Saturday 29 October 2011

Softie Making Marathon!

Yesterday Pip, Bec, and I had a craft day. A *whole* day of craft. Well, no, that's a lie. We also spent two hours on breakfast ~_^ It was epic, but I didn't take any photos. You will just have to imagine bacon, sausages, hash browns, eggs, mushrooms, fresh juice, tortillas, and toast on a tiny table and the three of us going "nom nom nom". Paint that picture in your mind.

We also made softies. Pip's was a tiny, complicated elephant, which isn't finished yet, so no photos. But soon! Hopefully she will post them on her blog. We shall see.

We made these softies to donate to Softies for Mirabel - you should make a softie too! It is for a very good cause!

Anyway, I made a another jackalope! This one kinda reminds me of ravers, because she has so. much. neon. I love her ^_^


I used a bit of IKEA that I had leftover from covering a massive canvas. The bunny pattern doesn't use a whole lot of fabric, so I had heaps leftover.

Her ears are not stuffed, so they are nice and floppy, and her antlers just have polyfill in them. The first jackalope I made had pipe-cleaners in his antlers, but seeing as this new jackalope is for little kids, I thought forgoing the metal, fluffy sticks was probably a good idea. 
 

Group shot! Here you can see my jackalope, Bec's dinosaur, Bec's plaid Ninni monster, and my blue and red Ninnis. There will probably more about Bec's dinosaur over on her blog.
 

This photo is a little blurry, so sorry about that. I forgot to bring my camera, so we used my phone. I have a smartphone now! I am so excited by it! It runs on Android, and I really want to learn how to make apps. I have actually downloaded the program, but for some reason I couldn't get the emulator to run, and so I had to buy a SD card, and now I have one, but I haven't tried again yet. I will! As soon as this house is clean. <cowers in fear at the giant piles of dishes and laundry>

Anyway - back on topic!

Here are my Ninni Monsters! I love them soooo much! I am going to keep the red one for myself ^_^ That's still two softies for Mirabel though! 


I want to make more of these cute little monsters, so perhaps I will organise a Ninni monster crafternoon for next year. That would be fun!

I hope you have a great day!
See you later ^_^

- Lisa x

Monday 24 October 2011

How to survive ZOMBIES! Free poster!


Hi! How are you? 

I made this instructional poster in case of zombie invasion. Would you like one? You can! 
I hope you like it ... and that it isn't *too useful* ~___^ Click on the image below to download the poster from my Google Drive! ^___^


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_MO0cK8Qg7mSEJTMkgwN1dIbEE/view?usp=sharing

- Lisa x

Sunday 23 October 2011

Zombie mitts!

Hello! How are you? I hope you are super. Today I finally finished part of my "work-appropriate" Halloween costume! Hooray! I made zombie mitts and I am so, so pleased with how they turned out. If you would like to make some too, these are based on the Mummy Mitts by Twinkie Chan; so read her tutorial, then read this post and you will know how!



First I crocheted two rectangles. Getting them the same size was the hardest part for me (sadly). I used this really nice green in acrylic, because wool is a little itchy for me, and also I know I will spill something on these at some stage.

Then I crocheted some blood spatter and some stitches. I made the stitches by chaining to the length I wanted, then single crocheting in each chain to make them nice and thick. 


The blood spatters started off with the first row of a circle (i.e. chain four, slip stitch into a ring, chain three, treble into the ring six times, join) then I did a mixture of trebles and single crochet. I made the sticky out parts by making two trebles, then chaining three and making another treble in between the first two trebles, and then slip stitching back down to the base row (i.e. where the first two trebles were made). Er, I hope that made sense.



I also made a long line of blood spatter by chaining to the right length, and then making the drips using trebles and single crochet in basically the same manner as the round blood spatters. For the parts where I didn't want any sticky out bits, I used single crochet.


Next I sewed on the blood spatter and the stitches with single thickness thread in the appropriate colours (red and black, respectively). I used wool and a tapestry needle to sew the lines across the stitches.

Once the embellishments were on, I sewed up the seams, leaving space for the thumb holes.

I can't wait to wear these on the 31st - I am thinking I will need to paint my nails to match ... maybe all in green? Or maybe white with red splatter? ^_^

Anyway, I hope you like them too - and if you do make some I would love to see them!
See you!

- Lisa x

Saturday 15 October 2011

Castiel embroidered canvas



Hey folks! Where has the time gone? I am highly suspicious that my diary is lying to me about it being mid-October already. But not too suspicious, because today is Rebecca's birthday! Yay!

I made Bec a embroidery/ felt/ canvas ... picture. I am so great at descriptions! But that's ok, because we have photos!


This is a little tribute to Castiel - the Trench Coat-wearing, demon-slaying, awesome quotes-master from the TV show Supernatural.

 

Castiel is embroidered with one and two strands of black DMC - he is quite small due to his massive wings also having to fit into the picture.


The wings are black felt blanket-stitched onto the blue cotton.

 
 
The quote is written in fabric pen, because I am generally terrible at stitching letters.
 
The finished piece on cotton was stretched over a blank canvas (I left the canvas material on because it is much studier than the cotton and thus gives it a bit of extra reinforcement) and sewn into place using this tutorial.

 
This picture is a bit hard to see - but basically I hemmed a piece of black cotton and whip stitched it onto the back of the canvas, to cover up the messy looking threads from attaching the blue cotton to the canvas.

The black cotton back has a flat tube (also of black cotton) sewn to it which can be used for hanging by threading a dowel or ribbon through it.

I am about 95% happy with how it turned out (the third line of the quote is slightly wonky which bothers me) but Bec liked it - and that is the main thing!

 

In other news, I got this AMAZING Imperial typewriter from my parents and grandparents. It's in a little bit of rough condition, but after I cleaned it up it looked 100 times better - I love it!
 

I am *still* making zombies ... but very slowly.
 

I made these trinket dishes for a wedding present, but I'm not really happy with them. They're ok, but you can see the brush strokes (which I could deal with, because it does look kind of rustic and charming) and they are still sticky! Ugh! I think I will try spray painting them, to make them a bit more matt and less brush-strokey. Only two are pictured here (the other one had an accident with some black paint ... oops), but they say "we tied the knot", "we put a ring on it", and "we said I do" with co-ordinating images (string with knot, rings, and heat respectively).
 


- Lisa x