Getting my Crafting Mojo Back

Recently I've been off after having surgery to get my gallbladder removed (NOT FUN) but have finally been starting to feel better generally and able to get up to some crafting. I hadn't realized how ill and stressed I've been this year with all the gallbladder issues until I thought about when the last time I'd done some crafting was! It had been a long time! I ended up playing around with some paints and some scrapbooking stickers I had and made this canvas. I also sealed it with Mod Podge to keep the letters on with somewhat bumpy results. :( However, good enough, and  I may actually take this to work and put it on my desk for those no good very bad days. I also did a huge overhaul of my craft room and got rid of so many things. I'm almost at the point where I can find everything that I need to do many types of projects and actually reach my sewing machine, so things are feeling a lot more creatively possible around here lately.

Clever Ways to Reuse Old Plastic Cards

When I lived in Toronto, I had a stack of old plastic transit passes in a rainbow of colours that I knew I had to craft something with. At first, I couldn't decide exactly what I'd make, but I knew that it would be a mosaic of some sort, so I cut up all my cards of different colours into tiny squares and thought about covering a table top in the pieces.

Eventually, I decided to to make the mosaic about, a sort of nostalgic nod to my time in Toronto, entitled "The Heart of Toronto", partially for the heart shape of the map and for the fact that I picked the centre part of the map to cut the heart from.



I really love how it turned out and I should really get it framed one of these days!

A friend shared her stack of TTC cards awhile back on Facebook wondering what to do with them, and I suggested my mosaic table idea as well as a few others.  I figured I'd share some more ideas here in case any of you have a stack of plastic cards that  you want to use for something, and hopefully to get myself motivated to use up all the little squares of cut up plastic cards that are lurking in my craft stash.

Other Ways to Reuse Plastic Cards 

I love the idea of making guitar picks out of old cards using a handy guitar pick punch

This mirror frame mosaic turned out really great as well - it would definitely make looking at yourself fun!

Artist Thomas McKean made an entire amazing exhibit of art pieces using old Metro cards...totally amazing. Click through the link to see more of the pieces from the exhibit.

I also enjoyed this idea to make an ear bud holder out of an old credit card-mine are always getting hopelessly tangled in my giant purse.

Hope these ideas helped you use up some of your stash of plastic cards! If you've seen any other awesome ideas for reusing plastic cards, please leave me a link in the comments!

♥ Craftzilla  

DIY Jewelry Display

I've been the world's worst editor of photos it seems, as I just found a bunch of photos from the summer that I haven't shared at all on the blog. Among them were these photos for this fun DIY jewelry display that I made to show off some of my knitted pins.

Here's what you'll need:

An old frame with a removable back and glass
Some card stock, cardboard or an old file folder
A piece of cotton batting
Glue gun and glue sticks
Scissors



What I did:

• I removed the back and the glass from the frame. This frame ended up working really well for this project, since the back attached to the frame with two screws. 
• Trace the inside of the frame onto the card stock/ cardboard or file folder and cut it out with scissors. 
•  Cut out your batting and fabric a bit larger than your cardboard shape. Lay the fabric wrong side up on a flat surface, then add the batting and the cardboard piece.  (see image below)

• Wrap the fabric and batting around the cardboard and secure with your glue gun. 
• Trim the excess fabric and put the back back onto your frame

Voila, you have an awesome jewelry display!

If you end up making one of these displays, I'd love to see how yours turned out!

♥ Craftzilla 

Apartment Update: Custom Shower Curtain

I was inspired my my friend Shawna's awesome shower curtain to make one of my own for the claw foot tub in our apartment, rather than suffering through a bunch of shower curtains hung haphazardly around the shower.  So I headed to the fabric store, and ended up settling on this yellow striped outdoor fabric, and some brushed metal grommets.

In order to figure out how much fabric I needed, I measured the length from the top of the tub to the shower rod, as well as assuming that I needed the coverage of two regular shower curtains, which usually measure 70 inches by 70 inches. So, I ended up getting 6 yards of fabric that had a width of 54 inches.



I think it turned out pretty well, and my downstairs neighbour didn't even come upstairs to yell at me after I spent an hour banging the grommets into the fabric with a grommet tool and a hammer. I count this a great success, don't you?



