Friday 2 January 2015

Some things aren't perfect - a bit of French knitting whimsy



Little Imp was given a french knitter for Christmas. Not the sort I remember having as a kid, this one was big and plasticy, with twirling spools and other attachments.
Little Imp struggled with it all until we worked out that if she just used her hands instead of all the attachments she could knit all by herself. Just like kids did in the 'old days' (ha!).

I helped a bit, but after a bit of perseverance she had a tube we could turn into a cat - just like the one pictured on the cover of the box the knitter came in (well kind of!).


No instructions in the box for how to make said cat, but we muddled our way through, collecting all our ingredients from the craft box - pipe cleaners, felt triangles for ears, goggly eyes, stuffing and glue.

We stuffed the tube..

We tied off the top third to create the neck between the head and body...

We poked a (pink) pipe cleaner through the stuffing to create the upper legs/arms, and threaded a (blue) pipe cleaner through the base for the lower legs. I folded over a small section on all of the pipe cleaner ends to get rid of the sharp pointy bit. The blue legs we made quite a bit longer to help the cat sit up and balance (see pic further below).

Short sparkly pipe cleaners were threaded through on the face & twisted over and around each other for whiskers and the felt triangles were pinched in a bit to create an ear shaped curve and positioned with a liberal amount of glue.

The green pipe cleaner was twirled around a pencil for curly whirly-ness and looped in near the bottom to create a tail.

A stray green pom pom was located by Little Imp during my tail attaching and proclaimed to be required as a belly button (because all cats have to have belly buttons apparently).
Two googly eyes were glued in place where they belong...,

And the third eye you may have noticed in the 'ingredients' pile at the beginning? Well, apparently some cats also have an eye on the end of their tails!

Hello Whimsy Cat;)

Thursday 1 January 2015

Christmas Cards with paper bunting

I found these photographs today & have realised I never uploaded them - from 2013's Christmas. Some Paper Bunting Christmas cards I made all that time ago.  Quite a lot of work, but they do look good at the end of it all.

White A5 card folded in half with a Christmas print taped onto the front half. THe first ones I did like the photo below - the Christmas paper covering the whole front of the card with about a 1-2cm overhang onto the back over the folded edge - looks a bit more finished). I think the cards looked better though leaving a small border of white card showing all the way around (see below).

Then cut out an assortment of small 'bunting' triangles from coordinating Christmas printed papers, thread a needle with gold thread, tie a knot in one end ...

... and sew them all together, leaving gaps between each one to string them out across the card, allowing a bit of slack so it looks a bit more like they might be hanging up.

Tie off the other end of the thread too and then use double sided tape to stick the triangles at each end down (and in doing so hide the knots).

Stamp out some sort of Christmassy word (like 'Christmas' for instance!!)...

...and stick that on the front too. (The card below shows the design I prefer; where I left a small white border showing all the way around)

Add a little something to the back of the card for fun - here a small punched out tree and a left over triangle. All Done.