Braided Hemp Bracelet

Inspired by all the awesome hemp bracelets I've seen floating around on Pinterest, I decided to try my luck and make one of my own.

I already had some wood beads laying around and some hemp from a previous project.

I started with 2 strands of hemp folded in half, and knotted at the loop, which left me with 4 strands. I clipped off the fourth and began braiding. Once I was satisfied with the length, I made a knot and began stringing some wooden beads.

I added 9 beads, knotted again and resumed braiding until I was satisfied with the length. I made another knot, stringed through and button and closed it with the final knot.

And voila! I had a bracelet. :)

Star Wars Themed Apron

For a friend's birthday, I really wanted to make her a homemade gift. So after brainstorming a bit, I came up with the idea of making a Star Wars themed apron! I searched online for some licensed Star Wars fabric and I found the most perfect pattern at Jo Ann's.

I used this super cute sweetheart apron pattern from the Etsy seller prettylittlepearl that I had purchased a while ago.

Here is a photo of the work in progress:

The apron on the left was more of a "lesson's learned" project. I'm still a noob when it comes to sewing and I didn't want to screw up with the pretty Star Wars fabric.

And here's me trying on the final work:

It's the first sewing project I've finished in a while. I have just enough leftover fabric, maybe I'll make one for myself. :)

One too many craft books...

I own several dozen craft books with more on the way.  The sad part is only a small handful of them have I actually used! *face palm* So, I've decided as motivation to get around to producing projects from these books I'll challenge myself by writing a blog review for each one. There's one condition prior to writing the review: I gotta finish a project in the book first!

I have a ton of Japanese craft books and sometimes it's hard to find reviews on some of the titles, so I'll probably start with those books first. I'll start with the small goal of one book review a  month and hopefully bump that up to at least 2 a month.

Anywho, I finished an amigurumi project recently:

She's Angel Salvia from the anime Wedding Peach.  I haven't really watched the anime myself; she was a request from my cousin. 

In addition to that, I finished an amigurumi elephant for a craft swap I'm in: 

His pattern came from Ana Paula's first amigurumi book, Seriously Cute Crochet.  This is a good book to get started with making your own amigurumi animals. *smile*

Plushies and more...

I haven't been extremely productive as far as crafting is concerned, but I've recently finished two craft swaps on craftster and I figured I should show off my creations here. (There's really not much to show off.)

First up is a chibi, clay charm version of Mass Effect 2's Miranda Lawson. I made her using Premo polymer clay, acrylic paint and Sculpey glaze.

Next we have a plush version of Miranda.  I made her using BabyLondonStar's famous plushie pattern.  This is the first time I've used the pattern and it's the second humanoid plushie I've made. I'm improving... 

Here's a group image of the plushie, charm and a N7 necklace I made. The necklace was made using a glass pendant, some Mod Podge and Diamond Glaze.

Finally, the second plushie I made is of Otoha from the anime Karas. He's an improvement over Miranda, but I screwed up his feet. :(  Unlike Miranda, he's 100% machine sewn (well, except for connecting his head to his body). I wish I was better at clothing making as well. He would look much more like the character he is inspired by if I had made added a sports jacket of sorts. :/

The next plush I make will probably be a Sailor Moon character. :)

More Sailor Moon Amigurumi: Sailor Mercury

Well I've finally found time to crochet another Sailor Scout. This time I give you Sailor Mercury:

Isn't she cute? :) I'll probably take a break from crocheting for a bit to work on some clay related projects.

Mwahahaha...Vampire Toast!

I made my first plushie!!! Yay me! I'm so proud of myself. :D

It's for the Weird Stuffie Swap on Craftster. Two of the themes my partner listed were vampires and food, so I combined the two and got this:

I think they're freakin' cute! XD And now with that done I have more confidence to make more plushies. I really want to make an anime-styled plushie of my D&D character and eventually make plushies of the entire party. :)

In other news, I've be crocheting A LOT lately. I'm working on making Sailor Moon amigurumi dolls. :) I've been trying to cipher and translate a Sailor Moon pattern posted at the Sailor Moon Obsession blog and I've just about got it done. I'll post WIP pictures later. I'm also working on a smaller Sailor Moon amigurumi project for another craft swap I'm in. I'm making Sailor Saturn. It's coming out well. I can't wait to add hair.

