Creating success around the world

Today I am blogging over at 'Creating my way to success'. This is an interesting series which looks at creativity from bloggers around the world. The different ideas from all the corners of the globe are fascinating and inspiring.




It is also a blog hop so check it out here or by clicking on the button above and say Hi to the super-friendly Jill while you're there.

Easy fairy doll tutorial

These sweet little fairy dolls are so simple to make and they are sure to capture a little girl's heart. Perfect for hanging on the Christmas tree or bringing a smile to your face anytime.

This would be a good craft to do with a child. You could make all sorts of individual little characters.

Let's get started...

...for one fairy you will need:

- a wooden bead with a hole drilled through it
- a pipe cleaner
- scraps of fabric and ribbon or string
- wool, tulle strips or rope for hair
- marker pens
- any other embellishments you fancy eg. fake flowers, sequins, glitter

To make your fairy:

Cut a scrap of fabric into a circle of approximately 12cm or 5" in diameter. Cut a small hole in the centre. Also cut two arm slits roughly where the '2' and '3' are on the tape measure

Cut the pipe cleaner in half and fold one half in half again.

Poke the folded end through the hole in the bead and open it out.

Poke lengths of wool, tulle (or whatever you like to use as hair) through the hole in the pipe cleaner. Also poke through a piece of string or ribbon to hang up the finished fairy. I added a fake flower to this one.

Pull the pipe cleaner back through to firmly hold the hair in place and open out the ends. These will become the arms.

Fold the other half pipe cleaner in half and wind it around the fairy's neck a couple of times to secure it.

Twist a few times to form the body and legs.

And it's time to get dressed. Poke the body of the fairy through the hole in the dress and pop the arms through the slits.

Tie a ribbon around the waist of the dress.

Draw on a face, make any minor wardrobe and hair adjustments...and she's done!

I made lots!

You could add wings, sequins, glitter, hats. Go wild and have fun. I would love to see pictures of any you make. Email me or post them on my facebook page and I may feature them here.

I will be sharing this with some of the link parties listed at the bottom of the page.

Skinny Jalie jeans

 Following the success for my skinny cargo Jalies, I bought some stretch denim and made another pair of skinny jeans, this time without the leg pockets. This was the higher-waisted version, which help hide my muffin-top!

The fit is better this time as I traced the pattern to fit my hip measurement (size S) and blended it into my waist measurement (size U) above the hip. I did this on any pattern pieces (pockets etc.) that went above the hip. This seemed to work well and I will do it again next time I make these.

This second pair went together much faster than the first pair I made and I gave a little more attention to detail with the fly, which was definitely worthwhile - at least Truffle seems to think so.

Quick fixes - update a t-shirt with a shirred hem

I haven't had time to blog over the last few days as we've been completely consumed by an incident involving my mother-in-law. MIL was flying over to Perth from Canada when she became confused due to fatigue during the flight. The airline took her off the plane in Hong Kong and sent her to hospital for medical assessment. The hospital cleared her to continue her journey but the airline insisted that she be accompanied by someone on the flight. A friend in Hong Kong was able to visit her in hospital and offered to accompany her to Perth. However, this was refused at the check-in gate as he didn't have an Australian visa and the airline offered no help in getting him through, even though he was going to fly directly back to HK and not stay in Perth at all. They also wanted to charge him an airfare four times the usual last minute rate. Eventually my husband had to fly out to HK to sort things out (again at our expense, not theirs). It is now three days since my MIL was taken off the plane in HK. We are hoping she and my husband can return to Perth tonight. We have been appalled at the lack of information, lack of assistance and poor treatment by the airline - Cathay Pacific. They have offered my MIL and our friend no help, food or accommodation whatsoever apart from a Starbucks coffee voucher! We are planning to take this further once we get everyone home again. If anyone has any ideas or similar experiences I would love to hear them.

Anyway, back to the crafting. Today I'm showing you a very quick t-shirt update using shirring. I have done this before, but always used my 'cheat's shirring method' as I couldn't get the sewing machine method to work properly. Well, I am pleased to say that I can now do machine shirring and it's incredibly easy!

I think I was going wrong with winding the shirring elastic on to the bobbin. I had been carefully winding it by hand. Wrong idea! This time I just wound the elastic on to the bobbin automatically using the machine bobbin winder and sewed as normal. And it worked! Yay. Thanks to my friend Amanda for telling me this trick, I will be using it often.

How to make a tutorial page on Blogger

Are you struggling to make a tutorial page for your blog that looks something like mine above? I spent hours and hours searching the internet for a method that worked and was simple to use. After much trial and error I finally found one and I've tweaked it into a user friendly format that I thought I would share. In my version you can click the picture or the caption to take you to the tutorial/blog post.

The most helpful resource I found was here and I adapted my version from that one. It is basically a table that you can add pictures and links to as needed. The pictures are always centred so everything looks neat and you can put as many per row of the table as you like. I chose a three column table.

I keep the code saved in Word and just copy and paste as required. Here it is:

[table border="0" cellpadding="5" style="font-family: Times; width: 700px;"][tbody][tr]

[td align="center" valign="center"]

[a href="FULL LINK TO BLOG POST">[img border="0"

src="FULL LINK TO JPG FILE ON PHOTOBUCKET OR BLOG"/][/a][/div]

[span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"]

[a href="FULL LINK TO BLOG POST AGAIN"]

CAPTION FOR IMAGE[/a][/span][/td] 

[/tr]

[/tbody][/table]

Change all the pink '[ ]' to '<' and '>' so the html code works properly

Repeat the above text from [td] to [/td] for each column of the table (i.e. each time you add a tutorial picture to your table)

To start a new row copy from [table...] to [/table] for each subsequent row.

NOTES:

- You need to be in the 'html' mode in a new page in blogger.

-You may need to change the width from 700px (first line) to fit your blog. 

-To get the link to your jpg photo file, either save the picture into a photo sharing site like Photobucket or Flickr and copy the url from there, or open the picture in your blog and right click on it to copy the url.

- If you want more than three pictures per row, just copy the '[td] to [/td]' part as many times as you need.

-Switch into 'compose' mode to check how it's looking. You may need to resize your pictures. I just make them 'small' by selecting that option on the photo itself. 

-You can add categories (eg. 'Girl's clothes', 'Crafts' etc.) in 'compose' mode. Begin a new table below each category heading.

I hope that makes sense. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments, I love to hear them.

Good luck!

Ikea rug to Mexican poncho costume

Mr Six was involved in an assembly item at school. The assembly had a multicultural theme and the children were required to dress in clothes from another country. A quick raid of the dressing-up box revealed nothing more multicultural than Star Wars and Ben 10 costumes, but we did discover a Mexican sombrero at the back of the wardrobe.

Now we just needed a poncho.

I found an old Ikea rag rug and we were in business. Mr Six even did most of the work himself! This is what we did:

Fold the rug diagonally and cut it to a square shape.

Fold the square in half...

...and in half again

and cut a little bit off the top corner to form a hole to put your head through.

Trim the hole to the right size (the rug is stretchy so don't make it too big). I made a v-neck shape pointing to one of the corners for the front of the neck. I also finished off the raw edge with a narrow strip of black jersey fabric (or use bias binding) and made a little felt embellishment for the front.

Then add wool tassels to all the sides that don't already have them. We used a loop/hook rug making tool but a thick needle would be fine.

 He did all the tassels by himself and was so proud of his efforts!

And it's done. He just wore all black underneath. The assembly performance was adorable. They all looked SO cute in their international costumes, I have to admit to a couple of teary moments!