tutorial - baby food jar pincushion

Finally! After so many months of procrastination I managed to finish this tutorial and share it. A few of you were begging to hurry up and post this tutorial already, sorry about the delay ladies.

OK, let's go directly to work. For this pincushion your will need...

Any size baby food jar (empty and clean of course. I like the tiny ones), glue gun, thread and needle, poly fill (that is how is called, right?) or fluffy pillow stuff, a piece of fabric cut in a 5" diameter circle and some ribbon (enough to cover around the jar lid).


Make a knot at the end of your thread and needle so it does not come off the fabric. Take needle and tread and sew around your fabric circle over the edge, DO NOT finish off. Use a simple stitch because you will be pulling the thread to close the circle. While you do this your glue gun should be getting hot and ready to use.


Place the handful of fluffy pillow stuffing in the middle of your fabric and gather by pulling your thread with the needle.



Use you hand to squish the fabric and stuffing to give it some shape and to continue sewing around.


Secure with a knot, and finish off. Cut your thread and the top of your pincushion should look like this.


This is how you will place the pincushion over the jar lid (please ignore that pink thread coming out from under the lid).


With your glue gun ready, pour enough glue on top of the lid. Be careful because the lid gets hot (I know, my poor glue gun looks disgusting. I will get a new one, I promise)


Immediately after you put some glue on your lid, place the pincushion on top (stitched part down)and press firmly to glue it to the lid. Keep pressing until the hot glue has cooled down and the pincushion stays on there neatly.


This is how the jar and lid should look after gluing the pincushion part.


To conceal the messy part of the pincushion and lid, we are going to glue some ribbon around the lid. Use a wide enough ribbon so it covers part of the lid and part of the pincushion edge too. Work this part little by little to make a neat finish and be careful with the hot glue.



Glue all the way around the lid, secure and cut the excess ribbon.


Voilà! Our pincushion is finished :)


I hope you enjoy this tutorial. If you have any questions or there are some typing mistakes, please let me know.
Thanks for stopping by!

stamp carving books and tutorials

Hello everybody! I am sorry I have been away for so long, I am totally swamped with work at my etsy shop and there is just not enough time for blogging more often. Tonight I had to take a break and stop by to say hi to all the wonderful visitors of my blog. I am very thankful for all the nice comments I receive from all of you, that is what keeps me going.

I also have been getting a lot of questions concerning my hand carved stamps. I wish I could answer every e-mail I receive, many of them asking about techniques, material, design and all the process involved in this fun craft. But because I get almost the same questions dozens of times it would be really hard for me to answer each one of them individually, besides there is just not time (sigh). I think I promised (way) long time ago to create and post a stamp carving tutorial for all of those interested in making their own rubber stamps, but after searching the Internet I found so many good ones that I decided to post the links for everybody right here.

I thought too that it would be useful to show you some of the books that I use for inspiration and techniques as well, but the truth is that all what it takes is practice and imagination. After that, you will come up with your own techniques and find the materials and tools that you feel work better for you.

OK, I will start with the books...

This is my small collection of books and you can purchase them at www.yesasia.com which I prefer over all the sites that sell Japanese crafting books (they give you free shipping if you buy more than 25.oo usd in some items)


From left to right and top to bottom: ISBN 9784479920014; ISBN 9784309280400; ISBN 9784529043397
NOTE: just type the ISBN in the search window at yesasia.com to find each book.


A couple more books and from left to right: ISBN 9784834727098; ISBN 9784277430654

The last two from my collection: ISBN 4834723542; ISBN 4391129914 (this last one was a gift from my flickr friend Yvonne)

And a couple shots of the inside pages...



Now some interesting and REALLY good tutorials...

Alma Stoller has a really nice and very original tutorial here at her blog-> LINK

I found this one at Kucachoo Crafts where they use the tools that I started with to carve my first wee stamps.-> LINK

Super talented Holly McGuire from two cheese please has a very good tutorial right here, she uses different tools and materials-> LINK

FranOnTheEdge has a very well illustrated stamp carving tutorial and gives several stamping techniques-> LINK

Junie Moon uses some of the same tools I use right now -> LINK

I love Carolyn Hasenfratz tutorial, this was the tutorial I first found when I just started carving stamps and it was very helpful to me in order to learn how to use the tools. The illustrations, material list, tips and instructions are wonderful -> LINK

RUBBER STAMP CARVING TIPS by Kirbert was one of the first tutorials I used too -> LINK

This Rubber stamp carving tutorial by Vonvonz is super cute and very well illustrated -> LINK

There are many, many more stamp carving tutorials by very talented people. I will keep posting the links and any other nice books. If you have any questions or you find a mistake on this post (ISBN or links) please let me know by adding a comment to this post.

house free embroidery pattern

Hello everybody!

