Freebie Friday: Competition - Win a Jubilee Bunting necklace!

To celebrate the upcoming Jubilee, we are giving away one of our new bunting necklaces.

You could be the proud owner of the beauty below in time for next week's festivities..

To win this necklace, all you have to do is suggest what you'd like to see us to make next!

You can send us a comment below this post, Tweet us or send a message on Facebook to enter.
You can also e-mail us at twobirdscraft@gmail.com with your suggestions

The best suggestion will then be picked and we will contact the winner to send them their prize!

We will take on board all your ideas and try to make the things you all want to see!

Good luck everyone!

Terms and conditions:

More than one entry is permitted. The winner will need to have an Etsy account although no payment will need to be made. Entrants must be in the UK to win the necklace. Closing Date for Entries: Weds 30th May 2012.

A Natural High - Woolly Wednesday

Our Cotton Yarn Addition…

As you know we birds get a real buzz from anything colourful but there is something extra special about this dyed 100% Cotton which has had us emptying out our bank accounts in a quest to obtain every available shade! We must be addicted!

Like most crochet newbies do, we started out using acrylic yarns as they are so much cheaper than anything else and available in a lot of varieties of thickness, colour and texture. However, once we progressed and became more adept in the ways of the crochet hook, we ventured into the sacred realm of natural fibres!

Yarns with a wool content or other natural fibre content are a lot more costly, some more than others, so we had to be careful only to buy a specific yarn for a particular project, rather than splashing out on the full range. We found this to be a little limiting to our creativity as we love to experiment.

One day we found a great supply of this Patons 100% Cotton yarn in both DK and 4-ply weights at www.rucraft.co.uk  and remembered that we had read about this kind of yarn a lot on Lucy's (Attic 24) blog when we were starting out. She talks about using Rowan Handknit cotton for her projects and I am sure this is the ubercotton of cottons but when we looked at it pound for pound, the Patons stuff is pretty much half the price so we let our wallets do the talking!

Colourful cotton we can't keep away from!

Cotton is a lot less fluffy than any yarn we have used before. It tangles less, splits less and the finished item really shows the stitches well, making the stitch pattern a big part of the creation. Because the stitches are so clear to see we agreed that we wish we'd splashed out on some sooner when we were learning as it would have made life easier!

See how clearly you can see these crocodile stitches
we are learning.

Cotton yarn is washable so great for any children's products. Because it does not tend to fray or shed easily it is also brilliant for creating jewellery and presses beautifully flat with an iron. There is not much this cotton can't do. 

The bright range of colours are great for kids,
and it is fully washable too!

What can I say? We are seriously addicted! You can see from these pictures that our supply is growing. We may have to start dealing soon to fund our habit! Half of the circle below is DK weight and of course, we had to match it with the same colours in 4-ply for teeny tiny stitches! Find out more about yarn weights here.

A rainbow of cotton in both DK and 4-ply

I think the limit for cotton is that when it comes to warm, cosy clothing or a cuddly teddy bear, there is nothing to beat soft, fuzzy wool. Therein lies the contradiction!

There are products in our Etsy shop which use 100% cotton yarn and we are experimenting with it a lot at the moment to tie it in with our jewellery making as it works so well in this way so pop back from time to time and see what's on offer. We would also love to see if any of you get bitten with the cotton yarn bug and what you create with it. Send us links here or tag us on facebook or instagram.

Tutorial Tuesday: Jewellery for beginners - Earrings

When we first got into jewellery making the web wasn't as full as it is now with helpful resources for craft lovers, and we ended up buying a rather expensive kit with a DVD.

The kit was very informative and was a great starter set, but now everyone has to watch their pennies a bit more, it would be far too much of a luxury.

So, here at Two Bird's Craft we thought we'd start making our own jewellery tutorials!

We will start you at the very beginning for those of you with no previous experience.

Today's jewellery tutorial is for a pair of simple earrings, at the bottom of the page we will list some links for you to find some supplies if you need them.

Earrings are one of the first things we made and are definitely the easiest and quickest item of jewellery to make, so let's start:

To make the earrings you will need:

Two headpins in the metal of your choice

Two earring hooks.

