DIY HEART STITCHED MAGAZINE ENVELOPES

Are you giving out love letters for Valentine's Day tomorrow? If you are, here's a simple DIY you can use to give your letters that extra touch!

Firstly, tear your desired pages out of an old magazine. This not only saves paper, magazine pages will also give your envelopes a unique look! ...Don't frown at me for tearing up a Discovery Channel Magazine, I haven't touched them for years! It's justified! Any page would do, you can even use one that is just full of words, that would work too!

I'm using a WRMK Envelope Punch Board to make my envelopes for this project, but if you don't own one, its really simple to make one just by tracing the shape of an envelope onto the magazine page and cutting it out, like in this project.

For me, I was looking to make a 3"x4" envelope, so I followed the measurements on the board and cut my magazine page down to a 6"x6" square.

Score. Punch. Score. Punch. The envelope punch board makes it a breeze. 

It also comes with a corner rounder to round the corners of the envelope. Once thats done, you just need to stick the folds together to get a complete envelope. But for this project, stitch the heart first before you do so!

Here's the slightly tricky part. Before attempting to stitch the heart, use a pencil and ruler to mark out all the places you intend to poke a hole into. For a striped heart like the one above, your holes just need to form the outline of the heart, and aligned like a mirror image. For a heart cross stitch pattern, I googled heart cross stitch and took note of how many 'x's I needed, and marked out the holes with a gap of 0.5cm in width and height from each other. After that, I use a needle to poke all the holes in advance to make things easier when it comes to sewing.

For the thread, I pulled 2 strands from the regular 6 strand embroidery floss to use (thickness of 4 strands after threading through the needle). For these hearts, my thread length seemed too short to complete a full heart, even when I cut them at 48 inches (before threading), so maybe you might want to try with a longer length of thread. 

I watched this video to learn how to cross stitch a heart, but because we're stitching on magazine papers, you don't have to follow all the instructions. To start or end a thread just tie a knot at the back to secure it! Also take note, pulling too hard might tear the paper, so be gentle!

It'll take a bit practice but once you've got the hang of it, you'll be able to do it pretty quickly! You can also do this on thicker paper if you feel like magazine pages are too flimsy as envelopes. 

And there you have it! A simple craft that you can use to dress up your love letters for Valentine's Day or any other day in the year. :)

Eunice

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HAIRBANDS + PIPE CLEANERS = ?

Super Simple Photobooth Hairband Props!

Here's a DIY idea that not only requires just two simple items, its also easy to whip up last minute for any party or photobooth that could use some props! 

Pipe cleaners are the perfect material for this project, because they can be bent any way you want them to, giving you almost unlimited freedom in your creativity for this project. I chose the sparkly ones, but there are also furry ones you can use. Also, hairbands that are flat (wider width) are more suitable because the pipe cleaners will shift around less.

Here are some ideas!

If you want to make shapes like those above, they are easy because they are made of simple lines, and do not require too many contact points with the hairband, only 1-2 per strand. This is good, because remember, each contact point should preferably be wrapped around the hairband so that the pipe cleaners are secure. They are pretty flimsy, and easily bent even after securing, so remember to be gentle with them. 

Off the top of my head, some other ideas that would work easily: Mickey ears, antlers, Yoda ears (more towards the side of the head), the Sims PlumbBob, any of the Teletubbies antennas.


Here's something a little more trickier. I went into this project with the idea that I would make tons of words with these pipe cleaners, but man, it was not as easy as I expected. 

Words require a lot of contact points with the hairband (almost one for every letter), and also preferably, the letters should all be connected to make them sturdier. This makes it hard because we can't use one length of pipe cleaner as it is. It needs to be cut up (not all letters link easily to the next, like 'B' or 'D'), and usually requires more than one length because letters require a lot of bending. This is a problem because if you bend/twist the sparkly pipe cleaners too much, the shiny strands detach from the wires and fall all over your workspace. So if you can, plan (draw) it out in advance so you can hopefully get it right in one shot.

Not just letters, numbers would be a good idea too! Maybe I should make some with 2015 across for the next new year. Or, 21, since everyone my age is turning 21 this year. Ideally I would go for larger words, but I did not have enough pipe cleaners on hand. You should take into consideration the size of what you want to have when you go out to buy pipe cleaners! From my experience, you always think you need less than you actually do. Haha



So there you have it! Super simple right? Oh one more important note: make sure none of the ends are on the bottom side of the hairband. You wouldn't want to scratch or cut your scalp when you put on one of these! Make sure all sharp ends are winded/tucked away tightly above the hairband!

