Jewellery II

I made this (fake) leather necklace already a couple of moths ago and now it's one of my absolute favourites.


It was simple to make. I just took a small (10cm x 10cm) piece of fake black leather. Next, I cutted about 1/2 cm strips to it and left 2 cm of the top uncutted. Then, I rolled the leather over a lace and also glued it there with a superglue. To make sure that it would hold, I also sewed the leather together.

Inspiration I

A view from my backyard was amazing one morning. The shadows from the fence to the snow were absolutely beautiful. Also, these shadows really reminded me of a Marimekko fabric designed by Erja Hirvi.

Scrapbooking III

Eviva España! Croquettes were a new course for me, when we cooked them for the first time in Germany with my lovely friends. I totally fell for them, even though they are quite unhealthy, but oh so good! Therefore, I wanted to add croquettes to my recipe scrapbook. From here you can find a lot of croquette recipes.

Blanket I

I just started to make a blanket from separate squares. I'm thinking of giving the ready blanket to Vaaka ry so that they can donate it to a child. I don't know that many kids, but I think they all like animals and panda is one of their favorites? So, my first figure is a panda. It was quite difficult, because when planning the panda, I forgot than it should be "knittable". Live and learn.

Excel plan of the panda figure.

Warning: boring technical info! First, I knitted a small test square and calculated the ratio of one stitch (width/height). I also calculated how many stitches there are in one square centimeter. With both measures. I calculated how many stiches and layers I need to knit to get a square of a certain size (mine: 26x26 cm). I planned the panda with Excel. The size of the cells can be altered, so I used the ratio I had calculated and made the measures of the cells to match the ratio of the stitches. So, the scale of the Excel plan should match the scale of the square. Lastly, I simply filled the cells with different colors to achieve the panda figure. Easier said than done!

The knitted panda.

After planning the square, I just knitted it according to the plan. It looks a bit like someone from kindergarten made it, but maybe the next square is prettier?

Scrapbooking II

Scrap, scrap, scrap. Gotta dig it!

In these pages of my recipe collection I've cut pictures from ads, magazines and also printed some from our special friend: The Internet! My funny grandpa ones asked me: Is there paper in The Internet? Other ingredients include e.g. beads, doily and stickers. I try to avoid using the ready-made scrapbooking materials you can buy from paper stores. I'm keeping it real!

The white pillow is made by my grandma.

The blanket and the left side page are made by my mother!

There is usually a colored paper in the background of the page. That makes it easier to handle the book. The papers can be just about anything. Some sharp-eyed readers might have already spotted it: I've used my wallpaper as a background material in Charlotte russe!

Woolen socks a.k.a. villasukat

I found my inner grandma and decided to go for the ultimate knitting challenge. Thus, I made woolen socks. It was a bit tough job, but not as difficult as I originally thought. I used this as a guideline.

Here are the socks and the happy owner (me) dancing!

Reupholstering

I had these old armchairs that have quite a funky shape, but the most disgusting fabric on them. So, I decided to reupholster them and hopefully bring them to the year 2010! Originally, I wanted to use very colorful fabric, since everything in my apartment seems to be black and white. Surprise, surprise - in the end, I decided to go with black and white fabric.

Before

After

I am a huge fan of Marimekko and I think that they just keep improving their collections season by season. Their furniture fabric collection was quite limited, but with the help of my sister and friend, we decided that I should go with Kanteleen Kutsu by Sanna Annukka.

I did the upholstering all by myself! First, I made a model of the coating from newspaper and then I cut the fabric using the newspaper model. Next, I sew a one-piece "hood" for the chair from the fabric. Lastly, I connected the hood and the chair with staples. The most difficult parts were the corners of the chair, since they are round. Thus, I ended up sewing those parts a gazillion times. I'm quite happy with the outcome!

Wallpaper

I moved to a new apartment just a couple of weeks ago and the very first thing I wanted to do was to put a wallpaper on the wall. I chose this classy Borås wallpaper with black and white stripes. Armed with three persons who knew nothing about wallpaper glueing and an old renovation book we spent all and all 8 hours with this wallpaper. But we made it!


This is the Borås photo of the wallpaper.


And here is the wallpaper in my living room!

Scrapbooking I

During the Cristmas break, I took my arts and crafts hobby to a totally new level: scrapbooking. For years, I had kind of made fun of "scrappers" and thought that it's definately nothing for me. How little did I know. My mother gave me this book, where I can scrap our family recipes and now I'm totally in love with scrapbooking. What a fun way to get your mind off from all the trouble in your life and just focus on how to set the pages right in your book!


For scrapbooking, you can utilize just about anything. I really recommend to use two-sided tape instead of glue, because glue has a tendency of making paper crooked and bended. 3D elements are quite cool in scrapbooking (I used word cool with scrapbooking?). On the other hand, using too much of 3D makes it difficult to close your book!

Ps. Most of these recipes you can also find from my mother's cooking website!

Jewellery I

The new era of my arts and crafts hobby started actually before last Christmas. Thus, it's natural to start the blog from the pieces of jewellery that I made for my friends (and perhaps for me too) as Christmas presents. My grandma is my biggest inspiration in this, since she started to make jewellery two years ago.


These are some of the earrings I made for my friends. I just used different fabrics, fake leather and the stickiest glue in the universe! The earring parts are really cheap and easy to find from any arts and crafts store. The details of the earrings are quite small, so it was challenging to make them neatly, but I'm kind of proud of the way they turned out! The photo is a disaster, but back in December, I didn't have a clue that I would start a blog and post this as my first photo!


These are just a sample of my grandma's huge collection of jewellery. Maybe I'll post later some more pics of her fabulous work!