I have to tell you that I have been terribly sick again. This cold just does not want to go away! These last days I could not even speak, I lost my voice and I was feeling really ill (nausea and everything). I had a lot of stamps to finish and ship and this is the first time I felt with not energy to make stamps, so I had to force myself to take a rest and that is what I did yesterday afternoon.

But because I am an obsessive and compulsive crafter I just could not let go, and my embroidery basket (which has been abandoned by my TV chair) kept "looking" at me in a persuasive way and I could not resist grabbing the basket and seeing what was inside. Well, needles to say, I started (and finish!) a little embroidery design, I even drew the pattern to share it with you. Hope you like it, you can see that the colors that I chose are kind of dull and not very happy, but I guess it was because I was not feeling well.



For directions about how to transfer your pattern visit Floresita’s blog here
click on image to get pattern

new year, new banner

I have made plenty of resolutions for this year. Although sometimes I still don't know what path I will be taking in life, I think I am getting to know myself a little bit better. That makes it easy to picture myself in the future.

New Etsy shop Avatar

But in any case, as you can see I have a new banner. Occasionally I need some change to feel renewed from time to time. I have been thinking on a new haircut too, I used to change hair styles very often (and dramatic changes too). I have been longing a cute short hair style for long time... maybe one of these days. But that is who I am; I like change, but the kind of change that is obvious. It gives it a new atmosphere and sensation to the everyday life.

OK, I just wanted to share with all my visitors my new banner and hopefully it gives to my blog a fresh image. I leave you with a LINK that I posted last year (when I had no visitors :() Check it out, it is a very nice Japanese website that shows how you can make nice children bags from old children clothes. Love those sites :)

LINK: Kid's Remake Bag

Christmas is close!

I am so excited about Christmas getting close since we will have more family with us this year. I am really looking forward for this season and I have not even started the shopping. Well, I am not worry about it very much since we get things for each other during the year so it is difficult to think about presents by this time of the year.
Anyway, just wanted to show some new stamps for this season and tags that I made. Friends and visitors have been asking about how they can make their own tags, round and square, because they can not find in their area. So I will post a tutorial and tips very soon so you can make your own tags, it is very easy and you only need to invest a little bit of money and time.
OK, here are some pictures and you can find all these goodies at my Etsy Shop

patchwork sewing basket tutorial

OK, so here is the promised tutorial I have been working on for long time. I started this project a while ago and finally I made some time to finish it and take pictures.

I will show step by step how to make a pretty patchwork lid for a basket. You can use it to put your sewing supplies inside, crochet, crafts or whatever you are working on. My Child uses one just like this as a pretend picnic basket.

I got inspired by one of those Japanese zakka style crafty websites that have very weird signs and fonts. I saw a basket similar to this one while surfing those sites and I liked it, so I decided to make one for myself and share the process with you. I hope you enjoy it.

First you will need...
a basket, any type but small. There are different types, with handles or without them . The one I chose has one handle and it works pretty good. I could not decided if I wanted the square one so I thought I will make that for later.

Materials and tools: sewing machine, scraps of fabric, light weight batting, leather cord (or ribbon or jute), trim like rick-rack or lace, one wooden button (plastic or metal if you like too), a piece of heavy cardboard (big enough to make the top of the basket), white poster board, glue gun and glue sticks, scissors, a card box cutter, one upholstery needle or big embroidery needle, pencil, pen and tool pliers.

First place the chosen basket up side down and trace the opening of it on the cardboard. Cut it and use the cardboard shape to trace onto the poster board like in the picture, cut it too.

Place the batting on a flat surface and cut a piece that is slightly larger than the cardboard top.

