kattitudes

Oh how easy is this little number? And talk about multi functional. You don’t even need to run out and by anything special. Use an old drinking glass or wash the empty jar you used last night. Remember, reduce reuse recycle, folks.

Slap a different shape up there to cast a decent shadow and you could create a zillion different decorations for every event under the sun. Christmas, Easter or use a patriotic American flag for an American Fourth of July celebration.

This is such a cute decoration and an inexpensive way to decorate. It would make a fantastic quick and easy hostess gift also with a wonderful candle ready for use.

We are so making these this year for our annual Halloween Crazy Dinner! We have to tell you about our Crazy Dinner, but we will do that in another post, as it is just too fun.

Anyway, we just love these. And oh my gosh, how incredibly simple. Come on, it is just a bunch of crepe paper and construction paper! And dig out all those stickers that you have left over from past projects from your crafts closet or your crafts armoire and you are in business.

We always try to make sure that all the Halloween candy is out of the house asap if you know what we mean (and come on, you do). For us, it is a joke at this point because (yes, yes, it is a sad story, but a true one.) We are part of the unlucky people that have migraine attacks, and we know that chocolate is a migraine trigger. So we literally cannot eat chocolate without suffering from a massive brain pain. So out of the house it goes asap. We just hate to have it around.

So, come this Halloween, back to early childhood we go, and we are going to pull out our construction paper, our crepe paper, our blunt scissors and all the silly Halloween stickers we will have in our stock and we are going to make these wonderful Halloween hats and fill them with Halloween treats and use them as placeholders at our annual Halloween dinner. We cannot wait!

The beauty of this design is that it lends itself to absolutely everything. You have a birthday coming up? Fill it with treats and change the colors to match the birthday cake. It would make a great little craft for the kids in the house to keep busy doing while you are trying to get the house ready. Easter, it would be a wonderful basket replacement if you don’t want to fill an entire basket. Christmas - fill with a silly paper hat, a joke and a small gift to make your own Americanized Christmas pseudo cracker and put around the Christmas dinner table. Fourth of July - fill with water balloons and take everyone out to the pool later. You name it - this is a great little project and something that you don’t have to worry if it gets absolutely destroyed, because you can make about a kazillion more and they will all still look great!

When we saw this bracelet, oh we wanted to purchase it so much, but the price tag of forty odd dollars made us literally laugh out loud. Literally. Forty odd dollars for a few pearls, less than a yard of pink ribbon and a set of bracelet findings? Nope. No. No way. We have those supplies in our craft armoire and can make one of these bracelets without much effort. And certainly without forty dollars worth of effort.

Again as with so many of the jewelry items on Kattitudes, the trick is finding the right finding (oh we love the word play this week). As a reminder, the findings are just the official jewelry terms for the metal pieces that are used to put jewelry together. In this particular case, the findings are the metal pieces that are used at the ends to grab the ribbons and crimp them together. You are looking for crimp end findings. Fortunately, as more and more people get into making their own jewelry, these findings are getting easier to locate, but they used to be quite the challenge. As always, even with our super secret jewelry source houses (because we are in training to be a bench jeweler outside the computer) we still get our best deals and usually our wildest pieces off eBay. Ooh, we hate to admit that, but it is true.

OK, so on this piece, the pearls have been strung onto the ribbon (and that is going to be a bit tricky if your pearls have not been drilled with a larger hole than normal jewelry pearls. You will need to check to see if the diameter of your hole is large enough to fit a ribbon and you might need to use a bead reamer to give yourself a little space in there). Once the pearls are where you like them, the ribbon has simply been braided, then the crimp ends have been mushed into place and voila. You have yourself a forty dollar bracelet for about twenty minutes worth of work. We would say that is a pretty decent pay off, wouldn’t you?

Love love this necklace and we have made literally multiple variations on this theme. Various stones and with all types of metals including different karats of gold. This is such a simple necklace and it looks good on everyone. Our only design tip that we give with this necklace: do not make the chain too long, as the stone needs to sit as the base of the neck. On the other hand, do not make the chain too short because when your necklace looks like it is choking you to death…well, that is not a good look on anyone. You want the stone pretty much at the base of your neck, not getting lost around your belly button.

