Hooker's Helper Necklace & Scrappy

I promised yesterday to share the yarn cutter & stitch marker necklace that I made to match the Scrappy Quilt As You Go Basket.  Each individual charm hanging from the pendant is actually a crochet stitch marker that can be removed and replaced via a lever-back earring hook. They are clipped to a pendant consisting of two sizes of metal hoops, and the large disk is a yarn cutter, perfect for NOT losing your scissors in the couch cushions.

Here are each of the stitch markers laid out individually.  They include Vintaj charms, Czech glass beads, and freshwater pearls. The color scheme was chosen to match the scrappy quilted basket. 

Here's a view of the pendant, when the stitch markers are removed.  I love how it came out, and have ordered a copper toned pendant to make one for myself soon.

Fairy Godmother Dreamcatcher

While working on a few other projects for the Fairytale Swap, I bumped into some ribbon in my stash that reminded me of the Princess Tote I was working on for my partner.  It was so pretty, I wondered what I could do with it for her, resolving to at least use it to wrap her gifts up.  A few hours later I dug through one of my containers of charms, and saw a magic wand charm, and it came to me.  Fairy Godmother Dreamcatcher!  Full of cute fairytale charms, and beautiful ribbons and fibers reminiscent of princess gowns and gossamer Fairy Godmother wings.  

The hoop is wrapped with the original ribbon, and he web is strung with a few strands of metallic silver and lilac embroidery floss held together.  In the center is a light purple Swarovski crystal heart, with a silver Fairy Godmother on one side, and a pocket watch on the other.  Below that, hung among the ribbons are a rhinestone encrusted angel wing, filigree crescent moon with a pumpkin coach hanging from the center, a magic wand, a crown, and several antique gold stars.  The fibers are a mix of ribbons, seam binding, yarn, threads, etc.  I'm really happy with how it came out, but none of the pictures quite captured the colors correctly; deep sapphire blue, bright lilac purple, burnt pumpkin orange, and a rich magenta. 

We Can't All Be Princesses Tote

This was a nice quick project made for itsmereba in the Fairy Tale Swap on Craftster.  I found the sentiment repeated on one of her Pinterest boards several times, and decided she needed it on a tote.  The design was cut on my Silhouette Cameo from hot pink, lavender, and gold glitter heat transfer vinyl. 

I worried some other wannabe princess might try to walk off with it when Reba was busy with important matters of her realm, so I added a monogram on the back for her.  The cut files are both from the Silhouette Store online.

Harry Potter Potions Ingredients

As I mentioned the other day, one of my projects for the Harry Potter Holiday Swap wasn't a Christmas ornament.  Emma doesn't decorate much for Christmas, she requested something for her Cabinet of Curiosities.  I remembered I had some glass bottles in my stash that were just begging to be turned into potion ingredient bottles.

The Runespoor bottle was clear originally.  It was dyed on the inside with alcohol inks. I was trying for a cool marbled effect that I saw in a tutorial, but it didn't work the way she said it would.  I like the overall effect it created anyways.   I had previously used ugly lumpy brown potato shaped freshwater pearls as doxy eggs in a long ago potions cabinet, and remembered that I had several strings of pearls that have holes wayyyyy too tiny to string onto anything I have in my stash.  At first I just added the white ones, but I wanted there to be more visual interest in the bottle, so I dug around till I found some royal blue, magenta, pink, and even silver pearls too.  I've decided that since no one really knows what Runespoor Eggs look like, that perhaps they are different colors depending on the age of the Runespoor that laid them, or the time of year or day they were collected.

The gillyweed was a bit of leaf trim that I just hit the edges of with a darker green marker to give it some added definition.  The text was cut out on my Silhouette Cameo, and the rest of the decorations came from my stash.  Some black tipped brown flowers, a wooden dragon charm that I colored with some Tim Holtz distress crayons, ragged black cheese cloth leftover from a Halloween wreath, number charms I had in my jewelry stash, a Swarovski crystal ring, twine, mermaid charm, skull bead, glass Hamsa charm, etc.  I love digging through all my really random bits and bobs to find things to decorate the bottles with, and hope to do some more in future.

