What I've been up to: Spyro, and something new!

A bout of unemployment has sent me into a creative hurricane. I've been making loads of stuff solely to put up on my Etsy shop, but a few things were made for me, and me alone.

First up, a blast from the past: A Spyro plushie!

There were a few years of my life where my memories are the most vivid. I was 9 - 11 years old or so, and I spent my days doing things like drawing my own sailor scouts, writing Gundam Wing fanfiction, playing Dragonball Z with my best friend, and of course, eating giant jawbreakers while playing Spyro.

When I say giant jawbreakers, I mean GIANT jawbreakers. They were about the size of a baseball, and took me a few days to finish (even for a candy-obsessed 10-year-old). I would often times break it with something, so I could fit rock-sized pieces in my mouth in order to hold my Playstation controller with both hands to fight gnorcs and save dragons. I have a grey 'video game chair' that I sat in, mere feet from the TV. It was a very small chair that rocked back and forth and sat right on the ground. These glorious days can be summed up with Jawbreakers, Spyro, and leaning back in this chair like I didn't give a care in the world.

When I came across this pattern, my heart leapt for joy. To be able to have a tangible thing to not only hold, but to make! To be able to look at and taste the sugar of the giant jawbreakers, and remember the Virginia air wafting into my room as I wasted my day trying as hard as I could to beat Metalhead.

This pattern can be found here (along with a pattern for Ember from "A Hero's Tail", though I haven't made her), and I have to say that it is absolutely worth the money. It's written very well, and looks amazing. It is time-consuming, but doesn't actually use up that much yarn. I didn't have to change a single thing, and Spyro looks amazing, and stands up nicely. There is some use of wire (to make his wings and tail poseable), and a lot of attaching of limbs. If you're up for a challenge, and need something comforting, then this is definitely the project.

My next project....IS NOT A CROCHET PROJECT!!

Yes, after months of longingly looking at overpriced ribbon bracelets being sold in stores, I finally decided to give into the ribbon jewelry craze.

Despite these bracelets having all the qualities I look for in jewelry (which is ribbon, and anything else that makes me feel like a mermaid and/or princess) I've held off on buying any, because I always felt like I could make it myself. As it turns out- I was right!

After crocheting in all of my free time (which is...all of my time), for the last two weeks, I knew I needed to find something different to do before I became completely and utterly burnt out on crocheting. Luckily, I had seen this tutorial on Pinterest awhile back, and had even bought the supplies for it. Unfortunately, the tutorial had kind of overwhelmed me, and the beads and ribbon didn't do much more than collect dust for awhile.

However, after a particularly yarn-heavy day, I decided to give it a shot. I was so pleasantly surprised! These bracelets were the perfect combination of simple and repetitive, while also being challenging and engaging. The result was absolutely gorgeous, and the use of elastic makes putting them on and taking them off very easy. 

I am, in fact, so happy with the results of these bracelets that I went out to Michael's yesterday, and bought more strands of glass pearls, as well as another spool of ribbon. Michael's sells the glass pearls in 7" strands for only 99 cents, and longer strands of smaller beads for the same price (a ribbon necklace would be amazing, too!). They also have nicer stone strands, but my wallet was just feeling a bit too light for that.

The tutorial can be found here. I did the "wave" and "pleat" patterns, since I was a bit too chicken (and short on supplies) to make the "fold". I'm not too keen on that design, though, so I wonder what other designs I could come up with...?

Fun fact: The bigger the bow, the more you feel like a princess.

Next time I come around I'll talk about chocolate, perler beads (SO MANY PERLER BEADS), fingerless gloves, how I can't stop making them, and why it's a problem.

How to make a Starfleet Uniform Duct Tape Wallet!

I'm a little surprised I'm a Star Trek fan. I never considered myself someone who likes space, science fiction, and I certainly never considered myself someone who would go crazy over a 'bad' scifi from the late 80's. But, here I am. I started watching it just a few months ago, and I lovelovelove Next Generation. So much so, in fact, I decided to make a Red Shirt Wallet.

As an artist, and a professional time-waster, I have spent a lot of time looking through different artistic websites looking for inspiration and ideas. I have seen a lot of nerdy duct tape wallets (My favorite so far being the Sailor Moon Tiara ones!) but I had found a significant lack of Star Trek uniform ones, so I made my own. I've gotten a little bit of criticism for making a red shirt wallet, because they all die in the Original Series, but they are THE BEST in Next Generation, and what with being in love with Riker and all- I HAD to make a red shirt.

