Repurposed Wood Bug Hotel

For some time now, I've wanted to make a bug hotel. But I could never quite get my hands on the right materials. Though I could have quite easily gone out and bought wood to make one (or bought a ready made one), I wanted to go the upcycled route and use something that had outlived its original purpose.

So this rather worn-out little wooden sleeve ironing board, which I found at the charity shop, was perfect!

Painted Leather Cuffs (Plus a Paint-Free Bonus DIY!)

Yesterday, I posted a tutorial for a leather & chain cuff, and said I'd post more ideas.

Today I'm bringing you painted leather cuffs, in two styles--plus a bonus, paint-free style, for those who don't trust themselves with a paintbrush!

These can look a little daintier, and you can go wild with colour combinations--your only limit is the colours of leather/paint you can get your hands on!

As I mentioned yesterday, this is a good upcycling project for bags/garments no longer usable, and you can use faux leather too.

Leather & Chain Cuff DIY

I started making leather and suede cuffs when I was a kid. Mum bought some suede scraps and some eyelets, and showed me an old choker one of her old work colleagues had made. Then we made our own!

This is an updated version of our DIYs. I made it back in April along with some others, after finding some leather scraps at a local market (and then I forgot to post about them...oops!)

Leather cuffs - or suede ones! - would make a great upcycling project if you have an old and knackered leather/suede handbag or garment that's outlived its original use.
Of course, you can also use faux leather for this!

These are relatively simple to make. In fact, this one is the most complicated of the bunch I ended up making. Which isn't really that complicated at all.

Here comes the tutorial!

DIY Striped Shoes

Summer is coming, and you're probably breaking out the spring/summer footwear, which is what I did recently--only to discover that all my lovely canvas shoes were totally beaten up and in need of replacement!

The frustrating part of shoe shopping for me has always been finding shoes that were a) Nice b) In my size (UK8.5-9) c) Affordable. Having big feet severely limits what I can get my hands on, and so far I have bought...men's shoes.

Men's shoes are boring.

So I jazzed up my navy canvas slip-ons with some gold paint to give myself something a little more interesting!

This is an easy little DIY that I did sitting on the floor one evening.

6 Ways to Repurpose Old Christmas Cards

It's the New Year, and you're probably taking down Christmas decorations, and amassing a huge pile of Christmas cards to go into the recycling.
Maybe you're looking at some of the artwork reluctantly, thinking, "It seems such a waste to just throw these away..."

You're right. 
Which is why I've been beavering away to put together this post of 6 Ways to Repurpose Old Christmas Cards.
For the most part, these little crafts are easy--if you can cut and stick, you can do these!
Some of these will also help you save some time next Christmas.
Some are best done now, whilst some are worth leaving until closer to the festive season, when - provided you've dedicatd some time to chopping up old cards this January - you'll have all you need to crack on with some Christmas crafting (without having to fork out for expensive store-bought stuff).

So, starting with the most obvious...

Christmas Window Display

As I've mentioned here previously, I volunteer at a charity shop. One of the great perks of volunteering is that I get to flex my creative fingers in putting together window displays!
Being a charity, we don't have a huge budget to play with (or any budget, really) so it's a case of being super-inventive with reams of donated stuff and scrap card/paper/etc.

Get your skates on and grab that charity bargain before someone else does!

This year in particular, I've tried to make some displays that are more visually interesting! I've intended to post about some of them for a while, so will eventually share pictues of the summer and autumn-themed windows I created.
For now, here is our Victorian Christmas-themed display!

Upcycled Festive Heart Decorations

Yesterday I made these Scandinavian-inspired heart decorations for our Christmas tree. They're very simple to make, and almost completely upcycled!

The method is so easy it's guessable, so I didn't make a proper tutorial, but here's a quick run down.

I used:
Template (from junk mail)
Fabric (old pillowcase)
Filling (from knackered old pillow)
Embroidery thread (from charity shop)

Using the template, I cut out hearts and sewed them right sides together, leaving a gap for turning.

Then I turned them so the right side of the fabric was facing outwards, and stuffed them with filling.

After sewing up the gap, I threaded a darning needle with 5-6 inch lengths of embroidery thread and pushed it through the top of the hearts, tying the ends in a knot to make a loop.

