Floral Painted Coat Hanger Tutorial – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 22, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Another Home Sweet Home craft today! Today is how to jazz up plain boring wooden coat hangers. My dream is to one day have a complete matching set of coat hangers. Somehow we always end up with a heap of random unmatched ones. I don’t know how it happens but it always does!

So my end result:

For this tutorial you will need:

A wooden coat hanger
Acrylic paint in various colours
Paint brush
PVA glue/clear sealer to seal it all in
Nail file

To begin with, buff the coat hanger with a nail file to remove any shiny finishes.

Next, paint it completely white. You may need a few coats of paint.

Next, paint pink or lilac spots randomly all over the coat hanger.

Add little green triangle leaves.

Then a while spiral in each as well and a highlight on each leaf.

Allow it to dry completely and then paint the whole thing in a thick coat of PVA glue.

Once it dries it will be nice and shiny!

Now just imagine an entire wardrobe full of these… magical yes? If only I actually had that many of these to paint ;_;

One day, ONE DAY!!

I think maybe I need to dream a little bit bigger than just having matching coat hangers in my life >_>

How To Use A Quick Unpick – Sew Fun

by VioletLeBeaux | Aug 20, 2014 | Craft, Sewing 101, Tutorial

It’s been far too long since I did some proper Sew Fun posts but here’s a little one to tide you over. Today we’re going to learn to use your new best friend: a quick unpicker.

Basically this tool is a little pointy blade on the end of a handle which makes unpicking crappy stitching a breeze!

Here is the basic anatomy of an unpicker…

So taking a look at a standard hem on a skirt, there are two parts of the stitching: the overlocking/surging and the hem seam. The hem seam is the part you want to unpick if you’re undoing the seam.

So pick a spot to start and poke the point of the unpicker through one of the stitches.

Continue sliding it upwards and break the thread with the blade. It will probably pop up like this:

Now wedge the unpicker into the stitch next to the broken one and angle the blunt end up so it pulls the broken end of the thread through and undoes that stitch too.

Continue using the unpicker to unthread stitches like this. You can just cut them but then you have to clean up a million tiny pieces and thread.

This way you can have one long thread to get rid of at the end.

Done!

Now unpicking things like zippers is a little more difficult.

This is the back of the zip.

When you gently pull the zip away from the fabric you can see the seam holding them together.

Gently poke the unpicker through the gap between them and use it to hook a stitch.

Slice the stitch and it will pop open and probably take a few either side of itself under the pressure.

Continue popping stitches like this until you can get the entire zipper out.

Pull the zip away from the fabric gently so you can get at the threads easily. Be careful not to cut the fabric with the unpicker.

All done!

And that’s it! You now know how to use a quick unpicker! Hopefully you found this edition of Sew Fun useful and let me know if you have any suggestions for what I should cover next!

How To Make A Paper Hot Air Balloon Charm

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 30, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Today I thought we would make a fun little decoration. I love hot air balloons and I thought a bunch of them would look really cute hanging from the ceiling ^_^

This is my end result!

For today’s tutorial you will need:

Origami paper in various colours
Thumbtacks (These were a gift from Pure Girl Blue!)
Wire
An acorn cap or something similarly whimsical for the basket
An eraser

Take a square of paper.

Fold it in half into a triangle.

And fold it again to form a smaller lopsided triangle like this:

Repeat with at least 7 more pieces of paper. This looks best with a rainbow of colours!

Now let’s construct the balloon part.

Use a thumbtack to poke holes in each end of each triangle.

Stack the triangles with the thicker side up onto a thumbtack.

Bend them into a curve so it’s easier to make a ball later.

Now fan them out.

Cut a small piece of eraser and put it on the end of the tack so it holds everything in place, be careful not to prick yourself!

Now stack the other ends onto another thumbtack at the bottom.

It should look something like this, now stack another piece of eraser on too.

Fan them out to close the gap you’ve been working in so it becomes a full ball.

Easy! Now let’s just make the basket.

So we have some way to hang it, take a piece of wire and wrap it around the top thumbtack. Twist it into a loop at the top.

I made the basket out of an acorn cap. To hold it on I used two more pieces of wire wrapped around the bottom of the balloon and then around the cap. You could easily just glue them in place too.

Cute and ready for take off!

Hope you guys enjoyed the tutorials and let me know if you give it a try!

Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

How To Make A Cute Flower Crown

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 28, 2014 | Craft, Hair-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

I feel like I can’t log on to any of my social networks lately without seeing someone wearing a flower crown XD I’ve made these before for tutorials but I had a bunch of random flowers rattling around my crafting stash so I figured time for a new one!

