Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Autumn Button Bracelet

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A couple of years ago, I started collecting button pictures on Pinterest. Something about them appealed to me after giving a tray of them to my littlest girl to entertain herself one day. Initially there were very few pictures on there but then suddenly a raft of them began to appear and before I knew it, I had a proper Pinterest board full of button creations! But it was once I saw my lovely friend June making some of her amazing jewellery using buttons that I knew I had been on trend ahead of time 😉

We’ve had a good go at making pictures from buttons but I thought I would try a bracelet, just to see how possible it was for someone not terribly skilled in complicated things. I gathered together a palette of colours first, planned out some combinations in order so it had my requirements for ‘organised random’ and then threaded them on to clear elastic, starting at the middle. Each pair of buttons is held together by the threaded elastic which goes through the holes from back to front and back again, going through the 4 holes to form a cross.

My handy hints are:-

Start in the middle and try to pick buttons with 4 holes. By threading in a ‘cross’ through them, both top and bottom buttons, they’ll stay secure and won’t slip.

For this jumbled look, pull the elastic fairly tight so there aren’t spaces between the button stacks.

I always finish a bracelet on elastic with crimps, even if its just a quick child’s bracelet. It’s so much better than having a pile of beads or buttons on the floor after an hour of zealous stretching 🙂

So having made my quick and simple version, I sent a picture of it to lovely June from Goddess Jewels and asked her if I could showcase her talent. And blow me if she didn’t respond with a beautiful version of it, done properly! June has used wire to give this a more organised look and she is going to do me a tutorial next week to put here. How fantastic is that?

It’s a great opportunity to show you some of her work, which I am frequently in awe of as I just do not have the patience for the fiddle nature of wire and beads.

I just think this tropical button bracelet is so beautiful. (So beautiful I bought it actually!)

And I love this button necklace too, an incredibly elegant piece of jewellery.

I’ve known June a very long time and many of my friends have now bought bracelets from her. She has a real knack for putting together combinations that work beautifully and the bracelets are a work of art and feel incredibly nice to hold and wear. I can’t wait for mine to arrive as the ones I’ve seen are just so tactile and gorgeous. Do take a look at her shop, I think you’ll be hooked.

If you want more button craft ideas, click on the picture above to go to Pinterest 🙂

 

Needle Felted Squirrel

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If you don’t fall instantly in love with this little creature, then I don’t know what to do for you! This is Maddy’s needle felted squirrel and I think he’s just divine. As usual, she had a picture in her head and far exceeded what I imagined she would do with the idea. This squirrel pretty much ties up the autumn themed crafts for this year too and what a way to finish!

Our felting box contains plenty of scraps of colours and this is made from what is left of a ball of brown and some flesh beige fleece. My favourite shops for buying felting supplies are World of Wool and Sara’s Texture Crafts. You can pick up a bargain on ebay too by looking for felting supplies. You’ll need some needle felting needles too and a sponge or foam pad (unless you don’t value your knees much).

At some point we’ll feel well qualified enough to do a tutorial; until then, read this 🙂

As you can see, the squirrel is constructed in a series of discs and when flat and solid enough, they are attached to each other with more needling.

Little paws, feet and ears are added with small shaped pieces of felting.

Once all his bits and bobs had been attached, he just needed detail adding with some back stitching in black (or dark brown) embroidery thread. The stitching and the button eyes really made him I think . Maddy Makes amazing craft projects, don’t you agree? (She’s very proud of him and only 12, so I think she would love some likes and comments to tell her he’s great 😉 )

Autumn Leaf Shapes Printable

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One of the things I always seem to want and can’t find (for free or in adequately easy to up and download form) are basic printables for nature shapes. I would use them for so many things; printing on coloured paper and cutting out from fabric to name just two. So I finally got round to making a printable page of leaf shapes which I hope you’ll enjoy using as you need.

I’ve spent a pleasant afternoon doing some simple embroidery stitches on some of the leaves to give them detail and definition. I cut them out of a variety of different felt colours and weights and then used variegated embroidery silks to back stitch, blanket stitch and over stitch on top of them. It made a huge difference to each leaf shape to vary the stitches and I really enjoyed experimenting. The variegated silks gave a nice dappled feel to the leaves and added to the autumn effect of them. I thought afterwards it would be nice to sponge paint some acrylic paint lightly on to the leaves first to add to that effect.

Once I had made them all inspiration promptly deserted me for what to do with them! Which is annoying, to say the least. Still, I’ve got quite a lot of ideas and a stash of pretty leaves gives me plenty to play with.

One idea was to decorate a plain piece of brown fleece with them to make a cute autumnal playmat for our baby. They stitch down really easily and make it look deliciously seasonal.Another idea is to stick them down on some green felt and embellish with buttons and beads to make a table decoration. It would look lovely with candle votives on top or perhaps some artfully placed berries, acorns and conkers.

