Other-Tutorials Archives - Page 15 of 19 - Violet LeBeaux

Heart Shaped Face Washers Knitting Pattern

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 15, 2011 | Beauty, Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

I kind of fell in love with this yarn when I saw it at Lincraft. I have a bad history of buying novelty yarns and then having absolutely nothing to make with them so I banned myself from buying them… but I’m not very good at sticking to buying bans so this made it home with me anyway!

Took me a while to think of what to make (and you know I’ve got almost the whole fricking ball left over after this project anyway so any suggestions are welcome…. anything other than scarves!) but in the end I settled on making heart shaped knitted facewashers as a start.

I used 7mm needles an cast on around 20 stitches.

I knit in garter stitch until I had finished a complete square.

And then cast off leaving around 20cm of extra yarn as a tail.

Now place the square like this with the tail at the top.

Basically we’re going to squish down the point into the centre to form the top of the heart…

So using a needle stitch from the top corner down and bunch it up. Tie off and weave any ends in.

Taadaa hearts!

Give them a wash and they are ready to use ^_^ I use mine to remove make up at the end of the day because it’s so soft and gentle and once dirty, can just be thrown in the wash. Considering the whole ball of yarn cost $5 you could make 1 for each day of the week and never buy cotton pads again. +1 for the environment and much cuter too XD

Quite a few of you guys have written to me asking for a beginners knitting class kind of tutorial. I’m thinking of trying to shoot that soon, is there anything specific you want included? Would you all prefer videos or photos?

How To Make A Cute Felt Door Stop

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 11, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Our bathroom is really poorly designed so there is no way to keep the door to it open, in fact it actually just opens onto the laundry door which was so badly thought through that it can’t physically close all the way either >_< Seeing as the door won’t stay open by itself I decided to make a door stop 😀

What you need:

Felt or fabric or something similar
Scissors
Needle and thread or hot glue gun for quick jobs XD
Rice or something equally heavy to fill it with.

Ugh, felt scraps are so messy, I haaaate them >_<

First let’s cut a base. This is the shape you should cut out:

Now cut the sides! Below you can see the shapes you need, to make the back ones it’s basically a square with a corner cut off. For the front it’s a square with the top cut into a semi circle. Make sure you leave an extra centimeter on each side for a seam allowance.

Now let’s put it together! Start with these piece:

Lay them together like this:

Stitch (or glue if you’re in a hurry hahaha!) down the left side. Open it up and it looks like this:

Repeat on the other side 😀

Now join the two flap pieces to form a back seam like this:

Now it’s time to make the front ^_^

Stitch/glue the front piece around the curve:

Turn the whole thing inside out so the seams are like this:

Stitch/glue the side until you reach the little corner.

Leaving a hole in each side stitch/glue the seam at the very top!

Now let’s make some ears! Cut a triangle of matching felt and a square of pink.

Put them together like this and secure:

Fold them up like this and secure:

Time to put the ears in 😀 This is roughly the placement you want to use…

Fold in the loose edges so the ear is sandwiched between them and stitch/glue!

Now using the hole on the other side, fill it with rice!

And close up the hole with the second ear sandwiched in!

From the back it looks like this:

Now add a cute face and you’re good to go!

Unfortunately ours suffered a slightly gory death as James was getting dressed, lost his balance and accidentally stamped on it. Brains everywhere >_<

I made another one to replace the blue one then fixed him up to live at a less action packed door XD

How To Make a Blythe Boater Hat

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 4, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

So yesterday I showed you how I quickly redid the cheap boater hat I bought a few weeks ago. Well I thought seeing as there were quite a few scraps left over I should probably do something with them too! So what I made was a little mini boater for my Blythe XD

What I used:

Left over straw from the hat
Hot glue (because it was an experiment, you could easily stitch it to make it look more polished)
A couple of pretty flowers

So first thing I did was stretch and break some of the fibres in the straw so it was easier to bend it to the shapes that I wanted.
Starting with a small spiral and fold the end over itself:

Glue in place.

Keep following the spiral around getting bigger and gluing along the way.

One it’s big enough to be the top of the hat cut and glue the edge in place.

Ending up with something like this…

Next it’s time for the middle part. Start by measuring around the circumference of the circle you just made. and form a loop of the straw, glue together!

Spiral it down until it’s tall enough, cut and glue 😀

Something like this:

Now the last part before it’s all put together: the brim.

Again spiral it out and glue in place.

Now it just needs the top to be put on!

And that’s it! Much quicker when you’re making them doll sized XD

The view from the top…

And after adding a couple of flowers it looks much cuter! Mine looks a little dodgy with excess glue because I was experimenting as I went but I’m sure if you were more careful you could get it perfect ^_^

And that’s it! Quick and easy so your doll can be as stylish as you 😀 Do you guys want me to try and make more dolls things or do you all prefer people sized things?