Beads or charms to make your earrings pretty!

Pliers - round and flat nosed and

Wire cutters.

Pliers and wire cutters are essential kit!

Thread your bead selection

Step 1:  Thread your beads onto your headpin

Cut the headpin leaving 1cm space

Step 2:  With your wire cutters, cut the headpin one 1cm away from your top bead

Step3:  Next, get your round nosed pliers and grab the headpin a mm or two above your top bead and bend the wire 90 degrees.

Use the round nosed pliers

Bend 90 Degrees at top of beads

Step 4:  Still using your round nosed pliers, use the fattest bit of the plier you can whilst stilling getting a grip on the wire and from the top twist the wire into a loop.

Make a loop

Step 5:  Now, get your earring hook and your flat and round nosed pliers.

Hold the small hook on your earring hook with your flat pliers and then open it with the round nosed ones. Then hook your headpin by the loop you created onto your earring hook. Now you just need to close the hook the same way you opened it and...voila, an earring!

Connect to your earring hook

Now you need to do that all again to make a pair!

You can you any amount of beads and charms as you like, but we recommend putting a small bead or a sead bead at the bottom of your headpin (especially if they are flat bottomed ones), so that any big beads don't fall straight off! If you're feeling adventurous, you might even want to hook a few headpins full of beads onto your earring hooks! 

We've been experimenting with mixing crochet and jewellery making together, here's one of our teeny crochet flowers looped onto the earring hook - what do you think?

Here's one we made earlier!

We hope everything in the above tutorial makes sense and you all enjoy making your earrings! If you need any help or think any pictures/instructions need improving then please get in touch!

As promised, here are some suggested websites for supplies:

Pur-ple

EP Beads

Perfect Beads

Good sellers on eBay:

0kittypink0

BeadAddicts

Make and Tell Monday - Bracelets, Purses and more...

Hello everyone,

Well, last week didn't go entirely according to plan. We have both been a bit lazy on the production front and to make matters worse we had illness in the nest, plus a lack of jewellery supplies which we were expecting to arrive. All in all, a pretty rubbish start to this post, which should be where we tell you all about our new creations!

Looking back at last Monday, we outlined our plans to work on several items based on the experimentation we had done the week before. As far as this goes, the little heart we showed you now has a big brother made with DK 100% cotton which we are LOVING at the moment! (More on this yarn on Wednesday) However, the heart operation (groan!) has been… wait for it… Bypassed… ahem, as we found a great pattern for little crochet flowers and have spent nearly all our time making these instead!

The little flowers we have been making are in readiness for a line of jewellery we want to create, subject to the arrival of our belated supplies so hopefully we will have more to show you on these later in the week. We put together a prototype for your comments shown here, but it is unfinished as we have no clasps at the moment. Flower hair clips are another idea we want to try too.

The Jubilee coasters have been similarly pushed aside but we need to crack on with these this week or there will really be no point at all! 

In addition to these we had a great idea for mini bunting necklaces which may just make it into our Etsy shop for the weekend in question but the way things have been going recently one really can't tell!

So this week we have been blocking up the pipeline with even more ideas and experiments. We promise we will behave ourselves and start stocking our Etsy shelves soon though!

Now for the finale. The pink bird's niece and nephew are coming to stay in the Summer so she thought she should get a move on and start making them some goodies! Here is the first. This little fella is an owl purse based on a circle which we adapted after lots of tries with other patterns. the top opening is pretty narrow but it is for the niece who is only three so it will be perfect for her little paws! To give you an idea of scale it is about 15cm wide and the strap is 45cm long so she can wear it over her shoulder just like mummy! 

 

We hope she likes it and would love your comments too. A photo went onto Instagram earlier and it got lots of likes. If you think we should make some for our shop let us know. We are still finding our feet with the Etsy shop so any free market research would be appreciated!

So we have not been completely idle this week but have a lot of work still to do! Once again, let us know if you would like us to try any particular ideas out or just send us your comments on what we have put together so far.

Lots of love,

TBC x