Dragon Egg Bag

I recently hosted another round of the Back to Hogwarts Swap on Craftster, and was so happy to swap with the lovely patty_o_furniture. She has been renovating her family movie room with an all Harry Potter theme, including murals of Hogwarts, and a kick-ass Honeyduke's candy cupboard, and has filled the room with awesome geeky handmade HP goodies, some made by her, and some made by the rest of the Craftster community.  I just happened to have a bunch of scale maile supplies in my jewelry stash that I bought last year to experiment with, so I dug through my yarn stash and found a good color match of yarn.  I finished it with some leather drawstrings, and handmade glass pony beads leftover from making some dreamcatchers.  The pattern came from toohotheaded on Etsy.  The yarn is Caron Simply Soft in garnet, and the scales are a pattern of dark red, light red, copper, gold, and black, and came from a combination of the Ring Lord and Fire Mountain Gems.  The pattern was easy to follow, and I would totally recommend it.  Hopefully it will fit in with all her HP swag in the movie room. 

Celestial Dishcloths

Some of the Mods on Craftster recently decided we needed some sort of happy swap amongst ourselves.  We all decided to fill a small Flat-Rate box, and I was doing well adding bits and bobs, but I had a bit of dead space, so I decided to whip up a dishcloth to fill some space and cushion some things.  I got the fun of crafting for kittykill. 

Sunshine Dishcloth Pattern

She mentioned having a cheerful yellow & red kitchen, so I made a cheerful sunshine dishcloth.    Then, since I had some white cotton, so I made a cloud to go with it.  Seemed like a great idea for a happy little matched set. 

Cloud Dishcloth Pattern

All this happened around the time there was so much excitement about the solar eclipse, so I whipped up a solar eclipse cloth to match.  For the Eclipse, I started with the Sunshine pattern above, and added the edging from this Eclipse Coaster pattern, made from I Love This Cotton! in black, and Sugar'n Cream yellow and bright orange.

At this point, it should have been clear I had a problem...   But since I couldn't seem to stop hooking, I finally decided that kittykill clearly needed a whole set of celestial dishcloths, and added in a star and a rainbow.  Well, the best I could come up with for a rainbow, since I crocheted them all from stash.

Star Dishcloth Pattern

I skipped the edging on this one, as I liked the clean look of the star without it.  It was made from I Love This Cotton! in colorways Turquoise, Pewter, Aqua Ombre, and Teal.  My final 'rainbow' cloth was made with I Love This Cotton! in color 'brights', and the pattern is called Fire Blossom.  I have a set made for me by a friend several years ago in this pattern, and these are by far my favorite dishcloths.  They are just the right size, and just the right density for washing dishes.   

Fire Blossom Dishcloth Pattern

Trio of Inexpensive Vintage Halloween Crafts

I recently participated in the Vintage Halloween Swap on Craftster, and had the fabulous good fortune to be partnered up with my friend FiberAlchemist.  The first thing I decided on making was  a Spider Web Table Topper, that I saw the pattern for on Red Heart's website.  It calls for 1 skein of their Super Saver, but since I hate how scratchy that stuff feels, I made mine with most of a skein of Premier Yarns Everyday Soft Worsted Heather in charcoal for the web, and half a skein of Lion Brand Heartland in Yosemite for the lacy edging, both dug out of my stash. 

While I was making it, I discovered a flaw in the pattern.  Sadly I was on the last row of webbing at the time!  I went back and rewrote the pattern, made myself a crazy color coded chart, and even a matching set of rainbow stitch markers to match the chart, and re-crocheted the whole thing.  Glad I did though, since it came out so much nicer after I fixed the pattern.  Since the yarn came from stash, the only cost was my time in frogging and rewriting the pattern. 

Since I was trying to craft from stash as much as possible, I decided to look around and see what I could make with my Silhouette.  I found some black and orange card stock, and some silver ribbon with black edging that I knew FiberA would like.  I bought the cameo cut files from the Silhouette store, which was the only cost. 

After cutting all the bits and pieces, I distressed everything with some Tim Holtz distress ink pads, distress paint pads, and markers, before putting it all together with glue dots.  Not bad for a $4 project!

