Thursday, April 28, 2011

I've Been Featured! - Again?!

You beautiful people! I was reading the comments on my last few posts on my phone while I was on a break at Uni and smiling away like a loon! I'm sure people walking by thought I was nuts ;) Love you guys!

I've got a couple more features to share - man, I'm feeling the love!

Jill at Creating My Way To Success did a post where I was interviewed! It was pretty exciting for me, and I was totally flattered to be asked to be a part of it! Jill features different people each week, it's always very interesting to read their different takes on what success means to them and how they're going about achieving it. Jill also does very cool tutorials, like the fabric chess set she did on Tuesday. I'm in love with it! Definitely a blog to check out! 

To top everything off, the lovely Stevie at Moore Babies awarded me the Versatile Blogger award! Thanks so much Stevie! <3


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Whip It Up Wednesday: Anthro Inspired Big Top Earrings

We don't have Anthropologie here in Australia, so I hadn't even heard of it before I wandered into blogland. I have to say, it's a great place for inspiration but I'm way too much of a scrooge to buy anything!

Anthropologie's Big Top Earrings.
US$160 originally, down to US$80 on sale. Crazy!

When I saw these earrings I knew I had to give them a go! Of course, I wanted to do it with only the materials I already had on hand, so it's not as perfect as the Anthro version which has been done with wire and beads that are actually the same length! ;) 

Rissa's somewhat lame attempt ;)

My version is less "neat" but gives the right effect when they're worn, plus, they're lighter than Anthro's would be since they're made with cotton thread. I road tested them and they passed the "night out" test ;) Right, let's get on with it!

What You Need:
* Cotton thread (or similar)
* Large seed beads or pony beads
* Small seed beads or delica beads
* Bugle beads
* 2 earring findings 
* 2 jump rings
* Scissors, needle, needle threader, etc...




What To Do:
First we're going to build the "frame" of our earrings. Thread your needle with the cotton, and knot the end together. You'll want to keep it double stranded.


Thread on some of your small beads in the primary colour for your earrings. I'm using gold to keep it similar to the Anthro original. Seed or delica beads work well. I threaded about 6cm worth of beads.


Tie the ends together so you have a circle of beads. Knot tightly and trim the cotton ends as close as you can to the end of the beads.


Repeat to make a second bead circle.


Now repeat the process to make two smaller circles. This time I used 3cm worth of beads.


Now you should have two large and two small circles of beads.


Right, time to get out your other colours! I'm using mainly gold, with chocolate, dark blue and light blue highlights.


Tie one of your pony beads onto the end of your cotton. This time we're just working with single strands of cotton :)


Thread on three bugle beads in the same colour. Thread the loose end of the cotton up into the bugle beads to hide it. Like this:


Take one of your big beaded circles we made earlier. You want to thread the needle between two beads in the circle and in between the two strands of cotton.


Pull your cotton through so the dangling beads on the new thread are against the beads in the circle.


Thread on three more bugle beads, then repeat the above process with one of the small circles. Thread on another four bugle beads. You should now have something that looks like this:


Now we want to work back down the other side. Thread the needle down through the opposite side of the small circle, like this:


Thread on 3 bugle beads again, thread through the opposite side of the big circle this time, thread on another 3 bugle beads and finish by tying on another pony bead. Trim the cotton as closely as you dare ;)

It should now look like this, sort of like an A-frame:


Now you want to repeat these steps to create a second "A-frame" at a 90 degree angle to the first "A-frame". When you're done, it should look like this:


Right, that's our frame. Now we want to fill in the gaps between the frames. This is similar to creating the frame, except that after you thread the cotton through the small circle, instead of going up and over, we want to come straight back down. Here's a diagram to help explain:


Thread the needle down and through the gap next to where you threaded upwards -if that makes sense!! ;) Hopefully the diagram above helps you understand what I'm going on about!


Continue doing this until all the gaps between beads in your large and small circles have been filled. 

If you need to, you can double up on using gaps in the small circle, thread through the beads in the top circle (e.g. if you have gaps either side of a frame leg), or of you have a single gap left over you can thread back through the same beads on the way down. 