All you need for this craft are a bunch of random flowers, a hot glue gun and some lace or ribbon to stick it to.

Lay your flowers out into a line and add more to the middle so it’s kind of a tiara shape.

Cut a piece of lace or ribbon which is long enough to tie around your head. You could also use a headband but I prefer ties because they are versatile and headbands give me a headache.

Now glue the flowers to the lace one by one. You can use a piece of fabric or felt as backing but it’s not really needed because it’s going to be hidden.

Taadaa! Seriously easy, the hardest part is deciding on how to lay the flowers out.

Then just tie it on and you’re good to go!

Having them on a piece of lace means you can wear it in so many ways, I like to tie it around a big puffy bun!

New accessory in record time! I’ll have to go through my craft supplies to do things more often haha! Have you guys made anything fun lately?

How To Make 3 Kinds Of Felt Flowers

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 21, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

For today’s tutorial I’m going to show you how to make 3 different kinds of basic felt flowers.

All you will need is some felt and either a needle felting needle or needle and thread.

Let’s do the red spiral one first. Start by cutting out a large red circle.

Next draw a spiral in the circle and cut it out. Wrap the spiral tightly around itself so it forms a rose shape. You can vary the shape depending on how tightly you wrap.

To hold it in place either stitch on the back as you go or use a needle felting needle to stab all of the layers together. Felting needles are so useful for these kinds of flowers because it’s much quicker than stitching.

Easy!

You can vary the size by making a bigger or smaller circle to begin with.

Now let’s give the yellow pointed one a try!

Begin by cutting out a heap of petal shapes in varying sizes. Also cut out a a smaller row of petals which are connected at the base. Begin with the line of petals and pinch each one in half. Stitch it or felt them in place so it makes a vein in the middle of each. This is going to be the center of the flower and give it shape.

Now starting with the large petals, lay 5 of them out so they overlap in the middle. Felt/stitch in place. Continue laying out groups of 5 petals getting smaller and smaller until it’s a full looking flower. I used around 15 petals.

Lastly roll the small middle petals into a spiral and stitch/felt them into the middle of the flower. This should cover all of the beginnings of the lower petals too.

Done!

You can see how much height the middle petal shape gives too.

And lastly let’s make the little blue one!

Start by making a small version of the yellow flower. This version only has 8 petals and they are all the same length. Then with each of the petals, fold them backwards and in half.

Stitch or felt the petals in place so they form little folds.

And there you go, a pretty little flower bud!

And there you have it, 3 cute little flowers which are ready to use as accessories or embellishments.

Let me know if you give any of them a try!

How To DIY Decoupage Shoes! Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 14, 2014 | Craft, Shoe-Tutorials, Tutorial

I did a video tutorial on these shoes quite a while ago but thought a photo tutorial would be in order as well! The idea is a very simple one: take old shoes and decoupage them with old magazines into adorable new shoes, win!

I used old Japanese fashion magazines for mine so I could reminisce about old school Lolita fashion from like 7 years ago.

For this tutorial you will need:

Old magazines or pretty paper
PVA glue or similar
Water and bowl

Begin by tearing all of your magazines up into small pieces. Make sure to consider whether the colours of each piece will go with the rest of them. It’s better to rip everything up at the beginning because once you have glue all over your hands it’s quite difficult!

I picked mostly white and pastel colours of old dress collections.

Mix a solution of equal parts glue and water in a bowl and put the pieces of paper in to soak. Leave them in until they are wet all the way through. The time this takes will depend on how thick your paper is.

Prepare your shoes. I’m using some old leather ones. If your shoes are patent or shiny it can help the glue to stick if you buff them lightly with sandpaper or a nail file to remove the shine.

Take your first piece of soaked paper and apply it to the edge of the shoe. Always start from the edges and work inwards. Smooth it down so it’s completely flush to the shoe.

Now take your second piece of paper and overlap it half way over the first one. Overlapping will give the structure more strength.

Continue overlapping pieces until you’ve done the entire shoe. Around the top of the shoe fold the pieces over the edge. Don’t cover the sole because that will get worn down quickly.

Done! Allow this to dry completely and then coat the whole thing in a layer of glue to seal it in. If your paper is transparent when dry you can add another layer.

Now just repeat on the other shoe.

Depending on the kind of glue you use these will probably not be waterproof at this point (it is just paper) so if you plan on wearing them in the rain etc I would suggest adding a coat of sealing lacquer to the top as well.