DIY

♥ DIY Envelope Booklet

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Hey Lovelies! Did you also survive the storm Ciara, if you lived in Europe? It really went nuts here, but nothing got damaged and I could walk most of the days without been blown away haha. I kinda like to walk outside when it storms, not completely sure why, just love it. For today I wanted to make a small booklet that looks like an envelope. I first wanted to create something else, but what I imaged, didn’t worked out in reality. So sad, but sometimes it’s like that. I hope you’ll like this tutorial. The booklet would also be very cute to use as a valentines gift with little notes or drawings, how cute would that be?!

Envelope Booklet

For this DIY you’ll need:
♥ 1mm Board.
♥ Pretty Cardstock or Paper.
♥ Paper for the sheets inside, I used dark and light pink.
♥ Scissors.
♥ Ruler.
♥ X-acto Knive.
♥ Glue.
♥ Needle that’s strong enough to poke through board.
♥ Piece of Yarn, about 30cm.
♥ Beads. (optional)

DIY

Cut the board to size, according to the picture below. All heights are the same, 4,5cm.

Then also cut the cardstock that you wanna use for the cover. The best way to do this is to start measuring out 0,75cm, then line up all the pieces including the space in between the spine pieces of the book, and add another 0,75cm. Add 0,75 on the top and bottom as well. Try to make it look like the picture below. (The good side of the paper is facing down).

Glue all pieces of board to the cardstock.

Now cut all the corners of the cardstock, like I did in the picture. Make sure to leave a little space close to the board (about 1mm) so the corners will get covered nicely.

Now glue all edges around the board.

For the inside of the cover, choose some paper/cardstock you like and cut it to size. It’s the same size but 1,5mm less from all edges.
Glue this to the inside.

Pages for the Booklet

Cut 7 sheets of paper for the pages of the booklet, 6 by 4cm. Fold them in half on the short side, so you get folded sheets of 3 by 4cm.

Stack all sheets together. As you will notice, when you stack them together, you can an outward facing V-shape on the side where you would open the book. You can leave them as it is. Or trim it down smooth. Just what you prefer.

It’s time to make the binding holes. Measure 1,25cm inwards on the spine at the left side. Both from top and bottom so you’ll end up with 2 holes. Poke those through with a needle, make sure to be careful. Copy those holes to the pages and poke those through as well.

Using the yarn, put it on your needle and go from the outside of the book to the inside, through the stack of pages. Then go through the other hole to the outside again. Tie a knot on the outside, on the spine. Try to have even ends of the yarn.

The ends of the yarn you can decorate if you prefer, for example with beads and use those ends to be able to close the book. You can also use a sticker for example to close it or anything else you can think of.

Envelope Booklet

And you just reached the end of the DIY. I hope you enjoyed making this little booklet! It would be a fun gift for your valentine with a cute little message or drawings.

I hope you had fun, and I’ll see you next week!

Love
Danielle

♥ Tutorial; Clay Snow Dragon

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Hey Lovelies! How are you doing?! I am sad it’s still raining and storming outside, no snow for me. I keep imagining how much snow all the rain would have been xD. Anyway I am still in winter mode, so I have made this adorable snow dragon out of clay. Just a little sculpture to have around and lift up the winter spirit. It’s perfect to use clay around this time of year.

Clay Snow Dragon

For this DIY you’ll need:
♥ Aluminum Foil.
♥ Air Dry Clay.
♥ Skewer.
♥ Some Rough Brush or Tooth Brush for Clay Purposes.
♥ Water and/or Glue.
♥ Some Branches.
♥ Clay tools.
♥ Acrylic Paint.
♥ Varnish.
♥ Brush.
♥ Glitter/nailart deco. (optional)

Tutorial

Make 2 balls out of aluminum foil. One about 3,5cm and the other about 2cm.

Prick the skewer in the large ball, this makes it easier to hold. Cover it entirely with clay, about 1cm thick. It doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. If you ever made a snowman with real snow, you know that’s almost impossible the get a perfectly smooth ball xD. When it’s covered, texture the clay using the rough brush or toothbrush. If that’s done, put it upside down with the skewer straight up and let it dry before you continue. Usually with air dry clay, this doesn’t take too long, although it depends on the clay!

When the large ball is as good as dry, do the same for the small one, but don’t let it dry. Cut the skewer smaller and pull out the one of the large one. Add a bit of glue around the hole of the large ball and slide in the skewer of the small one. if you left any marks where you hold it, make sure to texture it again.

Take a bit of clay, a ball around 2cm and make a oval shape of it. Put it on a flat surface and flatten the side/edges towards the flat surface. (Not sure how to explain this well, check the pics). This will be his beak. If the clay of the small ball is still wet then you can use water to put both parts together, if not use a bit of glue. Try to smooth out the edges , doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t forget to texture it!