I think I also solved one of the problems we were having with the tub as a shower, namely this weird hanging down piece of wood that the shower caddy is screwed onto, and the awkwardness of having a shower curtain close properly around it. I ended up making the shower curtain in two pieces--a smaller piece to deal with this section of the shower, and a double wide piece for the rest of the shower. I'm looking forward to a lot more showers and a lot less water sprayed everywhere!


♥ Craftzilla

DIY: Perler Beads Robot Art

Here's a quick and fun DIY using the small Perler beads kits that you can get at Michaels and other crafty stores. I had one of these kits lying around that contained the beads, plastic peg board and the instructions for the robot design. However, given that it's Zen's birthday today, I thought I'd make him a robot one, as well as a  cute robot Jesse dog to match in the style of those decals for

Here are the beads ready to be fused with the iron. I tried to design my robot dog one to mimic the robot pattern fairly closely, how do you think I did?

Here they are after being ironed and mounted onto heavy cardstock with my trusty gluegun.



Just a note that I only ironed one side of these (the back) since I felt the beads had a pixel-y sort of look that I enjoyed, and they were being glued to cardstock anyway. Generally you're supposed to iron both sides.

Strangely enough, I think this was actually a craft that I've never done before in it's entirety before, and ran into some trouble with the ironing (didn't iron long enough) but I think I'll be making some more in the future -in particular a robot me to add to the collection!

I think I'll also add some nomeclature labels underneath in fancy writing before I frame them, but overall, Zen was very pleased with these!

If you want to make your own, here's what you need:
-Perler beads peg board
-Perler beads
-wax paper (to place over the beads while ironing)
-Iron
-Paper (I used 6 x 6" Sthrathmore Bristol vellum, which is basically just an acid-free, heavier cardstock with a nice finish)
-Glue gun

You can also find some information on Perler beads and a cool looking application I might try to make your own designs from photos on the Perler beads website.

Happy crafting!

♥ Craftzilla

Tutorial: Chevron Friendship Bracelets

I won't lie, I took the photos for this tutorial back when it was actually summer and people may have felt more like making lots of friendship bracelets, but apparently I didn't get around to actually putting them into a post for some reason. At any rate, I hadn't made friendship bracelets for a long time, but signed up for a friendship bracelet swap and decided to document the process while I made the bracelet for my overseas friend!

Anyways, at the time I made the tutorials, I had been thinking a lot about summers as a kid and all the fun crafts I used to do at summer camp and at home with my mom and figured that a series of tutorials on these kinds of crafts would be an excellent way to reclaim my youth a bit, and have a bit of fun with some of these kinds of crafts.

So today's craft is friendship bracelets! I figured I'd start with the chevron kind, since those seem to be making a bit of a resurgence of late in fashion, plus a friend of mine at work requested a tutorial so that she can make some with her kids:)

First, pick your colours. I like to use 5 colours, and for this bracelet, I measured 64 inches of each of the 5 colours



Fold your threads in half and make a loop, then a knot





You can secure the bracelet to a flat surface with tape or use a safety pin and a pillow/leg of your jeans/anything--here I used a laptop desk and a piece of tape.



Start by arranging your threads --this is important to get the striping right. You'll end up with something that looks like this: (basically threads in my example go green, pink, yellow, dark pink, light blue, light blue, dark pink, yellow, pink, green)



Making the first half of a chevron

Starting with your first colour on the left side, take the first thread and make this shape with it (often called a "four" or "sailboat")



Tuck the end of the first thread, and wrap it around the second thread and into the centre of the "four"



Hold the second thread with your left hand and pull the end of the first thread until the knot is at the top of the bracelet.





Repeat again using the first threads; you have two knots on the second thread, which will look like this:



Repeat, two knots per thread until you reach the middle of the bracelet ( in this case, after 4 threads total)



Making the second half of the chevron

Now we're going to make the second part of the chevron.

Pick up the last thread on the far right, and make a reverse "four" or "sailboat" with the thread, around the second last thread



Wrap the last thread under the second last thread and holding the second last thread tightly, pull the last thread to the top.

Make one more knot using these two threads, for a total of two.

Continue on, making two knots on each thread until the two threads of the same colour are in the middle



Taking the two middle threads and knot the left thread around the right one, two times.



And voila, you've made your first chevron!



Continue on until you've used each of the colours - this forms your pattern:



Work until the bracelet is the desired length.

Finishing 

You can either leave the ends as they are, and tie the bracelet like this:



or you can braid the ends (four strands of floss per braid), which I think looks nicer





A sadly blurry picture of the finished product



Hope you enjoyed the tutorial! I'd love if you shared any bracelets you make!

