Hi Everybody!!  My name is Chrissy P. from Felted Chicken!  I’m your average-everyday Felter living & working on Hollywood, CA.  I’ve been needle-felting for about a year and a half now, and am always looking for new, interesting, and easy ways to add some extra UMPF to my sculptures.  Nancy was kind enough to ask me to share a tutorial on one of these processes.

In addition to the traditional felting techniques that everybody uses (needle & wet-felting, dying my own wool, accenting with tufts of colored wool)  I also use an Airbrush to add shadows & gradients to my pieces. …

Dabbled LOVES Hello Naomi (aka Naomi Henderson), a favorite cupcake maker from Down Under! (Read the Dabbled Interview with her)

We’ve features her fabulous work here before (here, and here), and she has graciously given us a tutorial on how to make some lovely V-day cupcakes.

See below for

• The Vanilla Cupcake recipe
• How to Decorate them

(a few translations from us Yanks, to the best of my ability: Icing Sugar = Powdered Sugar.  Castor Sugar = a superfine sugar, which you can purchase in speciality stores here in the states, or make by pulsing regular sugar in a food processor or coffee grinder)

I’ve included…

Today we have another lovely guest poster here on Dabbled,  Kelly from Tresijas!  I discovered Kelly through some of the really cool creations she had posted in the Dabbled Flickr group–especially her vinyl record creations–, and I asked her if she’d honor us with a tutorial.  And she agreed, so here it is…  Enjoy!

How to: Make A Bracelet from Vinyl Record

List of materials:

Toaster oven with tray
An old pair of scissors
stretchy gloves (to protect from heat)
record album
low grit sand paper
bracelet mandrel or other cylindrical object (a soda can or skinny glass bottle will work too)

Most of these items can be found…

I’ve been admiring Kerry’s resin work in the Dabbled flickr group, and resin is something I’ve never worked with, but always wanted to try! I’ve asked Kerry to share a simple tutorial to take some of the mystery out of working with resin. And so she did! These little Christmas tree decorations would be fun to give as gifts, top a package, or decorate your own tree… hope you enjoy! – Dot

Resin Star Christmas Tree Decorations

From Kerry at www.pennydog.com

You will need:

• Resin of your choice- polyester or epoxy
• Star shaped flexible ice cube tray (mine is from Ikea)
• Fine glitter in your favourite…

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…

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 posts with Dot!

Fall is here, and with it, an abundance of oak leaves and branches in my yard! I love our old-growth oak trees, but they sprinkle me with more presents than I can handle. What to do with nature’s bounty? Craft with it! I spent a couple minutes gathering branches to transform into this spooky Halloween-themed tree. Ornaments are quick and easy: dollar store erasers!

Project Estimate:

• Tree branches, gathered from outside
• Halloween erasers, $1
• Ribbon, on hand
• Acrylic…

One of the most creative people I know, Colleen (of the great indie online fabric store Some Art Fabric & and the brand new Sloth Craft) has gifted us with this fabulous blue jean remake tutorial.  Born of a wrong sized thrift store purchase for jeans for her daughter,  this is a great example of how to take something ordinary and turn it into something way cool!   As always, we LOVE our guest posters!  Hope you enjoy this great tutorial as much as I did!  — Dot

Blue Jean Remake – by Colleen

I sew. Sewing defines me as a person and as…

Weekends are slow, so many times I’ll do a re-run of something cool from the past.  Brooke, of So She Sews did this great tutorial for Dabbled early this year, and I thought it was definitely worthy of a “re-run”!  So,  check our her stuff (love it!) … and check out this tutorial on how to make some really cool stuff from fused plastic.. particularly the plastic from those awful cheap grocery bags.  (Cuz if you’re anything like me, you forget sometimes to bring your nifty re-usable bags, and end up with those brown things in your house!)

So, read the tutorial here...Make…

In my house, we (and by “we,” I mean me and my uninterested husband and kids that I am forcing this on) are doing our best to be better stewards of our environment.  So when Dot asked me to be a guest poster on Dabbled while she sunbathes on an exotic beach being served fruity cocktails by 22-year-old buff cabana boys (I am now thinking I got the raw end of this deal), I immediately racked my brain to come up with a crafty “green” project.

And thus, the reusable sandwich bag project was born. Here in the South, school starts…

GoodNCrazy Goes Bananas!

And maybe you’re thinking so is Dot? Where is she you ask? Um… she didn’t tell me?! I think she’s on a super secret mission? She promises to be back soon though? Maybe she’ll have additional robots for her collection.. ya think?? In the mean time… you’re stuck with me. Carissa. Mom/writer for 1 GoodNCrazy blog and chief craftster/boredom wrangler/mother to 3 kids. When Dot asked me to guest post for her.. I said oh girl.. I’ve got the perfect post…food, luv, chocolate, bananas… what could be better!?

I heart Bananas.

Join me at the smoothy store? Yes, I’ll take the bananaberryverydelicious option.{ Man…