Thrifty Thursday - Treasure Baskets and some new things in the pipeline...

We're steering in a slightly different direction for this week's Thrifty Thursday and in some parts a more personal one. Today's post will be focussed on the small people. Yes, kiddies!

The purple bird became a mother last year for the first time and has sadly "sniff," just returned to the rather boring world of work. When she was enjoying her lovely, all too short maternity leave, her Thursday afternoons were spent at the local Treasure Baskets group.

Treasure Baskets is for babies who can sit up but aren't quite at the crawling stage. The groups, in our experience, usually last just under an hour and are held weekly.

Each session involves a bunch of babies sitting on the floor, with their parent behind them, and some baskets full of treasures infront. The baskets do not have your typical baby toys in, quite the opposite, but that doesn't matter when you're 6 months old! Inside the baskets are wonderful objects with exciting shapes and textures, and some that make funny noises.
More information on Treasure Baskets can be found on the links at the bottom of the post

Sadly the group is now finished but it was great fun watching all the babies (sometimes literally) dive into the baskets and exploring all the items inside them.

As the little chick enjoyed it so much, purple bird decided to make her own treasure basket for home. At first she was a bit stuck for ideas, but after a bit of a search online and remembering what sort of things were in the baskets at the group, the ideas soon started flowing!

The finished article looks like this:

The little chick's treasure basket contains:
Scourer, old mobile phone, bells, body mop, honey stirrer, natural sponge, toothbrush, plastic tub with couscous inside (sealed with lots of sellotape!)

The basket cost next to nothing to put together as nearly all the items included were pilfered from around the home. So you can be very thrifty and not have to spend any money at all but still create a trove of wonder for your little one!

Whilst we're on the subject of kids, we've been thinking up some new ideas for things we could sell in our Etsy shop, that you could buy for your youngsters.

Here's what we've come up with so far...
- Baby headbands - see picture below.
- Young children's crochet jewellery  - no metal used at all, all cotton yarn and buttons, so completely washable!
- Toys - soft animals, balls and cubes for babies.
- Playroom bunting.

The little chick in her pretty flower headband!

We'd love to hear what you think about our ideas, and also if you have made a treasure basket for your baby, what did it include?

More information on Treasure Baskets:
About - Little Acorns site
About - NetMums site
How to make a treasure basket
More ideas and some safety tips *please read!*

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