Roller skate baby booties

Hello! I'm a big believer in the idea that mini things are just somehow cuter than regular sized things. I don't know why, but they just are. These baby booties that I made prove this rule; they are SO TINY and SO ADORABLE. I can barely even stand it.

I made these for my friend Toni, who is also my Skate Fit instructor. Skate Fit is pretty awesome; it's kind of like a circuit class mixed with a skills lesson and is super helpful if you want to improve your skating and fitness and bit quicker than just going to social skates (which I also love, by the way!). This week was our last Skate Fit class for a while though because, as you may have guessed, Toni is having a baby! Toni is an artistic skater by trade, so she wears those sweet high topped white skate boots that derby freshies like me lust after. When I found this pattern I knew it would be perfect, since the booties look really similar to Toni's skates!

 

I used a pattern by Andrea Collins to make these and they turned out perfectly; I'm very pleased with them and would definitely recommend the pattern. The only thing that I would have liked was a guideline for size customisation. As I mentioned, these are tiny; probably really only good for newborns (I'm not positive as I don't know many babies, but they are only about 7cm long so pretty small!) and I would have liked to have the option to make them a little bigger (cough *to fit me* cough).

The pattern recommends black yarn for the trucks/ sole but I went with grey because Toni's trucks are silver. It also suggests hot pink for the trim and laces, but I had this gorgeous mint green yarn which I desperately wanted to use for something; plus, it's pastel, so perfect for babies, right? I kept the boots white, but I did the wheels in the same mint green instead of grey because I thought it would be cuter. Toni's wheels are actually transparent with glitter, but I didn't think I'd be able to recreate that, unfortunately!

The wheels are sewn onto the sole which meant, for me at least, that in the inside of the boot some of the stitching was visible. To fix this, I crocheted a little insole for each skate, just by doing the first three rounds of the sole pattern. I also added a little non-toxic glue to the tops of the stitches inside the boot to hopefully prevent them from fraying or coming loose. Loose wheels are never a good thing!

 

The pom-poms on the ends of the laces are possibly one of my favourite things about this pattern. They're so tiny and cute! The smallest size of my pom-pom maker was way too big for this project, so I made these tiny pom-poms using a fork! 

I used 100% acrylic in DK weight for all of yarns in this project, and a 4mm hook. Baby wool would probably be a good option for it too, but I didn't want to use any of my wool yarn as I thought it could be too itchy. I personally can't stand the feel of wool on my skin, so I avoid it unless it's super super soft.

 

The wheels were the worst part of this project. Basically you have to crochet tiny spheres, which really hurt my poor fingers! If I was doing this again, I might resort to needle-felting them! They do look good though, so I'm pleased I stuck with it.

I gave these to Toni today at our (last *crying*) Skate Fit session and she really liked them! I hope that her little one will get some use out of them ... until they're ready for proper skates anyway! ~___^

I'm mostly definitely sold on baby booties as a gift now though, as I did these in only a couple of hours over two days; gotta love a nice quick project!

- Lisa xx

Imperial Eagle Cross-Stitch on a Crochet Dice Bag

Hello! If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably heard about the elusive creature that I call my husband, aka Scott. Scott is very, very patient with me as I constantly promise him things and then take ages to actually make them so his presents are quite often late. But, a strange thing has happened! I promised Scott a dice bag for his birthday this year and it's finished ... two months in advance! I think this means I better make him something else to give him on the actual day, what do you think?

I used this pattern by Geek's Dream Girl to crochet this bag, but made a few changes so that it could accommodate Scott's largish dice collection, which he uses (along with *a lot* of tiny, hand-painted army figurines) when he plays Warhammer 40K. The pattern suggested doing five rounds to make the base of the bag, but I did eleven. I did 21 rounds to make up the majority of the bag, and then seven rounds to make the bit that ruffles when you close the drawstring.

I used a DK weight wool to crochet the bag, and a thinner acrylic yarn to be the drawstring. For the drawstring, I just threaded two lengths of yarn through the trebled section of the bag (that will make more sense if you take a look at the pattern!), knotted the ends, and added a toggle.

