by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 30, 2010 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial
The first shout out in this knitted fingerless gloves tutorial has to go to Vintage Grrl, without her I wouldn’t have been able to make this because she hand spun the yarn for it!
How freaking cool is that? Please go visit her blog because she is truly a very skilled and talented lady.
I was so happy when this arrived at my door!
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Look at the lovely colours, it reminds me of yummy candy 😀
This is what it looked like after I balled it. I couldn’t ask for a more “me” colour!
And this is what I made out of half of it… a pair of very frilly fingerless gloves 😀 I searched Ravelry for patterns but I couldn’t settle on something that I really liked so I took a very basic lace stitch and made a standard fingerless glove with ruffles ^_^
Now I’m going to try and show you how I made them. Please be kind because this is the first knitting/crochet pattern I’ve ever written so it may make no sense at all. I’m more of a visual person so I prefer to just knit and see if it looks right rather than following patterns to the letter but you girls keep asking for patterns so here goes nothing! |
Row 1: Cast on 44 stitches. (please adjust the number according to the size of your wrist and hand) Row 2: *Knit 2, purl 2* repeat until end of row. Repeat for rows 3-13. Row 14: *Knit 2, K2tog* repeat until end of row. Row 15: K1, *K2tog, YO* repeat until 2nd last stitch, K1. Repeat for rows 16-30. Row 31: Cast off 14 stitches. K1, *K2tog, YO* repeat until 2nd last stitch, K1. Row 32-42: K1, *K2tog, YO* repeat until 2nd last stitch, K1. Row 43: Cast off.
You should end up with something vaguely similar to this:
Now fold the left side in half, this will form the finger holes. Fold the right side in half too to make the thumb. Sew together.
You have something like this…
Make a second one. Also make sure you try them on to make sure they fit!
Now let’s crochet some ruffles. I used a very simple stitch to do this…
Single crochet in the first stitch, chain 2, 2xdouble crochet in the same stitch, single crochet in the next stitch etc. Repeat until you’ve gone all the way around the finger and thumb.
You have something like this…
Now you should sew a stitch between each finger. This is optional but I prefer it ^_^
Add some ruffles to the bottom ribbing. This time I just did 3 double crochet into each stitch.
Taaadaaa! And there you have it. Cute lacy fingerless gloves ^_^
Phew! I’m all tired from trying to remember how I made the gloves, next time I have to take more photos while I’m actually doing it and write it down as I go XD Now go have a look at Vintage Grrl‘s beautiful yarn! Thank you for giving me such awesome yarn to make knitted fingerless gloves!
by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 27, 2010 | Craft, Decoden, Decoden-Tutorials, Tutorial
I thought I’d show you how to make a deco USB stick with your initial today.
I’m still going through all the entries to my give away tonight so please be patient for another day while I pick the top 3 for you to vote on. There are so many awesome entries and I’m having a tough time picking ^_^
In the mean time I’m thinking about deco a lot lately! I just did my new camera today and I can’t wait to show you all photos of it 😀
Firstly pick a USB stick in a cute colour.
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This one is pretty cool because you can fold it in on itself.
Now lay your red jewels in the shape of your initial. I made this one for James’ Mum so I used a “P”. It’s important to lay the jewels out so you can get the shaped exactly right and make sure the jewels line up exactly right.
Stick the red jewels in place using epoxy glue.
Now start filling in the gaps. As you can see from the photo below I am using a very basic grid pattern for the jewels, this means that the go in completely straight rows both vertically and horizontally. Because of the curve in the “P” I had to compensate with other jewels around it.
Continue the pattern on the bottom as well. Once it’s dry keep going onto the other side. Once you are finished you have something like this:
Very simple and quick but it really personalizes your USB beautifully! Let me know if you make your own deco USB stick! |
by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 23, 2010 | Craft, Decoden-Tutorials, Tutorial
So I promised a tutorial on cutening up a plain old umbrella and here it is, deco umbrella time ^_^
There are so many different things you can do with an umbrella and so I decided to do a few versions of this.
How you can decorate your umbrella will depend on what you’re actually going to use it for. For example if you want it to be a parasol and protect you from just the sun then you can do pretty much anything at all with it… but if you need it to protect you from the rain then you shouldn’t sew anything into the top section of it because the hole you poke with your needle and thread are just going to let water in!!
The key things I want my umbrella to do are keep me dry and fit in my handbag so I didn’t want to add anything too bulky or put any holes in the top. I decided to start off small and just add lace around the edge of the bottom of it.
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What you need:
- Umbrella
- Lace
- Needle and thread
What you need to do is open the umbrella up completely. Thread your needle and start sewing lace on.
