Dress made out if men's ties

Hi, so im back with yet another blog for your guys! I've been blogging a lot recently whilst I've got the chance and hope to be bringing you more blogs very soon.

So here is a dress that I made in school for a catwalk show we did at our summer eco fair, our task was to design and make an outfit out if recycled materials so I got the male members of my family to donate any ties that they have but don't wear anymore and I created this halter neck dress.

Unfortunately the pictures arnt as good as I would have hoped because my model didn't want any of her pictures put on the internet (which is totally understandable, she is one of my best friends and if she doesn't want them on there not going on) so I have had to settle for these.

Like I said before the dress has a halter neck and ties at the back like a normal tie, it also has a fish tail at the back which was totally not planned but turned out like that by itself.

Unfortunately the tailors dummy that it is on is way to big (but it was the smallest one we had at the time) so it really doesn't do the dress justice.

I have also made another Asian inspired dress for my final project but I haven't been given thay back yet as it is still at school because we arnt allowed to collect them yet :-( so as soon as I get it back I will write a post and upload some more pictures. Please feel free to comment at the bottom and thanks for taking the time to read my post it is very much appreciated.

Necklace and Earings Made From Shrink Plastic

I absolutly love the way that this turned out and like most of the things I post on my blog it has a story behind it.........

It was 2 week's before I was set to go on study leave with the rest of my Year so that we could prepare for our year 11 GCSE's and I had been thinking about what I could get my form teacher as a sort of "thank you for putting up with my craziness and constant asking if I could go to textiles to do my course work when I should be in form time....". For the life of me I couldn't think of what to get her appart from the usual chocolates, flowers, mug....... Then one day I over heard her talking to another member if my form about how she couldn't wear her favourite top as often as she would like because she didn't have any yellow jewelry. This got me thinking she know I make a lot of my own things why don't I make her some yellow jewelry to remember me by!

When I got home in my hour of craftyness I had restricted myself to a day so I didn't put off revising for my exams I started thinking and looking through my crafty stash for inspiration. That's when I found my yellow sheets of shrink plastic, it was then only a sort hop skip and a jump to finding my flower stamp and black ink pad. I stamped the flower onto the plastic once (only once because I didn't know if the flowers would shrink to small or not enough) after cutting the flower out I used my heat gun to shrink it and it was the perfect size! I then repeated process untill I had enough flowers to make a necklace and earings.

Now came the tricky part how to make the holes for the jump rings.......this wasn't a problem when I remembered the Christmas present my dad had insisted in getting (the present that I secretly love the most coz it's an amazing thing really) my dremal hand held drill! (when I get the time I'll do a post dedicated to it and put some links to my favourite YouTube videos). So I simply drilled the holes attached the necessary findings and there you have it!

My teacher loved the gift and wears it all the time according to my mum who works at my school, who knew that something so simple can make a person's outfit complete!

Fantastic Card Technique

Ok so first of all this is not my idea but an idea that I saw in an art shops window in Lancaster (England).

I saw this whilst out shopping one day and with the permission of one of the shop workers took a picture of it so that I could share it with as many crafters as possible!

I have tried this technique myself but with a different stamp and it worked beautifully, unfortunately I did it on the front of a card which I then gave to someone without taking a picture first :-( Never the less this is still a wonderful technique and one that I do on cards for those who mean the most to me.

Get involved!

I'm starting a new section of my blog today and it involves u the wonderful men and women at home! If u have any questions about anything craft related, ideas that you can't find patterns for or want to know if an idea you have would work, simply leave a comment on my blog and even if I personally don't know the answer I will hunt down the answer for you! Remember I created this blog for you the fantastic crafters out there and I want to help you all become the best crafters that you can be because without you all this blog wouldn't exist and the world would be a less creative and in my opinion a boring place to live!

Cute monster purses

So i've been meaning blog about making these for a while now but I just haven't had time sorry x

I made these cute purses or for me they are phone cases because I have a Sony Xperia z and it's huge!

One day I was out shipping and decided that I needed a phone case.....untill I saw the price of some of them :-/ Instead of purchasing one that would probably fall to pieces I decided to make one (well several and I'm going to sell the rest on my craft stall). Not having a pattern I simply made it up as I went along, I drew around my phone and left plenty of seem allowance then cut this Patten out of felt and made the case (it really was that simple).

I've made several different sizes (the pink  one is big enough to fit my Sony in and the blue one just about fits a BlackBerry), my next test is figuring out how to make them for tablets or even laptops!

These cases are so fun to make and why don't u get the kids involved in making there own gadget or coin purses, obviously you would stitch them together to save trips to the emergency room and social services comming round, but let the children chose the colour, buttons and other accessories to stick onto the front. This could be a quick and easy project for a rainy day or even a child's birthday party if u pre made the cases before.

As usual please leave your comments and questions and I'll get back to you, love and crafty hugs x