Mine didn't turn out -as- nicely as I'd have liked, so instead of listing it, I'm being nice and making a tutorial.

Note: This tutorial is only for the process of making the Starfleet symbol, for the rest of the instructions, you can follow my duct tape wallet tutorial here.

Well, let's get started, shall we?

What you'll need:

- Duct tape! You will need black, gold, and whatever color 'shirt' you want (Mine of course being red, and I will refer to this as COLOR A for the remainder of the tutorial)
- Scissors
- X-acto knife
- Paper and pencil to draw out your Comm Badge, or if you're less artistically inclined, have one printed out at the right size (More on how to figure that out in a minute).
- Your current wallet! You will use it asa guide for credit card slot sizes, etc. (More details about that in my Duct tape wallet tutorial.)
- Coffee, as usual.

How to do it!

First, you're going to be making the sheet of 'fabric' for the wallet itself. One side is going to be completely COLOR A, and the other side is going to be  about 2/3rds COLOR A and 1/3rd Gold. Your sheet should be at least 7" by 7". Mine is a bit bigger, because you're going to want the extra room for when you put your Com Badge on. If your COm Badge is too small, it will be VERY tough to work with. So give yourself some breathing room.

 

 

Next, you'll wanna cover the gold on Side One with COLOR A. Since both your sides should look identical now, use some kind of indication to keep track of what side is Side One. I just used a scrap piece of gold duct tape.

 

Now you're going to finish putting your wallet together. Make sure SIDE ONE is facing outward. That is where the gold is, and you will be cutting through the red to reveal your Com Badge, so having it on the outside is the only thing you need to worry about here. 

Again, if you need a reminder of how to make a Duct tape wallet, you can find my tutorial here.

So, now that you've made your wallet, you're going to be figuring out how BIG your combadge needs to be. To do this, Take your shiny new wallet and have it in the folded position. Place it on a piece of paper and trace it.

 

Now draw in your Com Badge about where you want it. It should be at least 1" x 1", if not slightly bigger. If this is not your strong suit, go ahead and print out a Com Badge, but lay it down on your wallet and/or the sketch you made of your wallet to be sure it's the right size.

Once you're happy with it's size and quality, tape it down on the front of your wallet where you want it to be. Leave about 1/2" of room on top for the black stripe, and don't put it exactly on the edge. Once it's where you would like it, tape it down so it's secure.

 

Using your X-acto knife, cut along the lines. Be sure to cut deep enough to get through the paper and through as many layers of COLOR A to get to the Gold layer. As long as you create some sort of perforation on the top layer, you can make many different layers of cuts until you get to the Gold layer. If you cut all the way through, that's okay! Just place strips of red tape over the cuts on the inside of the wallet. Wait until you are completely done, though, otherwise your wallet will end up thick and unwieldy if you throw some tape in it with every cut you make through the wallet.

Once you have cut out your stencil, remove the paper and the tape of the stencil and start peeling away the layers. 

Using your razor blade, you can continue to make precision cuts as you go along, and use it to peel off the pieces of tape. There will be some pesky strands from the tape. Do your best to either:

A. Cut them.

B. Use your razor to tuck them underneath the COLOR A layer of tape

C. Use a tweezers to pull them off.

D. If you have a Gold marker (preferably Sharpie, if they have those), you can color them gold. I have done this before on other projects, and it cleans the look up nicely.

This part can also be tricky, because depending on how you put your wallet together, half of the Badge area may have 4 - 5 layers of tape above the gold. If that's the case, be sure to cut off any layers of COLOR A in between the Badge that make it look awkward. If it's very thick to the right of the bade, that's okay! As long as the layers are even when looking at the badge itself.

 

As you can see, very close to the right edge of the bade, there is an extra layer, but there are no excess layers otherwise. You can also see that this is not the cleanest Badge! When working with small stencils like this with duct tape, your image won't be as clean as it would be if your image was larger. Don't fret! If you find you're having a lot of problems, work bigger! Try doing a Com Badge as big as a piece of paper to get a better feel for duct tape.

