Craftyminx

Be Mine Headbands

Sheldon got me a huge amount of glitter for Christmas so I've pretty much been glittering things since December. The dogs better watch out, they're probably getting some kind of glittered accessory soon. I wanted to make something fancy and pink to match my pink explosion outfit for valentine's day so I decided to sit down and make a crafty heart headband and of course, cover it in glitter.

These are really pretty self explanatory. You cut out felt, glue on some glitter, glue it all on to ribbon, and tie it around your head. So I'm really just going to go over how I made my hearts because those are the things that caused me grief. 

You will need: Felt, scissors, glitter (the colors I used from Martha Stewart glitter are below), a high temp glue gun (this won't work with a low temp), a lot of glue sticks, ribbon, parchment paper (not pictured), and elastic (optional)

Why am I using hot glue? Because it's my favorite. I have a drawer full of "special" glues and I always throw them back in the drawer and grab my hot glue gun. You want a glue that is going to stay flexible after it dries for this since it needs to kind of curve to fit your head. 

Cut some hearts out of your felt. I just kind of free handed mine, but you can draw some on paper and cut out templates if you want. In the top example I layered some together to make it look extra crafty. Make it your own by doing some embroidery or adding buttons. The sky is the limit here these would be awesome if they were made to look like conversation hearts with cute little messages. Ok, on to the glittering...

Make a parchment paper sandwich big enough to fit your heart and have a little space around it. 

Use a lot of glue and get it as close to the edge as you can. Work really fast here, You don't want it drying before the next step. Cover it in more glitter than you'd think you would need.

Smoosh it down (yes that is a technical term). I even used a glue stick as a little rolling pin to flatten it all down evenly.  Now let it cool completely! Otherwise, the glue could still stick to the parchment paper as you try to peel it off. 

Peel it off the paper and cut off all the excess. Yes, you will get glitter all over the place... sorry about that. I didn't say this method was completely perfected!

See, the hot glue makes it nice and bendy and keeps all that pretty glitter trapped in the thick glue. 

That's it, now glue everything down to ribbon with more hot glue. It can be a little tricky glueing already glittered hearts together so you may have to work with those a little more. 

For the backs, I like a little give so I used a couple of different elastic options. You could always just tie the ribbon on if you don't want to sew anything.  I also glued some onto a headband and it worked out as well. In fact, I kind of like these kind of headbands better than the around the head ones with my short hair. 

the day I made these I wasn't feeling very photogenic so I snapped some iPhone photos tonight of me wearing these :)

New Tutorials Page!

I went to update the tutorials page the other day and decided I didn't like it. I'm in the beginning stages of a site-redesign right now and just decided to go ahead and update the page becuase it was something easy that wouldn't take too much time and would be a quick satisfaction thing for me. I'm getting overwhelmed by my ideas right now so it's better to just get them out while I can. In fact, this next site-redesign might just be a work in progress over the next few months instead of a wham-bam new page kind of thing. We'll see. It's all on paper right now anyway.



When you hover over one of the images it changes color and has text describing the tutorial and each image links to the tutorial. 

I'm a big fan of the hovers right now. If you hate them I'm sorry, I love them :)

I think these will be a lot easier to keep updated than the last page as well, which I love even more!!

Check it out

Glittered Valentines

Since one of my big birthday goals is weekly DIY posts and it is February I thought I would start off with some Valentine DIYs. If you're not into the lovey dovey holiday don't worry, you can change up these projects to go along with anything. I think this project in particular would look great with black glitter for anti-valentines. 

You can really be as simple or elaborate with your supplies as you want. I used pre-made card banks from hobby lobby (but you can cut your own from card stock), Paper Glue, Glitter, double stick tape, scissors, paper trimmer, and a couple of border punches (these are a new obsession of mine and I keep buying them when they are 50% off or I have a coupon so you might see them in a few diys throughout the year). This isn't pictured, but blue painters tape could come in handy too, but it's not required. 

You're going to use two cards for this project. Trim up the edges so they are aligned when you over lap one card on top of the other then on the top card cut off about half an inch. Punch the edge that you trimmed. Now when you put the two cards together you'll have this edge that we're going to glitter.

