If you remember from before, here’s my original sweater haul:

Here is the sweater I chose for this purse, after felting*, and the process is below:

The process was pretty much the same as for the original Ele-purse. Click here for details. The only differences were that I wanted to just use the yellow for the trunk (there was an orange stripe on the sleeves that went to a different project, you’ll see that later), which necessitated a slightly smaller bag. The ears are made from the very top of the sleeves, which happened to be pink. I could have also cut them out of the scraps from the body, but they happened to be almost exactly the right size, and allowed for a little trim of orange on them.
In retrospect, i wish I had sewn the trunk a little skinnier, up to where the ribbing starts.

But all in all, a fun, easy, and cute project!

*I felted just by washing in hot in the washing machine, with a dab of soap.

The cow was taken from a previous project – sketched with marker and painted in photoshop. For this i played around with the live trace and live paint in Illustrator.

So, I bought a whole bunch of sweaters from the thrift store the other day (half of me actually doing a project is forcing myself to buy supplies–cuz then the Guy bugs me to do the project so he doesn’t have to keep seeing the bag of supplies). But i digress… So I bought these sweaters because I want to do a sweater snake for the Boy, and i have a robot in mind too. Then I realized that I hadn’t gotten a gift for one of Boy’s step-cousins. So my mind raced through what I could make for her that would be cute and that i could do with my current supplies–and that I could come up with on the fly!

The Ele-Purse was the result!

I really like how the experiment turned out. I think it will be a prototype for other, more well crafted versions. And i guess i need to figure out how long straps on a kids backpack would be, so i can do that version as well.

Related posts:
Another version of the Ele-purse. (This one is sturdier and more colorful).
See all recycled sweater projects here.
A reader does her own take on the elepurse – Nifty!
July 08 – The Baby Elepurse

The Process:

In case anyone wants to try it, here’s how i did it. And please do, just give me credit ;). I’m sure someone with more skill could do a much better job, and this is a very creative project, in that you could vary the materials, face, or construction and come up with a very different outcome. Be warned, this was a no-pattern trial and error experiment, so the directions may not be the best I’ve ever written. If I do it again, and anyone is interested, I might make a pattern.

I picked a sweater from the ones I had bought. This one was a light green lambswool, either a ladies or girls size.
The original idea was a backpack, but I didn’t know how long to make the straps, so I decided to go with a bag instead.

The Sweater collection:

the “body”
I started by cutting a square out of the bottom, leaving one side seam intact. I reversed it, and sewed it into a pouch (if i’d done the backpack idea, this would have also been when i added the straps in). The bottom finished edge of the sweater serves as the open top. The size could vary dependant on the size of the sweater (and the desired end result), but i made the pouch just slightly wider than the top of the sleeve of the sweater. Stitch a ribbon or whatever you want to use as a handle on either side of the pouch. If I’d been feeling ambitious i might have tried making the strap out of the sweater material, but I wasn’t.

the trunk/head
I cut the sleeve off straight at the shoulder. Since this sweater had 3/4 length sleeves, I used the whole thing, but basically, you need it to be a few inches short of the length of the pouch. Turn the sleeve wrong side out, and center the seam in the back. Now to make the trunk skinnier: About half way down the length of the sleeve, mark with pins. Come in about 3/4 in (depending on the size of your sleeve) on either side of the finished sleeve end, and mark with pins. You want a couple of inches between the pins. Then one each side, sew diagonally from the end pin to the middle pin. Turn rightside out and see if it looks vaguely elephant head like!

Turn the pouch so that the front is showing. Turn the trunk so the back is showing, trunk pointing up.
Slide the top of the sleeve into the pouch about 1/2 in and sew in place to the back of the pouch. The head and trunk should form the flap of the purse now.

the face
I just guessed on the ears. Trial and error gave me a 45 degree triangle, with one side rounded off, and folded a bit to make them stand up. Hard to explain in writing :). I just tacked them on the sides of the head, and covered with buttons. Then added buttons for eyes, and that was about it! More embellishment might be fun too.

That’s about it!

I’d been toying around with making homemade lipbalm since I read about making it on not martha ages ago. I even ordered some cool watchmakers tins thinking I would use them for something like this, and/or jewelry …

The Materials:

First Batch:
.25 ounces Beeswax
.66 ounces Shea Butter
.40 ounces Sweet Almond Oil
2 Vitamin E pills (just the insides, obviously!)
10 drops Peppermint Oil

Second Batch:
Olive Oil instead of Sweet Almond
No Peppermint Oil
A dab of lipstick for color

Recipe adapted from some found at Majestic Mountain Sage
Also got a lot of great tips from this BlueArts post.
I was thinking i’d order the ingredients online as well, to get the best deal and selection, but after procrastinating, i got most everything a the local Whole Foods (except the beeswax, which i had from a previous project.)

Melted all slowly in a double boiler, and used a dropper to pipe into the tins.
My scale isnt very good, so the amounts were pretty approximate. i think if i did it again i’d increase the oil a tad for a little bit softer mixture.

