Adventures in doily ball making

Have you heard of Pinterest yet? It's becoming the most talked about site on blogs lately. It basically organizes all those bookmarks you have saved into a visual pin board. You can categorize them all into different sections. It's highly addictive. I have pinned 560 items so far. Wow. I'm impressed with myself. :)

Anyway. In my early pinnings, I came across this amazing DIY for a doily ball. I was determined to replicate it. I started collecting doilies from Etsy, eBay & my mom got a few for me in Germany. If you're thinking of making one of your own, I have a few tips for you.

• Make sure the doilies you use are thin and light.
This makes them adhere better - all that glue really makes them heavy and you'll be cursing the laws of gravity when they start dropping like flies.

• Use the right glue to avoid hours of frustration.
Plain old regular wallpaper paste works best. I didn't realize that there were so many different types of wallpaper paste. I made the mistake of buying "activator" wallpaper paste. Which is not the same- this stuff is for hanging wallpaper that has been pre-pasted and simply activates the glue. My doilies adhered ok to the balloon, but they didn't dry hard.
I wasn't able to find regular wallpaper paste here in a small quantity, so I had to improvise. I found some fabric stiffener at my local craft store and used that with the activator. The kind I used was called 'stiffy' you can buy it here. It worked, but because I had to use a lot of glue to get them to stick, there was some glue residue that dried in the doily "windows" that I had to poke out.

• Buy more doilies than you think you'll need
During my first try, I ran out of doilies and had to buy more. In the mean time, my balloon started to deflate and (because I used the wrong type of glue) the doilies fell off.

So here's my finished result! It ended up being 4 feet in circumference (though I wish I had made it even larger) and weighing just under a pound. Since I did it in sections, (top part of the balloon first) it took a total of 3 days to complete. For the underside, it was a lot easier to cut it down and turn it upside down resting in a bowl to complete the bottom. I waited an extra day just to make sure it was completely dry and hard before I popped the balloon.
















































I would love to hear if you have tried making one of these too! Oh, and you can follow my Pinterest pins here. :)

Festive felt bow DIY tutorial

So here's my very first DIY tutorial! :)
Tutorials are what I love most about blogs, especially when that tutorial is crafty in nature. I saw some felt bows like this a while back on a blog, but they didn't have a tutorial on how to make them, I think they bought them somewhere & didn't make them themselves. It looked simple enough to give it a try myself.

The directions for this bow will measure approximately 3" by 1". Feel free to tweak my measurements to get the size you want. I found that I should have made the second, bottom part a tad longer to accommodate the barrette so that I had plenty of room to glue it with the glue gun.

I found that my trusty Fiskars rotary paper trimmer worked better (as far as precision cuts) than a fabric rotary cutter and ruler. But if that's all you have, it will work just fine, just go slow and don't use too much pressure or your felt can slide around.


First, here are the supplies you'll need:

-Good quality felt (I got mine on Etsy from Giant Dwarf- so many delicious colors!) One 9x12 piece of felt is enough to make about nine bows.
-Sharp scissors
-Rotary paper trimmer or rotary fabric cutter
-Ruler
-Fabri-Tac or any fabric glue
-28 gauge craft wire
-French style barrettes (mine are 2 1/4 long )
-Glue gun & sticks


















Start by cutting your felt to the following dimensions, you'll need three pieces of felt to make one bow:
3 1/4" x 1" (the bottom ribbon part, cut both ends, see a tip below*)
5" x 1"(find the center and fold the ends toward it, glue the ends down with fabric glue. This is the loopy ribbon part)
3/8" x 2" (the middle part of the bow)

*A quick tip for cutting perfect ribbon ends-- simply fold the end of your felt in half lengthwise, cut a 1/2 inch slit (I made a pencil mark on my scissors where 1/2" was). Then take the ending of your cut and cut directly diagonal to each end tip.



















Pinch the middle part of your loop to coax it into a pleasing bow pucker. This will help you get perfect little bow dimples. Cut a piece of wire & loop it around both pieces (the loopy part on top & the ribbon part underneath) with the ends of the wire under. Start twisting until your desired tautness. Cut the wire off & fold it down. You don't want a huge piece of wire here, keep it fairly short.


















Loop your 3/8" x 2" piece around & under the barrette spring. Keep it taut & secure with fabric glue. Finally, use your glue gun to secure the ends of the barrette to the bow.

And you're done!

DIY Faux Capiz Shell Chandelier

I've always liked the look of capiz shell chandeliers. I wanted one for my office/craft room.

Isn't it lovely? Plus, when there's a breeze, it makes a wonderful little tinkling noise like a delicate wind chime.

Unfortunately, they're very, very expensive.

I wanted to see if I could re-create it with things I already had around my house. Apparently, other people have thought the same thing! I saw this fun DIY tutorial a few months ago and wanted to re-create it for my craft room. The only problem was that I don't own a sewing machine. Plus, this tutorial is for a standing lamp and I wanted it to hang from the ceiling.

To begin with, my ceiling sconce isn't much to look at. I thought I could cover it with a bunch of strands of faux capiz shells and also have some hanging from it somehow.




The tutorial mentions using an old lampshade to make the circles. I didn't have one, so I decided to use plastic cups! They were something I already had in the pantry and sort of had the same look as a capiz shell. I punched out what seemed like a billion circles (non-ribbed white plastic cups work best for punching out the most circles) Instead of sewing the circles together, (which I think would have torn them in half) I opted to using a needle and white thread and with one stitch on top and one on the bottom, I was able to string them together into strands. This part took forever! If I were to do it again, I would try to find out a quicker way. The only kind of tape for sticking them on to the sconce that worked was masking tape, since the heat from the bulbs made other tapes peel off. This isn't the prettiest tape, and it's clearly visible in some areas. I had more strands up previously, but they fell because of the heat from the bulbs.

Here's the end result! What do you think?

New stuff in my shop!

Just listed two new things in my shop!


A simple DIY garland kit




























& a Welcome banner, great for decoration in a door way