It's the second round of the Iron Crafter over at Fireflies & Jellybeans! This time around, the secret ingredient was pillowcases and/or sheets.  I chose pillowcases, as you have already read above.  I wanted to make something useful, that I actually needed, and with three little girls, what I really need is storage.  Times a million.  So I decided to make some hanging bags that they could carry around and stuff with their favorite toys and stuff.  Here's what I made:


I love these, they may actually encourage the girls to pick up some of their toys!  Hmmm maybe not, but at least I now have more floor space in their rooms.  Now for the tutorial... stay with me folks, I am not the best sewing machine user, and definitely don't have technical terms for this!

To make these, I started with two long pillowcases, one for each bag.  Must be from a king set?  Not sure why I had them in my linen closet, but what the hey, I made them useful.

I took one and cut the top off.


Then I took it and folded it in half and cut it, making sure that the top piece was a little longer so that I could sew the bottom shut, and both halves would be the same size.  See?  I bet there are some good terms to use here to make it less confusing.  Good thing there are pictures, that's all I'm sayin'.


After turning the two pieces inside-out, I took the top piece that was pretty much just a tube of fabric, and sewed the bottom shut.  I did this next step to each piece.  I wanted to create "flat bottoms" on the bags, so I folded the bottom corners so that the seams were together, measured up about two inches, and sewed a seam.  Then I cut the excess fabric off of the corner.






Once it dried, the flowery branch things were a little too pale for me, so I went back and filled them in with a little paint brush.  I used a different stamp on the other side, to make it kind of reversible.

Once it was totally dry, I used a thick white ribbon and some metal rings to make the handles.  I placed the ring on the middle of a strip of ribbon, folded it over, turned up the edges, pinned it to the inside of the bag, and stitched in place.  (Forgot to take a picture at this part, oops...).

Then I made another bag from the other pillowcase, hung up a wooden peg rack that I got a Michael's for $5 (just had to paint it black), and that's it!  Easy storage!

I don't know which side I like better....

For my third installment of the Envelope Of Doom crafts, I took this beaded tassel-thingy:

 took it apart, and turned it into a cluster ring:

It was pretty easy, too.  The hardest part (for me) was finding a ring blank at the store.  Jeesh, it took longer than it should have.  I need to start asking where things are in the store, I'm always so determined to find it myself :)  So, here's my process:

I took the tassel apart and saved the flowery pieces.

They were originally strung on black string, but I needed something a little stronger than that.  So I grabbed some craft wire and strung them the same exact way they were on the string.  Started with the tiny seed bead and bent the wire back down to hold it in place,

then strung on the larger beads,

followed by the flower bead.

I took one of the pieces of wire sticking out from the bottom, and secured the beads in place by winding it around the base of the flower bead:


Once the beads were secure, I trimmed the wire.  I repeated this process with each "flower" (7 in all).  Once they were finished, I grabbed my ring blank and my hot glue gun.  Starting with the middle, I stuck each bead flower in place with a good drop of hot glue. (Forgot to take pictures of this... and I didn't have enough hands to take any, either).  Once it dried-and cooled off-, it was done!  I wasn't sure how the hot glue would hold up, but I made sure to use plenty of it, and so far it has held up to hand washing, changing clothes, changing kid's clothes, picking up toys... the usual daily things.  So it's all good!



As far as the gifting goes on this one, I gave it to myself... is that allowed??? I've got a plan for my next envelope project (which is all ready to go for Friday!), and I think it'll make up for it.

I saw this on the angelo:HOME blog...


and I immediately thought of my old, cracking wooden salad bowls that have been sitting in my cupboard since before I was born.  I really think they are that old.

I really like the look of these, but they are no where near my price range starting at $570.  Ooo, that hurt! 
Here's my cheap knock-off, that sort-of, somewhat resembles it...

Grabbed the drill and a large-ish drill bit (I forget the size... um, 9/16? I think that's it...) and drilled lots and lots of holes into the bowls, and a hole saw to cut a hole through the center of one bowl.  And as you can see, these bowls were already starting to crack before my drill work...

Oops.  Nothing a little hot glue can't fix.  I glued the pieces back together, hot glued the bowls rim to rim, and then onto a wooden candle holder, like so:



I sprayed it with some off-white spray paint, let it dry, and hot glued some string around the middle (to cover the gap & the bumps of hot glue...) and it was done.  This is one of those things that I don't recommend putting a real candle into... just the battery operated ones :)






I love the look of it lit up... but I'm still trying to find something brighter than my little rechargeable candles.  Holding a plug-in candle in it isn't gonna work...