So now we're almost finished.

Lastly, take a long strip of black duct tape, and cover the top 1/2" or so of your wallet. Cut it at the ends, and fold over so it goes into the inside area of your wallet where you keep your money. If, when cutting out your Com Badge, you sliced through your wallet, now would be a good time to patch up any cuts you made with your COLOR A duct tape.

 

Phew! All done!

 

The way I made this Com Badge is more or less how I make a lot of my duct tape art (by covering a color, then cutting through to reveal it). Now that you understand this technique, are you going to use it on other wallets? Framed pictures? Something else that's totally cool? Let me know what you make!

Up next: What I've been up to Post #2! This includes some Sailor Moon inspired gear, another geeky wallet, some hats and a purse! I can't wait to share with you guys.

After that: It's NaNoWriMo once again! Is anyone else participating this year?! My SN is CaffeinatedTarantula, feel free to add me as a buddy!

Halloween Project #10: Potion Bottles

I used to consider myself a Wiccan, and I was pretty uptight about it, too.

Then again, when you're 14, dress in a lot of black, only listen to obscure Japanese rock, and have an offbeat 'religion', you can't really say too much without being put under the microscope about how 'weird' you are. You'd be a little defensive, too.

I took it very seriously, too. I never tried to curse people, or hurt anyone, but when I got a headache, I tried putting a cucumber peel to my forehead, I picked up Tarot reading (which I still do) and I even had a little chant if we couldn't find our car in a parking lot. I collected herbs and stones, memorized their magical properties, and had a green book with thick parchment paper where I used a matching green pen to write down everything I needed to remember. It's actually the only notebook I ever filled to the very last page.

I would get frustrated around Halloween, when I saw fake bottles with labels on them for "Eye of Newt" and other 'crazy' witches brews, and I found myself even more annoyed at the people gobbling them up, picking them up with their sweaty, unmagical hands screeching out "Look honey! Eye of Newt! This sounds scary! Hope we have $8 to dole out for it!".

 

For the record, Eye of Newt is actually just a nickname for Lavender....And screeching women in stores still bother me, but this is neither here nor there.

These people didn't know anything. If I could have, I would have cleared off a shelf of bad Halloween party favors and yelled everything I knew about magic and Wicca at them, and they all would have second thoughts about buying fake novelty potion bottles. They could learn something, enrich their life, get rid of headaches with cucumbers, but instead I rolled my eyes and stayed quiet. Looking back, it was actually probably the most reasonable response.

It wasn't until Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets that this started to change. After forcing myself to hate the first movie (and book), due to my principles of knowing strictly what witchcraft was, is, and should ever be, I refused to indulge myself in liking something so....fake. Against my will, I went with my Dad to see the movie.

And damn was it good.

How could it be that something could go against all the rules of REAL witchcraft and be so damn clever, and fun? Well, as it turns out, it's called imagination, and taking things lightly.

And yeah, you bet I'm saying that Harry Potter helped me lighten up.

So now, around Halloween time, I look around my apartment, at the fake potion bottles, the scene setters, the bad party favors, and it looks DAMN good every year. I just don't have any bottles labeled Eye of Newt, because the fact that I know what I'm talking about has not changed, now I can just deal with people who don't. Afterall, I can't judge anyone anymore, not after all the morals Harry Potter instilled in me.

 
Want to make some awesome fake potion bottles for yourself for the upcoming Halloween season?  Michael's is selling these for $5 each, but with a couple summer garage sales left to hit, some ribbon I KNOW you have lying around and a printer- you can make your own for significantly cheaper.

Here's how.

What you'll need:

- 20 Gauge Wire
- Pliers
- Empty 'potion' bottles (I got mine at Michaels for 99 cents each)
- Ribbon
- Mod Podge, and a paintbrush to apply said Mod Podge
- Potion label images (I found mine online, and printed them off with NO intent of selling them (in case you are thinking about yelling at me!). Otherwise I know Martha Stewart has had Halloween labels on her website in the past). If you design your own labels, I'm sure Etsy will be kind to you in the near future ;)
- Coffee, obviously.
- Optional: Things to fill them with! I have not dealt with this yet, but as Halloween approaches, I may put some thought into it.

