LED Rose Tealight Candles

Today I am sharing a project that my daughter absolutely loves. I think at one point she relieved me of 8 of my learning roses and turned them into night lights around her room. Not that I really suggest this, but it showed me how much she loved them.

This project has slightly evolved from where it started. The idea started when seeing this post on pinterest. (if you would like to follow me, my pinterest is here.) Short version, it involves tearing apart a silk rose and gluing the petals to spoons. Then you are supposed to glue the spoons the the flameless tealight. I liked the idea, but I didn't think the light would pass through all that plastic, so I decided to change it a bit.

The making of one rose takes me about 20 minutes (40 if I am taking pictures for the tutorial), and usually one really burnt finger. I am sure it is able to be done without burning yourself, but I am just not that smart apparently.

Here I have three submersible tealights, green, purple, and pink. I really like these, and buy them here. I like them because they are brighter and easier to change the batteries when the time is up. And the options become really awesome.

I also have three white roses that have no stems. I have learned that your best bet is to use the white roses. Yellow ones will work, but after trying every color in the rose spectrum, none of the others were nearly as luminescent as the white. Ultimately, you are going to want a white rose and a colored LED candle of your choice.

First, you have to pop off the stem attachment piece (after removing the stem of course). Sometimes they don't like to budge and are a hassle. Be prepared to have to get a little rough, but not violent.

Now you are going to pull the rose apart, starting with the green....thingy....I don't know what its called.

The entire rose is really just poorly glued together, so you will need to tug and pull. Again, sometimes they can be little buggers, but overall they are easily disassembled. The petals will be either 3 to a layer or 4 as you get closer to the center (there are only 3 layers that will have 4 petals). They will also get smaller as you pull the layers back, so I tend to pile them in order as I pull them apart.

When that is done, you will have a little foam cone. Go ahead and throw this little guy away, we won't be needing him.
Now take your LED apart. It will be a lot easier to just work with the top.

Take the top layer of petals and cut them into 4 pieces. You can see it resulted in almost a templar cross being cut out of the center. This will later turn into triangles as you are cutting apart the 3 petal layers.

Then comes a little line of glue on the bottom of a petal from the hot glue gun. Too much glue will result in hot gluey lava when you have to tap and press the petal into place.

Now you are going to place the petal on the top of your LED. Make sure it is either flush with the line of your LED or slightly above. We don't want anything impeding the ability to screw on the bottom.

You are going to do the exact same thing for the next petal, but directly opposite of where you just put the first one. Then you will do the same with the last two, making your LED top surrounded with its first layer. Once the 4 petals are in place, make sure you have them overlap each other. One petal should both be covered on one side and covering on the other. Hopefully you can see that with this picture.

Here I am just going to take a moment to say that sometimes the petals will get stray strands like they are fraying. it is perfectly acceptable to trim these strands.

You need to repeat the steps again and again with each layer. There is no perfectly right way to put it together, just depends on how you wan your rose to look. If you want a budding rose, you obviously won't use the whole rose, just as much as you want. Here are various stages of building a full rose.

(if you fee like a petal is not secure, like the bottom petal here, you can add a dot of glue where you think it needs the extra help.)

Here is a "full" rose using all of my petals.

Now, you flip the rose over to add the green thingy I previously mentioned that I have no name for. I usually only add three pieces of it, 4 if I like the look.

And you are done!

Here are some pics of these three roses in a natural lit room and a completely dark room.

So awesome! My mom watched me make these while my husband, brother, father, and son were watching the football game. (GO HAWKS!) She wants a blue one and a green one. I showed her how great they work for little night lights in her bathroom. But I also want to show you the awesome that is submerging them in water.

If you use any other rose than white, the dye will bleed into the water, so you will have to wash them first. Isn't this amazing?! I totally would have used them for my wedding decorations if I was using roses. (My flowers were calla lilies and orchids...I couldn't figure out how to make it work with them.)

When I first started making these, my goal was to make a fairy garden around my garden tub in my master bathroom. Eventually that will happen, and when it does, I will give you pics!

Happy crafting.

Gearing up for Christmas

So, I wanted to do a post on my work area and how I keep things organized...only one problem, currently my sewing table looks like this:

Needless to say, that isn't what today's post is about any more. I have been doing a lot of cleaning lately now that the kids are in school. Just will all my general pain problems it has been slow going.

I plan on making all my Christmas gifts this year. I think I have some great ones planned.  I will be spending the week finding my sewing machine and showing you what I do to keep most things organized.

With 97 days until Christmas and so many gifts to make, I will be starting on them very soon. I am very excited about them. I will also be showing you some more of last years gifts. My pride and joy being the one I made for the kids to give to their dad. It was so simple, it just took some work with MS paint and asking the kids what things they love about their dad.

So please bear with me that this week doesn't have anything awesome to share with you, but I promise the coming weeks are going to be really awesome.

Hand Embroidery with a Coffee Filter

I know this post is late. I promise to try to get back on schedule of posting every Sunday. To be honest, I only get to see my husband on the weekends, so I kinda put everything off when he is home.

Back in 2013, Fandom in Stitches hosted a Dr. Who stitch along. I decided I wanted to make this awesome blanket for a friend of mine. My downside was that I didn't actually know the first thing about hand embroidery. A friend taught me this trick, and 36 blocks later (my blanket may be a wee bit bigger than originally designed), it has been extremely helpful.

I have had lots of people ask me how I stitched onto dark fabric. This didn't make sense to me, until I figured out that most draw their designs onto their background fabric with either water soluble pens or chalk. With this method, it doesn't matter what your background is.

First, start with some coffee filters. You know, the ones that are like $5 for 500.

