The Cake is a lie... but my companion cube foot stool is.... er not?

Halleluiah IT'S FINALLY FREAKING FINISHED!!!!

 I've been working on this foot stool for jebus only knows how long.... but yesterday I finally finished it. You all have Lewy to thank for it, he came and plopped it down on my lap while I was watching How Clean Is Your House (rather than actually cleaning it like I should but shhhhh!), told me he was sick of looking at it half finished and that I had better finish it off before the end of the day.

Now lucky for my I only had a small bit left to go, otherwise I might have just broken down and cried right there on the lounge with images of lounge room rubbish tips blaring in the background....

And the best thing of all? You can make this thing yourself.... and no it doesnt have to be footstool size!

 To the left here we have the basic pattern you need... I did forget to mention that the whole big square needs to be in dark grey felt or material... but this is pretty much all you need to know. You can re-size this pattern any way you like... make a teeny tiny one... make a gigantic one... make whatever you want out of it!










Steps:

All my pretty pieces, and sewn the hearts and "legs"on

1. Cut out all your pieces. If you're using the pattern I have given you I suggest cutting out the whole big square first, then cutting out the other pieces from inside, will save you having to print the pattern out multiple times. I made my squares about 1.5 feet because after all I did make a foot rest and it would be hard to rest your achy feet on a pillbox.
2. First of all you need to sew the heart shape into the center of the circle shape. Do this until you run out of hearts and circles.
3. You need to attach the purple "legs" (for lack of a better word to call them at the moment" to the top, bottom, and each side of the circle. It should look like you have sewn the circle with the heart on it into the middle of a big plus sign, and do this until you run out of purple pieces and hearts, you should have 6 at the end one for eac
h face of the cube.

Sewing those corners together!

4. Now you can save time by doing this step now, or you can save it for later. If you have a sewing machine handy I suggest you do it now because it really will save some time! Take three pieces of the Corner shape and sew the long sides together, you will get a pyramid shape. Do this until you run out of corner shapes, you should end up with 8 sewn together pieces. Take the light grey rectang
le pieces and sew one end of the short edges together. Now set these pieces aside, because you wont need them until the very end.
5. Take your heart on a plus sign pieces, and you are going to sew them on to each face of the cube. I found that pinning them in place helped me center them better while I was stitching them on. (Let me tell you a sewing machine would have come in soooooo handy at this point, and this is why this darn thing took soooo long to finish!)
6. After you have stitched all the faces on you are ready to make them into a cube. I found that stitching them all together in a big cross shape was more effective than trying to sew them into shape one by one... so you do four long in a row, it doesnt matter which way the row goes, just make sure that your purple "legs" line up and touch each other. Then on the second square of the row you will sew one on the top and one on the bottom of the row so it looks like a cross shape. (not an "X" cross but more of a "t" cross)

My "cross" shape

7. Now stitch all the edges together around the two prongs of the cross to make the cube, this can be a bit tricky if you're using a machine, but its alright if you round the corners a little bit on the cube because they will be covere
d up at the end. Make sure you leave a spot open so you can flip the whole thing inside out (so the seams dont show) and so you can stuff it!
8. Stuff that thing until your hearts content... but please dont over stuff it, just remember it's a COMPANION CUBE not a COMPANION BALL. Then after you're finished stuffing it stitch closed the opening. I found it best to leave one of the corners open to do this step since they are going to be covered up at the end it doesnt really matter if you have a noticeable seam after you close it up.
9. Time to put those corners on! This bit was also a bit tricky, you dont
want to put them on too tight because they are supposed to protrude from the cube a little bit, stitch around 2.5 of the sides then take a small amount of stuffing and cram it into the corner just to make it a bit more "corner-ey". and continue to stitch around the last side, tie off the thread and viola you have just done a corner!

10. Last step! The rectangle pieces you have laying around will go over the purple "legs" and in between the two corner pieces you have done. Stitch around all of the edges you can put a little bit of stuffing in this bit as well if you like but thats up to you. Tie off all your edges and you're finished!

 Now you may have noticed in my "finished" picture up there my rectangles in the middle dont look as though they have seams in the middle. Don't worry I'm not that adapt at sewing by hand... me in all my smartness didnt cut enough of them in the first place, and therefore had to make do with one to cover the whole distance instead of two thats why it looks a little bit stretched... but still I'd rather have one that I made myself than one that I bought from the shops and paid a ridiculous amount of money for.... seriously it couldnt cost them any more to make than it did you right? So why can they charge $50 for it when it barely costs $15 to make? HUGE PRICE MARK UP!!!! and mine looks just as good anyways!