There is one word of warning that we will give you based on our experience. If you will notice on this necklace, we have placed a red circle over the light colored stone. That circle is where the briolette stone is drilled and the sterling silver wire is threaded through. With most the lighter stones that we have used (amethyst, topaz and citrine to name a few) we find that as the stone moves naturally on the necklace, the silver naturally tarnishes right at that pivot point and you end up with two very dark points in the stone. Nothing a little quick cleaning will not get rid of, but it is something to be aware of if you make this necklace from sterling silver (which many people will end up using).

You can see how easy the twist of the metal wire is to attach to the chain and how the briolette stone has been threaded onto that wire. With practice, you can get the hang of making those twists and you can whip out necklaces like this in literally about five minutes. Talk about assembly line gifts! You could make an entire set for all your bridesmaids. Or pick up different stones and make a rainbow of necklaces for a very special friend (or keep them for yourself. We would never tell.)

What a simple and quick gift to put together. The hot pad leaf motif could be put together oh so quickly, sewn together from large scraps in just a few moments during a commercial break in your favorite movie. Paired with a baked loaf of pumpkin bread or cranberry bread - something that heralds the warmth of the autumn season, you have a wonderful greeting to the harvest season.

Take a few moments and find yourself your your fabric stash. Come on, we all have them. Just the other day, we dug out tupperware containers of fabric that had been collected and we have been dusting them off, dragging out all that fabric, revitalizing it and renewing our dedication to making gifts and small tokens of sentiment for those we love.

Dust off your sewing machine and practice practice practice. Your efforts don’t have to be perfect. In fact, it is the very imperfections that make people love your work. It is imperfections that make what you create so valuable in 100 years! If you do not quite believe what we are saying - go check on eBay for handmade goods. Not the current manufactured items, but what handmade goods from Grandmas are going for. Those could be YOUR items. Get going. Get sewing. Something like this little scenario is perfect to take over to a friend. Bake a loaf of quick bread, sew a little hot pad and go tell a friend “I love being your friend”.

Materials Needed:

* 1-1/2 yards red gimpe braid
* 1-1/2 yards of red satin ribbon for bow (if you do not tie bows well, purchase a pre-tied bow)
* 10 packages of red ribbon roses
* Heart frame (this project uses a 7 x 7 inch frame)
* 1/4 yard of red satin fabric
* 1/2 yard of batting
* Glue gun with plenty of glue sticks
* 1 inch cabone ring

Cut batting to same shape as frame and glue to frame. Cut satin fabric 2 inches larger than frame, but do not cut the center from the fabric. Lay fabric on work surface, right side down.

Lay frame over fabric, batting side down. Begin gluing fabric to outer edge of frame. Glue small sections at the top, bottom and sides of heart first, then go back and continue to glue rest of fabric. (Fabric will gather and wrinkle, but will be covered later with backing.)

Cut center out of heart fabric, leaving one inch extra around entire opening. Clip fabric every 1/2 inch around opening, staying 1/8 inch from the frame (these cuts will be your gluing tabs). Glue each tab to back of frame. Repeat directions to cover back board of heart, omitting steps for center opening.

Glue red gimpe braid to edge of each heart starting at top of heart and continuing around entire edge (tape the ends of braid to prevent raveling). Glue front and back sections of frame. Remember to leave the top edge of the heart open to allow for picture insertion.

Glue roses to entire front of frame starting with the outside edge to the inside edge and then fill in the middle. Start and end gluing at the point where you will eventually glue your bow. The bow will hide the area that is not covered by roses (see the photo). Tie a bow with satin ribbon and glue to frame. Glue tassels to bow and glue cabone ring to back for hanger.

Materials Needed:

* 2 yards red polar fleece (60 inches wide)
* 1/2 yard white polar fleece
* fusible web
* scissors (now is the time to dig out those craft scissors with the fancy edges you bought 3 years ago and haven’t used yet)
* iron

Making fleece blankets seem all the rage now, and although I’ve seen some lovely examples, for the most part, I really do not care for the tied fringe look. Reminds me too much of 1970’s macramé. Just icky and in fact, exactly the type of icky that I started Kattitudes.com to avoid. This blanket, however, is a little different in that you control the edges yourself with your fancy craft scissors. Although this blanket was originally meant for a Valentine’s Day gift, it could easily be adjusted for any other holiday or occasion.

Confession time. In making this blanket, I dislike the fringe edges so much that I took the time to whip through and put a blanket stitch around the edges of my blankets instead. I significantly prefer the look and the blanket stitch is amazingly simple. Eventually I will include a section on embroidery and simple stitches and I will update this page to reflect the sewing choice also.

