Felt Pumpkins Tutorial

Hi there!
Today I'll be sharing a super fast and easy tutorial on making felt pumpkins. All you need is felt, stuffing and thread. start by cutting two round pieces of felt.

Use a whip stitch to join the two pieces but leave a small opening. You can either fill it now and leave the stitch on the outside or follow the next step.

Turn the pumpkin inside out, keeping the stitching on the inside and fill it with the stuffing. Use a hidden stitch to close the opening.

Take a thread with a contrasting color and go through the center of tour pumpkin. Leave a "tail" of thread behind, you will need it to finish the pumpkin.

Start by dividing the pumpkin first in half vertically and then horizontally. Take your needle around the outer edge bring it down at the center, pull the thread to create a section. Next take your needle on the opposite side, around the outer edge and back into the middle again pulling to create the next section. Each time you will bring your needle up in the middle and pull tight to create the sections and they don't have to be perfect, real pumpkins aren't completely symmetrical either!

Once you've divided it into four parts next begin by dividing each part in half, again keep bringing your needle around the outer edge and through the center. When you have finished you should have eight sections. Bring your needle down to have it in the same side as the tail you left in the beginning. Tie the two threads together in a tight knot and cut the excess thread.

Use a piece of brown felt to create a stem and glue it into place, hiding the closing knot.

You can see the two different versions, two are made with the seam on the outside and two with the seam on the inside.
Hope you liked this diy :-)
Aleka

Wooden stars ornaments

Hello!
I've seen quite a few ornaments made from little wooden sticks and I just love their rustic and natural look. So I thought I'd give it a try :-)

What you need: wooden sticks with different thickness, hot glue (use the clear kind, I had white and it showed a bit on my stars) and jute string.
Start by cutting the wooden sticks to a size you want, I used a small saw on the thicker ones and just snapped the others. I made sure that I had two different lengths for the sticks, that way my star would look better. Hot glue two thick ones and two small ones creating two crosses, hot glue the two crosses together forming a star. Use the jute to cover the part where they are glued together and then dab a little glue to the top of the star and place another piece of jute. Make a loop so that you can hang your stars and cover the glued part with another piece of jute, just circle around it and tie a neat little knot.
Ta daa! You stars are ready :-)

Wishing you a lovely day,
Aleka

Linked to Homework, LizMarieBlog,Whipperberry 

New year's hoop art tutorial

Hello!
This is a project I had in my mind for a while, it didn't take me a long time to make it and I do love the result. I've used white fabric mounted on an 6 inch embroidery hoop and black felt numbers to "write" the new year. I've used a font called twinkle and after I printed my template I cut each number from paper and then used them as templates to cut the felt. A nit little trick I did to cut the insides of the 4 & 0 is this: I used blue chalk to mark the cut out on the felt, as you can see in the second photo and then used my pointy scissors to cut it out.

I placed my numbers on the fabric and then started embroidering them. I did the little twinkles first to secure the number in place then used scissors and tweezers to remove the paper. Then I just traced the number with white thread. I followed the same rules for the rest of the numbers, first I embroidered the little stars and after removing the paper I embroidered the outline.
And when I finished I had my new year's hoop all done, I love the contrast of the white fabric and black felt!

Wishing you a great day,
Aleka

Linked to Homework, LizMarieBlog, PersiaLou & Whipperberry

Halloween houses

Last Halloween craft and it's an easy one :-)
I used this house pattern, transferred it to black and white paper using carbon, it doesn't show on the black paper but on the white it's pretty visible. So I had my nephew paint over the blue lines with a black marker and gave him a silver marker to paint the black houses. I think it's easier for a kid to paint on the paper when it's flat, after he painted them I used glue on the flaps and mini wooden pegs to hold them while the glue dried.

While I waited I made a super quick mini bat garland, just cut bat shapes and little triangles from black paper, add a dab of glue on the back side and glue them on jute string. I used scotch tape to stick it on the wall behind my houses but if you have washi tape with a Halloween pattern that will look great!

The fun thing about these houses is that their tops are not glued so you can lift them and use the inside of the house to keep candy or spooky decorations :-)

xoxo
Aleka

Linked to Homework, Lizmarieblog & Whipperberry

Trick or treat bags

I love working with paper so here's a tutorial for making monster and pumpkin trick or treat bags!

