New Craft Supplies in My Shop!

As I mentioned last week, I've re-opened my craft supplies shop and am busy stocking it with lots of colourful, crafty goodness.

I've been busy photographing, measuring, and listing a whole bunch of lovely new things. Wanna see?

There are felt rainbows (and pick-you-own-colour felt squares), rainbow ribbons, pretty rainbows of pins, and bargain rainbow embroidery thread bundles. So much lovely colour!

I've also got some fab ribbon that's printed to look like a measuring tape, some black elastic for mask-making, cover buttons and a super-useful button covering tool (perfect for making felt buttons), and some GORGEOUS shimmery two-tone buttons.

Then there's embroidery scissors (so useful for cutting out small felt pieces!), lovely wooden cotton reels, big card bobbins for organising your yarns and ribbons, and some white elastic.

I've also bought some cute and colourful stickers. These are great for crafty projects, gift wrapping, journalling and scrapbooking, and for sticking on your snail mail.

There are cute woodland animal stickers (I've been sticking these on my shop parcels lately, I love them!), rainbow star, dot, and heart sticker sheets, and lots of colourful dots. I think the dots would be wonderful for creating bullet-pointed lists in your journal or diary!

I've also got colourful retro vinyl stickers featuring rainbows and unicorns and other fun stuff, and I've got some bargain books of mini stickers: cute kitties and happy stars.

Pen-wise, I've listed some fun colour-changing pens and a pair of metallic markers (I love a good metallic marker!). Then I've got giant wooden pegs (because why not? Oversized stuff is so joyful!) and packs of gorgeous glitter card (sooooooo shiny).

If you'd rather have tiny pegs than giant ones, don't worry - I've got you covered. I'm also selling a fab pack of luggage tags (I just adore those bright colours), a useful pack of coloured card, and some flower press kits.

I'm particularly excited to be stocking the flower presses as I feel like they're just the kind of relaxing, nature-loving craft we all need right now! I've got three sizes in stock, ranging from a mini press to the biggest flower press I have ever seen in my LIFE (seriously, it is HUGE). The boards are blank for you to decorate with paint, decoupage, stickers, etc, so one of these kits is basically two crafty projects in one. 

Click here to visit my shop and see everything that's in stock!

How To: Make Felt Covered Buttons

Sooo... we're all staying inside and making things for the next few weeks, then?!

If you're looking for crafty ideas to help yourself relax and pass the time, remember you'll find loads of free patterns and project ideas in my tutorial archive and my printable PDF patterns are still available as instant downloads over in my Etsy shop.

I've also got lots of fun projects in progress which I'll be sharing here on my blog in the coming weeks. First up: how to make awesome felt buttons!

Felt buttons are so much fun. I've made lots of them over the years with colourful felt scraps left over from other projects, and I thought it was high time I shared a "how to" with you guys so you can make some too.

Felt buttons are, essentially, buttons covered in felt. You can use them to embellish all kinds of craft projects and they make fantastic centres for felt flowers (they'd look great with my fabulous flowers!). 

To make them you'll need some cover buttons in your chosen size(s) - I prefer plastic ones because they're cheaper but metal ones are also available. You'll find these for sale in online craft shops, Etsy, or in your local craft or haberdashery shop (when those re-open again! Gosh these are such weird times we're in, aren't they?).

You'll also need some felt, of course. Cover buttons are designed to be used with fabric, so thinner and more flexible felt works best. I usually use a soft wool/acrylic blend which looks lovely but is easy to stretch around the button shape.

If you're planning on making lots of buttons I'd highly recommend buying a button covering tool. Pressing the front and back of the cover buttons together takes a fair bit of force and the button tool will save you a lot of effort, as well as helping you make nice neat buttons.

I use the Prym universal button covering tool, it includes holes for five different button sizes (11mm, 15mm, 19mm, 23mm, and 29mm)... I've got a lot of use out of mine over the years! 

Your cover buttons will probably come with a template, showing you how large your piece of fabric (or, in our case, felt) needs to be to cover the button. The Prym tool came with a template, too.

Use the correct size template to cut out a circle of felt from your chosen colour.

To cover the button in felt, you need to wrap the felt around the front of the cover button then press the back of the button into position. The back clicks inside the front, holding the edges of the felt/fabric in place and giving you a lovely button ready to use.

The button tool is really helpful during this process! To cover a button using the tool place your felt circle over the correct sized hole in the tool then add the front of the button on top, facing down.

