Simple Crafts

A craft for everything & everything in a craft.

Autumnal Fimo Candle Votive

September 25, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

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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Filed Under: Autumn, Difficulty 2/5, Glass Jars, Polymer Clay Tagged With: Autumn Crafts, easy polymer clay project, Fimo candle votice, fimo craft, recycled jar crafts, using sugar paste cutters for polymer vclay

Hama Bead Tree Autumn Leaves

September 11, 2012 by Merry 2 Comments

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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Filed Under: Autumn, Difficulty 2/5, Hama Beads, Trees Tagged With: autumn bead pictures, Autumn Crafts, free autumn hama bead designs, hama bead leaf designs, Hama Beads, leaf crafts, seasonal crafts, tree crafts

Pom Pom Owl

September 10, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

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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Filed Under: Autumn, Difficulty 2/5, Owls, Pom Poms Tagged With: Autumn Crafts, Halloween, owl crafts, pom pom craft, pom pom owls, pompom animals

PomPom Trees for Fairies.

August 22, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

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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Filed Under: Autumn, Difficulty 2/5, Pom Poms, Trees Tagged With: easy tree craft, fairy trees, pom pom trees, tree craft

Christmas Tree in PomPoms

August 8, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

I know it’s a bit early for Christmas yet, but I thought this Christmas tree from last year was just too good to miss – and it completes my craft collection for trees for now 🙂 Last year we treated ourselves to a set of these pom pom makers and really enjoyed making Christmas decorations with them. My favourite was this little scene we created and the tree has ended up being a keeper. We love it.

christmas pompom treeThe tree body is made up of the largest 3 sizes of pom pom, tacky glued together. We wound the pom poms in 2 colours of green wool, nice cheap Robin DK wool from our local pound store. The tree is sat on a slice of loo roll covered in brown felt, the star is a tiny pom pom and then we covered it with lots of minute pompoms from our local supermarket craft section. It looked gorgeous all through Christmas. As you can see, the pom pom snowmen also really approved of it 🙂

Required: pom pom makers or card rings, wool, felt, loo roll, glue, decorations.

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Filed Under: Christmas, Difficulty 2/5, Pom Poms, Trees Tagged With: Christmas craft, Christmas tree, easy craft, pom pom craft, pompoms, tree craft

PlayMais Tree Model

August 6, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

I’ve got a very creative daughter who often comes up with her own, generally excellent, take on any craft I suggest. After seeing my busy tree blogging, she took a craft material being used by one of her younger sisters and created a gorgeous tree model. PlayMais is a maize based peanut material (basically a coloured version of those eco-friendly packing peanuts you sometimes get in parcels) and can be cut and shaped and stuck together with just a dab of water.

It’s lovely when a craft material lends itself to all sorts of ages and abilities. This can be used to make pictures, models, masks, playthings and anything the imagination can stretch to. It’s safe for fairly small children and very rewarding to work with.

Required: PlayMais

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Filed Under: Difficulty 2/5, Maddy Makes, Trees Tagged With: easy craft, playmais, tree craft

Crochet Tree Picture.

August 2, 2012 by Merry Leave a Comment

Learning to knit and crochet has been one of my main achievements over the last couple of years. I’m not especially proficient but I do really enjoy making things with yarn and I’m gradually getting more able. I’m also slowly bringing my daughters over to the yarn side 😉 Last week, having taken delivery of some felting supplies and a drop spindle, we had a go at spinning out own yarn. The initial efforts were quite lumpy and bumpy, but they did lend themselves to a bit of sculpture. I remembered that a friend taught my daughter to crochet using this coral reef as inspiration and encouraged her not to worry about any errors. Amelie had a go at spinning some appropriate colours and then used a fat hook to crochet it up into a rough, wiggly chain. Once she had done that, it was easy to arrange it into a tree shape.

One thing we sometimes do with crafts is take a photo of them on a nice paper pattern background and edit it using a photo app on my phone. Then we print it out and save them to decorate home made cards at another time. It’s a great way to make something personal, but easy to post (and easy to store)!

Required: wool, crochet hook, patterned paper.

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Filed Under: Difficulty 2/5, Trees, Yarn Tagged With: crochet, drop spinning, easy yarn craft, tree craft

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