How to do it:

1. Cut two piece of wire, one about 3" long (This is to wrap around the neck of your bottle, so make sure it is long enough, with some extra slack) and the other one about 7" long (This will be the wire you will actually see/wire to use to hang on nails, etc.)

2. Bend the longer wire to form a U-shape. Using your pliers, bend about 1/2" of wire to wrap around itself a few times. Leave a small opening, as you will be putting the smaller wire through this.

3. Slip the smaller wire through the two loops at the end of your U-shape. With all of it as one 'piece', wrap the smaller wire around the thinnest part of the neck of your bottle. Use your pliers to twist the extra wire around itself, then push down towards the neck to lie as flat as possible. It's okay if this isn't perfect, you'll be covering it in ribbon, just make sure it's wrapped tightly enough so that it won't come undone.

 

 

Note: I know it seems odd to do it this way, instead of putting wire around the neck and THEN looping the handle through, but I found that I kept putting the neck wire on too tightly to fit the handle wire in.

Now you have a good base! Here's where the fun stuff REALLY starts.

4. Wrap the neck of your bottle with ribbon. You can use as much or as little as you feel it needs. Personally, it turns out I'm having some kind of love affair with ribbon, because I went way overboard, and I'm not looking back. I also tied some around one (or both) sides of the 'handle' for some extra fluff. I think the only REAL 'requirement' is hiding all the icky twists in the wires. Once those are hidden, you're golden.

5. Now make sure you have a good label printed out in the size and shape you think will be flattering for your unique potion bottle, and cut that sucker out.

6. Mod podge it on. Wait for it to dry, cover with a coating of mod podge.

7. Display proudly, knowing that you are not taking yourself too seriously, and you saved a couple bucks!
 

Are you filling your bottles with any potions, real or fake? What are you using, what kind of crafty concoctions are you coming up with?

Let's talk about the elephant in the room.: Pinterest. Also, let's give ourselves a challenge!

Yes, Pinterest.

I know, we all have our feelings about it, whether it be good or bad, but thanks to Pinterest, I'm starting a challenge for myself (Feel free to join me!)

I feel as though there are two kinds of people on Pinterest. The first kind is The Collector, The second being The Doer.

The Collector is planning their wedding, wardrobe and future house out on Pinterest. They post pictures of shoes, dresses, cute wedding ideas (so many of which, that if they actually USED all of them at their wedding it would be the tackiest thing), as well as home accessories from rugs to kitchen bowls, to food processors to paintings and toilets. They post so many pictures of jewelry and open-toed shoes, all with the caption "I WANT THIS!!!!!". There is nothign wrong with being a Collector (I'm certainly guilty of it at times), but I find myself getting bored of thinking "Oh, look at this thing I'll never own'. I'd much rather be a Doer, and that's what this challenge is about.

The Doer is the person who posts DIY things over and over again, from every sort of category. How to make your own dresses, how to plant a garden in tuna cans, how to bake cookie bowls, how to do fancy up-dos. Crochet and knit patterns show up among tutorials on how to make coffee filter flowers, headbands out of T-shirts, and personally, I can't tell you the amount of things I have pinned related to DIY projects with maps involved.

Good GOD I love Maps.

So us Doers, we pin and pin and pin and pin, and we think "HOW ENRICHED MY LIFE WILL BE AFTER I MAKE ALL THESE THINGS", and we keeping pinning and pinning until one day we realize....My God, I'm not actually doing any of these things. I'm just wasting time on Pinterest, tricking people into thinking that I'm a super crafty lady.

So, I'm going to remedy this.

During the month of June, I'm going to set down my crochet hook for awhile, and do some of the things I've pinned, because I sincerely thought about how enriched my life would be because of it. On top of it, hopefully by posting links to some of these things, I will hopefully be able to inspire you guys to do something crafty with your time (I mean seriously. I just CAN'T watch anymore TV, or deal with facebook for much longer).


So, month of June. What will you guys be doing? I'm going to take on the challenge of making:

- DIY Crochet hook comfort grips

- Jenga Block Map Keychain

- Homemade granola "bars"

- Pretty Double Braid Headband Hairstyle

Don't have a Pinterest?

That's fine, in fact, it probably means you're being more productive than I am. Nonetheless, let's make June a month of getting things done, learning new things, picking up a new hobby, venturing into unknown territories of your current hobby.

