Hungry Heffy Crafts Scrapbooking and Card Making Inspiration

Neccessity breeds creativity: A Summer Hat Sewing Project

by Lesley Oman on 19 May, 2013

It was a Sunday and it was sunny so we finally decided to make a start on the garden. After a quick trip to the garden centre we were ready to roll. Piper was eager to get stuck in, but then we realised that we didn’t have a sun hat for little miss P. Even with factor 50, I wasn’t prepared to take any risks. Hhhmmm, what to do?

Here’s what – grab an old pair of pre-pregnancy PJs that no longer fit and use the material to fashion a sun hat!

I wasn’t aiming for perfection, I was aiming for an ‘any old thing that will stay on her head and protect her from the sun’. And to be honest, that’s what I got. My original plan was to just throw it away but I thought I would have a go at rescuing it and I am happy I tried – I am delighted with the final result!

Here’s how it came together: I cut the fabric into four squares and then measured Pipers head. I lay the fabric on the cutting mat at an angle so it looked like a diamond and then i drew a bell shape onto the fabric. Two things to note: instead of a curved top I kept a point- the idea being that when i sewed them all together the four (roughly) 90 degree angles would come together, and secondly- the width of the bell was slightly more than 1/4 of the circumference of P’s noggin. Once I had one bell shape cut out, I folded it in half and trimmed it down so it was symmetrical and then I cut all four pieces to the identical shape.

Whiirrrrrr, whirrrrrrrr, whirrrrrrrr! After about three minutes I had sewn all the seams and created a shape that resembled a hat. I didn’t even stop to change the purple tread in the sewing machine. It stayed on and did the job.

The next day I traced around the bell shape and cut four more panels using a floral fabric, stitched them together to create a hat shape. Then, when I had more time I carefully pinned the two hats right-sides together and stitched along the seam, leaving a 2 inch gap. Once i turned it the right way round I top stitched in purple along the edge. This made the whole thing a lot more sturdy and also means that we now have a reversible sun hat!

Job Done!

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Birthday Rush & A Crafty Piper :-)

by Lesley Oman on 8 May, 2013

Hey everyone.

Remember me? Im the one who has been absent for months. Whoops. Sorry about that. Im not sure how, but all of a sudden I am back in the crafty mindset. Its one of those ‘don’t-ask-questions-just-run-with-it’ things! Now that the evenings are lighter I am starting to feel like my time after dinner can be used more productively, rather than spending it snuggling under a blanket (which has been my go-to reflex for the past while). Viva la craftiness!

May is upon us and that means that it has started – the massive influx of birthdays. The year starts nice and slow, and as soon as we hit May, we have my Mum-in-law’s birthday, My Dad-in-law’s birthday, my brother-in-law’s birthday, and then it gets to mid month and its my brother, then my sister at the end.

Luckily my mojo came back in time. Well,,,, almost in time. I did my usual trick of making the cards but not posting them on time. I am notoriously bad at posting cards. I wish there was a rehab for that because i feel so guilty that i dont even want to send the card in the end.

So here’s a nice little mix of cards that I have made for the Oman clan.

First a card for Craig’s Mum.

Marvellous day

Nice and flowery and springy.

So i have just typed the title of the card into this post and spell check has just informed me that marvellous has two Ls! Oh dear! RUBBISH! I hate it when that happens! Ah well, lets hope she doesn’t notice! LOL

Next up is a card for dad. I saw this Father text as a print on Pinterest and it looks like i didn’t actually pin it to my board so unfortunately i cant link it back. If i find it again I will link it up. I thought it looked really cool. I am planning on making more like this if i can be creative enough to think of character traits.

And of course, a card from Piper for Granda Oman. I used the left over pieces of alpha’s from a previous card that I made for my dad’s birthday in January. The design is basic but I love the finished piece!

Next stop is the cards for little Steven. Steven is much younger than Craig so these are boy cards. I am actually really excited to show these cards to you because Piper was very involved in making these ones! I brought some basic supplies in to the living room and Piper helped me make this card, and then insisted in making a card all by herself! It was so adorable and I sure was one proud mumma! I may have given a little creative direction, but she did all the sticking by herself!

Here’s the card from Craig and I

And here’s is Piper’s finished card

And saving the best til last… look at the concentration

and the HUGE grin!

I love my crafty girl! xx

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Things She Says: Scrapbooking Childhood Memories

by Lesley Oman on 9 February, 2013

We’re back! What a fabulous holiday! And look- a project to share.

