Embellished wooden box

Last week, after returning from our trip abroad and while browsing through a store I cam across a set of decorated wooden boxes. Which were kind of expensive. And I said to myself - I can make this for a lot less money. 

So I want to the dollar store and bought a simple wooden box. 

Book felt gift box

If you've been reading this blog for a while you already know I always prefer re-usable gift wrap alternatives. Well, this time I decided to create a sort of gift box for a book. Made of felt, of course. 

Because we are traveling this week my kids will miss not one but three birthday parties - seriously, their social life is way busier than mine! As we got the invitations, I still wanted to send gifts and I needed to leave everything prepared beforehand, so I was racing against time to get the gifts wrapped and read to go.

DIY Felt eyeglasses case

This padded felt eyeglasses case was made at the request of a friend. She gave me the approximate measures she wanted but gave me total freedom with respect to materials and colors. Because I love working with felt, it was a an easy choice for me. And because I know she loves everything Irish, I managed to find a piece of Irish green felt in my stash and decided it was just perfect.

Because I wanted the glasses case to be padded to offer more protection, I added lining and batting.

embellished felt clutch

I made this clutch for a friend. She creates jewelry and orders a lot of her supplies online and she'd just received a bag full of pink roses when the story of this clutch started.. I'm not exactly sure what the flowers are make of, as they are heavier than plastic, but in any case, she gave me one and challenged me to incorporate it in one of my sewing projects.

Challenge accepted.

Spring napkin rings

A while ago a friend gave me a bag of small ribbon flowers in assorted colors. For a while I had no idea what to use them for - hair clips for my daughter? embellishments on sewing projects? greeting cards? 

Maybe I will still get to all of those - because, really, there are a lot of flowers on that bag - but right now I made spring napkin rings. 

 

How?

DIY Tulle gift bags

When I wrap gifts I try as much as possible to use fabric bags. They are cute, ecological and the recipient can always re-use them to store other things. For these particular gifts (a set of chocolates for Easter, from a couple of weeks ago) I decided to change a bit the look of my gift bags and make them out of tulle. 

Tulle gift bags turn out really nice, and there are zillions of ways to re-use them. 

Spring bag set

I made this spring bag set for my mother's birthday last week. As I was pressed for time and trying to finish it at the last minute, I didn't take a lot of photos of the work in progress, so there isn't s a specific tutorial for this bag set - however, a combination of several tutorials I've posted here over the years will give you an idea of how I made it.
 

The set is composed of three pieces - the bag itself, a small zippered pouch and a key chain with my mother's initials embroidered.
 

Felt penguin key chain

Have you ever needed a gift on the go and didn't feel like going shopping? It happened to me this weekend. We were invited at the last minute for an Easter gifts exchange on Saturday and I had to come up with something really quickly.

As only the kids were supposed to get gifts, I decided to browse my Sizzix dies for something I could use. And I came up with the penguin key chain:

DIY Balloons Notebook Cover

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm sharing with you a felt notebook cover I created as a gift for one of my daughter's school friends.

The notebook cover was assembled using my themed notebook covers tutorial, and it's a very quick project.

DIY Felt Book Covers

I friend asked me to make a few felt book covers, and since I'm trying to destash, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to go through my felt scraps and try to come up with something.

I made three different book covers, using my 5 minute book cover tutorial and I think they turned out great even if I was using scraps (that's why two of the covers are two-toned, as I didn't have enough material to make them otherwise).

Book cover number one is a solid gray with a felt and button embellishment:

Book cover number two comes in two shades of blue, with a lacy ribbon serving as both embellishment and a means to hide the center seam:

And the last one (which happens to be my favorite) is made of blue and dark gray felt, with a vintage ribbon across:

These book covers are seriously easy and quick to make, and are a lovely homemade gifts too. The three above have already been delivered to their new owner but I'm thinking they worked so well as a destashing project that I'm going to make a few more in the neat future. 

See below my other destashing projects of 2018 so far:

Destashing #1: Scrappy crochet blanket
Destashing #2: DIY Play Food: cloth napkins & napkin rings
Destashing #3: DIY Doll Diaper - tutorial and pattern
Destashing #4: Zippered Pouches
Destashing #5: Felt envelope clutches



Happy Tuesday,

Felt envelope clutch with ribbon closure

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm going to show you how to make a simple felt envelope clutch with a cute ribbon and bow closure. And the best of it? It can be done in fifteen minutes or less. Because yes, it is that simple!

