DIY Felt Cat Cave

A little while ago I was browsing the internet and I happened upon these neat, sculptural felt cat "caves" and I thought they were really interesting and I immediately wanted to make one myself. I've never done this technique before - wet felting with loose wool roving - I've only ever done knit things and then felting them in the washing machine... so this was an interesting experience. This video is sort of a tutorial, but more of a "watch me make this and I talk you through what I did." Because of this, there are probably mistakes in there so if you see anything that I'm doing wrong, please let me know so I can correct anything! Also, check out these two older projects where I spoil my cat some more: Cat Shelves Cat Tree

Supplies! The cardboard is cut to 25 inches in diameter. It can be anywhere between 20 to 25, but my cat is a big guy so I went with the larger one. Please note that the amount of wool shown is only half of what I used.

I put down a piece of bubble wrap, bubbles up, put down the cardboard and attempted to take thin chunks of wool and placed them around the edge of the cardboard, hanging over halfway, and then I placed the inner pieces horizontally.

I covered everything with tulle...

...sprinkled all over with the hot soapy water...

gently rubbed over the tulle with the olive oil soap...

And in a circular motion, I rubbed all over the wool until it began to felt together.

I removed the tulle and then I covered with another bubble wrap layer, bubble side down. Then in one swift movement I flipped everything over.

With soapy  wet hands I flipped the wool that was sticking out from the edge over back onto the cardboard.

Then I repeated step 1-6. So now there's one layer on each side of the cardboard.

Now I placed wool around the edges like before, but instead of placing the chunks down horizontally, I went vertically. I then repeated the steps 2-6 again. And then repeated this again on the other side! So now there are two layers on each side.

I placed the wool around the edges like before, but for the inside I went back like the beginning and placing the chunks horizontally. Then steps 2-6 were repeated yet again. Flipped the piece over and repeated everything again. Now there are three layers on each side!

This layer looks a bit crazy, but it's because I ran out of enough solid colored wool so I attempted to do an abstract rock sort of design. Don't worry, I ended up flipping it inside out so the black layer would be the outer layer. Anyway, I did these chunks of wool over the edges again and vertically aligned. For the most part. And then repeated this on the other side. HOWEVER, for that last side I did not put the wool chunks lining the edge; I only did the vertical pieces in the middle.

I placed the sheet of bubble wrap onto the wool and squirted some of the soapy water on top. Then I proceeded to rub in a circular motion all over for about 5 minutes. The soapy water helps your hand to just glide around on the plastic without getting caught. I flipped over and repeated. And then I did that two more times.

Then I rolled everything up on my PVC pipe and secured it tightly. Then I got to rolling. I rolled this thing for about a minute or two, then I unrolled it, rotated the piece a quarter, rolled back up and rolled for another 1 to 2 minutes. Then I repeated this process two more times. So I ended up turning the piece a total of four times. I flipped the felt over, rolled it up and repeated all of this on the other side. When the cardboard  started to buckle, it was time for me to cut the hole.

I cut the hole. I meant to cut it more on the edge but I got excited to move onto the next step that I just cut a circle without thinking about it. Since I cut the hole small, however, I was able to salvage it. I soaped up my hands and used the hot soapy water to rub around the cut edge to help felt it better.

Then I reached inside and carefully pulled the cardboard, which was now sopping wet, out.

I rolled everything back up onto the PVC pipe and got rolling. I just repeated the rolling process I described earlier.

However, before I flipped it over to roll the other side, I made the executive decision to flip it inside out right then.

Then I resumed rolling.Now it was time to shape this thing and get it to shrink a bit. I used a small metal bowl on the inside to help shape the edges. I just rubbed on it through the outside with a handful of wet, soapy bubble wrap. When it was  the right shape (or really, when I was  over it and wanted to go to the next step)  I brought it to the sink and rinsed the water out, alternating between hot and cold water.

I made a water/vinegar bath with two gallons of water  and 1/2 cup of white vinegar and I soaked the cave for 15 minutes. After that time, I rinsed it out again and squeezed out some of the water in the sinkThen I brought it back to the table and rolled it up with a towel and the PVC pipe to squeeze out even more water.

I put it on some cooling racks to help dry it out and stuffed it with towels to help keep its shape while drying.

Once dry I cut the hole to a bigger size. I think the cut edge looks pretty cool because you can see all the layers. Also, I didn't need to felt it like I did earlier because the felt is much tighter and interlocked now, so it holds itself together.

