Flowers Archives - Simple Crafts

Easy Sew Felt Purse

April 25, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

Over the years sewing with felt and comforting embroidery cottons has proved a hit with my girls again and again. This quick purse was made up from scraps of acrylic felt and oddments from a craft pack and was really easy to put together but a very pleasing finished product.

You will need:

Felt; our scrap was half an A4 piece cut lengthwise

Cotton, a needle and scissors

A large button, scraps of ribbon & felt or foam scraps for leaves.

Glue.

To make:

Fold your strip of felt so the pocket end is roughly double the depth of the flap (2/5 front of pocket, 2/5 back of pocket, 1/5 flap). Pop a pin in the middle of the doubled over layer to hold it together.
Using blanket stitch start at the bottom corner of your pocket and stitch the front and back side of the pocket together, keep blanket stitching around the flap as a decorative edge and then go back down the other doubled side of the pocket. Make sure you hide your knots inside the pocket to look neat.
We decorated the front of the pocket with sticky foam flower stems and leaves but you could glue or stitch on felt versions just as easily Sew a button at the top of the stem; this will be the fastening and the centre of the decorative flower.
Cut a button hold in the flap, making sure it lines up with the button underneath. You can blanket stitch or over-stitch around this as strengthening if you wish.
Stick short lengths of ribbon around the button hole a petals. Make sure the inner ends of the ribbon will be covered by the button when it is through the hole.

Once you’ve got the basic idea you can add loops on the back for attaching it to a belt, or a strap and make it in any size you like and with any design. As projects go for little people who enjoy making but need to use fairly simple skills and have a finished product quickly, it is ideal. If blanket stitch is too hard overstitch looks nearly as good and even a simple saddle stitch will work.

Foam & Felt Mother’s Day Card

March 18, 2014 by Merry Leave a Comment

I’m not always very good at mixing my crafting media; I tend to make something out of all felt, or all Fimo etc But I happened to find myself playing with a Spring craft pack the other day that had been created in our shop for a set of bloggers and it pulled together a variety of different early years materials that I wouldn’t normally be playing with. The result was a very happy afternoon making some very gorgeous items with my girls which thoroughly pleased us 🙂 We made various cards from the items in the kit and Josie did a great job of making something really pretty out of an assortment of different materials.

I’m going to give pride of place to my favourite one though which is nothing more complicated than layering a set of items together but really worked for me; it has sat on the shelf for a week or two now but I’m liking it so much it may end up staying!

I’ve taken a liking to craft foam recently, having never really played with it before. These self adhesive shapes are great and I like the way you can swap them about to give a multicoloured look to the tulips. I stuck them on to felt and then used glue squares from last months Bostik challenge to to stick that to the felt rectangle I glued on to the card with a bit of a 3D effect. It’s all terribly simple and the materials are deceptively basic, but the effect is quite stunning.

Josie made more cards too.

Apparently I put the one on the left sideways. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Disclosure: on our other blog, we are part of the Bostik challenge and receive some free items from them which we used this month for these cards. The kits come from our own shop, CraftMerrily.

Simple Pipecleaner Daffodil.

March 9, 2014 by Merry 11 Comments

If you read our other blog, the one about out family, you’ll know it is now nearly 4 years since our little boy fdied at 11 days old. He was an April baby and daffodils are the flower that we most associate with him. This year though, the mild winter means they are already flowering and will be gone before his birthday. I’ve asked some blogging friends to join us in making daffodil crafts to light up April with yellow anyway.

Today I had reason to play with chenille stems and made this little pretty. It couldn’t be simpler.

Join two yellow stems by twisting the ends to make a long stem.
Make a zigzag with 6 points, then join them into a circle with another twist.
Use an orange stem to bind the centre together with crossovers (a bit like weaving a star into the middle of the flower) until it is solid and holds flat.
Use another orange stem to coil a trumpet, then use the last inch to bind over so that it stays a tight coil.
Glue into place.
Work a half green stem into the back of the flower for a stalk and twist a second full stem to the bottom and bend up to make leaves.

A glass jar, some plasticine, felt and stickers made a nice pot for it.

If you have a daffodil craft on your blog, old or new, why not join in our linky 🙂 It will make this little family very happy. Thanks 🙂

Pom Pom Flowers

September 2, 2013 by Merry Leave a Comment

It’s been a bit quiet here lately; I took some time out to enjoy my little boy, since he’s growing up all too fast and needed lots of mummy attention but I also found myself (as I’m wont to do) setting up a new shop for all the beautiful craft supplies that I like using on this blog. And that took some time too.

However, the crafting hasn’t entirely stopped and I’ve got plenty of projects put aside to blog about or ones I’m about to make. My trusty army of helpers have all departed for school now, after years of home education and being on hand to craft, so I might have to do more of the leg work myself. I’m pretty sure Maddy will still be on hand to help though.

***

Here is a pretty bunch of flowers we all constructed together one morning, combining pom poms and felt flower petals, sat on top of long wooden kebab sticks.

I started off with some simple 6 petal flower shapes with a hole cut in the middle that came from some craft kit or other, long ago butchered and popped into the cupboard as remnants. Popping a pom pom through the middle of this was easy and the stick sits securely into the centre of it too, so no glue really required. Put the pointy end downwards into your vase if you are worried about safely though, or cut it off beforehand.

After that Maddy and I got creative; she hand stitched some clover leaves in green felt and I had a go at machining onto felt too just to try and get my hand in with my new machine. Layers of different shapes put together make for charming (if not terribly real!) flowers and leaves decorated with ric rac can be glued to the back or skewered with the sticks.

We will be back later with a flower shape printable, but for now, one craft for the blog as a signal that we are back!

