How to make stickers into brooches

Hello! I don't know if anyone else is like this, but I have a hard time using stickers. It's just like, once you use them, that's it! I know, it's weird - and I keep buying them hoping to find the perfect place to stick them to. This has resulted in me having quite a lot of stickers but I've finally discovered the perfect use: make them into brooches! Yes!

 

I started off with these two cute rollerskating stickers that I got from a Roller Derby bout (p.s. if you're in Perth you should come to the next WARD bout! I'll be on the sidelines cheering and dreaming of the day when I'd be good enough to join in! ^___^). I didn't want to stick them to my helmet because I thought they'd probably get ruined next time I hit the decks (this happens a lot) and I figured they'd be perfect for repping derby in my everyday life ^___^ I got a lot of questions at work on how I made them, so I decided to get out my sticker collection and make some more!

 

To make your own you'll need some thin balsa wood, a scalpel, jewellery hardware, E6000 glue, PVA glue or mod podge, and some fun stickers.

 

I just stuck my stickers directly to the balsa wood, but I noticed one of them moving around while I was wearing it yesterday so in future I would brush on a very thin layer of glue before adding the stickers.

Cutting them out with the scalpel is the most time consuming part! I used the time to catch up on some Welcome to Night Vale episodes ^___^

 

Lastly, use the E6000 to glue on the jewellery hardware and leave everything to dry.

 

I made three hair clips; the popcorn one has gotten a lot of lovely compliments at work ^___^

 

The larger stickers are the best ones for brooches, as you can't see the badge backing peeking out behind them. The Hello Kitty milk choco brooch was the easiest to cut out - square stickers are definitely the way to go if you want to make one of these brooches fast!

I made three sets of earrings from these tiny animal faces. The lions were tricky due to their manes, but I really love them! ^___^

 

Lastly, I made two larger earrings from some Maneki-neko stickers Pip brought back for me from Japan, and made a ring from a fan sticker from the same set.

I've still got a lot of stickers in my collection so I think I'll be making more of these in the future, and now I have an excuse to buy even more stickers ~____^

- Lisa xx

Princess Bubblegum crochet crown

Hello! I don't know about you, but I spend a lot of my time thinking about costumes. They're just such fun! I love going to Oz ComicCon and Supanova and seeing all the creative ideas that people have come up with, but Halloween has a special place in my heart. I mean, it's a spooky day where you can dress up and dance with a zombie; is there anything better? ~___^

This year, since my hair is currently pink, I've decided to go as Princess Bubblegum from Adventure Time. Yay! I'm  going to do a closet cosplay and also go as a hipster version of PB; this is mostly because I don't really like wearing my contact lens and my glasses are so black and thick-rimmed that, well, they kinda suit the part!

 

So I've got a pink top, handkerchief scarf, skirt, and tights but to be truly PB-esque I needed a crown. I found lots of different ones, made out of all kinds of different materials, but I was most inspired by a crochet version I found and so decided to give that a go.

I also wrote down what I did to make this one so you can give it a go if you like! My crown is quite a bit bigger than others I've seen which I'm still kinda on the fence about. I like it because it stands out but ... I don't know, maybe it's too big? Either way, I guess you could just alter the pattern slightly so it suits you more. I will also mention that this hasn't been tested and so there are probably mistakes; if you find any, let me know and I'll add in corrections! ^___^

 

Princess Bubblegum Crochet Crown

Using a 4mm hook and yellow yarn (I used 100% wool in an 8ply), chain 120.

Row 1: Chain one (this is your turning stitch) and then do a single stitch in each chain stitch (120 stitches)

Row 2, 3, 4: Repeat row 1

Row 5: Chain one (turning stitch). Do a single stitch in the next 53 stitches. Chain 3, treble in the same stitch you just did a single stitch in (you will have a single and a treble in the same stitch). Treble in the next 13 stitches. Chain 3, do a single stitch in the same stitch you just did a treble in. Single stitch along the rest of the row. This will give you a segment in the middle of the crown which is slightly raised. Tie off your yarn.

Row 6: Tie your yarn onto the raised treble segment, four stitches in. Make one chain stitch and then do a single stitch in eight stitches; this will give you another slightly smaller raised section.

Row 7 - 22: Chain 1, single stitch in each stitch (8 stitches) 

Row 22 - 26: Chain 1, treble in each stitch (8 stitches). You could do these rows in single stitch as well if you wanted to, but they will be covered by the round part of the crown and I find trebles faster and easier to do. Tie off your yarn.

Crochet a flat circle using single stitch; I did 12 rows and my circle has a diameter of about 7.5 cm.

Cut out a circle slightly smaller than your crochet one from light blue felt. I painted my felt circle with glitter mod podge to make it sparkle!

Sew the felt circle to the crochet circle, and the crochet circle to the end of the uppy bit of the crown (yup, that's a technical term).

Sew the two rectangle ends of the crown together so that it forms a ring. 