Wanna know more about crocheting, but have only made a dozen scarves? Learn to make a hat. Don't have anything to do with your hands while watching TV? Learn to knit. Bake cookies all the time? Make crescent rolls, or learn to make cheesecake. Go outside and take photographs. Start writing a novel. Just get your hands on something, and make your brain start thinking.

I think you'll be surprised how nice life gets when you get away from Facebook and cartoons once in awhile. It's not that I'm not guilty of it, I totally am...what do you think inspired all of this, anyway?

I will post my results either at the end of the month, or as they are completed. Anything on your pinboards you guys wanna knock out of the way this June? You can see by the things I'm choosing to do that it won't cost much, either. Any hobbies you've been wanting to dabble in, but just haven't, for one reason or another? What are you guys waiting for?

Since I've been blabbering on about Pinterest, you guys should follow me! Honestly, please do. I need to follow more people...right now, all the pinners I watch are Collectors...I need some inspiration!

Halloween Project # 6: Viking Hat and Beard

Well guys, here you go. As promised, one full-on amazingly badass Viking get-up. As I write this, my eyes are drooping and my whole body feels numb with exhaustion. I'm finished with day 7 of a 9 day work week, and I can honestly say that this project got me through most of it. It kept my spirits pretty high, my hands busy and my mind occupied on other things besides...well, work.

This whole project took about 6 days, and I'd say overall it cost me about $25 to do (although worth every penny when Gabe put it on and the thing actually fit). I'm sure one could also do it for cheaper, but I used Caron Simply Soft, which runs about $4.50/skein. You could easily use Red Heart for $2.90/Skein, I just wanted it to be as nice as I could make it (I tend not to skimp on yarn when it's a gift).

Unfortunately, $6.50 of that expense was purchasing the pattern, so unfortunately I can not provide it for you here, it would not be fair to anyone, especially the creator of the hat.

If you would like the pattern of the hat, it can be purchased through Etsy here.

If you would like the pattern for the beard, you can get that for free on Ravelry here. However, as I stated in my last entry, throughout the beard I used long rows of fringe to make the beard more realistic, then added 'sideburns' so they could properly connect to the hat.

If you're looking for something to get you through a long week, or something to keep you warm and silly through the winter, I definitely recommend both the hat, as well as the beard. Both of these pieces were equally fun to make, and I had a ton of fun getting a laugh out of my co-workers by explaining to them that I spent my day crocheting a beard :)

Here are some more detail shots:

I added a button to the inside of the hat, and a loop at the end of the 'sideburns' so the beard can be attached or detached whenever you want.

Hat, sans beard.

I'd never used 'fun fur' yarn before, and although it looked quite sparse and difficult to use at first, it ended up being rather easy and fuzzy.

This was a great project, and I definitely recommend spending the $6.50 to make it (or if you're really crazy, you can just improvise based on photos).

Hopefully next project will be something great, but I'm not sure what yet! I hope you guys got a little bit of inspiration from these pictures, and I can't wait to take more 'action shots' of this as Halloween approaches :)

Viking Beard

Gabe being a fantastic model

While this beard may seem as though it's in the spirit of Halloween, it really isn't. My lovely boyfriend had his birthday last week (it was the 1st anniversary of his 29th birthday!), and while a sushi dinner was probably sufficient, I still felt as though his 30th should be bigger and better. For my 22nd birthday, he spent 50+ hours making me a digital painting of Mermaid Fairy Princesses, so I thought I should make him something, too.

The idea came about on the night of his birthday when we were looking through Ravelry patterns together, and it all came to me in a beautiful clear picture when a friend of mine posted a picture of a 2' long crocheted Viking beard to a crocheted Viking hat on my Facebook wall. So we decided that was what was going to be made.

I used the beard from this pattern as a kind of 'face cozy", then proceeded to take groups of 4 strands of yarn and pulled them through like fringe on a scarf throughout the beard. I used about 160 groups of this 'fringe' to make different layers of 'hair' on the beard. I used a little over a 315 yard skein of Caron Simply Soft to make this, but I think it was completely worth it.

The Viking Hat will be next, probably done in a few days or so :)

Halloween Project #5: Severed Monster Finger Chapstick Cozy

Well, Chapstick, you lose. I've been saying for years that you guys should make a keychain holder so I (and everybody else in the world) don't have to buy chapstick every 4 days (or maybe that's exactly what you want us to do...).

