I usually try to do these on Mondays, but better late than never, right? 😀
Anyhow! Here’s this week’s crafty picks – since I’ve gotten into playing some delightfully old video games this week, like Super Mario RPG (my favorite!), this week is going to be retro game themed!
Ahh, Mario, always getting the girl… no wonder Luigi’s a little cranky here. Cross-stitch pattern found here, at Spritestitch. And there are tons more patterns there for your enjoyment!
Hello all! I’ve got another fresh batch of awesome craft projects for everyone! This week I’ll be focusing on cross-stitch projects I’ve found around the internet recently, so hopefully everyone’s got some Aida cloth and an embroidery hoop handy!
I featured this pattern a few weeks ago over at Geek Crafts, and figured it was definitely worth a mention here! I do love Wreck-It Ralph, after all, and I plan on making this pattern myself, framing it, and hanging it in my living room.
Hello all! I hope your Monday went well – mine was a bit of a mixed bag. Ah well. I’ve got a fresh batch of crafty picks for everyone this week!
Speaking of Mondays… this would be a hilarious addition to anyone’s cubicle, haha. It’s in a handy dandy kit, put together by Purple Hippo Stitches, and also part of their Tax Day Sale! I’m half done with my own set, and plan on sticking mine in my cube once it’s done. It’s really simple, and an easy intro to cross-stitching if you’ve never done it before.
I’m going to try something new for the next few weeks here, and see how everyone likes it – I’m going to do a nerdy craft roundup, of four of the most interesting nerdy crafts I’ve found out on the internet! Here’s hoping it brightens everyone’s Monday, and gives everyone some inspiration for some cool craft projects to make.
This looks like a fun project for cross-stitchers, and would also be a great gift for any Doctor Who fan! It would also be a great weekend project, for when you’ve got some episodes of Doctor Who to catch up on. You can find it at The Crafty Companion on Etsy.
You know what’s worse than being sick?
Being sick on a weekend. A beautiful weekend, no less, where it’s finally warm enough to open all the windows and sit outside on the porch, and enjoy the beautiful flowers.
I hate late season colds.
The beginnings of a TARDIS blanket
However, I did make the best of this cold – yesterday I decided to jump in on the Worsted for Wear Knit/Crochet-a-long on Ravelry (it’s Doctor Who themed!), and am working on a TARDIS blanket. It’s small – I suppose I could make it a lot bigger if I upped the hook gauge, but I figure I should stick to the pattern for right now, since it’s my first time working with filet crochet. You can’t really make much of it out, but that’s totally the bottom of the TARDIS. I swear. 😀
I’ve noticed that people keep coming to my site to look at all the various Toothless plush that I’ve made (well, the one plush, and the one crocheted Toothless) – and I just now realized I don’t have any links to where I got the patterns or inspiration for these awesome dragons! So, this post is dedicated entirely to where to find out How to Make Your Own Dragon.
Well, the weekend’s almost over, and I did tell myself I’d be writing a blog post this weekend – since nothing exceedingly nerdy happened this week, I’m going to do a roundup of the projects I’ve been working on recently! I’ve got three that I’ve been working on over the past week, and here they are.
This shawl earned its name from the little colored speckles in the yarn – it bears a bit of a resemblance to Vanellope Von Schweets’ hair! I started working on this on the flight to San Francisco a few weeks ago, and have been working on it in classes since I got home. It’s getting pretty long – once it’s finished, I’ll sew it up, and then it loops double for wearing. (It’s the Holy Cannoli pattern, on Ravelry.)
I will admit – one of my favorite simple crafts to do that involves very little effort is making no-sew fleece blankets. Just about anyone can do them, even kids, and you can make them any size, with any fun fleece you can find, and they don’t take terribly long at all to make. You can get no-sew fleece blanket kits at Jo-Ann Fabrics (or probably many other places, I’ve only seen them at Jo-Ann’s) – or you can make something a little more personal and do it all yourself! If you take the do-it-yourself route, you can even pick the size of your blanket, and make it as big or as small as you want. I’m sure there are already lots of no-sew fleece blanket tutorials out there, but maybe someone out there will find this helpful, and I’m hoping you’ll all enjoy my tutorial!
As you might remember from my Startitis post, I have some My Little Pony fleece that’s been waiting for this project. My blanket is going to be big enough to cover the bed in my craft room/home office – this way, I can wrap myself in pony goodness if I need to, and I can use it to cover the bed as well! That’s my main reason for doing this – considering nerdy comforters are nearly impossible to find, I may as well make my own. I should have bought that Sailor Moon comforter off eBay ages ago when I saw it for $40…
What you’ll need
All trimmed and ready to cut.
Anyhow! Step one is to cut your blanket down to the size you need. I tend to wing it with stuff like this, instead of measuring it, but the standard size for a twin sized blanket is 66 in by 90 in (and I found this information here, for those curious!). I picked up two yards of each of my fleeces, so I only needed to trim the edge of the pony fleece so the two pieces of fabric are roughly the same size.
Step two is optional – while fleece tends to stick to itself pretty well, you might want to pin the two layers of fleece together just for an extra bit of security – this will make sure the two pieces don’t shift while you’re flipping it around as you cut and knot the blanket. Don’t pin too closely to the edge – you want to leave enough room to cut the fringe around the edges! 🙂
Step three: cut the fringe! This is where the sharp scissors will come in especially handy. You’ll want to make your fringes 5 inches long, and about an inch and a half wide – this way you’ll have enough fabric to tie in knots and have a fringe that’s not too stubby or too long. However, also keep in mind that fringe-making is not an exact science – they won’t all be perfect, and that’s alright. It won’t be noticeable when you’re all done!
