Cute little Envelopes

Thursday, March 08, 2012 Posted In , , Edit This 0 Comments »
Recently when I was in office, I had to make an envelope to put in some delicate stuff. I made the envelope in about 5 minutes from printer paper and stapler pins. Since it was too quick and easy, I felt I should just mention it out on the blog though there might be a lot better envelope ideas out there on the Internet.


Step 1. Gather any paper of your choice to make the envelope (I had some papers remaining from my Paper Mobile project. These were colorful and gave me pleasure at the thought of being able to recycle them.)


Any size would be fine - rectangle or square. As you can see in the picture, the papers are of varying sizes. Towards the end you can see the sizes of the envelopes also, so that you get an idea of the size to be used for your project.


Step 2. Make a fold from one side as shown. It should be a little more than 1/3rd and little less than half of the length of the paper. Let us call this as First Flap.



Step 3. Now fold in the other flap. The newly folded flap overlaps the older flap. Let us call this the Second Flap.


The other side looks like this now.


Step 4. Draw a thin line on the Second flap.


Make sure that the line is well before the edge of the First flap.


Step 5. Cut along the line and let the center portion remain as shown in the picture. The uncut portion will serve as an insert to keep the envelope flap in place. Let us call the uncut portion as the Insert.


Step 6. Now press the Second flap against the First flap and mark the corners of the Insert.


Step 7. Open the flaps and make a cut within the marks on the First flap as shown.


To make the cut you can use a retractable safety blade. You can alternatively use a pin also. Make holes very close to each other using the pin along line you want to cut and then move the pin horizontally to tear along the perforation. Or you can even use a ruler and draw on the line using the pin back and forth. A neat cut will appear after a few drawings.

Step 8. Now fold the First flap back in place and staple along the edges. Alternatively, you can also use gum/glue, tapes, or even sew along the edges.


Step 9. Fold the Second flap and slide the Insert into the cut made at Step 7.


Your envelope is now ready! Put in whatever you want - your bills, earrings, hair clips, pins, and any knick-knacks.

You can also sneak in love-notes for your beloved ones.


And make labels for the envelopes. Love the colorful splash of envelopes I have now.



Organizing!

Tuesday, March 06, 2012 Posted In , , , Edit This 0 Comments »
Organizing is something I love to do. But what makes me sad is that it doesn't stay organized for long! :-( With people like hubby and me, who throw around things, how can I expect my home to be on order. Well, but every other day I would be organizing something or the other.

Since marriage, hubby's socks were a problem. After the laundering, socks are always subjected to get lost, especially when I am a person who keeps on pushing the task of folding the clothes. So I started keeping the socks in a separate box soon after drying out the clothes. Things looked okay for a while.

But we needed further simplification. When almost all your socks pairs are of the similar colors, you usually end up wearing the wrong pairs :-) So I had to come up with a better idea of organizing. After many days of thinking, I finally figured it out.

A cardboard box with compartments in it. I had seen the pretty versions of these in malls earlier. So why not come up with a simpler one on a trial basis. Yes, I was on my heels in no time.

Found an empty box, cut out some cardboard pieces to act as the separators, and glued them in place. When done, it looked like this.




>And when I folded and put in the rightly paired socks into the compartments, they looked like this. Neat!





Well, it was so easy and quick. I intend to do a bigger, better, and neater version of this soon. Will keep you posted.

The Liebster Award

Friday, March 02, 2012 Posted In Edit This 1 Comment »

My friend, Raji, from the Thread with Me! blog just presented me an award - the Liebster Award. The word Liebster means 'favorite'. And this award is passed on to the upcoming bloggers.

So I am actually happy that I have an award now.

Now comes the fun part - I need to pass it on to 5 other bloggers... hmmm... Need to decide :-) Let me choose... And here they are:

1. Miss Holly from Seaview Cottage. I came across her blog recently and loved her tutorials.

2. Raji from Raji's Ramblings. Love her blog for the simple and everyday things she blogs about.

3. Narayan from Through the Motions. You can read some genuine and interesting movie reviews here.

4. Kavitha from In This Journey Called Life. To encourage her to write more (;-))and she does have some interesting posts on her blog.

