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.

Robot picture

I have been working on this embossed robot picture for a boy's room. It has already got the stamp of approval from my two boys.

If you would like it for your little man this Christmas, it is available in my Etsy shop. I plan to add more pictures in different themes very soon.

Have a good one,

Rusty rake jewellery organiser

Inspired by an idea I saw on Pinterest a while back, I made a necklace holder from a gorgeous old rusty rake.

I had bought the rake from someone on Gumtree. It came with a bonus hoe (not quite sure what I want to do with that yet) for only $7. It was a young guy selling them and he gave me such an odd look when I said what I planned to do with the rake. I bet he'd be jealous now if he saw it!!

So, while the boys were outside hygenically making fresh lemonade on the front steps (hey I'm sure all that citric acid will kill any germs, right?)...

...I set to work on my rake.

This is it 'before', complete with spider webs.

I gave it a wash then found some ribbon and tied it through the hole on the back. I secured the ribbon with some wool wrapped around the bit where the stick goes (stop me if I'm getting too technical). Then I glued a bit of felt to the back to protect the wall. It was the quickest project ever, so much so that I felt sure I couldn't be finished and tried to find more to do!

I think it looks rather sweet - and it will certainly be very useful.

You can see the felt on the back here

So...now for some of that lemonade...

How to make a soft and cosy dog kennel from a camping mattress

We've had a cold winter here in Perth and I thought my little fluffball needed an extra cosy place to sleep. This kennel was simple to make and created entirely from things that would (should) normally be thrown away. I say 'normally' as most people don't hoard clutter like I do, but you just never know when it might come in handy, right?

All you need is a thin foam mattress, which makes the roof, floor and sides, and some material for the front and back. I used a self inflating camping mattress, which was foam with a waterproof cover. You could probably use a yoga mat or similar as long as it holds its shape when rolled into a cylinder. I used an old Ikea bag for the front and back. Any sturdy fabric would work here.

As you can see, my mattress had seen better days and was coming apart at the seams - literally! I sewed the edges together again on my sewing machine. This was a hideous job and broke three needles. I guess you could do it by hand if you had to. Hopefully you won't have to!

Next, roll your mattress into a cylinder and hold the short edges together with bulldog clips or strong pegs. Then lay out your front and back fabric, the Ikea bag in this case, and bend your mattress into a kennel shape (a cylinder with a flat side). Trace the kennel shape on to the end piece. Cut two pieces from this to make the kennel front and back. I didn't take a picture of this as you kind of need both your hands and knees for this bit.

Here is what you end up with. I left the handles on the bag in case they were useful for carrying the kennel later. In retrospect, they probably won't be, but hey you never know. At this point I would recommend cutting out a hole for the door and sewing some sturdy fabric around it for added strength. I didn't do this but wish I had ;)

Sew the flat end of your front and back to one end of the long sides of the mattress. Everyone wanted to try out this project along the way!

Now thread a nice big needle with strong thread and get stitching - all around the front and back and along the remaining bottom edge.

Now it's starting to take shape.

You can see above that I marked out the door shape on the front. I would recommend doing this at an earlier stage as previously mentioned. Anyway, I cut it out and reinforced it with duct tape. I wish I'd sewn it before and added some nice writing applique but not to worry.

Pop an old pillow inside (with a washable pillowcase) and there you have it. Hang on, where's the dog??

Ah, here he comes...."What's this?"

"Do I go in?"

"Like this?"

"oooh yes, I like it"

"Thanks Mum!"

How to stencil clothes with adhesive plastic film and paint

Let me introduce Mr Hurley. Mr Hurley, his brother (Mr Hurley) and his dad (Mr Hurley) love wearing HURLEY brand surfwear. With so many Hurleys in the family this can get expensive. I decided to modify the original Hurley logo and do some stencils on clothes.

I have seen tutorials using freezer paper, but I didn't have any to hand, so I substituted clear 'Contact', which is the inexpensive, adhesive plastic film used to cover school books. It is best to use clear Contact for ease of tracing your design, but it's a bit hard to see in some of the pictures.

To start with I designed my stencil on the computer. I used Microsoft Word and the 'Hurley' is written in Century Gothic font. I printed it out and made a couple of modifications by hand so it looked like this:

Then I placed the clear contact over the printout and cut out the letters with a scalpel.

Any middle bits of letters (like the 'e') need to be saved to be stuck on the fabric later.

I then carefully peeled the Contact from its backing and stuck it to the fabric. I used a paintbrush and acrylic paint to fill in the cut outs. You could also used fabric paint of course. The consistency of acrylic paint works fine for this and didn't produce any bleeding. I would recommend at least three coats allowing paint to dry in between.

I reused the same stencil to make this t-shirt.

Mr Hurley jumping for joy!