• Old felt dessert project… or you know the pieces of felt they are made up with ;)
• Cheap plastic retractable measuring tape
• Decorations like bows, diamantes etc
• Glue gun or needle and thread

First take apart all of the felt pieces.

The three main parts are the pink top, cream sides and brown crinkly bottom…

Start with the pink top. It is felt with some stuffing inside to keep the shape.

The pink top needs to be on the side without the button to retract the tape otherwise you’ll never be able to push it through all of the toppings XD

Hot glue around the edges 3/4 of the way around.

Poke some stuffing in…

And glue the rest of the way. Done.

Now the sides, cut strips of the cream tall enough to cover the edges of pink and still fold down underneath.

Wrap it all the way around the edge and glue in place. Make sure that you leave the hole that the measuring tape comes out of clear! Trim around the outsides so there is only a few mm of overhang.

Fold it around the bottom and glue in place.

Now the crinkly bottom part! As it was the crinkly bottom part didn’t quite fit my tape measure so I cut the thread that ran around the edge and redid it so it was loose enough to fit.

You can see below how it should fit without the other pieces in the way.

Put a tiny bit of glue on the button which retracts the tape so it sticks to the felt. This is so you can easily press it  after the felt is in place, just be careful not to glue it so it’s permanently pressed!

Glue/stitch on all of the strawberries and yummy parts on top and you’re finished! I decorated with a few diamantes and a bow as well.

Quick, easy and functional too :D Now my at home measuring tape is as cute as the bear one I keep in my purse!

Problem is that looking at this now is making me huuuuungry XD

• Old manicure set

or

• Metal butterfly purse clip
• Cardboard
• Thin foam sheets

Plus:

• Fabric for the outside
• Glue Gun
• Fabric for the inside
• Ribbon
• Felt

Now the original one of these was glued together so I decided to hot glue mine. It probably would hold better if I was to have used epoxy on the metal parts but it’s held up in my handbag well so far so I probably won’t redo it.

First thing I did was to take the whole thing apart.

I had to unpick the inside stitching but it all came apart fairly easily.

From this point on we’ll assume I’m doing this from materials from scratch. Cut out cardboard and foam in the same shape and size as each side of the butterfly hinge.

Now cut out rectangles which are big enough to cover the  cardboard pieces with a few cm of overhang each side.

So that’s all of the pieces ready to go, let’s assemble it all!

Start with the cardboard.

Glue a layer of felt to it and trim the edges:

Next add a rectangle of the inside fabric on top of the felt. Hold it in place by gluing a thin line around the edge. My metal piece was around 4mm wide so I had heaps of room to hide the glue.

Now time to make a pocket! Take a second rectangle of inside fabric and fold it in half. Place the folded piece half way up and glue around the edges to hold in place. Don’t glue where the fold is otherwise you will be gluing your pocket shut XD

Trim all of the extra fabric off.

Repeat for the other side!

Now flip the cardboard over and glue the foam to the other side.

Next you need to glue both cardboard pieces to the metal butterfly. They should just sit on the outside like this:

Closed it looks like this:

Inside is done now we just need to make the outside look pretty. Grab the first rectangle of the outside fabric and glue it in place on the hinge edge.

Pull tight and glue on the other edge near the clip. Hinge on the right and clip on the left below:

My butterfly clip had a big groove around the edge where the fabric was previously held in by plastic tubing. I didn’t have any plastic tubing so instead I put a line of glue in then pressed the fabric into it using the nail file that came with the kit XD That way I could make sure it was all nice and tight.

I then trimmed the extra off with the nail scissors that also came with it… useful kit! Repeat the whole process on the other side and it’s almost finished.

Taadaa…

But you can still see the edges of everything in the groove so the easiest way to fix that is to cover it with ribbon!

I used 5mm ribbon which was wide enough to cover the gap and still have a little on either side.

Start at the back near the hinge and slowly glue ribbon over the gap. Make sure not to get glue on the hinge or you won’t be able to open it!

Repeat on the other side too. Make sure you’re really careful with the glue here because if you get it out of place you might have to remove the whole thing and start from scratch.

Where the ribbon meets I folded the edges before gluing.

Done!

Nice pretty inside with pockets to hold lots of business cards :D

Still small enough not to be annoying in the handbag and much more stylish than just throwing them in there ^_^ What do you guys think?

• Plastic beads (I’m using pearls and some blue ones)
• Tulle netting fabric
• Scissors, needle, thread

Cut 2 rectangles of netting.

Lay them together and stitch around the outside leaving a gap at one corner to feed in the beads.

Turn it inside out through the hole.

Start inserting your decorations. I made a little paper funnel and poured them in to speed up the process.

