Fine Craft Guild .com » Personal Accessories (Scarfs, Clothes, etc)

PS I Made This

Fine Craft Guild — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 12:46:00 +0000

great title, great book.

Part designer DIY
Part fashion
Part lifestyle inspiration guide.

I counted 27 projects in this book. All are practical and with easy (obvious) to follow instructions.

Sample Trendy Fashion Project 1

How to Make a Fancy Ruffle Shirt

(Upcycling a plain boring white t-shirt)

Sample Trendy Fashion Project 2

Get real: How about a feather skirt? I love this one. Fancy the fun of making this, let alone wearing this. My entire village here would talk about it. Ha ha… Love it.

Sample Trendy Fashion Project 3

A glamorous top with glued-on glitter… Mmm..: this is more for me…

Get Inspired

Not only does the writer Erica Domesek give us great projects to do ourselves, with step-by-step instructions; she also shares where she gets her inspiration from, encouraging us to cross-pollinate ideas and be creative ourselves.

As styles are diverse, surely not all 27 will be according to your taste. However, they don’t need to be. If you are an avid reader of my blog, this book will be a teaser for you to apply your own creativity.

You’ll pick up some techniques, which you can take further and you restyle, refashion or reuse things to represent you, using the book as your initial starting point and how-to guide.

E.g. If you don’t like those bouncy balls in that tied pantyhose necklace, well, use something else instead. You could use some left over foam balls, or even some IKEA packaging materials, chopped up. The pack I opened last night had a great foam cube in it that just screamed ‘craft me’ into something good !! Or, use a could of standard black/white dices instead. All these would make great statement jewelry, riding along the lines of black/white and recycling trends.

See it, like it, buy it:

PAPERBACK VERSION: P.S.– I Made This: I See It. I Like It. I Make It
KINDLE VERSION: P.S.– I Made This

Click Here For Other: Craft, DIY & Interior Design Book Reviews

Enjoy free shipping on orders over $25 (conditions apply).

(ps i made this – images source: pinterest)

Kaleidoscope Crochet Scarf

Fine Craft Guild — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 11:03:00 +0000

Remember that freeform crochet bolero I received but which did not fit whatsoever? I modified it into a rather fun and happy scarf that sure stands out.

(I have a few crochet flowers / rosettes left over, one of which is going to be a crochet brooch, which I’ll show you another day.)

Tada: The New Freeform Crochet Scarf …

It fits and it’s beautiful.

It still is the most unusual color combination you can not envision in your wildest dreams (particularly in certain light). I might give it a tea and/or coffee natural yarn coloring bath to tone down all those bright colors. However, for the moment, I like my new scarf on a pair of jeans and a mustard green t-shirt. It’s whimsical.

On a real positive: what is great about this scarf is that it will allow you to mix & match almost any piece of clothing you own, because this scarf has all the colors to pull that outfit together (smile).

Crochet Scarf – Rosette Jewels

Now that the shape of the clothing is no longer ‘jarring’ your attention goes to the beautiful crochet flower rosettes themselves, which is a mixture of granny squares, granny circles, and double layered crochet flowers. Each is like a jewel, and the result is like a kaleidoscope.

Like my new freeform crochet flower scarf?

Crochet Patterns

Want me to make you a pattern to make a scarf like this? I promise I’ll stick to no more than 11 colors. No, just 10. Joy: how about a holy number 7. But, I’ll make sure that all these colors harmonize. How about that!?

How to: Ying-Yang Friendship Bracelets

Fine Craft Guild — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 12:45:00 +0000

This friendship bracelet video tutorial with Chinese Ying-yang symbols celebrates several holidays together, from Chinese New Year (January 23), to our North American Valentines Day (February 14), to Carnival (March) in Latin America, where friendship bracelets were originally invented.

This is a very happy friendship bracelet with lots of Chinese red for good luck. Makes a fun little gift for your spiritual, yoga, Buddhist friends who wish to live in balance and harmony. And a lover also.

Incidentally, did you know that friendship bracelets were originally given to a friend at which time this friend could make a wish.

The bracelet was/is to be worn all day & night till it would fall of, at which time the wish is supposably being granted by the universe.

Mmm.. reminds me of Tibetan prayer flags, and how they are used.

In terms of difficulty level, I would not make this my first bracelet ever. However, if you’ve made other friendship bracelets before you could give this a try also.

Have fun!

Step-by-step Video Instructions

Make this Bracelet

How to Make a Friendship Bracelet featuring Ying-Yang symbols

Find the Video Tutorial Here Note: the source of the original design is below, however this video explains things a tat faster than the video tutorial featured on the website below.

For knot instructions and more details see Friendship-bracelets.net (image source).

How to Save Your Cosmetics

Fine Craft Guild — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 12:59:00 +0000

Pin It

Save yourself hundreds of dollars with this handy eco-friendly cosmetics saver tip! Got some broken cosmetics ranging from compact blush, powder to eye shadow? No longer be sad; no need to throw it away.