Eunice

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DIY CAKE BUNTING 3 WAYS

Today I'm going to share with you some simple DIY ideas for cake bunting. It's a super easy way to add colour and a personal touch to a simple cake, and ther is so many variations you can use to make these. Here, I'll touch on 3 different ideas for cake bunting, namely, using paper, ribbon and washi tape.

Let's start with paper, because its the item that most of us are sure to have on hand without having to go to a store. 


For paper bunting, you need coloured paper (I used A5 size), scissors, twine (or string), and most importantly, wooden skewers. I have watercolours and brushes because I wanted to go for a unique speckled look instead of a plain colour.


I found the easiest way to achieve this look was to brush my thumb upwards along the flat tip of my brush (flat brushes work better than round brushes), and also to use less water when diluting the paint, because if you are using regular coloured paper, the wet paint won't stand out as the paper absorbs the water. 


This step is used for all the buntings. I cut a 9 inch length of twine so that I can be sure to have at least 6 inches of twine in the centre after tying it to the skewers. I use a basic knot, as shown above, and do that twice on each side to secure it. If you don't want to risk the rope loop moving around you can even secure it with a dot of glue. You can always attach the flags first before tying, but I feel like tying first gives me a better sense of how I should attach the flags.


What I did was to fold the paper in half before cutting, because with the handmade speckles, there is a tendency for the centre of the paper to be more speckled than the sides. While it is folded, cut out about 1.5cm wide strips. 

After that, place the twine in between the folded sides, and staple it down (you can opt for glue of tape if you don't like the look of stapler bullets). You want to make sure that you don't staple too far down such that its loose and can move around a lot on the string, but also not too far up such that you staple onto the string or your paper flags cannot be wiggled around later. 

You probably don't need as many flags as you cut, so pick those that are nicely speckled! Once you've attached the number of flags you want, you can start to cut triangles out from the end to get the swallowtail shape. You can cut your buntings at any length you like, but also depends on the length of your skewer, because you don't want your bunting to be touching the cake when you're done. 

Finally, move them around so that they are evenly spaced out and in the centre of the bunting, and you're done!


The second bunting is made from washi tape. I don't have step by step instructions because its pretty straightforward, and also, I made this one years ago. So, no pictures.

This time, do not tie the twine to the skewers first, I'll explain why in a bit. 

Cut a 4-5cm length of tape for each flag, position and fold the tape over the length of twine and stick it down so you get a rectangle. After which, grab a pair of scissors and cut triangles like we did for the paper bunting. And if you'd like, use a permanent marker to add some letters like I did. 

Once you're done with all that, tie the ends of the twine to the skewers such that the flags are in the center, and its okay if one side has more excess twine than the other, you can just snip it off.


The tricky thing about using washi tape is: the tape will stick to the twine. This means you will not be able to shift it around like the paper flags. So you have to get the positions and spacing right on the first try, but being in the centre of the twine is not as much of a priority since you can adjust that later when you tie the twine to the skewers. 

Also, the washi tape flags have a tendency of sticking out at different angles if they are not pasted onto the twine flat, and can be a cause of much irritation, so thats another factor to watch out for!

Sidenote: I recommend doing just one layer instead of three like I did here because it can get quite tricky and frustrating, but if you're up for the challenge go ahead!


For the last one, we'll do a ribbon knot bunting. Pretty straightforward too!
Tie the twine to the skewer like we did for the paper bunting. Cut 4-5 inches of ribbon or whatever length you like (I think a bunting of different length ribbons looks better) but remember that you at the end the ribbon flag will be a bit less than half that length. Because here's how I tied it:


The process of tying the ribbons to the twine is pretty clear from the photos right? After that, cut the edges, and I like to add a little clear nail polish to the cut edges of ribbon just so the threads do not start unravelling and make a mess.

The ribbons can be shifted around so go ahead and space them out. Also, remember that you don't have to fill out the whole length with bunting flags, sometimes less and simpler and simpler is better.

Just a tip, I find the tying easier to do with thinner and well, softer ribbons. Thicker and stiffer ribbons just seem to come loose easily, and the large knots they make aren't very pretty. If you didn't notice (hopefully), my striped ribbons are actually half the width of the actual ribbon. I cut them down the centre to make two ribbons because they were too thick. And because their material is still stiff and 'uncooperative', you can see (below) that the knot they create is larger than the wider but softer plain blue ribbons. So thats one thing to consider when picking your ribbons. You can tie knots with them to test how 'cooperative' they would be.


And thats it! We've gone through 3 simple ideas for cake bunting you can tweak and make your own. Play with the colours and the look, for example, using triangle or pointed flags instead of the swallowtail shape I used here. You can even try creating that knot look with perhaps strands of thread, or tiny strands of crepe paper. There are so many ways to jazz these up, my head is still swirling with ideas.

