Be a thrifty crafter :0)

Hey guys!

Today I thought I would post some of my best tips for stocking up on your craft materials while keeping the cost very low :)

You may already know/follow some of these tips but if you don't hopefully it will help you to enrich your craft box and save you money!

Here they are, my top tips!:

1. Ribbon can be very expensive to buy especially thick luxurious satin ribbon or patterned stuff. However if you keep your eyes open and take a look at some things before you throw them out you may find it on more things than you would imagine! e.g chocolate boxes, cards, gift wrapping, and even around boxes of bubble bath sets or Christmas cake boxes! So keep your peepers peeled and you'll soon find your ribbon stash building up (you can sometimes find buttons or beads in these places too!). This is just some of the ribbon I have collected:

2. If you are getting rid of clothes (and they are not going to the charity shop) make sure to cut off the buttons! This is something so easily forgotten but if you remember you can find yourself with a full set of buttons ready to be used in a project :) Also if the clothes are made of some interesting fabric cut out a large square or two and keep it. Then you will have some beautiful fabric to make a dress for your next amigurumi creation, for example. Without costing you a penny!

3. Get a large jar or tub and store all of your yarn tails from your projects in it as there are tonnes of uses for these scraps. Firstly you can tie them all together (leaving short lengths of the tied yarns sticking out at the knots) to create your own rainbow coloured furry novelty yarn. Secondly you can stuff toys etc... with them. Yarn scraps are great for stuffing toys as they won't cause lumps in toys unlike some kinds of stuffing and they make toys really soft and squidy, thats what I used to stuff my Red Nose Day monster :) You can also use them to make cool rainbow pom-poms! Again without costing you anything.

I keep all my scraps in an old sweet jar:

4. Collect up birthday, Christmas and celebration cards as you can cut sections of them out to make pretty and unique labels for your handmade items! Here is my collection of cards:

5. My final tip is ASK YOUR FAMILY (or drop hints about saving you their craft stuff if you don't feel cheeky enough to ask :). Ask your mum, dad, brother, auntie, nan, grandad, Anyone! to save up any old buttons or beads or ribbon they find lying around and ask them (politely! :0) if you can have the stuff. You could even make them a little thank you gift from some of the stuff they give you. A while back my auntie gave me a load of buttons and my nan gave me lots of embroidery thread, all of which has come in very useful.

I'm pretty sure that that is all :) I hope this post has been even the littlest bit helpful.

Happy crafting,

Bye :D



Yarn, *Tick*, Needles, *Tick*... Woo, Im ready!

Hola! :)

Today I finally got the yarn I need for My design for the Dal (design along) on Ravelry!

I'm soo happy, I got it in hobby craft today. I got two balls of candy pink for the main parts of the gloves and then some in a coral pink for parts of the little flowers. The candy pink yarn was £1.99 per ball and the coral pink yarn was only 99p per ball, they were having a sale. So not only did I get some lovely soft yarn it didn't cost me a fortune either :D

I was also pleased because when I got home I found that I had some circular needles in the size I needed too, I thought I was gunna have to buy some of those too, but no! :0)

Ohhh I can't wait to start!

But first is the matter of a tension square....

Check you later! :)

Byeeeee

Recently..........

Hello lovely readers!

I thought I would have a bit of a catch up post as there are quite a few random bits and pieces I wanted to tell you all about :)

Firstly was the bargain of the century I picked up last week.........................

The book only cost me 49p and it had some really amazing patterns in it!

I even found inside a project perfect for using my hello kitty buttons on, some little slipper socks :D

I am going to make the main sock and straps in this colour yarn:

Then for the rim of the sock (done in a crochet edging) I am going to change to white and finally attach my fab buttons. Im soo excited, Im starting them today!

Another thing I did recently was finish this little sushi cutie:

I call her RICE BALL!!! :) I loooovvveee her sooo much xxxx, I wish my real bento could be that cute! :3

The pattern is here for anyone who wants to make their own little foodie friend: http://handmadekittyblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/onigiri-couple-amigurumi-crochet.html

If you remember back to my blog tour you will know I gave away some little cookie buttons. The winner, Barbara, said she was going to put them on some dolls for charity. This morning I recieved an email with this picture of the dolls with my buttons :) They are absoloutely fab! and are going to be sent to children in Africa suffering with AIDS.

It is such a great cause and Im sure the kids will be over the moon with the dolls, well done Barbara!

Thats about it for the catch up really, Im off to start on those slippers and eat the cookies I made this morning......

They are toblerone and white chocolate, YUM! :P

See you all very soon,

Bye xxxx

All this for £2.....

Hi everyone :)

My mum has recently been teaching me how to sew! Im currently making a dress I designed myself (ohhh how exciting I feel like im on project runway :D) I wanted a mannequin to make my dress on but they are vvvvveeerrrrrryyy expesive! I found a tutorial online which told you how to make your own. It was brilliant! all you needed was an old t shirt, newspaper, a coat hanger and duct tape. I bought 2 rolls of tape for £2 in my local pound shop so that was all it cost me to make the whole thing which I think is really cheap :0)

Heres how mine turned out:

Im really pleased with it. I used wrapping paper rolls to make a tripod so it is free standing :)

For instructions of how to make your own go to: www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3659/clone-yourself-a-fitting-assistant