This photo explains exactly how you can recover it. In essence, what you’ll need is a few drops of rubbing alcohol, a bit of rubbing, and a day of patience. How easy and inexpensive is that?!!

Yippee. I’m so excited. Can’t wait to try this with that gorgeous Guerlain purple eye shadow that I just loathed to throw out such expensive cosmetics.

How To Save Your Cosmetics

It does not look ‘perfectly new’,
but works!

Source: this wonderful discovery was shared by Katrina, who writes Katrina Lomidze.

DIY Leather Belts … w Tassels

Fine Craft Guild — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Just posted how to make tassels from scratch & from remnants, when I spotted a wonderful tutorial on how to make easy darling leather belts with tassels.

Such a fashion statement!

source photo & how-to:

Organized Living Solutions

AAA t-Shirt Bracelet: Leopard, Knotted, w Gold Chain

Fine Craft Guild — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:55:00 +0000

: HANDMADE JEWELRY EXTRA-ORDINAIRE. Old t-shirt + leopard design print + knot + gold chain = fabo bracelet. Absolutely wonderful. Let’s make some.

This fun tutorial video is long and chatty, so I’ve summarized the steps here for you.

Cutting up a tee is just step 1…. Designer Connie Yu goes a mile further… :

She paints leopard print on the shirt
She knots it into a sailors knot
She weaves in some gold chain,
To finish it off, she glues on some fabric to close the bracelet.

Involved, but easy. You can do it to. Here is the how-to.

Step-by-step Tutorial on How to Make this Bracelet

2- strand knotted bracelet

Step 1: cut a big rectangle from the fabric between the two sleeves at the front or the back of your tshirt. Paint a leopard design on with some black paint. Blow-dry it, or wait a day till dry.

Step 2: Cut 2 long strips of 1 to 1.5” width out of rectangle. Tuck along the whole length of both strips so that the sides curl in and they become tubes.

Step 3: Knot your two strands together into the Josephine knot. (this demo = approx at. 7 min. point in the video)

source knot image: http://www.satincord.com/knots/doublecoinknot.htm (also called the Josephine Knot)

Step 4: Fiddle around with it till it looks like the knot in the picture/video (picture #4). Check if the loop at the top fits around your wrist. If not, adjust the knot so that it fits. Also ensure that the dangling ends together also fit around your wrist (i.e. have the length of 1/2 the loop).

Step 5: Cut the loop exactly in the middle. You should now have 8 pieces dangling from your knot, that are almost even in length; 4 on each side of the knot. Trim ends perfectly even.

Step 6: Weave in the metal chains along the same lines of the knot. Hand-stitch the chain edges onto the fabric.

Step 7: Making the closure: Cut a 1 x 2 “ rectangle from the t-shirt, and cover it lightly in fabric glue. Let the glue dry 1/2 a minute. When the glue gets tacky, take your bracelet and flip it upside down, and lay the 4 ends of one side of your bracelet onto the middle of the glued rectangle. Fold over the other end of the bracelet and glue the other 4 ends onto the other side of that rectangle, next to each other to make the bracelet loop. Press the ends into the glue. As your glued rectangle is bigger than the knot ends, fold the rectangle over them so it covers up all ends nicely. Let it dry for 24 hrs.

Video Tutorial – How to Make a Leopard Print Knotted Gold Chain Bracelet

If you don’t see the video here, click: http://youtu.be/rXw394FAKwo

Source: http://thisolddress.blogspot.com

Freeform Crochet

Fine Craft Guild — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 12:11:00 +0000

As you all know, I love knitting & crochet. So it’s to be expected that I get these kind of gifts. Usually I am thrilled with them, but sometimes, …. sometimes, it’s a miss… (silence) …

So, here is my first challenge of 2012: a white elephant. It’s a ‘designer’ freeform crochet bolero vest. Could have been awesome, and almost is, … but …..

Before

… here’s absolutely no fit …!!!!
The back section is too wide.
The shoulders are too wide.
The crochet flowers on the top front are too wide so that, in an unflattering manner, they cover the top-arms.

If that was not enough, the bolero is not long enough. It’s a few flowers longer at the front than at the sides and back, but it’s not long enough anywhere.

It looks and feels like there weren’t enough flowers, so they added the tie at the front so you can close the bolero.
However, the tie is not in the right place. It’s way above the breast instead of at the décolleté.

And last but not least: notice that appliqué: a color-clashing bright yellow embroidered crochet banana paired with a dangling strawberry. I love the idea of a crochet fruit, but not in this color and style clashing way.

Crochet Challenge
How to transform this item that positively makes any woman look fat, shapeless and nerdy, into something fun, hip and contemporary. I’m taking on the challenge. Check back later this week to see the ‘after’: i.e. what I’ve come up with.