One of the other advantages of making the dice bag bigger was that I had room to test out a technique I'd been keen about giving a go; cross-stitch over crochet!

I made a pattern for a very simplified version of the Imperial Eagle (which you can grab from my Google Drive here if you'd like to!) and cross-stitched it onto the bag, using the lines of the crochet as a guideline. It's certainly not as easy as cross-stitching onto Aida cloth, but I'm pretty happy with the result! 

Here's a kind of action shot, with Scott's Space Marine Centurion and Chaos Space Marine Maulerfiend looking on. Open ...

... and closed!

I'm currently working on some ~secret things~, which I absolutely can not wait to share with you, as well as a couple of gifts ... I think I better whip up something for myself too so I have something to show you next week! ^___^ What I'd really like right now is a bathtub to soak my skating-induced aches in, but I think that's a little beyond my abilities ~____^

- Lisa xx

Polymer clay foods

Hello! It seems that Autumn has arrived today in my city! I woke up this morning to find cloudy grey skies and plenty of rain! I'm sure I'll grow tired of it soon, but right now it's a lovely novelty ^___^ One thing I love about cooler weather is that is really makes me want to crochet and knit! I've got a few projects on my list that will be perfect for rainy days, but lately I've been messing around with polymer clay. 

I made these peas in a pod, which has been done many, many times before by other people ... but look at those little faces! Eeep, they're so cute! I only had one colour of green clay, so I mixed some green and white together to make the lighter colour for the peas. The peas are made simply by rolling clay into three balls of the same size (or, well, same-ish size). For the pod I made a rectangle and wrapped it around the peas. I pinched the ends together and cut off the excess, and then smoothed everything on the back down. You have to do this carefully, because otherwise you might squash your peas! Once it was baked, I painted on the faces with black paint and a very tiny brush. I have made this one into a brooch ^___^

 

I added brooch backings to these two pieces of fairy bread as well, but I'm planning on wearing them as collar clips ^___^ I don't know if people in other countries eat fairy bread so, for the uninitiated, fairy bread is buttered white bread covered in sprinkles. It's a staple at children's parties, and good for invoking nostalgia in older Australians ~___^ To make these, I made a square with beige clay and then sliced it in half to make triangles. After it was baked, I used brown paint dabbed along the outside edges to make the crust. The butter is cream coloured puffy paint, and the sprinkles are from thin clay "snakes" that I baked and then sliced with a razor. If you sprinkle on the, uh, ... sprinkles while the paint is still wet, they will stick in place ^___^

 

Pancakes!! I am so in love with these pancakes. I made them by making three disks of beige clay, all about the same size. Rebecca made me a little nub of butter by making a little square of yellow clay. I baked the pancakes and butter separately and then glued them together with a mixture of dimensional magic and brown paint. I glued this onto a ring base so now I have a pancake ring just like Annika! It's kinda an enormous ring, but I love it ^___^

 

I also made these two toasts and a jammy dodger, but I'm not sure what I will make them into yet. I dabbed them with brown paint, the same as the fairy bread, to make crusts and give them a just baked look. The jam on the toasts and inside the biscuit is acrylic paint. The jammy dodger was baked in two pieces and then glued together with the paint.

And lastly, I made this zombie brain! It glows in the dark, which I think is pretty cool, but it still needs a little something-something. Time for some experimenting! (insert mad scientist laugh here)

I'll see you next week, hopefully with some crochet! ^___^

- Lisa xx

All hail the Glow Cloud

Recently I was digging around for a gift bag behind the couch (... isn't that where everyone keeps their massive stash of gift bags?) and I found a big paper IKEA lantern. I have a vague memory of buying this once, intending to try to make it into a Death Star, which obviously never came to fruition. Instead, I decided to make a glow cloud, using this tutorial by 3 Chic Geeks.

