April RiotArt Haul

cross stitch bookmarks and supplies

Hearts / Love / Valentine's

Clover / Irish / Lucky / St Patrick's Day

Green and Purple: longest scarf I have ever made

One of my buddies in the SCA has his house colours as purple and green, so after finding balls of green and purple wool in my crafty box, I decided to make him a stripy scarf as thanks for all the lifts home he gives me.

This is the longest scarf I’ve ever made, as well as being a stripy one - took me about a month overall to complete. I’m actually pretty proud of finally finishing it – it’s longer than me!

New Skill: Adding Beads to Knitted Projects

Since I’ve finally mastered the art of basic knitted scarves, I thought I could teach myself to make prettier scarves by adding beading to them.

It turns out that there are 2 ways of adding beads to knitted wool projects:

1)      Pre stringing the beads onto the wool

2)      Adding the beads using a crochet hook during the knitting process

I find the 2^nd option much more fun to do, especially as I don’t always like planning the finished look in advance.

So I found a really good instructional video on youtube:

 

And bought myself a box of beads for some more variety and a crochet hook – both from Lincraft.

 

Scrapping Paintings Galore - Room Decor

The trouble with my current sharehouse is that the off-white walls are kinda dirty…also ridiculously dull and plain. So one of my favourite ways of making my room look better is to use small panel paintings.

I tend to buy these small square canvas boards on the cheap from the dollar store or in the sale section of the newsagent. I find them very versatile for small art projects and paintings.

During my last trip to Lincraft I found a small bag of paper scrapbooking pieces on sale, which I couldn’t resist getting ‘cos they are so pretty…

As I don’t actually do any scrapbooking, I’ve found them very useful in other ways, like decorating cards…

But the way in which I’ve put them to the best use so far is to make mini artworks out of them to hang on my walls…

Basically I start by painting the canvas boards a background colour, wait for it to dry, then glue the scrapbooking pieces on top. Then a little addition of plastic embellishing gems to make them all pretty and sparkling.

It seems like I really have a taste for boho-style décor….

As there were a few pieces with words on them, which doesn’t really fit with my room theme, I made this extra thing as a small gift for my (former) housemate…

My First Granny Square Crochet

For my birthday about 2 years ago, I got a Patons introduction to knitting book for my birthday.

So far, I’ve only made hats and scarves, so I figured that it’s about time that I actually tried making a ‘real’ item of clothing.

So about 6 months ago, I decided to attempt making the poncho design in the back of the book.

It turns out that knitting squares take a long time, so I thought it might be a good idea to speed up the process by crocheting some of the squares instead…

Which led me to teach myself how to crochet a granny square from lessons found on youtube…

Crocheted Flower Shawl and Scarf

Following finding that crocheted flower tutorial on youtube a while ago, I realized I had some silky grey wool sitting around that I got from charity, so I decided to use it to practice making flowers. 8 flowers later and turning them into a scarf seemed like a good idea….

‘Cos I really don’t like spending a long time sewing pieces together, I figured that I could save time by using my trusty hot glue gun. It turns out that it is pretty easy to stick the pieces together in terms of tough joins as the glue can fuse the fibers together. Also it works pretty well when you run a little along the edge and press the edges of the two pieces together…and so long as you don’t mind the joints being a little scratchy due to the hardened glue…

I’ve also always been fascinated with the idea of wearing capes to keep warm – instead of wearing jackets. It turns out that women were wearing capes during the 1930s rather than coats (as mentioned by Anais Nin in her diaries). So I thought I’d give making a crocheted flower cape a go…