A blog and Youtube channel about a girl and her quest to make everything sparkle. New craft, hair and beauty tutorials every week!
Violet LeBeaux spends most of her time trying to think of ways to make life prettier, posting said ways on her blog and drinking very strong tea. She writes about big hair cute things, girly fashion, beauty finds, sometimes Hime Gyaru fashion (姫ギャル) and crafty tutorials.
She lives with her adorable boyfriend Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
Remember all of those little felt dessert kits I did ages ago? Well after a lot of thought I finally found a use for them 😀
Meet my new strawberry parfait tape measure cover 😀
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
I’m finally almost out of business cards YAY!! This means I can finally print the new design with my new contact details and correct hair colour 😀 😀 😀 That’s right, I’ve had these since I had a blogspot address -_-‘
Anyway back on topic I was making up the last of the cards on Monday and decided to make up a new business card holder for my bag.
My cards are an annoying size, I love the bows but it makes them so hard to keep in a wallet or purse. I’ve had a couple of business card holder over the years but considering their size I can only ever keep a couple in there at a time… completely useless.
A few months ago I was at the Forever New store at DFO and they had a rack of broken things for $2, I picked up this broken manicure kit. It’s the perfect size for business cards because it has space for the tools inside!
So I turned it from this:
To this:
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?
This whole cleaning out of the craft stash is making me a little obsessed with making different/not my standard bows. I’ve seen mesh bows filled with pompoms a lot lately and wanted to try making some. I didn’t have pompoms so I substituted with some very light beads. You could use either or really anything as long as it’s not too heavy.
End result:
What you need:
Plastic beads (I’m using pearls and some blue ones)
Tulle netting fabric
Scissors, needle, thread
Cut 2 rectangles of netting.
Lay them together and stitch around the outside leaving a gap at one corner to feed in the beads.
Turn it inside out through the hole.
Start inserting your decorations. I made a little paper funnel and poured them in to speed up the process.
Blue done!
Add in some pearls to give it more shape…
It needs to be around 2/3 full so there’s still room to tie in the middle.
Stitch the hole closed…
Cut another rectangle of the netting.
Tie in the middle and you’re done!
The tulle I had on hand was bridal tulle so it doesn’t hold the shape particularly well. You can use heavy duty tulle, add a wire frame or a piece of felt inside as a backing to help it. I decided to leave mine floppy because they way I’m going to wear it my hair will prop it up!
I’m quite taken with this style now so as soon as I can find the damn mini pompoms in my craft shelves I’m going to make some more!
I think I might use bows like this to decorate my vanity now that’s it’s become my new hair/make up area… ugh that just means more cleaning ;_;
The cleaning out of the craft stash continues and therefore the making of the large amount of hair things continues! On today’s menu is a floaty, drapy slightly deconstructed hair bow. In my head I’m imagining it being worn by and adorable match stick girl or in more earthy tones in a mori coordination ^_^
The result…
What you need:
Floaty fabric, I’m using gauze but you could also use chiffon or something similar
Tulle for the middle bit
Needle and thread
Cut out a really big rectangle. It needs to be twice as wide as you want the tail bits to end up.
Fold it in half side ways.
Start cutting diagonally up from the outside bottom corner.
Keep cutting diagonally until you get 2/3rds of the way then cut straight upwards. It should look like this…
Unfolded:
Take the pieces that you just cut out and lay them overlapping like this:
Then add the big piece over the top…
Starting from the top, use your fingers to fold the fabric back and forth over and over so it bunches together.
You can see it starting to come together now…
It’s completely optional but I decided to add a rectangle of pretty tulle to the middle as an extra point of interest.
Cut another small rectangle of the main fabric to act as the middle tie.
Wrap it around the bunched middle of everything tightly.
Stitch in place!
To give it that extra soft feel, run your hands over the edges of the fabric to make it fray.
And done!
Very little sewing required and still pretty ^_^ I think the raw edges really give an extra point of interest on this one!
Of course if you’re not into the gigantic bows like me you could always make one much smaller ^_^ I like my bows gigantic though. If you preferred a more finished look you could also add rolled hems to the edges. Personally I wanted this one to be huge, frayed and floaty.
Hope all of you have had better weeks than me, James computer exploded this morning with a huge pop and flash. Clearly this is not my week for technology >_<
James needed a coat for winter because it’s quite a bit colder this year and his other jackets aren’t cutting it.
(*James edit* he does have a jacket that is really warm, a military jacket with some patina, but Violet say it makes him look destitute.)
(*Violet edit* That’s not what I said at all! I said that it probably wasn’t appropriate to wear a 40yr old military jacket that your Russian teacher wore in an actual war and I’ve had to repair so many times because it’s falling apart to dinner!)
(*James edit* Nuhuh! It’s a perfectly fine jacket. The holes give it more character! Military jacket for the win!)
(*Violet edit* You’re a stupid military jacket)
(*James edit* Your face is a military jacket)
(*Violet edit* I’ll military jacket you. Sigh -_-‘)
Anyway he didn’t want to buy one so last time we were in Brisbane his Dad gave us one of his old wool/cashmere jackets from Russia. It didn’t fit him but was super warm so he asked me to rework it to make it fit him.
Before and after.
Nowhere near perfect but it’s definitely an improvement!
First thing I did was pin it up to the length he wanted it.
I pinned the whole bottom edge…
Cut it along the fold…
Bam, shorter jacket.
I put it back on him and pinned up the back so it was fitted. It was double breasted but that didn’t look so good so we decided to change it to single. I pinned it shut where I was planning to move the buttons.
To give it shape and definition and decided to take in the 3 back seams…
After I took it off of him I fixed the pinned seams to make them straight. Most people do this step with the item of clothing inside out so the can sew straight from there but I don’t like sewing with pins in and I find it easier to see the finished product when it’s right way out.
So I snipped the extra fabric from the seams…
I cut straight up the back seam and two darts up the sides and into the sleeves. Next I overlocked the back seam and tacked the sides in place so he could try it on before I sewed properly.
The darts and bottom needed a bit more fitting before the final sewing. Definitely an improvement though!
Re-cutting and re-pinning the darts!
Stitch stitch stitch…
Snipped off all of the buttons and restitched them in place. We decided rather than to redesign the front he liked it with off centre buttons. I added a snap closure at the top button to avoid having to make another button hole XD I think looking at the photos I will probably move the bottom button to the right side and make it decoration too because he never bothers to close it.
I still want to make a lot of adjustments to make it better but as a quick fit I think this went down pretty well. At least he won’t be cold anymore and he likes it so that’s the important part!
What time is it? Sexy time! Oh that’s right XD
Finally crossed something off my to-craft list, yay!
Illustrator. Strong tea, knitting, watercolours, and making a video game called Moonlight in Garland. Living with her adorable husband Jimmy, fluffy puppy Miss Lottie and Bergamot Bunny in Melbourne, Australia.
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