Here's the finished piece, sitting on top of a piece of cardboard that has a circle drawn on it to show how big the cardboard circle I started with was. Pretty crazy! It shrunk about 8 inches.

Like with the shelves, I had to use a little bit of cat nip to show him that this new weird blob thing is actually pretty cool and he should check it out.

It seemed to work.

I hope you all liked this little walk through tutorial thing! I'm okay with how it came out. I don't think I'd try making another one really soon, but I can see myself wanting to try again in a few months or so. It serves its purpose, though, and doesn't look hideous or anything, so I'm happy!

Upcycled Leather Jacket Backpack

I'm going to start this post off with an apology. Half of the pictures I took were taken with my phone's camera and they're not the best quality, so I'm sorry for that. Pretty much all of the "making of" shots were taken with my phone and then I went back afterwards with my nicer camera and got some better shots of the finished product. I'm planning on making another one of these for my little sister so I'll take some better pictures of that one. I've been seeing some really cute backpacks lately and I got bit with the bug to create. Most of the backpacks I saw that I liked were made of leather so I decided to take a page from my own book and use an old leather jacket from the thrift store. After searching far and wide for the perfect jacket, I finally snagged one from my local thrift store, along with two belts that I planned to use as the backpacks closures. I believe the cost for these three things was about $15 or $16.

I dug through my existing fabric and whatnot and was able to find fabric for the lining, some batting, some vinyl and a zipper for the inside pocket. Then I got to sketching what I wanted my bag to look like and after finalizing it I wrote myself a little shopping list, taped in some swatches of the leather jacket and liner fabric and went off to the store. I ended up just buying thread and grommets and just cannibalized some old unfinished purses for the swivel lobster clasps and D rings.

I don't have any pictures of the deconstruction of the jacket, but basically I seam ripped the inner seam of the sleeves, down the side of the jacket and cut the sleeves free of the body of the jacket. Sleeves are deceiving, they always have way more fabric than you would think. I ended up using both sleeves to construct the body of the backpack. For the front pocket I decided to utilize the already existing snap buttons from the front of the jacket. I cut out a section that had both sides of the buttons and sewed them onto the front of the bag. It ended up working out perfectly. When working with leather you can't just stick pins everywhere because the holes won't go away so my trick to keep things in the right spot when sewing was to tape it down with masking tape.

More unpictured steps: I wanted a special pocket for my laptop that would be easily accessible if I had the backpack closed all the way so I made a padded pocket with the liner fabric and some batting and used the jacket zipper as the closure. I reinforced the piece of leather I cut for the bottom with two layers of thick vinyl fabric I found stashed away in my fabric box. I then sewed up the body of the back and then sewed on the bottom, making sure to sew in the bottom of the straps as well. I cut, lined and sewed together the flap but didn't attach it to the bag just yet. I placed the flap over the bag to approximately where it would sit once sewed in and then started placing the cut belts onto the bag to see how the placement would go. I wanted to secure the belts onto the flap by sewing them on, however the leather of the belts was super thick and I didn't even want to attempt that with my poor sewing machine, so I grabbed one of my sharpest knives and began to skive the belts in the spots where I wanted to sew it. I thought this process was going to be quite hard and tedious, but it actually was really easy and kind of addictive.

To hide the stitches and the areas I had to skive, I cut small strips of leather, placed them over those areas and tacked them down on each side with some stitches. As you can see in the picture, I totally skived the leather in the wrong spot on each belt so one was sewed onto the flap higher than the other. That kind of sucks, but hey, it's handmade right? That proves it!

I didn't get any shots of constructing the inside, but I essentially just used the measurements of the outside of the bag and threw together a liner with that. Of course, I had to stick a zippered pocket in there as well. And a little leather "tag" with my logo on it, which probably could have been executed better, but this is what happens when you're impatient, you go with the first try and tell yourself. 'Eh, that's good enough.' And then you look back on it and wish you had tried more.

On the top of my liner I also sewed a strip of leather around the top because I wanted the main bag closure to be a drawstring with grommets and I thought having it go through leather rather than fabric would look and function better. There will be better pictures of this later on in this post.

I stuffed the inner fabric into the backpack and sandwiched the top flap and the upper strap loop between the outside leather and the inner leather and sewed it up nice and clean around the edge. From there I poked 8 holes around the top of the bag and hammered the grommets in place. I sewed up a thin piece of leather, threaded it through and sewed on a piece of leather to act as the stopper part of the drawstring.