Here they are on our tree! Also seen here are several homemade items I've posted about in the past:
Recycled Magazine Garland
Tin Can Tea Light Holders
Felt Doves and Peace, Hope & Joy Stars Decorations

DIY Spoon Decorations

As long-time readers will know, I volunteer in a charity shop and utterly love putting together window displays! The manager had decided for the Christmas window to be done this week, so I made these unique spoon decorations from some donated spoons, to go on our Christmas tree!

Thought I’d take pictures along the way, so I can share this DIY.

This is a DIY that will require the use of power tools. Such things are scary and I am clumsy lately, so I enlisted the help of my Dad :)

The Curtain Skirt: DIY

Do you keep a list of all the projects you’d like to do?

Something from my project-in-waiting list was this ‘curtain skirt’, made from what I think is a curtain fabric sample, found at a charity shop!

Pinning Inspiration #7

You're driftwood floating underwater
Breaking into pieces, pieces, pieces
Just driftwood hollow and of no use
Waterfalls will find you, bind you, grind you.

~ Travis, Driftwood

Contrary to Travis' poetic lyrics, we all know that driftwood has lots of uses, and creative ones at that!
So here is this week's Pinning Inspiration, on the very subject.

Source: anthropologie.com via Kei on Pinterest

Driftwood projects don't have to be very involved--they can be as simple as gluing or tying a few smaller pieces around a glass candle holder. (Isn't this one from Anthropologie gorgeous?)

Customising Clothes: Bottoms

Last week, I posted about customising clothes, focusing on tees and shirts. Here’s part two, which looks at skirts and trousers!

In some ways bottoms can be a little harder to customise, particularly trousers. There may be lots of seams, pockets, zips and goodness knows what else to work around, and if you’ve got a sewing machine like mine, sewing several layers of heavy fabric can be difficult if not impossible!

Plain work skirt gains playful feature

This skirt had already been customised by its previous owner, in that it had been made shorter, which saved me a job!

I injected some fun and colour into the style by sewing on some contrasting trim in a wavy pattern and adding buttons to the peaks and troughs of the wavy line.

Customising Clothes: Tops

In this bustling, throw-away society, it’s easy for clothes to become tired, boring, or (with fashion’s ever-brief dalliances with retro styles) frumpy.

It can also be pretty easy to bypass clothes because they aren’t quite right--perhaps that skirt has a great print but an ugly style, or that thrift-shop shirt has a stain on the cuff that looks rather permanent.

But there are so many easy ways to customise clothing that these uninspiring, damaged garments can easily be turned into something stylish and wearable, sometimes with only a few minutes work!

This post focuses on customising tops. Next week, I'll post about bottoms (not that kind, cheeky!)

Drab denim jacket into rockin’ waistcoat!

The makeover on this piece was incredibly simple. I hacked off the sleeves and then brought out my ancient BeDazzler and added a bunch of evenly-spaced gold studs from my stash!

Embellished Boots

These embellished boots are a project I started about two weeks ago, after seeing a post on A Matter of Style about Saint Laurent's 'homemade boots'. (Read the article on A Matter of Style here)

I customised a pair of boots that I bought from New Look last year. Everything I used here came from my stash, so these embellishments didn't cost anything to make...

Here's the picture I pinned from aforementioned blog:

Source: matterofstyle.blogspot.co.uk viaKei on Pinterest

My method was almost the same as suggested on A Matter of Style.

I wanted to make these embellishments removable, instead of gluing them on, as I have monster feet (UK 9, if you're wondering!) and find it hard to find great boots in my size.

I cut two pieces of faux leather to fit the front of the boots. and sewed four loops on the back of each piece (two for each boot strap):

I didn't think to take a picture of this before sewing everything on, so you get to see my stitching in all its glorious messiness!

Sewing on my selection of embellishments - buttons, charms, beads and chain - took an absolute age, which is why I only just finished this project. I have to admit that I procrastinated a lot on this!

Whilst sewing the first one I realised it's much easier to sew on the chain after everything else.
The more that goes onto these pieces, the easier it is for the thread to tangle around things and I found the chain caught in the thread a lot!

Even once I thought I was done, I kept finding little gaps that needed filling! I could easily fill a few more gaps and make these look even bulkier, by using tiny gold beads (like in my Buttons and Beads Bib Necklace Tutorial). However, I decided I'd sewn on more than enough!

