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Autumn 2020

Next in my box contents catch up, we’re going to look at the Autumn 2020 box!

owl

The felt sewing project this season is an owl perched on a branch, ready to hang up and display,

pumpkin

The second project is a bit more hand-sewing.  Lovely soft and strokeable plush fabric is used to create a cute halloween pumpkin witch plushy toy!

acorn

And finally for something a bit different to all the sewing, there is an air-dry clay project to make and decorate an acorn shaped trinket dish.

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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Summer 2020

I realised I’m very behind in posting the box contents to my site, so let’s begin to catch up by looking back to Summer 2020’s box.

sunflowersteps

The first project is a happy sunflower brooch, decorated with some simple embroidery and ready to add a bit of sunshine to your outfit! 

frogsteps

Next we have a needle felting and paper-craft project to make a content frog enjoying a Japanese hot spring bath.  The felting is actually quite simple – just three balls – so great if this is your first time needle felting.  All the cute little details are constructed from pre-cut card pieces.

bagstencil

Finally, the last project is something a little different – stencilling with fabric paint onto a supplied plain lunch/craft project bag.  Two different templates are included, either a cheeky onigiri (Japanese rice ball) or a panda!  There’s also everything included to sew a matching bag charm.

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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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 🙂

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Recent Craft Projects – Part 1

Whilst we’re waiting for the Spring Box to be released, here’s a little look at some of the other craft projects I’ve been working on recently.

Over Christmas and New Year I indulged in a whole two weeks off work, to spend mainly at home crafting. I decided to use the time to make a few of the craft kits I have mounting up from both holidays and presents.

Here’s part 1 of a little round-up of the things I completed!

Kogin

First up, we have two kit’s that I was given by a friend for Christmas. They are both Kogen kits, which is a style of Japanese tapestry I hadn’t tried before

I started with the needlebook kit because it was in English. But this was quickly followed by the button kit, which whilst in Japanese, was very easy to follow.

I love how these big buttons turned out and now I’m just waiting for the perfect use for them.

Miniature house

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Another present that I got for Christmas was this ‘Fantasy Forest’ miniature kit. I’ve made a few of these ‘Cute Room’ kits now and they are all pretty similar. They have English photo instructions that are normally pretty easy to follow, but the tiny scale of everything does tend to make them pretty fiddly makes that require a bit of patience (along with tweezers and some good glue). Your patience is rewarded in the end, with a cute house filled of teeny tiny details!

The the kit included the parts to make a decorative box that the house could go inside, but I decided to skip making that, since I just wanted to display the treehouse.

It even comes with some little lights to wire up – although you do need to provide some little coin batteries for these.

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‘Billy Dollshouse’ small kits

I think Billy dollshouse are most known for their range of traditional and retro Japanese building kits, which you can find in number of shops in Japan as they’ve become quite popular as souvenirs, as well as on amazon.jp (and amazon uk but they are pretty expensive!). However, they also do these much smaller kits and I had a couple I’d picked up on holiday.

The instructions are in Japanese and only have a few drawings. Luckily these are simple kits where you’re just arranging the parts as they are in the photo and sticking them to a wooden base, so it’s easy to figure out! After not much time at all, I had a couple of completed cute mini scenes.


And that’s it for part 1. I’ll post part 2 soon!

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Summer 2019

The summer 2019 box contains sewing, embroidery and polymer clay projects to make a cute floaty jellyfish, a handy long-stitch trinket tray and two ice-cream magnets

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Sakura Petal How-to Video

To help out those of you that have bought the Spring 2019 box, I’ve put together a short video of making one of the Sakura charm petals – I thought seeing the folding in action would help make things clearer if you were unsure when following the photo instructions!

I hope that helps you out – they are easy to make after you’ve tried it a few times, but you will get sticky fingers!