Mixed media, embroidery, fabric painting, DIY project, Banner and handmade handicrafts
A winter themed banner with fun characters and white snow just sparkling. Perfect for kids room to brighten their days during the long, wintery cold months.
This banner is based on my Do it yourself (DIY) project which you can access here (http://bit.ly/wm9lBo) and get step by step instructions for how to make this banner with pictures. I used a floral fabric banner in the project but the technique is the same.
This DIY is a follow up to my previous blog post. This DIY is even simple and a lot more fun. All you need for this one are the following items –
You can draw with permanent marker any face or cartoon character of your choice on the Ornament ball. Use felt to create hat and beard and then glue them to the ball. I created few of them and enjoyed each one. Every time you will create something new and different.
I would love to hear about your experiences. Please leave your comments about my blog and DIY projects and feel free to share yours. Go and have some fun.
Hello,
Happy New Year to all my friends! Let’s welcome New Year 2012 with enthusiasm and joy. Let’s welcome new colors of 2012 and make plans to add them to the painting of our life.
Happy New Year 2012 Banner (on Etsy)
Happy New Year !!
Tahira
Here I’m as promised in my last post posting few more fun, easy DIY for you to get some more last minute Christmas ornaments on the tree.
Step 1: First choose your Christmas ornament design.
Step1: Material List
Step 3: Take white color Vinyl and draw your ornament design on it with fabric marker as show below in  2 or 3. Cut your design shape with scissor as in 4.
Step 3: How to draw and cut the design on Vinyl
Step 4: Â The ornament is cut in the share of Christmas tree and is almost ready now, see 1 below).
Punch a whole at the top of the Christmas tree with punch cutter (2).
Use any fabric color to paint the ornament. Obviously since this is a Christmas tree I have painted it with green color (3, 4).
Step 4: Cut and Paint your Christmas ornament
Step 5:  Decorating the Christmas ornament is the most fun step of the DIY. Look in your craft box for any  sticker, beads,or scrap book stuff (1).
Stick these stickers/beads 0n your ornament with the help of super glue (2).
Finish all decorations (3).
Take 6′ of satin ribbon and tie it on top of the ornament through the whole which we made in Step 4.2.
Step 5: Decorating the Christmas Tree
Voila.. you Christmas ornament is ready to be hung on the tree. Go ahead and do that and share some pictures.
Step 6: Finished Christmas Ornament
Merry Christmas!
It’s the time of the year when baking gingerbread cookies, drinking egg nog, non-stop shopping, watching Christmas movies with family & friends and a lot more doesn’t seem enough to hold you over until the big day.
I don’t know about you but this year I’m on an insane loop of baking and decorating cookies (and eating them too :-)). In my dreams I see myself as a baker of exotic, out of this world gingerbread cookies. Though it’s just a dream but still very fulfilling and it is so beautiful that I don’t want to make it a reality. Not sure if that makes sense but that is what it is.
Gingerbread Cookie (Credit: normanack's photostream - http://www.flickr.com/photos/29278394@N00/)
Here are some of my favorite blogs that fuel my dream.
1) What is more adorable than a bunch of gingerbread men, especially those cute ones that are missing few appendages :-)? Ashleigh of “Bee in our Bonnet” blog has a wonderful post about how to make some of these “ABC Gingerbread Men“. You must check them out if you dream to be a baker or even if you really want to bake some.
ABC Gingerbread Men by Bee in our bonnet
2) How about decorating some cookies like a real crafter, using a cookie making kit? Wow that sounds like something I can do. Ashleigh at “Bee in our Bonnet” is a pro in this and has created a kit for people like us. It’s incredible you have to try it. Now I can also claim that I made gingerbread house cookie by hand (may be with a little help.. shhhhh… don’t tell that to anybody).
Gingerbread House by Bee in our Bonnet (guest blog on Eighteen25Blog)
3) The Sugarbelle (Callye) at “The sweet adventure of Sugarbelle” blog is one of the top divas of cookie decoration. Her work is inspiring in so many ways, far and beyond cookies. Beware she is out for some serious Worldwide Cookie Domination and she just might!
Her “Rustic Poinsettia Cookies” are out of this world.
Keep baking, decorating, sharing and enjoying your gingerbread cookies!!!
Merry Christmas!
We all know “Christmas†is around the corner and just ready to knock on our doors. I have been fascinated like many other craft junkies with the desire to never stop making Christmas ornaments. So this time I have a DIY to design your own Christmas ornament and give new look to your decoration or your tree. This is going to be a short, sweet and quick project for the whole family including the kids.
I wish this DIY Christmas ornaments may festoon your Christmas tree with joy and love.
Now let’s start cranking!!
#1: First choose your Christmas ornament design.
I know choosing is hard and even harder is the question of where to find these designs/patterns? Well I think I can help a little bit to get you started there. One of the easiest and most creative way is to draw a design/pattern by hand. Of course that ain’t easy and if you are like me then you would rather prefer a pre-made design or pattern . Who doesn’t love easy, premade, free stuff? I do!
There are numerous such resources on the internet. Check out few of the awesome resources listed below –
#2: Choose a Holiday/Christmas pattern fabric
You can buy this from your local favorite craft store or from stores like Joann. Below is one such pattern-
Simplicity Pattern 2723-Christmas Decorations-One Size.
#3: You would need a Pellon Iron-on-backing (Single Sided Fusible Ultra Firm Stabilizer) and you get it from your local craft store or from Joann.
#4: You would also need Satin ribbon.
#5: Lastly you would need a Scissor or Precision Knife. If you already have one then we all are set to start creating our DIY project.
Here are some of the Christmas ornament designs.
