Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Bead & Button & Bell Xmas Decorations

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A really quick and easy make last year was these  bead and button decorations made with memory wire, beads, buttons, bells, ribbons and yarn. eBay proved a good source of all of these bits and bobs, though they have inspired me to maybe add some of those things to our own shop next year.

I got the original idea from Pinterest (of course) which was an early addition to my Christmas Crafts board, which has been really popular all year.

After that we branched out and used beads too, which added some glittery sparkle.

The tricky bit was securing the top of these. Proper clear sellotape (or wire to twist if you have that knack of that) and some softer ribbon would have worked better. They looked really beautiful on our light tree though and were a great way to use up spare beads and buttons. A few of them ended up with tiny bells strung on the ends, which made it all very festive.

This craft originally featured on Patch of Puddles where you can see higher resolution photos of all of them.

Folky Needle Felted Christmas Tree

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For a very easy needle felted Christmas project, you can try making ornaments that can hang from a tree or in the window or from a bunch of artfully arranged twigs. I have to buy my artful twigs, though this does mean they are fake, with lights in them and last for years, so it isn’t all bad 🙂 A few ornaments like this would keep the kids quiet for a while without taxing the brain too much and they look gorgeous too.

It’s nice and simple. Needle felt a triangle of dark green fleece to a moderately spongy flattened shape, then make a small brown rectangle in the same way and felt it to the back. That’s your basic Christmas tree shape. We just used ordinary cheap wool to blanket stitch around the edge, which make it look a little more ‘finished’ and then glued some buttons on to be decorations. Glittery stars etc would work just as well. If you stitch a loop to the top, you can hang it from wherever you choose.

Joining in with Festive Friday.

Polymer Clay Poppy Flower

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Poppies and their story have caught the household this week and another daughter got in on the act to produce this stunning piece of arty-crafty beauty. A really simple method produces a fabulous poppy flower from 3 colours of polymer clay and some seed beads.

As you can see from the easy step by step below, we used cutters designed for petal shapes. However, it would be really easy to fashion these petals by hand or by gently moulding heart shape cut outs. The red sculpey is in 6 parts, 4 small petals and 2 large ones while the leaf is another cutter. If you don't have anything suitable, flatten out an oval bead shape of green fimo and then use the handle of a knife to gently make dents in the side.

We used some sculpey texture plates to give it the pattern. These are lovely but you can easily recreate the effect. One way is to make a texture of squiggles in fimo and bake it, then press it into your petals, another is to use doilies or fabric to add pattern.

The centre is a heart shape with tiny black seed beads pressed into it. This poppy was baked flat, but with some extra leaves and a second flower, this could easily make a loop around a vase or be mounted on a canvas covered picture frame as a picture.

 

Firework Decorations in Felt.

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One last bonfire night craft to finish off the firework season. My girls and I all had fun making these felt fireworks today with a mixture of coloured felt and seed beads. I had an idea in my head to make them double sided and then make a mobile; I think I still will but these ended up being lovely little sewing projects. Josie, Amelie and I all made simple ones but naturally Maddy really went to town and her version is a triumph!

These are really easy; we made some shape templates using Microsoft Word and then cut out explosions and tails for our fireworks in coloured felt. Then we cut out a rough black shape for them to be pinned to and threaded up a needle in a complimenting embroidery thread colour. Each bead is threaded on to the needle as it comes through from the back and then we stitched back down into almost the same spot. The result is that you can hardly see the thread and there is a lovely sparkle from them. Maddy used really tiny beads and loads of them, which made it looked positively jeweled!

Once all the beads were on and the thread tied off, I trimmed the black to make it fit more closely to the coloured shapes. Maddy did hers really close, which looks better I think. All that is left to do is stitch on a hanging loop and then glue another piece of black to the back to hide the stitches and then these will make lovely firework night decorations for Josie, our November 5th baby, for a long time to come!

Hama Bead Firework Patterns

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Well, in an effort to get some Firework Night crafts up on the site, we’ve made up a few patterns that we haven’t had time to make for real yet. (I lie slightly, Maddy made up the rocket using real beads, which is why it is quite a lot better than my other ones!) Still, hopefully these will give you a few ideas to get started; hexagons, circles and starts with different colours and patterns would look great. We had plans for a mobile but half term is rushing by a bit.