I hope you got some ideas for your own cake bunting from the post! I had fun with this one!

Eunice

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DIY CHRISTMAS CAROLS WRAPPING PAPER

Christmas Eve is here! Before I go off for a family Christmas gathering, I thought I'd drop bye with a quick DIY for those of you who have left present wrapping to the very last day (like me). I like to wrap all my presents in a similar style and this year I wanted to do something simple but fun and I decided to go with handwritten christmas carols in Christmas colours.



Just grab brown parcel paper, a few markers (I used Zebra Mildliners), the lyrics of a few of your favourite songs, tape and you're pretty much all set. To make things easier I estimated the amount of parcel paper I would need for each present before I started writing because I wanted them each to feature different carols.



I though what could be more Christmasy than picking from the carols we sing in church during Christmas services? So here I wrote out 'Go tell it on the mountain', 'Come on ring those bells', 'Joy to the World', 'Mary's little boy child', and I'm going to write one more of my favourites 'See Him lying on a bed of straw'. I sure had fun singing all these Christmas carols while I was writing them out!



For name tagging the gifts, I stuck sticker letters on them but you could also write them out in the middle of the lyrics like how I did for Joash. 

What about you? How are you wrapping your gifts this Christmas? :)
Eunice

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TRANSFORMERS POP-UPS

So three weeks ago I dedicated a post to pop-up books that I wish I had. While doing up that post, I came across something pretty awesome: the DIY Pop-Up section on the websites of the paper engineers of those incredible books. 

I decided I had to try them for myself, because I thought making them on my own would give me some clue as to how pop-ups worked. And I can safely say I don't think it enlightened me much. Haha But it was still fun. I love my transformers. I even made GIFs to show you! (First try at making GIFs too) Haha




Are the GIFs giving you a headache, because they are starting to give me one. Haha I especially love how Bumblebee transforms from a car. These are the Transformers Pop-ups from, one of my favourite paper engineers, Matthew Reinhart's DIY section. He has uploaded tons of neat DIY Pop-ups there, including Star Wars characters like Chewbacca and Darth Vader. These would make fun art projects to do with children, because they are all part colouring pages. If I had nephews instead of nieces, I would have let them make these with me. But I guess my niece might like pop-up bears and stuff too.

Robert Sabuda also has his own DIY section, where the pop-ups are more generic stuff like animals and flowers. Which I guess would make for good templates if you want to make a pop-up card!








Pretty neat? They sure are. If you feel like you're too old to make them without "helping" a kid make one, heres the assurance you needed to hear: You are never too old for pop-ups. Now go get some markers, scissors, and glue and get crafting!

Just thought I should add: I used regular paper to make these because that is all I had at home, but if you have slightly thicker paper, that would certainly make for sturdier pop-ups!

Eunice

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WISHBONE & ANTLER NECKLACE

Here's another easy DIY craft! I followed the DIY tutorial by Courtney from Always Rooney, who seriously makes some of the best DIYs, and is young and really inspiring. Her antler necklace caught my eye and I just couldn't forget it, so I decided I just had to make it myself!


I admit I did not follow her tutorial to the tee: I used air dry clay instead of oven bake clay. BIG mistake. It was the only type of clay they had in popular, and I bought that because I was itching to make them and didn't have time to go down to an art store. So if you look closely, you'll see a crack line where my antler broke in two (at the part where they join) because air dry clay is just so fragile. I was devastated, and although it was nothing super glue wouldn't put back together, it left behind a line. 

Also, air dry clay needs to be coated/protected. I coated the clay pieces with mod podge, but I doubt its very protective. Let this be a lesson of long term versus immediate gratification. I might have to go get some oven bake polymer clay that is waterproof and redo these.

I was initially going to go with a gradient of green or red, but decided I want to go for warm fall colours, and so mixed up the colours. I used DMC 918 (red) and 3852 (yellow), and Anchor 843 (green).


Since my hands were already full of clay, I decided to give my little spin on this project and make a wishbone necklace! I think the wishbone is far easier to shape than the antler. You can use this Oh Happy Day tutorial for reference! For the wishbone, I went with a gradient of blue because I love that wintery, icy look. I used Anchor Embroidery Thread: 847, 849, and 851.