Well, now it's too late. Not only do I have a keychain holder to keep my chapstick in so I'll never lose it, BUT IT'S IN THE SHAPE OF A SEVERED FINGER. BEAT THAT.

This took almost no time, and even less materials. You can find the pattern here. I omitted the button clasp, as it's very snug, and there's no way that chapstick is coming out on it's own, and I used black for the fingernail and knuckle instead of brown...other than that, the pattern is easy to read, very accurate and really fun.

Enjoy!

Halloween Project #3: Boo Ghosts

These guys were definitely a bittersweet project. Much like the Candy Corn in my previous entry, I assumed they would take very little time (considering how tiny they are), but as it turns out, it's actually a pretty real project.

The entirety of this project is actually 15 seperate pieces that are sewn together at the end, and it made for a somewhat tedious task. I always get kind of annoyed when starting a piece, so starting 15 pieces became...irritating, and made things more time consuming than they would have been otherwise. Not to mention, all the tight stitches cramped up my right hand a few times, and I definitely got some new callouses from this project. However, I didn't spend every free minute of my time for the past 2 days doing these guys because I hated the project. Although tedious, it was really fun, and came together very smoothly. Making the letters, the poses and the faces were by far the best part. If you're looking for a fun Halloween project to dedicate yourself to for a little while, this is definitely it....also, admittedly, it probably wouldn't have been as tedious if I had given myself some time off from the project

The funniest part about this project was actually an incident at work. As I've mentioned before, my job allows me to crochet or read between busy times, and I was working on this particular project yesterday. We were somewhat busy, and I had just set this project to the side as I worked. I had been working on the letter "O" when a customer asked me what I was making.

Not sure exactly how to explain the entirety of this project to her in less than two seconds I simply said, "Ghosts."

"But ghosts aren't orange."

"Yeah...well...they're going to be holding up the letters B-O-O, to spell 'Boo'"

"Pfft. everyone knows ghosts don't have arms!"

Err...what? I wasn't sure what kind of ghosts this woman had been seeing, but apparently my tiny crochet project did not meet her expectations, or replicate the things that had apparently been haunting her. I still kind of chuckle about it, but that wasn't the first (nor will it be the last) time that someone has said something....silly regarding my crochet projects.

The pattern for this project can be found here, assuming you're all okay with making ghosts that have arms (even though everyone knows ghosts don't have arms).

Halloween Project Number 4 will be a pattern of my own, and I'm hoping it works out. It looks like I'll be getting all the crochet projects out of the way first, then onto other things.

Halloween Project #2: Amigurumi Candy Corn

So as you may, or may not, remember, back in June, I decided to do 31 Halloween-related projects before Halloween. I did one, and there was nothing for a long while (not because I didn't want to...you know how it is when your car breaks and you get 25 commissions to help pay for it, and then you move and simultaneously decide to write a novel. Or maybe you don't...but that's what happened, either way).

Well things are calming down a bit, and so I can finally move forward. It's finally Autumn, and so I think we're all in the mood for Halloween, anyway.

These little candy corn are, for lack of a better word, FREAKING ADORABLE. They are about 3" high, and take about 30 minutes to make (so you can make a million of them!). I can't wait to make a bunch to put in candy dishes, or possibly put on string to make a festive candy corn garland. Either way, this is a quick project, and you can get 2 - 3 finished in an hour.

You can find the pattern on the Lion Brand website here.

The next pattern involves ghosts! It's another crochet one, and I'm excited for it.

Scarf with Pockets

What a brilliant idea, right? Right. I wish I could even take credit for the idea, but a friend of mine commissioned me, and I couldn't say no. It's basically a scarf, but about 2 feet longer than you'd like, then sew up the pockets. If you're interested, here's the pattern for this exact scarf, but this scarf can pretty much be done with any set of colors or patterns, just sew up some pockets at the end.

This scarf is long enough to be the appropriate length for pocket usage after it's been wrapped around your neck once. Snuggly! :3

Color A - The short section of color (Purple in this scarf)
Color B - The long section of color (Black in this scarf)

Ch 32 w/ color A, dc in the 3rd crochet from the end, dc to end of scarf (30 dc)

[[Dc 9 more rows of color A (10 rows)

Change color to color B, dc 30 rows of color B. (40 rows)]]

Tie in loose ends.