Now so no one sues, all rights to the companion cube are for whoever made the portal game... i dont take credit for coming up with the design or the name or any of that stuff... I do however take credit for the pattern.... because lets face it you would have to be a freaking rocket scientist to come up with that on your own!

Now if you will all excuse me, I'm gonna go and put my feet up, have a nice cup of tea and watch some more bad youtube videos that make me feel guilty for not cleaning or eating the right foods.... and then I'm going to go to work and deal with some screaming children while I can barely breath out my nose due to my allergies not being able to make up their minds if they want to act up or not....

Yes I am in my pajamas.... but it is not even 9am and I will probably stay in them until I have to change clothes for work..... Don't Judge ME!!!! By the way I freaking love my socks, they have pandas on the toes, and the colors are so bright they almost glow in the dark! I just wish they were a little bit warmer, because it was 2 degrees outside this morning.... 2! I'm bloody freezing here!!!

Now that I think about it actually I'm gonna have to hide my pretty and comphy new foot stool.... because lets face it, it's pretty and comphy and the mario mushroom foot stool that I made for Lewy ages ago has gone a bit... er, flat.

 

Which is pretty funny when you think about it because when I first made it it looked like 

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and Lewy squished it with his big man feet!

2.1k VIEWS!!!!!

Yup, that's right folks... We have finally hit the 2,000 view mark! I couldn't be happier!

So in honor of this special event, I've decided to do a blog on origami butterflies.

I'm making a whole bunch of little ones, so I took some step by step shots using my awesome new phone, who's camera is 100 times better than my old one, so get ready for some extra crisp views!

Step one: you start out with a square of paper. (The ones in the picture were made by folding an A4 sheet of paper in half and making a large triangle first, then the scrap of paper left over is what I have used to make the triangles used in this blog.) You can make 2 triangles from each scrap of paper. Now I say triangles but you really end up with a square that is folded in half diagonally.

 Step two: take the top corner and fold it down lining the edges of the paper up. You should be able to make two if these triangle shapes from the scrap of paper, but it will depend on how many you personally wish to make, and what size paper you are using.

Step three: while the shape is still folded in half diagonally cut off the excess paper from the bottom of the scrap, make sure all the edges line up and there is no excess paper on any of the sides, or your butterfly may end up with some overlap in its wings.

Step four: now that you have the square piece of paper, you need to make the pre-folds. Fold the piece diagonally both ways so there will be an X shape of folds. Once you have done this fold the paper in half so you will have a straight line going through the middle of the X folds.

 Step five: collapse the folds in on themselves. You will end up with another triangle shape with two flaps on the inside, which you will be able to see from the open end of the triangle.

Step six: now its time to start forming the butterfly, we will start with the bottom wings. Turn the open end of the triangle away from you.

Step seven: take on of the corners from the open end and fold it down to meet the top point of the triangle. Make sure not to grab both corners, or the butterfly's top wings will have creases in them.

Step eight: do the same to the other corner. You should end up with something similar to the picture on the left, with what looks like a small square in the middle of a triangle. These two folded down flaps will be the butterfly's bottom wings!

Step nine: flip the whole thing over, so now the two corners you folded down are on the bottom and the plain triangle shape is facing the top.

Step ten: take the pointy end of the triangle and fold it upwards towards the open end. Make sure and fold it so the point is higher than the open edge. Doing this will pull up the other edges as well but this is ok, we want this to happen.

Step eleven: after you have folded the point to the top you need to flatten the shape. The bottom edges will have pulled up so you need to pull them back down and flatten them, it will make a small overlap of paper on the flap you pulled up in the previous step and look similar to the picture on the left. We're almost done!

Step twelve: once again flip the whole thing over, It should be starting to look like a butterfly now, and you should have a small triangle peeking out over the open edge of the top wings.

Step thirteen: fold this small triangle back over the open edge of the wings. this will keep the whole thing closed together without having to use staples or glue.

Step fourteen: fold the whole shape in half, along the line between the bottom wing flaps. Make sure the small triangle doesn't come unfolded during this because the butterfly will sort of fall apart.

