November 2009 – Dabbled

Make Quick Mittens

HeatherM — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:51:58 +0000

Hi! I’m Heather from Dollar Store Crafts, a daily blog devoted to making cool crafts with dollar store stuff. I’m so excited to be swapping holiday posts with Dot!

Do you love felted sweaters as much as I do? Felted (or technically, “fulled”) sweaters are made from animal hair-based yarn (like wool, alpaca or cashmere), and washed in hot water and dried in the dryer until they shrink up and the fibers are fused together (kind of like dreadlocks on a micro scale). Once a wool sweater is felted, the fabric can be cut and it won’t fray. It’s an amazing material for crafting. You can use a felted sweater as the base for all kinds of cozy winter goodies, like these cute mittens.

You can find wool sweaters at the thrift store. Just make sure the tag says it is mostly or 100% animal fiber. Need to know more about the process of felting? Check out this post by Diane Gilleland at Craft Stylish about felting your sweaters.

Project Materials:

Felted sweater
Scissors
Sewing stuff (sewing machine & thread)
Paper and pen

To Make Mitten Template:

Trace your hand (or your child’s hand) on a piece of paper.

Add a seam allowance line about 1/2 inch around the outside of your traced area.

Place template on sweater and cut out two pieces for each hand.

Place pieces right sides together and sew around the edge. Be sure to reinforce the seam at the cuff of the mitten by backing your stitch up a bit.

Clip any excessive extra fabric (pay attention to the area near the thumb), and turn mitten right side out. Try on mitten to see if it works. If you need to, you can turn it back inside-out and adjust.

Smile because that was so simple and quick!

Visit me at Dollar Store Crafts for more great holiday ideas and tutorials!

Happy Almost December!

Dot — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:05:15 +0000

You can’t deny it now, the holiday are really upon us now… Stay tuned this week for 3 Holiday Tutorials!

Some Fun holiday stuff from Last Year, while you’re waiting…:

Make a Shrink Ornament Santa HERE (includes template)
Lemon Pie – Decorate with a winter snowflake theme HERE
Some great ideas for Holiday Up-cycling! Finalists in last years Dabbled Upcycled Craft Contest… Here!
How to Make Homemade Eggnog. Try it! HERE
Make and Freeze Homemade Stock (Any of those holiday recipes that call for broth will be better with homemade!)- HERE
Holiday links: Click here for cute holiday links. And Click HERE for bunches of ornaments and tutorials.
Printables: “Uncoventional Santa” Xmas Card. CC licensed, so print it for personal use if you like!
Make Oatmeal Cookies! Tutorial here.
Christmas Tree Cookies: Make ‘em here.
Robot Scarf. A fun gift, and makeable by a novice. Info Here.
Dabbled Classic: How to make a Blueberry Pie. Check it out here.
Tutorial on making a cool boy-toy! The homemade sweater snake.
Go Green for the Holidays – Tutorial Links

Thanksgiving’s over… Leftovers?

Dot — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 16:52:46 +0000

Vegan Leftover Pizza!

A few quick ideas… Do you have your own tricks for using up your leftovers?

Vegan Thanksgiving Leftover Pizza

Turkey Panini

Curried Turkey Croquettes

Leftover Pies

Day After Thanksgiving Food ideas

10 Tasty ideas for leftover turkey

10 More ideas from Women’s Day

And finally:
Make and Freeze Homemade Stock at Dabbled – If you’ve got a turkey carcass, make use of it and keep the delicious stock for future cookies use!

Link day: Tutorials and other fun things

Dot — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:03:15 +0000

Paul (from the fabulous blog Dudecraft) has a great tutorial on making papercut portraits! Go check it out!

One of my favorite web destinations, Dollar Store Crafts, has a cute tutorial on making a placemat advent calendar.

Here’s a tutorial at Craftster to make lovely tile coasters… what a nice gift!

Pretty Decoupage Candle Holders at Craft Stylish

Crafting in a Green World has a tutorial to make felted acorns. Neat!

This should have been included in Dabbled’s Christmas ornament roundup, but I missed it, so go check out One Pretty Thing’s Christmas Ornament Roundup

And just for fun… You’ll never use scrubbing bubbles again! (at Superpunch)

Thanksgiving Creative Cakes and Sweets!

Dot — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:37:53 +0000

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone (in the US, at least… the rest of you, just have a happy day!)…
I figured it was time for another Flickr Roundup! Here are some fun and creative cakes, cookies, and other sweets with a thanksgiving theme… who needs pumpkin pie!

Click through the links below to see the original photos — several have tutorials, too!

1. Turkey Cake Pops, 2. Thanksgiving_Turkey_Cake_Stuffing, 3. Thanksgiving Turkey cookie with pop up timer…. POP! Let’s EAT!, 4. Thanksgiving Cake, 5. Mmmm Oreo Turkey Cookies, 6. Turkey Dinner cupcake, 7. turkey cookies, 8. Thanksgiving Cake, 9. Pilgrim Pumpkin Cake

Happy Thanksgiving Link Day

Dot — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:10:23 +0000

Too funny! Turkey cupcake found on flickr

Just a little fun list of Thanksgiving Links!