Tape off the edge if you want, then add the glue. I painted it on nice and thick. The thicker the glue, the better your glitter will stick. Cover the whole surface with glitter. Tap off the excess and peel off the tape while the glue is still wet. Let the glue dry. Make sure you do this a day before you really need to so everything can be completely dry before the next step.

Your glittered card will be wrinkled from the glue but don't worry! Iron the card (glitter side down) on a no-steam setting and it will crisp right up.

*My friend Reagan says "Chin-up buttercup" all the time so this is a little nod to her :).

Use your double stick tape to tape all the edges of the card together get as close to the edge as you can if you overlap you can always trim the tape off later. Trim up the edges when you're done if you need to and fill it in with your own heartfelt message. 

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Want more fun Valentine's day inspiration? Check out the tutorial page! Valentine's Day is apparently one of my favorite holidays to do tutorials for.

Filled ornaments

When I was growing up my mom used to go to ornament parties where everyone would bring ornaments and a dish (with recipe card) and at the end of the day you had like 20 ornaments and recipes to take home. I participated in a couple of these and have a really big stash of homemade ornaments. This year I decided I wanted to start the tradition of making my nieces an ornament every year. When my friend Amy shared this blog post with me I knew my nieces needed candy filled ornaments :) I found these really cute heart shaped glass ornaments at Michael's that were perfectly sized to go on the top of their Christmas Presents. 

However, when I tried to make them using varnish like Little Gray Fox suggested, my ornament turned into this:

Not pretty! I think I didn't wait long enough for it to get tacky enough to add the sprinkles or I used the wrong kind of varnish. Oh well.

So I just filled the suckers up and added hot glue to the top so no little ones would try to pry out the sprinkles and put the caps back on. The ornaments were small enough that they weren't too heavy. I think I'll try the varnish thing again sometime, I have a dream of covering my white tree with candy type ornaments one day.

I have a huge collection of sprinkles to choose from so I ended up with this assortment of ornaments for the girls.

I had a couple of ornaments left and this huge container of yarn ends from my granny a day project (not sure why I'm keeping  them, but I am) so I made a couple of yarn ornaments too. 

Super easy, fairly inexpensive handmade ornaments! Now my wheels are turning for next year's ornaments. 

Do you have a lot of handmade ornaments or do you tend to gravitate towards other types of ornaments. For me, the last two years have been all about the colored balls on a white tree, but next year I think I'll pull out the handmade ones again. 

Crochet School - Table of Contents

Welcome to Crochet School! This is a listing with links to all the lessons in Crochet School. Bookmark this page for easy reference and share the link to this page if you want to tell others about crochet school (it's just easier to find all the posts from this page). Once you are on a lesson there will be buttons at the bottom of the lesson to go to the next lesson, the previous lesson, and this table of contents. The class is completely free but please consider making a donation using the donate button on the sidebar if you would like more classes like this in the future!

Crochet school is free and will be up as long as craftyminx.com is around. Enjoy the class!!

• Lesson 1: Welcome & Intro to Crochet
• Lesson 2: Crochet Hook Basics
• Lesson 3: Yarn Basics
• Lesson 4: Yarn Meets Hook
• Lesson 5: After the Chain
• Lesson 6: The Single Crochet Stitch
• Lesson 7: The Half-Double Crochet Stitch
• Lesson 8: The Double Crochet Stitch
• Lesson 9: The Treble Crochet Stitch
• Lesson 10: The Double-Treble Crochet Stitch
• Lesson 11: The Slip Stitch and Weaving in Ends
• Lesson 12: Review
• Mid Term Exam!
• Lesson 13: Increasing
• Lesson 14: Decreasing
• Lesson 15: Creating Texture
• Lesson 16: Working in the Round
• Lesson 17: Granny Square 101
• Lesson 18: Working With Color
• Lesson 19: Preparing for a Pattern and All About Gauge
• Lesson 20: Reading Patterns
• Lesson 21: Reading Crochet Charts
• Lesson 22: Blocking and Seaming
• Lesson 23: Common Mistakes/Fixes and Graduation!

 

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Announcing... Crochet School!!

It has been a long long time coming, but crochet school is ready !!!