When you get to the corners, just cut the corners right out – it’ll leave you with a couple of nice 5-inch squares of fabric. (Which you could maybe use to make a matching pillow!) If your scissors are really sharp, you might be able to cut through multiple layers at once – that’s what I did in order to cut doww on my cutting time, haha.
Step four is the long part. Now you have to knot all these fringes. This is where you might want to put on a good tv show or movie and zone out while you knot away – my show of choice was Lost. The total time it took me to knot this thing was about an hour – it may take more if you’re working on a larger blanket.
And now we’re done! This took a total of maybe an hour and a half to two hours from start to finish – it’s a perfect project for a lazy Sunday afternoon, or for a quick gift for someone! And if you can find the right fabric, it can be delightfully nerdy as well.
Okay, in all honestly, this should be named “How To Make Your Dragon: Part Four” – however, the other three dragons haven’t really been mentioned here – I’ll give them all a quick passing glance right now. First, a little backstory – my best friend Morgan showed me How To Train Your Dragon over the summer, and I absolutely fell in love with Toothless, one of the main characters. He is a hilarious dragon, and I love him to pieces. Morgan loves him too, so I made him a giant plush Toothless – the first of many iterations of everyone’s favorite dragon that I’d make.
The second Toothless I made was a crocheted one that I made for myself, over the holiday break – I wanted a Toothless of my own, darnit, but I didn’t want to go to all the work I did for the first Toothless – after all, it did take me a week to make him, and I sewed every moment I had that I wasn’t asleep or at work. Crocheted Toothless took a lot less time – maybe a few evenings over the course of a week.
He’s small, but absolutely adorable! The third Toothless, I made as a Christmas present for Morgan – it was made out of Sculpey, and it was a bit of an ordeal – the Sculpey that I’d picked up to use was almost dry, and while I figured out how to revive dried Sculpey, it was tough – I spent 45 minutes massaging baby oil into some chunks of black Sculpey, and made a mess of my hands. It was all worth it, since in the end I came out with this little guy.
And tonight, I made a Sculpey Toothless of my own! He turned out really well. First off, I picked up fresh Sculpey, which helped immensely. It was much easier to mold him. I followed the tutorial here, from LightningMcTurner on DeviantArt – they made the tutorial I used for the first Toothless. I made him a bit bigger this time around, and improvised a bit as well, but had a ton of fun making him.
As I said, fresh Sculpey made all the difference – it was much more easy to manipulate, and easier to assemble all the pieces, too! I’m really happy with how he turned out.
Here he is just before going into the oven – isn’t he adorable? I ended up giving him bigger, unfurled wings, instead of the small tucked wings the tutorial suggested. I’m happy with that choice – I love his wings. Take a look below at how nice he looks after coming out of the oven!
So, if you love Toothless as much as I do, you should go check out the Sculpey Toothless tutorials that LightningMcTurner has up on DeviantArt, and make some dragons of your own!
How many of you out there have startitis? I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about…
from the webcomic Worsted for Wear
I know I’ve got one heck of a pile of unfinished projects stashed in my closet – in fact, this post is going to showcase some of the more interesting projects I’ve got stashed away, thanks to the ridiculous case of chronic startitis I have. (I think it’s terminal, to be honest…)
First off, the knitting/crocheting projects – there are so many of them, they’re not even getting their own individual introduction – I’ve just lumped them all together here for convenience, haha. It’s just so easy to start a new knitting or crocheting project! All you need is some yarn and a pair of knitting needles or a crochet hook – sometimes, I don’t even need a pattern. I just wing it. (I also love how I have two scarves in the same pattern there, and didn’t even realize it until I went to dig out all these projects)
Next is the massive pile of punch embroidery projects in various stages of completedness – I sometimes get struck with an amazing idea, work on it with wild abandon for a few days, then get distracted. Often by another craft project. Told you my startitis was terminal. Especially for many a project that just ends up languishing in a closet or a bucket. Projects of note in this pile include the Doctor Who punch project I’ve been working on for… what, four years now? I really should finish that and turn it into a pillow or something… Also, the fact that there are three pieces that are just outlines on fabric, well, that’s a travesty.
Then we come to sewing. I am actually SO CLOSE to finishing this apron, too! I’ve been working on it for about three years, which is depressing, considering I turned out the skirt for my Pinkie Pie cosplay in what, an afternoon? I need to get this one done too. Besides. It’s coffee themed. How can I not finish it?
I think needlework projects, especially those of the counted cross-stitch variety, are the ones that end up victims of startitis the most. I’ve got, what, four or five projects here, in various stages of completion, and one of which that’s been hanging around since 2007. They just look so pretty in their packages, and I think “oh I can get this one done while I watch TV”, and it never happens…
And I have one project that doesn’t even involve sewing or embroidering or anything – and that’s not done yet, either! This one hasn’t even been started! I may work on this one this weekend, though. Because the world needs more no-sew blankets. Especially with Rainbow Dash and Applejack on them. You know it. 😀
I end up starting way more projects than I finish – if this post were about the projects I’ve actually finished, this would be a much shorter story. In the past year, I think I’ve finished… let’s see here.
Well, at least that’s something, but it nowhere near equals the amount of projects I actually STARTED last year. My friends keep bringing things I’ve finished to my attention that I’ve forgotten here – everything added in green is something I made and I forgot to add. Which means maybe my case of startitis isn’t as bad as I thought it was? Anyway… when I get bored and whiny about not having any craft projects to do, I’m just going to look at my startitis pile and work from there, instead of getting anything new, no matter how tempting it is…