Actually, this gave me another idea, to use them to make a linen nature collecting bag with these stuck to the front as faux applique. And THAT made me think that possibly I could try a bit of simple quilting with leaves on each square. I think it might look quite nice.

Various other ideas are presenting themselves, including sticking them to the outside of jars or vases, hanging them as a window display from threads interspersed with beads or buttons and various others. I think a picture with a tree trunk might look lovely too, using the leaves to make the foliage shape.

Whatever, it was a restful afternoon of stitching.

Sunday simple crafts

Here is the printable to right click on and print or download as a pdf.

Finally, no post would be complete without a pinterest link, so here is one to some Autumnal Leafy Crafts.

Autumn Hama Bead Coasters

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Drink coasters are one of the most made things with Hama Beads and there have been loads of searches on this site recently for autumnal version of them. So Maddy made some to share with you and I think you’ll agree she did an excellent job. All three of these are made with Midi Beads on a large circle board; she made a plain backing in the background colour with the outer ring for each one to make them stronger and thicker too.

Below are the patterns for making these coasters. You can right click and print all of them and they’ll shortly be available as an autumn download on our other website. The double thickness makes a real difference with these (bottom one is photographed double) and gives them an extra strength after ironing. It also means that both sides of the coaster can have the un-ironed look; use tacky glue to stick the ironed sides together. It works really well with hama beads.

Maddy had a good time creating alternative colour ways for these too. I’ve not produced them all as patterns but here is her three versions of acron coaster. What a very autumnal feel they have.

I think that is it for our autumn hama bead crafts on this site for now. We’ve got some 3D patterns to go up on BeadMerrily so do keep an eye out over there.

 

Autumnal Fimo Candle Votive

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Sometimes when I’m trying out a new idea in Fimo, what I like to do is have a go at a very simple version first and then see what I like and don’t like about it before I go on to try a more complex version. Family life does tend to mean that I never get to the complicated version, or I don’t ever blog what I do make because I’m not happy with the finished product! In fact this blog is partly for exactly those projects; things I know someone else will probably do a better job of than I will but might not have had the particular idea in the first place 😉 This particular project started off as a quick try out of an idea though and when I test ran it, I liked it far more than I thought. So I give you a simple Fimo Autumn themed votive, which looks LOVELY when lit and pretty good when it isn’t too!

The original plan for these autumn jars was for them to be complex, similar to the flower jars we made on recycled jars early on in the summer. I wasn’t feeling terribly creative on the day though and just made some simple oak leaf shapes using an icing sugar cutter and some branches that looped around the jar so it would all hold together. Then I decorated it with some very simple acorn halves and baked it, feeling rather disgruntled with my efforts.

These were the things I wanted to do better.

1) Texture the branches.

2) Use texture plates to make more realistic leaves and make them thinner and less chunky.

3) Look more closely at acorns and learn how to make them in polymer clay.

4) Build up the base with more detail  to hide the tealight.

I’ve created several Pinterest boards to develop the theme a little more including a Hedgerow theme and Autumn Crafts and Nature Crafts and I think I’ll be back to working on this, because autumn colours and shapes really please me. However, in the end, the way it looked in the dark pleased me enough to think it deserved a little outing even in its first incarnation.

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Melted Hama Bead Leaves

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Recently I came across a way of melting Hama Beads in an oven to make shapes such as bowls and we had a go. We really liked the result and it got us thinking of other ways to use the beads in different ways. Since we had our palette of Autumn colours out anyway to make conventional Hama Bead leaf shapes, we thought we would have a go at something different too. We used Sculpey Leaf Cutters (but any metal cookie cutter would do) and filled them with an assortment of beads thrown in, keeping them quite random and uneven to give a fairly textured effect to the finished item. We did this on an oven tray so the base was nice and flat – it retrospect some sprayed on oil inside the cutters would have been a good idea as it was fairly hard to separate them afterwards.

I put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 200C and kept an eye on them. I’ve seen this technique with things backed until the beads are fully melted and flat but I quite like the half melted look so we took them out before they went over into flat plastic. Then we waited for them to cool and prised them out of the cookie cutters.

I absolutely love these. The plastic melts very shiny and is wonderfully tactile; melting the beads seems to really enhance the colours too. I’m hoarding these, along with the pompoms from earlier in the month and some nature-y finds and other autumnal bits and bobs. I think they’ll make a beautiful autumn wreath towards the end of the month. Fortunately, the one good thing about our summer of rain is that so far none of the trees or plants think it is autumn yet, so I can hold off for a few more weeks.

Please note: the crafts has an easy rating because it is VERY easy but baking them and removing them from the cutters needs an adult and care to be taken.

