Monday 24 October 2011

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Knitting Pattern to Knit Action Heros

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Knitting Pattern to Knit Action Heros

Want to knit yourself (or someone else) some retro action figures? My Daughter as big as she is, still adores the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, so I designed a knitting pattern to make soft knitted replicas of hero’s in a half shell – Turtle Power!

To make these retro action dolls you need...
Double knitting wool in shades: Emerald Green, Lime Green, Dark Green, Tan, Red, Blue, Purple and Orange.
You also need size 10 UK needles,
Kapok stuffing,
And sew on wobbly eyes or safety eyes if your toys are for a younger child.

Each doll measures approx 19 cm

You can buy the pattern to make the turtles here...

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Halloween Decorations & Treats for Parties : How to Make a Ghost Decoration with Foil


Easy ghost decorations for Halloween! Learn how to make a ghost for a Halloween party in this free video clip about a Halloween parties for children.

Want a step by step guide to making ghost decorations - Visit HalloweenMania.co.uk


Wednesday 12 October 2011

LadyBug Slippers Knitting Pattern

LadyBug Slippers Knitting Pattern
I always give my children a silly Christmas present every year just as a bit of fun, and this year I have knitted my 20 year old daughter a pair of LadyBug Slippers.

I found a free knitting pattern online you can download the PDF here...

The pattern says that you need fleece yarn, but because it's just a silly Christmas gift I didn't want to go to that expense, and I just used two strands of double knitting yarn. I knitted the 'adult medium slipper' working to the sizes in brackets and my slipper has turned out to be 22cm in length, but as the pattern says the slipper does stretch. I have size 7 feet and they fit me fine.

Ladybird Slippers Knitting Pattern



Another alteration I made was to the spots, instead of sewing some spots on my ladybirds, I knitted them some.

Using size UK 8 kneedles and single strand of black double knitting wool cast on 12 st and knit a row.
Row 2: K2 tog to end then cut the yarn and thread it through the remaining stitches. sew the knitted row ends together so that it makes a circle. I made 5 spots for each slipper.

I also made the ladybird some eyes. I thought that plastic eyes wouldn't be very comfortable on your feet, and besides I wanted to keep the cost to a minimum and I have lots of oddments of knitting wool.

With size UK 8 Knitting needles and white double knitting yarn cast on 20 stitches and knit 1 row.
Row 2: P2 Tog to end then cut the yarn and thread it through the remaining stitches. sew the knitted row ends together so that it makes a circle.

Pupils

With size UK 8 Knitting needles and black double knitting yarn cast on 12 stitches.
Row 2: K2 Tog to end then cut the yarn and thread it through the remaining stitches. sew the knitted row ends together so that it makes a circle. Sew the pupil in place on top of the white of eye.

To make antennae I cast on 16 stitches, and knitted 1 row quite tightly and then cast off. The knitted strip has a natural curve to it. Go with that curve and toll the one end of the antennae to make a small ball on the end. Tack into place and then sew the other end of the antennae on to the slipper.


Monday 10 October 2011

How to Make ‘Pencils’ to Tie Your Hair Back With

How to Make ‘Pencils’ to Tie Your Hair Back With
Having watched MissPrincessPancakes’s video on Youtube entitled How to tie your hair back with a pencil, it has inspired me to make ‘pencils’. The video explains that when you just need to tie your hair up but you can’t find a hair elastic or slide, that a pencil or any similar object can be used to hold your hair up. The video demonstrated how this is achieved, but the steps are…

Gather your hair together in a pony tail.

Put the pencil on top of the ponytail base with the nib to the right and wrap the tail up and around the end of the nib end of the pencil.

Next, twist the pencil around as though you are turning a cooker knob. The nib should pass over the top of the pony tail base.

Finally, you need to turn the pencil so that the nib is facing the starting point again, but instead of twisting, the nib needs to turn in towards the head and go through the base of the ponytail and out the other side.

It does take some practise to do, buy watch the video and try it yourself. It doesn’t take long to master, and it does hold your hair up really firmly and it doesn’t damage the hair like tight hair elastics can.

Once I had got the hang of tying my hair up a pencil, I wanted to find something nice to tie my hair up with. The Video suggest using a chopstick, a fork, and of course a pencil, this is great if you have nothing else to hand, but to wear your hair to go out in this style, you would look a bit kooky.

It is this that inspired me to make an alternative.

To make these hair ‘pencils’ you will need...

6mm Dowel Available cheaply at B&Q costing around 60p
Beads, ribbons and exciting things to decorate your pencil with.
Strong glue and sandpaper.

Cut the dowel into pencil length pieces at around 19cm.

Then with a Stanley knife cut the tip of the dowel as if you were sharpening a pencil, making sure that you are cutting away from your body. You want to shape the end to a blunt point. Then sand the point and the rest of the dowel so that it is smooth and wont pull on the hair as you push it into your hair style.

Next comes the fun part – decorating the end. I tried a couple of designs dangling beads, a bumble bee and ostrich feather and flower.

dangling beads hair slideTo create the dangling beads I took lengths of thin ribbon, on one end of the ribbon I glued a small bead and the other ends of the ribbon I glued the ends altogether into a bigger bead. Next glue another bead onto the end of the stick, and then stick in place the bead filled with ribbon ends, and leave to dry.

When using beads, you may need to ‘sharpen’ the decorated end of the dowel to make it thin enough to feed beads onto.

bumble bee hair slideThe bumble bee is simply two bead stuck onto the end of the dowel. I drew some stripes on the yellow bead with a black permanent marker pen and I glues on some wobbly eyes to give him a fun character. The bee’s wings are simply a piece of transparent silver ribbon folded into an ‘M’ shape. I then sewed a few running stitches along the bottom of the ‘M’ to hold the two ends and the central part together and to gather them. Then I put glue on the gathers and stuck on the bees back and left it to dry.

ostrich feathers hair slideThe ostrich feathers are just a section of ostrich feathers wrapped around the end of the dowel and glued into place. I held it with a peg whilst the glue dried and then I stuck a ribbon rose on top of the feathers where the ends joined.

The great thing about these hair accessories is that you can use anything to decorate them. One Idea I had was to get Hello Kitty danglies from the slot toy egg vending machines that you see in supermarkets. Hello Kitty hair accessories would be so cute.

Top Tip – I found that standing the pencils in a glass was great when leaving them to dry.

Tie Your Hair Back With a Pencil

Tie Your Hair Back With a Pencil