Saturday 17 October 2015

ACCORDION FOLDED SEWING KIT

Closed Sewing Kit

Open Sewing Kit
I have lots and lots of paper.  I am not complaining about this fortunate state of affairs, but every now and then I do feel that perhaps I should actually use some of it.

As I seemed to be forever borrowing sewing needles from the ladies at work, these little kits seemed appropriate.

I just folded a long strip of textured white card three times (to make four panels) - up then down then up again to make an accordion.

I added paper to the back panels, securing a ribbon under the end one (which becomes the front of the book) so that it can be tied around the book to keep it closed.

On the other side I added little pieces of felt secured with split pins to sticky backed magnets to hold needles and pins, and a little pocket to hold a bobbin shaped piece of card wound with three different colours of cotton.

They won't last forever but don't take too long to make and are very functional - just a nice size to slip in your handbag (or desk drawer for the next time some annoying person like me wants to borrow a needle or pin!)

Saturday 3 October 2015

PAPER SCRAP EARRINGS

Here's one for folks who can't bring themselves to throw out even the tiniest scraps of handmade and Japanese papers......buy some earring backings and little glass cabouchons and go wild.

Due to a slight misreading of quantities on ebay,  I now have enough to wear a different pair each day for, oh, well, give or take.....about a year!!  (But I have used up a lot of little bits of paper!!)

Some polystyrene packing provided a nice stable base, whilst I was gluing the bits together.  The black, gold and burgundy examples were made by colouring the base of the glass with Sharpie markers before glueing them to the base, but the rest were all made with scraps of paper.