Blanket Stitch and Monsters

We're having another Craft Party on Monday night and one of the things available to make will be Felt Mistress's Monster from Issue 7 of Mollie Makes. I made this one as an example for people to see. People always compliment me on how neat and intricate my amigurumi dolls are - and I guess they are! But when it comes to sewing and cutting material my ability to be neat and intricate just goes out the window! Straight lines are not my thing. I like how this guy turned out, but if you could see him in real life you would see how inaccurately I cut the shapes and how wonky my sewing is! And for those of you who are into sewing I have a question... How do you start off the first stitch when you are going to use blanket stitch? When I do it the first stitch always comes out wonky. Answers gratefully received!

Jajce Craft Party #2

We enjoyed our Etsy Craft Party in June so much that we decided to do it again last week. As you can see, we had a great time. Craft Party #3 is coming - just need to choose a date...

Etsy Craft Party 2011 - Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina

We had a great time :) Enjoy the pictures - you can see more if you click here. Did you go to a Craft Party? How was it?

Hand-painted Plush

Happy Craft Party Day to all you Etsians out there! Here's another example of one of the things we're going to be making at our Craft Party on Tuesday.



and the back view!

It's almost Craft Party time!

Are you hosting or going to an Etsy Craft Party this Friday? I'm hosting one here in Jajce but it will be on Tuesday next week because this week is the Theatre festival in Jajce. Today I had a go at making a simple sock creature - this will be one of the things people can make at our Craft Party.

Featured on the Etsy Blog

Our Etsy Party was featured on the Etsy Blog this week.

Etsy Craft Party

Welcome to our Etsy Craft Party! The people at Etsy encouraged Etsians all over the world to have craft parties on 18th June in celebration of Etsy's 5th Birthday. I have a friend,BlessedFlower, who is preparing to open an etsy shop and so together we decided to organise a party here in our town Mostar. There are not many Etsy sellers in Bosnia and Herzegovina and there is only one other in our town (well 2 cos they're a married couple, but it's one shop!). We wrote to all the Etsy sellers in BiH to let them know about the party but most of them live in the capital city, Sarajevo and it is too far for them to travel for one night. But the other Etsy sellers from Mostar came and it was great to meet them. They make amazing jewellery, you can check it out in their Etsy shop - Lottaart.

The idea of our party was to have fun encouraging other people to be creative. We prepared different activities for people to try:

• crocheting bags with plarn
• making sock monkeys
• sewing flowers
• making altered art journals

We also had a good supply of cookies, brownies and other snacks :)

Everyone had a great time and hopefully we encouraged those already creative people to try new things and we awakened the sleeping creativity in everyone else!

Tutorial - How to make bunting from old magazines

How many of you went to an Etsy Craft Party on Friday night? I organised one here in Mostar and we had a great time. I'll post some photos and write more about that another day, today I want to share with you how I made bunting for the party, cos you can't have a party without bunting!

What you need:

• old magazines


• 10 metres of 1 inch ribbon


• pins


• scissors


• sewing machine

How to:

• take a page of a magazine and fold it into 4 (see picture a)


• cut the paper from the bottom left corner to the top of the first fold and then from the top of that fold to the bottom of the next and from the bottom of that fold to the top of the next fold and from the top of that fold to the bottom right corner of the page. (see picture b)


• throw away the 2 end pieces and you have 3 triangles of bunting.


• pin the triangles to the ribbon. (see picture c)


• repeat this as many times as necessary to make the length of bunting you want.


• sew the triangles to the ribbon. (see picture d)

And it's as easy as that!