Sun Catcher

For Grandparents day we made Sun Catchers.  I read about this on-line & thought it would be kind of fun to try.  It is recommended to do it on the grill to avoid the melted plastic fumes in your house.

Place your plastic pony beads in a pattern in a baking dish

(cake pan, muffin pan for littler ones, etc). 

We used cookie cutter to guide our in our shape, but you can do

whatever pattern (or no pattern)

Remove cookie cutter & place on hot grill, wait about 10 minutes (we checked ours every so often to see how well the beads were melting)

Once all beads are melted, take off & allow to cool. 

TIP:  Don't get your grill too hot, I think that is why the first one did not melt into a smooth surface... it was hot enough to boil plastic!

Once cool to the touch, pop in the freezer for a few minutes & the plastic sun catcher will pop right out of the cake pan!

 Then drill a small hole & hang with ribbon.

Other Tips:

1) This did ruin my cake pan even though the on-line instructions said it was OK - if you have an old pan you don't care about - use it!

2) The translucent & opaque Pony beads melted best, I bought some pearlized ones & they melted, but were "clumpy".

Peepers really enjoyed this project & wants to make more fish sun catchers.

Thanks, Karla

Sweater 911

Hi~

I have a super simple craft to update any top (or to rescue a sweater with a stain - which never happens to me).

I don't have detailed photos, but this one is pretty easy. 

I cut out a few flowers from a pillowcase I got from GW (Goodwill).  Used a little Stitch Witchery & simply sandwiched the Stitch Witchery between the cut outs & the sweater, ironed them down & then stitched them down.  I used  a sewing machine to sew the appliques on, but you could easily hand sew it too. I left the edges raw so they would fray a little in the wash (It must have been a high thread count, because the fraying has been minimal).

Then I gathered up a few seed beads,  hand sewed them in the centers of the flowers & a few on the petals.  You could use rhinestones or sequins & glue if you weren't in the mood for needle & thread.

Another Sweater Saved!
Thanks, Karla

Embellished Sweater

This was my latest weekend project...

I took a 4.00 sweater from the Target clearance rack & added my own "do-dads".

I had an off white tee just asking to be remade... So I cut off the hem & cut 1" wide & 1/2" wide strips.
I then made accordion pleat ruffles and hand sewed them along one edge.I hand stitched the 1/2" strips into a circle, by connecting the 2 ends. I fanned the "petals" out so they laid flat & sewed a pearl in the center. For the 1" wide strips, I made half circles & sewed a pearl on each end.
This was the hard part... hand sewing them on the sweater. I stitched the half circles on the sleeve & used the flowers & half circles to make a pattern to sew on the sweater left front shoulder area. OH, I forget to mention I created some rusching on the sleeve by sewing elastic to the inside of the sweater. I added my "do dad" where the rusching ended.