And Now for Something Completely Different

With the arrival of winter weather...and the arrival of my online order from Joann.com (TEN skeins of Caron One Pound yarn!), it is time to switch crafts.

A few weeks ago I came across a post showing how to make an 8-bit Mario blanket, and got totally inspired. The core idea behind this craft is that any pixelated image could be turned into a granny square blanket. Helllooooo gift ideas for Christmas 2011!

Step one, I had to develop the design. My mom requested the old-school POW block from Mario Bros...a pretty easy design to try out. I often try to fly by the seat of my pants, but this is one project that does require a pattern - I chose to use Excel and color in different cells to lay out the image.

The totals for squares:
Black - 155
Red - 56
White - 45

The final blanket will be 16x16 granny squares. The granny square pattern I'm following creates them 5 inches square...so the final blanket should be about 6 1/2 feet wide. So far I've made 5 squares. Looks to be a long process (that I hope to share here), but I'm most certainly looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

Plastic, and Nothing But

Fused plastic has been a great medium to work with in my crafting endeavors. But I'm lazy, and handstitching, while awesome to see on my projects, takes a long darn time. Time for a new innovation in my crafting:

 No-sew fused plastic awesomeness!





Started with a rectangular piece of plastic (which in previous projects I have folded in to thirds and sewn up on the sides), and this time decided to make a single pocket wallet with an ID holder.

To make the ID holder I cut halfway in to the top fold...

...cut out a piece of parchment paper to serve as a placeholder for a credit card/ID...

...and ironed to fuse the edges.

(Pardon the gratuitous D&B card in these pictures, didn't want to possibly melt my license or credit cards!)






Next thing to do is make the bottom part resemble a wallet.

Just like the credit card slot, an appropriate size of parchment paper needs cut out and used as a placeholder so only the wallet edge fuses (pretend this dollar is parchment paper, don't actually iron money!)

Once the edges are fused, you may need to trim the edges if things did not line up perfectly when ironing it all together.








Aaaand here is the final wallet. Look Ma, no stitches!

Of course, it's a wallet, so you're going to need to fold it...

...once...

...aaaaand twice!








So there you have it, a super simple wallet made out of nothing but plastic! Unique idea for a bar wallet - interesting talking point AND it's just big enough to carry an ID and cash if you want to travel light. And it is also waterproof...should you decide you need to go swimming with identification...(hey, you never know)

In total the project took only 20 minutes to fuse, cut, and iron. Impulse crafting at its best!

Simple fused plastic wallet

In my last post I explained how to turn old plastic shopping bags in to quasi-fabric - now on to things to do with it. The first and easiest way to use fused plastic is to make a simple wallet (or coupon holder, or receipt holder, etc.). Now, on to the crafting!

In order to make this project, your sheet of plastic needs to be three times longer than whatever size your want your finished project to be. If you want something sizeable but only have smaller bags, don't fret, part of the awesomeness of fusing plastic is that you can fuse sheets together!

Each of these sheets are a single Kroger bag. Each bag was folded to make it 8 layers thick (lay it flat and fold it in half, then in half again). Sadly, the wallet I wanted to make needs bigger squares than these.



In order to fuse two sheets together, it works best to have "fresh" unmelted plastic to work as the binding element. I have no pictures of this step, but those bag handles trimmed from earlier work very well for this task. Place the handle bits along the front and back seam and iron that area until it is fully fused into one piece.

Hurrah, you now have a bigger sheet to work with!







Making this simple wallet now just takes a couple stitches up the sides. To create the bottom of the wallet, fold up the bottom of your plastic. For those of you used to sewing with fabric, you may feel inclined to use pins to hold things in place while stitching...bad news! This material is not as durable as fabric is - if you poke holes in it they are pretty noticeable. Instead of using pins, you could use tape or paperclips, I've found both to be fairly useful.

As for the stitching part, it's up to you how to do the stitching. I chose to do a modified whipstitch/chainstitch with a little french knot thrown in. Came out like this:

Of course, with the stitching done on the sides, the top leaves a little something to be desired. At this point it just looks like a fancy envelope. Booo-ring.


So...what to do?



In my web research for all things related to plastic bag crafts, I came across instructions on how to make yarn out of plastic bags. Armed with this knowledge, I decided to make a rosette as a fastener.

