Pastel alphabet bead bracelets

Hello! The other day I was going through my beading stash and I found some glittery heart and star beads and some alphabet beads in a little kit which I am 90% sure I've had since I was a child. I didn't actually have enough alphabet beads to make many words or phrases, but I made one bracelet, decided I needed to make more, and went out and brought more alphabet beads. What I've learnt: there are never enough "e"s.

 

Nonetheless, I made quite a few little bracelets and I'm quite pleased with how they turned out.

 

In my stash I also found some cute plastic heart beads with small shiny gems in them, faux pearls, and some random coloured plastic beads. I used stretch elastic for threading the beads onto, and found it a complete and utter pain to work with. There was one bracelet in particular that broke four times! I've found the best way to preserve your bracelets, and your sanity, is to do two double knots, and then coat the knots in glue; I used E6000 and found it worked well. The other tip is to roll your bracelets on, rather than stretch them out too much.

 

I made five bracelets in what I think of as the pastel colourway, and then decided to try out some black alphabet beads and make some Halloween jewellery ^___^

 

When making these, I found that cutting the elastic to ten inches, and then beading to cover six inches was a good way to get enough bracelet to go around my wrist and enough ends to make tying the knots not totally painful. If you have more dexterous fingers than me though, you may be able to get away with shorter ends.

 

Lastly, I mixed together the black and pastel beads to make myself a "muggleborn" bracelet. I don't know if I have a favourite out of these bracelets ... but this one is definitely up near the top!

 

Although I love making quick projects like these, I've found lately that I haven't been making many big projects. I think this is partially because I've been trying to post a new project every week, so I've decided to relax my posting schedule. I'll still be posting, but only when I've finished a project. Hopefully this will actually make for more interesting, involved projects, and more tutorials too! And, of course, if you feel like you're just not hearing enough from me, feel free to check out my Instagram ~___^

- Lisa xx 

Easy loom daisy flower crown

Hello! Today I had my first day back at uni - I can't believe this is my last semester ever!! I only had one class today, but it did go for three hours (gah!). It was totally fun though; I'm doing a cultural studies unit as my elective and for this class we get to spend the entire semester analysing fantasy and sci-fi texts! I'm so, so keen to get properly into it. I decided today to try and blend in with the cool kids on campus who are all wearing '90s fashion (it's everywhere now!) so I made this quick and easy daisy flower crown to wear ^___^

To make it, I wove five daisies using my largest round loom and some white and yellow wool. I have a Hana-Ami loom, which is really easy to use; making this headband took me one viewing of Coraline ~___^ If you click on "Hana-Ami", I've linked to a short video showing what it looks like and how it is used. However, I did my centres a little differently to the all videos I could find; the loom comes with an instruction sheet that shows you different ways to finish off the flowers. It's in Japanese, but there are pictures so you can get the general gist of things. Instead of using the darning needle to sew from the centre of the flower, I used it to tie knots in a circle around the centre. I knotted together four strands of wool with each knot and each knot contains one strand of wool from the previous knot. Hmm. I hope that makes sense. Perhaps I should make a video to show you what I mean, what do you think?

 

I wanted the centres of the daisies to be a solid colour, so after knotting the circle I used my darning needle to criss-cross the yarn through the centre of the flower. The darning needle I got with my loom has a huge eye on it, which makes threading it super easy, but it's not great for filling in the centres. I recommend changing to a smaller darning needle, if you have one handy.

The actual headband is just a length of crocheted chain stitch; I used a 4mm hook and green yarn. The chain stitched wool is about 70cm long, and I left the 15cm tails on each end to ensure I'd have enough yarn to tie my crown around my apparently massive head ~___^ To attach the flowers, I threaded the chain stitch through the massive darning needle and simply stitched through the back of each flower. You can move the daisies around on the chain to ensure they are positioned well, but they don't move about on their own.

This would also make a really cute daisy bunting, and using the smaller looms produces flowers small enough to be worn as jewellery. Daisy chain necklace, anyone?

Since I'm back at uni now, I'll have less time to craft and blog (boo!); but you can always find me on Instagram and Twitter if you want to catch up! ^___^

- Lisa xx

Glittery pastel bone and skull hair clips

Hello! How are you doing? Today is my second offical day of Study Break and I have certainly not done any studying ~___^ Instead, I've been working on finishing off some projects from the huge box of WIPs. So, so many abandoned projects; it's sad really. And also I've started some new projects because I am not the kind of person that will ever have all of her crafts actually finished.

  

This is one such project; I decided the other day that I wanted a hair clip shaped like a bone. I have no idea why, I just suddenly really wanted one. So I sat down with some sculpey and made some bones. And then I made some skulls. And then I burnt them (oops!) so I had to paint them.