Horns

Make two balls out of clay, approx  0,5cm each. Make a pine cone shape of both balls. Glue those to the head where you like them. try to smooth out the edges and texture those as well.
From here I let it completely dry before I continued.

Tail

Make a long cone shape that you wanna use for the tail. At the widest part you wanna slice a part of with a knife to be able to apply it to the body easily. Texture the tail too.

Shawl

Make a long snake of clay, and flatten it a bit. Wrap about 10 to 15 cm around his neck (depends on your work), like shown in the picture. Make sure to use a bit of glue/water, cause air dry clay won’t stick to dry air dry clay.
Now make a little gap where the clay starts to overlap. In here you will add another piece of the flatten snake you made. Cut off about 4 to 5cm of the snake and flatten one side of it a bit more, this will make it easier to slide in the gap. If you have done that, add it carefully in the gap and fold the remaining part down. Make sure to use glue here as well.

Ears

Make 2 balls of about 1cm each and shape those into a flat-ish triangle. Apply those to the head and make sure to texture those as well.

Arms

Poke a hole with something sharp on the place where you want the arms to go. Cut pieces of a branch to the size you like and put those in the holes you just made.

Eyes and Buttons

With little pieces of clay make the eyes and buttons on the snow dragon. Make sure to leave those smooth so they could look like little stones stuck into the snow.

Painting

Last paint the parts you like to paint. I painted the scarf light blue and the eyes/buttons black. Further I left everything white. You can varnish the snow dragon if you like. I added some glitter to the varnish for that little extra. If you have ever seen snow, you know it sparkles. So so pretty! *-*

I hope you liked this little tutorial how to make a snow dragon out of clay! Show me if you made one as well, I’d love to see! Have a wonderful day!

Love
Danielle

♥ DIY; Jute Gift Bags

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Hey Lovelies! I am so sorry that I am late with uploading, but stuff with my cat came up and then I couldn’t access my website, great. But as you can see I can access my website again and upload stuff! Today I wanted to show you how you can make those cute jute gift bags! Or use them as docoration. It’s fun and easy to make, so I hope you will like them as well.

For this DIY you’ll need:
♥ Brown fabric or real Jute.
♥  (Fabric) Scissors.
♥ Pencil or Trick Marker.
♥ Ruler.
♥ Sewing Pins.
♥ Iron. (Optional)
♥ Sewing Machine. (Optional, you can do it by hand as well).
For decorating:
♥ Paper or anything else you can make a stencil of, like wrapping foil that’s self-adhesive.
♥ X-acto knive.
♥ Acrylic Paint. (Optional)
♥ Brush. (Optional)

Tutorial

From the brown fabric, cut out a rectangle of 21 by 16cm. Make as many as you want, but for one bag, you need one rectangle. If your fabric is really wrinkly, like mine was, you might wanna iron it.

Along all sides of the rectangle, measure 1cm along the edge, this will be your seam allowance. On one of the widest sides, draw also a line that’s 2,5 cm from the edge. (see picture)

Fold both lines in on the side with the 2 lines. Pin those down and sew it close.

The side you’ve just sewn close, fold in half, the good side facing inward. Use sewing pins to keep it in place. Sew along the 2 sides that should be closed as well. As I used cotton fabric, the sides will raffle a bit, so I used a zigzag stitch as well to prevent this from happening.
If you have a lot of fabric left over around the edge, you might wanna trim it a bit. Just so it won’t get bulky once you turn it inside out.

When you are done sewing, turn your bag inside out. The bag is done now, but you can choose to decorate it.

Decorating

I chose to decorate some of the bags I made, either for Sinterklaas or Christmas. I searched for silhouettes on google to make a stencil of. I traced those onto paper/wrapping foil and cut those out with a x-acto knive.  Make sure that you won’t make the stencil too big, you wanna close the bag as well, without losing the image.

Position your stencil on your bag and apply the acrylic paint with a brush. I’d prefer to you a dapping motion, to prevent the paint to go under the stencil. When done, remove the stencil and let dry!

When you wanna wash your bags in the future, heat set the paint for about 4-5min with an Iron. But this is optional.

Finishing off.

With a piece of thread/yarn, about 15cm, close up the bag. I wrapped it twice and tied a knot.

I hope you like those small jute bags, just something cute to decorate your house with, use as gift bags or maybe even make your advent calendar with it. How cute will that look?! Show me what you will do with them! I’d love to see.

Love
Danielle

♥ Sinterklaas Lucky Charms

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Hey Lovelies! Sinterklaas is back in town xD! You excited?! Haha me not so much, but I like to get crafty around this time of year. *Sigh I wish my family would do something called ‘surprises’, but we don’t. Oh well, I’ll buy something nice for myself then! If you do live in a country where they have Sinterklaas, how do you celebrate it?
Okay, back to the crafty part of this blog. Last year I made those Pietjes lucky charms! Do you remember? This year I had to add Sinterklaas lucky charms, as promised. I just like making those charms I believe~ hehe.