My final project for FiberA was a sign I saw a tutorial for on the Silhouette blog, which called for cutting the words out and using the 'dead space' as a stencil instead of using the words themselves.  Then using a paint pen to 'scribble' in the letters, and removing the vinyl to leave the scribbles behind.  I started off by following the tutorial, but sadly, that just did NOT work.  The paint pen bled under the vinyl stencil so much that the words were completely illegible!  So I sanded the paint off, and started over.  I used the Silhouette for what it was intended, by cutting the words out of silver vinyl, and applying them like normal.  But there was a bit of dead space at the top, so I added a scrolly skull to fill it in.  I like how it kinda feels like a tombstone with the curved top.  The wooden sign came from Michael's, and was priced as $10.99, but I had a 50% off coupon, so it was $5.49, plus $2 for the cut files from Silhouette.  That made a grand total of $11.49 for 3 awesome projects. 

One Awesome Harry Potter Thing Swap Package

A little over a month ago I showed you the rag rug that I created for noodle-bug in the One Awesome Harry Potter Thing Swap over on Craftster.  Sometimes I get so focused on, and worried about crafting for someone else, that I completely forget that I'm going to *receive* an awesome craft in return, and this was no exception. I received the most stunning swap package, and had to share it with you.  

Noodle-bug is known for knitting beautiful cowls that I've admired for ages.  But considering I live in Nashville where the average low temperature in January is 28 degrees, I never thought to have one of her thick woolen confections for myself.  Enter Noodle-Bug the Genius.  She did her research, even contacting a friend who lives in the States to ask about the weather here.  Her answer was to make a super soft, feather-light cowl knitted from silk & angora, that I can wear without overheating.  And see those flecks of gold in the yarn?  They're beads that show a map of the stars in the Equatorial band, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.

I'm not sure how she did it, but she also managed to match the cowl to my winter hat.  I can't wait to wear them both as the weather cools down.  (I know everyone loves summer, but I'm really more of a fall & winter kinda girl.)

Noodle also created a beautiful hand-bound notebook, that also contains a star map, though this one is stamped in beautiful golden ink.  It's a seriously weighty tome, and I haven't yet decided what to dedicate it to, but for now it is on my desk, where I can marvel at it every day while I work.  Thank you noodle-bug!  Your work is always so awe-inspiring, that it warms my heart and makes my fingers itch to pick up a crochet hook or some pliers. 

Scrappy Crocheted Rag Rug for Noodle's Nest

Now that it's arrived at its new home, I can finally share my completed rag rug with you all!  For those who might have missed the initial post, I recently organized Round 2 of the One Awesome Harry Potter Thing Swap over on Craftster.  I was lucky enough to partner with the utterly fantastic noodle-bug, who also just happens to be my Deputy Headmistress in the Harry Potter Craftalong over there.  While we were chatting about our mutual HP love, it became apparent that we both desperately want to live in the Burror, the home of the Weasley family.  

The Weasleys are kind, loving, welcoming, and poor.  Mrs. Weasley makes handmade gifts at the holidays and sends Harry wonderful knitted sweaters and homemade mince pies.  (We are clearly kindred spirits.)  I decided that I wanted to give noodle-bug a little bit of the Weasley's loving-if-threadbare home by creating a rag rug for her flat in London.  

The pattern is from ATERGcrochet on Etsy, and calls for tee shirt (or zpaghetti/fettucini yarn), which I thought would be fun to work with, and hopefully work up quickly.  Both of those things turned out to be true.  What didn't work so well was finding the yarn itself.  Tee shirt yarn seemed to be available everywhere a year or two ago, but it has since disappeared from store shelves.  I did some looking around online and found very few sources in the US, but one seller on Etsy called Ganxxet had a decent selection and fair prices.  (Some were charging and arm & a leg!)  Ganxxet was very helpful and great to work with.  She got back to me on a question right away, and I'd order from her again in a heartbeat.  I picked up a dusky pink, and this cool white print from her.

Sadly I couldn't afford to order all the yarn I'd need, so I decided to make some myself.  I made the navy and the black yarn from tube jersey that was on sale at Joann's for 50% off.  I bought 2.5 yards of black and 1 yard of navy for about $15.  There are tons of tutorials for making tee shirt yarn out of actual shirts, and using the tube jersey is exactly the same.  (Like this one.)  The only difference was that I used a rotary cutter & mat, rather than scissors as I had much more to cut.  It took most of the morning to slice it, stretch it out, and roll it into balls, but as I'm addicted to audio books, this really wasn't a problem for me.

