Month: February 2006

This is the felt doorhanger I made – I just made two similar-size (but not *exactly*) hearts cut from felt – pink and white. I made them just slightly different so when they were sewn together, one would ‘peek out’ from behind.

Some pretty pastel beads went on one side by poking jewelry string through the first layer – and on the other side I stitched in a smaller contrasting-color heart. Inside I put a little cottony stuffing, and finished sewing it together, adding a ribbon to hang the heart by. The whole thing took about thirty minutes!

There are lots of wonderful Japanese craft books (you can find many of them on eBay or Amazon’s Japan site) that show how to make all kinds of things out of craft felt…especially mascots (little animals, etc), flowers, and food items.

I’ve been wanting to try to make a felt cupcake, and as it turns out, I just did a little Google search and found instructions on Craftster. I’m making other things out of felt right now – including a cake I hope to have finished next week – but 100% of the credit for the pattern on this particular cupcake goes to the tutorial by AOI (here). It is just great!

Here’s my version, a little different because I used ‘sprinkles’ rather than the cream puff and strawberry AOI used (I really like hers too!):

Materials:
Scissors
Two colors of felt – one for the cupcake (cake part) and the other for the color icing you want.
Embroidery floss in each of the two colors (or you could even use complementary colors if you like)
Needles
Cottony stuffing
(if you make my version then you’ll also need clear jewelry string and some pretty little beads for the ‘sprinkles’)

Directions:
Cut out circles from both colors – you can use anything circular as your pattern that’s about the size you want the bottom of the cupcake to be.

Cut out a length of the cake portion equal to the circumference of the circle, and as wide as you want the cake part to be tall. (BTW, you can cut the lengths longer than the circumference, then cut them down once you get sewing in case you’re afraid of making them too short to go around, which would be a problem)

Cut out a length of the icing portion equal to the circumference of the circle, as wide as you want the icing to be, scalloping the edge so it looks pretty.

Sew the bottom circle and the cake strip together at the bottom, then sew up the edge of the cake.

Next, work on the icing part. Sew the icing circle and the icing scallop together, then sew the edges of the icing scallop together (just like you did with the cake).

Here’s where I did the cupcake differently – I thought pretty little pastel beads would be pretty as ‘sprinkles’ on top. I took some clear jewelry string, made a knot in one end, then poked it through the felt (it’s strong enough to poke through the felt without a needle or anything). Just take the end through the felt, string on a bead, then poke the jewelry string back through to the back side. Just repeat that over and over until you like the amount of sprinkles and tie off with a knot on the back side again.

Just stuff the cupcake bottom (on mine, the white part) with lots of cottony stuffing, and sew the top on, by threading the scallop edge to the cake part. Voila! I need to work on my needlework super-bad, but I am *so* happy with how they turned out.

Yay! It’s February! I get to decorate for not one, but two holidays this month – Valentine’s Day, and Mardi Gras, which goes up right when Valentine’s Day stuff comes down!

The first thing I’ve done for Valentine’s Day is a ‘I Love You’ banner. It’s very simple, and looks pretty nice!

Materials:
I used scrapbook paper to cut the hearts out – I used a red & white checked pattern. To stencil the letters, I used a paper from Thailand that had little strings running through it (I know there’s a name for that, but I don’t know enough about paper to know what to call it!) and isn’t quite 100% opaque. In total, use one sheet of scrapbook paper for each letter and space (so for ‘I Love You’, I needed ten pages, plus a couple extra in case I made a mistake) and half that for the letters and spaces of the contrasting color, because you can do multiple letters on one sheet of paper.

Also:
Letter Stencils (or if you’re really good, you can just do this freehand)
Stencil paint (I used white)
Stencil brush
Decorative Scissors (these have a little scallop edge. You could use a straight scissor, too, though)
Mod Podge (matte or glossy – I used matte for this)
A cheapy black foam brush to mod-podge with
Ribbon to hang the banner with
A hole punch, or improvise carefully with a pen

Directions:

First, I cut the hearts out of the checkered paper freehand.

(Quick note – I wanted to have a heart space between each of the words, so out of the solid red paper, I freehand cut a small heart shape. You can see those in the last banner pic below.)

Next, I cut rectangles of the red paper to stencil my letters on. I just laid the stencil on top of the paper:

And dabbed the stencil paint on with the brush in an up & down motion. This keeps the paint from trying to get underneath the stencil, and it has a nice look to it once you lift the stencil. It looks a little more natural than ‘painted on’:

I used my scallop scissors to cut down the original letter paper once the stenciling was done. Next, I just glued the letter paper onto the heart with some Mod-Podge, then I Mod-Podged the entire front of the heart. This makes certain that the letter stays in place:

I gave everything a few hours to dry (although it’s mostly dry in about 15 minutes), then punched a hole through the middle of the top of each heart to make a place for the ribbon. The very easiest way to do this is to fold the heart in half length-wise so you know the hole will line up. Then I just strung my ribbon through each of the holes:

And attached it to the mantle (all cleaned off, ready for more decorations!):