There are endless possibilities for this project, and I hope it inspires you with new ideas on what else you can do! Thread-wrapped is such a effortless but pretty look, I might just be tempted to thread-wrap more of my stuff. Haha

Eunice

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LOVING YOU TONIGHT

Andrew Allen - Loving You Tonight

Remember how I said I was going to try and cut out a whole chunk of lyrics? It turned out well guys! And I mixed it up a little with full cut outs for some of the words this time, just so the lovely yellow gets a chance to show through more. Just in case you missed it in the previous post, you can easily recreate this with this DIY on How About Orange! Its super simple yet pretty darn neat. Oh and in case you were wondering, because a friend asked, I used a regular penknife instead of an x-acto knife like the one they used in the DIY. Yup, I did. Moving the paper as well instead of just the penknife really helps. Use whatever you have guys! Don't let the tools stop you. :)

I've been loving this song ever since my friend Hazi mentioned it on Twitter. I think we have similar tastes in music because I love almost every song she recommends. Which is good for me, as I hardly keep up with the music scene since I don't listen to the radio, so I learn of new songs when other people mention them. It's just such a sweet little tune.
 

Eunice

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NOVEMBER

November has arrived at our door. The end of the year has begun! What joy! My school's exam streak has finally hit a hiatus (before the final exam weeks), so I was digging up time at home to work on some crafts and hand lettering over the weekend. But now that the weekdays are back, I have awoken to the reality that I still have group projects and a backlog of blogposts for a class learning blog to work on. Groan. 

In the meantime, heres a cute little cut out for you. Its super simple and a really quick project, and would probably take you only around 20mins from the very start to finish. Unless of course, you're working on something much bigger and with many more letters. I followed this DIY on How About Orange and was psyched to find how easy it was. 



I have plans to do this for a whole chunk of lyrics, so I'll get back to you if that goes well. Haha Time to bust out that penknife and get slicing! :)

Eunice

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CROCHET WITH ME

If you read my about page, you'll know that I'm all about trying new crafts, and how refreshing that is for me. I dabbled mostly in paper crafts so far, so I was pretty excited when I decided that my next crafting adventure would be to try my hand at crocheting!

The thought has been playing around in my head for quite some time, but it was not until I got my hands on some great value crochet hooks that I really thought "Okay! It's time ti try it!". I bought the HiyaHiya 5.5mm crochet hook when I was in Bangkok for slightly over a dollar! I also bought a 4.5mm one but I can't find that for now... You can find some great ones at Spotlight, although they might be a bit more costly. Or check out the $2 ones at Daiso, although the last I checked they only had really big-sized hooks. The three smaller hooks were recently given to me by my Grandaunt, who says they are at least 30 years old now. Wow. I should probably ask her to teach me some of her skills.

I used this brand of yarn, which was slightly less than 3 dollars a 'ball' at Spotlight during a sale. If you know about your yarns/wools you'll know why this got so cheap, its 100% acrylic, so its apparently not as soft as the ones with wool and its probably useless in cold weather. But if you're starting out, there's no point in investing in expensive yarn unless you're sure that your first crochet project will turn out absolutely great! So acrylic yarn did fine for me.

When I stumble across fashion pictures on Tumblr or Pinterest, I've always adored all the cute wool hats that went with all the gorgeous winter outfits. Well of course there's no winter in Singapore and thus hardly any reason to make one of these, but a girl can dream!

This was the first beret I attempted. Because I was just starting out, this became a trial and error piece. I redid the second half of the beret three times before deciding that the fault lay in the beginning part and so I redid the whole had from the very start. Sure it was heartbreaking to pull loose all the knots and start right from the top again, but its not too difficult and you won't miss the uneven stitches and poor knots you made in the first round. I'm still not sure if I got it right, because as you can see in the picture on the right, it makes a frilly outline around my head... which kind of bothers me. And I made it a little too tight-fitting. Hahaha

If you want to attempt this chunky/slouchy beret, you can follow this tutorial video!

The second beret I worked on went much more smoothly I must say. I loved the sweet rows of gaps/patches extending from the center of the beret. It is also more neat and less big and... frilly. Haha Although this time, I was a bit too cautious and made it a teeny bit too loose. But nothing a bobby pin here and there won't hold! 

Here's where to learn to make this one!

She really is a great teacher, as all her instructions are very simply worded and easy to follow, with no crochet jargon that she expects you to know. To be honest, because I did both berets using her tuorials, I don't know the proper terms for the knots or how to read crochet patterns. While this may outrage the dedicated crochet community because they would argue that I didn't exactly learn to crochet, it spells joy for the rest of us beginners who just want to try it out and see how much we like it! 

I have found crocheting to be extremely therapeutic. There's just something about making knots over and over again and slowly seeing the pattern take form. I especially like to work on it while I go through my line up of shows that I watch at the end of each week. I'm looking for other crochet projects to take on, will probably stop with the berets for now. Heehee

I hope this helped you if you were thinking or trying it out! Let me know if you do! :)

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