After nearly completing it, I decided that while I liked the rug, I wasn't in love with it.  (This is probably putting it mildly.  I might have frantically messaged Shannon over at Flew the Coop, and telling her my project felt like a cluster-fuck.  She might have suggested a cocktail.)  I knew it needed more colors to feel really scrappy, but I didn't want to spend another $50 on more yarn, and I didn't want to take it apart and start over.  So I dug through the bag of clothes I have for Goodwill and pulled out a teal shirt and a violet shirt.  Sliced and diced both, and used them to do the slip stitch rows on top.  I really love how much brighter the rug is with the additional color.  You can see how it looked before in this process picture.  The overall color scheme was softer, and now it's definitely brighter and a bit more punk, like noodle-bug herself.

Here's a detail shot that noodle took, which really shows off the  teal and violet stitches.  It's so much brighter and scrappier now!

The entire rug was supposed to be 34 rounds and measure 4' across, but I didn't get quite that far.  By the time I was on round 17 it was clear that I was nearly out of all my yarns.  It was also becoming quite heavy and I had to ship it to the UK.  So I completed the 18th round, then did 2 rounds of single crochet to finish the edges.  When it was done it measured 38" across and weighted 5 pounds!  Here it is in its new home, noodle-bug's bay window in her London flat.

I will say that while I am normally all for recycling and upcycling, I did prefer working with the ready made yarn and the yarn that I made out of tube jersey, far more than I liked working with the balls I made from the actual tee shirts.  I hated trying to hide the shirt seams.  It's very thick and squish under your feet, and has a solid weight to it that feels comforting.  In the end I'm thrilled with how it came out, but I would like to try the pattern again some day, and actually complete all 34 rounds.  Perhaps when we get a house of our own next year.

Her Craftiness Knows No Bounds (Mostly)

While everything that I've shared thus far has been a jewelry project, beads and charms are not my only medium.  Far from it.  I've been asked many times "What crafts do you do?" I tend to answer with a cheeky "I've never met a craft that I didn't like," because I don't want to bother listing all the crafts that I enjoy.  (Except perhaps knitting.  She and I did not get along.)  The truth is that between being raised by a very DIY mom, being naturally interested in traditional crafts, and my education in costume design & construction (not to mention props and scene painting), I've learned a great many techniques that I pull from every day, and I am constantly adding to my mental list of new things to try.

Baby quilt made for my niece Mia, in 2011.

I learned to quilt as a small child, and had my first sewing machine in grade school.  I taught myself to sew clothing and costumes by using Simplicity patterns throughout high school.  By the time I was studying costume design in college, I wanted a craft to do at the end of the day to help me unwind, and so I picked up crochet.  Over the years I've taken classes in cake decorating, basket making, corsetry, painting, and floral design.  On my own I've made forays into altered art, shrines, paper crafting, soap making, canning, and just about anything else that strikes my fancy on a given day.  Why all this background?  So that you won't be surprised as new projects show up here, including all of these media and more.

Shakespeare Shrine made for pinkleo in the Shrine Swap on Craftster, 2013

My latest side project is for a swap on Craftster.  I'm both organizing and participating in the One Awesome Harry Potter Thing Swap, which requires participants to create a single awesome Harry Potter inspired project for their partner.  Each project must be a large in terms of time spent (minimum 3 hours), and it is assumed to will spend much more than that on your project.   I was lucky enough to snag my friend noodle-bug as my partner and am both thrilled and terrified to be swapping with her.  She is fantastically talented, and I'm afraid of disappointing her.

Rag Rug made for Abbeeroad in the IYP Swap - Round 26 on Craftster 

Both of us dream of living in the Burrow, the home of the Weasley family in Harry Potter.  With that in mind I decided to create a scrappy rug for noodle's home, reminiscent of something that Mrs. Weasley would make for one of her children.  I had previously created an Upcycled Rag Rug out of cotton yarn crocheted around a core of tee shirt yarn, for Abbeeroad in the Invite Your Partner Swap last year, and while I greatly enjoyed the technique, I decided that for this project I wanted to try crocheting the actual tee shirt (or zpaghetti) yarn itself.

