Lightsaber candle holders

Hello! May the Force be with you! I try to make a Star Wars craft for every International Star Wars Day and this year I made lightsaber candle holders! ^___^

I actually started making these for *last year's* ISWD, but I didn't finish them on time! This year, although I finished them, they are kind of a fail craft so I haven't done a full tutorial.
 

Basically I started off with the coloured candles; they were surprisingly hard to find! I ended up with these mini candles, but they came in lots of different colours! It was hard to limit myself to only buying four packets ~___^
 

I used Sculpey to make the actual holders; I basically made a thick but short sausage and then inserted a skewer and rolling it around on the inside of the clay until it was hollow. Then I added all the little lightsaber details and baked them according to package instructions.
 

After painting and glazing, I inserted the candles but I must have made the holders slightly too snug because three out of four of my holders cracked!  *insert sad trombone noise here*

The only good thing I can say about that is at least they cracked on the backs?

So, that's my fail craft confession! Looks like Master Yoda was wrong - sometimes all you can do is try! ~___^
 

I think all I would need to do to make this project work is to make the holders slightly bigger before baking them, but since it's taken over a year to get them to this stage, that might take some time!

I hope you all have a marvelous International Star Wars Day, and you can check out some successful Star Wars projects through the links below! ^___^

BB-8 amigurumi

Sarlacc cake

 

Darth Vader coffee cup cosy

 

Leia and Han watercolour quote art

 

 

Wicket the Ewok crochet cushion

Princess Leia hoop trio

Bless this Mess Death Star cross stitch (with free pattern!)

Princess Leia crochet and spool knitted bun hat

 

Star Wars finger puppets (with free patterns!)

 

Lightsaber perler bead brooch

 

Leia and Han card

 Han shot first cross stitch

 Perler bead Stormtroopers

AT-AT string art

- Lisa xx 

Felt and clay cacti

Hello! I have mostly been working on granny squares lately (in light grey, dark grey, and black; Death Stars do not have the most inspiring colour scheme!) but I did finally take some photos of the cacti that I made at the last crafternoon my friends and I had. Huzzah!

 We used a tutorial from A Beautiful Mess for the felt cacti and a tutorial from Darby Smart for the clay.

Both tutorials were very simple to follow, although unfortunately A Beautiful Mess didn't include any patterns for their cacti. We drew our own, but patterns would have been nice to have!

Gemma, Catherine, Miriam, and I made clay cacti as well as felt but we all ended up taking our projects home to finish them! I gave mine two coats of Americana Multi-Surface Satin paint (which I am quite impressed with so far!) and then added the spikes by dipping a rectangular brush in white paint and gently pressing it to the surface of the cacti.

 

We did managed to finish quite a lovely contingent of felt cacti on the day, and Gemma, Boulder, and Miriam also sent me some pictures of their finished projects ^___^

Gemma ended up making not one, not two, but three pots of cacti! I love the purple flower on her little round clay cactus ^___^

 

Boulder (yes, I know her from Roller Derby, why do you ask? ~___^) went seriously hardcore and made a little companion to go with her tall cactus that has so. many. leaves. Look at them all! It looks so amazing though, so her hard work was obviously worth it.

And Miriam made these gorgeous little cacti gardens with pretty button flowers and lots of springy grass. I love how she made her tall cacti with different colours of felt; it gives such a cool effect!

I'm hoping to finish the Death Star blanket soon (#eternaloptimist), but my pals and I will be crafternooning again next week so I'll show you that results from that sooner! 

- Lisa xx

Three Addams Family crafts

Hello! Do you like the Addams Family? I really hope you said yes, because today I've got three easy and quick crafts inspired by our favourite creepy family to show you! I didn't watch heaps of TV or movies growing up, but the Addams Family is one that definitely sticks out in my mind; I wanted to be a cross between Morticia and Wednesday when I grew up, and spent a good portion of my teenage years dressing entirely in black to achieve such a look ~___^

This first project is one that I have been meaning to do for ages! I don't know why I put it off for so long as it wasn't difficult to do and I really love how it turned out ^___^ I prefer having black pillowcases since otherwise they do tend to end up stained by my hair dye, but if you wanted to make your own you could really use any colour. I do feel like black is apropos though!