Step fifteen: pinch the top where the triangle was folded over, with your fingers, and flatten. This will give you a butterfly body ans well as pull the wings away from each other slightly giving the whole thing a more butterfly feel.

Flip the whole thing over and you should have something that looks similar to the little butterfly pictured above!

Now you can decorate it however you like, add some antenna, draw on some spots.... make some different shapes and sizes and colors.... the possibilities are endless!

Next blog:

Instructions on how to make this adorable little bunny using a pattern that I found for free on pinterest!

The Teddies!

First of all, let me state that there has been a problem... I am not sure if it has to do with the loss of my laptop or what has happened, but all of my blog photos and videos have seemed to disappear...

I was able to replace 98% of the blog photos, luckily because I have them all saved to my pc (which Lewy fixed for me) but the videos are pretty much gone... they were all done using the webcam attached to the laptop and not saved anywhere but here *sad face*

One of the ones affected was the blog about the little teddy bears I made, so I decided to do a proper blog about them... I did leave the other post up because it has the link to the ravelry website so you all can get the pattern... but here is is one more time.

The pattern is pretty straight forward, all knitted on straight needles and sewn together, it's overall a very cute little teddy bear and they are pretty addictive to make.

These pictures are just a few that I made, the brown one on the right went to little Bella, and a twin one went to Daniella for her first Easter, the black one with the white face goes to my mom, the stripy one went to my cousin Ashley's little boy Dylan, and the two little ones are what I like to call my Mr & Mrs bears. They take about 3 days for me to make, the larger ones take the least amount of time, but because my fingers tend to cramp up a bit when knitting for long periods of time I have to put it down and rest a little before starting up again, if you are able to do the whole amount in one sitting it should only take you a day or two at the most to finish one off. I thought it would be pretty fun to play around with them a little bit, hence the stripes and the accessories. The brown bears both had sewn on felt eyes, but you can use fabric paint (like I have done for the rest of them) or even buttons, but I wouldn't suggest that if you plan on giving the finished product to a small child.

 Now the only thing I do differently from the pattern is that I don't stitch closed the neck, I attach the head and the body together using the cast on edges as a guide, I find it makes the whole thing a little bit stronger which is good if you want to have little kiddies dragging it around. The Mr & Mrs Bears were by far my favorite to do, because they have accessories!

 The Mr bear is sporting a nifty little felt top hat, a stunning little mustache, a powder blue tie to match Mrs bear, and not pictured is his little Ball and chain... While Mrs bear is sporting a lovely white veil with a jeweled tiara in blue and silver, as well as a nice little bouquet of silver roses! The had their eyes put on using fabric paint, Mrs bear had a nice little pre-wedding nose job because I made the mistake of painting on some horrid red lips that made her look like a clown, but luckily enough I had enough yarn left over to make her a new nose.

Cutie Patootie Teddies!

Sorry for the bad quality video! lolz but it's way to early in the morning to care what I look like or sound like at the moment XD here's the link to the free ravelry download! click it now and make this super cute and adorable teddy bear!

Easy Peasy Sunglasses Bag

So I really REALLY fell in love with the material I got from Spotlight for the back of my Country Kitchen Apron, and I've been trying to find a use for as much of it as possible.

When I carried my sunnies around with my in my hand bag they always ended up really dusty and needed to be cleaned almost every time I put them on (which isn't a good thing when you're driving!)

So there was a pretty long piece of the material left over, and if I folded it then it was just the right width to hold my sunglasses. So I sewed it together up the sides, and using a pink sheet of felt cut out the same size and sewed up the sides of that to make the inside of the bag.
Next I got a small length of pink ribbon and folded it in half tying the ends in knots so they wouldn't get lost inside the bag if you pulled one side too hard.
I flipped the material inside out so the stitches are on the inside, and slipped the felt inside the material (leave the stitches on the outside).
Stick the ribbon between the two layers all the way around the bag, and then fold over a small lip on the material side of the bag. Sew all the way around the bag leaving just enough of an opening for the ribbon to slide in and out of, leave a gap between the ribbon and stitch the gap closed.

Easy Peasy! Just make sure you don't catch your ribbon in your stitches, then slide your sunnies inside and pull the ribbon tight and VIOLA!!! You have your very own sunglasses bag!

Country Kitchen Flair!

So my favorite pair of jeans ended up getting a hole in the thighs. It couldn't be fixed with sewing or even a patch, and I didn't want to throw them away...