Christmas Ornament Designs
In the following image you can see all of my 5 items – Christmas Ornament Designs, Holiday themed fabric, Iron on backing, Scissor and Satin ribbon.
List of items for Christmas Ornament Design DIY
Step1: Apply Iron-on backing on the back side of the Holiday themed fabric to strengthen it.
Apply Iron-on backing
Check procedure of using pellon iron on backing  from the picture given below.
Instructions for how to use Pellon Iron-on backing?
Step2: Trace your designs on the Pellon iron-on backing i.e. on the back side of Holiday themed fabric. See ‘1’ below.
Now cut the fabric along the trace line with your scissor or precision fabric knife as shown in ‘2’ below.
You’re done cutting the design. Your ornaments are almost ready and will look like as shown in the image below.
Christmas Ornaments
Step3: Now we just need to thread the Satin ribbon through needle, then poke lightly with the fabric knife somewhere near the top of the ornament to make a small cut. Pass the satin ribbon through the cut and repeat the same for all other christmas ornaments.
You can hang the Christmas Ornaments garland around the Christmas tree or above your front door or porch or on any wall in your home.
You can also stick single ornaments any where in your home or even hang them on the Christmas tree.
The same above steps can be repeated for any ornament design. You can create single ornaments or a garland (kind of banner bunting) of Christmas ornaments.
Christmas Ornaments Garland
For your kids room the ornaments can be made with baby Christmas fabric designs & patterns.
For this DIY imagination is the limit to what you can create, depending on what theme you want to choose. I have few more DIY projects to share  that are related to this idea only and will be back soon to do that.
Happy Crafting till next time!
Hello dear friends I have a fun DIY to share. Holidays are all about celebrating life and thanking the people that matter in your life. There are different ways to express thanks, thank you notes, tags and thank you necklace is just one of them.
In this DIY (Do It Yourself) project I’m going to show how to create a beautiful flower tag with any message that your heart desire.
Step1)Â Material List for DIY thank you tag
Step2) Take your designer fabric strip, make sure the size is 4″ x 18″Â
Step3)Â Cut fabric strip straight with the rotary cutter.
Step4)Â Take needle and yarn for the running stitch [for me this was a difficult step because I couldn’t decide which yarn to use, which is obvious since my yarn box is a mess, I’m sure your’s is not :-)]
Step5)Â Connect corners of the fabric strip together with running stitch to make circle . Fold the strip and run stitches for gathers.
Step6)Â Pull thread from both the corners to pull gather in the middle and now you can see the flower shape. Tighten the knot then cut the extra thread.Â
Step7) Use Iron to press down the flower this will help to give flower a better shape .
Step8a) Now we will need a piece of sponge foam. Spread some fabric color of your choice smoothly on the foam. Tap on the color few times to smoothen the colored surface.
Step8b) Tap the “thank you” block/stamp on the sponge few times. Make sure your stamp is evenly dabbed in color.
Step9) Don’t forget to put your fabric or vinyl on hard surface before stamping
Step10) #1Â Draw a circle around your “thank you” stamp, with the help of compass.
Step10)Â #2Â Use super glue and stick the cut out in the centre of your flower.
 Step11) Tuck satin ribbon to the back side of the flower .
Step12) Show that you care and add personal touch to any gift with this “Thank You” tag. I used mine on a wine bottle as a gift.
I also used this flower gift tag with a necklace as shown below.
You can tuck the necklace to the flower tag with thread, needle and Jump ring.
A “thank you” Â tag is a fun and loving way to show your love, support, encouragement or gratitude for anybody whom is important in your life. So don’t wait, go ahead and create some fun tags.
Did you like this DIY? If you did please put few words or leave a comment. Even if you didn’t like this project, that’s cool too, still leave some suggestions.
Happy Holidays!
I have been struggling since last ten days – first I haven’t found any models for the handicraft items I created earlier last week. I had created brooches and hair-pins for young girls and couldn’t find anybody to model for that. The other issue is with the shiny and sparkly material that I used on the brooches and hairpins that I created. This material is very hard to photograph. It doesn’t come out well in the pictures. What is even more frustrating is that when I use images of kids and then add these brooches/hairpins on them the final image doesn’t come out well either. No matter how much of photoshopping I do on these images, they don’t seem right. The images of brooches/hairpins look good only when they are worn by a real person. Earlier I have used dolls to display the brooches/hairpins but the doll head is too small in comparison to the the hairpins and it makes the image look fake and odd.
Well what can I do? So today I decided to continue my work and blog without the baby model. However I did find a beautiful pet model “Snoop”. He looks really handsome in this snazzy Merry Christmas bandanna. Thanks to Linda and Sarah for letting Snoop model. Â In Snoop’s scarf I used plain fabric color instead of sparkly stuff and as you can see it has come out much better. I am going to continue to make the same stuff (scarves/brooches/hairpins) in other materials that is not so shiny and sparkly and see if I can avoid this problem.
I have few more things cooking related to the fun jewelry concept. I will put them on the blog as soon as I have some ready.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
Christmas is almost here and I am busy designing and working on artworks on the holiday theme. With that in mind, this morning I came across this desktop background which is so good and christmasy that I couldn’t help sharing this free Christmas gift with everybody. The credit for this well designed desktop background goes to Jaro Mlkvy from Slovakia and I came across it on Smashing Magazine (one of the best online web design magazine).After working on this project for last one week, now I have some better understanding of what I want and how to create these headbands and brooches for babies. Here are 3 more pictures but they are not yet done completely. If you think you would like to see some other designs please let me know by commenting on this blog post or connect with me on my Facebook page here.
So I finally designed two craft items today based on the idea that I had yesterday. I have to work on them a little more and refine the designs. I will create few more of these in the next couple of days. These can be designed as holiday headbands for little babies.
