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!