4.18.2012

Upcycle! Make a Flower Vase Cozy from a Sweater Sleeve



Lately, I’ve been obsessed with snapping up Thrift Shop sweaters and turning them into pillows and lampshades.  I now have a nice collection of sweater sleeves and I’ve been thinking about how to use them.  Then it hit me….  Make cozies for flower vases!  I have a bunch of glass vases from flower shops that aren’t really that pretty but seem too nice to get rid of.  Dress them up with a knit cozy.   Perfect!

This is a very easy DIY project but you will need to play with it a bit depending on the shape of your vase and the thickness of the sweater.  I actually used several methods on these vases.  The shapely red one was actually the easiest.  I used the turned cuff at the bottom, slipping the arm part over the curves then I tucked the excess into the vase.  This is perfect for artificial flowers but won’t work as well with fresh flowers that need water. 



I fiddled around with various ways to stitch the raw edges and finally found that it really works better, and is much easier to simply tuck the raw edge under.  If there is a line or bump, cover it up with a pretty bow. 

The part that makes this project so much fun is that the knit is so forgiving.  You can stretch it around a variety of shapes and sizes, in a variety of ways.

Give it a try.  I had lots of fun and I love the results!





4.06.2012

Bunnies, Hearts and Spring



What a great project for Spring!  Get started now making some for Mother’s Day.  It is so much fun to work with Polymer Clay.  Whenever Nicole brings me one of her creations, I get so excited and this little pot is one of my favorites. 

Sponge paint the little pots and have a blast embellishing them with little flowers and critters made with Fimo or Sculpey.



4.03.2012

Organize Spools of Ribbon in a Hurricane Globe


It's so easy to see everything.
Last month I organized all of my bits of ribbons on foam core.  That is working out so well.  I love it!  But I still had ribbons on spools that really had too much yardage to take off and wrap on the foam core.  I had tried using a dowel system but that wasn’t really working for me.  They seem to unroll too easily and also, I like to be able to just grab a spool and take it to my project, which is sometimes in another room.

Since I really like to SEE all my pretty supplies, I came up with this system.  SIMPLE!  I stacked them all inside a hurricane globe. 
They are neat and organized, protected from dust, very easy to get to and best of all… I can see them all and they are so pretty!

The relatively small size of the stack makes it manageable.  If I need a spool from the middle or even the bottom, I simply lift off the hurricane globe, the stack remains stable and I can grab the spool I need without the stack toppling over or unwinding. 

A couple of notes however….  Be sure you select a hurricane globe that is wide enough for the spools.  Also, if you slip a plate under the entire thing, it gives it even more stability when you lift off the globe.