Garden Pests April Fool's Projects

This year, after the move from Craftster to Lettuce Craft, the Mod Squad decided that Garden Pests would be a great theme for our annual April Fool's project takeover on the site.  I created a few quick  projects to join in the fun. 

A pair of earrings featuring naughty bunnies trying to steal my bok choy.  The bok choy beads are lampwork glass that I've had for ages.

Dougie, the Derpy Worm bookmark, crocheted from Darn Good Yarn's ombre silk.  The face is top stitched with embroidery thread.

And finally a set of squirrel paper lanterns.  The cut files came from the Silhouette Store, and were cut from some paper given to me by the lovely pottermouth, over at Flew the Coop.  The file cut just fine, but I did worry the whole time I was weeding it that I might tear it, and I do wish the overlap for gluing was a bit bigger, but all in all it was a quick and easy project.

Heart in Hand & Circuit Board Valentines

Despite being happily multicraftual, and owning a fancy cutting machine, and having a bunch of scrapbooking paper in my stash, I never make Valentines or other cards.  It just seems like such a big hassle for something that is so each to pick up at the store.

But, as part of my effort to be more thrifty, work through my stash, and try new things, I decided to try making a few Valentines with my Silhouette this year.  It might help that I only needed to make 3 for the Harry Potter Craftalong card exchange, since not many folks signed up this year.  I did a quick search on the Silhouette Store, and found a few card designs I liked.  So I spent about $2.20 on cutting files, and dug all the paper out of my stash. 

The hearts in hands were actually harder than they looked, and I made a mistake in my paper choices.  The hands are cardstock from the Happily Ever After line, while the red hearts are a printer weight paper.  You're supposed to weave the two layers back into one another, so there should be small red squares inside the tan squares in the center of the hearts. Unfortunately the two different weight papers didn't want to work together, so rather than mangling them, I gave up the second step of the weaving.  Instead I took the heart offcuts from the wrist band, and glued them into the spaces.  So three pretty cards for $.70 cents!

Then of course I had to make a card for my actual Valentine, my husband Jim.  He works as a programmer/software engineer, so I had to go with this adorable circuit board card I found.  When I found the piece of deep teal-green paper, I knew it had to be my circuit board.  (The example used red paper.  That would not do.  Circuit boards are NOT red!) The design also called for the little flash drive to be attached to the outside of the card, with a rivet or brad, and I didn't have any, plus I didn't really like how it looked.  And it had the circuit board as a cut out piece laid on top of a blank card base, which I didn't have a good color cardstock for.  So I played around with the file in the design software, and manipulated things until I was happy with them.

Plus it gave me something cute for the inside of the card.  I tucked it into Jim's Star Trek lunchbox for work yesterday, along with a peanut butter heart.  He found it when he sat down with all his coworkers. 

Harry Potter Paper Bunting & Ornaments

Another year, another round of the Harry Potter Holiday Swap!  This year I had 3 partners, and created a wider mix of items than I have in previous years, including a banner, wooden ornaments, glitter ornaments, and potions bottles.  I'm going to post the holiday themed items here, and the potions bottles tomorrow.

My friend Edel requested some sort of banner or garland, so I created one out of book pages from an old copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  The 3 part design was bought from the Silhouette store online, and the paper pieces were all cut on my Silhouette, before being assembled with twine & sparkle yarn, as well as some large hole glass beads between each snowflake.  There are 20 snowflakes all together on the strand, and I included a few extra of the cut pages and backing, without the light blue snowflake on them.  Each snowflake & frame is about 4" across, and the whole thing is a few yards long. 

I knew I wanted to make an Amortentia ornament for Kira, but was nervous about doing a new technique and possibly messing up her ornament, so I did a practice Felix Felicias one first.  I created these from a tutorial online that utilized alcohol inks, which I happened to have on hand.  The words were cut out on my Silhouette Cameo, and the tops were decorated with a chain maile collar of rings, and charms in corresponding colors, with shamrocks and celtic knots for the liquid luck potion, and hearts for the Amortentia love potion.

The last set of ornaments almost didn't happen.  I bought the wooden blanks on clearance after Christmas last year at Joann's.  They are laser cut wood ornament that come flat, and have slots to slide them together to create the 3-D hearts.  Being a Harry Potter nut, the first thing I thought when I saw the stags standing above hearts was 'OMG, look at the Patronus ornaments!' 

So I picked them up for less than $1 each, and put them away in my wood crafting stash to await this year's holiday crafting.  ...And completely forgot about them.  I bumped into them by accident when I went to pull out popsicle sticks to use in a recent candle making adventure, and knew I had to put them together. 

They are colored with Tim Holtz distress crayons, which have the feel of oil pastels, but unlike pastels, they don't smear all over the place.  You can smudge them if you do so on purpose, but on their own they don't smudge.  I colored them lightly with the crayons, then used wet Q-tips to blend the crayons into a watercolor effect.  I actually made 4, but somehow only have pictures of 3.

Create More Paper Bunting

This was made for kittykill in a recent personal swap on Craftster.  Like my All Hallows Eve Banner, it was made solely from card stock, ribbon, markers & inks in my stash.  I was so excited to see that red and turquoise were some of her favorite colors, because it's one of my favorite combos. 

I cut out the pennants and letters with my Silhouette Cameo, the distressed them each with Tim Holtz distress ink pads, before using glue dots to attach the letters.  I strung them all onto a long ribbon, and left them loose, so that kittykill could adjust them closer together or further apart as needed when hanging it.  I also included a few extra pennants, in case she ever wants to add to it.