So Long.

Thank you all for visiting this blog for creative and innovative tutorials. I have decided to close this site to focus more on my main blog JustSomethingIMade.com. A sincere thank you to all who have contributed, those who have shown interest in contributing and to all who have visited.

I hope you will continue to visit me at JustSomethingIMade.com

For the very BEST in creative ideas and tutorials on the internet, I am very happy to refer you to
ONE PRETTY THING!

Ring Display, by PoPkO

I found this fabulous ring display tutorial from the artist of PoPkO and thought it would make a fantastic post. So many crafters are looking to craft their own show displays. And for her first ever tutorial, I think she gets an A! Please visit the PoPkO Etsy store and blog for some really fun jewelry! -Thanks PoPkO!

I had a big show last week and needed a new ring display. I wanted something sturdy and with a little bit of chunk to it, so I could show off my Glitter PoP Rings.
To make your own, you can get some ideas from this turotial. Scouting out the right box and fabric are key. You can make any kind of ring tray you want with this in mind. Mine cost me about $16 total. You can certainly buy one already made for that price, but making you own enables you to customize it to your own ring size and make it match the rest of your display more than the commercial ones.This is my first blog tutorial, so bear with me!

First, I had to decide how many rings I wanted it to hold. I estimated about 50 or 60 each, as I have about 100 + rings.

Supplies:
-trays (mine were $7.00 with a coupon)
-foam , just larger than your tray (mine were $7.99, but look at the thrift shop, or take apart your own chair!)
-opaque fabric, twice the size of your foam (the first one I used was too sheer and showed the green foam through it, and I had to find some more opaque fabric)


Tools:
-scissors
-box cutter
-marker
-ruler, or any stick to stuff fabric down (hand works too)

I found some bamboo houseware trays at Bed Bath & Beyond. They are stacking, and these would have been great if I could have had a little less foam, then I could have set up the rings at home and just stack them and bring it to the show. But I wanted the rings to sit right at the brim for easy viewing. Plan this when purchasing your foam. How thick do YOU need your foam to be?

I bought two trays. The green foam is from Joanns fabric, and is for seat cushions. They had all sorts of thicknesses and densities. I got one that had a big of heft to it, so that the rings would stay in the tray. If it is too floppy, your rings wont have anything to grab them, so go for dense.

Lay your tray over the foam, and score a line where you will cut it. I used the outside of the box to measure, knowing that I need a tight fit. If the foam is larger than the box, when I put it in the box it will expand and stay put. I did this all by eye and just winged it.

Cutting was satisfying..it made a nice clean line. Snip snip! But the foam was a bit thick so I found myself cutting twice over every line. I had to be careful not to shred it, but it was easy.

Stuff the foam in to check the size. if its tooooo big, just snip again. Mine had to be stuffed into it, which is what I wanted. I dotn want tit to move AT ALL.

I then set my intended rings onto the top to see how far apart they needed to sit. I have large rings, that needed a lot of space. I marked with a sharpee where I would need to cut.

Take the foam out of the box again and cut on the lines!

Note: I thought I would just need to kind of slice halfway down the foam, but decided to cut the foam completely at each black line. So I marked the foam #1-#12 so I could put the puzzle back together after cutting them. Once I sliced completely through, I stacked and stuffed the foam back into the box. There was a lot of finagling and wiggling to get it to stuff back in and look neat and tidy. Just work it in.

Next, lay the fabric on top. I found the center of the fabric by folding it in half, and stuck the middle into the middle foam crease. This helped me evenly distribute the cloth.

I had to cram the fabric into the sides with a ruler and my fingers and lots of tug-o-war. So don’t be afraid to really get in there. I had to do it twice on each ring box, take the fabric out and put it back in to get it to look nice. Make sure you get the fabric ALL THE WAY DOWN to the bottom so that it doesn’t come out when people are trying on rings.

You can see that this was my first try, and you can still see the green through the fabric. I switched it out the next day with a velour sort of fabric. This felt nice to touch and made the rings look a lot more refined as well.

Heres my final product! This is what it looked like at the craft show (boy what a messy table). I think I will go back and get a few more trays. They had smaller ones and I think I want a small tray for each of my fused glass rings with different prices. I also had a lot of foam left over to do this again. This was an easy project that didn’t require any glue. I love that!

