A Multitude of Crafts

The junk mail change purse with the bottom sewed.

I apologize for the long delay in posts, but I’ve been rather busy with several different projects.

The Junk Mail Change Purse: I’ve sewed the bottom together, but the material is so stiff that I really wasn’t able to pull it tight. There are a lot of gaps, the thread is visible, and overall I’m just not very proud of it, so I’m not going to bother putting on a zipper. 

The rings for the candy wrapper change purse.

The Candy Wrapper Change Purse: I have two of the three rings completed for this progect, although I want to rearrange the wrappers on one of them; the colors are a little too clumped for my liking. I should finish with this one soon, in the meantime, here are pictures of the finished rings.

My crocheted coin purse.

The Crocheted Coin Purse: I saw this pattern online and couldn’t resist making one. It was simple, it only took me about 45 minutes (with Law and Order: SVU distracting me) and the yarn left over from an old project. I think I might give it to a friend, she really likes things like this.

My Sister’s Birthday: For my sister’s birthday, I embroidered a birthday card and crocheted her a poison dart frog – her favorite animal for as long as I can remember. The dart frog I actually completed a while ago, it was the second amigurumi I ever made. I’m not happy with the seams, but overall I think it’s pretty cute.

The embroidered card for my sister.

The dart frog I crocheted for my sister.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last two weeks, I hope someone out there finds them interesting. Oh, and today’s song stuck in my head: “Science Fiction Double Feature” from the 1975 movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Upcycling Updated

This week, I was slowly gathering wrappers and watching the pile of junk mail in my craft box quickly accumulate. I decided that it makes more sense for me to work on both purses at the same time, if only to diminish the pile. So one large college brochure and eight online episodes of Surface later, and I had four rings woven from carefully cut strips. Another episode, and the strips were sewn together into a cylinder. I haven’t had the chance to sew the bottom, but hopefully I’ll have the chance to finish it this weekend. Once I sew the bottom and add a zipper, my change purse will be complete. Here are a few pictures.

The first ring of woven junk mail.The four rings woven together.The four woven rings sewn together.

 

The first four rings sewn together.

If I get  somewhat faster at weaving the bands (which might be easier if I didn’t distract myself with the TV) I hope to post these on my Etsy and sell them.

 

On a completely unrelated note, I am known for having a different song stuck in my head almost every day. Today’s song: “Stranger Than You Dreamt It,” from the 2004 movie version of The Phantom of the Opera.

 

 

 

My First Attempt at Upcycling

While flipping through some old books a few days ago, I came across a picture of a purse designed by Olga Abadi which was woven from candy wrappers. The weaving technique appeared to be the same used to make gum-wrapper chains, so I decided to try it myself. Here is the beginning of my first chain, which will hopefully become a change purse in the near future. I’m using wrappers from candy bars and bags from individually wrapped foods, all cut to the same size (the size of an average candy bar, which is 2 1/4″ by 5 1/8″). I’m using the change purse in the picture (made by my big sister) as a model for the size and shape and will post more pictures as the purse develops. If it goes well, I may begin to make similar purses out of junk mail – a medium which I am not lacking by any stretch of the imagination.

The beginning of the first chain.

Hello!

Hello, my name is Rachel (or Rae, or Raen). I am a devoted crafter and decided that a blog would be a good way to share my crafting ideas and gain new ones. At the moment, my most consuming crafts are crochet, cross-stitch, and embroidering cards, though my interests tend to shift around fairly frequently. I will post my projects as they progress and invite any followers to do the same. Hopefully I will soon have an Etsy account up and running, also under RaenyDayCrafts. Also, a little about me outside of the craft world: I am a practicing second-degree black belt in Songahm Taekwondo – working hard towards my third degree – and am completely obsessed with the movie Repo!: The Genetic Opera. My future posts will more than likely contain references to these activities.