First - a typical case, up the left side, through the middle of the two cotton strands at the top, back down the right side.
Second - up the left side, through a bead at the top, down the right side.
Third - up the left side, through the middle of the two cotton strands at the top, back down the same beads.

When you're done it should be looking more like this:


You'll notice there are some kinks, not everything sits flat. This is because the bugle beads vary in length. If you can get your hands on bugle beads that are perfectly equal in size, your earrings will sit much more nicely ;)

OK, now we need that jump ring and earring finding. Open your jump ring and thread it through the top of your beaded tassel. You should have two strands on one side of the jump ring, two on the other. Slip your earring finding in and close the jump ring.


That's one earring done! Now repeat the steps to make a second earring so you've got yourself a pretty matching pair! *Phew* All done!

I'll even model my pair for you:
Check out my mad photoshopping skills ;)
Happy Beading!

Linking up at Sundae Scoop and Sunburnt Cow!


Tuesday, April 26, 2011

I've Been Featured!

It's always so exciting to have things featured! While I was sadly AWOL last week, I came back to discover that all of these lovely people had featured me in some way! It made my day - my week even! -  so I just had to share the love back!

Terri at A Creative Princess was amazing! First, she dedicated an entire post to sharing my blog and shop, then she even featured my vintage charms tutorial in her Super Saturday features! Talk about feeling the love! <3

My embellished cushion cover tutorial was featured over at To Sew With Love - yippee!

My wire bird's nest tutorial was featured by two lovely bloggers! Jennifer at Vintage Gwen and Luci at Thymely Stitches - thanks so much!

Lauren at Doodleboop Designs awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award! Thank you!

And finally, my felt brooch was featured in the MadeIt.com.au newsletter, and I sold two brooches that day! Wow! Now I only have this one left!


So, thank you so much for the features everyone! I'm delighted and honoured!


If you ever do feature something from H&H please let me know! I always enjoy sharing the blog love!


Monday, April 25, 2011

Mod My Blog Monday: Grab Code Box For Your Button

Good morning my lovelies! I hope you all had a relaxing Easter weekend!

Today I'm going to show you how to make a grab box so that people can copy the code for your button and put it on their blogs. It's pretty easy! Here's my "Featured" button and grab box:




 And here's the (simplified) code behind it! 

<img border="0" src="IMG_URL"/><br/>
<textarea cols="15" rows="4">
&lt;a href="BLOG_URL" target="_blank"&gt;
&lt;img src="IMG_URL" border="0"/&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;
</textarea>


How to use the code:

First, copy the code above!

Next, when you're writing a post or editing a page, click on "Edit HTML"


In the HTML code, find the place where you want your button and code box to show up.

In the picture below, everything inside the green box is just the code for the empty lines between my text in the image above.

So, what I would do is replace the little bit of code in blue with the code you copied from above.

I would also delete the code that's in yellow, because it's just empty space, but you don't have to! You can do that in your normal "Compose" view :)


So, you should have something like this, where the new code is highlighted in green and the "div" tags that were originally around the code we replaced are still there and highlighted in blue.


Now replace BLOG_URL with the address of your blog or the page that you want the button to link to, and IMG_URL with the address of your button image! Remember, there are two places to replace IMG_URL with your address!

If you're not sure how to get the address of your button image, check out this post!

When you've done that, click "Compose" and finish editing your post as usual!


Enjoy! And remember, you can always let me know if you need some help! 
Email me at marissa.milne [at] gmail [dot] com!


Sunday, April 24, 2011

Scrap Box Sunday: Link Party #6

Last Week's Highlights:

Once again, thank you to everyone who's been supporting the party and linking up! If I haven't already visited your project, I promise I will! Last week was just soo busy! ! Here are the most clicked projects from last week:

Love this! I'm doing a little Anthro knock-off shortly too! Great minds think alike ;)


These are very cute! And practical! Can't go wrong with that combo!

 Thanks so much for joining in the fun lovelies! Please feel free to grab a Featured Button from here!


