onsdag 17. desember 2014

Winter decorations

Better late than never! 
I ment to post this ages ago, but I never got around to do it. Just some pictures of my decorating with homemade birch-candle holders. The "snow" in the lantern is sea salt! 
And the lovely tablerunner is an heirloom from my family <3

torsdag 13. november 2014

Christmas decorations!

Some may say that I started a bit early, but the thing is, I wanted something to do because I wanted to start making Christmas gifts, but I didn't have the things I needed, nor did I have the money to buy it (yet), so I figured; hey, why not just start making some decorations then! After all, I have all the materials, and they are very inexpensive to make! So if you think it's too early to make these, check back in on the 1st of December! 
How did you do that, you might ask! It's really easy

All you need is
A rolling pin
A pin/stick or straw
Cookie cutters
Stamps
Stamping pads (if you want the print colored)
Hemp, leathercords or whichever fits you best for hanging
Clay (there is a wide variety to choose from, fimo, air-hardening clays, salt dough)
(Fimo effect-clay with glitter gives pretty results aswell, I used those last year!)


I used this clay bought from Clas Ohlson for the fine sum of 65 NKR
What's great about this one is that it's air-hardening so you don't need the work of cooking it in the oven (though, I recommend ovenbaking-clay of you're in a hurry or want to finish up quickly. They are often more expensive..) This one is also fairly durable and when it dries, it gives of a porcelainy feeling. You can also modify it using sandpapers and stuff.Its also durable in usage, and if you don't want to use all of it, just tape the package shut and keep it in a plastic bag. If it becomes dry, just ad some water.

Now, over to the real fun!


Take your choise of clay out, and work with it a bit to make it warmer and easier to work with. 


Use your rolling pin to roll out the clay.. This is basically just like making gingerbread-cookies.
Roll it so it's about halv a cm or a bit more. You don't want them too thin, they will break more easily when thin! You may also add glitter if you feel like it! I made some with glitter and some without. After, place on a flat surface if airdrying, or on a bakingtray if you have bakingclay


While the clay is still wet, use your stamps to create decorative patterns on your figures. If you want to, you can put colors on your stamp, just use your regular stampingpad!
Also remember to poke a hole for your thread!
Also also remember to wash your stamps after as clay may contain oily substances and may stick to the surface!


If you use airdrying clay, remember to turn your artwork a few times during the drying period so they get to dry on all sides. This will also prevent cracking.
Follow bakinginstructions if you use bakingclay!


I don't have a very flattering picture whit them hanging as of now. I need a branch or a Christmas-tree..
I am going to use these for decorating presents this year!

~Happy making!

onsdag 22. oktober 2014

Concrete and flowers


My sister's birthday was in September. I decided to give her flowers in a homemade pot!
Made out of a towel and some concrete, because we all know by now that I'm slightly obsessed with concrete..
The present was well received by my family and my sister, and it was very easy and fun to make.

We have two cats, and one of them, Sherlock, is always very curious about everything new that comes into the house, and he always checks it very thoroughly! 


Down bellow, you can see how I made this pot!
Everybody can do it, you just need
-Concrete
-Water
-Towel
-Buckets

Plastic bags and dish washing-gloves makes the job so much easier!
Do this outside or on a covered floor (Not in your livingroom..), because it is messy!

Step by step: 
1.Cover up your floor and the buckets you will be using by placing plastic bags on the floor and on the bucket (I used one bag in the bucket where I mixed the concrete, and I had one plastic bag outside of the bucket I would use for shaping and drying the towel. Keep your gloves ready!

2. Cut out the size of your towel, I made mine a big square. Now, here I learned something a bit delayed! Dip the towel in water and then squeeze all the water out of it! I did not do this, so the towel sucked all the water out of the concrete and I had to add new water all the time..

3. This is where the gloves come in handy! Mix your concrete into a soup. How much you will need depends on the size of your towel, so just try this part out! You should be able to soak your entire towel in it.

4. So do that.. Soak the towel, just leave it there for a few minutes and also stir a lot, to be sure all parts of the towel has gotten as much concrete as possible. 

5. Now, place your towel on top of your covered, upturned bucket (or whatever else you want to use)
I had to make mine higher by placing a few more buckets under it.

6. Be patient! If it's sunny, the concrete will dry faster in the sun.

7. Turn your new pot, and use as you would any other pot! 


tirsdag 16. september 2014

Concrete candles


Lately, I've been really into using cement/concrete for making stuff, and I hear it's quite in on the fashion-side as well!
I've been making some of these really easy candle-holders. They are incredibly cheap, easy to make and really cute.
What you will need is:
Washed out milk-cartons
Empty toilet-paper roll/something candle-sized
Vaseline or oil
Stick for stirting
Cement/concrete (mine is from Coop Bygg, 59NKR for 25KG)
Water
Some tape
Spraypaint




So what you do, is really easy!

