Craftgrrl - Where Crafters Unite!

I've neglected my knitting for quite some time now. I blame the fact that I promised lots of scarves to different people, and ended up getting stuck in a seemingly never-ending rut. I have 3 scarves all in progress, and a set of wrist warmers. It'll be summer before I get them done! In the mean time, here's what I made last night :)

( Coffee sleeve with embroidery! )

I might make another one tonight! I also spent today working on a zine. It's starting to take shape, hurrah! Being unemployed + being snowed in + COFFEE = me being super productive :D

Cross posted to my journal and veganknitters.

so i thought I'd take a break from my usual crocheting and knitting and general crafts to revisit an old fav of painting.

this weekend i picked up some water colors and paper. It had been many years since I've touched a brush to paper and i certainly have missed it!!

I'm not the best at it, but it's been fun revisiting it and i think I'll make it a more common indulgence


anywho, ( here's what i've done since sunday )

Hey Grrls! :)

So, I've decided recently that I really want to try my hand at making fake cupcakes! Something along the line of these little beauties! I wonder - have any of you ever made such a thing, and if so can you offer any tips? Any idea what to use for swirly frosting on top? Any other thoughts?

I do a lot of (real!) baking anyway, but am *sooooo* inspired by CUPCAKES!! Really really want to try this! Any thoughts or help would be wonderful :) Thanks!!

Needleworking craftgrrls, what brand of embroidery floss do you use? Has it always been the same one? Where do you live?

( Why I'm asking... )

In all of our local stores, DMC is the only brand they carry. My mother says they used to only carry Coates, but in the late 70s, suddenly DMC got the area's monopoly. We have normal DMC floss, DMC linen floss, glow in the dark DMC floss, fancy metallics and neons in DMC...

I just bought a pattern from England, and it's using Anchor colors. I found DMC equivalents for all of one of them, but still, erg.

Oddly enough, the DMC floss I have says it is not for sale in the European Union. I don't know what that is about.

It's been a while. =)
Here are a few more of my little felt dolls.
Hope you like them!

( 300, Portuguese History and a Serial Killer )

My needle fell into the machine last night when I was sewing. This is my first sewing machine (A Singer Inspiration, 4210) and I have no idea if this is serious and will kill my machine or how to remove said needle.

I tried removing the needle plate and using a magnet in hopes of somehow getting the needle out, but there's a lot of metal in sewing machines, so it didn't work as well as I'd hoped.

Please help me, and thanks in advance. I'm sorry I'm so stupid! :(

ETA: I ended up taking it to a vacuum/sewing machine repair shop, as suggested, and they checked it out to make sure the needle hadn't gotten caught in anything. It evidently fell through straight to the bottom, where it isn't causing any problems (my machine has a belt, so apparently this is okay?).

The repair guy said that, in the future, should I have any serious problems with my machine, we can always get the needle out, but that it would be way more of a hassle to take the casing off my machine (which looks like one big hunk of plastic to me) than to just leave it there.

I made another bag last week. I was churning out about one a day, but I've got some baby blankets to work on now so it might be slowing down a bit.




( more photos )

I refuse and reject the profusion of pink and red hearts in February.  Completely and utterly. Rawr!

Ergo, I present to you my efforts to combat this phenomenon.




The Mad Hatter's Heart





Labradorite heart wrapped in argentium silver via Alice in Wonderland's loopy fantasy style. I imagine that the heart of the Mad Hatter would be as strange as this XD


( Click for the 2nd one! )

Happy Un-Traditional Week!

Over the weekend my husband didn't feel well and slept all the day. It gave me some time to craft few things.


See more of my weekend crafts, a painted vase and the transformation of a tea box: here

I just ordered a snazzy new laptop, and was shocked when I saw how much cases cost for a laptop with an 18.4" screen. There's about 3 of them out there that I found, and all were at least 70 dollars. I'll pay it if I have to... but there's another downside - all of them very very plain.

So I kind of want to try making one, except, I don't know where to begin. Any suggestions on what materials to use for padding, and what materials to avoid? I've heard fleece is a no no, for example, because of its ability to hold static.

Thanks in advance =)

Hooray! Finally! An artistic post! And my first craftgrrl post! This has been... how many years in the making?

Needle felting! You can skip the back-story/explanation. And to be kind to your page... :P A cut! ( Read more herez... )

Hello! I just joined this community in hopes of finding someone that can help me. I'm currently in high school and looking for creative ways to help my school and earn some cash along the way as well. My aspiration is to become a graphic designer so I thought I would put my designs out there in a cute way. I have an idea to make pin buttons. I have no problem coming up with graphics for them, but finding a button machine is an issue. I just went to my local Jo Ann's and Pat Catan's today and there were no button makers to be found! I've been searching online and the only ones I can find are expensive $200 machines (Dr. Don's) and a cheaper one at a more reasonable price (Badge-A-Minit) but it has terrible reviews and looks pretty inconvenient to use. So, if anyone out there has any tips or knows of a place where I can locate such an item, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks! <3

Hello =) I just wanted to share my small bird I made for my purse. My purse is pretty plain and I wanted to add something that didn't make it look tacky.

( tweet tweet )

I've been busy over the last week or so! I finished stitching my Princess Leia cross stitch to go with my Queen Amidala stitch.

( Below the cut: I love you more than Mario, Princess Leia, and Home is where the xbox Cross Stitch Is )

I've been working on a bunch of snowflakes since shortly after New Year's, improvising the patterns as I go along. Some are loosely based on photos of real snowflakes, most are just whatever seemed pretty at the time. Some of them turned out nicely, some just taught me what not to do next time. Some would be nicer if I'd done a better job starching, and there are a few tricks I'll use to fix that with the next batch. My classes were cancelled yesterday (because the city's snowed in, wouldn't you know!) and I finally had time to starch and photograph them. I have close-ups of most of these, but Photobucket doesn't want to let me resize the images.

( So here's the one big group shot. )

Cross-posted to crochetcrochet.