Tie on your end at the back of the crown, where your sewn join is. Single stitch around the edges of your entire crown. This will smooth out the blocky edges of the uppy bit and just generally make everything look nicer ^___^

 

My crown was looking a bit droopy, so I sewed a thin craft stick to the back of the uppy bit. I was worried that this would make it really uncomfortable, but I was wearing my crown around the house last night (as you do) and it was fine. I may sew a little cushion over the end of it anyway, just to make sure I don't finish Halloween with a mark on my head ~___^ Other options to fix this would be to make it shorter, or maybe use fabric starch.

 

I, as usual, have grand plans for this costume which probably won't get done. I was planning on making a visit to the craft store today to pick up some orange wool to make this amazing Science the Rat but last night I broke my toe. Well, it may only be fractured but I enjoy being overly dramatic. Still, it's meant that a lot of my plans for the week have to be delayed since walking is rather painful.

On the bright side, I will be sitting down a lot over the next couple of days which will be the perfect reason to get ahead in my assignments. Yay? ~___^

Are you crafting anything for Halloween this year? I have two more Halloween crafts on my list, but it looks like they'll have to wait until next week. I've had this zombie project in my head for *ages* so even though Halloween will offically be over, I'm still going to make them! I can't wait to show you ^___^

- Lisa xx

P.S. Does the gem part of the crown remind anyone else of the Stargate?

Beaded cherry necklace

Hello! I went to the craft store to buy some new sheets the other day and totally broke my promise to myself of not buying more craft supplies. I'm sure it's not just me that looks through their stash and simply can not think of anything to make (please, tell me other people do that too ...); it's really silly because I have so much stuff and yet ... nothing inspires me. But, I found these totally adorable tiny green leaf beads at the shop and suddenly, I knew what I had to make.

 

Cherry necklace! Yes! ^___^ Other people have made cherry necklaces, but since mine is a little different, I thought I'd do a small tutorial for you anyway ^___^

 

To make this necklace, you'll first need to decide how many cherries you'd like as this determines how many beads you'll need. I think odd numbers look best, so I choose to do five pairs of cherries. I used 12mm red glass pearls for the actual cherries; really any largish red bead will work and you will need two for each cherry pair. You will also need two glass leaf beads, one large jump ring, one smaller jump ring, and two head pins for each pair of cherries.

 

You'll also need some chain (I used about half a metre), a clasp, another jump ring (this is optional really, but I find it makes doing up the necklace easier), and some pliers.

 

The first thing you need to do is thread your red beads onto the head pins and use your pliers to bend the open end of the pin into a loop.

Then use your pliers to open up the smaller jump ring and thread on the leaf beads and the two cherries.

 

Close up the small jump ring, and then open the larger one. Thread the large jump ring through the small jump ring ...

 

... and through the necklace chain where you'd like your cherries to sit, and then close it up again using the pliers.

 

Make the rest of your cherries exactly the same, and finish off your necklace by adding the clasp and the extra jump ring to the ends of the chain.

 

And that's it! This was such an easy necklace to make, but it's so cute and such fun to wear! I felt extra jangly and special wearing this around campus today, and even got landed on by a ladybug. I feel like this is the best seal of approval I could have possibly gotten ~___^

But now I'm back to not knowing what to make. Hmmm. I think it's time to go and spend some quality time with my stash. Something in there has got to inspire me, right? ^___^

- Lisa xx

Easy loom daisy flower crown

Hello! Today I had my first day back at uni - I can't believe this is my last semester ever!! I only had one class today, but it did go for three hours (gah!). It was totally fun though; I'm doing a cultural studies unit as my elective and for this class we get to spend the entire semester analysing fantasy and sci-fi texts! I'm so, so keen to get properly into it. I decided today to try and blend in with the cool kids on campus who are all wearing '90s fashion (it's everywhere now!) so I made this quick and easy daisy flower crown to wear ^___^

To make it, I wove five daisies using my largest round loom and some white and yellow wool. I have a Hana-Ami loom, which is really easy to use; making this headband took me one viewing of Coraline ~___^ If you click on "Hana-Ami", I've linked to a short video showing what it looks like and how it is used. However, I did my centres a little differently to the all videos I could find; the loom comes with an instruction sheet that shows you different ways to finish off the flowers. It's in Japanese, but there are pictures so you can get the general gist of things. Instead of using the darning needle to sew from the centre of the flower, I used it to tie knots in a circle around the centre. I knotted together four strands of wool with each knot and each knot contains one strand of wool from the previous knot. Hmm. I hope that makes sense. Perhaps I should make a video to show you what I mean, what do you think?

 

I wanted the centres of the daisies to be a solid colour, so after knotting the circle I used my darning needle to criss-cross the yarn through the centre of the flower. The darning needle I got with my loom has a huge eye on it, which makes threading it super easy, but it's not great for filling in the centres. I recommend changing to a smaller darning needle, if you have one handy.

The actual headband is just a length of crocheted chain stitch; I used a 4mm hook and green yarn. The chain stitched wool is about 70cm long, and I left the 15cm tails on each end to ensure I'd have enough yarn to tie my crown around my apparently massive head ~___^ To attach the flowers, I threaded the chain stitch through the massive darning needle and simply stitched through the back of each flower. You can move the daisies around on the chain to ensure they are positioned well, but they don't move about on their own.

