Carrier Bag Holder

Now that carrier bags have suddenly become precious items I thought they deserved something better than being shoved in the back of the cupboard!  Here's a "proper" carrier bag holder that I made for Fiskarettes UK.

Very quick and easy make to hold all those precious carrier bags we are now hoarding.  But why shouldn’t it be pretty?

 

Cut a piece of fabric 50cm by 40 cm.  I used a Fiskars rotary cutter and a ruler to get nice straight lines.

Fold it in half right sides together and sew the long sides together to form a tube.  Press the seam open and neaten the raw edges. Turn over 1cm each open end of the tube and press, then turn over another 1cm each end and press again.  This forms the casings for the elastic. 

Pin and sew along the edge of the casing, starting just after the seam and finishing just before the seam, leaving enough room to thread 20cm of 0.5cm wide elastic through each casing. 

TIP: Fasten a safety pin to the leading end of the elastic to make it easier to feed it through, and use another to anchor the other end to the fabric to make sure it doesn’t disappear. 

Overlap the ends of the elastic by 1cm and hand stitch.  Slip stitch the rest of the casing closed and repeat at the other end.

Form a hanging loop with 20cm of ribbon and stitch to the top end of the tube where the seam is so this becomes the back.

I die-cut some flowers using Tim Holtz’ Tattered Floral dies in felt to match the colours of the fabric, layered them up and stitched them in place using buttons as the centre of the flowers.

Football Card

Use a hexagon punch to cut 6 white and 4 black hexagons.  Cut three of the black hexagons in half and fill in the gaps to make the shape of a football on a piece of scrap paper, then cut into a circle.  

Emboss with a dotty embossing folder and mount on a slightly larger green circle.  Add to a square white card, hand cut a strip of grass, then cut banner shapes from paper and Kraft card and layer on the grass. 

Thread a button with bakers twine and glue on top.  Add a peel-off sentiment to finish.

TIP use the hexagon punch to shape the tails of the banner. 

What a Star! Gift Card Holder

Cut an A4 sheet of card in half lengthways and score at 10 cm and 23 cm (Makes two)

Cover the outside with patterned paper; use two strips of double sided tape to fold the larger flap up to make a pocket

Decorate with a large star cut with the Shape Cutter from the multi Shape Template, smaller stars in the same paper cut with the power punch medium star, and assorted star sequins. 

Print sentiments onto card and cut out with the new Standard and Scallop Tag Maker  and ink the edges..  I have used the standard tag on the back and the scalloped tag with toning ribbon on the front and edged the flap with the same ribbon.

Add a tiny piece of self-adhesive Velcro to the flap as a closure.

Easter Bunny Egg Cosy

The template for the body of the egg cosy is a 10 cm square with the top corners rounded off.  I drew an oval ear shape and a smaller oval for the inner ear.   TIP – fold them in half to check they are symmetrical and trim to adjust if necessary.  

Fold the square of felt in half and put the bottom of the template on the fold to cut a double shape for the front of the egg cosy and repeat for the back.

Draw a bunny face on the template, transfer to the front piece and stitch a satin stitch nose, backstitch mouth and long stitch whiskers.  Sew the buttons on with matching sewing thread.

Cut four ears from white felt. Back the pink fabric with fusible web and cut two ear linings, then iron onto two of the ear pieces and slip stitch with pink sewing thread.  Blanket stitch the backs of the ears to the fronts with white embroidery thread. 

Fold both main pieces of the egg cosy in half and pin together, then blanket stitch through all four layers of felt to make a double thickness cosy. 

Slip stitch the ears into place and decorate with a length of flower ribbon round the base. 

Heart Bunting for the Fiskarettes UK design team

 

I made this shabby chic heart bunting from some scraps of fabric and felt, stranded embroidery silk, ribbon, toy stuffing and some heart shaped shell buttons and flower trim.

I drew ten hearts on the fabric using the 3 inch heart from the Fiskars Hearts Shape Template.  I used a vanishing pen on the right side of the fabric but you could also use a pencil on the reverse instead.

I cut the shapes out with pinking shears allowing a 0.5 cm seam allowance outside the drawn outline.

I used the 1.5 inch heart template to draw 5 hearts on blue felt and cut them out using straight scissors, without leaving a seam allowance.  I blanket-stitched them onto five of the fabric heart shapes using three strands of pink embroidery silk.  I stitched a heart shaped button onto three of the hearts, leaving tails so I could tie the thread in a knot through the buttons.  The other two hearts were decorated with a strip of flower trim with a couching stitch.

I pinned the decorated hearts at regular intervals onto the ribbon, alternating between buttons and flowers.  I then made a sandwich with a little of the toy stuffing and a plain heart behind each one, pinned the edges together and used three strands of pale blue embroidery silk to sew them together along the 0.5 cm seam allowance with a decorative running stitch.  Just before finishing sewing round each heart I stuffed it more firmly with additional stuffing.  Then I made a loop on each end of the ribbon and stitched it with matching cotton to make hanging loops for the bunting.

You could also make individual hearts with a ribbon hanging loop at the top, or even add a little dried lavender to the filling for a drawer freshener.

Recent Birthday Cards

December and January are busy months as most of my family have birthdays then (myself included) and several friends too!  Not forgetting Christmas of course.  The reason I started making cards in the first place was the lack of good cards in the shops at the very time I needed plenty as the card shops seemed to assume nobody ever has a birthday near Christmas...

An easel card for Mother-in-Law's 90th birthday

This was for one of my sisters' 50th birthday; she's a brilliant knitter.  I cut a circle from card and wound it with a lovely cerise bouclé yarn and made the knitting needles from kebab sticks and buttons

I made two similar cards as two photographers had birthdays in January.  The camera is made from silver and black card, I made my own templates for it from looking at pictures of vintage cameras.

And last but not least a bouquet of flowers for my own lovely Mum's birthday

A proud moment - my first Design Team appointment

I'm delighted to announce that I have been selected as one of the Design Team for Fiskarettes UK for the next four months.  I'm so excited!  My very first DT!  I shall be working with some fabulous Fiskars products and some very talented people.

Valentine's Earrings

My first published project is this pair of shrink plastic earrings for Valentines Day, which were great fun to make with a heart punch, a pink Promarker and and a background stamp.  All finished off with some Swarokvski crystals for a bit of sparkle!