So there you have it! A quick and simple fused plastic wallet.

What to do with baggage (the plastic kind, at least)

Unless you always carry reusable shopping bags around all the time you probably have plenty of plastic shopping bags lying around. (Of course, if this doesn't apply to you, you can always beg off extra bags from your friends. Trust me. They'll have tons.) So the question becomes, what to do with them? Perhaps some crafts? Yes, please!

Using an iron (and a well-ventilated area) you can turn plastic into fabric (of a sort). Trust me, it's spiffy. So let's get started!

Materials:

- Iron & Ironing board/surface
- Plastic bags
- Parchment Paper




Set your iron to a mid-range setting - I use the 'Polyester' setting, but you may need to tweak it depending on your iron. You want the heat to melt the layers of plastic into one solid sheet, BUT you also don't want to use too high a heat setting because you'll end up with gross super-hard swiss-cheese-looking plastic. Trial and error is a big factor, so don't give up after trying it one or two times.

Next, you have to prep your plastic. Fusing plastic is easiest when having a square-ish piece to work with, so cut off the bottom and handles from your bags. Fold your bag so that it is 4-6 layers thick (i.e. fold it in half then in half again), and put it between two sheets of parchment paper.

(The parchment paper helps keep your ironing surface and iron free from any melty plastic pieces.)





Slowly run your iron over the parchment paper. Be sure to use even pressure and keep the iron moving. Depending on the number of layers and the type of bag, it can take 30 seconds to 2 minutes to fully fuse your plastic into a single sheet. Again, this is a major trial-and-error craft project.

After you've ironed your plastic, check and make sure it is all one solid sheet. If you notice bubbles or areas not fully fused, iron over that particular area (you can see in this picture that the corner is not quite fused together).



So there you have it, an iron can turn plastic into a new craft medium for you!

Fused plastic project tutorials will be coming along shortly!

The wonders of revamping

I am not a hoarder, but I AM someone inexplicably drawn to thrift stores. Maybe it is the possibility of finding something awesome and unique...but it is more likely that I am cheap. Whatever the reason, I love wandering in with no expectations and coming out with something really awesome!

Recently, I came across this:

 A Goodwill $12 dollar find on half-price day, sweet!

Of course, looking like such a sad little table, I knew I had to do something to spruce it up. But that being said, I was also wanting a quick fix. Solution: spray paint! This table has been one of my first spray painting projects. Also, this being an October/November hobby (and spray paint requiring a certain working temperature), I opted to cover my apartment's living room with plastic sheeting, open all my windows, and have at it. This was the first and last time I will ever spray paint indoors, and would warn against it for anyone else - bad fumes for sure, but there was also this residue-ish feeling on everything in the apartment afterwards. Good inspiration for a top-to-bottom apartment cleaning, but that's about it.

Anyways back to the project. A little spray of primer:

And a pop of awesome color. (Seriously, Valspar has some outstanding colors!)

But then there is that problem of the inset piece (you didn't think that I was going to leave it like that, did you??)

I originally had every intention of putting an upholstery fabric remnant there, but decided to tie this piece in with all my other saved-from-the-junkyard furniture. A little ModgePodge, some old book pages, and a little bit of time turned this inset into:

 And my $6 find at Goodwill (plus maybe another $7 for spray paint) became this:

A wonderful little coffee table for my apartment!

A welcome and an apology

If you have come here, you are surely lost. But that's okay, I will try to keep you entertained until you can click your way out of here. This is perhaps my third attempt at blogging - each previous time I tried to adhere to some specific schtick - and quickly got bored and stopped after a few months. With this new blog I hope to just be random, therein preventing my boredom of blogging, perhaps also keeping you entertained for just a little bit longer.

So what now? I'll start by telling you a little about myself. Firstly, I am a book nerd. Bigtime. Love reading and all things bookery - perhaps not too surprisingly, my daytime job is at a bookstore. In addition to reading a lot, I also participate in crafty endeavors. Knitting, crochet, quilting, candlemaking, decoupage, sewing, furniture restoration/rejiggering, plastic fusing...and honestly, anything else that strikes my fancy. So between books and crafts, I'll hopefully be able to write something of substance. Or maybe just write something else entirely random. Anything is possible.