This was a great DIY project for using up all the short scraps of chain I had left over from making jewellery! I also used some of the vintage buttons a family member gave me, beads from a few bracelets that I don't wear anymore and a selection of charms.

I'm really pleased with how these have turned out and can't wait to wear them!

Removable Shoulder Embellishments

Following my intention to do more stash-busting, rather than buying new things to craft with, I made these removable shoulder embellishments to add to my accessories collection.

This is actually a project I’ve been thinking about for ages, but it took me a while to gather together enough buttons!

Originally I was inspired by a picture on the cover of a record in a friend’s collection. I forgot about the project until I saw a little customisation feature in Company magazine (October ’12 edition - said feature involved embellishing the neckline of a t-shirt. It looked good!)

I’m pretty pleased with the outcome, which can be fixed onto the shoulders of just about any garment.

It’s really simple to make these, so here is a tutorial.

Tutorial: Pillowcase Shopping Bag

A while ago I posted about some cute retro pillowcases that I picked up from the charity shop. As usual, they lived in a drawer whilst I became distracted with jewellery!

This week, however, I made up my mind about what to do with one of the pillowcases.

So here is my upcycled, eco-friendly, repurposed, super-duper pillowcase shopping bag!

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This is probably the easiest thing I could have created, since it made use of the existing shape of the pillowcase. I lost track of how long it took to make the bag since I had to go and do other things a few times!

I think this is a great way of using old pillowcases and of course, using cloth shoppers is much better (and looks much cooler) than relying on plastic carrier bags!

Want to make your own? Here’s a tutorial:

You’ll need:

An old pillowcase

Trim (optional)

Dressmaking chalk/similar

Ruler

Sewing machine

1. Measuring from the bottom seam of the pillowcase, draw a line across at the desired height of your bag (mine was 17 inches). Then draw a second line 2 inches above the first.

2. Cut off at the upper line.

3. Turn the bag piece inside out and reinforce the stitching on the sides. Then bring the two corners together. Place a pin 1 inch from each corner, across the seam.

4. Sew across each corner where you pinned to give the bag a squared base.

5. Unpick the stitching at the top part of the pillow case (I didn’t need to do this as it was already coming undone!) then cut the top three inches off both sides. These will be the straps.

6. Fold over the sides of one of the pieces you just cut, ensuring the pre-hemmed side is on top. Pin and sew.

7. My stitching is a bit rubbish and the pillowcase had a small hole in it, so I used trim on the bag and straps to hide this! ;)

8. Fold over the top two inches of the bag and pin and then pin on the straps. Sew on with two rows of stitching.

9. To strengthen the straps, sew a rectangle where the strap and bag are joined, with an X in the centre.

10. Show off your bag to envious onlookers at your local shop ;)

Will be linking up  at the parties in the side bar!

For My Next Trick...

...I shall transform a tree into a piece of coral!

Over the course of clearing out our attic (a task still unfinished!) we had several ‘junk’ bags--filled with bits and pieces from play sets and toys long gone, broken toys, etc.

Being a total scavenger I rummaged through it all and hooked a whole bunch of items that had some potential!

One of those items was this:

As far as I know, it’s a Playmobil tree, from a set that belonged to my sister. The rest of the Playmobil was sent to a charity shop a long time ago; this was a leftover piece.

‘If this was white,’ I thought, ‘it would look like one of those awesome bits of faux coral I keep seeing all over the internet.’

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Off I went to Wilkinson to pick up some spray paint, brought it home and over the course of the day, gave the tree several layers of paint:

Whilst I would have preferred a matte finish, the white seemed too stark a colour, so I ended up buying cream spray paint instead.

The whole point of this exercise was to make a necklace, so the next step was to add a bail. The tree had a hole in the bottom that turned out to be the perfect size for a greek spring with a hook on the end.

I put some glue on the greek spring and pushed it into the hole. After that I wound some fine-gauge wire around the bottom of the tree (which would become to top of the necklace) and added a jump ring to the hook on the greek spring.

After sliding the pendant onto a piece of suede cord, I cut it to length...

...and added some cord ends and a clasp to finish off!

Et voila!

Linking up to all the fab link parties in the sidebar =D