The button necklace

Here is a small project I finished recently. Bending a copper colored aluminum wire in a U-shape, you slip a bunch of buttons on. Then you bend and cut off the ends of the wire and you are left with something like this:

This Pendant is about 12mm in diameter and 20mm in height. The closure of the necklace was done with the same wire, bent into spirals and a hook.

The fabric covered notebook

This is a nice little project I finished recently. It is a notebook about 9x13cm and 30 pages. The pages are bound to a cardboard cover. I use the three hole stitch as explained here. The notebook was then glued to a sturdy fabric. The fabric was then wrapped around the edges, glued to the interior of the cardboard and the first and last page glued over the fabric. 

The Notebook is closed by wrapping the ribbon around the button.

Evovling the brooch approach

I am strating to like the brooch approach. With the few polymer bases I made in one batch I am going on with  the creation of new ones. In this one I added pearls and wire.

The Camera Bag Strap

So I entered the world of DSLR cameras recently. To tote around my precious camera, I bought a camera bag from Case Logic, which is a nice bag (especially the camera suspension "hammock"), but the strap is no good. The shoulder padding is quite big in comparison to the strap, so it seems to be very probable that it will twist around and slide of your shoulder whenever it has an opportunity.

This is the original strap:

So, lets make a better bag strap.

What you need:

• sturdy thick fabric
• padding (I used a fleece blanket, which I am using as a cheap padding)
• about 1-2 m of a strap in the width you like
• 2 fitting hooks and sliding plastic thingies

Strap not depicted.

Here is the pattern I used for the padding. 

Cut out the banana shaped shoulder pad. I cut out one of the fabric parts. Then I pinned down the fabric face to face on the second fabric and on two layers of fleece.

Then you might to sew the long sides of the banana.

Turn the tube inside-out and sew the borders, closing of the ends of the tube.

Sew the plastic things to the straps. Add the hooks. You can get orientation for this on an existing bag.

Now you can sew your prepared straps onto the shoulder pad banana.

Why is the pad banana-shaped, you ask? Because, when you hang the bag on your shoulder, the shape fits great to your shoulder, which has a good "fitting" and "secure" feel to it.

So this is the finished strap on the bag:

Another pin

Hello there. I just post a picof another pin, which is plaid flannel fabrics. Nothing fancy, but a basic to build upon.

Emboidered Fabric and Felt Brooch

Going further with the brooch line, I added embroidery to the mix. Again on the polymer base, I glued the embroidered fabric and finished off with the felt border.

Things I consider for the next steps: get a smoother back of the polymer base and try to stamp the URL of this blog into the back. Maybe I can also substitute the polymer with salt dough, to make the products more environment friendly.

Felt Brooch

I am still going on slowly with the manufacture of brooches as a main line of a future product. Here I kept the polymer base and glued felt on it. With a hole puncher I made a holes in the green felt and filled those holes with disks punched out of red felt. I discovered that I can very easily manufacture a felt border, so the polymer will not be seen when worn.

After doing this, I added a border to the first brooch I made.