Spoonflower weekly design contest – Sewing Notions

There were lots of lovely designs entered into last week’s Farming themed contest on Spoonflower – see the top 10 designs here!  Although I didn't win I was still pleased with the results (65 votes and 99th out of 260 entries).

This week’s Sewing Notions themed contest was slightly different as the brief was to create 4 coordinating designs on 1 yard, instead of just one design.  I had a good rummage around the sewing box, drawing spools of thread, buttons, pins and other bits and pieces.  Then scanned my pen line drawings and coloured them digitally – here’s a work in progress shot of one of the designs…

 

And the finished yard with 4 coordinating designs…  I'm looking forward to seeing how these print on fabric!

Voting  for the Sewing Notions contest is open now – vote for your favourite designs here!

Hot Air Balloon Cupcake Box DIY Tutorial

I have been wanting to design a new printable box shape for a while and after much testing, some arguments with my printer and a happy accident I have created this cupcake box!   It is slightly larger than my existing box shapes (3 inches square), so comes on more than 1 sheet but is still easy to make. 

This box has a hot air balloon theme, to match my latest range of printables, but I will be making cupcake boxes with other designs soon too.  There are 4 boxes featuring different balloons and colour schemes (blue, red, green and yellow), in this tutorial I will just be making the blue box but they are all made in exactly the same way…

There are 2 sheets you will need to print for the box, plus an additional sheet for an optional lid.  Each sheet can be printed on A4 or letter sized (8.5 x 11 inch) card.  For best results when printing, I recommend using your printer's highest quality setting and printing on a good quality card.  I print my boxes onto 240gsm white card…

Cut around the outside of box parts 1 and 2.  Then score and fold along the dashed lines (Tip – use a craft knife and ruler for straight edges, and a sheet of craft foam under the card when you’re scoring with a bone folder)

Glue tab ‘A’ (on box part 2) to the centre square on box part 1 (marked side A), your box should now look like this…

Glue the remaining tabs marked with ‘glue’.  You can leave the box like this, and fill with sweets or other small gifts…

Or if you are making it for a cupcake, make the cupcake holder to fit inside the box.  Cut around the edge of the cupcake holder and cut out the circle in the centre.  Score and fold along the dashed lines, then glue the tabs.  Your cupcake holder should look like this…

There is also an optional lid you can make, which is printed on a separate sheet (with 2 lids on one sheet).  Make this in exactly the same way as the cupcake holder (it is slightly larger than the cupcake holder).  Slide the lid over the top of the box.

Alternatively you can cut away the top part of the box before sliding over the optional lid.  You could also glue a piece of acetate to the inside of the lid, so that the circle hole becomes a window and you can see inside the box.

A few other ideas for customising your box are mixing and matching the coloured cupcake holders and lids, using ribbon or baker’s twine around the outside of the box and adding one of the tags (which come on page 1 of the box templates).

If you would like to make your own boxes you can buy the templates for this box and other designs from my shop here: shop printable gift boxes

The baker’s twine tied around the box in the photo at the top of this post is ‘Eton Blue’ – you can buy this (and lots of other colours too!) from my shop here: shop baker's twine

I hope you like these boxes and if you make some of your own I would love to see your photos! :)

Spoonflower Fabric of the Week Contest - Farming

It’s been a while since I entered one of Spoonflower’s weekly design contests (almost exactly a year since the Citrus one!)  Sometimes the theme doesn’t immediately  inspire me but next week’s ‘Sewing Notions’ one caught my eye.  I decided to try the Farming one too and really enjoyed drawing lots of different farm animals (along with the tractor and ears of wheat) to create this repeat pattern…

I am going to try and enter the weekly contests more often, to make me draw new things and be inspired to try out different ideas :)

Voting is now open for the Farming contest - you can vote for your favourite designs here: http://www.spoonflower.com/contest_voters_temp/new?contest_id=253

Etsy TV ad

Have you seen the new Etsy UK tv ad yet?  It looks great and it’s really good to see Etsy being promoted to a wider audience too! 67 sellers took part in the filming in London but Etsy has also given all of us other sellers the opportunity to be involved by making our own customised versions of the ad.  If you watch this video right to the end you’ll see my shop details (for my craft and party supplies shop)…

If you have never used Etsy before I have a couple of great offers to share with you!

This is for new buyers - £5 towards your first Etsy purchase (which you can use in my shop or any other Etsy shop!)  http://etsy.me/1w25MQF
Or if you have been thinking of setting up your own shop on Etsy this will give you 40 free listings! http://etsy.me/1yrxTLf

Floral design T shirt competition

Here’s a competition that creative people might be interested in – the closing date for entries is tomorrow (June 9th) but if you’re very quick there’s still time to enter today!  (Apologies for the late notice, I only entered my design yesterday).

The contest is being run by Bags of Love and The People’s Print and there are some great prizes!  All you need to do is come up with a design for their all over printed t-shirt.  They have created a tutorial using flower photographs which you could follow, but you can create your own floral design too.  More details of the competition can be found here.

This is my entry to the competition…

I created my design from drawings of the flowers in my garden.  The pen line drawings of individual flowers were scanned and coloured digitally, then combined to create a repeat pattern.  I would love to see how this design prints on fabric!  If you like my design I would really appreciate your vote! and if you enter please send me a link so I can see your entry too! :)

DIY ideas for using fabric covered buttons

Remember my diy tutorial on how to make fabric covered buttons?  There are so many ways you could use them in craft projects, here are a few that I have tried so far…

The first time I used a fabric covered button in a project was on this camera case - the button camouflages so sell it's almost invisible!  I made it with some vintage orange and brown needle cord and designed the case to perfectly fit my camera.   I love this little bag but it’s for my old camera so I don’t really use it now :(

Here are a couple of very easy hair accessories made with fabric covered buttons.  This is just a hairband looped through the shank on the button…

You can buy hairgrips with round bases on the end which you could glue a button on (without the shank), but I made this with just an ordinary hair grip pushed through the shank.  Couldn’t be any easier – and within seconds you can be wearing it, no need to wait for glue to dry!

This next idea turns the buttons into brads – great for cardmaking and scrapbooking!  There are different types of buttons for covering with fabric - make sure the buttons you’re using have a wire shank like these and an oblong slot for the shank to go through.  Before covering with fabric, remove the wire shank with pliers and push a brad (split pin) through the backing piece.

Making your own brads means you can match them with any project.  I used one here to attach a fabric flower to a card.  The brads aren’t limited to paper crafts – I also used one on a crocheted garland.  As well as being decorative it was a quick and easy way of layering the flowers without the need for sewing.

Have you used fabric covered buttons in your craft projects before - what have you made with them?

June – free printable calendar

Another new month, so time for a new free printable calendar...  It’s the start of summer here and I picked the first 2 strawberries from my garden yesterday!  So this month’s calendar design features lots of strawberries with strawberry flowers and leaves. (If you like this design you might like these other designs with my strawberry illustrations too!)

You can download the PDF here and you can view and print the calendar with Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The calendar is A4 in size, but you can scale it to fit different sized paper if you prefer.  You can print onto any type of paper you like, for best results I recommend using your printer's highest quality setting and a good quality paper.

Please note this calendar is for personal use only!  You can print it as many times as you like for your own use but you may not redistribute it in any form (digitally or printed).  You may not modify the calendar or claim it as your own.  If you would like to share the calendar on your blog, Pinterest, facebook etc please include a link back to this page (not the download link).  Thank you!  I hope you enjoy using it :)