My craft room

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I rearranged my craft room (actually it's more like a craft corner). So I just wanted to show you an instagram shot of what it looks like now. It's a bit more messy most of the time. But i'm in love with this long table, mini drawer and an extra shelf. The space I had before was probably ten times smaller. I have no idea how I managed to work with that.

Autumn-inspired notebooks

I've been making loads of tiny hand-bound notebooks lately. I love the process and I love the way they look and feel. There are several notebooks available for sale in my Etsy shop now.

These two are the ones I'm especially happy with. Basically I used the same idea I had for the Banana Pill t-shirts and tote bags a year ago. I collected oak and maple leaves outside my house, painted them with watercolor and transferred the paint straight to the carton covers. The paint didn't transfer as well as it did on fabric, so I had to add some color with a brush.

I'm totally in love with these leaves! I wanna try with other kinds. The only problem is that I don't know the names for all the trees.

Granny Square Laptop Cozy and Tiny Pouches

I've made this laptop cozy quite a while ago. It was my first granny square project ever. I've spent lots of time trying to find good buttons for it, that's why it was complete only recently. It doesn't fit my laptop, so i don't yet know what to do with it. Will probably put it on my Etsy shop, but should first measure it properly.

I had some yarn left so i made these little pouches. I've no idea what you can store in them but i find them quite cute.

Valentine's Day Crafts

The Valentine's Day is over but i would still like to show you what i've made for it. Here are my tiny crochet keychains and below are my watercolor Valentine's cards. I wish there was Valentine's Day every day, so that i could make everything heart-shaped.

Hand-Stiched Notebook

I have been away from my blog way too long. The dark winter days have not been very inspiring for photographing, plus there haven't been much crafting going on here because i got a day job. But now i've reorganized my schedule and the sun started coming out, so i have many new things to show you.

I have finally learnt to hand-stitch notebooks! And i fell in love with it. I have been checking loads of tutorials for the past half a year or so. Finally i figured out the most clear way for me to do it and here is my first notebook.

 I was expecting the first notebook to come out quite lousy. Surprisingly it came out very nice. I used office paper of two different colors and i kept changing the color for each signature.

On the picture below you can see how the stitches look on the spine. I like the way the spine looks so much, that i've decided to use the cover only for front and back. This is also much easier than making the whole cover. This notebook now belongs to my friend Ksenia.

My Christmas Ornament Collection

I finally have a kind of a collection of Christmas ornaments ready to sell on the Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. Above is a foam plastic ball covered with glittery yarn. Below are my handmade ornament sets. First two are made of carton and the other three are polymer clay.

In addition to Christmas ornaments i will be selling some handmade gifts.

My cell phone cozies:

Handmade fabric pins:

And some of my crochet doilies:

This is the first time i'll be selling my creations, so i am very excited. I am not planning to sell them all, but i hope somebody finds something they like among my lovelies.

Poetry Books

I took part in a fun project this year together with two poets. We made books with their poems to sell/give away on a Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. The poets took care of all content and i've put together the books and made the covers.

The first book is by Platon Lliv. He wrote 10 of his poems by hand and added some cut outs from old books/magazines as illustrations. I've made 10 books with a minimalistic cover and scans of his writings inside.

The second book has poems by Tatiana Pertseva. She had combined her poems with loads of collages made of magazine and advertisement cut outs, own photographs, old tickets and lots of other found treasures. I've made 5 books with scans of her works. Each book has a slightly different cover made with two types of carton. The names and titles on the covers of both books were hand stamped using my alphabet stamps, letter by letter.

I really enjoyed working on this project. We already agreed on a larger project of this kind with one of the poets. Will start after the x-mas holiday. Can't wait!

Lots of little crafts and Christmas decorations

I've been making lots of small stuff recently, because I got a chance to actually show and sell some of my works. There's an annual Christmas poetry event we take part in (last year we did an installation and i always get to decorate the place). So this year i will also sell some of my handmade items there. I'm trying to prepare as much things as i can, so i've been busy with that a lot nowadays. I didn't bother taking proper pictures, because not everything is ready yet, but here are Instagram photos of some things i've made recently.

Lots of crochet doily coasters

Little crochet pouches (they still need buttons)

Fabric covered pins

And finally some Christmas stuff! Gingerbread-looking carton decorations

Fabric covered carton Christmas tree decorations.

New notebooks

I've been working on these notebooks for the whole week. They don't take so much time to make, but for some reason i kept doing them little by little. They are not made with recycled paper, but with new paper this time. I really wanted to try making them with this yellowish paper. And i've also finally tried my new rubber stamps on notebooks!

For this one i used an image from a magazine for the cover.

These rainbow polka dots are made of color paper and cut with a hole puncher. It took some time to glue each dot on to the cover.

For this one i used black carton and one of my black and white film photographs of flowers.

The shopping list notebook was made from the scraps left from the first three. It also took quite a long time to finish this one, because the words on the bottom were stamped letter by letter using my alphabet stamps. So the letters are not at all perfectly aligned, but i like it this way. It also has magnets on the back for hanging it on the fridge.