Then grab a bunch, I usually grab about 1/4 inch worth, and then take the iron to them, making them as flat as you can. You will most likely be flipping the stack a few times.

Now, print out your handy template.

Tape your flat filter as tight as you can to the paper. (Sometimes your design will be bigger than the filter. You may have to use two filters. In this case, make sure your design is fully covered by over-lapping filters and trim as much excess filter as you can. I leave about 1/4 inch of overlap.)

With a sharp pencil, trace your template. be careful, the filter doesn't take kindly to the eraser.

From here, gently pull up your coffee filter. Leave the tape attached, it will become helpful when positioning on your fabric. Here I have centered my pattern and put my needle through the filter and fabric to hold it together while I press down on the tape and get it into my hoop.

You want to get as much of your design in the hoop as possible. The more you have to re-position, the more the filter will tear apart. Here I have gotten all but two letters fully into the hoop. I will show you later.

Start stitching!

Now, I know it is going to be a little hard to see because of my thread color (which is glow in the dark, btw.) But in theory, you notice the grey disappearing. This is what I mean about getting most of your design area in the hoop. I have the top of the k, the e, and the tail of the j that extend past my stitching area. I will stitch everything but these letters so that my filter is as stationary as possible.

Once I shimmy the hoop around and get them done, then the hoop is removed for what I consider the fun part!

When tearing the filter off, I try to get the largest amount off as possible in the first pull.

From there, it becomes picking at little stuff. Sometimes I have to use my needle to help pry it up. Tweezers might also be a good tool here.

Ta-DA! We are done.

Grandma's Garden Table Runner

Last December I was trying to decide what to make my Grandmother for Christmas. She had recently lost her husband to cancer and was re-inventing, well, everything. She replaced all her furniture and was learning how to be social again. To be honest, she had more than enough of the go-to chicken figurines. (She loves chickens; don't know why, just does.) Among the new furniture she bought was a dining set. This table was beautiful, but had some odd measurements. My Mother suggested that I make Grams a springtime table runner, since she had bought a fall and winter one. I had recently run across this picture on pinterest. (Well, I rotated it to fit better here; link I followed from pinterest.)

 I loved it. This was what I had to make. Only problem was, I didn't know how to work with hexagons. Oh well, I have always been a dive-in kinda girl. I spent a few days thinking about numbers, how long I wanted the runner to be, what fabrics did I already have that would look good, and of course, how do I piece hexagons. I was running into a problem....everything I read, and even heard from my God-mother, was that I was going to have to sew this by hand...It was December 11th when I started cutting out hexagons...this table runner had to be at least 60 inches...hand sewing wasn't going to cut it...Then, enter the Youtube search that saved my butt. I found a video for machine piecing hexagons. Could it be true? Did I find the answer I was looking for? So here is a picture break down of the creation and completion of this project.

I cut my hexagons, needing 6 in one color for the outside of the flower and 1 of a coordinating color for the center. I don't remember what size any more, but I believe they are 1 ½ inches.

These are fabrics that I had gotten in in fat quarter bundles from JoAnn's. They were supposed to be used for another project, but I was running out of time and money.

I couldn't decide which flower I liked best, so I opted to use both. I then cut out 4 flowers from each of my color sets (dark and light blue, dark and light pink, dark and light purple, yellow and orange). This resulted in 25 hexagons in each color.

I used 2 different shades of greens for the grass/leaves.

I then started laying them out on my table, and quickly realized I was going to run out of room.

I then found a length of empty wall in my house, and tacked up some fleece I had left over from the Reusable Swiffer Pad creation. My daughter helped me pin hexagons so that we could get a full length view of the table runner before sewing.

I wanted a more vine like table runner, so you will see that there are a lot of curves in this. My hope was for it to snake across the table. Now for the sewing.

First, I want you to note that you will technically be sewing diagonal lines.

Flip your hexagon over so you are looking at the wrong side of the fabric. With a pen (I use Frixion erasable pens, they come in many colors and the ink disappears when you iron), mark a 1/4 inch border around your hexagon. You will sew your hexagons together between where these lines intersect. I have heard this referred to as "dot-to-dot" sewing.

Do this for every hexagon in your rows.

Once you have all your rows finished, this is where it starts getting complicated.

Find where your rows are going to connect. They will lay fairly similar to this. Dot-to-dot sew where they connect.

It should look like this when unfolded.

Now, you have to fold the first hexagon in half so that you can line up the next seam.

Dot-to-dot sew again.

Now the second hexagon will get folded in half so the 3rd seam will line up, and you will dot-to-dot again.

See a trend yet?

You will continue to fold the previous hexagon as you dot-to-dot all your seams until your rows are joined.

Ta-DA! You have just pieced your first hexagons with your sewing machine. Continue this entire process until your project is finished. I swear the more you do, the faster you will get.

After completing the top of my table runner, I laid it with the batting and backing making the finished edging sammich that is required of hiding the seams. I then carefully sewed at 1/4 inch. I sewed up all but one end, then trimmed down my backing fabric so I could turn it over. Turning was a slow process because I had to poke and press all the corners out. I then sewed little bug buttons (dragonflies, bumble bees, lady bugs, and butterflies. Also found at my local JoAnn Fabrics) all over to tack it down and continue the garden feel. I sewed these bugs at about a hands width apart. I then sewed up the open end and called it done.

Over all, I know there are some bubbles in this project. I admit that it was rapidly thrown together with no idea what I was doing when I started. Grams loves it. I love it. Everyone that watched the development loves it, and that is what I choose to take from it.

I hope this helps and gives you a wonderful project to work on. I guess I need to get to work on some matching place mats. Grams has requested the ability to have a full setting for Easter. Guess I know what she is gonna get this Christmas!