Crafts Classes Starting

Stay tuned.  There will be many new craft classes, sewing, crochet and more. 

Dollhouse Remodel Progress

The sewing room has all the wallpaper stripped off the walls. It took a bit of elbow grease to get it all.

The hardest part was taking the bits of wallpaper along the floor. Before I wallpaper again, I plan on sanding the walls and smoothing out the slanted part of the corners with some wood inserts.

 The electrical tape will be marked on the floor with masking tape so it will be easier to install the outlets after wallpapering. 

Here is the wallpaper I found for the room (from www.billigerluxus.com). It is pretty floral pattern that will go with my shabby chic decorating plan. I am going to do a bit of editing to print it on legal size paper. 

But before prettiness can come, the windows need replacing. Time to go shopping again. 

The Start of My Dollhouse Renovation

There is finally enough room to bring my dollhouse out of storage after over 20 years of being neglected. It took quite a while to clean up after the squatters that lived in it. Those darn mice were not very neat or clean.

Here is a picture of it after the cleaning.  I have started stripping the wallpaper in what originally was going to be the baby's room. In this renovation, I decided it will be the sewing and crafting room. All the loose pieces of wallpaper have been removed.  This is what is left. 

The rest of the paper will get misted with water and then I will use my blow dryer to warm it up and steam it off. Wallpaper paste was used to glue the paper on way back in the early 80's.  Oops, showing my age. The wood floor will be staying, new windows are in order, and trim work. 

So stay tuned to see the progress made on my renovation. 

Add a touch of vintage looking lace to the outside

This week's project was to take a vintage doily pattern and create something that could be used outside. My inspiration came out of doily pattern book from 1956. The finished size of the doily following the pattern is 9". I used two strands of cotton string and a size H crochet hook. My finished doily size is 25".

This doily can withstand many washings, getting wet, the sun or anything Mother Nature can throw at it. It will make a pretty addition to your front porch. If you are interested in having this one of a kind doily, please email me. The selling price is $45.00.

Makoodle - A website for craft inspiration.

This morning in my Internet browsing for new craft ideas, I stumbled across "Makoodle". It is full of great craft ideas, recipes, printables and many other things.  The first thing that caught my eye was a Fourth of July decoration

 You need a jar, vase or bottle; red, white and black dried beans and just a little bit of time. The red and white beans get layered until the jar is 3/4 full and then top it off with the black beans. Voila, a flag in a bottle.

The second thing to save for next Valetine's Day is a printable for boy's cards to make candy bag labels. No more having to bring pink Valentine's cards to school and be embarrassed. Make sure you have a little bit of time and happy browsing on this site.

As always, please check out my Pinterest Boards for new pins.

Steampunk Backgrounds

I have found some vintage steampunk backgrounds that I will have the perfect project for (stay tuned for that project). The backgrounds will be printed out and cropped to the appropriate size that I will need.

 

Hands-Free Cross Stitch Chart Holder

Whenever I do cross stitch I can never find a convenient place to put the stitching chart without having to constantly be picking it up to look at it.  Then if you trying to look where the stitches go, the chart is forever slipping or in the way of the stitching.  Also, if you are holding the chart you do not have two hands to stitch.  It took just a little bit of thinking to come up with this useful addition to my cross stitching tools.

This was very simple to make, only a couple basic supplies.  I got a 6" x 9" clipboard from my nearby box store.  I opted for a plastic one so it would be easy to keep clean. It has a retractable hanging tab just above the clip.

The next thing you will need is a 6" long piece of wire that you can bend.  I bent it in half around a  dowel to get make a nice curve.  Then I held the wire with my jewelers pliers about 3" from the bend and twisted the wire together a few times. At the twist, I bent the wire to make a hook.  I made a rough curved shape to fit around my cross stitch frame dowel  Below is the finished product.

Once the hook was made, I put the wire up against my frame's dowel and pressed the wire around the dowel to make the curved shape.  Try to make the wire to fit snug around the dowel so it stays put.

Finally, I made copies of my pattern and thread color charts and folded them so they fit on the clip board.  I made two copies of the thread chart because it is two columns and folded each copy to show each column.

The stitch chart is on top on the clip board with the thread charts underneath.  I had one copy of the thread chart at first but if the color was in the second column, the chart was upside down to view it.  Finally, to help you keep track of what you stitched, I use colored pencils with similar colors to color in the squares of the chart that are done.

This has proven to be a very useful addition to my crafting tools.  Later on, I plan on designing a much nicer looking holder to replace the prototype.  Happy stitching.