Craft Studio: Flower pomander ball

While I was in Wilmington, NC this past weekend, my friend Dawn and I crafted this flower pomander ball. We watched a youtube video to learn how to burn the fabric. The flowers are crafted from various size fabric circles that are layered and hot glued together with embellishments. It was a bit frustrating at first to determine just how close the fabric had to be to the tea light flame to make it curl and pucker. Dawn became the master fabric burning guru while I assembled 22 flowers and glued them to the styrofoam ball. When I started to apply the first flower, I plopped on a big blob of hot glue. The ball began to roll so I grabbed it with my right palm…palm met hot glue and turned me into a swearing machine. It was SO painful! No pain, no gain—even in the crafting world. We are pretty proud of our first attempt at making handmade fabric flowers. One thing we learned—gold lamé fabric will ignite and disappear in a flash (good thing my baby sister Kelley never stood near an open flame while wearing her twirling costume in high school!)

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

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Fit to be tied (& dyed)

Check out our fun craft project series in last summer’s issue of our Celebrate Home Magazine! My friend Barbara Kelley and I published four issues of this seasonal magazine before going on hiatus. It was a lot of fun but a lot of work. Download the issue free in the links below! Flip to page 126 to see the instructions on how to make this cool scarves.

View the issue as reader spreads (my favorite!):

CHM Summer 2013 Spreads

View the issue as single pages (suitable for printing):

CHM Summer 2013 Single Pages

Splurge and purchase a beautiful print copy on magcloud.com (no markup; at cost + shipping):

http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/600404

Photography and design by Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Bronze & turquoise wire crochet necklace

Bronze wire crochet necklace with beads in bronze, copper, ceramic, wood, glass, resin and plastic

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Craft Studio: Bedazzled beaded bracelet in blue

Last weekend during my beading birthday bash I created this cuff bracelet for my friend Dawn. I used a blank wire cuff, 24 gauge non-tarnish silver wire, and an assortment of beads in various shades of blue. The star of the show was a piece of inexpensive square glass—the kind you get in bulk bags to fill vases. You can buy the bracelet blanks at Michael’s in a two-pack for $2.99 (you’ll get one of these and another style that I haven’t found a use for yet). I just discovered they’re available in a blackened-silver and a bronze color, too. It’s an extremely easy project and takes an hour or less to complete!

© Cindy Dyer. All rights reserved.

Craft Room: T-shirt scarves

Yet another craft project with my sister Debbie—scarves crafted from t-shirts. These were fun, easy and fast no-sew projects with unlimited possibilities! Thanks to the lovely Barbara Kelley for modeling for us.

Craft Room: Ear bling

My sister heads back to San Antonio this afternoon, but we have had a blast being on the road in Rhode Island and Vermont, then back home crafting earrings, necklaces, bracelets, napkin rings and t-shirt scarves!

Craft Room: Beaded napkin rings

My sister Debbie and I made these beaded napkin rings this weekend to add to her entertaining accessories. We used inexpensive beads (Michael’s and other bead sources), 20 gauge tarnish-resistant silver-colored craft wire, needle nose pliers and a wire cutter. The diameter of each set ranged from 5 to 5.5 inches. Form a tiny loop at the start of your piece, thread on the beads, then make another loop at the end. Open one end, feed through the other end loop, then close. You could also purchase memory wire in the small bracelet size, cutting the wire into separate sections. This would give you continuous loop napkin rings (this would use more beads than our one-loop version).