I picked up this beautiful rug pattern from ATERG Crochet on Etsy, then headed out to Joann's to pick up some tee shirt yarn.  Only to discover that no one in the US carries it anymore!  I remember seeing it in all the craft stores a year or two ago, and there are plenty of books out with patterns to make with it, and yet there seems to be no yarn to be had!  For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it is a super bulky yarn, made from the remnants of cotton jersey.  The pattern calls for six 130 yard cones of yarn (4 of various colors, and 2 cones of neutral).  I quickly discovered that while you can order individual spools from Lion Brand for $9 each, you are unable to choose colors in any way, and just have to like whatever they happen to choose to send you!  Thanks Lion Brand.

Brescia print from Ganxxet on Etsy

While I did want a scrappy feel to the rug, not knowing what I was going to get was a bit too scrappy for me, so I started searching the net.  There is very little of it for sale on either Etsy or eBay in the US, but I did find one vendor on Etsy with a decent selection and fair prices.  Ganxxet has 80+ colors, including some really neat prints and stripes. I picked up this adorable print called Brescia, which is a white background with a black, blue and pink print that looks like scribbles of headphones, wings, flowers, hands, and tiny Union Jacks.  It reminded me very much of something Tonks might wear. Sold!  The seller was very helpful, checking a color match for me with the shade of pink that I picked out to go with it, and she shipped it really fast.

After I came to the realization that I just couldn't afford to buy more yarn, I decided to make my own with this tutorial, in coordinating shades of blue and black.  I picked up some classic rib knit from Joanns, which was on sale for 50% off.  I bought 2.5 yards of black and 1 yard of blue, which came to just $15, and spent a couple of hours slicing, stretching and rolling it.  The very slight rib in the knit became more pronounced when it was turned into yarn, but I like the variation in texture that it offered.

The entire pattern is 32 rounds and should measure 4' across when completed.  I've finished 18 rounds, and it is currently 30" wide.  Since I've officially run out of the Brescia print, and am nearly out of the blue, I'm unsure if I'm going to do the entire 32 rounds, or if I might stop around 25 or so.  As of right now, I'm worried about it being able to fit in a flat rate box to ship to the UK.  After another round or so I'm going to have to start making box checks each time I complete a row to be sure it will fit!

Shrine to the Goddess of Crafty Inspiration

This shrine was created for Pinkleo in the Shrine Swap.  It is an assemblage shrine to someone we all worship, the Goddess of Crafty Inspiration.

The wooden frame came from the dollar store, and the bits and bobs that make it up came from my stash, work, my car, the craft store, Knickertwist’s garden, and a many came from sheepBlue in a bundle of goodies she sent me in the IYP 23 Swap.  (sheepBlue, can you find all nine?)

Metal tag, acrylic crystal jewel, thimble, charm, and domino.

Vintage glass button and wooden thread spool.

Burned out headlight from my car, and carnelian stones to lend energy to craftiness.

Vintage game token, buttons and a tiny Delft shoe.

Bird's nest with a broken rhinestone earring, freshwater pearls, and vintage buttons.

Vintage watch face, tin, and pen nib charm.

Vintage vial full of seashells, bottle of freshwater pearls and Swarovski crystal beads, shell, metal rose, and sleeping moon face.

Copper key, broken enameled bumblebee earring, wooden letters, lace, ceramic owl bead and a piece of licorice root.

For anyone interested in the process, I first painted the entire base in black craft paint.  The cubbies were then painted with a crackle medium, so that the over layers of paint would crack to reveal the black beneath. Next of course, is the contrast paint, which crackled nicely over the crackle medium.

After that, I laid out all the items where I wanted them, and then took pictures so I wouldn't forget where anything went!  Next I glued in the very back layer of items.  (The things that lay flat against the back.)  The paper items were put in with archival safe book binding glue, and the more solid items were put in with E6000, the best glue ever made.  After those all dried, it was time for a layer of standing items, and the gluing and waiting process repeated in that way for several more sessions.  I usually let the shrine rest for at least 8 hours after putting things in.  Some items were after thoughts, and were a little tougher to arrange after other components had gone in, like the lace behind the key in the bottom right box.  That was inserted with tweezers and toothpicks well after the key & “MAKE” letters. 

The metal pieces on the front came from my stash of Tim Holtz goodies.  I used some Vintaj metal paint in agate to highlight the words, and wiped it off the front, and distressed them slightly with a Vintaj reliefing block.  After all that was done, I painted the back burgundy, and distressed it with a sanding block, before stamping it, and highlighting the stamped areas with a gold gel pen.  Finally, I added a row of fabric measuring tape around the outside edge.