To make them, I ironed the pillowcases to get most of the wrinkles out and wrote out "mon cher" and "cara mia" onto them with white chalk.

Then I used a paintbrush to go over the letters with white fabric paint. I did about three layers of paint to try and get the lines a relatively even weight; they're still not perfect but the extra layers also helped the white letters pop more against the black fabric.

I left them to dry overnight and then gave them a quick iron, with a cloth over the letters to protect my iron. Depending on what type of fabric paint you use, you may not need to iron your project but it makes me feel a bit more confident that it will survive the wash!

I think these would be perfect for a housewarming gift for a couple, or maybe even a wedding present! Depends how kooky they are, I guess ~___^

Next up is the craft that inspired this whole post: a Morticia quote canvas. This is seriously the easiest craft ever!

I was feeling a bit uninspired one day so I was digging around in my craft room and came out with a blank square canvas and some black glittery letter stickers. I decided that there really isn't any other colour best suited to black than more black, so I painted the canvas with a mixture of black paint and glitter mod-podge. I slopped it on nice and thick to give it some texture and then when it had dried, I just glued on the letter stickers.

I know gluing stickers may seem a bit strange, but they're made for attaching to paper and so weren't sticking as well as I wanted them to. I've put this canvas in our lounge room, and when the sun hits it it really does sparkle! Which is great because, after all, black *is* such a happy colour! ^___^

My last project was going to be something different to this family motto necklace, but I had a total craft fail and couldn't rescue it in time! I'm sure it's still salvageable, but it's going to take a bit longer than I had hoped.

So, instead, I got out the sculpey and whipped up this necklace. I used the same technique as the derby name necklace I made for Electra Fire, but made it bigger as the Addams' Family have got quite a long creed! In case you can't read it, the motto is "Sic Gorgiamus Allos Subjectatos Nunc" or, "We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us".

I made the pendant from black clay, stamped it with my tiny alphabet stamps, added holes with a thick needle, and baked it for 20 minutes at about 150oC. I wanted a tarnished metal look, so when the pendant was done baking, I covered it with silver acrylic paint and, while it was still damp, rubbed at it with a tissue to show some of the blackness underneath.

I used a fine felt tip pen to add some black in the indentations of the words and then I added the chain by threading jump rings through the holes. And that's it! A pretty necklace, but not just pretty words ~___^

Until next time, do do do do *snap snap*

- Lisa xx

Derby Name necklace

Hello! My roller derby league (WARD, for those of you following along at home!) recently had this year's grand final - and it was totally awesome! Watching the bouting skaters do their thing is always incredible and inspiring, but it was also fantastic because I got to hang out with my derby friends and celebrate fellow freshie Electra Fire's birthday - huzzah!

I wanted to make her a little gift so I pulled out some sculpey, mini alphabet stamps, and gold paint and whipped up a little name plate necklace ^___^

You could use any colour sculpey to make this necklace, but I decided on black. After conditioning the clay, I rolled it out using a small glass bottle as a rolling pin and then used my scalpel to cut it into shape. I used a pin to add the holes at the top and stamped on Electra's name with my mini stamps.

 

I baked the sculpey for about 15 minutes and then let it cool. Then I put a small amount of gold paint onto my finger and rubbed it across the clay. I used a tissue to rub off the excess, leaving only the gold paint in the letter indents.

 

To finish it off I threaded some large jump-rings through the name plate, and then strung it all onto a gold chain.

 

Electra liked her necklace - which was a huge relief to me! It was really simple to make, but I like the impact of the simplistic design. I think I will make one for myself as well - but I haven't yet decided if I want red clay and gold paint or pink clay and silver paint ^____^

I'm still working on my larger version of the pink and blue heart hat, but for some reason I just can't get the ribbing to work this time! It's so frustrating because I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I think I will have to wait until I can get some clever knitter friends to check it out. So next week's post will be a surprise for both of us! ^___^

- Lisa xx