Vintage-Look Bottle Brush Trees

Just in time for Easter decorating...Here is a tutorial for something I would’ve never thought of but am now completely crazy about! It comes from Rosann Babcock who first shared it on her friend, Jan’s, super-great blog, Little Pink Houses.

Rosann visited me at my booth in last November’s craft fair in Petaluma. Thank you so much for sharing this excellent tutorial with all of us!

Good morning Little Pink House readers! I'm excited to be here! Let's get going!

sisal twine ~ your choice

scissors

wire ~ I like 26 gauge steel

rubber gloves

contact cement ~ dries clear

pencil

paper towels

tacky glue

vise ~ clamp type, (or just a drawer that shuts tightly - Jan)

mica

paint brush ~ #12 flat is fine

items to decorate tree

wax paper

First ~ protect your work surface. This will make for easy clean-up. Cut sisal into 3”to 4” lengths, then separate strains. Use as much or little for fullest and/or height of tree.Cut wire at least 20” long, then fold in half. Make a loop at top of wire with pencil turning 3 times. Remove pencil. With gloves on, put contact cement on both section of wire were the sisal will lay between.




Center the sisal on one side of wire then place other half of wire on top, lining it up. (I felt like I needed two more hands at this point - Jan) Let cement set.

With ends of wire, place into the vise, tighten. With pencil back in loop, start to twist. You may need help the wire twist where sisal is, so use one hand to move sisal round it. Twist enough to hold firmly. Too much and the wire will break. (My first tree did break, but that's OK, it was still usable! - Jan)

Twist,


twist, twist and twist some more! This was the hardest part for me--getting the twists even throughout the wire, instead of bunching the twists at one end - Jan


Remove tree (even though it doesn't look like one yet), from vise. Move sisal around to even out empty or full spots on tree.


Start shaping the tree with scissors. Remove a little at a time on a 45 degree angle. Have the top of the tree towards you and work out to the base. (Kinda like that old joke about the marble sculpture--cut away anything that doesn't look like a tree ?!?!?)


Keep the loop on the wire at the top to add a topper, otherwise it can be cut off. Trim wire at base, leaving as much as you need for base / stand.

Lay a nice layer of mica on wax paper. This makes it easy to return unused mica to container. Brush tacky glue on tree, then roll over mica. May need to sprinkle some mica on by hand. (You could use glitter too, right? I wonder how German glass glitter would look!)




Choose a base / stand for your tree. Then add on items with tacky glue to decorate the tree. (There are lots of options for the base. Rosann used 1/2 of a small Styrofoam ball, covered in flecks of gold glitter and the mica she used on the tree. You could use a wooden spool, or block too!) Or just anything you have laying around the house!

Different twines will produce different trees. You can also dye the sisal to make trees for any season! Contact with water will also straighten out the twine as it dries. I used food coloring for my green trees (see picture at the top of this post) before I glued it to the wire, but I bet you could dip them afterwards too! How about PINK for Easter? And then you could glue tiny eggs to the tree, or...or...or...the possibilities are mind-boggling!

Important point: Some of the twines you find at the hardware stores are NOT SISAL, and don't work as well. They don't turn out as "full" and they won't "take up" any dyes. So be sure you have a true sisal (you can smell sisal, or just ask the sales person if you don't want any funny looks in the rope aisle at the hardware store).

Another great tutorial suggested by Rosann can be found here: www.buildingmodeltrains.com/bottlebrush-trees/

Thank you for the great project, Rosann!!

Vintage Brooch Turned Pendant, by Christi York of BuenoStyle

In this tutorial, Christi York of BuenoStyle shows one method of turning an antique or vintage brooch into a pendant that you can then turn into a necklace. How gorgeous is this piece?! ..I’m off to dig through my jewelry box!

If you raid your mother's or grandmother's jewelry box, no doubt it yield up some lovely vintage or even antique brooches. Another source is of course antique stores or, if you are lucky, thrift stores.

The piece I worked with for this project was found in an antique store in Revelstoke, BC. Yes, there is a place called Revelstoke in British Columbia. Gotta love this province!

