"Hup Holland" keyrings with charms

Youngest's school has the tradition of not celebrating the birthdays of teachers on their actual birthday but all the teachers of a year (or sometimes more years) get together and plot a party that lasts either all morning or all afternoon of a school day (in older classes they also do stuff like a sleepover and a gala dinner) and the kids then usually take a small gift of some sort (the teachers try to encourage something home made from the kids but youngest isn't all that crafty unfortunately). I really hope the teachers like them :)

So this year I made keyrings/bag decorations in the colours of the theme of the party "Hup Holland" which is the football supporters chant at Dutch national football matches (that's soccer for the USA people who are wondering :) )

The large things hanging from ribbons are 4 different coloured  (red/white/blue/orange) 60 degree diamonds sewn together with a layer of leave in stabiliser stuck in place with iron on adhesive so that I didn't have to stuff the shapes but could keep them lightweight.

I also made little "delfts blue" hearts with blue and white fabric bonded to a little heart shape cut from the stabiliser. and strung larger beads onto the ribbons and tied them in place around seashell or sun charms

I bound the tops of the ribbons together with embroidery floss then wrapped it around the ring 3 times and made it pretty with a blanket stitch going all the way round and then over the bit I'd wrapped the thread round.

Lucky stars bracelet and earrings.

I wanted to have a go at making those little paper stars I'd seen people make and after a bit of searching Deviant Art for a paper I liked that was free to use I found this: DeviantART v7 Lucky Star Paper and thought it would be fun to use. I didn't allow my printer to adjust the image to the paper size so ended up with two not quite the same size stars that were smaller than the rest and I used them to make the simple earrings.

Autumn leaves...

Despite hating the cold and the wet weather that often comes with autumn I love this time of year - the winds blowing through invigorate me and my idea of fun is to bicycle with the wind against me as fast as I can make myself go (yeah I  know - crazy). Inspired by the changing weather and the leaves that are starting to fall I made this autumn necklace from glass leaf beads I had lying around and leather cords.  I chose green and 2 shades of brown as those are the colours of the leaves being blown around at this time. I used glass beads to match the cords.

Loving music..

I've had the G clef charm (the musical note charm)  for a long time and not really found a way to use it but the sewing charm necklace inspired me to see if there was a way to use it and with a bit of leather I had lying around (yes I AM that type of person - I keep al kinds of small bits and pieces in case I'll need them for one of my many projects) and beads and "findings" from my bead stash and what you see above is what the result is <grin>

Not much to tell really so I'll let the picture speak for itself .

Sewing charms...

Last week when we were in Tilburg (The Netherlands) I was at a lovely little quilt shop - Quilt-it it's housed in an old Dutch house and the shop itself is in the parlour, with the class room being in the room across the hallway - it had lovely tiles on the floor in the hall that were original to the house. They specialise in old style fabrics - muted reds/brown/blues etc. not really my taste but certainly lovely fabrics so I got myself a couple of FQ's (that's a piece of fabric that's around 20 x 18 inches for the non quilters reading this) in some red tones, some needles and some lovely sewing related charms.

Today while in town with the kids I got the coloured leather laces, closure and other bits and pieces for making a necklace and made myself this in about 20 minutes.