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Spring 2020

Here’s a little look at what was in the Spring 2020 box 🙂

duckling

The first project is a felt duckling to sew, all prepared to go out and splash in some puddles! 

springhoop

Next we have a larger hoop art project, making use of applique and relaxing hand embroidery – this is a project to take your time over!

hairtie

Finally, the last project is a new craft for Creative Kawaii – Japanese UV resin. This ready to use resin cures in sunlight, so we use it here to create a pretty hair tie with origami paper.

If you’d like to give these projects a try, then please click the button below to go straight to the Etsy listing for this box!

Buy now on ETSY
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Recent Craft Projects – Part 2

Following on from my last post, here’s the second half of the craft projects I made during my Christmas break!

Mizuhiki Bracelet

Mizuhiki is a decorative knotting technique, using pretty cord that is actually made from paper. It’s normally used for decorations and cards – you see is uses a lot of envelopes used to gift money at new year or at weddings.

This kit is a modern take on this traditional craft, using the technique to make beads! Everything to make a bracelet was included.

This was another kit I’d picked up on holiday, so the instructions were in Japanese. However, I don’t think I needed to translate anything – the main thing you need to do is follow a diagram to make the pretty ‘knots’ – this does need to be followed slowly and carefully, as it’s easy to miss a step! If you’ve made any jewellery before, assembling the bracelet once you’ve made the beads is straight forward.

Paper nano Tower Bridge

I really like the paper nano range of kits so I have made a few of these before – I’m always impressed by how very detailed the laser cut card is.

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I usually buy myself one of these kits when I’m on holiday in Japan, but this one was a present from a past birthday – you can sometimes get them on amazon, just need to watch out for the price being hiked up (they should only be about £10 at most!)

They have very easy to follow picture instructions. The main tricks i find to making these kits is firstly to use long tweezers to support the card right next to the score line as you fold it, rather than just using your fingers. You’ll get a nice sharp edge that way. And secondly use tiny amounts of a good tacky glue so it grabs quickly.

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The only gripe I have with this kit is the scale of the bus – it’s too big to fit through the bridge!

Wallhanging

This was a random kit I picked up on holiday. You cover pre-cut foam shapes with pretty chirimen (kimono) fabric and then follow the diagram to assemble them into a picture.

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The instructions are in Japanese and the shapes are labelled with hiragana and katakana. You need to copy the labels onto the backs of pieces, which can make things a little more tricky if you aren’t familiar with them. Luckily my very limited Japanese skills do include being able to read and write these characters so it wasn’t so bad. Other than this, there’s lots of pictures and it’s again very easy to work out from these.

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I was pleasantly surprised when I’d finished making this kit – it looks so much nicer in real life compared to the photo on the packet

Two embroideries

Finally I have a pair of embroidered pictures, which, you guessed it, came from a holiday in Japan. I bought the one with the window first from a lovely fabric shop in Kyoto, but then Mike said I should get the second one when we saw them again in Tokyo, since it’s like me embroidering with our cats about 🙂

The kits came with everything, including the nice wooden frame. The fabric had the design nicely printed on it – finely detailed, but clear, so it is easy to hide with the stitches (I’ve had some kits with really fat printed lines!). The instructions included a labelled guide for which stitch to use where (in Japanese but easily translated by google!), along with step by step picture guides for the particular types of stitches – there were all common ones.

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And that concludes the Christmas holiday crafting round-up! It was great to just have time to make things for myself 🙂