Admittedly this is an older one, in fact a page which was started on our last trip to Scotland, when I brought some supplies but stoopidly forgot photos! Whoopsie! It didn’t stop me though – i just made the basis of the page and then finished it off when I got home.

With a little child in the house, its amazing to watch them develop each and every day, to look at the way they interpret the world and to see how they change from babies to toddlers just like that. A few months back I jotted down some of Piper’s attempts at a few words, the ones that we have noticed are a little quirky and have their own unique Piper twist.

These stamps were perfect for this project- and i love that the speech bubbles are really easy to cut out. I am going to be using this set a lot, i can tell!

I stamped the little ‘thats what she said’ stamp all along a piece of vellum to create a border for the project. It too was perfect for this layout – love it when that happens!

To finish the design, I chose to go with clustered embellishment for a fancy, feminine look. Here are some more photos…

Looking back its really hard to imagine being back in that time frame. Piper’s speech is so advanced, even the guys at nursery sing her praises. She plays games with us, pretending to say something wrong and then bursting out into laughter. Even though only a few months have past since this time, you really do forget. And thats why i am so glad that I have made this page. I hope i remember that pages dont have to be a work of art in order to immortalise those precious little memories from a childhood that passes by too quickly.

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Mini Emergency Craft Kit: Bringing Craft Supplies On Holiday

by Lesley Oman on 21 January, 2013

Bonjour tout le monde! I’m trying to get in to a French mood because in a mere few days we will be enjoying the snowy peaks of the French Mountains! Woohoo, Roll On Holiday! I have now entered into packing mode!

Last year I shared my Emergency Craft Kit with you, a collection of goodies to pack in your suitcase when you want to craft on the go. It worked well for our domestic trip but this time we are really stuck for room, so there was no way we would be able to take up valuable suitcase space with that much stuff. Plus, we wont have as much free time, so lets be reasonable. I had to get creative about what to bring. And I do love being creative….

I remember seeing a post on the beautiful blog of Crafty Goddess Elizabeth Kartchner, where she had packed some crafty supplies for a road trip. I loved it, be sure to check it out. This was the inspiration for my (mini) Emergency Craft Kit! Let’s take a look at what i’ve got!

Mini Book

Elizabeth made a little book from kraft cardstock and her silhouette and it was adorable. I thought I would follow suit to see what I could come up with. From an A4 piece of card I made pages with word apertures, cut out using the BEBAS font. I love the way this font looks when you cut it out.

I too used the bind it all to bind all the pages together, but I mixed it up a little in two ways. Firstly I used black wire as well as silver wire for the bindings. This is a cool way to use up those offcuts when you use all but two or three prongs. Secondly I added some extra pages to the book: a piece of glitter card to go behind the cover page, a pocket page for ephemera and I also glued two pages together to create the last page in the book (with some washi tape behind the aperture) – this makes it more sturdy, and hopefully more voyage-friendly!

Supplies

As for supplies, I too wanted to bring some washi tape, small scissors and some tags and journaling cards. I also brought some offcuts of pattern paper from my scraps box.

For adhesive, I really wish that I had the small bottle of glossy accents but i’m not going to buy it just for this trip so instead I am bringing this white glue pen. It is basically PVA glue but is it super easy to dispense. I have wrapped some sticky tape around the lid to ensure no mishaps on our travels.

In regards to pens, I’ve got a standard black pen that I like to write with and a white gel pen. I have wrapped these up in some discarded craft packaging incase of ink spills. It pays to be careful!

I also took a little baggy and put in a sprinkling of embellishments: buttons, veneer shapes, chipboard shapes. In fact Piper spent about half an hour sorting these this afternoon, so these may also double up as an indoor play project with miss P. BONUS!

All together

To contain her bits and pieces, Elizabeth had a little fabric bag. I never even thought of doing something like that. I guess I would have worried about getting things crumpled, but throwing caution to the wind I figured I would give it a try. Its good to get outside your comfort box sometimes.

I took some fabric and cut two rectangles, and before sewing them together I wanted to decorate the front of my bag. For this I used felt letters from KI memories, spelling out ECK – Emergency Craft Kit of course!! The felt letters have a cardboard backing and are adhesive but I didn’t think the adhesive would endure the ride so I ran some stitches through them. I love how they turned out. Not sure who makes the felt heart, but I stitched this by hand onto the material.

A few minutes later I had a bag, and all it needed was a drawstring – seam binding worked great for this! TA-DA!