Want to download this tutorial in one handy portable file?

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a list of all of my downloadable tutorials? OMG so convenient! I know right?

Just sign up to The VLB monthly newsletter/magazine/awesome thing below and have the list delivered right to your inbox in the welcome message!

Custom Mini Blythe – Violet's Adventure in Blythe-land

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 2, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’ve kind of always wanted a Blythe, I don’t really know why but I just really like them XD

There is an advert on TV here at the moment which features some puppets that look a lot like them too and James’ Dad is convinced that I look like the main one, it’s so cute!

They’ve always been out of my price though so when I saw Blythe/Littlest Pet Shop Cross over in a toy shop for $20 I thought it was a golden opportunity to indulge and give it a make over 😀

This is how I turned this…

Into this! 😀 😀 😀

So first thing I did was give her face a make over. The make up she came with was all orangy and yuck so I used black acrylic paint and gave her some eyeliner with wing ends.

I used this pink glitter paint to give her eyeshadow and subtle blush. I did her lipstick with my favorite nail polish! I undid her hair fluffed it out a bit to see how much volume I could get.

Looking better!

I did a little test run to see if I could dye her hair and as it turned out it was really easy!

After sectioning up the top area which would later be used for the hime pouf I combed through her hair.

Using the same dye I use for my own hair I added the pink gradient. But instead of washing it out, I left it to dry over night.

After brushing through the next day it was all soft, bouncy and exactly the way I wanted! 😀

I experimented with a couple of ways to put her hair up, at first I was going to use a rat inside made of tissue paper but it was too hard to keep in place.

Not working…

So after tying the rest of her hair back and considering the fact that she’s a doll and it doesn’t really matter if her hair sustains long term damage I just teased/backcombed the hell out of it!

After hair spraying the crap out of it this is what I got…

Side:

And back:

And with her hair out…

Last thing I needed to work out with her hair was put some bouncy curls in! I covered her up in some thick paper towels so nothing was damaged.

Then using disposable chopsticks I curled up her hair and held it all together with an elastic. After everything was secure I spent about 10 minutes with a hair dryer heating up, cooling down, heating up, cooling down, heating up, cooling down etc ^_^ This was enough to reset her hair without melting it. Very similar to styling synthetic hair pieces.

So the result of all that work was this:

And from the back:

At that point it was time to work on the finishing touches. Little details like painting her white stockings etc make a big difference to the end result. I thought about doing something with her little shoes but couldn’t decide in the end so I left them.

I stitched up a little dress out of scraps and added some hair flowers. BAM! Mini Violet 😀

Then it was just a matter of painting her dog to match. I coated him in white first…

Then added pink sparkly details and repainted his whole face to look less sad/creepy and more happy/adorable.

And there you have it! I couldn’t be happier with her make over! I think she’s going to be a great edition to this blog too because she’s looks better in photos than the real Violet XD

I asked James to take a bunch of photos of her with his new lens so pic spam ahead!

I made this little hat for her too, tutorial coming soon!

Who wouldn’t want a picnic like this?

Looking longingly out my window at the gel stars that I stare at all day from behind my computer.

Very photogenic!

So all in all I thoroughly enjoyed my first doll make over experience. I don’t know if I’m completely addicted but having a little army of them would be pretty sweet!

What do you guys think? Did I do a good job on my mini Blythe?

Making Cute Face Washers Or Wash Cloths

by VioletLeBeaux | Jan 31, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Aaaand continuing in the series of making house hold things a bit prettier today we have face washers!

What you need:

Face washer
Lace
Embroidery thread
Pretty fabric

First cut out your pretty fabric into a nice design, I chose two hearts.

Thread your needle with matching embroidery thread.

Place the hearts in the corner of the towel.

Stitch them in place ^_^

Now using the embroidery thread start stitching the lace around the edges.

I decided to do a simple running stitch but you could do something much more elaborate 😀

All the way around the edge and you’re finished! This is how mine turned out:

It’s nice and easy to make and still very pretty. This is a something that looks really effective but is still easy enough to do that I wouldn’t be put off from doing it to all of the ones in my house XD

I figure that if I start doing little things like this now, by the time I actually can afford to buy a house I’ll finally have nice stuff to put in it XD

Making Quick Felt Flowers

by VioletLeBeaux | Jan 27, 2011 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Some of the things I made for people this Christmas were felt because I’ve been having a lot of fun trying new designs with it. So here are a couple of things I made and quick instructions on how I did them.

This felt flower was quite simple but looks really pretty when worn ^_^