Craft Archives - Page 27 of 77 - Violet LeBeaux

How To Make A Bow Shaped Puppy Pull Toy

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 22, 2012 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

So when I brought Lottie home one of the things I was looking forward to was doing some doggie diy projects. I wasn’t counting on all of our friends and family falling in love with her and spoiling her rotten XD

It was almost a month after we got her until she was bored over her other toys and I wanted to make her something else.

She enjoys yarn so I made her a bow shaped tug-o-war thing out of the yarn she likes.

She is completely obsessed with this particular yarn for some reason, she prefers squishy yarns, I assume because it’s soft.

Let’s get started!

Tie a loop.

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Pull the yarn through the loop forming another loop.

Pull it tight. Pull the yarn through again and pull, through and pull etc.

It forms a crochet style chain.

Keep going until you have a very long string.

Cut the end off and pull it through the loop.

Pull it tight so it knots off and won’t come undone.

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Arrange the rope in loops which lay flat like this:

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Tie the middle very tightly. The point of this toy is so the dog spends ages pulling it apart so the tighter you tie it the longer it will take the dog to do it.

Make a second shorter rope, I plaited this one just to make it a little more interesting.

Tie it rightly around the middle a couple of times so it makes it even more bow like and that’s done!

Of course it only works if your dog isn’t extremely lazy XD

Lottie wasn’t interested during nap time haha!

After she actually woke up properly she tore the hell out of it. It took her a week to undo all fo the loops then I tied it back up again and she started from scratch. Never ending fun for her. Even more fun if you hide a treat in the middle. Now I’ve started making things like this I’m thinking of more I can do!

How To Make A Cute White Board – Home Sweet Home

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 14, 2012 | Craft, Home Sweet Home Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Fridge looks a little boring and plain?

Time to make your own pretty whiteboard!

Hours of fun drawing or more realistically writing shopping lists!

You need:

Whiteboard paper (got mine from Daiso)
Markers
Old magnets
Hot glue gun
Lace
Diamantes

So first step is deciding what size you want. The whiteboard paper was really easy to cut so in theory you could make all kinds of shapes.

I decided to edge it with lace but I thought pink would look better with the fridge so I coloured the nylon lace with a Copic marker.

Easy!

Glue the lace to the sticky side of the paper all the way around the edge.

I taped it in the corners for a little extra strength.

I was kind of decorating as I went along so the next thing I did was clean off my fridge and remove all of the stickers. I find it easier to do projects like this when they’re actually on the item. Sometimes you just need to see things from further away to pick up any mistakes!

This is what I had at this point but it looked a little plain.

Diamantes to the rescue! I put a row of large diamantes around the edge of the paper.

Pretty!

Now it’s time to do the matching pens 😀

These are really simple too, just make sure you use actual whiteboard markers not regular ones or else you’ll never be able to wipe them off XD

All you need to do is cut some old magnets to be the size and shape of the lid then glue them of. You may need to glue one to the actual pen too depending on how strong the magnets are.

Easy!

I added my Bergamot magnet for another little detail too 😀 You can learn how to make your own Bergamot magnet here.

Taadaa!

Now you just need to draw something on there!

When I made this one I was thinking I would use it for shopping lists and things like that but all I really ended up doing with it was drawing cute things XD

The fridge definitely looks cuter now! I’m still considering adding a heap of flowers to the bottom of it too but I can’t decide on which medium to use!

3 Ways To Get The Best Ribbon Bows

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 13, 2012 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

Today I thought I would do a bit of an experiment and compare different ways to tie ribbon bows.

There are three methods which I wanted to compare:

The Fork, The Knot and The Cut.

So let’s get started!

#1. The Fork.

This is a larger version of something which has been all over Pinterest and Tumblr. I have no idea who invented this originally but here’s a site with a pdf which is fairly self explanatory.

For the big version you just need 4 fingers and some ribbon.

Wrap a piece of ribbon around your fingers like this and hold in place:

Poke the top end between your middle fingers at the bottom.

Poke the other end through the the fingers at the top.

From the back it looks like this:

Tie the two ends in a knot so they hold it in place.

Wiggle it off your fingers.

Even it out and this is the front:

And back:

Not bad and it’s very easy to get a lot of bows done quickly which are completely even. It can be a bit fiddly though.

The Knot.

Take a piece of ribbon and fold the end in to the middle.

Fold the other end to the middle too:

Now grab the folded ends and tie them in a knot.

It makes an upside down bow.

Pull the ends tightly and even it out.

That’s the knot! It’s a very simple way to get a bow but the tail pieces come from different sides of the bow which I’m not a big fan of.

The Cut

This version kind of cheats by using 3 pieces of ribbon instead of one. I’ve already done a more detailed tutorial on this one so if you need instructions check out my ribbon bow tutorial here.