Check out the tutorial below:

A Handful of Zippered Pouches

Today I'm back here to show you a set of zippered pouches I've been busy with in the past few weeks.

Each pouch is different because they are made with fabric scraps, but all of them were made using my zippered pouch tutorial - which means that despite the zippers I managed to assemble them pretty quickly.

Cross Stitch Baby Gift Set

Today I intended to share another installment of the You-Can-Do-It-Yourself series, but I had a very busy day yesterday and I just didn't have time to set it up. So instead I'm going to show you a cross stitched baby gift set I finished last weekend.

It's very similar to the one I made last year, but this time for a girl instead of a boy...

Both the bib and the little blanket were store bought, which may be a bit more expensive but always saves a lot of time. I just added the cross-stitch motives.

Inspiration for the cross stitch came from this Pinterest pin, though as usual I changed the pattern a lot before deciding on the final version.

 

I love cross stitching and I haven't done a lot of it lately, so making this was a real pleasure. In addition, it was a quick project and makes a lovely baby gift for the mother to be.

Happy Thursday, 

4 Projects from Christmas past

While I try to showcase on the blog all of my DIY projects, sometimes I just don't have time for everything and I simply have to choose between getting things done and writing posts or creating tutorials.

So today I decided to showcase four Christmas projects of previous years that I never got round to actually post about here before. 

Let's start with my favorite, and the one I'm most proud of:

I cross stitched this years ago, framed it and gave it to my mother for Christmas. While I love cross-stitching I usually go for smaller projects which are easier to complete. That I managed to make this and finish it in time for Christmas still fills me with wonder every time I look at it. 

Project number two is the Nativity that stands on my daughter's dresser every year since she was born.

I used the free pattern of the Nativity ornament from Wild Olive, though yes, you guessed - I tweaked it just a little bit.

Then we have the red and white felt star that graces our Christmas tree. Over the years we got lots of additional ornaments (most of them made by the kids) but at first all our ornaments were in red and silver. And the first time we decorated the tree we noticed we didn't have a start to place at the top. So I quickly printed a star shape of the Internet in two different sizes and managed to sew a felt star in record time.

It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement but the years have passed and we are still using it...

And last but not least, I bring you a very original project we made with the kids for a Christmas tree exhibition at their school. It's made out of a semi-opened umbrella stuck into a flower pot and covered with a zillion pieces of green wool (which I spent a full weekend sewing in place). The idea for using the umbrella came from my husband, I took care of sewing the wool and covering the flower pot with burlap and a red ribbon, and the kids glued on the decor.

After all that work I didn't have the courage to get rid of it once the school returned it, so we've used it to decorate the hallway between our rooms ever since.

I hope you've had fun looking at this collection of some of our past Christmas projects, and happy Holidays!

DIY Simple Zippered Pouch Tutorial

Following up on last week's post about the purse organizers gift set, I'm sharing today the tutorial for the zippered pouch. 

Adding zippers isn't the easiest thing in the world (at least not for me), especially when there's lining involved. So I've come up with a simple method to make it work.

Check out below the tutorial to make this lined zippered pouch.

DIY envelope purse organizer

So last weekend I created three purse organizers as a birthday gift for a friend (you can read about it here) and I promised I would post tutorials for each of the pieces. Here's the first one: the envelope shaped purse organizer.

Of the three, this is the easiest one to sew, so it's perfect for beginners. Bottom line, if you can't sew you can use fabric glue and get nearly the same result. Here's the how to:

DIY 3-piece purse organizers gift set

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm going to show you a set of purse organizers I made for a friend's birthday. I know I'm already late for all the Christmas crafting, but this birthday came first and I had to rush to finish the gift last weekend. 

Homemade gift tags - free printables

These gift tags are the perfect complement to your homemade gifts. Because homemade is always made with love!

The tags come in different colors and formats, so that you can choose your favorite:

To download the set of homemade gift tags just click here. You will be able to open a pdf file with several pages. Just decide which tag suits you best and run that page through a color printer.

Use the tags as you want, but f you re-post or share on social media, just please leave a link back to this page!

Happy Monday!