So what you need:

• 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 😀 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

What you need:

• 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 😀

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?

Pretty cute huh?What you need:

• Jute or yarn for the middle part
• Strips of rose fabric or contrasting yarn for the outside
• A crochet hook of corresponding size to your yarn
• Scissors
• Potpourri or scented oil etc

Cast on a stitch…

And form a foundation ring of around 5 stitches. Chain one and then single crochet into the next. We’re creating a big spiral which forms a circle. To get there you want to double up stitches on every 3rd stitch as you go around.

It should look something like this…

When you get to the size you want your bunny’s head tie off. I made mine around 8cm in diameter.

Repeat, making another circle. This time add 2 long ears out of chain.

These are the pieces you should have now:

Now fit the two sides together and if you feel you need it, pin the middles so they don’t move around.

To join them we will use the floral fabric strips to crochet the two halves together.

Basically using the fabric as yarn you want to pick up a loop from either piece and treat them as one loop.

Single crochet around the outside of the whole thing.

Should look something like this…

When you get to the ears keep going up and around them. The extra bulk will give them ore shape. You may need to crochet twice into the tops of the ears to give them that curved shape.

And finished…

You can see that at the top behind the ears the back piece isn’t joined so it’s formed a little opening making it like a bag. If you’re going to add in potpourri this is where to do it

I decided to use perfume oil instead of potpourri. I was gifted this delicious smelling cake oil from Epically Epic Soap co. by SheFallsSoftly and it’s soooo good. Seriously the most realistic cake fragrance ever.

The jute holds scents really well so I just rubbed the perfume oil around the inside…

… and popped it in my stockings drawer!

Done! If I had actually sat down and done it in one siting it would probably have taken around an hour and a half. This blog is turning into a crochet bunny spree hahaha XD

What you need:

• Pretty frame
• Counted embroidery fabric
• Needle
• Various colours of embroidery thread
• Purikura or photo for the inside
• Embroidery hoop
• Pen/pencil

Measure a big square of fabric which is enough to cover the frame and fit in the embroidery hoop and cut it. Using the pen draw around the outside of the frame to use as a guide.

Flip it over and draw around the inside hole too. You will want to find the center as well and mark it with the pen too.

I drew a cross so I could have an obvious guide.

Line the photo you’re going to use up in the middle and draw around it.

So you’ve got something like this…

Because I was pretty much winging it I drew a design on the fabric but if you are following a pattern you can just count.

Now it’s time to put it on the embroidery hoop. The hoop I’m using is a standard wood one and it cost around $0.60

Untwist the screw and sandwich the fabric between the wood pieces, the big one should be on top.

Push them together and pull the fabric tight. Screw the top to hold it all in place. It should be very taught like a drum!

So let’s get stitching! At this point it should be mentioned that you can stitch with the full thread or you can split up the thread and just use one or two strands depending on the size of the weave of your fabric.

I started off using the whole thread but decided later to switch to a couple of strands because it was too thick.

So pick a place you want to start, I started with a small heart. Pull the thread from the back to front leaving a few inches as a tail. If you want you can knot the end of the thread but I prefer to hold it so the finished project isn’t lumpy.

I’m starting at the bottom of the heart.

Stitch into the hole that is diagonally opposite to the first. My preference is to stitch diagonally from bottom to top but whatever is more comfortable is fine.

Now pull up from the back in the hole next to where you just went down.

And diagonally over into the last hole. That’s it! You just made a cross ^_^

Repeat this over and over again to make your shape.

2 crosses! Now it’s important to note that you need to keep the method consistant through the whole design or it will look odd. So if you start from bottom left and go up to top right as the first stitch then do that the entire thing.

Heart #1 done!

If you keep going things will start to take shape after a while.

I prefer to do all of the main elements eg. hearts, sparkles, roses first and then worry about the background afterwards.

I also find it easier to do all of the stitches with the same colour at once, it saves having to switch needles so much!

All of the main bits are now complete so it’s time to start the background.

Going up and down from left to right like this keeps everything nice and even…

But sometimes if I’m impatient I will go ahead and do a bunch of the first stitch in one go and then work backwards and cross them all off XD For some reason it just feel quicker!

Progress..

And done! It’s not a perfect oval but as long as the shape fits in the frame it doesn’t matter.

Now cut your purikura down if need be. I lost the one I started this with so I had to dig for another shot. This is from back when I had black hair and James had… *some* hair mwahahaha!

Place it over the space and if you need to pin or glue it in place.

Stitch the corners to hold it in place…

And then fill in the gaps with more stitches.

That’s all the stitching part out of the way thank god! Remove it from the embroidery hoop.

Cut it down to the size which actually fits into the frame.

I overestimated the stitching area so I had to cut the fabric very close XD

And there it is in the frame!

Quite pretty if I do say so myself… but I think I won’t take up any more embroidery projects until I finish all my half done ones XD I need more motivation to finish the big projects! The pattern for this will be available in the first upload lot too.

Hope you enjoyed, let me know if you make your own!

What you need:

• Yarn
• Scissors
• Whatever you’re making the case for, I’m using my iPad (yay for early birthday presents!)

I wanted to get this done quite quickly so I decided to use this really thick squishy yarn, it’s super soft and kind of looks like a big rainbow pipe cleaner. If you use thin yarn it will take longer to put it all together and weave tight enough to avoid holes. Whatever you use the technique is the same.