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Hama Bead Tree Autumn Leaves

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I’ve been meaning to teach my children to properly recognise British trees by their leaves for years and today we found ourselves having a look at this tree identification chart as part of a nature crafts project we want to do. That led to having a go at making some of them with Hama Beads after remembering a pattern that Maddy made up a year ago. We were really pleased with the results. We got quite carried away and tried out oak leaves, beech, alder, ivy and more and I think we’ll be back tomorrow too. I loved being able to really use a wide palette of Hama Bead colours and all the different boards too; autumn leaves allowed us to try out lots of gorgeous combinations. I’m very tempted to turn them all into an autumn leaf collage or perhaps a wreath for the door of hall way.

One of the best things about this craft was just being able to free wheel and enjoy making the shapes and leaf patterns and seeing how they developed. All the children were pleased with what they achieved and these are the results. I loved the conker and berries too and the day made me feel really positive about the coming of Autumn, normally my favourite season anyway. If you want close up of the patterns to try, visit BeadMerrily and see everything we got up to but I’d encourage you to just explore the different opportunities the colours and shapes give you and make up your own.

 

The colours we used were yellow, orange, red, forest, green,  brown, dark brown, beige, coffee, burgundy, gold and bronze and we used the egg board, the hexagon, the circle and a large square.

There are also some other Autumn Hama ideas at BeadMerrily as well as all the designs we have built up there over previous years.

All of these were inspired by Maddy’s orginal design from last year.

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Pom Pom Owl

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Last year my girls and I had fun making some spooky Halloween pom pom animals and people. One of the most effective ones was the owl we made, hooooo… (who? hoo? get diddit?) was really too cute to be anything spooky at all.

Owls have been one of the great design icons of the last couple of years and Pinterest is full of them. What I loved about this particular crafty creation was not only how easy it was (and gave us a chance to experiment with using chunks of colours on a pompom) but how easy it would be to customise it to make different owls too. You could really have a hoot designing them.

Ahem.

We used 2 colours of cheap and cheerful DK wool and made a medium and fairly small pompoms (pale green and yellow if you use the Clover makers) and did each one wound with 3/4 of the circle in darker brown and 1/4 in the speckled cream/natural. We used our trust tacky glue to attach them to each other and then cut out feet and a beak in fun foam sheets and added googly eyes. We debated felt wings but decided he was just cute and hapless the way he was.

Have a go – and let us know what you manage to make? We would love to feature your pom pom creatures.

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PomPom Trees for Fairies.

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My daughters and I had a whimsical moment the other day. We wanted to have a go at bigger versions of the tree I made for a model once, which was a Fimo base and a pom pom tree top. It occurred to us we could maybe make trunks out of all the different craft materials we are currently featuring on Simple Crafts. So we set to and with a little bit of effort. we managed a very creditable fairy forest.

The idea was nice and simple. This was to be the first of our Autumn crafts so Maddy made pom poms in a mixture of autumny colours – browns, yellows, oranges and greens, varying the pompoms with 3 different shades in each to give our forest a dappled look. The trunks varied in simplicity. She made one from foam sheets because we really couldn’t face trying to sew one, cutting two pieces of foam into trunk shapes with two branches forking out of the top so the pom pom sat on top.She cut a slit from the bottom of one and the top of the other and slotted them together; the branches made a cradle for the pompom and it stood nicely. She did similar with Hama Beads, leaving a gap so the two pieces could slot together (I’ll do a pattern for that asap).

We used brown paper for another trunk. Cut a large rectangle and fold it then twist 4 roots and four branches so it stands with the pompom on top. The felted one was more tricky and I wasn’t totally pleased with it; it took a lot of felt and patience to do and although it looks okay, it needed to be more solid and was a pain (literally at times!) I don’t like 3D needle felting!

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Here is her step by step of her ‘2 slightly different sized toilet rolls put together’ tree which she then covered with brown felt and then I redeemed myself by blending up old brown Fimo and pushing together roughly cut sausages of it into a trunk, making roots and branches nice and gnarled and nobbly and being really quite pleased with the result!

This post is very much intended as a craft idea, not a how to do it post; I will add some templates for the Hama Bead trunk and the foam tree trunk design though as I think we’ll be coming back to this idea to do more thoroughly. As it was, we had some fun seeing how fast we could grow a little forest in our own back garden with most of our favourite craft materials.

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Hama Bead Autumn Trees

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Hama Beads are a wonderful way to make simple but very effective pictures and can be used by children and adult in a multitude of ways and means. One way is to make pictures which reflect the seasons, altering each one just slightly to suit the theme.

Here is a pattern for an Autumn Tree in Hama Beads. There are also Season Hama Bead pictures on BeadMerrily.

This post was originally featured at Patch of Puddles. There will be unique content here soon as well as archived items from our other websites.

Required: Hama Beads, Large Square Pegboard, Ironing paper, iron.

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