This would also make a really cute daisy bunting, and using the smaller looms produces flowers small enough to be worn as jewellery. Daisy chain necklace, anyone?

Since I'm back at uni now, I'll have less time to craft and blog (boo!); but you can always find me on Instagram and Twitter if you want to catch up! ^___^

- Lisa xx

Pineapple and AT-AT string art

Hello! Today I really felt like I needed a break from my crochet project (so. many. trebles!) so I had a look through my idea notebook and found one that said, in shaking just-woke-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night handwriting, "geometric string art AT-AT". There was also a drawing of what I assume to be the aforementioned AT-AT but it looked more like a cow. Good attempt nonetheless, sleeping-Lisa. A for effort.

So anyway I gathered my supplies, and got to crafting! It turned out well, but my desire for hitting things with a hammer wasn't yet sated, so I made another string art; this one a pineapple. I'm still not over the pineapple trend, and it works with the 70s-esque medium of string art oh so well! And I even made a little tutorial and a template for you to make your own ^___^

 

1. You'll need a hammer, upholstery tacks (or some other kind of small nail), string (I used cotton thread), a piece of wood (mine is a chopping board from IKEA), scissors, and a scalpel.

 

2. You'll also need a silhouette. For my AT-AT I used this one, and for my pineapple I made my own. If you'd like to use my pineapple silhouette, you can download it by clicking on the image above ^___^

 

3. Add your tacks around the edges of the silhouette. My pine board was soft enough that I could push in the tacks a little before hammering them in; this adds a little bit of stability and reduces the chance you'll hammer your thumb ~___^

4. Once you've got all your tacks in, you can remove the paper template. Just rip it off! ^___^

 

5. Some of your tacks might have a little bit of paper stuck underneath them. I used a scalpel to cut these little scraps off.

 

 

6. To start off the string wrapping, I did an adjustable slip knot which I tightened around the first tack. I wrapped the string around each tack around the outside of the shape and then started criss-crossing through the middle.

 

7. To finish off, I also used an adjustable slip knot. It can be a bit tricky to get the knot in the right place so that your string is kept tight enough, but it does look very neat once you get it done. ^___^

8. Cut off the tails of your strings, and you're finished! Huzzah!

 

It's still quite cloudy and rainy here, being winter, but I feel like these little bits of art cheer up the place quite nicely ^___^

I'm back at uni again next week which means that craft will, once again, be relegated to the back burner but until then I shall be working on my crochet project. I hope I can finish it in time to show you soon! 

- Lisa xx

Leather bat bows

Hello! How are you? I feel like somehow my life has actually been busier since uni finished which really does seem improbable! Maybe it's just been going by quicker since I've been having such fun! ^___^ If you follow me on Instagram you'll already know some of this, but since my last blog post I have dyed my hair blue (well, bluey green with sections of black ... ~___^), crocheted enough granny squares to now have over 100, had a flower crown making party to celebrate my birthday, completed an epic thrifting roadtrip with Rebecca (photos of which I will share with you soon!) and I've also been making myself a scarf (highly practical in this Australian summer heat!), sewing a few Christmas presents, and I even finished a project to share with you today! Omg, right? ^___^

I saw a photo of cute bat-esque bows on pinterest, but unfortunately the image was uncredited (don't you hate it when that happens?). I still wanted to make some though, so I drew up a quick pattern and got to crafting!

 If you'd like to make some too, you can click on the image above to download the pattern from Google Drive! ^___^

Here's what you'll need to make your own batty hairclips ^___^

1. Some leather or pleather scraps

2. Fabric and paper scissors

3. The pattern

4.  A needle and thread

5. Bobby pins

Firstly, cut out the pattern. I have a special pair of scissors that I use only for cutting paper, because I don't want to dull my lovely fabric scissors ^___^

 

Then use the pattern to cut out the shape from your fabric. If you can, do this without pins because they will often leave marks on leather/pleather. If you find this step tricky though, you can draw the outline on the back of the fabric and use that as your cutting guideline.

You'll also need to cut out a small rectangle of fabric to serve as the middle of your bow. Mine was about 1cm x 2cm, but this doesn't have to be exact.

 

Then fold the middle of your bat shape like the letter 'm' and use your needle and thread to secure the fold.

 

This is what it looks like from the back ^___^

 

Wrap your small rectangle of fabric around the bow and sew it together to make a small tube around the middle of your bow.

Tie off your thread, and then slip a bobby pin through the fabric tube. 

 

The tube should be rather snug so your bobby pin will stay in place without the need for glue or stitches.

 

And then that's it! You're done and now you can make more! ~___^

Yay! I think I'll make an extra big one to wear as a headband too! ^___^
I hope you like it; if you make one then I'd love to see it! ^___^

Now I'm off to refresh my university emails repeatedly until my end of year results come in! Eeek! Wish me luck?

- Lisa x