5. Carol from Tapestry Crochet. Head over to her blog for some awesome crochet items and techniques.

And now the rules for the award winners:
  • Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.
  • Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.
  • Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.
  • Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed.
  • Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog.

Congrats to all! :-)

Circles and circles

Tuesday, February 28, 2012 Posted In , , , Edit This 7 Comments »
I have been doing some paper crafts lately. Reason - its easy and you get to see the end result quickly.

I wanted to replace my butterfly mobile with something new. I had some colorful brochures (from our home hunting last year) lying around. I picked those up and started cutting out circles in two sizes. For tracing the circle I chose a glass and a lid, in different sizes. I was so busy in the tracing and cutting that I forgot to take in-progress pictures.

Finally when all the circles were cut out, I laid the smaller ones on top of the bigger circles. Also tried to make them look as contrasting as possible. Once the pattern was set, I put my dear sewing machine to use - sewed all of them together.

And finally hung it on an empty wall near the kitchen.

What I love about this mobile is that when we switch on the fan in our living room, the circles start to twist and turn showing the colors.

I completed the project on Sunday evening and could not wait till the weekend to capture pictures of it at day time. So I clicked the pictures in the dim light itself.


I actually wanted to give the title to this post as 'New Paper Mobile' but then thought people might start thinking of it as a new mobile technology or gadget.

Weaving in Ends - Tip

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 Posted In , Edit This 0 Comments »
Weaving in the ends are perhaps what I don't like. And when the project is big and with different colors of yarns, even worse. I found out a tip using which the number of ends to be weaved in can be reduced.


Let's see how to do it.

This is how you start with the stitch for a Granny Square or a crochet round.


The steps to make the end weaved in starts once the magic circle is done and you start doing the stitches in the square.


Yarn over, bring the hook through the magic circle, and when you do the yarn over again, make sure that the End to be weaved in (ETBWI) is in between the yarn and the hook. Now yarn over.


Continue the stitches while keeping the ETBWI in between during the yarning over step.



Here you see the length of the ETBWI visible reducing as the stitches increase.



And finally, there is no ETBWI now. You have only the loose end remaining. Result, lot of time saved on weaving in the loose ends.

Granny Square Edges - Tip

Thursday, February 16, 2012 Posted In , , , Edit This 0 Comments »
The biggest challenge when making Granny squares are that they often do not turn out to be the perfect squares with the crisp edges. This creates difficulty when trying to join two squares together.


So some tips -

When making a Granny Square:

1. Choose the correct size hook for the yarn you choose.

2. Hold the loose end of the yarn with even tension throughout the process. If you keep varying the tension, the size of the stitches also vary, which creates uneven squares.

3. When using more than one type of (or colour) yarn to make a square, make sure that the yarns are of the same ply and thickness. Else, the square can become uneven.

When joining Granny Squares, if the edges of are curved up like this, it is difficult to get the stitches correctly.


Here is one tip. Hold the squares to be joined together. Insert a smooth thin rod through the holes in the edge and hold it taut till you get a neat corner on the square. I used my crochet hook itself to hold the stitches up.


Now you can see that perfect bend at the corner as well as identify the stitches easily.

Happy joining :-)

Mini Green Blanket

Monday, February 13, 2012 Posted In , , , , Edit This 4 Comments »
I finally finished working on the mini green blanket. I am extremely thrilled with how it turned out. I had very few threads to weave in and the granny squares turned out perfectly this time. They are the best grannies I have made till date. Joining together the squares were also a lot fun. I would pick up the granny squares, huddle in front of the television and start joining. This is fun as it doesn't require much attention and you get the feeling that you are almost nearing the end of your project.

The mini green blanket was a quick project as most of the grannies were already ready when I started on the project recently.

As I mentioned earlier, I went on for a the usual edging - simple double crochets. I made three rounds of the edges (the pic shows only 2) and didn't take the final pics though.

Well, let's see the final mini green blanket!



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