My daughter has a grey cat so I decided to make her a tiny cat brooch.
The most difficult part is making the pattern, I find if I draw a picture and then fold it in half (using the best side) its easier to make a symmetrical pattern.
I sewed the face on first and used chain stitch to make a tiny collar.
I decided to stitch him together with purple thread as its Jenny's favourite colour.
With the addition of a brooch pin he is finished.
Thanks for stopping by It's a Creative World
Debbie xxx
I bought some mint chocolate biscuits and made stickers with my trusty Xyron Sticker maker and made some cute watches for the party bags.
Also for the party bag were some tescos mini bubbles which I made custom labels for...
Cheap, simple but effective...
No Alice party is complete without Eat Me cookies. Here were ours...
Sugar cookies with Sugar paste disks written on with an Edible writing pen.
The Queen of Hearts she made some tarts...well these were made by adapting this recipe.
I had picked up the cardboard cake stands from a Tesco sale for under £1 each.
Cardboard cake stands are quite widely available now and make a much cheaper (and more child friendly) solution than china, and you can use them more than once if they don't get too trashed.
Then I made cupcake picks using a strip of paper I had printed out and glued onto a cocktail stick. The little watches are made from sugar paste written on with an edible pen.
Asda's juices had the labels ripped off and custom ones printed by me and attached with a pretty yarn.
and this was the birthday cake (based on the Disney cartoon version of Alice in Wonderland) made by myself and my older daughter.
And in keeping with the Alice theme, here is a necklace I had made out of polymer clay and decorated using a photocopy transfer method.
I hope you were inspired to have a little Wonderland party yourself!
Love
Doda
xx
Hello, Eleanor here, introducing a series of posts with a theme of Alice in Wonderland. Over the next few weeks you will see many different styles and interpretations of Alice from the creative girls, and I hope there will be something you are keen to try.
To start us off, I've made a domino triptych necklace.
I drilled through top and bottom of each domino, added images, diamond glaze and inked edges, before threading with waxed cord:
And you know me? Yes of course I made another one:
Back soon with some more Alice inspiration.
It's toot toot Tuesday and I wanted to share with you a new paint I've discovered.
Back in June I went to the Extravaganza Weekend at the Craft Barn and saw Pebeo Fantasy Paints demonstrated. There are two Fantasy Moon, which gives you a flat pearly effect and Fantasy Prisme, which gives you a mosaic effect.
My favourite is the Prisme.
Here's a brooch I've made
and some bottle tops I plan to use as the centre of flowers
It does take 6 hours to set, so you have resist checking it but the final effect is gorgeous.
If you get the chance do get yourself some, they give such a different effect.
Lynne x
Katie recently showed us her shrink plastic lucky cat, and I've been shrinking too. Having struggled with stamping on normal shrink plastic, I bought some inkjet printable sheets and used my printer. I found some images I loved, here from Cathe Holden. She used hers for fridge magnets and bunting but I made mine into a necklace. Sounds bizarre but it's colourful and funny. All I had to do was to lighten the images in Photoshop, print, cut out, punch holes, and shrink.
I made another one (sound familiar?)
and here I am wearing a cheesy grin and a cheesy necklace just to prove I do wear these things I make
Have a look around Cathe's site, there are some wonderful freebie printables, and a host of creative ideas.
Bye for now.
I've always found using shrink plastic a little difficult- I think the first shrink plastic I had may not have been the best quality as the ink had a habit of sliding off-very frustrating!
Anyhow I decided to give it another go and tried some CLEAR shrink plastic this time! I used Staz-On ink to stamp with and coloured on the back of the image with copic pens.I trimmed around the image and remembered to punch a hole to attach my charm to my planned brooch.
Shrinking the image is a nerve wracking time- watching that little piece of plastic whip and writhe around is very odd- especially when it looks like it's going to get stuck on itself! However we both survived and Lucky Cat turned out to be a really cute little charm!
I added a jump ring to the cat and attached it to a Tim Holtz Swivel Clip!
For my other charms I stacked a couple of Tim Holtz gears up with a Game Spinner and added a brad to hold them together; used a Halloween token; a small bottle with some glitter and a little label and finally I threaded some beads onto a wire and added those for some bling!
Here is the finished brooch- I wanted a dangly brooch but it can be used to attach to a zip or as a keyring!
I actually loved the shrinking of the Lucky Cat he looks so cute this size and I have some more ideas for shrinky dinks from making this project!
So that's it from me for now!
Happy Crafting!
GlitteryKatie xxx
Morning, Eleanor here with a dinky little swinging birdbox pendant.