Party time again!! 

Link up anything that you've made with scraps lying around your craft room! It doesn't have to be fabric scraps, it could be paper, ribbon, food, beads anything! You've got until Thursday! 

Just display H&H's button somewhere on the post or in your sidebar, and link up! Link as many projects as you want, as long as you haven't linked them up here before.




InLinks now checks that you've linked back to H&H and that you're linking the the right sort of post - this means you need to place the link to H&H on your blog before you add your link here. Please let me know if you have any trouble linking up!



Scrap Box Sunday: Elastic Cuff Bracelet

Happy Easter beautiful people! First of all, let me apologise for being AWOL from the blogging scene lately - as I predicted, being on holidays meant I actually had less spare time ;) but don't fret, Uni goes back after this long weekend so everything should be back to normal soon!

Now onto the crafting! Today we're using up fabric scraps (again! I have a lot of fabric leftovers...) and making a cuff bracelet!




What You Need:

* A rectangle of fabric
The longer it is, the more ruffled the cuff will be.
The wider it is, the wider your cuff.

* Two strips of elastic

* Embellishments
I used more fabric and felt scraps and some beads.



What To Do:

Fold both long edges of your fabric rectangle inward and pin them in place. You want to fold them over enough so that when sewn up, your elastic will fit inside.


Sew up both edges. If you want the finished product to be tidier and more robust, you could fold that raw edge under as well, but it'll be on the inside of the cuff and since I'm just making this one for me, I did it the lazy way (as usual!)


Cut two strips of elastic. These should be long enough to comfortably fit around your wrist, plus about 1 cm for sewing up the edges.


Grab a safety pin and pop it through one end of one piece of your elastic. Use the safety pin to thread your elastic down the sewn "tube" edge of your fabric rectangle.


Push your elastic all the way into the tube, so that the end lines up with the edge of the "tube".


Sew across the end of the elastic, back and forwards a couple of times, to hold it securely in place.


Now use the safety pin to pull the elastic all the way through and out the other side of the "tube", ruffling your fabric as you go.


Line up the end of the elastic with the open end of the tube and pin it in place. Remove the safety pin and sew across the end of the elastic, back and forth a couple of times, to hold it in place.


Repeat with the other piece of elastic on the other side of your fabric! You should end up with a stretchy, ruffled thing that looks kind of like a piece from a baby's nappy cover XD


Fold this in half, raw edges facing the outside, and line up the ends. Pin the two ends together.


Sew straight across the top edge, remove the pins.


Turn it right side out and now you have a very simple, ruffled fabric cuff!



Time to embellish it..!
You can of course embellish yours any way you like. This is what I did.

First, cut some petal shapes from three different coordinating fabrics. You probably want about 6 petals from each fabric. Also [not pictured!] cut out three circles of white felt.


Grab out that trusty glue gun! Pop a little dab of glue on the end of your petal shape and press it together. Now you have a nice 3D petal instead of a 2D one ;) Do this to all of your petal shapes.


Glue your petals directly onto your cuff, arranged into three flowers (sorry, forgot to take a photo!) Pop a dob of glue in the centre back of your felt circles and glue these to the centres of your flowers.


 This next step was tricky to take a photo of because you need both hands (thus, no camera hand free!) and you need to do it quickly! Before the glue dries. It'll take longer to read about than to actually do ;)

Pop a big dob of glue in the centre of your felt. Pinch the opposite edges of your felt circle together (I'm doing one in the pic below, but you want to do both at the same time to get the right effect!) and when it's starting to hold, but the glue is still drying, take a generous pinch of pretty coloured seed beads and sprinkle them in the centre. Push them into the glue. 

Resume pinching the edges until it's all nicely dried, then shake off the loose beads. 

I lost a tonne of beads in our carpet, yay! >_<


Do this for all three of your flowers and you're done! I think smaller flowers would look even better.


Here's an action shot, please excuse my thin yet manly wrist :P Let the pretty cuff distract you instead!


Happy Easter! Have a safe and love filled weekend!


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