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!

Vintage-Style Leather Cuff

Over the past few days I've brought you leather cuffs of several different styles. Leather & chain, painted leather, and even leather using spacer bars as decoration.

This is the final post of the set (for now) and can once again make use of upcycled materials!

If you've got an old brooch knocking about that you never wear, this is the craft for using it!

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.

Letterzines Inspiration

When I shared 6 Ways to Repurpose Old Christmas Cards, one of the methods I mentioned was Letterzines.

If you like writing letters but want to get more creative with what you send, this post is for you!

A letterzine is a cross between a letter and a magazine. Along with the usual hellos and how-are-yous found in a letter, a letterzine is filled with images and information, hand-decorated and tailored to each individual recipient! This is a fun way to reuse or repurpose wrapping paper, magazines, or any other paper-based imagery.

This post is intended to give some inspiration for what you could include in yours.

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...

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

Refashioned Dress #2

Remember the far-too-costumey dress that I introduced as my 'next project'?

I finished it at the weekend. This is what it looks like now:

 And here's how I did it...

Paper Sticks of Rock, or Beach-Themed Party Favours

Recently I made a beach-themed window display for a charity shop. No British seaside resort is complete without sticks of rock, so I made these fake ones out of paper!

These would also make cute party favours if filled with little sweets, or an addition to beach-themed décor.

Read on for how to put them together (it really is as simple as you think)

Vintage Measuring Tape Belt

Though I’ve been massively sidetracked by Doing A Thing, today I sat down and made this belt from a vintage measuring tape.

This is a project that’s been in my To Do pile for a long time, which is ridiculous considering how easy it was.

Read on for a how to. This project is simple and doesn’t take all that long: fifteen minutes at the most.

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!

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!

Studded Tassel Necklace

After digging out a bag of square studs for the easy stud necklace I posted previously, I was itching to do something else with some of the studs I had left!

I ended up making this short necklace, inspired by some Japanese street fashion photos. A lot of the stylish and adorable people snapped were wearing necklaces that looked like all kinds of non-necklace things: curtain ties, upholstery tassel, even doll parts!

Remembering the tassel braid left over from when I recovered my bedroom stool, I pulled this necklace together over the space of a few minutes!

The construction is very easy and requires a few basic stitches and a few basic jewellery-making techniques. Anyone can do it!

Bottle Necklace

Whilst browsing the internet recently, I found some cute bottle necklaces! I have a few little glass bottles that I’ve kept since childhood, so decided to turn them into necklaces!

It doesn’t take much to make a simple necklace, just wire, chain and basic jewellery findings. After making the first, I made more and took pictures so I could share this tutorial!

Recycled Magazine Garland

At the charity shop where I volunteer, we were recently discussing a Christmas-themed window display. The manager, Ann, wanted a red and white Scandinavian-inspired theme! I decided to make this red and white garland from old magazines to put in the display.

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.

Circuit Board & USB 'Dog Tag' Necklace

What do you do with a broken computer mouse? Or anything else that plugs into the computer, for that matter?

Throw it away? Toss it into a cupboard and forget about it?

Hold your horses!

Don’t just toss it, cannibalise it!

Unscrew screws, cut wires, take stuff out that you can use (and drop off any leftover metals at your nearest recycling point!). Just be careful if you’re playing with anything that might hold an electrical charge, and watch for sharp edges.

Amongst a heap of broken computer stuff I was given for crafting with, was a broken card reader (I think that’s what it was anyway!) Basically a bit of plastic with a bit of circuit board inside, attached to a USB plug.

I wanted to make something with a more masculine edge to share with you here, so this is what I came up with:

My inspiration was dog tags. The circuit board especially reminded me of a tag.

As I happened to have a necklace with multiple strands of ball chain, I took a strand off to use for this craft :)

Of course I have a tutorial for you too. So if you’re looking for a little inspiration or what to know how to make one of these USB and circuit board necklaces.

Giant Curtain Tassel

Happy New Year everyone! I've been a bit MIA over the past few weeks, but I'm back now!

One of the crafts I wanted to do for the Pinterest Challenge was make a big tasselled curtain tieback, inspired by the giant tassels I saw on The Autocrat!

Back then I didn’t have the time or materials to make one.

Until now:

Pin It

And here’s the awesome tassel that I pinned:

Source: theautocrathaley.blogspot.com via Kei on Pinterest

Isn’t it fantastic?! I love the creativity in this; all the extra touches like the beads and luxurious mix of patterns and colours really make it special!

As for me, I had to work with what I had lying around...

It took me a while to work out how I was going to make mine. Hayley at The Autocrat wrote that the giant tassels had a water bottle in the centre, but also linked to a Hobby Lobby how-to.

I looked at Hobby Lobby’s instructions and decided their way wasn’t entirely for me (I didn’t have half of what they said I needed) so I went the water bottle route, too, and muddled along until I got the result I was after!

Basically, I used the top part of a 500ml water bottle:

To make an inner row on the tassel, I cut out the middle of the bottle and made a slit up the middle.

I then stapled it at a slight angle before hot gluing on the strips of ribbon.

After that I hot glued this inside piece to the inside of the first section of bottle.

Note: Plastic bottles don’t like hot glue! I did have some trouble with warping when I glue things together!

The rest of the bottle was made mainly in the way Hobby Lobby explained, but with the plastic bottle instead of the polystyrene ball.

For a final touch, I decided to put more lengths of fabric in the centre. I cut some length of purple cord and tied them to a large D ring.

I then popped the tassels and D ring through the centre of the tassel, from the top, and looped some cord through.

Instead of using a tassel topper I used a metal thing that I found in a box of junk. I threaded the cord through the centre top to bottom and then again bottom to top, to make two loops on the top of the tassel. I tied the ends around the D ring underneath before gluing the metal part down.

My curtain has needed a tie back for 9-10 years. Oops?!

I only made one tassel (rather than a pair) since the curtain on the opposite side of the room goes behind a shelf when I draw it back!

This tassel cost me nothing—everything I used was to hand. The plastic bottle was waiting to be recycled, the ribbons came from my Nanny, the purple cord used to be a skirt and everything else was either left over from old projects or lying around the house! Hurrah for free stuff!


Linking up at the parties in the sidebar!

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!

Pin It

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!