thimbly things

As promised, here’s the tutorial for making magnets that are oh so pretty. I think so, anyway. ;)

First, gather your materials:

• magnets (I used what I already had: half-inch round typewriter key magnets. They’re pretty strong.)
• buttons
• various floral bits: preferably old and used (I had some crocheted flowers hanging around from a garland I made last year and some woven flowers from a yardsale find. Use whatever you have!)
• needle, thread, scissors
• hot glue & glue gun (I use a low temperature glue gun so I don’t have to say ugly words during my happy crafting time.)

1. Arrange your buttons and flowers in a pleasing fashion. If you like what you see, then thread your needle!

2. Sew or glue buttons to flowers. Most of my crocheted flowers had large holes in their centers. For these, I put glue on the front of the flower around the edge of the hole and then quickly attached the button. I added thread to some buttons even if they weren’t being sewn to anything. For appearances. (Please excuse my sad cuticles. That’s what too much crochet and not enough hand lotion will get you, Dear Readers.)

3. Knot the thread together at the back. Doesn’t have to be fancy.

4. Now put lots of glue on the magnet and quickly quickly quickly press flower to magnet. Quickly.

5. Let cool. Stick on fridge. Admire.

Congratulations! You fancified your fridge! Wasn’t that like the easiest thing you’ve ever done? ;)

Also try gluing your favorite buttons to magnets or adding some sparkle and shine with beads! :)

EDIT: Cheryl’s Fancified Magnet Tutorial is also up.  Take a look!

She covered all her random magnets in the same fabric to pull them together.  Great idea, huh?

Also, she used the same pretty fabric for this stretched canvas, which is quite beautiful too. :)

Doesn’t that sound nice and dramatic? :)

So Emily’s crayons were getting a little crazy.  They were chewed, broken, and generally kinda gross.  And hazardous to our newly-mobile Jacob.  And hazardous to our walls.  I mean all it takes is one little bit of overlooked crayon left on the floor, and the living room walls are a pre-pre-K art project.

Somewhere on someone’s blog a long, long time ago, I saw pretty little crayon cakes made by melting crayons in a muffin tin.  So I searched the Internets and found that there are only about a gazillion different directions for this project.  So I’m gonna tell you what I did using the materials I had on hand.

Supplies:

• broken crayons
• mini-muffin tin
• cooking oil
• cooling rack
• oven :)

Directions:

1. Peel paper off crayons (if your child hasn’t already), and break each crayon into about 4 pieces.
2. Separate by color or however you wish into greased muffin tin.  I think it would be fun to experiment with color here, but I separated the Roy G. Bivs, browns, and then all the leftover neutrals (black, white, and greys).  Oh, and don’t overfill the vessels.
3. Heat oven to 275 degrees.  You can probably stick the pan in anytime before the oven is fully heated.
4. Monitor crayons carefully.  Mine took about 12 minutes to melt.
5. Carefully remove and place pan on cooling rack (keep pan as level as possible).
6. After the crayons have hardened, flip over pan and tap on each vessel to release crayons.  I was surprised by how easily they came out.  But I did use something large and metal to “tap” on the pan.
7. Voila!  Go color something.

First off, I just want to say I was overwhelmed by your response to the hat I made.  Really.  I rarely get any traffic here on the weekends.  So y’all made my day. :)  (Yes.  Eight comments in one day overwhelms me!  Particularly since I wasn’t giving anything away.)

So I made this little dealio (a brooch), and I thought you might like to see how.  It’s not anything huge, but I thought it would be a good way to flex my tutorial-making muscle.  Straight from my beloved notebook, here’s my First Official Tutorial.  Hope you can read my handwriting. ;)

Yep, silliness all around.  But I can’t help myself.

Two things to know: 1- I used 1 1/2 inch wide satin ribbon.  2- I hot-glued a brooch pin to the back when I was done.  This could be sewn directly onto a garment, but washing said garment would then be problematic.

Oh, and the Fray Check step could actually come after step 1.  You decide. ;)

Next up, I’m planning to repurpose some lace from an old shirt to make a pretty bag for this brooch.  I also like it on a simple black top.