Glitzy Grad Lei

Got a graduate who's a little glitzy? Maybe someone a tad glamorous? They might like my newest take on the braided lei, the Glitzy Grad Lei.

For this lei you only need a few supplies. The lei pictured here used 1/2" rhinestone ribbon, blue 3/8" picot ribbon, white 3/8" picot ribbon, and scissors. My lei ended up only using about 5 yards of each ribbon. If you already know how to make a braided ribbon lei you don't really need to read the rest of this blog entry. Just make this lei the same but with the addition of the rhinestone ribbon. For those of you who may need a braided ribbon lei refresher, read on.

You start this lei by making a slip knot about 12" into your piece of ribbon. A slip knot is made by making a loop and then using the same ribbon, pulling another loop through your first loop. I tried to take a picture of this process (see above) and hopefully this will make the last sentence more understandable.

Now, with both the white and the rhinestone ribbon, make a loop leaving about a 12" long tail of the white ribbon in the back. As you can see, the rhinestone ribbon should be on the inside of the loop. Insert this loop into the loop you made on the blue piece of ribbon.

Then, pull the long piece of the blue ribbon, this is the one that should be facing you, tight until you have the blue ribbon cinched around the white/rhinestone.

Now make a loop with the blue ribbon and insert that loop into the white loop. Pull the white loop tight. All this talk about loops is making me a little loopy.

Anyone know how to do the loop-de-loop? Continue inserting blue loop into white, and white loop into blue until you have a long enough braid for your lei.

To finish, cut your blue and white ribbons leaving 12" tails. The rhinestone ribbon can be cut shorter. Then, with the last white loop made, insert the end of the blue ribbon into the white loop and pull the white loop tight.

Take your two long tails at each end of the lei and tie them together into a double knot.

 

Then tie your lei ends together and you're done! Your finished lei should look just like this one. Who's ready to get their glitz on?

Since we've already seen this ribbon in earrings, what do you all think about making a bracelet out of it? Good glitzy idea or crazy ditzy idea?

Puna @ Enchanted Lake

P.S There's another lei making how-to if you scroll down. Please do.

Crochet Bow

 

Who doesn't like a cute bow? I recently found a website where someone explained how to make these amazingly darling crochet bows. I made a couple of changes to the pattern, but I'm going to explain everything to you right here. By the way, these bows were made using our 100% cotton Sugar N' Cream yarn.

 

Now the first step is, using a J sized crochet hook, chain 30. Then, starting with the 3rd chain from the hook, half-double crochet in each chain until the end. Don't know how to do a half-double crochet? Read on...

The first step to a half-double crochet is to yarn over. That's shown in the really boring looking picture above.

Next, insert the hook in the next chain and yarn over and pull through. You should now have three loops on your hook, just like the picture above.Then, you yarn over again, and pull through all three loops on the hook. A half-double crochet looks like the last stitch in this picture:

Now the remainder of this bow is made of four rows of half-double crochet. Each time you get to the end of one row, you turn your work and chain two, then start making your half-double crochets all over again.

When you're done with your four rows, tie-off your end, and then weave the ends into your piece. Now, just like it shows in this picture, bring both of the short ends to meet together in the middle.

Scrunch this at the center and hot-glue in place. To make the bow look more finished, you need to crochet one more little piece to go over the center of your scrunched area. To do this, chain 10 and half-double crochet in the 3rd chain from your hook and in every chain across. Tie-off and weave in your ends then hot-glue this piece around the center of your bow.

I made one for St. Patrick's Day too! You can glue these to barrettes to make hair-bows or even to a piece of elastic as a bow tie. My green one here is definitely going to be a bow-tie.

I'm writing up an actual pattern for these and they'll be out in the store pretty soon. Make sure you stop by to check them out. How many of you out there like to crochet? Personally, it's one of my favorite things to do.

Don't get up to too many shenanigans this weekend, and see you next week!
Puna @ Enchanted Lake

Spread the...

Have you lost that lovin' feeling for your Valentine's Day decorations? Get it back with a simple and quick fix that will get you back to loving Valentine's Day in all its pink-hearted glory.

All you need for this project are some frames, some scrapbooking paper, and some vinyl letters. The frames for this don't even need to match; you can use all different sizes and colors, like I did, if you want. Just cut down your pieces of scrapbooking paper to fit in the frames (if you have a paper trimmer this step can be pretty speedy and brainless) and put the paper into the frames the way you would a photo. Then, make sure your glass is nice and clean by wiping it down with some rubbing alcohol and stick your vinyl letters to the glass. Make sure you do a little spread the love dance as you set your frames up on your end table or counter because this swanky decoration was so snappy you were done before you could spell L-O-V-E.

Puna @ Enchanted Lake

Scroll down to fall in love with paper mache letters too!