Now take your fabric scraps and trim and make a pretty patchwork piece. Iron it and place it under your cardboard top. Cut your patchwork around and about 1" (inch) larger than the cardboard piece. You are going to "glue gun upholster" :)

Place the patchwork piece under (wrong side up), the batting and then the cardboard. Glue the fabric around the edges pulling slightly towards the center of the cardboard so it gives it a nice stretch to the fabric (almost like upholstering). Don't worry if it looks messy, we are covering the center in a bit. Just make sure the exposed edge looks neat.

This is how your glue gun upholstered cardboard should look, cute uh?

Now cut a piece of fabric that is larger around the piece of poster board and follow the same process as with the cardboard but just don't use batting here. This is the piece that will conceal the back side of the cardboard top for the basket. Now both pieces are covered and neat looking.

Take both covered pieced and hot glue one with another with the wrong sides together. Now your basket lid is finished.

Here is how it looks. Next, determine where you want to open it from and hand sew a button close to the edge on the patchwork side of the lid.

Cut a piece of leather cord, ribbon or jute and slide the two ends through some of the open spaces of your basket. Just make sure the cord is long enough because this will be the loop to fasten the button. Place the lid on your basket and adjust the cord so it is easy to wrap around the button.

Take the lid off and knot the ends of the cord from the inside of the basket, cut off the ends if is too long.

Place the lid on top of the basket again and with a pencil mark two points, those marks are for the "hinges" of the lid. Use the upholstery or big embroidery needle to pierce a whole throught out the lid and use the same needle to pass a long piece of cord too, use the pliers to pull the needle if it gets difficult. Do the same with the second mark.


The first picture shows how the lid should look with the two long pieces of cord.
Next pass one end of each piece of leather cord through some spaces of the basket like the second picture shows.

Line up the edge of the lid and the edge of the basket and make knots the cord to secure the lid, don't pull the cord too tight, just enough to keep the lid lined with the basket and easy to open and close; cut off any excess.

Close the lid and this is the way the hinges should look.

NOW...

Your basket is done! Now you can put that WIP inside your pretty basket and take it anywhere! My daughter love it and thought that it will make a pretty pretend picnic basket for herself; that is actually a great idea for a little girl too!

I hope you all enjoy this project and show yours if you make one please :)

finally! :)

Hello to all my blog visitors! I missed very much to post something for you on my blog, I have been really busy lately but I could not wait anymore to show you a preview of my next tutorial. I got all the pictures edited and it is just a matter of adding the directions to the final project. Here are some pictures so you start gathering some scraps of fabric from your stash.


This was a fun project and very fast one too, no complicated at all.


I saw a basket like this one long time ago while sneaking into one of those cozy Japanese craft websites. I liked it so much that the image got well recorded in my brain like a picture :). I think I bookmarked the site but after two computer crashes I lost it, pictures and everything (my hubby is really good recovering data when crashes happen, but that time it was out of his hands) :(

Anyway, I will be posting tonight all the photos and steps that take to make this pretty zakka style sewing basket. Be tuned!

hello!

WOW! Eight days without posting on my poor and abandoned blog. I know , I know, I have to get that promised tutorial in here. Soon I promise :)
Well, has been a long and busy week, I have been carving stamps like crazy! My child loves them and I making a set for her too. I am having a good time selling them at my etsy shop CRAFTPUDDING too and I am coming up with new designs that I will be listing there. I will add some sets of 4 with different designs so people can mix and match.

Continuing with the stamps, a few days ago I listed on my shop this stamp set which includes a stamp with your etsy shop name, website or any title you want, a stamp with a cute design or your own logo, and a tiny stamp to decorate the rest. I made one set for myself and this is how it looks...I am using this set for my mailings, labels, cards, tags and anything that needs my etsy shop title.

Anyway, enough with the stamps! :) I have so many projects waiting for me to be finished but it is so upsetting that time is short and the days go by so fast. Some of those projects include a couple fall jackets for my child, and a couple uniforms for school (I got a nice dressy fabric for those), a linen patchwork scarf and a set of crochet mittens and winter hat. I want to add some cute bags to my etsy and a sewing pattern (with pictures and everything) *sigh* So much to do and not enough time.
OH! I almost forgot to show these wristlets that I made as a special order. They look really nice in person and I am sure that the person that order them is going to love them. This was a fabric I had left and I love it. Here they are...

OK, I promise next post is about a new tutorial, so keep coming :)
Thanks!