Their tutorial is very easy to follow, basically you are just sticking toy stuffing to a paper lantern using a hot glue gun. I found that doing this on a chair, with me varying between sitting and standing, made reaching all sections of the lantern easier and also meant that less hair was sticking to the toy stuffing (poor Scott; living with me is basically like living with a giant, constantly shedding cat). I also found that ripping the stuffing into handfuls beforehand made gluing much more efficient.

We hung it in the corner, above the bookshelf where a paper swallow mobile had been basically since I moved in (one of my first ever home decor projects ... ahhh, memories!) using command hooks. Here's a hint: don't use command hooks. Your glow cloud will fall down. One of the things on my to-do list is now to go to the hardware store and get a proper hook.

 During the day it looks like an innocent fluffy cloud, but then at night ...

 

 ALL HAIL. These photos are pretty bad, mostly because I am still using my phone as a camera for literally everything. But, you do get a sense of it's constantly mutating hue nonetheless, right? To light up the glow cloud, I used a "colour changing light mood lamp ball sphere" that I brought from ebay, because the hardware store/ craft store people looked at me very strangely when I described what I wanted. If you don't live in Australia, you might have more luck with finding this in a store. I sometimes have dreams about visiting America and just going to craft stores ~____^ Anyway, the most important thing is to buy a lamp that won't heat up, because you definitely don't want to set your glow cloud aflame!

I also brought an LED torch from the hardware store, which is meant for work site safety. It is *very bright* - it even comes with a warning not to look at the light directly. It makes for a much brighter glow cloud, but it can only be yellow and red, and the red is a scary flashing warning light which makes the glow cloud seem very angry. While the colour changing light is not as bright, it is brighter than the pictures above would lead you to believe, and it's actually very relaxing to watch. I am still considering hanging some plastic animals from the bottom of the glow cloud, but I don't know if that would be a little too much. What do you think? 

In other news, I am now in week two of roller derby training. I have muscles that I did not know existed! My t-stops are dreadful, but I can plough stop pretty well, and last night I did 19 laps in 5 minutes which I thought was pretty good. I think we're going to time laps again tonight, so hopefully I can overcome the thigh pain to maybe reach twenty!

- Lisa xx

What's new, pussycat? Kitty necklace from a beaded bracelet

Hello! I think I have finally gotten back to mostly good health, just in time for my first week of roller derby skills training tomorrow! I am so excited, and also quite nervous. I don't know about you, but for me crafting is a fantastic form of stress release and so, despite my illness, I have managed to start a few projects this last week. Of course, starting a project doesn't necessarily mean finishing it (my WIP crate can attest to this!), but there are exceptions ~___^

I brought the bracelet below while I was in Singapore, but soon realised that it was too big and too heavy for me to really want to wear around my tiny baby wrists. I didn't want those adorable kitty beads to languish in my jewellery box forever though, so I cut the elastic cord of the bracelet and reconstructed it into a necklace ^___^

 

I like it much better this way! I wanted to let the cat beads take center stage on the necklace, so I didn't complicate it overly.

 

I threaded one crystal bead onto a headpin, added one cat bead, and then trimmed the wire and twisted it into a loop which I then attached directly onto the necklace chain. You could use jump rings for this, but I felt having two jump rings between each headpin and the chain looked a little too busy. After attaching all the cat beads, I just added a lobster clasp with jump rings to attach the ends of the chain.

 

There are eight cat beads on the necklace, which is a deviation from my usual preference for odd numbers, but eight is a lucky number so I figured I would do well to keep all the cats together ~___^

 

One other thing that happened recently was that Frankie Magazine shared a photo of my knitted pineapple tea cosy that I made for the Giant Pineapple KAL! My pageviews went through the roof, so welcome if you've found this little corner of the interwebs via Frankie! If I'd known I was about to have so many visitors I may have tidied up a little bit ~___^

I'm picking up my sewing machine from the repair shop tomorrow and I can't wait to finally make some headway on my alterations pile! Shortened straps and taken-in waistbands aren't all that interesting to other people though, probably, so I'll simply have to make some new things as well. What a shame ~___^

- Lisa xx