Ladybird Purse

Finally, I’ve gotten around to making something else from one of my craft books, as part of the Craft Book Challenge! Right on the last day of the month, even. (I should really start a bit earlier next month, shouldn’t I?!)

This month, I took the opportunity to pick up a cute wee craft book my lovely sister-in-law Krysha sent to me – Cute Stuff by Aranzi Aronzo. These guys make the cutest books ever – they’re written in a comic type format, with super-sweet images of animals, and it’s narrated by White Rabbit and Brown Bunny. Too cute for words! And yet, I’m ashamed to admit that this is the first thing I’ve made from the book. I’ve picked it up several times and loved looking through it, but it’s only now, with the Craft Book Challenge, that I’ve gotten around to making anything from it. Oh well, better late than never, right?! (One of these days I’m going to make myself the cute business card holder. Maybe that should be my June project….)

I choose to make a ladybird purse – it’s made of felt, with a zip in the back so you can use it as a wee purse for, well, whatever you want it to be, really!

It took me a bit longer than I expected to make, as I hand-stitched the spots and the eyes onto the ladybird, and my hand sewing isn’t the fastest (or the best). I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, though – I think it’s rather cute.

I’m going to be sending this to one of the 6 people I have left to make things for as part of my Pay It Forward 2011 craft pledge. Miss Ladybird will be winging her way to one of those people this weekend. Hopefully her new owner will like her as much as I do!

Fabric bound notebook

Back in February, I came across the Craft Book Challenge. Seemed like a brilliant idea to me – after all, I have lots of craft books lying around, and have made hardly anything from any of them! Several haven’t even been looked through completely. Pretty slack of me, right? After all, why buy craft books if you’re not going to use them?!? So I added my name to the list, and decided I’d make at least one thing from one of my craft books every month for the rest of the year.

Here’s my first creation as part of the Craft Book Challenge – a fabric covered notebook. The tutorial for this came from issue number 7 of World Sweet World magazine. I’ve got about 5 of these magazines (which sadly are no longer being produced), and although they are full of lovely, crafty, creative goodness and tutorials put together by local craftsters, I still haven’t gotten around to making anything from them. (I have bookmarked a few tutorials though. Does that count? Not really.)

This tutorial involved creating a notebook out of sheets of paper, fabric scraps, embroidery floss and glue. It uses a Chinese book-binding technique which I hadn’t come across before, but am now in love with and will use quite a bit more in the future! I think these notebooks will be a great little go-to project for gifts for people – they’re super cute, can be personalised in so many different ways, and are fast and fun to make. (Although I will need to get myself an awl. I had to make the holes in this one using a darning needle, which took a while longer than it should have.)

(While it looks a bit wonky in the photo, I’d like to reassure everyone, myself included, that it’s actually nice and rectangular and it was just something about the camera angle that didn’t want to play nicely for this photo.)

About my only real issue with this notebook is the fabric choice – it’s quite a loose weave, and when you combine that with stripes, those stripes are never going to look straight. Or I’ve never been able to get them to, anyway! If I make another striped one, I think I’ll have to play around with them either going vertically or diagonally – there’s just a bit too much room for things to look a little wonky if you use horizontal stripes.

One other thing I’ve decided to do with the Craft Book Challenge is to tie it in to my Pay It Forward 2011 plan. Since I did one of these via Facebook and another (smaller) one via my blog, I’ve got seven people to make things for this year. Making surprise gifts for people using my craft books seems like a good combination of things to do.

So this little notebook is my first Pay It Forward gift. I’m gonna wrap it up all pretty and give it to my lovely friend Teresa next time I see her, so she can keep all of her thoughts and ideas and shopping lists and all that sort of stuff in it. (I do like giving gifts. So much fun!)