Trim the selvages off of the red polar fleece. Cut “fringes” all the way around the fleece: done by cutting about 2 inches into the fabric every 1/2 inch along all 4 edges. (By the by, this is a lovely time to put to use all of those craft scissors with the scrummy lovely shapely edges that cut in an interesting pattern).

Fuse one side of the fusible web to the wrong side of the white fleece. Leave paper backing on. Cut heart shapes out of white fleece. You can use a pattern to cut the hearts, but remember the appeal of a homemade look. Fuse the heart onto the right side of the red fleece.

It is the end of summer and fall is finally on the way. The heat of summer finally broke here in the southern United States and we are actually almost thirty degrees cooler today than we have been for the last week. Unbelievable, but wonderful for those of us that prefer it cooler. However, we still have a need and a desire to see the beauty of the summer season and all the hard work of our garden season. If you have any wonderful rose blooms still available, or if you have dried blooms available, this might make a wonderful gift from your garden.

Materials Needed:

* 1 shadow box (purchased)
* Dried rose buds or dried rose blossoms (amount depending on size of purchased shadow box)
* Glue gun and sticks

To make assembly easier, keep the shadowbox flat on your workspace until ready to hang.

Prepare roses by cutting off entire stem. Starting on one side of the shadowbox, glue roses to backing. Working in rows, slowly fill shadowbox, taking care to fill as tightly together as possible.

If desired, alternate rows with alternative color roses or even alternative dried flowers.

We have done fabric covered boxes in the recent past, but there is just something about velvet that really spices up a project. The nap on the fabric catches the light just so and makes everything so beautiful that you just want to touch it.

The ribbon and trim on these boxes are simple to add, but really make the project pop in the details. And because of the relative size, it would not be that expensive to purchase additional trim to finish off boxes like this. In fact, you could most likely just keep the end pieces and scraps of ribbon trimmings from other projects and mix and match to make a fun and festive hodge podge of season appropriate colors and celebration.

Boxes like these could be done for any holiday, any birthday, event, occasion or everyday use under the sun. Autumn colors for Thanksgiving. Red white and blue for a patriotic theme. Pastels for some beautiful Easter basket replacements. They could be used for storage, for your jewelry, for your sewing kits, for your office supplies or for bathroom beauty works. Pack one with new baby supplies. As with so many ideas on Kattitudes, you are limited only by your imagination.

I am still not sure if I am a fan of the leather look or the not, but regardless of my feelings about leather, I know that there is a large call for leather in jewelry accessories.

As a note, this particular piece has been made, not with leather, but with a fabric (often satin) cord. I prefer the leather. I find the fabric cords like this snag something wicked, unless you can get your hands on some waxed cotton, which actually is not that difficult.

If you have not yet learned the tricks to wire wrapping, you definitely need to sit down and spend some time practicing. There are so many jewelry pieces that depend on wrapping to attach pearls (and usually briolette cut gemstones) to jewelry. If you do not have access to jewelry quality soldering equipment, or if you just like the look of hand wrapping then you just must. There is nothing else to it.

I will spend some time going over the seventeen billion websites that have instructions for wire wrapping (there are SO many out there! Some are drek and some are decent) and give you a quick review of those I think are worth your time and those I think are a waste.

The trick to this particular piece is the ends. You need crimp end pieces. Not ribbon crimp ends, because those simply fold over, but crimp ends that are round metal beads, sealed closed on one end, but open on the other and allows you to feed the ends of the leather into a small cup. Once all the leather ends are in there, you just do as the name suggests and crimp the metal closed, thus trapping all the leather pieces together and holding the bracelet together. Make sense?

The pearls have been attached to the leather by wire wrapping, but in addition to being wrapped to the leather, the leather thong pieces have then been tied in knots around the wire wrapping, thus effectively double tying the pearls in place. This keeps the pearls from sliding up and down the leather thongs, anchoring them specifically where you choose to place them.

All in all, this really is a lovely piece. The nice thing about pieces like these is that you can find leather and pearls (or whatever beads you want) in a wide variety of colors, so you are literally limited by your imagination. You could use pink leather and turquoise pieces in place of the pearls if you wished - something along those lines. This piece really has a lot of potential. You could mix and match so many beads, stones and pearls on a wild mix of different colors of leathers intertwined with chains. So much potential! Give it a shot!