Craftside

The Craftside Fabulous Book & Yarn Holiday Giveaway

It's time for the Craftside Fabulous Book & Yarn Holiday Giveaway! Can I get a whooo-hoooo-ho-ho-ho!

Yes my crafty peeps we have a fabulous stack of 10 books:

- Knitting 101
- Astounding Knits!
- Wool Toys & Friends
- Felt Fashion
- Sweater Surgery
- Knitting Socks from Around the World
- Intertwined
- The Granny Square Book
- The Complete Photo Guide to Crochet
- Knitting Around the World

and

A basket of supplies including colorful yarn, roving, crochet hooks and knitting needles.

The only thing we won't do is make the scarves and sweaters for you! ;)

What do you do to get yourself in the running for this entire pile of book & yarn yumminess? Let me tell you.

1. Leave a comment on this blog post telling us about your holiday crafting plans for a chance to win! 

2. Become a fan of Craftside on Facebook for a second opportunity to receive this basket! On our page's wall, tell us what handmade goods you're looking to receive this holiday season.

3. Follow Craftside on Twitter for yet another entry! Just tweet, "I'm entering the @CraftsideWorld Fabulous Book & Yarn Holiday Giveaway: http://bit.ly/book_and_yarn."

You can enter once on each of these channels (for three entries in total). And hey, if you want to play Santa, spread the word to your blog, Facebook and Twitter friends.  I bet they would love to get in on the action too! 

All entries must be submitted by midnight ET on Thursday, December 15, 2011. One lucky recipient will be announced on the Craftside blog, Facebook and Twitter pages on December 16th. (While this offer is for US residents only...we hope to be able to offer something for everyone else soon!)

Good luck and happy crafting!

Trapping felt and fabric technique from the book Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal by Melissa Manley

Here's our Wednesday giveaway question that gets you in the running for a copy of Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal:

What are the two craziest materials you have combined or have seen used together?

Answer this question by Midnight ET on November 23, 2011 and you could be the proud new owner of a copy of Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal. And for all of you who like to mix felt, fabric and wire jewelry making (or are looking to try), check out this tutorial on how to trap felt and fabric in wire.

Click on these pages from the Quarry book Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal to enlarge and read how to make fabric, felt and metal jewelry.

More about the book:

Jewelry Lab: 52 Experiments, Investigations, and Explorations in Metal

by

Melissa Manley

Jewelry Lab uses brevity to ignite a passion for working the metals processes and learning about all the ways metal can be used. It provides aspiring metalsmiths and jewelry makers a way to learn fundamental techniques that is quick and fun. In addition to the basic skills such as sawing, drilling, soldering, and finishing, the book covers texturing, etching, rolling, coloring, patinas, forming, connections, findings, solders, bezels, rivets, and other experimental techniques.

 

This is not a project book; rather, it is an approachable, unintimidating workbook that breaks metals processes down into very specific experiments, such as texturing or plastic deformation of metal, with no goal in mind other than to experience how metal moves. Readers learn to understand more about metal, how to master it, and gain a deep, thoughtful underlying appreciation for process and method, becoming entranced with finely crafting objects with great care.

Melissa Manley lives and works in southeastern North Carolina a few miles from Wrightsville beach. She received her BA in studio arts from University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Years later, she went back to grad school. While there she studied with enameling master Linda Darty and the godfather of found object Robert Ebendorf. She earned her MFA in Metal Design at East Carolina University in 2006. Melissa now teaches metals at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington. Melissa has also taught workshops around the country in collage, book altering, watercolor and jewelry making for the past 7 years. Her work has appeared in Somerset Studio magazine, Crafting Personal Shrines by Carol Owen, The Fine Art of Enameling by Linda Darty, Making Connections by Susan Lenart Kazmer, and 500 Enameled Objects by Lark books. Teaching, making in a variety of mediums, keeping up with her teenage musician daughter Meredith, and her professional kayak guru and partner Robert Smith all keep her very busy! For more visit her blog: http://melissamanleystudios.blogspot.com/

How to make recycled wool felted sweater Christmas trees with the Sizzix fringe die cut

I know Halloween is this weekend, but when I got Eileen Hull's new Flowers 3-D #2 die and saw the part that makes a section of what looks like fringe to me, I thought of Christmas trees! And since Sizzix dies cut recycled wool felted sweaters like a dream, and being the author of Sweater Surgery: How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters, you know what's coming...these cute as can be recycled wool felted sweater Christmas trees!

Here is how I made my recycled sweater Christmas trees:

I started by cutting scraps of the recycled wool felted sweaters and getting all different shades of fringe sections. I had some cardboard cones already made in prep for this holiday season of Christmas tree making as I always make a few new ones each year. These cones were a bit too big and I knew I wanted to make 3 trees (as 3 is the minimum for a collection).

So off to the recycle bin, and I happened to have a cereal box, and a folder of some promotional material came in so I just rolled them into 3 cones of varying sizes. I recommend the color of your cardboard cone be similar to the shades of your fringe so if some peeks through it will blend.

I decided each tree would be a bit of a different collection of shades of sweaters, light, medium and dark.

I started at the bottom and hot glued each row of the die cut fringe.

All that was left to do was whip up a few pom poms to top them off. I did this using two different yarns and just wrapped around my fingers a bunch of times. Then I tied the loops around the center and cut the loops open.

If you want to see what else this fabulous die cut will make, use the Sizzix button on the top right side column to hop to a whole bunch more blogs to see what my fellow designers have created with Flowers 3-D #2 die cut.

Want to WIN a Flowers 3-D #2 Die? Pop on over to the blog Oh My Crafts and enter!