Bright idea? Turn them into my very own cooking apron!

So here's what you need:

• old pair of jeans (not too ratty you need to have the legs in decent condition)
• seam ripper
• scissors
• 1.5-2 meters of lace (optional)
• 1 meter of thick strapping
• sewing machine or needles
• 1/2- 1 meter of your own chosen fabric

Now for the steps!

1. Take the seam ripper and rip apart the legs of the old jeans. (you can also cut them apart if you are in a hurry or don't want to waste a lot of time trying to get them apart.)
2. Cut the legs off the front of the jeans, I cut mine off just at the crotch because of the holes in the thighs.
3. using the legs from either the front or the back you need to cut out the top part of the apron. I had a slight flair to my jeans so I cut out just under the knees and measured to the top of my chest. But you need to cut them long enough to cover from your chest to your waist.
4. Decide on how you would like the top of the apron to look and cut the shape out accordingly. I chose a heart shaped top for mine you you can have a square top if you like.
5. After cutting out the shape for the top, sew one side of the legs together, this will be the top of your apron.
6. Open the legs, using pins attach it to the waist of the jeans. Using your sewing machine or by hand sewing, sew the top to the bottom of the jeans. Open it up and this will be the front of your apron.
7. Pin your straps into place. (make sure they are long enough to tie around your neck and waist. Stitch these into place.
8. Pin your lace around the front of the apron, it can be any color you like and any material you feel comfortable working with. Or if you choose you can NOT use lace at all
9. Using your sewing machine or by hand sewing, attach the lace to the front of the apron.
10. Cut out the shape of the apron from the material, if you have enough left over you can make a pocket to go on the front.
11. If you make a pocket (or wish to put on an applique of any kind on the front) do it at this point.
12. Sew the material to the jeans, right sides together. I didn't leave an opening around the edges because I left the zipper open to turn right side out. (If your jeans do not have a zipper or you have sewn it shut then you will need to leave an opening to turn the project right side out)
13. Turn the project right side out and sew up any holes you have left.
14. Iron over the seams to make the project flat. 

TADA!!! That's how it goes! Now you know how to make your very own apron using an old pair of jeans. This is also a great project for children, since its machine washable, you can use it for art projects, painting, or having the little ones help you out in the kitchen.

Update on Harry Potter Night!

Alright, lets just get it all out here on the table...

I've been a lazy LAZY little girl lately with my arts and craft projects...  at the moment I have about 4 things laying around half finished. BUT it's all OK.

Why? I can hear you asking yourself, let me tell you why. I've noticed it! Plain and simple truth... I'm slipping back into my old habits of starting stuff and never finishing it so now I'm doing something about it!

First thing's first, the Harry Potter night goodies. I have finished the Hufflepuff set of bags and scarves, and am 80% finished with the first Ravenclaw bag (the last of the sets that I need to make) And I've found that as long as I am doing other things while crafting I get a lot more done.

So I've been watching movies, and even the Australian version of Kath & Kim, and have almost finished this bag in record time!

Now if only things will stop interrupting me... either some one comes to visit us, the dogs have  been escaping our back yard because our next door neighbor is a moron who has no respect for his neighbors, or we have had to go out to see other people....

This week I have no plans to go anywhere, all I need to do is my housework and my crafts.

So with you all as my witnesses, I plan to at least have my Harry Potter sets finished and photographed by the end of this month!

Cooking up a nice new book!

So I've noticed lately that there are A LOT of cookbooks around... but they are all full of stuff that I dont really want to cook.
It sucks that you have to pay $20 for this book when there are only one or two recipes you will actually use in them. So I have decided to make my own little book to fill with all my favorite recipes, and my family recipes, and all kinds of yummy stuff!
I know it would be just as simple to go out and get a ready made note book, but where's the fun in that? This way you can make your own hard cover book, with any type of cover you want! I found this awesome tutorial on youtube with step by step instructions (the videos!)

This lady is freaking awesome! She makes it really simple to make, she explains everything really well and shows you each step as she does it.

Now here's my very own hard cover journal!!!:

It took me only a day to make (and yes I realize that my cover's words are upside down but we aren't focusing on that right now) It's a little bit messy, but I think it's totally worth it in the end, you end up with a beautiful book you can tell everyone you made yourself, and something you can match to your very own needs! If you want a cook book you can make a cook book, if you want a journal you can make it a journal! I really hope you like it!