How To Customise An iPad Keyboard Case

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 25, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Lately I’ve decided to take the idea of working on my career more seriously, I want to work hard and be more successful at things I enjoy. Most of those things tend to involve writing so as a present to myself I decided to buy a proper keyboard for my ipad so I could write even while my computer is busy rendering video and things like that. Really I just want a better laptop so I can multi task while editing videos… but that’s much more expensive than a keyboard so this is my interim solution!

Anyway I decided to decorate it so I would remind myself why I’m working so hard: you guys!

This is my end result:

For this tutorial you will need:

iPad keyboard
Drawing/painting/pretty paper you want to cover it with
Glue
Scissors
Clear book covering contact

This is my keyboard:

I wanted the main focus on the back of the iPad to be the coat of arms for the VLB and then on the inside a spring theme.

It wasn’t quite bright enough for me so I decided to jazz it up a bit with some more water colours.

While it was drying I worked on the inside area.

I cut out a piece of a daisy/grass painting I had done earlier and fitted it to the blank part of the keyboard at the top. I used a little bit of glue to hold it down for the next steps. PVA or paper glue is fine for this, it’s really just to stop it sliding around.

Then I covered the area in clear contact.

It was a little hard to cut it so it was snug around the corners but I did my best to keep it smooth and clean.

Now the back! My painting was all dry by this point so I cut it to fit the back of the keyboard without overlapping the curved edges.

I added a thin layer of glue again to hold it in place.

And stuck it down.

Then it was just a matter of covering that with contact too.

I made sure to go smoothly and carefully around the curved edges so there weren’t any creases.

Taadaa!

Spring on the inside and VLB on the outside!

I absolutely love it and every time I see it, it makes me want to get to work on something awesome!

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

James’ Office Chair Make Over – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 18, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

After we moved around the lounge room to the new configuration there was one thing left which bothered me: James’ chair.

I have had a love hate relationship with James’ chairs over the years. He always picks the cheapest crappiest chairs which are terrible for back support and also super ugly, but he claims are super comfy. I mean if they were good for his back then I could understand… But honestly bleh.

So I made this…

From this…

So I sold him on a make over by promising to add a bunch more pillows and arm support so it was *actually* comfortable for him to sit there. Double win!

I tied some old pillows from daiso around the arms, added one to the seat area and one to the back support and held them all in place with old yarn.

I toyed with the idea of coating the arms completely in yarn but I didn’t have enough and the finish wasn’t so great so instead I covered it and the rest of the chair in white stretch fabric and hot glued it down.

I chose green knit fabric for the bulk of the chair so it matched the rest of the house.

I didn’t have enough for the whole chair so I ended up chopping up an old scarf and doing the rest in brown knit. I like it because it kind of looks like a tree.

I fixed the final fabric in place with hot glue as well making sure that all of the edges are covered up.

Bam! New area! I feel like it’s much more open and almost magazine-y! So clean and pretty and nice. And a clean work space means a better frame of mind and more productivity… or that’s what I’m going with anyway 😀

Now if I could only convince James to buy a really nice proper ergonomically chair which would actually be good for his back -_-‘

Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

Random Ikea Lamp Hack – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 11, 2014 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Random project… We had an Ikea lamp which was broken and an Ikea tea light lantern which was also a bit broken. So I combined them into one monster lantern…

Before:

The second lamp didn’t work and this one wasn’t getting power properly.

I removed the top of the lamp and glued the lantern in place. I also strengthened the inside so it could withstand the extra weight.

I also added some flowers into the stand because… I don’t know, its me. >_>

With no power supply any more I debated between tea lights or LED fairy lights. The LED won out because they required less cleaning of wax.

So there you go, waste nothing! It looks a little like it’s leading the way to Narnia XD

How To Make A Basic Draped Shirt With No Sewing

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 9, 2014 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

So I’ve been a little bit obsessed with making wrap shirts lately. It’s such a fun thing to experiment with especially because there is pretty much no sewing involved!

This one has cute bow shapes on the sleeves.

All you need for this is a large square amount of fabric, some scissors and a little ribbon.

Take your piece of fabric and fold it in half. Cut a neck hole along the fold.

From this point on I put it on my mannequin to hold while I was working so I could see the shape.

Round out the neck hold so it’s more flattering.

Along the shoulder area cut 2 horizontal lines.

Pinch the fabric in between the cuts together into a bow and tie the ribbon around the middle.

Now make a cut on each side around the wait area.

Now take the corners of the fabric which are at the back and poke them through the waist holes.