Turn a negative into a positive (and how Sears gets social media)

Dot — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:56:58 +0000

I like twitter. Within the loosely knit community of crafty folks I hang out with on Twitter, we’ve been having discussions about the right and wrong ways to use Twitter, and about effective (and SOOO not effective) ways that twitter is used by both large and small businesses. (Check out @kpwerker’s mystifying exchange with an organization that obviously has no clue!)

So I tweet. And along with posting cool links and interesting stuff I’m doing–and chatting with my buds (hi guys!)–I also occasionally give kudos and/or rants about companies I do business with. Like how I will never buy another camera from Pentax due to their awful customer service, or how Snapfish really impressed me with their fast delivery and issue resolution.

So I tweeted the other day about helpful customer service from Sears in setting up an appointment to level my new washing machine (which, by the way, is an LG and I really like!). Then I had to take back my kudos via tweet when they didn’t show up for the appointment. Within a short while I got a message from @MySears, which apparently watches twitter for what people are saying about the company. They were concerned about my bad experience, and offered to have someone contact me. Their Care team contacted me the next day, and researched the problem, were incredibly helpful!

This is a perfect example of a good use of social media by a large company — they found about about my problem while it was still fresh, addressed my problem, and made me feel like a valued customer.

Related:

If you’re using twitter to promote your small business, you should check out @craftypod’s e-book on the subject. (I reviewed it here) Although it’s targeted at “crafty” businesses, it has some great Twittering tips.
Some insights (and suggestions) for better tweeting from @dudecraft.

A few people to follow on Twitter

(this quick selection is crafty related – I’ll do more lists later)

@craftypod
@kpwerker
@dudecraft
@someartmama
@avgjanecrafter
@seschloss
@croqzine
@obajoo
@dotatdabbled, of course!

FTC Stupid Disclaimer – I am not a pawn of Sears, LG, Snapfish, or even Craftypod! Don’t you feel protected by your benevolent government now?

Feel Free to Steal the Come to the Dark Side Twitter icon!

Thoughts on good/bad twittering?
And if you’re on Twitter, feel free to share your Twitter name in the comments!

Handmade Christmas Ornament Tutorials

Dot — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:18:36 +0000

If you’re making Christmas ornaments, you’d better get started now! So here is the first of the 2009 collection of links to holiday ornament tutorials! (For more ideas, check out Last Year’s here).

I love this Polaroid Ornament from Katie Cupcake! And she has a detailed tutorial on making these on her blog – Go Here!

Such a clever idea, and a great way to display family photos. Plus what a perfect gift for Grandma…

Want more ideas? Here are some I collected from flickr (links below the big pic)…

1. Bolinhas de natal, 2. Bright Paper Ornaments – Tutorial, 3. Vintage Egg Ornament Tutorial, 4. Fabric Scrap Ornament Tutorial, 5. mini felt chains, 6. Paper Ornaments, 7. Earring Ornament/Packaging , 8. acorn mushrooms, 9. Quilted Ornament Tutorial

Direct links to some of the tutorials (others you may have to click through on the links to the pictures above)

Patchwork Balls – Portuguese (Translated to English here)
Acorn Mushroom
Felt Chain
Vintage Egg made with real eggs!
Quilted Ball
Fabric Scrap

Elder Gods have a lot of time on their hands…

Dot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:07:52 +0000

This design was inspired by a twitter conversation with my friend rit. I had just showed off The Crafty Octopus to my twitter friends, and everyone liked it. But rit’s comments just made me have to go make this image. The conversation has been recorded below, for posterity’s sake.

Dot says: http://twitpic.com/q3z6a – How do you like this one (crafty octopus)? I was thinking of using it for a Dabbled tshirt

Rit says: LOVE the octopus. I would tattoo that on my body if it was more cthulu-ey :)

Rit says: I’m thinking more preparing to devour the world than do some crafting ;)

Rit says: I mean it’s not, “In his house in Ry’leh dead Cthulu waits making arts and crafts” :P

Dot says: well, @rit, how else does he pass the time? I mean I bet an elder god is a fabulous knitter!

Rit says: that’s true. I bet he has tentacle sucker doilies or some kind of elder god mitten. And of course, his teddy bear Pookie.

So, I REALLY will do a Cthulhu for rit (sans knitting), but the knitting Cthulhu just had to be done first!

I think this image would make a great poster… What ya think?

PS, if you follow me on twitter, be sure to send me an @reply saying you’re from Dabbled so I will follow you back!

Gelatinous Zooplankton (aka Jellyfish!)

Dot — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:00:13 +0000

Apparently, Jellyfish is not a fish.

They also don’t have giant eyes like these, but I did read that one species has no brain, but 4 very good eyes.

So the fourth (or third if you count the order they were posted on twitter!) in the black and white series is the Jellyfish. Enjoy!