So grab one end of the yarn and tie it around the ipad/laptop. Knot it in place so it doesn’t move. Don’t do this too tightly because you want the gadget to be able to slide in and out of the case easily.

Next keep wrapping the yarn around in a big spiral so it forms several straight lines across the ipad. Tie the last loop to itself so the whole thing doesn’t come undone.

Now the case I made has a fancy end part which is woven in a different direction to the bottom, if you want to do that then you can cut the extra yarn off but if you want to have the whole thing woven in the same direction leave it attached. The reason for this is that when you weave it all together it will compact and it won’t be long enough to encase the whole ipad anymore so it’s easier to just work with it in two sections.

Next it’s time to measure out the cross pieces, if you’re doing the fancy end weaving you want them to be around 3-4 times as long as the gadget so there is lots of room for mistakes. If you just want it to do regular weaving then 3 times as long should be fine.  Folded in half mine was this long:

Cut a *heap* of them. I needed about 3 times as many as shown here to do the whole case. In fact I used a whole ball of yarn for this project.

So let’s get to the actual weaving part. Take one of your lengths of yarn and start weaving it horizontally across under, over, under, over, under, over etc until you reach the other side.

Do the same with another piece but if you started by going under, this time start by going over. It should be the opposite to the pattern you did with the first yarn.

Close up you can see what I mean.

At the end, take the two pieces of yarn and wrap them over the end of the gadget.

… and continue the weaving pattern over the back. if you ended on an “over” on the front then make sure to start on an “under” on the back to keep the pattern going. Also make sure the loose ends on the yarn are roughly the same length so we can use them later.

Now go crazy with the weaving! I did about half of them on one side working form the middle to the edge then flipped it and continued them on the back.

At around this point its a good idea to add a couple of cross yarn lengths to the bottom so it strengthens it a bit more.

All I did was cut 2 more lengths of yarn and just weave them into the bottom from left to right.

I knotted them and left the ends loose so I could knot them with the yarn on the sides to form more sturdy corners.

The sides need to have a nice tight weave to protect the ipad/laptop/whatever from damage so when you get to that point make sure the yarn is very close together.

In the photo below you can still see gaps so it’s best to add another strand or two just to be on the safe side!

Repeat the process until the whole thing is covered nice and tightly. You can see that by pushing the strands together tightly to form the fabric the whole thing has shrunk leaving around 1/3rd of the ipad exposed. At this point if you want to keep the straight weave all you need to do is move the case a little further down the gadget so you have room to wrap around another lot of vertical strings to weave the ends in to. Keep going in this way until it’s as long as you want 😀

I decided I wanted something a little more decorative at the ends so what I did was tie each pair of end strings into a knot. Then from each pair I pointed one diagonally right and one diagonally left. Having them all pointed at an angle like than made it very easy to weave them together. Same concept as before: over/under/over/under etc but on an angle.

I kept doing it around the edge, slowly getting them all into place. Once it was long enough I broke them into pairs again and double knotted all of the ends together to prevent it from just coming undone.

At that point it looked like this…

I trimmed all the ends down so they were even but I left them around 5cm long to make a kind of frill at the end. Lastly I just pushed the couple of loose ends from the bottom corners in.

All finished!

And that it, the techniques can seem a bit complicated at first but once you get the basic idea down you can make pretty much anything. The fact that you’re actually weaving onto your ipad/laptop/whatever means you know it’s going to be a perfect fit every time. Easy! ^_^

What you need:

• Tape
• Flat Surface
• Headphones
• Yarn/cotton/embroidery thread
• Scissors

Tape the top of the headphone to a hard surface. I’m just using the floor here but you could use a table or a book or anything as long as you can tape to it securely without damaging it. Make sure it’s not going anywhere.

Tape the end of the thread next to the top of the headphone.

Now this is how to do the basic technique which is repeated over and again.

Hold the yarn with your finger and cross it over the top of the headphone cord to form kind of a backwards number 4.

Now bring the ball of yarn back the way it came but this time go underneath the headphone cord.

Pulling the yarn through upward put it over the top of the beginning of the yarn. Essentially what you did was loop the yarn around the headphone cord but instead of making a spiral you made a knot.

Pull it tight and up to the top of the cord and it should look like this:

Do it again!

After repeating a few times you should have something similar to this. Basically because you’re knotting around the cord you will have a row of knots on the right side and loops on the left.

That’s really it! Keep going and going and going until you reach the “Y” point where the headphones join together.

If you want you can twist the knots around the cord as you go so it forms a pretty spiral.

Once you get the hang of it this is a good mindless craft to do when you’re watching a movie or something because you don’t need to may too much attention to it ^_^

Cut off the extra yarn leaving a tail of around 3cm. Now you’re 1/3rd done 😀

Repeat on the other headphone cord as well. This time when you get to the join don’t cut off the yarn.

Now continue down the cord but instead of tying the knots around just one of the cords, do both for a couple of knots then continue over the joiner part until you’re back down to the cord.

Now all you need to do is continue to the end of the cord!

Lastly to tie off all the loose ends use a needle to poke them back up through the knotting and you’re all finished!

Finished! You can add deco to the hard plastic bits to finish of if you like too.

If you use variegated yarn I imagine this would look even cooler! I totally want to make a different pair to match all of my outfits now XD I bet you could add in some little beads or hanging drop jewels or something. The possibilities are endless. Hmm now to decide what to add next. Maybe a little piece of attached velcro to keep them tidy in my bag!