Lariath- Live a Little.

Just a quick post as I haven't been on here in a while. My life is so busy right now!  I like to make cards; I feel like they mean more because they take time and some thought to make. Also they can be as personalised as you wish! My friend and I love Studio Ghibli films and we adore Susuwatari (Soot Sprites). Therefore I decided to give a Susuwatari card a try.  I think it's quite cute and the integrated card stand works really well, I am defiantly going to be adding that to my future cards. Also it's orange! See more of my Studio Ghibli projects  Here Enjoy this post?

A while back I fell in love with the tiny hats I made for the  Crochet Santa Minion  and the Crochet Snowmen . I had a great urge to make more this year but I want to make a LOT so I wanted to find an easier and quicker way than crochet. Here it is: I think these would be a great crafts for kids where they could choose whatever colour Yarn strips they want to make funky coloured hats! To make these hats you need: Yarn (I used some scrap Yarn in holiday colours but any colour would look awesome) Scissors Tape measure/ruler Toilet roll or kitchen roll Cotton balls First cut the toilet roll or kitchen roll into Just under 1 inch pieces and cut the Yarn into approx 12 inch strips. For one hat I used 1 piece of toilet roll and between 40-60 strips of Yarn (depending on the Yarn thickness). Next tie Larks head knots with the Yarn all the way around the toilet roll, here's how: Take a piece of Yarn put the two ends together to fold the Yarn in half....

I posted Paper-cut bird card  a few days ago and wanted to try a slightly more complicated design so I decided on a flower. It's still pretty simple but I'm very slowly increasing the difficulty. I love the shadow that these type of cards make. I didn't have anyone in mind for this card so I picked orange as it's my favourite colour. I can't make my mind up if I like this card more than the Bird card  or not, but it now has someone to go to already as a thank you. Enjoy this post?

I love to make things from scratch, it makes me feel like I've achieved something. Which means I always try and make cards with nothing but sheets of card and paper. No shaped cutting equipment etc just scissors and a craft knife. I am still in the practice stages of using my craft knife so I'm trying to keep it simple at the moment. My Grandma loves birds, any type of small bird usually so I wanted to make her a card incorporating a bird. I looked at some cards for inspiration trying to find a simple bird which I could use for a card. Here is the finished card. I simplified it even more than the image I found to make it easier for myself, I think the card looks quite nice in its simplicity, the shadow it creates looks pretty awesome. My Grandma's favourite colour is green, hence the green card. I hope she likes it, I just need to find an excuse to give it to her now! Enjoy this post?

I have never tried watercolour painting before, well I probably did when I was very young but I don't remember. I love to learn and try new things so I want to give it a try. For my birthday I asked my friend to get me some watercolour paints. She asked me to paint her a picture so that is what I concentrated on for my first try at watercolour. My friend loves Japan and her favourite flower is a cherry blossom so I searched for some watercolour tutorials to help me out, with this theme in mind. I found  This YouTube Video  (Keep in mind I completely new at this and my painting is nowhere near as good). I am a newbie and don't really know any techniques yet, but I thought my friend would appreciate my first attempt with the gift she gave me. Here it is: I made a little frame for it to make it looks little neater: I am hoping to try more watercolour painting in the future but it will be a long time before I am any good at it. There is so much to learn! Enjoy this p...

I haven't blogged in ages AGAIN. Life is busy. A friend of mine is obsessed with Minecraft, I made her a  Crochet Creeper  a while back so this year to keep with the theme (and because I know nothing else about Minecraft) I made a Creeper card. I got the idea for the inside of the card somewhere on the Internet but now I can't find it..... The front of the card is a cut out Creeper face with black paper behind, the picture doesn't show the effect very well but the basic idea is there. The back of the card looked boring just being plain green so I added some 'pixels' just for a bit of interest. The inside of the card took me an extremely long time to figure out as I didn't have a template. I haven't made a pop up card like this since I was in primary school! The challenge of figuring it out was fun for me, I like trying to figure things out especially if it's for someone else. However, now I have many odd looking Creepers lying around. ...

I like notebooks, I like them that much that I don't use them because I totally ruin them...perfectionism is annoying. So to get over this I tried making my own cheap cheap cheap notebook that I won't mind wrecking. Whilst surfing the web on how to make notebooks I came across This Tutorial  which suggests making a notebook using paper bags. I loved this idea but I wanted a notebook with a different binding. Looking at Japanese binding techniques I found This  (which is one of the easier ones...gotta start somewhere!). So combining the two tutorials I made a paper bag notebook with Japanese binding.  The notebook turned out OK it's not that nice that I feel bad using/ruining it, which was the whole point. DIY notebooks can be made any size, used for anything and decorated in any way or not at all.  When I've used this one I will try a different binding technique.  Enjoy this post?

I love the look of aged paper but who has time to wait for paper to start looking old? Here's how I made paper look old, in about an hour, using instant coffee. What I used Plain white paper Instant coffee A tray - must fit size of paper  A kettle or saucepan - to boil water Somewhere to dry the paper that wont stain Paper I used normal plain white printer paper for this, although more absorbent paper would work better, printer paper worked fine for what I need. I ripped my paper in half as this is the size that I wanted and the ripping added to the aged effect. Staining The tray I used was a tin food tray, recycling! I placed a piece of paper in the tray then sprinkled some coffee on top, I then placed the next piece of paper on top and sprinkled some coffee on that and continued this using 5 pieces of paper in total (and a few extra bits). The colour of the paper will darken the more coffee used. I boiled some water, waited for this to cool a little so no...

Money origami makes owing someone money, giving money as a gift, leaving a tip etc slightly more fun. I made these as a gift: The butterflies are so simple to make but look really good. The shirts are slightly more complicated but I wouldn't say they were difficult and neither take long to make. My Mum took the ones I made her into a shop to buy a mirror she wanted... the assistant was very amused. Instructions for butterflies:   http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WipQCf9hgNg (Even though in the video dollar bills are used, it's the same as using pound notes) Instructions for shirts:  http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G_CMmYZv-yA They don't even have to be made out of money; coloured paper looks good: Enjoy this post?

I'm obsessed with tree silhouettes at the moment so I was brain storming what I could make involving trees. I came up with the idea of making a candle cover thinking that the candle light behind a tree would look good. Here's what I used: Plain white A4 paper Tissue Paper (I chose red) A4 card (I chose orange, I have no red) Scissors Pencil Rubber Ruler Glue stick Craft knife Craft Board First I decided how wide I wanted the cover to be so that it would fit around the candle without being too close to the candle. I decided 8cm by 8cm was big enough for the base. Here's the diagram I made: I folded a plain A4 piece of paper 8cm from the edge and then folded the paper again 16cm from the edge. I also made a small flap of 5mm after the second fold. The flap is shown in the diagram as the darker gery area.I also drew a 5mm border within the two folds as shown with the orange lines in the diagram.  Then I drew the design i wanted within the two...

I wanted to make a Minion Snowflake but I couldn't find a design on the internet. After doing a few Star Wars ones I decided to give my own design a go.  Here's what I used: Pencil Rubber Paper Scissors Craft board Craft knife (optional) Compass (or anything circular to draw around)  The craft knife is optional for this design as it can be made just using scissors, this can be a bit tricky on the small cuts so a craft knife may be better. Saying that I managed with just scissors. The craft board is anything that's going to protect the surface you are working on from being damage by the craft knife. At the moment I'm just using a wooden chopping board. So first I drew a circle on the paper and cut it out. The size of the circle doesn't matter but the smaller the circle the trickier it's going to be to cut out the design: Then folded the paper in half:  Opened up the circle and folded the circle in half again to make quarte...