This has been an interesting summer. Although my blog has had a maybe stunning lack of craft tutorials, it hasn’t been that I’ve not been making anything. Far from it. There’s that book that I wrote . . . that took a fair amount of time. And there are projects I do all the time with my daughter . . . but those aren’t exactly “How To” projects, they’re just us playing and drawing and having fun.
I was starting to get an itch to MAKE SOMETHING one week in the not-so-distance past that was craft-related and what I made ended up being the content for this post. Not really life-changing projects, but definitely easy wins that you can pull together in minutes to an hour or so. Yay!
The first one is a grapevine wreath I made several years ago with my mom. We were visiting in the fall and when I mentioned how much I loved her grapevine wreaths, she took me straight out to her garden and proceeded to cut down some of the curly vines.
Yes, you need to wait until fall when the branches aren’t quite so green, but you’ll want them to still be pliable. Cut a long length of the vine (you can always trim it), and begin wrapping it into a circle, twisting it into itself. You can do this two or three times (or many more) and then tuck the end of the vine into the wreath. I used a bit of ribbon from an Anthropologie bag to hang the wreath up. 🙂
Okay, don’t laugh. I know what you’re thinking. “What in the world?” But these yarn-wrapped sticks were soooo simple that my toddler helped me to make them. I was originally trying to make a mobile and when that failed, I just kept the yarn-covered sticks. It’s actually kind of addictive, to be honest. All you need is, you guessed it, yarn, scissors, and a stick.
Cut the yarn and tie it to one end and wrap away! When you’re finished, you can tie a knot and tuck the end of the yarn back in. I’m still on the fence as to whether I’ll make anything out of these . . . I so want to make a mobile, so I might give it another try. Until then, these are so pretty!
Embroidering a simple design on a onesie is hands-down my favorite gift to give to new moms. I sketch the drawing onto a plain white onesie with a blue water soluble pen, then I choose my embroidery floss colors, place the onesie into a hoop, and back-stitch the whole design.
From start to finish, it’s usually about two hours or so, though in the case of the above onesie, it took a while longer since I started and stopped many times. Still, it’s totally worth it. You can also place the onesie over a simple design you like and trace it before stitching if you feel uneasy about your drawing skills. (Of course, you can’t sell a onesie with a copyrighted design; just wanted to clarify that. :))
These leaves have been KILLING me with their beauty. I made stacks of beautiful papers from junk mail earlier in the summer, and decided to decorate a couple of the sheets as leaves. I used regular and fine-tipped Sharpies to do this. Then I cut the leaves out and have been trying to figure out what to do with them every since.
They’re too pretty and full of texture to put in an art journal (at least for now). I attempted to make a mobile, but after failing over and over, I lost my interest in that idea. I finally stacked them up and fanned them out and thought a necklace was in order. One long strand of embroidery floss later (the leaves were already hole-punched), and a beautiful paper necklace was born.