It’s quite self explanatory really ^_^ When you get to the corners you should pleat the lace so it sits flat then start up the next side. I took this photo after it had been crushed in my bag for a week so you’ll have to use your imagination >_<
Keep going until you reach the end and tie it all off ^_^
Done! This is a way of just adding a little bit of something cute to a plain old umbrella. Nothing will be left un-cute by the time I’m finished ^_^
Though after looking at it for a few months I think it’s still a little plain so I decided to add some more details to it. I haven’t finished yet so you’ll have to wait until next time to see it all completed. I’m going to add small bows to each of the points and deco the bottom of the handle 😀 |
So I’ll show you it properly finished by the end of next week! Hope you like the deco umbrella ^_^
by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 21, 2010 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial
Morning everyone, today I’m making a cute shower cap ^_^
Continuing on in my series of cutening up every day objects today I’m going to show you how I made my shower cap that little bit pinker 😀
To make this particular cute shower cap you need:
- Plain shower cap (got mine from Coles for around $2)
- Some fabric of your choice
- Eyelet lace
- Ribbon
- Needle and thread
So get out your shower cap and lay out your fabric.
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Stretch out your plastic cap to find out how wide it is. You need to cut out a circle of fabric with that diameter plus a few inches for seam allowance.
Now a note on choosing fabric, because this is going to be getting wet often you will need to choose a fabric which dries very easily or else it will get moldy! I am using toweling. This is my circle:
Now thread your needle and with the edge folded under, stitch your fabric into the elastic of the cap. You will need to stretch out the elastic as you sew it in. This can be a bit tricky when you only have two hands so what I do is use a notebook or something solid like that to hold it stretched while I’m sewing.
When you finish you should end up with something like this:
Now this is where you can do one of two things… Either go nuts with the cute and add a frill to the edge here like a vintage styled one or move straight on to the lace. I personally find frills at edge to be cute but not practical because the water catches in them so I went straight to the lace.
Sew one edge of your eyelet lace around the very edge of the elastic.
Then sew on the other side. It should hide all of the edges of the pink in a nice little sandwich.
Lastly thread your ribbon through and tie in a bow. You will need to stretch it out and make sure there is enough ribbon there to go around your head.
You’re done! Ok so there is a limit to how cute you can actually make a shower cap, no matter what they always look pretty silly. But it’s Winter so it’s a very necessary item… and I think this is an improvement on the original ^_^
Hope you enjoyed and let me know if any of you give the cute shower cap a try! ^_^ |
by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 18, 2010 | Craft, Shoe-Tutorials, Tutorial
Morning, it’s Sneaker Sunday again!
So you took the plunge and deco’d your sneakers? Good for you! And you’ve been wearing them for several months and didn’t think anything of taking care of them? Now they are looking quite dirty and a bit yucky huh?
So how do you maintain them?
Well it’s quite easy really 🙂
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First thing’s first let’s give them a nice clean! Use paper towel soaked in water and wipe them off.
Dish washing liquid is perfect for removing stubborn dirt.
Now it’s time to remove any jewels or deco that are beyond repair. I used epoxy glue on these jewels and they have cracked, I didn’t know that the area was going to be bending a lot, when you need flexible glue I use PVA.
Clean under there too. The pearls around the edge could easily have been left there if I had cleaned the dirty glue off the top and re-coated them but I wanted to change the pink flower too so I ditched it all and started again.
Gather any replacement supplies and start gluing. Note that I also removed the laces and gave them a really good wash.
I think it is easiest to glue from the outside in. Again I am using PVA glue because it needs to be nice and flexible. |
I decided to fill that section with tiny plastic little stars.
So you should glue them down and then paint the glue over the top of them to seal it all in. Do a couple of coats but wait until each one is dry before starting the next.
Put the laces back in.
And you’re finished! Sorry for the dodgy phone photos I am having a tiny bit of trouble uploading though. I will put the HD photos in the next post 🙂
Cute as and almost as good as new.
The lesson here is that with a bit of maintenance an forward planning your deco sneakers can last almost as long as you want!
Check out Valerie‘s post on sneaker Sunday maintenance too this week 😀
by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 13, 2010 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial
I’m sure you’re all sick of my talking about Melbourne… but Melbourne is cold. I’ve never lived somewhere that actually requires me to wear gloves so this is a bit exciting for me!
Of course I couldn’t just have normal gloves! When we were moving I was also very short on time so I had to think of a way to make my plain old $8 Kmart gloves cuter in a big hurry and only using things I already had.
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So what I used was:
- Pink gloves from Kmart
- Rose lace
- 2x lace collars
- Matching ribbon
Have you seen these lace collars before? They used to sell them everywhere but I haven’t seen them in a while. I bought them thinking I would put them on a black blouse when I was into Lolita but this seems like a much better use now 😀
So what I did was very very easy… I put on the gloves to make sure where I was sewing was stretched out enough and carefully pinned the collar in place around the top of the wrist.
Because they were meant to be collars the lace flares out and the pattern is more on one side. I pointed this towards the edge where my pinky finger was so they have a cute flare to them.
I stitched it all in place then placed some lace over the top.
When sewing it on make sure to stretch the fabric that way it will stretch enough to fit over your hand.
Lastly I added a nice big fat bow on top because you can never have enough decoration!
Taadaaa!
And there you have it, I didn’t buy anything new, I used up some of my old stash aaand now I have cute gloves ^_^ |
I think you could really replace the lace collars with pretty much anything, even just a frill of other matching fabric. It didn’t take more than 20min to do so they are the perfect quick craft to do at night while watching tv.
