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paper napkin rings

I know I know, how many of us actually use napkins, especially nice cloth ones? I could get on my soapbox and start talking about using cloth napkins to save paper and reduce garbage, and then I could get on another soap box and talk about proper dinner table etiquette, but we all know that you’re only really going to break out the nice table linens when your mother comes to visit.

But napkins, be they paper or cloth, can provide an excellent and easy decorating opportunity. If you’re having a party or a themed dinner, or just want a little extra fun on the table, simple paper napkin rings are super effective. Plus they’re easy and they’re cheap. Make butterflies for spring, daffodils for Easter, jack-0-lanterns or Creepy Doll faces for Halloween. You get the idea.

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open-ended paper heart box

Ah, Valentines’ Day. The 24-hour span responsible for the greatest number of breakups in the year. A day that drips with soggy Hallmark declarations, bursts with the emotion of panicked last-minute lovers in flower shops, rings with the voices of a million untrustworthy women saying, “No, no, you don’t need to get me anything.” A day of nightmare.

Are we all in a nice romantic mood now? For the past four Valentine’s Days I’ve been happily in a relationship, but have steadfastly refused to mark the holiday with anything more than a cursory acknowledgement. Last year my boyfriend and I watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is a Valentine’s movie, in a dark, depressing way. It was great. This year we’re going to order in Chinese food and watch a movie. Probably – knowing us – something violent and gory, like Kill Bill.

But I’ll admit, the crafter in me does enjoy another chance to decorate, to wear outrageous amounts of red (my favourite colour) and to make cute stuff for people. I do like the excuse to get my boyfriend a token gift of some kind. But that’s the point, people: token. Something small, something caring, something that the other person will like.

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a Magical mail delivery – bonus post

Introduction

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while know that I sometimes get unusual calls from my boyfriend when he’s at work. Well today I got another one, but this time it was not tied to a request for me to craft nerdcore jewelry.

A Mysterious Package

So, Jeremy called me this morning with excitement and a great deal of puzzlement in his voice. “A package just arrived for you here at the Moonbase*,” he told me. (*Another name for the LoadingReadyRun office, where he works.)

“A package? At the office?” I said, because repeating things is helpful and makes you sound intelligent.

“Yeah. Did you order seven pounds of magic cards and have them delivered here?”

“Did I do what? Magic cards? Seven pounds? What?”

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envelope book

When I was in elementary school I refused to wear skirts. This was for two reasons: 1) I couldn’t hang upside down from the monkey bars in skirts and 2) they never had pockets.

To this day, the lack of pockets in women’s clothing annoys me. Oh, I know the reasons for it, but a total lack of pockets in an outfit has always seemed to me a bit daft. There are ways to make up for it, of course, but even purses rarely seem to contain enough different pockets for me to properly organize my stuff.

So starting from the vantage point that one can always use more pockets in life, I present you with the idea of an envelope book. This is a book where every page is an envelope, so you can put things in them. Flattish things, of course. Make a big book of manila envelopes to organize your work papers, or a book of smaller envelopes for receipts and tickets and notes-to-self. You could even keep loose change in there.

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7 craftsy things to do with Magic cards

My boyfriend and I play a lot of Magic. And playing a lot of Magic means having a lot of Magic cards around the house. A lot of cards. We’re talking infestation levels. We had to empty one of our dresser drawers in order to store them all, and the collection keeps growing.

You regular readers know by now that overabundant materials in our apartment are first in line for crafting fodder. I’ve been looking for ways to put some of our Magic cards to other uses, and so far I’ve come up with seven different crafts to use up extra Magic cards and tokens.

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Pipe Vault t-shirt dress

Ok y’all, I was going to start out nice and simple with my tutorials on t-shirt dress-making, but where’s the fun in that? Let’s just jump right into the deep end. What’s the worst that could happen?

This dress was made from a unisex 2XL t-shirt, specifically the Pipe Vault shirt by Fangamer. (If you aren’t familiar with this company, check it out. They make some absolutely fabulous shirts and other stuff.) They sent us a bunch of great stuff to auction and give away during Desert Bus for Hope in November. They also sent us all a free shirt for ourselves, because they’re really sweet like that.

As you already know, I don’t wear many t-shirts, but I wear lots of other garments made from t-shirts. When it came to choosing a Fangamer shirt, I thought this Pipe Vault design would offer some great dressmaking possibilities, with its a-symmetrical printing and the fact that the graphic goes so far down the side of the shirt. Turns out I was right. Read the full post »

new page – The Basics

You may have noticed that I’ve put up a couple of wee little technique tutorials over the past few days. This is to provide links for my new page (there, at the top of the blog) called The Basics. (There is another, much bigger tutorial coming later today for the official weekly update.)

There are certain basic bits of knowledge that crafters take for granted. Sewers, for example, often assume that everyone knows how to do something so simple as backstitching to knot their thread. Which may be true much of the time, but not all. We all have to learn these things from somewhere in the first place.

I’ve been crafting since I was a child, and sewing (albeit badly and without much interest) since then as well, so I tend to take the basics for granted myself. But a tutorial’s not very helpful to someone who wants to learn a new crafting technique if they aren’t starting on the same page as you, with all the same basic knowledge. Therefor, I’m gradually building a collection of tutorials about the very basics of sewing, felting, paper crafting and more.

As more of these basic tutorials go up, I’d love to hear what you think of them:  are they helpful? Are there other basic tutorials you’d like to see, and if so, what are they?