So what do you think? :)

UPDATE

I added hair last night/in the wee hours of the morning.

Getting cuter! XD Thinking about making her staff with polymer clay.

Crafting Mama!

Aaaaah! Craftster has a new challenge next month: Pixelate Mama


(image from thread)

The goal of next month's challenge is to create a pixelate project featuring Cooking (Crafting) Mama!

My brain is churning with ideas right now. I will most likely use fabrics and sewing as my medium. Hopefully, the finished project will come out half as good as what I'm envisioning. :)

Ambitious much?

Okay.

It is most unfortunate. Despite the size of my ever growing craft book collection, I've not one craft to show for it. This fact is very discouraging and has prompt me to create a goal of sorts: At least one completed project a week.

Simple enough, no?

I think so. This week I shall start with a small amigurumi project, a really cute and free Onigiri couple pattern curtsy of HandmadeKitty. I've actually almost completed one save sewing on the details, and I've got two more in the works. Maybe I can complete each project before Monday. We shall see!

If I some how pull this off by Monday, I shall complete a bunka doll next. My book came in today. :3 It's full of pretty pictures and one full pattern. It really sucks that I cannot understand a single word, but fortunately (as with most Japanese craft books), following the instructions is pretty straight forward. :D

(If you would like to create a bunka doll of your own, but you're unable to find a copy of this book, here's a really good tutorial at Three-Fourths.)

Well anywho, wish me luck!

EDIT:

Hmmmm...I almost forgot. I ordered some polymer clay tools this past week. Should they arrive by Wednesday, let's add the goal of making at least one piece of miniature food in polymer clay. :D

*sigh* I'm hopelessly addicted to Japanese craft books!

They're much more interesting than most American ones I come across. Unfortunately, just when I think I'm satified with my current collection, I always find more that I fall in love with. :-(

Recently, I've taken a great interest in doll making. What sparked this interest was me stumbling upon Bunka dolls. Extremely cute cloth dolls.

I found a pretty good tutorial on making the dolls. But, that wasn't enough for me. I searched around and found this book:



It's currently in route from Japan to my house, and I eagerly await it's arrival. Anyways, after discovering Bunka dolls, I decided to look more into Japanese handmade dolls and I found all kinds of adorable dolls to make. My searches eventually led me to ball jointed dolls. So while searching for a great book to get started on the topic, I found this guy:



From what I read, it's one of the best on the subject. I purchased a copy on Hobby Link Japan. (This seems to be a good site to purchase reasonably priced doll books.) I also got really lucky and found a translation available for the book. :-D

I'm currently on a quest to get ahold of two Japanese hemp books from the publisher Ondori. The one I REALLY want is Hemp Strings and Stones:



Unfortunately, the one place that had a copy is now sold out! :-( I requested for two people to search to see if they can find it in Japan, so hopefully one will have luck! :-)

I hope once my quest for the two hemp books end, I will then be content with my current collection of craft books. I have dozens and I've no finished projects to show for it. :-(

I blame my poor time management skills for that one, >:-( but I do hope to do better. A finished craft a week would be a nice goal. :-P

I'll be sure to post reviews on the books once they arrive and I've finished one project!

Retro Sprite Art with Perler Beads

I finally found a craft project that I can finish easily in one sitting: 8-bit sprite art using perler beads.

I was inspired Friday when I stumbled across a post from Geek Crafts' blog, 10 Awesomely Geeky Perler Beads Crafts. Since then, I think I have become addicted to these awesomely geeky creations. XD

Fortunately, there's many classic sprites available online. Two websites that I found particularly useful were http://www.videogamesprites.net/ and http://www.spriters-resource.com/.

To help visualize where to put beads in the board, I used gimp. I just opened up my image and zoomed in about 2000%. It sucks that grid lines aren't available, but the enlarged image was enough to get the job done.

So far I've made two Mario's, a question block (from Super Mario Bros.), Kirby and Lakitu. I hope to make a project with Phoenix Wright and Domo-kun, but I need to get a larger perler bead board. :)

Here's a few more pictures of my little creations:

Pink Mario. He's so cute. :)

Finished hunger Kirby