When I bought this Victorian era brooch, it was missing the back pin, but still had the hinge and hook assembly where the pin would have been attached to.

Your brooch you choose to work with will probably still have the whole pin section intact. Generally speaking, I prefer to get rid of the pin assembly all together when I make a pendant/necklace. Usually, I can use nipper pliers to cut off the pin assembly, but on this antique brooch the metal and solder was very hard. I had to turn to the SAW!

Do not be afraid of the jewelers saw! It looks evil and scary but it can be your best friend! I didn't even know you could easily saw through metal until I took a jewelry techniques class recently. You can find this style of jewelry saw at any jewelry specific supply places. I got this one at Habson's here in Vancouver. You'll need blades too; tell the staff what you need them for and they can walk you through which blades to buy and how to load the blades correctly.

The only thing you need to be aware of is the blade is SHARP and can quickly do some damage if you accidentally start sawing your skin instead metal. I was confident enough to saw the back off using my bare fingers - but you may want to use a ring clamp to hold your brooch. A ring clamp is an inexpensive easily adjustable clamp that will quickly become your "go-to" tool if you decide to do much sawing or filing of metal.

The thing to remember about sawing metal is that you need to let the blade do the work. This means do not white-knuckle it! Keep the handle of the saw lightly firm in your hands, and do not push the blade forward. Just keep it moving in a light but firm up and down motion. The blade's teeth only go in one direction, so it's the downward stroke that actually cuts. You may want to practice on a sample piece of metal until you've got the feel for a nice easy rhythm.

Once you have the back brooch assembly cut off, you'll need to turn to another inexpensive jewelers tool - the file. I picked up this tiny set at Habsons for about $12.00. It has small files in different shapes and roughness. You'll just want to file off any of the rough edges that the saw blade has left. The trick with filing is not to crank the file blade back and forth, the "teeth" only go in one direction, so just move the surface of the blade forward firmly and evenly over the surface.

Let me back up a bit here and point out that whatever brooch you choose to work with should have some obvious way of attaching wire or jump rings to it. With my brooch, there were small openings in the top and bottom that I could manoever some 24 guage wire into and create loops for hanging.

So the thing you want to look for in a brooch (at least with this method) are some type of open areas to use as an attachment point for wire or jump ring - there's two examples in the top row here. The top upper left brooch has open areas on the top and bottom - making it perfect for an asymmetrical necklace. The shiny gold bow brooch in the top row had several open areas on the back of the brooch, making it very easy to attach jump rings.

I decided to make my antique brooch into more of a pendant necklace partly because it was so delicate, and partly because it had already one loop in the centre bottom that would be perfect for hanging this vitnage red glass briolet from.

Ok - so you find your areas to wire wrap or put jump rings through and then you are ready to go. Use whatever design best fits your brooch. If it's a funky chunky 80's brooch, don't afraid to go with some bold chain and over the top faux pearls, etc.

If you want to learn how to make a wrapped loop - there is a great step by step tutorial here.

Here's the finished OAK necklace. If you'd like to see more of my One-of-A-Kind (OAK) creations, check out this link.

If you are interested in the idea of remaking vintage jewelry into something new and intriguing, check out this craftypod review of a book called Vintage Redux. I bought it recently and there's a lot of good ideas in there.

Thank you so much for a beautiful tutorial, Christi!

Be sure to check out Chrisi’s Etsy shop HERE!

Mini File Folders by Whitney of Whisker Graphics

My crafty-bloggy friend Whitney of Whisker Graphics has mad some pretty darn cute file folders. She not only sells them in her Etsy shop, but she’s made a FREE download of a folder just for YOU!

Whitney writes, “I'm just so excited about these little file folders that I wanted to share. Click right HERE to get your free pdf template download. Cutting it out with scissors seems to work best and if necessary do a little clean up with an X-acto knife on the curvy parts. I printed it out on white and kraft cover stock.

“They are only 4.75 x 7 in size. Just right for so many good uses:
- Store recipes from magazines
- Print a out and give as gifts
- Keep one in your purse to wrangle receipts
- An invite's handsome carrying case. (They fit nicely in a A7 envelope.)
- Put photos in them to give to family and friends
- A pretty place to keep your to do lists”

Thanks for the fantastic FREEBIE Whitney!!