Remembrance Day Poppy in Felt

November 6, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

We’ve done some great Remembrance Day crafts before, using the opportunity to talk through the significance of the day and read some war poetry, marking the 2 minute silence with our crafty friends as we went. Today we thought we would have a go at making our own poppies, since we’ve not yet been past a seller. We can pop a £1 in an appeal box next time we see one.

I wasn’t sure of this for most of the time I was making it, but in the end I was fairly happy with it. There are step by step photos below.

Poppies have 4-6 petals apparently; I ad libbed a bit so you have to imagine the the base is two large petals. The shape on the right was a basic one and then I trimmed it down to look prettier once the 4 smaller petals were in place.

I held 4 small petals on top, making them overlap each other as the went round then stitched them down in red thread with a circle of stitches fairly near to middle. I pulled the thread a little as I went round so they puckered slightly and lifted. This gave the flower some shape.

Once that was done I added some stitched detail lines up and down each of the smaller petals. Again I pulled slightly to pucker the petals.

I added a circle of black felt to the centre and using black thread, I added lots of small black seed beads to the middle to give it texture.

Lastly I added one of my autumn leaves and a brooch pin. I’m pleased with it 🙂

As usual, Maddy totally outdid me with this very classy poppy. She cut two circles, one slightly smaller and stitched tiny beads all round the edge of each, pulling the thread as she went to make them cup slightly. The centre is totally black seed beads, all individually stitched.

I’m not really speaking to her any more 😉 Seriously, how can anyone aged 12 makes something so classy?

Lastly, I made one final simple one using two layers of easy shapes and some 2mm seed beads as the centre. I quite like really.

Hand Sewn Butterfly & Flower Felt Picture

September 4, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Summer is nearly over and all those crafts are nearly ready to be put to bed for another year…. flowers, butterflies, rainbows and blossoming trees will soon give way to harvest, russet leaves, Halloween and fireworks. Even the glimmer of snow and Christmas doesn’t seem so very far away. I’ve got a few more pretties that we made this year still up my sleeve though and wanted to show the picture our summer header came from. It’s part of a set I’m making for the wall of our new baby boy when he moves into his own room, the first being the tree picture this site started with.

I’ve got a real soft spot for this sort of folky and simple hand stitched picture, particularly as it copes so well with a cheaty bit of gluing to keep it quick and easy. Blanket stitch (ooh, some interesting varieties there!) and back stitch or simple long stitches add detail to felt without having to be too slavishly careful and felt is very forgiving when being cut and shaped (along with being cheap!) so a few mistakes won’t matter.

Without being too prescriptive, since creativity is key rather than following a slavish pattern, cut out some daisy petal shapes and a circle, which I added long stitch detail to to give it some interest. Add some wiggly leaves or grass stems and glue them all into place. The butterfly is blanket stitched (from a template I will be providing here shortly) and the bottom is cut from a dark piece of felt the same size as the blue background and given a wiggly edge and some back stitched detail for interest. I love buttons, so sticking those on as flowers and butterfly pattern worked really well. If you are doing this with a child, it is a great opportunity to explore symmetry too. Once it is all glue together, it will look great inside a picture frame and popped up on a wall.

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Fimo Flower Jars

August 25, 2012 by Merry 4 Comments

Recycling glass might have got much easier than it used to be around here, now that we can put it all straight in our ordinary recycling bin, but I do often feel I ought to be able to make more of jam jars and the like; they feel like a free resource that should be crafted especially as we currently have lots of baby food jars too (I know, I know…)

So this week I had to provide a craft for children in a group we go to so I took jars along with us. I also took the flower cutters I have (made for icing) but I’ve blogged before about hand making fimo flowers, which is just as interesting? As it happened, the kids made as many of their own flowers as they cut them out and were very creative.

Amazingly, they spent all day poring over their creations and as a craft it worked brilliant, especially for using up scrap polymer clay. The results were stunning.

The premise is really simple. Polymer clay will hold to glass around a shape so long as there is a continuous loop. The clay bakes and contracts and so a loop will grip on to the jar. You can varnish for extra stickiness and gloss and strength to the pieces but it isn’t necessary. The kids built up designs of looping stems, leaves and flowers to make vases, candle holders, pen pots… You name it. The front left one, while clay intensive, has holes pushed to the glass in every flower to let candle light out afterwards.

The kids all interpreted their designs in their own way and as you can see, my Maddy did her very own thing again! I can see us coming back to this idea again and I’ve been collecting some inspiration of my Fimo Pinterest board.

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Felted Flower Picture.

August 24, 2012 by Merry 1 Comment

A few weeks ago a visit to a re-enactment day and the girls loved the idea of wet felting. We’ve needle felted before but not wet felted so we pulled out our trusty supplies, looked up how to do it and had a go. In the few relatively nice days we had this summer, the girls sat on the patio with soap and water and blended fibres and got wet and messy but clean at the same time!

Being a little slapdash and short on attention, their desire to create intricate pieces was fairly short lived. They did enjoy the process and the fun of making up blends of colours but were short on patience at making really flat felt. This left us with lots of pieces of felted wool in a variety of fun mixes and nothing to quite do with them so we hit upon the idea of a collage style picture.

We cut leaf and petal shapes from all the different pieces of felt and then needle felted (it was raining!) some blue and green blends together. Then we stuck some linen on to the board at the back of a large 30″ picture and stuck the sky and grass backing on to the linen.

Once they were no, we arranged petals and central circles on to the scene and stuck them down with tacky glue. The felted stems were twists of fibre needle felted into shape and stuck down. Once completed we put a dark wood frame on it and got it ready for the wall. You’d have a picture of it there if I hadn’t smashed the frame carrying it out to take this picture!

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