I made the straps adjustable like normal backpack straps are but at the end I attached the swivel lobster clasps. Those then could be connected to the upper strap loop. Thinking about it afterwards, it doesn't really serve that much of a purpose, to be able to unclasp the straps from the backpack; I just thought it was a neat idea.

Anyway, from there I tried the thing on and realized the straps were kind of thin. They're maybe about an inch wide and I thought that with a full backpack they would totally cut into my shoulders and be uncomfortable, so I made little strap pads and slid them in place. Worked like a charm and then my bag was complete!

So from now on these will be the better quality pictures.

And here's the finished backpack! I love how the belt closure turned out. The little metal embellishment on the belt on the left is pretty cool too!

Here's the back, and in this photo you can more clearly see how the back straps connect to the top and you can also see how the strap pads look on each side.

Another feature on the back is the padded laptop pocket.

And here's an action shot with my laptop halfway in the bag. Ooo, exciting!

Here's a shot looking into the bag. If you look closely on the left next to my finger there is a tiny loop with another tiny swivel lobster clasp which I put in for one purpose, and that is to simply hold my headphones if I'm taking them with me.

Like so.

Here's another photo of the bag opened, but it's laying flat and there's no headphones in the shot so it's different enough.

Here you can see the lining fabric for the flap. I ended up reinforcing it with one layer of vinyl because I thought if I didn't then it would be weirdly floppy, so to keep that in place I quilted it together with the liner fabric. I used this opportunity to make a nice chevron type of pattern.

I used some of the leftover leather to make a big tassel because, why not? And I attached it to another swivel lobster clasp (man I just have those things everywhere) so that I could stick it wherever on the bag I want to. Unfortunately it's a silver clasp, not gold like everything else on the bag, but oh well. I was working with what I had at that point.

Here are some cool angled shots of the front and back of the backpack.

And to end this I shall throw in this photo of my dog, Hobbes, enjoying the backpack as much as I do! (Lookie there behind the pup! Yup, I still own those letter pillows I made a few years ago!)

And that's all folks! I hope you all like this backpack as much as I do. I plan on making another one of these backpacks and will be taking better pictures of the progress of it, so please stay tuned for that!

I Heart These Earrings

So, as I mentioned a week or so ago, I recently got my ears pierced, and I've been making earrings all over the place in anticipation of being able to wear more cute stuff on my ears. Out of the blue I decided I wanted some cute, simple heart shaped studs and I had some left over brass from previous projects and decided that was the perfect material for these studs. I also took the time to take some progress pictures for you all to enjoy!

You can't tell from this picture, but it's actually two pieces of brass sandwiched and held together with rubber cement. I drew a small heart on a piece of paper and glued it onto the brass for a template.

Cutting cutting! It is very hard to take progress pictures like this with one hand.

Here they are cut out and ready to be filed. It was kind of a pain since they were super tiny, but eventually I managed it.

All done filing, so cute!

To attach the hearts to my earring posts, I used this two part epoxy.

Gluing. I kept having to readjust the posts because I was impatient and kept trying to move the earrings around before the glue had set, so the posts were getting nudged around everywhere.

And here they are complete! Again, I couldn't do any in the ear action shots because the holes are still healing but I really love how they turned out! It's really killing me that I can't wear all these earrings I've been making recently.

Cute Black Clutch Wristlet Thing

In the days before my friends bachelorette party I searched high and low for a semi-cheap black clutch or wristlet or purse to carry around with me.  For some reason this task was impossible, so a few hours before I had to leave the house I had the bright idea to make my own.  I had everything I needed here anyway, or so I thought.  I had a zipper, I had a tupperware full of fabrics I could use as a liner, I had some length of chain that I could use for the strap, but low and behold, I didn't have any suitable black material.  After the quickest trip to the fabric store that I've ever done, I was ready to create. And here it is, my cute little black clutch/wristlet thing.

The one key feature I absolutely wanted was to have the chain connecting to the zipper in such a way that it couldn't accidentally zip open while I was dancing or something.  The only way it could unzip was if I took it off of my wrist and unzipped it myself.

While I was out, unfortunately the chain worked its way out from the little loop on the side, but I was able to rig it back together with the help of my friends keys.  Haven't had any problems with it since!

Here's a shot of the inside.

Before I made this, I figured it would end up being a little throw away clutch that I would use only for this occasion, put away somewhere and forget about its existence.  In the end I actually ended up liking this thing quite a bit and plan on using it more in the future.