♥ Craftzilla

DIY: Meet Zentron the Robot

I don't know if I've properly introduced you all to Zentron, the DIY robot that I made for my boyfriend a few Christmases ago.  Please say hi to him!



I was trying to figure out something fun to make that was easy and used only items from the dollar store, as I was working on a budget for gifts.

What I used:

A no-name Rubix cube
4 plastic and metal oil pourers (for the arms and legs)
A cheap battery powered alarm clock for the head
A mini compass that I took off a carbiner/flashlight combo thing from my old work --but I've also seem them at the dollar store.
Gorilla glue

This was a really easy craft - I literally just glued everything together with the Gorilla glue. You can use any other kind of glue you want, I just found that the pieces didn't stick very well onto the Rubix cube using either super glue or a glue gun.

Easy as that, and you have yourself a lovely robot friend to call your own!

Variations
Add buttons
Perhaps a Sombrero or other kind of hat
Maybe he should hold something?
Robot dog?

♥ Craftzilla

Easy DIY Wedding Shower Invitations

I've been going through some older photos on my laptop, trying to get things cleaned off so I can upgrade to Windows 7 and stop cursing Vista every time I try to do anything, and have been coming across a lot of fun photos which contain some things that I've made that I know I haven't shared here on the blog. So expect a few more posts like this in the next while, as I work my way through all these files!

I figured I'd share with you some invitations that I made for the bridal shower that I threw for my sister before she got married. The invites were fun and simple, and turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself (and I do!)



Materials:

Scrapbooking paper in various patterns
Paper cutter (but you can just use scissors if you can cut in a straight line, unlike myself!)
white paper
black ink pen
needle and green embroidery floss
scissors
Glue Stick

The outside of the cards--there are a few different patterns of papers I used that I thought all worked well together









The inside (note that the flowers at the bottom weren't actually there --they're just preventing my email and phone number from being on the internets)



How to:

I cut a piece of patterned and a piece of plain scrapbook paper into three (3) equal pieces lengthways, the patterned paper for the outside of the card, and the plain paper for the inside using my paper cutter.
I threaded my needle with two strands of  embroidery floss, knotted at the end, and sewed the two layers together using a simple straight running stitch.

I cut some circles out of white printer paper ( I traced a spool of thread to get the size right) and wrote the "You're invited..." on each with a black ink pen and glued them on to the front with the glue stick.

I printed out the shower info at a copy shop, and cut them to size and glued them in as well.

And voila, fifty invites later, I was a master of paper cutting and running stitch  and was all set to mail these lovelies off to all of our guests!

♥ Craftzilla

DIY Key Rack

I was feeling a big crafty yesterday, so I made up a quick key rack for my hallway, so I can hopefully stop losing all the keys I have!



Here's what you need:

-Cup hooks
-A piece of balsa wood (mine was 3/16 x 4" x 36" that I cut in half to make two 3/16 x 4' by 18" pieces)
-Sharp X-acto knife
-Self healing mat
-Ruler
-Pencil
-small wooden plaques
-Glue gun
- Sawtooth picture hanger (like this)

Steps:
1) Measure the halfway mark on your balsa wood with your pencil and ruler (to roughly 3/16 by 4" by 18"
2) Cut the balsa wood in half with the X-Acto knife on your self healing mat. Balsa is easy to cut with just a knife blade, though if may take a few scores/passes. You may want to use your ruler for this as well.
3) Using your glue gun, glue on the wooden plaques where you want them on the front of the piece of balsa wood
4) Flip the wood over and glue your sawtooth picture hanger onto the top middle of the back
5) Flip the key rack back over and screw in the cup hooks at evenly spaced intervals. Again, balsa wood is very soft, so this is easy to do without having to drill holes.



6) Hang up and enjoy!



And here's the second one I made:



What do you think? I'm trying to decide if I should stain or paint the wood, or if I like them the way they are.

♥ Craftzilla

Wallpaper Covered Pencils Tutorial- Make some new pencils for School!

Today while I'm out travelling to visit my parents and then at the Peterborough Folk Festival, I'm going to share this quick and easy tutorial for paper-covered pencils, just in time for back to school!




















And then you can enjoy your fancy pencils! Much nicer than the standard orange ones, no?



Happy weekend!

♥ Craftzilla