The ‘AFTER’

Click here to see the beautiful kaleidoscope crochet scarf I made with it.

Party Shoes

Fine Craft Guild — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:30:00 +0000

: Gorgeous shoes spotted in my Beverly Hills window shopping trip earlier this month. Here is Rodeo Drive’s shoe fashion parade for Winter 2012. Fashion and glamor shoes.

I felt like in a museum, walking by exhibits. While I love the cultural aspects of gorgeous shoes, high heels, fashion colors, innovative designs, display of style and class, I’d find it rather tricky to come up with the occasion whereby I might like to try wearing these.

So, for the fun of it all, here are your fashion shoes.

(Can you imagine that begin December, LA looks like this? Looks like summer!)

Tiger skin shoes.

Silk Pumps

Fuchsia Flower Sandals

Lanvin Trampese Heels

Blue Feather Shoes so pretty that I wished I could find an occasion to wear these.

Fur-trimmed Golden Shoes

Creative Fashion …
for when Beverly Hills is far away….

Holiday Wear
Make Your Own Ruffled Fashion Shoes a la Christian Louboutin, inexpensively.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

As it is now the time…
No matter what kind of shoes you’re wearing ….

Wishing you all

a Smashing ‘n’ Dashing,

Dazzling Fun & Creative,

Prosperous,

Often Peaceful & Always Soulful,

Happy 2012.

Felted Ring

Fine Craft Guild — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:47:00 +0000

I did discovered something new, that’s just so cool that I wanted to share it with you: Did you know that if you take a bit of (your favorite) mohair wool yarn and you wrap it loosely around your finger 2-3 times, and you go about your business of cooking and cleaning, along with usual hand washings in between, your felted bitty bit will become a groovy felted ring?

Look! The felt ring is just a perfect ‘spacer’ between two precious metal rings you don’t want to rub against each other, like your wedding and engagement ring.

Ring Sizing & Felting

The ring you see in the picture is yarn about 6 or 7 times wrapped around the finger, and after about 2 days worth of felting. I recommend to make it a bit thinner if you want to wear other rings with it. However, I’d do about 11 rounds of yarn for a stand-alone felted ring.

Note that each time the wool felts, it shrinks. Therefore, you should begin with a very, very loose ring wrapped around your thickest finger. Consider that thicker rings will have less stretch and for a thick ring I’d wrap it around a candle stick that’s slightly larger than my thickest finger for the first felting. Experiment and consider that your felted ring could shrink up to 40%, dependent on actual yarn and thickness of the ring. I recommend to take your ring off when you take a shower, do the dishes etc. Several times a day hand washing is already lots and lots of felting! Eventually you want to take your ring off during all wet activities.

This ring-making technique so easy, I am not naming this article a tutorial. How about calling it my ‘whimsical craft tip of the week’ ?!

Tribal Jewelry: Get Creative with Bungy Cord

Fine Craft Guild — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 12:33:00 +0000

Oh, we all crave creativity. But sometimes copycat-designs are ‘just the thing’ to shave off time of making something ‘unique’. Here’s a novel idea that looks so ‘belonging’, that could be made with recycled items.

I’d long to make it one day:

a tribal necklace

a la designer Proenza Schouler’s

Resort Collection 2011.

So, cool.

How-to Make the Chunky, Tribal Necklace:

In a nutshell:

get some rope and an old bungy cord from the garage. Cut them to pieces and lay your necklace pieces out as is shown in the picture below, before wrapping them together.

tip 1: try that rope on in your neck. Is it comfortable?? If not, you might like to use the kind of soft, silk rope that you’ll find in haberdashery shops for curtain drawbacks of pillow edging instead.

get some nice, thick cotton yarn from your knitting yarn stash (yes, some remnants will suffice).

tip 2: at this stage in the game, it PAYS to actually look into your wardrobe and see which outfits could use a tribal necklace like this, and then pick yarn colors accordingly. Ditto with the semi-precious stone pendants.

Use some strong glue to glue the ropes together, before wrapping them with the yarn.

tip 3: see ‘which glue for the job’ article for ideas as to what to use when.

Let the glue dry before adding beads.

tip 4: i know from experience that if my necklace is too heavy, I won’t wear it (for more than 2 minutes). So, consider limiting the heavy stones and to add significant crochet (or paper mache) elements instead. Hip, and light-weight.

In the making….

Done.

Looks so much more ‘difficult’ than it actually is.

Alternative Necklace Design Ideas:

The above is a hip, bright color combination. Consider a beach scheme instead, with sand-color, sage green, aqua blue and off-white; or an all neutrals with a bright contrast color. Both would be great!

In fact, when I went back over the Proenza Schouler Resort 2011 collection, I found that she has another version of the bright necklace in her collection, looking exactly like what I had in mind.

source howto photo / copycat necklace: Honestly … wtf

source top & bottom photos: proenzaschouler.com