First, cut your milk-cartons so they are not as high. Makes it harder to work with, in my opinion.
Put some cement in the carton, and put in some water. Yo can always add more as you go, depending on how big or high you want your candleholders. Stir well, make sure there are no dry lumps. It should be like a thick soup.

-I recommend using a concrete that is as fine as possible. This one is a bit rough, I have now tried over with a finer one, and it's better!)

What I did to make the holes for the candles, were to put tape all around empty toilet-paper rolls, covered them with vaseline (you can also dip in oil), and I just pushed them as far down as I wanted them. If you want them shallow, you can also use candles, but use the candles with aluminium-foil around it! Will make it much easier to take them out later. Trust me!
 I had to tape my toiletpaper-rolls to the carton as they were so light they just floated back up!

Leave it for a day or two, then take them out of the cartons, and let them dry a bit more. It will be faster where it's hotter and sunnier.. 


When dry, tape the part you don't want colored! Tap the tape closely on and make sure to cover everything you don't want sprayed! As you might see, I used 3 different types of spraypaint.
I'm not very particular about which one to recommend, I like them all.
Only thing is that the silver one is a bit.. tame, or flat. If you want it very silvery, I recommend trying a krom-spray.
Chose your colors and spray to your hearts content! 
I had two layers!



African Giraffe approves.




lørdag 23. august 2014

Bubbles and Brushes

My aunt turned 60 this June, and for her birthday we decided to give her a painting course together with her family. The course is in water-colors, and we are served champagne and canapes, and the mood and surroundings are really colorful and inspiring. A local artist, Magny Tjelta Jaatun, is the course-holder, she's very calm and really a very good artist.

Our task for the day was to paint a parakeet. First, we doodled it on a piece of paper with just very soft touches of a pencil.

We had instructions and help through the entire course, and the artist helped us improve our own individual style and product. What really is very great about this course, is that anyone can do it, even if you never painted before!

We had a "lunchbreak" inbetween the layers of paint, in order for the paint to dry. We were served homemade canapes with roastbeef, salmon, cheeses, shrimps and other fancy stuff, and homemade chocolate mousse on lovely plates and cups for our tea or coffee. My sister also brought homemade carrot-cupcakes.

Afterwards we continued painting, adding more layers and outlines, adding details and really creating our own "impression" in our painting. What is really funny is to see how all of us can have the same starting point, and see how different it all turns out!

I am happy with the outcome and I can't wait to frame it and hang it up somewhere! 

Click here if you want to know more..

Here is a collection of all our paintings!









søndag 13. juli 2014

Cement in a pot

Today is my mom's birthday. Happy birthday, mom! <3
I like to give homemade gifts, especially to the people in my family because they appreciate homemade things very much, and that makes me very happy. So this year, I decided to make my mom a homemade flowerpot from cement. I had seen this done on Craftgawker before, and it looked awesome!

The actual process of making it, however, was not quite as expected. Though, it might have been due to lack of the right equipment...

Unfortunately I don't have pictures from the process of making it, but I'll tell you what I did..
First, i had to get the cement. Easy peasy, I thought. Evidently not. shops close early so I cant get in to buy it, and some stores that should sell cement, well.. they don't. So I found at last, on Coop Bygg.
Just add water, the guy said. Nice, I thought. Adding water was the easy part. The mixing was hard, without a cement-mixer or an electric drill. So I was mixing by hand, and after I had blemishes on my fingers and cement up under my nails. And scratches up to my elbows. The floor was full of cement and so were my clothes. And, by God, mixing cement with your bare hands is tiring work!
I had the cement in a big bucket, and I put a smaller bucket (covered in vaseline) in the middle. It dried pretty fast, but then came the removing of the casts (aka the buckets)
I had to smash the inner bucket to pieces because it had got stuck, even if it was covered in vaeline. And then I had to bang the entire outside of the big bucket with one of those soft-like hammers. and turn it upside down, and jump on it.. And I got it out! Woho! It's HEAVY!

But all in all, it turned out pretty great! And my aunt and my moms two friends were impressed so I guess it was all worth it in the end.
Lesson learned, though; buy something to help mix the cement next time.

mandag 23. juni 2014

Short shorts!

I haven't been the most persistent of bloggers as of late. Mainly because I have lacked the time to do creative stuff, and also the lack of a sewing-table (Which I now have. It's mall, but i have one! Go me!)
I have been very inspired lately, but can't always see through all my plans.. 

Anyway, one day I stumbled across this on pinterest, and I wanted to make my own short shorts for the summer!
Just on a sidenote, to all you who seek inspiration for things to craft or decorate or whatever, you really should visit pinterest and craftgawker. I LOVE those sites!