This is the end result, it’s the perfect shape but it takes so much longer to do.

So looking at them side by side I like The Cut the most but I think the Fork is best when you need to do them in bulk. What do you guys think?? Which is your favorite?

Here they are in the order of Fork, Knot and Cut:

I’m so weird about bows, I can’t believe I actually just wrote a post comparing them XD

How I Made Lottie’s Puppy Halloween Witch Costume

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 8, 2012 | Craft, Miss Lottie Pomeranian, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Today I figured I would do a quick walk through of how I made Lottie’s Halloween costume. I’m not really sure how I feel about dogs wearing cutesy clothing in general because I know some of them hate it. As she’ll most likely need to wear a coat when we go out in winter next year our vet suggested getting her used to it now while she’s still little. I haven’t made her any real coats yet so I figured I’d get in quick and do something that could double for Halloween.

I cut up a shirt that my Mum was going to get rid of as it didn’t fit.

First I cut the skirt section off.

Then I cut down around the clasp so I could fold the top of the black part over to form a collar.

I stitched the collar in place and put a piece of elastic through it so it was the right size for her neck.

The I cut off a piece of the stretchy arm of the dress and stitched it on the inside of the cape so it would go around her tummy and keep it all in place.

Of course the front needed to be cut much shorter so it wouldn’t get in the way of her feet. To keep the jagged look I snipped unevenly and went all around the back too.

I couldn’t resist so I made a matching hat clip too from the scraps… though I ended up wearing it more than she did >_>

Verdict: she couldn’t have cared less about wearing it so I don’t think I’ll have any problems at all when it comes to Winter again!

She couldn’t stand the smell of one of our Halloween broom props though XD I was quite surprised she didn’t try to eat it!

Very cute and a good practice run for a time where she really needs something like this.

I’m so glad she’s such a relaxed puppy with things like this because it makes it much easier to do important things like bathing and clipping her nails without her panicking!

Hope you guys all had an awesome Halloween and had fun with your costumes too!

Adventure Time Costumes and Halloween Decorations

by VioletLeBeaux | Nov 7, 2012 | Craft, Life, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Halloween!! This is the first year we’ve ever decorated our house. And the first year I’ve put much effort into my costume. Halloween is getting more popular in Aus though we still didn’t have any trick or treaters.

We decided to do a family theme of Adventure Time! I was Princess Bubblegum, James was Finn and Lottie was Jake because I didn’t want to put her in her witch costume for very long.

We didn’t do much for our costumes, most of it we already had but I made James’ hood and my crown.

I coloured my hair pink for the night using some pastels, I’ll show you how I did it in an upcoming video.

Very happy with the costumes! I kind of wanted to change outfits into her other ones throughout the night XD

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James made a very good Finn, I think they are the same mental age XD

He couldn’t find a sword so he borrowed Lottie’s broom. I made his hat in around 10 minutes by hot gluing some polar fleece together and his backpack is a green pillow with tape for straps XD Super dodgy!

Now on to the spoooky decorations we had XD

Personally I hate fake spider web but it’s a staple of Halloween so I covered all of the windows in it.

The lounge area had a flock of bats flying out the window, you can’t see very well but on the corner they actually come off the wall on wires.

We had skull candle holders and Autumn leaves everywhere.

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The most important part: candy table 😀

The real food table and more Autumn leaves.

My new message board (tutorial soon) was covered with a black cat, spider web and even more Autumn leaves. I really like Autumn leaves.

So much so that the same was put on the kitchen cupboards.

I made some very quick custom goblets too, these plastic cups were $3 at Big W.

All it took was a bit of acrylic paint and a small paintbrush.

A few coats and they were done.

Easy, effective and after the night they just wash clean. Make sure not to get the outside wet during the party though or else you’ll have bats coming off on your fingers XD

And a bonus shot of James being measured for his hood. Classy! Maybe I should have kept it that way…

What did you guys do for Halloween? Did you get dressed up?

How To Make A Simple Pajama Shirt

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 30, 2012 | Clothing-Tutorials, Craft, Tutorial

Today’s project is another recycled outfit. In fact this has been recycled before! You could probably even call this one tshirt surgery XD

I had this dress which while very comfortable I never really wore it because I didn’t like how the top sat. I had already given it a make over, I can’t find the damn post I did it in though. So typical! >_<

Anyway, the fabric was pretty so I made a couple of pajama tops out of it instead.

I cut the skirt part out and cut a piece which was long enough to wrap around my torso.

Then I stitched it in a tube and hemmed the top.

I made some straps out of the same fabric by cutting a rectangle and folding it in thirds.

I measured and stitched them on.

Taadaa!

Extremely easy to make these. The stretchy fabric is forgiving so you don’t need to be exact in your measurements. You can of course just buy some tshirt fabric or cut up an old shirt to make into your own version.