I wanted this class to be like going to school so  I have created a syllabus for you to look at. Yes, I was an education major in college. Glad you noticed. 

VIEW THE SYLLABUS HERE

Class starts on Saturday, October 1st! I realize this is very soon, but don't worry if you can't get started right away, everything will be here waiting for you. I wanted to give all of you time to learn so you can start making holiday gifts. 

Oh and just in case you skip the syllabus, this class is F-R-E-E free! 

A few F.A.Q.s 

1. Even though I'm calling this "school" and I talk about a "class" this whole thing is on this blog. I suggest you subscribe to the blog using one of the tools on the left side-bar so you don't miss a lesson or bookmark http://www.craftyminx.com/crochet-school  to only see these posts.
2. The class starts in October, but all of the information will be up long after, so don't worry if you don't have time right now or if you miss a lesson. After all the posts are up I'll make an easy to follow table of contents so you can go from post to post without having to wade through all my other blog posts. 

Please share the word! I would feel really bad doing all this work and only have 3 of you following along.  

Here are buttons for you to share and of course you can use the big image above if you like.

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*update - The image code should be working now! sorry for my poor html skills. Thanks Amy for letting me know.

Motif Magazine

Do you read Motif? I've been reading it since the first issue. I was drawn in by their first cover. It's just soo pretty :) 

 
It's a pretty wonderful little on-line lifestyle magazine. It has fashion, recipes, book, music, and movie reviews, really great articles, and a craft column. 

Speaking of the craft column. You might find a little surprise if you head on over and see the new issue. Ok, you will find a surprise...

I'm the new craft editor/resident crafter!

 
In this issue, (the Journeys Issue), I'll teach you how to make an experience journal from supplies you probably already have laying around the house. I created a travel journal, but you can customize it to reflect any journey you want to keep mementos and notes from. It would be really great for keeping track of your year with 12 envelopes for mementos and lots of pages for goals and journaling.

 
This was a really fun journal to make because we had just returned from our Austin trip and I had a lot of fun pictures and stories to tell. I also took the time to add all of the trips that Sheldon and I have taken together over the last 3 years to it. It was exciting to comb through all the little mementos I kept from our first trip to Vegas, our first road trip to Louisiana, and our Honeymoon. There's also plenty of room for future journeys we take together. Here are some more photos:

 
 

 
Tips:
- Use what you have! Most of the pages in my journal are from printed commission packets from work that are one-sided. I use them for everything and I get a huge stack of them each month.
- Mix it up by adding in interesting papers from kids writing/drawing tablets and ledgers (both of which I always find at thrift stores but are available at Target and WalMart too).
- Envelopes and pockets add interest and allow you to add mementos you don't want to use glue on.

It's a Party! Why don't you give yourself a cute manicure?

 
I'm sharing my tutorial for ombre nails over on Amy's summer blog party today! Her blog party is going on all week and so far, the posts have been great! My pal, erika shared the yummiest recipe for mini key lime cakes yesterday that I'm going to have to try out soon. Erika is also doing something fun this week! She's celebrating pink week on her blog pinksuedeshoe. There's even a pink giveaway.

Special thanks to my friend (and fellow nail polish addict) Tisha for being my hand model for this post. It's really difficult to take photos with wet nails, so she saved me!

I've done this manicure a couple of times and thought it was time to share my knowledge with the masses so try it out and let me know what you think! I would love to see what color you try it with.  


For those of you that really want the specifics of the supplies I used in the post. I'll share them here.
Nail Color - Ulta Creme Salon Formula Nail Laquer in Eye Popping Poppy
White Nail Polish - Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On
I say to use nail polish remover for cleaning your brush in the post, but to be truthful that only works a little bit. If you're going to be using this technique a lot and want a flawless brush cleaner get thee to Sally Beauty Supply and pick up some nail brush cleaner. It's my new favorite thing.

On a completely random side note: You all know my new last name is Beach, right? Whenever Sheldon's family all gets together, one of the siblings inevitably yells out "It's a party Beaches!" So now every time someone talks about a party I want to yell out "It's a party Beaches!"  No one else gets the joke so I can't, but I ALWAYS want to haha. 

Happiness is post is coming up later this afternoon!