So, I made my own shorts from some old drapes I bought from my local second-hand store (Fretex) a while back. It wasn't very hard, the hardest thing was to get the measurements right so that it would fit (I have little experience in sowing pants, and making my own pattern wasn't as easy as I'd have thought.. (Apparently my... backside.. is to big, so I had to add some fabric to the back so that it wouldn't be too low..

In the end, it didn't turn out half bad.. 



fredag 16. mai 2014

17th of May

Tomorrow is Norway's National Day, the 17th of May.
This year is special! This years, it's 200 years since Norway got it's declaration of independence.
I had some ribbons laying around, and I figured I'd try making my own jacket decorations for the special day tomorrow!


The materials are super easy! Ribbons, some old buttons, safety pins, a needle and some thread!



lørdag 15. februar 2014

Project in the making

I took up working on an old crochetting project that I've been working with on and of for maybe 3 years. Mostly because I packed it away and forgot about it!

Now, I am making the last pieces of it, and finally! After all these years, maybe I will complete it!

mandag 10. februar 2014

Nerd Couture

For Christmas for my best friend, who also happens to be somewhat of a nerd (as am I..)
So I decided to decorate one myself! Because is looked like fun, and getting a blue XBOX-controller proved harder than expected..

The left joystick had started to loose it's rubber coating, so I took it all of and made a new button out of air-drying clay. Then I coated it with epoxy glue (which turns into "hard plastic" when it dries) to protect it from breaing and also from the fat and oil on our fingers. 


And if anybody is wondering whan an XBOX-controller looks like in pieces, here you go!
Lots of small parts and buttons. Putting it back together is like a jigsaw. But aso very fun.



Vanilla Lavender Hand Soap


Sunday the 9th of February was Mothers Day here in Norway.
I was away for the weekend, and would be home in the evening that sunday, so I figured flowers would probably not be the easiest thing. But, alas! My mother likes homemade stuff, so I decided to make her something of my own!

Making soap is not hard! All you need is some ingredients and a little time.

Here is what I used:
-Transparent soap base from Panduro
-Vanilla soap scent
-Vanilla stick, chopped
-Dried lavender

Melt the soap base in a water bath, and add the other ingredients.
Pour into your desired shape and let it dry.

I packed them in plastic foil and then i ripped out some pages in an old book i got in a second hand store, and wrapped the soapes in that.

A piece of nature

I made these wood candleholders from a tree me and my mom took down outside her house. It blocked the sun out, so we figured why not use it for something good instead!
It was a painful and time-consuming job to get the tree down and into small pieces, as all I had by hand was an old, and very rusty saw. It was horrible.
But I got it down!

And the results are nice! 


Rhino plushie

I made a Rhino plushie inspired by this blogger, as a gift for my 3 year old niece for Christmas.
I made some changes to it, as it was going to be a plushie for a 3-year old, I felt like lentils as stuffing would be unpractical. And also all the shops I had the chance to get to, were completely sold out of pink felt.
Who would have thought!

It is really easy to make, I made it in a few hours while watching Person of Interest on my computer, and I think it turned out kinda cute.

If you click the link posted earlier, it will give you the complete DIY so you can make one too!


lørdag 4. januar 2014

Butterflies in a jar


I made this as a birthday gift for my friend. She likes butterflies and she really needed some decoration for her room, so I made her this.

The butterflies are stamped baper, cut out and colored on both sides with Letraset ProMarkers.
The tree is simply wires curled around a stone.
I bought a candleholder in a second hand store, and a regular white plate, and glued them together with epoxy glue. All the butterflies and the rocks and even the cheese dish-cover is glued together with epoxy to make it solid and durable. 

Homemade skin products


For Christmas I made homemade Vanilla Lavender Sugar Scrub and a few batches of Cocoa Body Butter.
They are very easy to make, and requires only a few ingredients.
Sadly some of these ingredients are expensive here in Norway, but I bet they are cheeper in other parts of the world.

The body butter was made from this recipe,
the body scrub I made myself.

Vanilla Lavender Sugar Scrub

What you need:
Sugar
Carrier oil (I used walnut oil)
Lavender essential oil
Vanilla stick
Food coloring (optional)

Pour sugar into a bowl, depending on how much scrub you want to make.
Add your carrier oil bit by bit, so it's not too much, and mix it. You want it to be like a thick liquid, but not too thick.
Add about 4 drops of Lavender oil in. Too much might irritate the skin, so just have a few drops
Chop a vanilla stick. How much you will need depends on how much you're making. if you take too much, it might look grumsy and dirty, so be moderate
(because of this, I decided not to use lavender petals. I tried this at first, but it looked indelicate, so I made a new batch without it in)
Add a few drops of food coloring of your choice if you want to make it an other color.
Keep in an airtight container, and stir before use.