How To Make A Triple Ribbon Bow

by VioletLeBeaux | Sep 11, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Ok so I originally made this as just a regular bow so I could show a different kind of bow in a tutorial… but it looked so cute on Lottie that now it’s an adorable doggy bow. Come on, she looks so fancy and proud!

. For this tutorial you will need: 2 kinds of ribbon Needle and thread   Cut a piece of your first ribbon and form it into a loop with the split in the middle. Thread your needle, I’m using white so you can see what I’m doing. Stitch down the middle and gather it. Tie it off so it’s secure. Repeat with a second piece of ribbon so you now have two bows. Tie the two loops together so they form a big super bow with 4 mini loops. Now create another gathered bow loop with your second kind of ribbon and tie it to the middle as well. Then add some long tails to the gather as well. Tie one last piece of the second ribbon around the middle of the bow. Make sure it wraps around everything completely. Now if you’re going to attach this to your dog’s collar, stitch a loop on to the back of the bow. Taadaa, a gigantic monster bow! Just thread it through your puppy’s collar and she’ll be as fancy as Lottie. … ladies? I’m so glad my dog is as big of a camwhore as I am. She makes the funniest expressions… and puts up with a lot from me XD .

How To Make A Paper Hot Air Balloon Charm

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 30, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Today I thought we would make a fun little decoration. I love hot air balloons and I thought a bunch of them would look really cute hanging from the ceiling ^_^

This is my end result!

For today’s tutorial you will need: Origami paper in various colours Thumbtacks (These were a gift from Pure Girl Blue!) Wire An acorn cap or something similarly whimsical for the basket An eraser   Take a square of paper. Fold it in half into a triangle. And fold it again to form a smaller lopsided triangle like this: Repeat with at least 7 more pieces of paper. This looks best with a rainbow of colours! Now let’s construct the balloon part. Use a thumbtack to poke holes in each end of each triangle. Stack the triangles with the thicker side up onto a thumbtack. Bend them into a curve so it’s easier to make a ball later. Now fan them out. Cut a small piece of eraser and put it on the end of the tack so it holds everything in place, be careful not to prick yourself! Now stack the other ends onto another thumbtack at the bottom. It should look something like this, now stack another piece of eraser on too. Fan them out to close the gap you’ve been working in so it becomes a full ball. Easy! Now let’s just make the basket. So we have some way to hang it, take a piece of wire and wrap it around the top thumbtack. Twist it into a loop at the top. I made the basket out of an acorn cap. To hold it on I used two more pieces of wire wrapped around the bottom of the balloon and then around the cap. You could easily just glue them in place too. Cute and ready for take off! Hope you guys enjoyed the tutorials and let me know if you give it a try!

How To Make 3 Kinds Of Felt Flowers

by VioletLeBeaux | Jul 21, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

For today’s tutorial I’m going to show you how to make 3 different kinds of basic felt flowers.

All you will need is some felt and either a needle felting needle or needle and thread. Let’s do the red spiral one first. Start by cutting out a large red circle. Next draw a spiral in the circle and cut it out. Wrap the spiral tightly around itself so it forms a rose shape. You can vary the shape depending on how tightly you wrap. To hold it in place either stitch on the back as you go or use a needle felting needle to stab all of the layers together. Felting needles are so useful for these kinds of flowers because it’s much quicker than stitching. Easy! You can vary the size by making a bigger or smaller circle to begin with. Now let’s give the yellow pointed one a try! Begin by cutting out a heap of petal shapes in varying sizes. Also cut out a a smaller row of petals which are connected at the base. Begin with the line of petals and pinch each one in half. Stitch it or felt them in place so it makes a vein in the middle of each. This is going to be the center of the flower and give it shape. Now starting with the large petals, lay 5 of them out so they overlap in the middle. Felt/stitch in place. Continue laying out groups of 5 petals getting smaller and smaller until it’s a full looking flower. I used around 15 petals. Lastly roll the small middle petals into a spiral and stitch/felt them into the middle of the flower. This should cover all of the beginnings of the lower petals too. Done! You can see how much height the middle petal shape gives too. And lastly let’s make the little blue one! Start by making a small version of the yellow flower. This version only has 8 petals and they are all the same length. Then with each of the petals, fold them backwards and in half. Stitch or felt the petals in place so they form little folds. And there you go, a pretty little flower bud! And there you have it, 3 cute little flowers which are ready to use as accessories or embellishments. Let me know if you give any of them a try!

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!

How To Make Paper Bunting

by VioletLeBeaux | May 7, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

Some of you guys asked how I made the bunting in my video back drop so here’s a quick tutorial on it!

You need: Pretty paper String to hang it on Glue or a stapler Scissors To begin with, cut large triangles out of the pretty paper you have. They don’t need to be equilateral, in fact I think these look better if they are longer on two sides. I used a variety of Cristina Re papers I had in my collection. To attach them to the string you can use a variety of methods. I just folded the tops over and stapled them in place:  but you could also go to the effort of gluing on a second sheet of paper to make a tunnel for the string to go through. For these mini ones I cut a diamond shape and then folded it in half to make the triangles. To attach them to the string was as easy as just placing the string at the fold. You can see the fold here when they are hanging: Easy! Hope you found the tutorial useful and I’ll see you all next time!