Just a quicky i did this weekend for Illustration Friday. I love the silly little robot. The background is pretty slack, but i got tired of messing with it :)

It’s funny, because people i’ve showed this to have seen entirely different things in it. One assumed he was pointing people to an Exit. I originally pictured him about to push a button or something, and was suddenly distracted by something behind him. But the original inspiration was simply i thought it would be cool to draw a robot with his head turned backwards ;)

As a quickie for IF, I took one of my old doodles, and played around with Vector Magic on it.

Here’s another version, not quite as dramatic…not sure which i really like better:

I’m thinking a picture of the boy with the Christmas tree in the background, with stars could be very cool.

Link via photojojo

-Jewelry: I had my mom bring me back some beads from India, and I want to attempt something with those (I bought some supplies, but except for one failed attempt at a bracelet this summer–the beads were too heavy for what I wanted to do–I haven’t done anything with that yet.
I have nifty little round boxes to put said jewelry in as a great gift, if i can just get around to creating it.

-Sweater snake: I saw a cute idea at the Candler Park festival this year where they had made long funky snakes out of old sweaters. must try that. would be nifty for boy. So, trip to thrift store or maybe i have something in my closet?

-Xmas cards: OK, not that creative of a project, but a project none the less, so here’s the status…
First step –Pictures *complete!*: I dragged the little pink tinsel tree out of the basement to give me something seasonal for the background, dressed the boy all cute and did a photoshoot!
Step 2– Photoshop (in process): A few pics turned out pretty good, so a little bit of cropping, photoshopping different options — thinking black and white for this, but still working it.
Step 3 — determine how i’m going to do the cards — print them myself? Go through an online print place (used Vista Print last year)?

New this year:–

Sweet sushi (introduced at April Fools day) does a repeat performance. Directions are here

– Creep fingers. I saw something similar in a magazine (may have been BH&G halloween issue) and changed it a bit. I usually do Witches Fingers almond cookies, but decided that that would be too much cooking this year, so this was the alternative. The original pic was white chocolate, but I had several mishaps with my white chocolate this year, so I ended up making them out of regular melted chocolate chips. (A happy accident, as i think the taste of the chocolate with the salt of the pretzels was tastier than it would have been with white) Also, the original had slivered almonds as the finger nails, but I borrowed from my cookies and used whole blanched almonds (split in half so they weren’t as heavy) because i think they look creepier. Easy to do, just dip the pretzel stick in the chocolate, and stick on the almond. I used a cooling rack at a 45 degree angle to hold the pretzels while they dried. The holder idea was also stolen from the magazine. Just glasses, covered in sleeves off an old shirt.

Mozzarella Eyes – A new creation of my own this year. Easy and yummy.

– Monster balls. A test run due to the fact that I had left over Rice Krispie treat mixture and a bag of gummy body parts that I had impulse purchased at Big Lots. They were all eaten, so I guess they worked out! They are pretty self explanatory. The eyes are white chocolate with mini chocolate chips embedded. I glued them on with extra melted chocolate.

-Bone Marrow: Bread baked with smoked sausage and BBQ sauce inside, with the ends split to resemble a bone.

Other Creepiness, Back by Popular Demand

– Flayed Face. Erika created this by layering proschutto into a art store face mold, then filling with a spicy cream cheese and cheddar cheese ball mixture. Lessons learned from last year… shread the proschutto into small pieces or it’s too hard for people to ‘cut’ through. Served with wheat crackers.

– Brain. Old-y but good-y. I’m thinking about changing the dip next year, though, just because I’ve done this one for years. It’s a crab dip in a brain mold – I got the recipe/idea years ago from http://www.britta.com/HW/HWr.html. That’s also where I got the recipe for the witches fingers cookies that I usually do, and I recommend those as well.

– Peanut butter eyeballs. I don’t remember where I got this one, and a search of the internet reveals that alot of other people have it too. But this is a perenial crowd favorite.

And I loved the idea of the glove animals. Now, realize that I’m usually better at visualization than execution (i.e. I can think up all kinds of really neat things to do, but I get lazy when it comes to actually doing it) and my sewing skills are marginal at best. But I digress…

The Materials:
I’m enamored with the idea of doing some of these out of really nice wool or cotton socks/gloves. Knowing my limitations, I decided to go for cheap materials to make my first attempt. So I found these hot pink acryllic gloves in the dollar spot at Target. As I had embroidery thread from a previous unfinished project attempt, my cost outlay was pretty low :)

The Recipient:
I like having a target recipient for my project, and of course my initial thought was that the target of the first attempt would be The Boy. However… the hot pink… at 2, I don’t think his gender sensibilites would have caused a negative reaction, but alas, it just felt too girly. Luckily next door baby loooooves bunnies (and the boy sleeps with a faboo sock monkey that her mom made), so I decided to make it with baby H in mind.

The End Product:
I think it worked out pretty well for a first attempt. I think it would look better (but more of a choking hazard) if it had buttons or such for eyes. I’m claiming my pretty crappy attempt at making the features is an effort in playing up the handmade crafty aspects of the bunny.

The Follow-up:
The Boy, although in theory loved the idea of giving the pink bunny to Baby H, in practice was wanting to take it back home with him. So a quickie bunny #2 was created! (pic to be posted)