 

 

I originally spray-painted them white, but then I decided that they should be pastel. And glittery. Because, why not, right? ~___^

I use Scott's Warhammer paints to paint my sculpey but of course those paints only come in dark, army-type colours; no pretty pinks in sight! So I mixed a drop of each of the acrylic colours in with some of the Bone White Warhammer paint  to create my pastels. It worked really well! I think because I used only a tiny bit of acrylic the paint still adherred really well to the sculpey. After I'd painted the bones, I gave them a thin coating of glittery Mod Podge; I absolutely love the subtle sparkle it gives the bones ^___^

 

I was going to attach alligator clips to the back of these, but then I found some great pins in the milinary section of Spotlight. They look just like bobby pins except they have a metal circle on the end of them which made them really easy to glue to the back of the bones. I wish I had found them before I made the bones though, because, as you can see, they are a teeny bit long and stick out from behind the bones.

 

I really like how these clips turned out but they are a little tricky to photograph; I took a whole set of photos yesterday but they turned out too blurry (for the close-ups) and limited in detail (for the in-action ones). So I took some new ones today but you can see from the photos with me in them that I'm still having some trouble with the latter problem; I wondered maybe if because they were so pale they were reflecting the sun too much? I don't really know. I included a couple of the in-action photos anyway, so you could get an idea of how big they are. You'll just have to imagine that you can see a bit more detail then the photo actually provides ~___^

I wore them into the city today as Scott and I checked out the new Codex release at the Warhammer store; but I didn't tell the people there that I've been using paints for non-army related purposes. That'll be our little secret, ok? ~___^

- Lisa xx

Crochet eyeball beret with pattern

Hello! A while ago I saw a beret that looked like an eyeball and, as with so many things, I thought: "I could make that!". And, finally, I have actually done so! ^___^

My version is crocheted, because the only thing more impractical to wear during an Australian heatwave than a big floppy beret is one that is woolen. Yes, I am a highly practical person ~___^

This is what it looks like on; as you can see I have added some pleats in the back in order to make it extra slouchy and comfy. I think it worked! ^___^ (Also, thanks goes to Rebecca for taking this photo of the back of my head, as that is a rather difficult thing to accomplish by oneself.)

And here it is from the front! I like to wear my hats rather low on my head to cover up where my fringe part begins. Especially at the moment as I desperately need to touch up my roots - eek! ~___^

Would you like to make your own? Here's how!

You'll need four colours of yarn. I used charcol grey for the pupil, green for the iris, white for the sclera, and pastel pink for the veins and the rest of the hat.

 

 

I wanted the veins to be very subtle, so I chose a colour with a very similar tone to the white yarn; maybe too similar! The veins are tricky to see unless you are looking carefully. I also used a 3.75mm crochet hook (size F-5 for the Americans ^___^), scissors, and a thick tapestry needle.

To make this hat, you are basically making two shapes; the circle and the ring. Both are pretty easy to make and you could probably do it without a pattern. But, I wrote down what I did anyway so if you like you can follow that ^___^ Just please keep in mind that this pattern hasn't been tested! You will probably find a mistake (or ten!); if you do, please let me know and I will fix up the pattern! ^___^

Circle:

Row 1: Using your grey yarn, chain 6. Join with a slip stitch. 

Row 2: Crochet 12 trebles into the ring, join with a slip stitch. 

Row 3: Crochet two trebles into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch. 

Row 4: Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next stitch; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 5 - 6: Repeat row four.

Row 7: Change to green yarn; treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

Row 8: Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next four stitches; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 9: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

Row 10: Repeat row nine.

Row 11: Change to white yarn. Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next four stitches; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 12: Repeat row eleven.

Row 13: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

Row 14: Repeat row thirteen.

Row 15: Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next four stitches; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 16 - 17: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

My circle was 28cm in diameter.

 

 Ring:

Row 1: Using your pink yarn, chain 118 and join with a slip stitch. Make sure you don't twist the chain while you join in.

Row 2: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

Row 3: Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next four stitches; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 4: Repeat row three.

Row 5: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

Row 6: Repeat row five.

Row 7: Treble twice into one stitch, then once in the next four stitches; repeat this pattern all the way around and then join with a slip stitch.

Row 8 - 11: Treble once into each stitch around, join with a slip stitch.

The inner diameter of the ring that I made was 17cm, after pleating.

 

Then pin the ring to the circle, right sides in, adding four pleats to the bottom of the ring. Using slip stitch, crochet all the way around the pinned edge, joining the two pieces together.

  

Use surface crochet to add the veins to the sclera and then, after weaving in all the ends (groan!), it's finished! ^___^

My head circumference is 55cm, but the hat does have a bit of stretch in it so it'll probably still fit if your head is a little bigger than that. Also, please keep in mind that I crochet very tightly. If you crochet with less tension, your hat will end up bigger and you probably won't need to do as many rows.

 

Anyway, I hope you like it! If you make one for yourself I'd love to see it, and if you can advise me what one should wear with a pastel eyeball hat, I'd love to hear your outfit ideas!  I'm thinking a white lace dress with pale blue stockings ... but that'll have to wait until winter!
^___^

- Lisa xx