Found this recipe from Alisa Burke, crafter extraordinaire. She made her own granola bars out of oats, nuts, fruit pieces, sugar, honey, and a few other very simple ingredients. It looks SO easy to make, even I think I could do it, and that’s saying something. Plus, being a college student, grab-and-go granola bars are half my diet during the semester. These things would be a lot cheaper than the crazy prices of the things you buy at the store, and you could customize it to suit your palatte (and budget!). The sugar could be substituted for splenda. You could use fruit grown in your own garden. If you’re lucky enough to know any beekeepers or live near a market that sells honey directly from the bees, you could use that honey instead of the processed-pasteurized-heated-and-trucked-across-country stuff you buy in the store.

There are so many different things you can do with this recipe. I’m already excited to make my own, and I’m thinking it would be a great bake sale item for the drama club!

I stumbled across this video while avoiding homework. It seems fairly simple to make, and all the ingredients are more or less found around a typical house. Of course… you may ask why someone would bother to make paper out of ANOTHER ripped up sheet of paper. But heck, for me, I’m always using paper cutouts for patterns and decoration and things, and I’ve got plenty of scrap pieces sitting around. Plus, heck, this might be better than a shredder Could you imagine making Christmas gift tags out of junk mail? Recycling, for the win.

It’s September. For me, that means that this begins the planning stages of two different costumes: The Renaissance Festival and Halloween. This year’s Halloween costume may be a Faerie Masquerade type thing. Well, what does every faerie need when going to a masquerade? A fascinator, of course! I browsed the net to find tutorials and inspiration. So here is the Link Roundup of fascinators.

Sans pictures for now, because… I just don’t feel like uploading any, that’s why. Hey, man, I don’t do this for a living. Give me a break.

Corvus Tristis
This page shows how to make comb-style fascinators. Looks like a very easy tutorial to follow, and involves very little, if any, sewing. All the supplies are potentially just sitting around your home right now. If not, they would all be easily found at a dollar store. Cheap and easy project, but with beautiful results.

Knit on the Net
For those of you that prefer knitting to sewing, I present Knit on the Net. This tutorial is for teardrop and circle shaped hat style fascinators. The tutorial is a bit more complicated than the comb. The nice thing about this page, though, is how versatile the project could be. I can’t knit to save my life, but I can crochet well enough and could adapt the project. Even if you can’t knit or crochet, this tutorial shows you all the angles of the hat portion, and it’s great for learning how the thing is put together. Not to mention that the fascinators pictured there are gorgeous.

SquirrellyPoo’s tutorial at Burdastyle
Well, I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually feel like knitting/crocheting a whole hat. For those of us that just want to use fabric, I present SquirrellyPoo’s tutorial. It involves a lampshade (which could be substituted for cardboard), a bit of fleece (or sweatshirt material, or anything relatively soft), some fabric, and whatever junk you’ve got lying around the house. The tutorial is really clear, and leaves plenty of room for your own creativity.

Burdastyle Roundup
And because sometimes I have problems designing my own stuff without inspiration first, I present all of Burdastyle’s projects tagged with the word “Fascinator”.

Cut Out and Keep Roundup
Come on. What would this blog be without a link to CO+K? Check out the Fascinator category there.

Anyway! That’s all I’ve got to say for now. Seeing as I’m running out of things to say on this blog, do me a favor and leave a comment below and tell me what sort of projects you’re interested in. Do you like home decor? Jewelry? Clothing? Accessories? More links to free patterns? More tutorials? More inspirations? Let me know, and I’ll see what I can do

Cute little things, aren’t they? The recipe said to cut them into ovals or leaf shapes, but I, of course, had to cut them to look like the movie (and don’t get after me, purists, I’m sure Tolkien would be perfectly okay with me cutting them into squares). The little diagonal cut down the center made it MORE movie-like, and gave it a sweet little English tea cake thing going on.

Anyway. They turned out very delicious, though I’d recommend having them with something (they’d go great with tea), as the flavour is subtle. Instead of making honey butter (which, by the way, is three tablespoons of butter, three of honey), I made TREACLE butter, which turned out great.

However, after making these pretties, I was covered in flour, had bits of dough stuck to my hands and buried under my nails, plus all the usual soiled measuring cups, mixing bowls, and the rolling pin, and I must tell you… I did NOT feel very elven.

Making freezer paper stencils seems to be something that everyone knows how to do, but no one knows where they learned it. I found several bleached shirts on Cut Out and Keep (among them was this amazing Doctor Who shirt), but there were very few How-Tos. One quick internet search later brought up this tutorial which was very helpful! What they don’t tell you, though, is how little time it takes for the bleach to start working. I was expecting to leave it on for a minute or two, but about thirty seconds later I was running to the wash basin to rinse the shirt in the peroxide mixture. So keep an eye on your projects.

These jeans were made by Elizabeth over at Cut Out and Keep. She made hers using the tutorial available here, which, unfortunately, is in French. The pictures are pretty clear though. I’d never have thought to use duct tape to mark off the stripes of the flag! Very clever.

Anyway. A very VERY loose translation of the tutorial (with the assist of an internet translator, so take this with a grain of salt) is that you’ll need some light wash jeans, fabric paint, a paint roller (not of the wall variety, the smaller one! ), and some tape (possibly scissors to cut that tape).

From there, basically start marking off the jeans as shown in the pictures on the tutorial site, (it says that the cross part should fall on your knee), and then roll on the paint! Yay! Clean off your roller quickly, then peel off the tape. Let this paint dry before you move on to the next step.

Then start marking off the next bit (again, as shown in the picture on the tutorial site), and roll on the blue paint. Something is mentioned about making sure the width of your tape is working with the Union Jack design… but the translation was especially sucky on that part, so basically… be careful with your tape. More drying time!

From there, you’ll make MORE marks with your tape (the tape for this step isn’t shown on the tutorial site, but I imagine you’ve got the idea by now.) Check the final image to see where the diagonal red bars should go, mark it off with your tape, and roll on your paint. More drying time! The tutorial also mentions setting the paint with an iron after it’s completely dry, but I would imagine that depends on the sort of paint that you’re using.

Once everything’s dry, that should pretty much be it!

Now, if anyone reading this blog speaks French and sees something that I’ve missed, or something horribly inaccurate, let me know in the comments so I can fix it.

Now, I’m somewhat of a fan of this dress. I’d totally wear one like it, but not with the back like this…

But I’m LOVING the sleeves. I just watched a SecretLifeOfABioNerd video where she wore a white shirt with similar sleeves (The shirt is seen at 0:56 in the video). Just yesterday I made a note about those sleeves, then today I came across the Selena dress.  I keep looking at these sleeves, and I think they would be SO simple to make. In fact, I’m thinking of cutting of the sleeves of a red t-shirt and then sewing on some sheer black sleeves in this style. It would give the shirt a kind of casual RenFaire feel to it (and it would look awesome with the previously mentioned shoulder dragon plushie sitting on my shoulder…).

There are four free dragon plush patterns on the site, plus one bat. The patterns vary in difficulty. The shoulder dragon (green one pictured above) seems fairly complicated, while the bean bag (white one) looks pretty straightforward.

I’d love to be able to make the shoulder dragon. He’d look so great sitting on my shoulder at the Ren Faire! Hmm… wonder if I can get my sewing skills up to that level by September…

Anyway. Leave me a comment below. Do you like seeing free patterns on this blog? Do you want to see more links to tutorials? And what type of projects are you interested in? Plushies? Home decor? Jewelry? Clothing? Let me know

View the video tutorial here