There are 5 making days until christmas
I was saying to the lovely bee, pea and kylie yesterday that the stuff I love about a lot of the blogs I visit are the many and varied craft projects that people throw themselves into. Big-P likes to check out technical blogs all about code and hard drives and clever little apps whereas I like to see felt and knitting and magnets and glue and stuff. So in the style of the queen of craft, Megan, I bring you some crafty gals doing cool stuff:
I mentioned a while back that I had picked up a copy of Martha Stewart Kids and how happy this made me. One of the articles inside is a step by step guide to making sock dogs which I ooo-ed and ahh-ed at but dismissed as being too hard to even contemplate. But Anna has gone and done it! She has kindly put up some pics of her beautiful sock dog Pickleberry.
Next year I am going to attempt to make all gifts. This year I can barely even get organised enough to get my Christmas shopping done, let alone bundle it up and send it off in time to get to overseas relatives. One thing I must keep in mind is glass etching as explained by Isabelle. I would love to make an etched mirror for someone.
Erica impresses me no end with her pure energy for the craft project. I wished she lived in Melbourne so I could send her to that shop where I found Amelia’s christmas doll because it is loaded with felty goodness. Check out Erica’s stocking stuffed with funny dogs.
And because, in my opinion, felt is this season’s chenille (or corduroy or something!) I have to point you to ljc’s gift for her grandma.
Although Gayla doesn’t have a photo of it, the bag she made for her cousin sounds so completely fabulous. This entry makes me want to never buy another gift ever again. I think I am going to start making stuff in January in preparation for next year. Also, Gayla has an article on plant related gift projects up at You Grow Girl.
Totally unrelated, but if anyone is interested, here’s a link (courtesy of Erica–that’s where I found it!) that has some of the cutest felty creations, since felt is this season’s “It” craft fabric:
Great links, Claire!
O! I’m feeling woefully uncrafty now! Hugely impressed all the same!
Wow — thanks for all the great links, that will keep me amused for hours.
i made some ornaments this year for my Mum’s tree. i’d paint a walnut with gold paint, and then wrap narrow red ribbon around it so it looked like a bullsey (boiled lolly, you know?) and then let one end of the ribbon go free at the top as a tie. Then, on the bottom end i attached a small string of teardrop pearls.
It looked brilliant, even if i say so myself.
(Hope i explained it properly.)
Mmm, craft. I must say, it was really relaxing to make most of the presents this year. Yay for my unbearable enthusiasm!
Ooh, thank you for the links. I’m feeling like the tins of cookies I’ve been churning out just won’t cut it for next year!
wow, those are excellent links. i like the glass etching a lot… just a question: in the illustration of you on the sidebar there, what are you and your husband carrying? plastic bags of ice? sorry, i’ve been trying to figure it out and i can’t get it. i’m sure it’s something really simple, though.
Has anyone found an online source for the Kyrgyzstani dolls? I haven’t had much luck in my searches.
Heather, try looking here: http://www.eziba.com/
Search for “Kyrgyz”. They have some ornamental dolls that look very much like what Claire found, so perhaps contacting them might be useful…maybe they’re able to provide you with more information on the artisans. 🙂
Heather – the eziba link that Anna mentioned is the only thing I came up with aswell. I think the store where i bought the doll sells very similar ornaments to the ones on eziba so they might even be from the same group of artisans.
Heather: One of my local yarn stores has those dolls (including some in a kit where you can knit them some clothes). Their online store is not yet going but there’s some info on their site, maybe you can email them. The URL is http://www.ivyandmaude.com.au/
My wife has done glass etching before and it’s kind of stinky. Craft stores also sell a bake-on enamel which ends up looking like etching but without the stink. We used it to make “commemorative” take away champagne glasses for our wedding. It was cheap (about $3US per glass) and looked quite nice. We had a rubber stamp made of the text, mounted it on a board and rolled the glasses over it.
see here: http://plinth.org/wedding/wedding_scans/3-49-49.jpg
http://www.skinnyrabbit.com is Becky’s site (in Paris) about her knitting projects. Very inspiring!
What a nifty summer ’02 illustration!Here’s my knitting story. I really liked a certain Michael Kors knitted poncho, but I’m not about to shell out $500, so I decided to knit my own and it’s looking great!I found the pattern in a knitting dictionary book, I can scan my notes if anyone is interested…
By the way Claire, that ginger cake recipe you posted a while ago was really good, thanks for passing it on…
totally awesome!
thanks for all the crafty links-I, too, love to look at fun things that other people are making, and steal all their great ideas :o)
btw, I haven’t commented on this before, but Amelia is beautiful (and that means a lot coming from me, the auntie to 3 of the most beautiful nieces in the world!)