Vintage Apron Tote Bags, by Carol of Retro Threads

Carol of Etsy’s Retro Threads offers this on transforming vintage aprons into tote bags! There are a few steps not shown, but a very basic understanding of sewing will get you through. You can find more of her fun retro threads on her Flickr page.

Start with any old apron, just as long as it is a fairly substantial fabric. Sheers and delicate fabrics aren't going to make good usable bags, but sturdy cotton ones will be better. I like to line the bags with a heavy cotton twill.

Start ripping out the waistband. Next (not shown) you will press the fabric flat. Check out this awesome Alice in Wonderland print fabric. I ended up trading this tote bag to my friend whose name is Alice. She carries her laptop in it.

Fold and press top edge to the inside. Lay out lining fabric so that fold will be at the bottom edge. Lay apron bag on top of lining fabric with the bottom edge and the fold matching. Cut around bag as a pattern, leaving 1/2" seam allowance on top and side edges. Stitch sides of lining fabric (not shown). Leave lining wrong side out. Make handles (not shown): take remaining waistband and sew short edge together to make one long strap, or leave separate for two handles (as seen in next photo). For added strength, cut 1 or 2 long strips of lining fabric at half the width of waistband. Lay strip down the center of the waistband and fold edges of waistband over top of the lining fabric on both sides. Top stitch.

Measure the length of the apron and if it is more than 15" long, cut off an inch or two of the bottom (take care with any pockets or interesting trim). Fold the edges toward the center and overlap to create a width of around 12-13". If there is a pocket, make sure it is lying flat. Pin overlapped edge, turn wrong side out and top stitch overlapped edge. Trim excess seam allowance. Stitch across bottom edge and trim corners (not shown). Turn right side out.
Here are a few more of Carol’s fun apron bags! (Click to enlarge.)
Thanks Carol!

Handmade Card Holder, by Kellie of Greenhab

Who couldn’t use one or five of these in their purse, car or pocket? A holder for business cards, credit cards, Starbucks cards, and more! Thanks to Kellie of Greenhab: The Browns Go Green blog, here’s a super easy tutorial on making your own.

I made this little business card holder (would work for a few credit cards as well) for my mom and thought I'd share a quick tutorial with you. My sewing machine is packed away due to some construction going on in our house, so I actually sewed this by hand. It took about 1.5 hours by hand without any pattern or instructions, so I'm sure one could churn out a few of these in an afternoon by machine. This is a great way to use up the cute fabric scraps you've been saving!

1. Cut out two rectangles that are 6" x 4.5". These will be the outside and the lining of the card holder. Cut one that is 6" by 3". This one will be the inside pocket. Iron them all.

2. Take the smaller of the three pieces (the pocket fabric), fold over 1/4" along one of the 6" sides. Hem this. This will be the top of the pocket. (I've figured in 1/4" seam allowances everywhere.)

3. Lay the pocket on top of the lining fabric.

4. Then lay the outside fabric on top, so that the right sides are facing each other. Pin them all together so that they don't shift as you sew them.

5. Sew along the top and the two sides, leaving the bottom open. Clip the corners. Turn it right side out and push the corners out with something sharpish. Iron the seams so that they are flat.

6. I cut two pieces of card stock about the size of a business card and put them into the lining. (You could use interfacing as well, but I didn't have any on-hand when I came up with this idea.) This will keep the case a little stiff.

7. Now we need to close the bottom. At this point the pocket is only attached on the left and right side. You want to lift it and turn the pocket inside out. As you can see in the picture, the outside and the lining are still right side out, but the lining is now inside out. Sew the bottom closed, clip corners.

8. Turn right side out again and push the corners out. Iron seams.

9. I then sewed a line up the middle of the case so that there were two compartments for cards and also so there would be a natural place for it to fold. I see now that you can't tell from the picture, but the line starts at the top of the pocket and goes to the bottom of the pocket.

And there you have it! I am - by NO means - a good seamstress. I can barely sew a straight line, so I would rate this as EASY!

The only thing I’ll change next time is adding a strap to keep it shut. It lays flat, but I am now thinking that it might come open in your purse or bag. For this one, I'm going to sew a tiny snap onto the inside pocket to keep it closed.