An advert for Handcrafted Jewelery magazine popped into my inbox one morning and I just had to make what I saw on the cover. First I enlisted my husband to cut me some very small pieces of wood, not that I couldn't do it myself, you understand, of course I could, but I thought I'd give him something to do! ;)
Here are the little pieces he produced for me, approx 1in by 1.5in, with a 5mm wide shallow hole drilled on one face of each block:
I then carefully drilled a fine hole down through the centre ridge,
into which I placed an eye pin (from a jewellery findings supplier, or you could cut an inch of wire and curl a loop at one end) (could have used a small eyelet screw, but even the smallest one from the hardware shop looked big and clumsy on top of my teeny house) just to test the fit:
I took the pin back out and put it to one side, glued a couple of squares of chipboard on to make a roof, then simply decorated each house with a selection of patterned paper scraps (I used pieces from 6in x 6in pads, as the print is smaller). I also stamped here and there, and gave the little entrance hole a quick lick of black paint, once I'd used the end of a pencil to press in the glue-soggy paper (I knew I'd never match a precut hole in my paper with the actual hole, I know my limitations!) . I then poked about with a long pin in approximately the centre of the roof ridge until I found the little hole I drilled earlier, dripped in a drop of glue, and popped in the eye pin. (I used superglue, the one drop easy applicator one.)
Finally I coated each one with 3 coats of Mod Podge, drying in between:
Added a chain, but might try a ribbon, or waxed cord, or a length of cotton string for a rustic look.
Big thanks to both the original designer, Heather Alexander, and also Cate Prato for her take on it, the same but different, as is mine, and as will yours be.
I fancy stripy beach huts next time.
See you soon.
x
Our creative girl Doda posted recently, here, about where to find inspiration, and that very post was where I found inspiration for this project. My eye was drawn to Doda's screenshot of her pinterest board, and down at the bottom were some blue and white porcelain hearts by, I think, Harriet Damave, which I fell in love with.
Here are mine:
They started life as a sheet of white shrink plastic, which I zendoodled with a fine blue Sharpie. I cut hearts approximately 2 inches across at the widest point, punched a hole on either side, and with the aid of a heat gun -
Here's another look at a finished heart, to see the thickness; I just love the miracle that is shrink plastic, seems I never grew up!
I used small silver jump rings to connect the hearts, using 7 in total to make a loose bracelet, with a silver tibetan clasp at the end:
Modelled by yours truly:
These are ready for necklaces and brooches:
Thank you Doda, that peep at your Pinterest board was just what I needed.
Eleanor
x
Hi Lynne here
Happy New Year to you all, I hope 2012 brings you everything you could wish for.
Many of us are given book tokens as presents and I thought I'd share with you a fabulous beading book I have. It's well worth adding to your collection if you love making beaded jewelery, as I do.
It's called Beaded Allure by Kelly Wiese and it's fabulous.
The instructions are so easy to follow, as step by step pictures are included.
I've made the necklace on the front cover, using my own colour scheme.
I have a list of other projects I want to make in this book, I think it will keep me rather busy with my beading.
I hope you'll share with us if you make anything from this book.
Lynne x
Hello everybody - Kerry here with my very first post on here so please be gentle with me.
My project is an easy crocheted brooch.
Terms are the US version of crochet because despite being English I learnt using the US terms.
You will need a few scraps of leftover yarn. The thickness is totally up to you. I used chunky which I believe is called bulky in other countries. It gave me a brooch of approximately 3 inches in diameter. You could use thinner yarns doubled.
I used a 6mm crochet hook.
Directions:
Using the magic circle method (explained here) chain 3 and then do 10 double crochet (explained here) into the circle. Join with a slip stitch into the top of the chain 3.
It should look like this:
Chain 3 and then do 4 lots of double crochet into each double crochet from the previous round. Slip into the top of the chain 3. Weave in your ends and your crochet part of this is done. The 4 lots of double crochet makes it slightly ruffled. If you prefer it to be flatter then simply substitute the 4 double crochet for 3 double crochet.
It now looks like this (yes I was naughty and took the picture before I got rid of the ends):
Now comes the fun part. Grab some buttons and beads and let your creativity loose. I used just ordinary sewing thread doubled for attaching the embellishments as some of the items I used were too small to fit yarn through. Invisible thread would be great for this part.
Sew a pin to the back and you are done.
There are numerous other ways of using this project. It would be great to dress up a bag, for fastening a scarf, as a hair accessory or on your papercrafting projects.
Thanks for taking the time to read my first ever post.
Kerry x