Sinterklaas Luck Charms

For this DIY you’ll need:
♥ Wooden beads in 2 sizes. (you can make them as big as you want)
♥ Air Dry Clay.
♥ PVA Glue.
♥ Skewer or Toothpick.
♥ Acrylic paints in colors of choice.
♥ Paintbrush.
♥ Matching pieces of thread, to the paint.
♥ Varnish (optional).
♥ Scissors.

Tutorial

Glue the 2 wooden beads together, make sure to line up the holes. Let those dry before you continue.

From a bit of clay, make a triangle for his ‘mijter’ and place this, with some glue, on top of the small bead.

Make another triangle of clay, a bit smaller for his beard. Place those, with some glue as well, on his head/body, were the beard is suppose to be xD. With the skewer of toothpick, make a few indences to give it a bit more shape.

With the skewer or toothpick, poke a hole though the ‘mijter’. This is so you can add the threads through later.

Make a moustache out of clay, it’s a bit fiddly, but I am sure you can do it! Glue it on and shape it until you like it. Make sure to let everything dry first.

Painting

Now for the fun part, painting!! Let’s give those buddies some color! You can paint them however you want, of course. But I kept them sorta traditional. It is possible that you need several layers of paint for good coverage. When you are finished, you can varnish it, if you want.

Lastly, add 2 pieces of thread (about 30cm) through the body. Make sure to have a loop at the top and tie a knot at the bottom.

And it’s completely done! I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial for Sinterklaas Lucky Charms!
Have a wonderful day, stay warm, stay healthy!

Love
Danielle

♥ DIY; Tie Dye Bleach Jeans

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Hey Lovelies! I always love to change up cloths when I buy basic stuff. But I am usually to lazy to do them  or to show it to you xD. For today I thought, why not show you how to bleach some jeans, tie dye style. It’s a quick and easy change you can do yourself. I have done this a few times before. It’s cheap, tho you can buy those type of jeans yourself as wel, but that less fun and you probably spend more money on them. This DIY only involves some patience as well, so just that you know, bleach needs time to do it’s job xD.

For this DIY you’ll need.
♥ (Black) Jeans of your liking.
♥ Rubber Bands.
♥ Bleach.
♥ Water.
♥ Bucket that’s large enough to put your jeans, water and bleach in. Or you can use your sink.
♥ (Large) spoon.
♥ Scissors.
♥ Sink to rince your jeans well, this will be the place to remove the rubber bands.
♥ Washing Machine.

Warning! Bleach can affect your skin, eyes and airway. Make sure you are in a well ventilated area when you start working with bleach. Also wear gloves and some old cloths in case the bleach splatters around.

Rubber Bands

The first step is to add the rubber bands to your jeans.  You can do this in many ways. But I like to grap a piece of jeans and wrap the band several times around it, but not at one spot. As I show in the pictures. Do this for the whole thing! There’s not a wrong or right way to do this, just go for it.

Bleaching

Time for the bleaching part, please make sure to do this carfully! Fill up your bucket or sink with some hot water, then add the bleach (about 2 parts water, 1 part bleach), it doens’t matter if it’s a bit more or less, as long as it does it’s job. Keep in mind that you still have to put your jeans in there as well, so don’t overfill.

If your bleach water is ready, put in your jeans. Let it sit for about 30min, up to 90min. When the jeans are in there, you wanna make sure to twist it around every now and then, this is where the spoon comes in. I would NOT recomment you doing this with bare hands! You can see the water change color now, this is good, that means the bleach is doing it’s thing! The jeans should be completely under water, if that’s not the case, because it’s floating, put something heafy on it.

Note: after washing your jeans, the color will wash out even more, so it will lighten up after it’s washed and dried.

Removing the rubber bands and rinsing.

When the jeans are ready, it’s time to take it out of the bleach water. I usually rinse the whole thing out first (as far as possible) and then remove the rubber bands. Removing the bands can be pretty time consuming and annoying. Scissors will help a lot with this but becareful you won’t cut into your jeans. When all the rubber bands are removed rince out again.

Washing

As soon as all the rubber bands are removed, put your jeans in the washing machine. Just wash it as you would do regularly. BUT don’t put other stuff with it, since there’s still bleach residue left in the jeans, those need to be washed out first. When it’s done, let it dry and enjoy your new, unique pair of jeans!

I hope you enjoyed this DIY and so you will try it yourself! It’s fun! Oh! And a small tip, if you used black jeans like I did, try some color dye to color the white parts! Imagine the white spots to be hot pink or green!

Have a beautiful day!

Love
Danielle