Simple Gifts #2

Today's simple gift comes courtesy of a great new blog I've discovered, Crafting Rebellion.  This Purse Sized Notebook was so simple and inexpensive I couldn't wait to try it out! 

Crafting Rebellion has gifted us with a fantastic tutorial here.
Go there right away and try one out for yourself!  I have a feeling once you make one you will want to make many!  I've made two so far, one was made and gifted to a friend who was under the weather and not photographed, and here's a shot of my second attempt:

The beauty of this project is that you can make it as plain or as fancy as you like.  I didn't have a good coordinating color to ribbon wrap the ring, but i like the simplicity of it as is.

I always claim to not like the color orange, but I seem to find myself going with orange and other fall-ish colors this time of year.  Who could blame me when you see the wonders of autumn in Denver all around?

Go out and crunch some leaves under your feet, enjoy a little bit of autumn!

Simple Gifts #1

I've mentioned the huge family and wanting to make everyone a little something this year for the holidays, so I thought I'll take you guys along with me by providing links, guidelines and mini tutorials of inexpensive, quick and simple projects.

I spent a lot of time browsing around the craft blogs this week and came across this wonderful tutorial on Yarnista.  I was able to get out and about and made my way to the Not So Stinky Thrift and was lucky enough to find a styrofoam wreath, a steal at 99 cents.   Here's a quick in-progress shot:

I did a bit of searching for fabric flower patterns, but in the end settled on the felt flowers in the tutorial.  The finished result is so sweet on its own, I love the imperfection of them, as I hate to measure!   Here's one I did using pinking shears, the second shows one cutting the circle with a little bit of a scalloped edge.

 These flowers would be perfect for many projects, embellishing headbands, attached to a clip or pin for a sweet little barrette, or even grouped together for a nice brooch.

I was fussy about placement of the flowers and had a serious fear of over-embellishing, so I didn't use either of these on the finished wreath.  All in all the project would have only taken around an hour, had I not been interrupted several times to tend to Babygirl and other domestic duties! :)

I love the simplicity of it, so pretty and all in all cost maybe two dollars in materials.  I'm having a hard time deciding how to finish it (as usual) so I haven't done anything with the hanging part yet.  I'm thinking maybe some wide ribbon...suggestions?

Yarn Mountain De-Stash Value=  half a skein of soft boucle, which I have quite a bit of, so there will likely be more wreaths in my future to get rid of it!

Ok, I confess, I also bought yarn at the above mentioned thrift store, but really, how could I resist this lovely wool/mohair blend in my favorite colors???

More projects to come, Happy Friday!

Rediscovering Cross Stitch

Way back in the middle school days, I took an afterschool class in cross stitch.  I remember enjoying it, but quickly dropping it since it wasn't exactly the cool thing for a 13 year old girl to be doing in her spare time!  Years passed and I decided to give a stamped cross stitch blanket kit when I was pregnant....never finished it.  See a pattern here?!  I always liked it, but seemed to lack the motivation to take it further.

In my never ending quest to be buried alive by books, I picked up the hilarious book Makoto's Cross-Stitch Super Collection.  It is so funny and full of small charts that are funny and simple enough for a beginner x-stitcher such as myself, as well as some modern project ideas.  Anyway, I've done a couple of the charts for little things like bookmarks and then while flipping through it one day, was inspired!

I had been in a bit of a slump and had to make a book for the One Tiny Book swap over on Craftster, and this seemed a perfect time to attempt to combine fabric and paper!

The base of the book is a 3" by 3" children's board book that i covered in scrapbook paper.  Edges are painted due to my lack of skills with the Exacto knife, but the color was a perfect match straight out of the bottle!

My partner was the lovely hgddm and she had a wonderful Pinboard full of nautical stuff.  Each page is wrapped in jute twine that I picked up at the good ole Dollar Tree.

Isn't the crab great?!  Too funny!

My favorite:  the shark!!!

...and the front and back cover, octopus is yet another Dollar Tree Treasure!

This project was VERY time consuming due to all the stitching and waiting for glue and paint to dry, but absolutely worth it!  I will definitely do it again with another theme in the near future :)