Fold Color A over so that is goes over 25 rows of color B, leaving 5 rows of color B still exposed. Using a tapestry needle, sew both sides together using color B yarn. Fold inside out so the seams aren't able to be seen. I did this first instead of doing both pockets last, so I would have an idea of how long it was going to be. I didn't want to finish the scarf thinking it would be long enough, only to sew the pockets over to find it was too short.

Repeat directions between the [[double brackets]] 5 more times.

dc 10 rows of color A. Finish off.

Tie in all loose ends

Now sew up another pocket. Since you're going to be flipping this pocket inside-out, be sure to fold it over to the opposite side of where your first pocket is, then when you fold it inside-out, both pockets will be on the same side.

Now you will have a scarf to keep your neck and hands warm during the winter! Enjoy.

Ribbon Jewelry (A Tutorial for the Craft Inept)

Okay, so it's not that you're inept, rather, I am. I know I do a lot of projects, but if it's too difficult to keep together with airplane glue, or duct tape, then just forget about it. I cut corners, I know that if someone isn't going to see it, then why not cover it in duct tape and modpodge?

However, when I saw that Michael's was trying to sell necklaces of ribbon for nearly $4, I couldn't bring myself to do it. I'd wanted to make necklaces using ribbon for quite awhile, but couldn't bring myself to spend nearly $10 to buy a few of them to practice on. What  did instead, was bought some ribbon and was on my way to go home and see if I could make this work.

What I made turned out very lovely, although, yes, duct tape is involved. If you have a large pendant that you don't think chain will do justice to (or in my case, a pendant with brass accents that would look awful on a silver chain), ribbon is a good alternative, and always adds an extra sense of elegance to whatever you're wearing.

What you'll need:

- Ribbon
- Duct tape to match (Black tape on black ribbon, blue on blue, etc....I used this because I happened to have it lying around, and it matched my choice of ribbon the best)
- Two Crimp End Caps
- One Jump Ring
- One Lobster clasp.
- Pendant(s) of your choice

How to do it:

1. Cut two lengths of ribbon about 17" (If you're going for a choker. Longer or shorter if desired).

2. Fold the last 1/2" or so of the end of ribbons in half and then in half again, wrapping a short length of duct tape around it. It will now somewhat resemble a shoelace or sorts. Do this for both ends, using both ribbons.

3. Before taping your end cap on, I would attach your jump ring/lobster clasp, respectively. this will make things a lot easier. Pinch he duct tape, so it's small enough to put the end cap on.

4. Tape it on, so it is secure.

5. Do the same thing for the other side.

 Add your pendant, and you're set! You've got a beautiful ribbon choker for 1/50th the price of a pre-made ribbon. And using this method, you can customize the length of your necklace.

This is another choker I made, but using tarantula fang beads from my molted Pink toe, Brynhilde, and using a shorter length of ribbon. Adding multiple smaller pendants gives this choker an added dimension, and the short length is good for fragile beads.


B-B-B-BONUS TUTORIAL.

Ribbon bracelets are also very easy, and something else that is generally rather overpriced at jewelry and department stores. This didn't take very long, but will require very, very minimal sewing (don't worry, I tried both glue and tape, but sewing was the only thing that worked).

What you'll need:

- Ribbon
- Beads
- Needle and Thread (or a fancy pants sewing machine if you have one).

1. My beads happened to be a pre-made length at Michael's bargain bin for just under $2, but you can do whatever you'd like. Use a length of about 4" or so (just shorter than your wrist.)

2. Through the jump rings on either side, pull your ribbon through. Both my ends ended up being about 7" or so, I believe, with an extra 2" to sew on the bottom. It may seem too long for a bracelet, but remember that you're going to be using the ribbon to tie a bow, and will need quite a bit of length.

3. Fold about 2" or so underneath the ribbon. About 1/2" away or so, sew the ribbon onto itself. Cut any excess ribbon off from the undersside that you just sewed on. do this on both ends.

Now you have a beautiful ribbon bracelet!

Hopefully if you guys have some extra ribbon and jewelry stuff lying around, you'll now have an excuse to make something from it.