This one is pretty lovely, done on a large square board. Maddy used gold beads for it which look great – I think the catherine wheel below would suit some gold hama beads too.

Hmmm… I’m not sure about that one really… you could send me your own ideas?

Once you’ve made a heap of stars in different combinations, you might want some tails to swoop about after the explosions.

Try these 😉

You might not know but we have a craft shop which sells the entire Hama Bead range. If you can, do support us while buying your supplies so we can.. ahem… have more time to make better hama bead firework patterns 😉

Hama Bead Ghost Pot

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Finding new things to do with a hama bead creation is always a challenge worth taking on; I particularly like 3D items, especially if they are useful. This particular ghost pattern, converted into a pot for holding glowsticks, possibly pushes the boundaries of actually being useful, but it is fun!

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Maddy made up these patterns; while I tend to go for interlocking designs, she decided she would stitch them together. I love the way this looks; it gives it a really different finish and perfect for a spooky pot!

It’s a very simple set of patterns, all made in green glow in the dark hama beads. Once made and ironed on one side, Maddy stitched them together in a square. There are two designs of ghost and they alternate around the square base.

Once stitched, a painted toilet roll tube went down the middle to support the ghosts. We actually covered ours with black card for speed, but felt or paint would work better. It’s now a perfect storage pot for all those glowsticks you have hanging around!

hama bead ghost patternOne thing that occurred to me afterwards was that if the tips of the hands and the bottom row of the ghost were done in white, rather than glow, they will look like they are floating when in the dark. I think that would be an extra good spooky effect that wouldn’t alter the look of them when the light was on.

Here are the printable patterns for the pot. We really hope yoooooooooooou have plenty of fun with it!

For a spooky graveyard scene in hama beads, visit BeadMerrily for a brand new pattern set.

Hama Bead Owl Family

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Owls are fairly traditional Halloween fare but I must admit I’ve got a bit of an obsession with them in general (hooooooo… hasn’t?) and I’ve been collecting them on my owl board on Pinterest for quite a while. All the cute little chaps on there inspired me to have a go at some Hama Bead patterns in bright colours and these are the results.

Hama Bead Owls

I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for the one with his wings up and I think I might tweak the mummy owl a bit at some point but over all I was quite happy with them. They definitely show a few different owlish attitudes 😉

I’ve drawn up the patterns for them which is free to download for this site by right clicking and saving. The patterns are all worked on a large Hama Bead Hexagon board and can be done in any colours you like. I’ve chosen bright dark colours accented with their pastel conterpart and then white and cream tummies (I altered mummy a bit when I created her pattern) but you could do browns, whites and blacks for more realistic owls.

hama bead owl patternsHere’s a small version of all the patterns I’ve created if you can work from that and just want one quick set to print off. Otherwise, full sized versions are below.

I’d love to see what you make with these; do leave me a comment and a link if you try them out and feel free to share them on the internet via Pinterest etc 🙂

Halloween Finger Puppets in Felt – Easy Set

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I got a little one to one time with my 8 year old the other day and she wanted to do some sewing. Since I was typing up a witch tutorial at the time but wanted to facilitate, I helped her create some easy Halloween finger puppets. The designs and ideas were really all her own, barring the ghoul which I felt compelled to make too 😉 All I did was cut out her designs and help her with some of the fiddly face bits but otherwise she made them and did all the stitching.

Halloween Finger PuppetsEach puppet is made from two pieces of felt stitched together. The ears are folded over on the mouse to give a bat look to them but otherwise the spider legs, pumpkin stalk and owl wings are stitched between the main body layers as you go round. The bat wings are stuck on the back and the face pieces are stuck on the front.

There is a story behind the bat. His body was originally a mouse and he was re-purposed after that project ended due to mouse fatigue. His wings are one set of butterfly wings (which can be printed here) which were also left over. Obviously you could just make your own wings to be more bat like but we rather liked the mouse-a-fly.

The Halloween finger puppet patterns can be downloaded and printed here except for the faces because frankly, I think you should make those up yourself! 😉

We’ve got a more complicated set of puppets under construction too, so hopefully they’ll be available soon!

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 🙂

 

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.