Romantic pincushion in a tin

This is an easy no-sew, no-glue pincushion for keeping needles and pins or displaying a vintage hat pin collection. A simple tin gets a romantic transformation with some lace, tulle and bling jewellery.




Materials and tools needed for the project: scissors, small empty tin, fabric and tulle scraps, ribbons, filling, vintage jewellery pieces or beads, rhinestones, etc.




Making process:

1. Cut a round piece of fabric with a diameter at least twice the size of the tin. (I used lace and a second thicker fabric underneath.)
2. Put some filling in the middle of the fabric, gather the edges and tie with a ribbon or thread. Tuck it into the tin with the tied side downwards.
3. Cut a round piece of tulle and put the tin in the middle of this piece. Gather the edges and put a ribbon around it. Arrange the tulle or cut the edges smoother, if necessary.
4. Stick some bling jewellery pieces into the ribbon knot. Voilà!

Little Craft Cottage: Inside

This little craft cottage is my first miniature project and it features a creative space for an artisan working with yarn and textiles in 1:12th scale.




The rustic style cottage room decorated in shades of blue and grey is fitted into a cardboard shoe box, which was exactly the right size. Some furniture pieces and tiny accessories are commercial, paper and textile stuff is completely homemade.




There is a sketching in progress on the desk and a cork inspiration board on the wall to help with idea generation. Newspaper is waiting to be read and some correspondence to take care of over lunch break.




Toothpicks are so perfect for pencils. Found the idea in the zakka life blog, there is a great tutorial for making these as well.




The chest of drawers is made of matchboxes cut in half, legs and pulls are just metallic spacer beads. The stool is made of matches glued together as other small wood material is really hard to find. The stone flooring was quite easy: teared pieces of cardboard glued and painted.




For the shelf unit, I found a box where the 'shelves' were already there. It's not very strong, but enough to hold the sewing machine and all the supplies, books and notions quite well.




The fabrics are folded over pieces of cardboard and fixed with glue. Same with thread and ribbon on printable cards.




All the yarn in the stash is real wool in cobweb and lace weights. The chunky knitting basket is crocheted of medium weight cotton.




As for books and magazines - I just diminished the ones from my own collection...




When there is work in progress, coffee must be available at all times, why not serve with style on a silver tray.




For after dark hours and burning the midnight oil, the hanging ceiling light can be switched on. It's a battery LED light, no electricity and wiring needed.




For the size comparison, here's an oversized apple from the big world.

Sewing machine's new clothes

The sewing machine got a new dress - hoping to get her into working mood more often. Besides, the original plastic cover was just ugly.




There is a small summer wardrobe fashion show on the front to give hints what to make or what to wear. (Despite all that endless snow outside.)

Rosy times ahead

There can never be too many small vessels at home for this and that, especially in the craft room. After taking a look at the expanding tin and napkin pile, it was quite clear, what sort of experiment should be carried out. (And there was a big sale at haberdashery). So these rosy lacy cans were born.



The tins were painted first, then roses cut from napkins positioned and moistened with water using a brush, and then three layers of mod podge applied. Finally, the cans were trimmed with lace and twine to protect against sharp tin edges.

Cosy needles

In order to make the finding of double pointed needle sets easier, I made some special cosies for them. Although I liked the look of them all together in a jar, this way the sets are always handy and any member less likely to be misplaced.




The cosies are simple tubes worked in the round and embellished with a tiny crochet flower.

Takeaway knitting sack

To make knitting projects portable and take them outside now that the weather is warming up, one needs a suitable bag that would blend in with the natural environment.
This drawstring bag is made of linen fabric and cotton yarn, the knitted embellishment, of course, is essential to show that this is a knitting and not sewing bag in question.




The drawing strings are made as knitted i-cord. They end with vintage wooden beads that are attached using yarn tails.

Digital crafting

Wouldn't it be convenient to have all sorts of real life tools available also while being online? For example, scissors for cutting, glue for pasting, safety pins to put something on hold, pins for pinning?


I turned some of such tools and small craft related items into digital format. The images are free to use for embellishing your craft blog or website. These are .png files without background and will blend in anywhere.
To save an image, right-click on it and choose 'Save Image As' or similar.

All images are shown in actual size. They can be made to appear smaller by using the code marked in green inside the image tag in HTML and adjusting the width in pixels:
<img width="50px" src="http://..." />

If your default web template adds border to images, you can add this green code to the image tag to remove the border:
<img style="border: none; background: transparent;" width="50px" src="http://..." />

Book with sharp content

This needle book is made of small piece of printed corduroy and black felt. Some flowers on the fabric are outlined with seed beads - it is very convenient to embroider when a template is already provided.




The book cover is padded with felt sheet and another layer of felt is sewn to the inside, so that needles can feel safe and comfortable.




The backstrip is made of grey blue lace, suggesting a romantic sewing story.

Wool spooling

Another great find from the attic department: antique wooden wool spools. These look so cozy on the shelves and are perfect for storaging cords and ribbons or a single yarn ball. Not yet tested, but it must be very convenient to wind yarn from the spool during knitting. Only a spool holder missing now.




The spools went through a thorough cleaning, nevertheless kept the terrible 'attic' smell and had to be coated with furniture varnish. This is why they are a bit shiny, but the antiqueness is still quite visible.

Ribbons under control

January always gets me in the mood for some home improvement and this year I'm taking on my craft supplies organisation. Naturally, they should be convenient to use, as well as look pretty and inspiring.
Ribbon storage was the first project and it was really fun. I found a tin candy box, cut some cardboard strips in appropriate size and wrapped the ribbons around these.








The most convenient method for storing shorter gift wrapping ribbons seemed to be using clothespin. And glass jars are probably going to be the key element for storage, so I need to collect more of these (originally occupied by candles).