Blue done!

Add in some pearls to give it more shape…

It needs to be around 2/3 full so there’s still room to tie in the middle.

Stitch the hole closed…

Cut another rectangle of the netting.

Tie in the middle and you’re done!

The tulle I had on hand was bridal tulle so it doesn’t hold the shape particularly well. You can use heavy duty tulle, add a wire frame or a piece of felt inside as a backing to help it. I decided to leave mine floppy because they way I’m going to wear it my hair will prop it up!

I’m quite taken with this style now so as soon as I can find the damn mini pompoms in my craft shelves I’m going to make some more!

I think I might use bows like this to decorate my vanity now that’s it’s become my new hair/make up area… ugh that just means more cleaning ;_;

• Floaty fabric, I’m using gauze but you could also use chiffon or something similar
• Tulle for the middle bit
• Needle and thread

Cut out a really big rectangle. It needs to be twice as wide as you want the tail bits to end up.

Fold it in half side ways.

Start cutting diagonally up from the outside bottom corner.

Keep cutting diagonally until you get 2/3rds of the way then cut straight upwards. It should look like this…

Unfolded:

Take the pieces that you just cut out and lay them overlapping like this:

Then add the big piece over the top…

Starting from the top, use your fingers to fold the fabric back and forth over and over so it bunches together.

You can see it starting to come together now…

It’s completely optional but I decided to add a rectangle of pretty tulle to the middle as an extra point of interest.

Cut another small rectangle of the main fabric to act as the middle tie.

Wrap it around the bunched middle of everything tightly.

Stitch in place!

To give it that extra soft feel, run your hands over the edges of the fabric to make it fray.

And done!

Very little sewing required and still pretty ^_^ I think the raw edges really give an extra point of interest on this one!

Of course if you’re not into the gigantic bows like me you could always make one much smaller ^_^ I like my bows gigantic though. If you preferred a more finished look you could also add rolled hems to the edges. Personally I wanted this one to be huge, frayed and floaty.

Hope all of you have had better weeks than me, James computer exploded this morning with a huge pop and flash. Clearly this is not my week for technology >_<

Nowhere near perfect but it’s definitely an improvement!

First thing I did was pin it up to the length he wanted it.

I pinned the whole bottom edge…

Cut it along the fold…

Bam, shorter jacket.

I put it back on him and pinned up the back so it was fitted. It was double breasted but that didn’t look so good so we decided to change it to single. I pinned it shut where I was planning to move the buttons.

To give it shape and definition and decided to take in the 3 back seams…

After I took it off of him I fixed the pinned seams to make them straight. Most people do this step with the item of clothing inside out so the can sew straight from there but I don’t like sewing with pins in and I find it easier to see the finished product when it’s right way out.

So I snipped the extra fabric from the seams…

I cut straight up the back seam and two darts up the sides and into the sleeves. Next I overlocked the back seam and tacked the sides in place so he could try it on before I sewed properly.

The darts and bottom needed a bit more fitting before the final sewing. Definitely an improvement though!

Re-cutting and re-pinning the darts!

Stitch stitch stitch…

Snipped off all of the buttons and restitched them in place. We decided rather than to redesign the front he liked it with off centre buttons. I added a snap closure at the top button to avoid having to make another button hole XD I think looking at the photos I will probably move the bottom button to the right side and make it decoration too because he never bothers to close it.

I still want to make a lot of adjustments to make it better but as a quick fit I think this went down pretty well. At least he won’t be cold anymore and he likes it so that’s the important part!

What time is it? Sexy time! Oh that’s right XD

Finally crossed something off my to-craft list, yay!

This is how I achieved the look:

Section the parts of hair I wanted purple, put a piece of toilet paper underneath…

Painted the hair with a make up brush…

Got frustrated with how long that was taking and used fingers instead…

Allowed to dry for a few minutes….

Brushed out to separate the hairs….

To give it even more of a natural look I added a little dry shampoo to the mix and brushed that out too.

Perfect. Feels the same texture as the rest of my hair, doesn’t leave purple everywhere and washes out with water or a little oil free make up remover.

This is perfect for those who want to experiment with colour but not commit or who change their likes often. There is not one thing that I don’t like about this colour in my hair, it’s the perfect shade to compliment the pink! Now I want to get a bunch of them and try different ideas! Like painting hearts on my fringe or something else fun like that!

So yes this first day it looked a bit patchy because I was impatient but the next day it had worked in better and looked completely even and natural. Kicking myself for not thinking to take photos of that >_<

Next time I will work with smaller sections to get a completely even coverage first go rather than waiting for it to settle in on the second day. Still very happy with the experiment especially because I can get rid of it so quickly when I’m bored! :D