Linnea 'Ea' quilts...

Oh dear, oh dear. This is a true challenge. And, since I've so far missed/bummed out on nr 2 (wool), and nr 4 (lace), I simply MUST find something to do for this one. The theme this time is "The colors of spring". See the picture below. The colors of spring. Truly, really, absolutely not the colors I would normally use (more like never!) for a project, but... We'll see. Will post more after some brainstorming.

I've just realized that there's no way at all all for me to participate with the fourth MaMa-challenge. Since this is the last day for that particular challenge, and bit too late for me to finally "find" something to contribute with, I must simply throw in the metaphorical towel and fold. You see, this time I 'failed' because of 3 things: I didn't get my sewing machine back until today. I could have gotten it back last week, but I got the flu last Tuesday. And I just couldn't ask Micke to go and fetch it for me, no no no, that would have been too degrading. I can actually picture such a scenario: " Honey, could you get my sewing machine from the shop 8 blocks form our house? It weighs a ton. And btw you're not allowed to put it down on the ground while you walk home, because I don't want it to get dirty. Oh, and it will cost you 95 euros. "  If only I had cleaned up my stash of fabrics before today. That way, I would have found th...

Oh dear, oh dear.... She's chosen lace for the next project. And I'm so not a lace-using-kind-of-person. How am I gonna come up with something for this challenge? Let's see... when I think of lace, I see: gothic black lace on a corset lace on undergarments Marie Antoinette-like grand ball gowns Queen Elisabeth-type collars Hand-held fans, painted in gaudy colors 17th and 18th century clothes ... is it just me, or do I seem to just associate lace with clothes? Let's try a bit more: pillow covers with lace on the sides parasols with lace around the brim table cloths old granny bedclothes ... this is getting nowhere. Let's see what inspiration Google can bring me . Lots of interesting stuff, I think I like these shoes and this bag with lace decor, and the wedding cake with a lace pattern the best. Then on the other hand, this dress in kinda nice too. And I didn't know there's a flower named Queen Anne's lace , either. Or how about thi...

For  the Mama-haaste nr 3 , I came up with the idea of making a heart-themed candle. The things I used I listed previously . Now, I've never done any sort of candles before, but I've saved a lot of 'stumps' from old candles. Why? Well... because some craft techniques use paraffin , and because I'm a slight craft hoarder . Ask anyone, they'll tell you the same. (Oh! Here's another one , too.) Anyway, I started with melting the old stumps to get rid of the impurities and the wicks. This was done with a water bath (big glass jar in a pot with hot/boiling water). Since some of the candles were red left-over ones from our Valentine's Day dinner last Monday, the result was... pink :) Next, I made I wick out of cotton thread, put it in the cleaned jar, and poured in the liquid candle-soup. I let it set (good thing it was cold outside!), and then painted the lid white. For decoration, I used red window-paint and drew hearts and lines on both the lid and th...

A change! This challange wasn't about using a specific material, instead it's a theme. Looking at the title, I'm sure you were able to figure out that the theme is "hearts". So... this time, I just ransacked my arts and crafts stash, and found an old mustard jar with screw on lid some stumps from old candles some cotton thread white acrylic paint red window paint Now, you'll get too see what I did with them in the next post :)

For this challenge , the theme was "wool". And I was at first at a TOTAL loss. I simply had no frigging clue as to what I was going to craft. My whole creativity went *poof* and flew out the window . I mean, there's just so much you can do with wool. Wool, as an animal fiber, is extremely versatile. But, for once, I didn't want to knit or crochet something. Maybe because that would have been... too easy?  Too simple? Perhaps? Oh, later on I had all these thoughts about making: a companion cube (tunisian crochet + felting) door stopper a chess board (knitting + felting) with felted chesspieces a brooch (again, felt), typically a sunflower or then sunflowers needle felted onto something decor on a wooden photo holder from IKEA turn a little IKEA-lion into a yellow dragon (again, needle felting...) something for jewelry, but felt or wool is not so nice against your skin, so... And somehow, I still couldn't come up with something smart/funny/nice to crea...

I'm sorry if people are, by now at least, feeling as if I'm spamming their rss-feeds. Feel free to jump ahead, if you're so inclined. This Saturday was spent with Ida and Mimi, first having a super lovely Austrian-inspired dinner of bratwurst/potato salad and wine, then doing crafts until 3:30 in the morning. Tiring, yes, but oh so satisfying. There's much you can do around a dinner table. While Ida was kept busy writing her BA-thesis and cursing her computer * , Mimi was sewing on her Star Wars hat and I was just fooling around with making jewelry. I told them about the button challenge , and later on Ida and I came up with some really cool designs. Here's some pictures of what we made during the evening. * I later helped her, by pointing out that she could increase the virtual memory amount for Windows. Suddenly, the computer started working like a charm :) I was so glad to be able to help! Green wooden necklace with Chinese button knots. Charm bracel...

These are my contributions to "the button challenge"or MaMa haaste nro 1 : Red button necklace. Red button ring. The necklace was a trial and error kind of thing; it started out as one thing, but ended up as a blend of ' satin cord meets jump rings '. The button knot on the cord is one I've used before on jewelry, and I learned it from the book by Suzen Millodot. You can see similar stuff on her webpage :) The ring was inspired by two things: ArtsyCrafty babe's flower button brooch , and Jokkemaa's rainbow ring . Although I only noticed first now, while writing this down, that I think Jokkemaa might have used a very similar macramé-style of making the 'ring around the finger part' of her ring. 

I'm sure you know the concept six degrees of separation , but I'll still say this. I follow some blogs, using Goggle reader. One of them is Jokkemaa , whose blog I started following because someone in my knitting circle happened to refer to her blog sometime ago. Jokkemaa had this post about a button ring she'd made , and she'd written how this was part of a challenge found on the blog of 37 tuntia vuorokaudessa . The challenge itself was pretty straightforward and simple: make something with buttons out of found things in your own stash of arts and crafts-stuff. I thought "why not?", and then remember I had bought some red buttons from a flea market. And I actually had thought about turning them into a necklace, or earrings. For inspiration, I once again looked at Ellen Gerritse's design button necklace (Leaping copper collar) in Contemporary Bead & Wire jewelry" . The way she's put the "beads" (buttons) together is really i...