Super cute and EASY Wrist Warmers (Re-purposed)- tutorial

This season I made it a point to try and stretch myself creatively and give a handmade gift to some of my closest friends. While some of my friends are artsy... not all of them are. So in an attempt to find something I could make with my hands, yet still make my non-artsy friends (Ah-hem... PATTI) happy, I came up with this quick and easy solution.

My friend Patti asked me for wrist warmers for Christmas. Patti and I have worked together in the past, and she has seen me get crafty on more than one occasion... but in this circumstance...I think she thought I was a little more crafty than I actually am. When she was explaining to me what she wanted she kept talking about crocheting a tube...yada yada yada... The truth is I can crochet a chain, and well anything that can be made from a very simple chain. At this point she lost me. 

So instead of thoroughly handmaking her wrist warmers, I decided to experiment and re-purpose. 

I went to the local thrift store and bought a few old wool sweaters. From here I took them back and washed and dried them a few times to felt the wool really tight. After the sweaters were ready I proceeded to cut strategically to create her wrist warmers.

To Cut, First cut the entire sleeve off of your sweater. This will leave you with two sleeves to work with. 

From here, stack your sleeves so that they are lined up perfectly.

Cut your sleeves to about 14 inches long, so that both sleeves are the exact same length. 

If your sweaters have sleeves that are thin and balloon out wider, the final measurements of the cuffs are roughly 14inches long, and 3 inches wide (I measured a pair I already had for this).

To finish off, rip the seem of your sleeve to create a thumb hole. In the picture below you will see I left about two inches from the top. Depending on how long you want your overhanging cuff to lay over your fingers, you can go anywhere from 1-2.5 inches from the top of the overhanging cuff. To Finish off, I added a blanket stitch just for some added detail.

 You can see here that on the opposite end of the cuff that I did a tight zig zag stitch on my sewing machine. From here I simply trimmed off any excess fabric that stuck out of the zig zag stitch.

Here is how the final product looks while in use. This pair is for our friend Lisa who likes purple.

 To wrap these, I just used a small bit of tulle tied in a cute little bow.

 Of course once you find something really cool to make, the rest of your friends start to drop hints that they might like a pair. So here are a few other sweaters I have picked up along the way for our other friends. The purple pair above were not actually made of wool (you'd be surprised just how hard it is to find purple wool sweaters!) so if you are not a fan of wool, a cotton, acrylic, angora or cashmere substitute should work just fine. The main thing to consider is that your zig zag finish can keep the material from shredding.

Supplies used: Old Sweater, sewing thread, sewing machine (If you don't have one you can finish the edge off by hand just use a tight stitch) and embroidery thread (I used Bazzill Basics, In Stitches thread.)

This is also great if you have sweaters that either you or your husband (not mentioning any names ☺) "accidentally" shrink your cozy wool sweaters. This is a wonderful way of giving them a new purpose and also letting your husband off the hook.

I hope this finds you all well and that it is helpful to you. It is really a simple project, but if you have any questions... feel free to email me :)  I would love to help!

~Liz ♥

T-Shirt embellisments and a giveaway!

A few weeks ago I was asked to create a 1 hour challenge over on the Club CK blog. Now being that I know the viewers over on the Creating Keepsakes site are extra crafty, I decided to challenge them with using some old t-shirts in a new way.

Be sure to check it out, in the comment section you will see so many fun uses for old t-shirts. I will be sharing some more this week. As an added bonus we are doing giveaways too! I have three giveaways that are identical. One has already been given away, but the other two are still up for grabs!



Giveaway #1- Over on the Creating Keepsakes "Club CK blog" they have a challenge to use the t-shirt challenge and post it by June 20th.

Giveaway #2- Just post a comment on my blog anytime between now (June 15th) and June 21st 2011 and I will pick a random winner and post it on June 22nd.

I will be working on some videos this weekend and hopefully getting these up for you this week.

I hope you join in the CK Challenge fun, the girls over there are already rocking this... check out their great ideas :)

~Liz

Shabby to Chic... Turning the Ordinary to FABULOUS pt. 1

Ok so today is the first day of my blog hop with Marion Smith from a Piece of Craft. In this FUN blog hop, we are going to share some unconventional ways of making the ordinary fabulous! We have the next two weeks planned out with some fun themes and great ideas! Here is what we have planned out:

APRIL

19^th antique store finds: reusing vintage items in crafting. We will take a trip to the flea market and come back with a variety of options to make you re-think these lost treasures.

22^nd $1 Store: Now we all know that $1 stores do have a small scrapbooking aisle... but what about the rest of the store? We will explore the possibilities beyond the craft section and open up the possibilities to some VERY interesting finds.

26^th Reduce, Recycle, Reuse: on this day we will feature some "unconventional" products that can be easily re-used in a FABULOUS way! Sprinkle in a little "green" mentality and you have an inexpensive and totally resourceful crafting experience.

29^th Rags to Riches: So for this day we are taking some of our "older layouts" and projects and reinventing them to a modern time, not necessarily taking them apart... but offering a "classic" layout the opportunity to be "new" and perhaps take these ideas onto a whole new page. We will also be utilizing some literal "rags" and incorporating them into our projects.

With April being Autism Awareness month, my blog hop for the month kinda took a back seat. But thankfully Marion was on board to do a POWER month crammed into two weeks. I am looking forward to sharing with you all some "resourceful" ways of creating in hopes that we give you some ideas that will platform some of your own "resourceful" thoughts.

So here is my interpretation of our theme for today (Antique/Flea Market Finds):

For this resourceful craft, I used some old wool and cashmere sweaters to create a wearable broach.

Using some old Jewelry from an antique store to embellish the centers.

This flower is doubled up on color using a striped sweater.

And here is a video explaining just how I did this:

I have a few other items that I picked up on my flea market venture, but unfortunately the battery ran out of my camera as I was filming, so I will have to share those this weekend. We will also be doing a giveway for those of you who would like to try out out fun technqiues, give them a try and post them to facebook. Make sure to tag myself and Marion in them so that we can add you to the list of participants. We will randomly pick a winner from those who participate. Now I know this didn't go so well last month, but I am hoping that was just because of easter. This specific craft is super easy and CHEAP, so I hope you all will try it out this month. We will be randomly picking a winner at the end of the month from all who participated.

Next months blog hop will be featuring the Tattered Angels Education Team!!! I am so grateful to be able to participate with the girls for a Tattered Angels National Scrapbook Month Blog Hop. It will be so much fun and feature ALL things Tattered Angels. It will start May 1st with some videos from the Tattered Angels staff.

So as you can see I am going to be BUSY this month, but between work and soccer for the kids, this will be a fun project for me and James to work on. We love doing these videos and hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

Thanks!

~Liz Hicks