If you need more recycled sweater projects, might I recommend:

Sweater Surgery:

How to Make New Things with Old Sweaters

by

Stefanie Girard

Contemporary crafters are thriving on personalizing, modifying, and altering fashion, and as a way to take a greener approach to their creative lifestyle. This book shows you how to upcycle all your slightly worn, slightly damaged, or out-of-style sweaters into fabulous new items for your wardrobe and your home. Readers learn how to choose, cut, restitch, felt, and embellish old sweater fabric, transforming it into beautiful handbags, mittens, scarves, hats, hoodies, skirts, jewelry, soft toys, pillows, and more! You'll find complete instructions for 27 projects, plus a huge gallery of exciting ideas for further inspiration.

Stefanie Girard (Los Angeles, CA) has a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute and worked as a set decorator and prop master for 10 years in the entertainment industry. She has produced, written scripts, and edited Web content for television shows and has been covering these creative topics for HGTV, DIY Network, and Lifetime TV. Check out more recycled sweater projects at  www.sweatersurgery.blogspot.com.

 

How to blanket stitch felt flowers onto a scarf from the book Knitting Scarves from Around the World

I always think about using the blanket stitch to sew elements down around the outside, but these cute felt flower elements use it to secure around the inside! See how to use the blanket stitch to embellish a scarf on this page from Knitting Scarves from Around the World: Patterns in a Variety of Styles and Techniques.

Click on these pages from Knitting Scarves from Around the World: Patterns in a Variety of Styles and Techniques to enlarge and get the felt flower pattern and directions for embellishing a scarf with blanket stitched flowers.

More about the book:

 
Knitting Scarves from Around the World:

Patterns in a Variety of Styles and Techniques

Edited by

Kari Cornell

Photographers:

Sue Flanders

Janine Kosel

Here are 40 patterns for scarves from around the globe—including stylish traditional projects from Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, the British Isles, the Americas, and Asia. Pattern introductions provide a background of knitting techniques from that part of the world, including schematics and charts.

Kari Cornell is a book editor by day and an avid knitter by night. She is the editor of several collections of knitting stories and patterns, including For the Love of Knitting, Knitting Yarns and Spinning Tales, Retro Knits, and Modern Knits, Vintage Style. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

 

Photographers Sue Flanders and Janine Kosel are authors of the book Norwegian Handknits.

 

How to make a felted Easter Egg, crafty links, and Spring Cleaning Big Book Sale!

Spring is in the air and that means Easter is just around the corner. So that means Easter crafting!!! Can I get a cluck-cluck for crafting? Well if I haven't lost you in my dorkiness check out this super cute tutorial on how to make a wool felted Easter egg. Yes, the tutorial itself is beyond cute, trust me! It's by Laurie Sharp, author of Wool Pets: Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle and  Wool Toys and Friends: Step-by-Step Instructions for Needle-Felting Fun.

More about Laurie's books:

Wool Pets
Making 20 Figures with Wool Roving and a Barbed Needle
By
Laurie Sharp and Kevin Sharp

Anyone can make cute and cuddly creatures from a handful of fluff and a barbed needle!

This book is about sculptural needle felting--creating 3-D animals and figures using the felting needle to sculpt wool. It shows all the techniques and describes how the felting needle works with wool fiber to create felt, while explaining the differences between this art form and other forms of felting. You will learn how to hold the needle, as well as what sort of materials to use and why.

There are 20 complete projects including various birds, bugs, four-legged animals, and people--each one unique and irresistible! Laurie also shows the reader ways to display their felted creations as mobiles, ornaments, or arranged in shadow boxes.

Wool Toys and Friends: Step-by-Step Instructions for Needle-Felting Fun

by

Laurie Sharp

This volume teaches and illustrates fun, needle-felted projects to add to your collection of Wool Pets. The instructions include wet-felting and various embellishment techniques along with the needle felting and discusses the ways that folk art and nature inspire the projects. Heirloom hand-crafted wooden or cloth toys, birds and other animals have inspired and influenced the projects which have been translated into needle-felted art.

Laurie Sharp is a full time artist and has been needle felting for over 7 years. She raises her own sheep and shears and processes the wool for most of her projects. She has been featured on HGTV's That's Clever. You can visit her web site at www.woolpets.com. Her work has been shown in a number of galleries in the Pacific Northwest, where she lives with her husband and business partner, Kevin Sharp. Kevin is a professional photographer, and provides both the beauty and how-to photography for this book. His work can be viewed at www.sharpphotography.com.

Now onto more crafty goodness:

Eileen - The Artful Crafter
Eileen made a necklace and earring set using shells gathered on vacation and shares the how-tos.

Mixed Media Artist
Cyndi finished up one of the little fabric books that she's been working on!

Stefanie Girard's Sweater Surgery
Learn how to make a painted dotted line greeting card.

The Crochet Dude
Drew unveils an opportunity to unleash your inner crochet designer!

About Family Crafts
Kits are a great way to buy craft supplies and to try new craft techniques. Sherri shares some advice and tips to help you choose craft kits.

Aileen's Musings
Aileen re-shares a fun and easy tutorial showing you how to colorize vintage and black-and-white images.

Carmi's Art/Life World
Carmi showcases some new products from a Canadian trade show.

Crafty Princess Diaries
The Crafty Princess decides to barter for a baby afghan.

And the Spring Cleaning News!!

It's April and we're doing some Spring Cleaning!
Over 300 books and calendars (across all categories/imprints)

at

www.qbookshop.com

are on sale for

60% off.
And EVERYTHING ELSE is on sale for 25% off.
Whether you're a crafter, DIYer, pet owner, musician, parent, gearhead, history buff or a foodie there's something for you on our site!