And tie them in a knot.

Done!

So when it’s laid out flat, this is what it looks like:

And then on it looks like this:

Tight at the back and the draped and pretty at the front!

How fun was that!? No sewing effort required and you could do so many things like this by draping and tying the fabric in different ways!

Silk Painting Technique Sampler!

by VioletLeBeaux | Jun 6, 2014 | Art, Artwork-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

Seeing as I’ve been doing some beginners watercolour posts lately I thought perhaps it would be fun to do something similar with silk painting techniques. So I made a silk sampler to try out a lot of different techniques.

I’m using Opulence silk dye for this post, it’s easy to use and fixes with an iron rather than steam. I’m using clear and black gutta as well. The clear washes out with water and the black is fixed.

I’m using a small Pongee pre-hemmed silk.

It’s very thin and a bit floaty. It was one of the cheaper weights and I think I prefer the expensive heavier weight looks but I haven’t been brave enough to paint on one yet because it’s more expensive and I’m scared of ruining it >_>

The silk is stretched on my frame so it’s tight and easier to work with.

To begin with I thought I would experiment and see if I could colour the clear gutta so it would leave behind a light stain when it was washed out.

For this I used a thin brush while applying.

It did look cute but didn’t take on much of the silk dye colour.

I then applied a design around the outside using the clear gutta applicator bottle to see the difference between brush and bottle tip.

Harder to see when it’s white on white but the application is thicker but more regulated.

The black gutta has a much thinner applicator.

And it was much thicker and therefore harder to control with a small paint brush.

I divided the rest of the silk up into sections that we could try different techniques in and left it to dry.

For the silk paint I used a larger brush.

This particular dye can be diluted and effected with water while the gutta acts as a barrier.

The first technique I tried was wetting the fabric first and then applying the dye. It gave a very light colour and it was harder to spread the dye as the fabric was already full of water.

I managed to go over the lines on the first damn one too >_>

You can see how much brighter and more even it is on dry fabric.

I then did a gradient effect on wet and dry fabric. The dry fabric was brighter but the wet fabric seemed like a smoother gradient.

Time to experiment with salt now! This is dry fabric with dye and then salt sprinkled on top. The salt sucks up the water and the dye moving it around to make interesting effects.

Once it’s totally dry it looks like this:

Salt on pre-wet fabric didn’t create as sharp an effect but it made more of a fluid pattern.

Close up of the salt on dry fabric:

Close up of salt on wet fabric:

In the top left square on wet fabric I painted a green base and then put little yellow spots. The bottom right was the same thing but on dry fabric. They look much of a muchness.

I then gave painting stripes a try. First on wet fabric where it was kind of successful.

Then on dry fabric where the dye just spread and blended into itself.

I blended red and purple together on wet fabric and the gradient was very smooth but the colours were dull.

Blending while wet looked much more vibrant but the blended area was lighter.

And that was the full sampler, so time to seal it and then wash it out and see how things turned out.

I sealed with an iron as usual.

Then washed the gutta out.

You can see all of the clear gutta has been removed and left clean white silk below it.

The gutta I tried to colour didn’t leave any colour behind so it’s back to the drawing board on that one.

Now here are some close ups of some of the different areas and techniques.

So, a fun way to give everything a try! I would definitely suggest doing one of these to test out techniques if you’re starting out with silk painting. It was good to see how the paint reacted to different surfaces and treatments. Now I can apply all of this experimenting to real painting later! Fun 😀

Hope you guys found this useful and let me know if you’re silk painting too, I’d love to be inspired by what you guys are up to!

How To Make You Own Needle Felt Lottie

by VioletLeBeaux | May 26, 2014 | Craft, Miss Lottie Pomeranian, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

When I get bored and have an excess of needle felting supplies, things like this happen…

To make you own needle felted Lottie you will need basic needle felting supplies and wool in creams, beiges, black and a little orangey red.

Make 3 sausagey legs and felt a crease to make the feet. These should be beige with extra cream on the foot part.

Make a body which looks like an egg. The chest area should be white and very proud looking while the back is beige. Attach the legs as well.

Add a white tail which is a ridiculous proportion to the body. It should be extra fluffy and highly decorative.

For the head use mostly beige with details in white. Lottie’s face looks like a fox so pointy snout, big eats and cheeks so fluffy they also seem highly decorative.

Attach the head to the body.

Lastly you need to add a face. A little brown nose is accurate but black is fine too. Don’t forget to put eyes on which absolutely beg you for the treats you’re holding.