Ministry of Tarnation and Titbits: Office of t-shirt transformation

More craft archiving from the school environment stall adventures in recycling.
Today's department is all about T-SHIRTS!

Cotton, stretchy, colourful t-shirts.

Rules and regulations:
1. You can cut a t-shirt into yarn or "TARN" because it doesn't fray but rather stretches into a lovely curled tubular yarn. And then well, you have yarn and can do all the usual amazing things with yarn!

2. Ribbed necks make excellent bag handles.

3. hems are little casings waiting to be transformed into many things. Don't throw out the scraps!

First off. Making continuous tarn-yarn from a t-shirt is a great trick. Here are some how to links:from Instructables and Mollie Makes

Once you have the yarn-tarn-tarn-yarn then you're off and running!
You can crochet bowls....

or bags......

or make pom poms....

or vague useless tassels that just hang around.....

As for the leftovers:

Short yarn can be looped over a chain to create a tassel necklace

leftover bits of hems and necks can be made into little flowers for hair ties and clips....

And I very much enjoyed sewing little rectangles of hems together, in contrasting colours fringing them and using the existent casing for necklace making.

But wait! There are scraps! Sew little scrappy bits along a thread with a needle.

Use a wooden bead at each end to hold into place and left over tarn for the necklace and voila. I think I used every last skerrick!

And for the best and easiest no-sew-no-fuss bag check out this tutorial

These sell like hotcakes at the fete!

Here is a linky dink for more jewellery ideas here

Keeping Christmas Eco - recycled sushi packet garland and bracelet

Save the little soy sauce fish from take away sushi! They make a lovely window garland or would look great hung individually on the tree. We filled them with water coloured with food colouring and painted the tops with different coloured nail polish.

 And save the packet too. Why? Well, sushi containers are perfect for shrinky dinking. My daughter Mattie made this (Kesha themed) charm bracelet for her sister. The diamond charms are sushi packets (the rest is shrinky dink frosted plastic that you can buy from a craft store.) Mattie drew on the plastic with a sharpie pen and used a hole punch to make the hole. Then into a very slow oven and watch it shrink and thicken. You can place something flat on top when it comes out of the oven to ensure it doesn't curl.

And while we were shrinky dinking, we made these snowflake bauble necklaces for the twins. Blue pencil on frosted shrinky dink.

My Creative Space: tassels

It's all about the tassels here in my creative space today.
But now it's time to get ready for the Kris Kringle Night Market at the Northcote Town Hall. Yes.  I know it's VERY hot in Melbourne today. But hopefully some people will still be wandering in later in the evening!
Check out some more creative spaces here. 

Blogtoberfest Sweet By and By Giveaway Winner

Is it over already? Blogtoberfest 2012 finished and gone? Well not quite.  There's still some housekeeping and finishing off to do - like announcing the winner of the Sweet By and By necklace giveaway.

Frankly, I'm tempted to send everyone a necklace. But that's not really practical because I don't have enough! But thank you to everyone who entered and in fact a big thank you to everyone who commented on blogs during Blogtoberfest. It really helps! And boy were there times when I needed it!

SO the winner is..................Jen from Madeonthecouch! She chose "Winter"

Finish things Friday

Another FTF (finish things Friday)because I'm trying to stick to some sort of routine; clearing the decks before the weekend...otherwise it just goes on and on and there is no weekend - in fact, there is no end.... so today, finally, the finished the sugar skull garland...

and made about half a dozen of these plaited leather necklaces....

and some crocheted hexie brooches....

But I couldn't resist....and I did start something too....

My Creative Space: Balsa wood beads

 

Yes I know I shouldn't be starting another  project but our new little drill was calling me! 

"Come here!" it called "Use me! Press my button! I'm fun and useful!"

And it wasn't lying. It even shines a light on what you are drilling! Whoa!

So. What to drill? These little craft blocks of (sustainable plantation grown) balsa wood were calling me too.

 "Drill me" they called! "Drench me in colour!" they added. "We need a makeover! Transform me into something pretty!"*

So I did.

 Using Landscape Dyes I soaked those little blocks in colour and simmered.

They sure were thirsty and soaked up the colour! I did try some ombre dip dying but the wood was too porous and the effect didn't work.

 

  Hmmm. It's hard to take a photo of simmering...

For the record, I rinsed them well, and they dried out quite quickly without losing shape or getting warped. Phew!

I also made sure they didn't leach any colour onto the skin when wet! Didn't they turn into bright and happy little things?

 Now it's a simple matter of stringing them onto chain (or whatever you wanted to use). I put a wooden bead between them.

 I like a long necklace (partly because I am, ahem, very flat chested - yes which makes my obsession with Dolly Parton even sadder) but I have also ordered some shorter chains which I think will look good.

 Head over to My Creative Space and see what everyone is up to!

*should I worry than inanimate objects are calling to me???

Sweet By and By Giveaway!

"summer" felt dot necklace

 We are half way through Blogtoberfest 2012! 


Here's another giveaway to help get us through the second half: 

A Sweet By and By dot necklace.

They are handmade from little wooden circles covered with recycled jumper felt.

 
Leave a comment below and tell me which one you would like:

Winter

Spring

 

Autumn

Oh and it ends on the 31st of October!

Good luck!

Scarf or Necklace?

I'm one of those people - you know the ones. The ones who always wear cardies, even on sunny days. The ones who are always going on about feeling cold. 

The ones who rarely show any skin! The ones who always have cold hands ("cold hands, warm heart," Mum would say.) 

On the plus side, I'm one of those people who,when it's sweltering in Summer, feels great and energetic. 

But even in Spring, it only takes a slightly cool breeze and I want to rug up.

Solution? Spring scarves. Or are they warm necklaces?

These ones are made from recycled jumpers transformed into felt rope/yarn (for tutorial on how to make felt jumper yarn/rope go here) There are a lot of recycled t-shirt scarves out there and I was inspired by Emma at Frog, Goose and Bear.

 

The felt rope/yarn from is from light weight cream jumpers. The rope/yarn was dyed with Landscape wool dyes. To make the scarf/necklace (scarflace?) I hand stitched each bundle end together then twisted and joined. The plaited piece is there to hide the stitches, but looks so good I think I'll wear it with the plait at the front.

tribal trims

 

 

These days I will attempt to crochet just about anything. So I've delved into the box of trims and made this necklace. I realise I am possibly the only person willing to wear this colour combination...so I have started another one in muted tones - to which my teenage daughter said,

"Muted tones? Why bother?"  But I really love the vintage braid trim so I'll keep going! Teenagers can be so harsh!

 Next I'll move onto this loopy green fringing....