So what’s a girl to do when the shops are closed and she needs one for some photos or she can’t find them in her area? Make one of course!

What I’m showing you today isn’t completely a hair donut, rather a hair sausage which is more versatile that a donut and can be worn in so many different ways (tutorials on those ways are up coming of course).

The end result is a light squishy tube which is flexible and held in shape via wire.

You need:

• Polar fleece or similar stretchy fabric
• Thick wire for the inside
• Needle and thread
• Stuffing or fabric scraps if you’re desperate
• Pliers to cut and shape the wire.

Cut a piece of the wire a long as you want the sausage to be. Remember it needs to be able to wrap comfortably around a ponytail with a bit to spare and the ends will need to be curled over so they aren’t pointy. I made mine around 25cm and then curled the ends into circles as seen below.

Fold a piece of polar fleece in half and lay the wire on top.

Cut out a trapezoid shape like below and make it substantially longer than the wire, the long end of mine was almost double that of the wire.

Stitch from one corner up the side and around to the other side. Leave a gap so you can turn it inside out.

Turn it inside out ^_^

You should have something along these lines…

Put the wire inside.

Stitch on each side through the wire loops. This will hold it in place and make sure it doesn’t slip around inside.

Because the polar fleece is bigger than the wire it will look something like this when you sew each loop.

Fill the whole thing with stuffing.

It should be packed in there fairly tightly but not so much so that it can’t bend.

Stitch the end up and you’ve got a hair sausage!

To use it you just need to make a ponytail, wrap this around and the form the bun around it.

The reason I prefer the sausages to donuts is that you can use them in a variety of ways including in vintage style rolls etc. I’ve seen a lot of sock versions of this too, have you ever tried them?

I’ve got tutorials on how to use it in a variety of ways coming up soon :D

Felt circle on the back…

Make a nice flat surface for the magnet.

Magnet on!

Done! That took all of about 3 minutes :D

Quick crafts for the win!

Project 2. The Glass Bowl

We found this bowl in the Black Hole (the place people leave stuff for hard rubbish pick up downstairs)

I found some mirror strips in my craft stash.

Very simple project but it looks so expensive.

Wrap the mirror as a band around the top. Add some netting to the inside. Stick in a bunch of fake flowers!

Cost Breakdown:

• Vase $0 (I’ve seen the vases for $5 at the junk store though)
• Flowers $0 (you can get bunches at junk stores for $2 though)
• Mirror $2
• Netting $0.20
• Total cost $2.20

It’s basically a big tall glass bowl.

These little mirror pieces come on adhesive backing and were $2 at a junk store.

I cut them into strips of 3.

Peeled off the back and stuck them to the top of the bowl.

No seriously that’s it.

I added some random netting material I had to the inside so it had another texture then dumped a bunch of fake flowers in too.

Pretty neat huh?

To top off that area I put down an lace matt which I think my grandmother made (you can buy lace doilies at thrift stores for next to nothing) then added a couple of candles on top. Clutter like this looks so much better if you keep the colours similar so I used creams and pinks throughout.

I’m very happy with the results and that’s another area down in the house!

I hope some of you give this one a go!

• Popsicle sticks
• Hot glue gun
• White paint
• Decorations
• Sharp scissors

Start by deciding how big you want the box to be, my base was 8 sticks. Lay out the correct number of popsicle sticks like this:

Now you need to make cross beams to stick it all together so cut the appropriate length sticks.

Glue three of them down onto the base so it’s completely secure.

Now to start making the sides. Cut the sticks to the correct length so you have one for each side of the base.

Then cut enough picket pieces for each side. Mine were half the length of each original stick so that make it nice and easy to measure. Glue them to the first side piece.

Then add two more sticks on top of that to make it look more fence-ish ^_^

Repeat for the other sides and you have this:

One by one glue each side upright onto the base.

And you now have a box!

For extra strength I glued in some cross pieces to the corners.

Now you just need to make it look prettier!

Paint the whole thing white.

Mine needed a couple of coats before it looked right.

Now it’s time to decorate, this is the most fun bit! I wanted mine to be very spring-ish so I used fake flowers to make it look like a window box.

I glued a sculpey flower between each picket.

Then floral lace around the inside so it was peaking out of the gaps between the pickets.

Pretty cute yes?

The last step was adding a nice bow to the front :D

Done! The most time consuming part of this was waiting for the paint to dry because, well, it was like watching paint dry ;) Other than that it was quick and easy but it looks adorable and is the perfect size to hold eyelashes still on their trays.

You’ll get to see how it all matches into my vanity when finish the diary entries on that :D

What do you all think?

Project 3. That Stupid Corner!

There is a corner in our lounge that I hate. It has a box platform plastered in and because it’s next to the TV and the heater it’s terrible for decorating. I want to sove this puzzle by putting our black hole vase there and filling it with flowers and other trinkets.

I have a random collection of flowers and bits and pieces to use.

This is my vase, we found it in the throw away pile downstairs. I call that place The Black Hole because it magically makes cool stuff appear but more on that in another post! I like this vase because it’s tall and has a pretty floral pattern with a classic shape.

These are the flowers I had to fill it with. Some of them are from my junk store stash, some were given to me by Celeste when she moved and some are keep sakes. There’s the peacock feather James found me at the zoo and my flower from the Langham as well as some little jewel trinkets.

The reason I chose these flowers in particular was because they all had complimentary colours and interesting textures. Some of them are soft, some pointy, some little, some big and some tall, some short.

Most of them had wire stems so to get different heights I just bent them to the length I wanted or snipped off the bottom. I preferred to bend them though so the vase looked fuller.

To fill the vase I started with the biggest  tallest pieces in the back.

I added pieces in odd numbers, so 3 long pointy pieces with small flowers.

Then the rest of the tall pieces around the back. There was no point adding them to the front as they would be covered by smaller flowers.

I didn’t stick to just flowers either, feathers, jewels and anything with a nice texture is good to fill in gaps.

Next I added a layer of medium flowers to fill the entire front of the vase so you couldn’t see in through the gaps anymore. The big roses were really good for this and because they also had some netting sections it was even better to give variety.

I put some large diamantes and crystals throughout the whole thing.

And lastly added some little tiny flowers to cover any annoying gaps.

To dress the corner up a bit I first put an old cake stand on the box. This gives the arrangement extra height and it’s a good place to store the cake stand which never actually gets used XD

Taadaa!

After playing around with the placement  added a pretty green bow and moved some of the taller flowers so it looked like a one sided sweep and pointed towards the window. I really like the way it brightens up the room!

What do you guys think? Another project done!

So you need:

• Ric Rac
• Glue or needle and thread

Twist the two pieces together so they form one long strand.

The length you need will depend on how big you want your flower but you do need a decent amount.

Roll the end into a little spiral. Fix it with a stitch or a dot of glue on the back.

Roll, roll, roll and roll some more until you have something along these lines :D Poke the end underneath.

Stitch or glue it all on the bottom!

Flip the outer layers down so they sit flat. I think its easier to do this if you’ve glued the bottom because stitching can have a lot less give to move it around.

Done!

Cute!

Just promise me you won’t be putting them on any scary dresses XD

Instead add them to something slightly more subtle and slightly less neon such as a pearl headband!

Hope you enjoyed and it doesn’t bring back any horrible memories of your grandma’s sewing XD