Carefully press your button and the felt into the rubbery shape. The felt will be pushed up around the button, as shown.

Squash the edges of the felt down towards the centre of the button with your fingers.

Put the back cover button piece in position then use the hard section of the button covering tool to press it firmly in place.

Your finished buttons may look slightly different if you use a different style of button to mine, but here's how the back of my button looked:

And here's the front. Mmm... buttony goodness...

Now just sew your finished button to your chosen project, as you would with a normal button.

Caution: making felt buttons is slightly addictive! :)

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How To: Felt Eyeball Buttons for Halloween

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd squeeze in an extra tutorial this week... how to make fun felt eyeball buttons!

 

I used my buttons to customise an old cardigan - perfect for adding a spooky touch to an outfit this Halloween.

Felt buttons are quick and easy to make!

You will need:
- small pieces of black felt (for the pupils) and blue, green and brown felt (for the irises)
- matching sewing threads
- soft white felt (30% wool blend felt is perfect for this) or white fabric
- 22mm cover buttons
- a button covering tool (optional, but very useful! I use the Prym universal button covering tool)
- a needle and a pair of embroidery scissors
- the circle templates at the bottom of this post

If your cover buttons are a different size to mine, use a pencil and a compass to draw your own templates for the pupil and iris.

To add the buttons to a cardigan you will also need.... a cardigan, matching sewing thread and some pins. If you want wear the cardigan more than once, make sure you choose washable (synthetic) felt when making the buttons!

1. Use the templates to cut out one white eye from felt or fabric, one black pupil and one coloured iris.

2.  Place the iris and pupil in the centre of the eye and sew them in place with matching threads. Sew the pupil in position with a small X made from two stitches, then sew the iris with a line of small running stitches. Trim any excess thread at the back.

3. Now follow the instructions on your pack of cover buttons (or look online for a how to) and cover a button with your decorated circle of felt/fabric. Using a button covering tool makes it much easier to snap the front and back of the cover button together and the holes in the tool I use are very helpful for checking that the decoration on your button (in this case, the pupil and iris) are in the centre.

4. Repeat steps 1-3 to make a selection of eyeballs with different coloured irises. If you want you could also add some red stitches to the eyes for a bloodshot effect.

To add your eyeball buttons to a cardigan, first remove the original buttons (apologies for the low quality of some of these pics, navy blue is a real pain to photograph!).

 

The buttons on most cardigans are likely to be much smaller than the large eyeball buttons, so the eyeballs won't fit through the buttonholes. Because of this you need to turn your cardigan into a jumper (sweater) by sewing the front together (make sure the neckline of your cardigan is large enough that it's easy to take off and on again!).

Pin and then sew the front of the cardigan shut, using matching sewing thread and small running stitches. Make sure you don't sew the front and back of the cardigan together!

 

Then use a double thickness of sewing thread to sew on the eyeball buttons, sewing them securely in place through where the old buttons were. I left off the final button at the bottom as I preferred how it looked with just five buttons.

And you're done! :)

Click here to view the template sheet in another window/tab, and print it at 100%.

You may borrow a couple of photos if you want to blog about this project, but please remember to credit me and link back to the original source, and do not reproduce my tutorial on your site. Thanks!

Enjoyed this free tutorial? Buy me a "coffee" and help support my blog!


Subscribe to my newsletter for a monthly free pattern and visit my crafty tutorial archive for lots more free projects.

Visit my shop to buy my printable PDF sewing patterns:

Nostalgia + Lots of Craft Supplies

While sorting through a box of bits and bobs this week, I found this mini notebook. The panda's eyes flick from being blue to having big red hearts in them. Cute, huh?

When I was very small and obsessed with sewing clothes for Barbies or Flower Fairies or Sylvanian Families, I used to write notes for my sewing projects in here...

... but spelling was never my strong point! :)

In other news, I've added a few "new" listings over in my Etsy shop - larger quantities of some popular items in my supplies section.

You can now buy a set of 24 mini 3inch embroidery hoops...

... a bumper button-making kit with 60 cover buttons instead of the 20 included in the basic starter kit...

.... a huge bundle of 144 skeins of embroidery thread / floss (4 skeins of each of the 36 rainbow colours)...

... and a set of 4 giant wooden buttons:

Oh, and just a heads up for all you felt fans, there's just one pack each left of the "warm tones" and "cool tones" felt bundles as I'm discontinuing them to make room for a couple of new packs later this spring.