You'll need pva glue, two balloons and pieces of newspaper. You can either pick the balloon with the size you want and blow it up completely or just use the ones you have (I had big size balloons) and just blow it up to the size you want. Start gluing the paper on, cover the entire surface of the balloon leaving enough space at the bottom for your hand to go through. Let each layer dry before applying the next one, four or five layers of paper make a very sturdy bag. Once you have applied the final layer and it is dry pop the balloon, then cut the edge of your bag so that it's even. Apply gesso to the inside and outside before you apply paint. Paint it like a pumpkin or green monster. Make two holes at the side and tie your cord and you're done! My nephew loved the green monster, when he saw it he said "brains, brains" :-)

Tips:
Start with a layer of white wrapping paper (I have a lot of it from Ikea, the one you wrap glass and breakables) that way you won't have to paint the inside. You can also end with a layer of the same paper so won't have to gesso the outside before you paint it.
After you have done all the layers and popped the balloon hold the bag up to the light, that way you'll see the parts that aren't so thick, that's where you'll need to add paper to make them stronger.
Or you can alternate layers between newspaper and wrapping paper so it will be easier to see which parts you've missed.

Hope you like it :-)
Aleka

Linked to Whipperberry and LizMarieblog!

Felt bones

Halloween is a holiday we don't have in Greece, there is a similar holiday called "Apokries" where people dress up but it's not really linked to witches, monsters and scary things. So I've learned to love Halloween from movies, one of my favorites is Tim Burton's "Nightmare before Christmas" and this absolutely fantastic song!
So here's a super easy tutorial for making felt bones. I've used grey and black felt and after cutting out the shapes I stitched them together with matching thread colors and stuffed them with polyfill batting. You can use the last image as a guide for the shapes, the three bone shapes fit an A4 page. Just right click and save the image.
You can make lots and lots of them to have as decorations for Halloween :-)
Have a lovely weekend,
Aleka

A small succulent garden

I had these small glass vessels and thought they would make a great mini garden with succulents. I used little pumice stones in the bottom for water drainage, then filled them with soil and planted the succulents. The first little garden I gave to a friend of mine and used Echeveria plant, it's a very easy plant to grow, every leaf that falls off grows new leaves and roots even if it falls to the floor!

The second in the last photo is mine. I made it using leaves from different kinds of succulents and though all through the winter they showed no sign of growing they practically doubled in size over the summertime.

Wishing you a lovely weekend,
Aleka

Jellyfish

This is the project I was talking about:
Paper mache jellyfish! We used glass bowls (they are the ones we use when we make creme caramel), turned them over, covered them with plastic wrap (the one we use to cover foods) and then started gluing pieces of newspaper with pva glue. We did three layers so they are quite thin and lightweight. Once the glue was dry on the outside we took them off the bowls, peeled away the plastic wrap and let them dry completely, you can see in the third photo that the inside is still not dry so we waited a day to be sure.
The next day we painted them with gesso, then acrylics in pink and yellow and then glued yellow crepe paper on the inside. I'm still debating whether I should fill them with more crepe paper, I like they way they look now so I don't know.

The nephew's kindergarten will have a summer party when the school closes for summer and it's a sea themed one. The background the teachers have used is a deep blue paper so I'm sure they'll pop and since the party will be outside the jellyfish will be moving with the wind :-)
Wishing you a great Sunday,
Aleka

Recycling and Christmas

We thought it would be a great idea to make some Christmas ornaments from paper mache and then give them to our nephew's kindergarten. Using cookie cutters and pulp made from newspaper and envelopes from bills we made ornaments shaped like a boot, a star and a round bauble. Because of the envelopes they have a bluish hue and not the typical grey that you get from newspapers, there are also bits of other colors popping here and there which gives them a great texture.

We figure each kid will take a set of two ornaments so they can paint them themselves and put them on their Christmas tree. We are still in the process of making them while the first batch dries, we've been using the oven to speed up the drying as it's been a cloudy day today. Once they have dried we'll make a hole and tie a string so they can be hang on the Christmas tree.

Wishing you all a great day, 

Aleka

ps. You can see more creative spaces here!