{Handmade Christmas} Felt Flower Brooches.

Really, this post should have a subtitle: General rambling about not having enough time to blog. Or something like that. So if you just want to read about the felt brooches, scroll down. Scroll some more. Really, it's there, I promise. Anyhow, if you blog, this might sound familiar (I hope).

I always underestimate the amount of time that blogging adds to any of my projects. Before I started blogging I thought that when I'm doing these things anyway, I might just as well blog about them, right? Wrong. At least for me, it's a challenge to get the things on my list done before I need to pick the kids up AND take decent pictures of the progress. Or the end result. Or the nicely packaged result, since that would mean I would actually have to nicely wrap some of the things just so I can take a picture of them.

And when I do get around to taking pictures, well, imagine me running around the house trying to remember what I need to photograph, trying to find a decent background, spending half an hour I don't have making cute gift tags for the prototype package of dog biscuits and telling myself that I really, really need to learn how to use this camera properly. And of course on those days it's always dark. Always.

Oh, and then the kids get sick. So even if I work around the times spent at home with little brother because he can't go to preschool or the doctor's appointments and all that, there are still the nights. You see, I've learned that blogging during the (kid-free) morning usually results in nothing else getting done (the beds upstairs are a mess as we speak and I'm trying really hard to ignore the crumbs on the floor or the Christmas cards I need to write), so I avoid my laptop, telling myself I'll do that at night when the kids are asleep. Except that they don't really sleep well when they're sick. Surprise. Oh, and little brother doesn't fall alseep without mommy. Never. Ever.

Take yesterday: I was downstairs at 8pm, all kids asleep. Record time. I was feeling crappy, but hey, how can I let a night that starts at 8pm go to waste with something like sleep?! So I made some tea, took some migraine medication, turned on the laptop and started Blogger. Before I could type the first word, little brother was crying. By the time he was back asleep it was 9pm and I decided to go to bed and read some blogs on my phone instead. Pathetic.

It's been a week since my last post and I have so many projects to share! I can't believe I'm not getting any posts done about them. So I'm taking some time off from my to do's today (I have a migraine so technically I could declare this as relax and drink tea, I think...) and start posting about them, regardless of how bad the pics are. I promise I'll take better pictures next year. Really.

So here we go: Felt flower brooches.

If you saw the yarn wreaths, these might look familiar. For the felt flowers, I followed Dani's tutorial. She uses a felt circle that she cuts like a spiral and then rolls it up. See the full tutorial at klitzeklein. I found her method of using a tiny piece of double-sided tape at the beginning of the spiral really helps keep it together. Being lazy, I use fabric glue instead of the hot glue. For me, the small tip on the fabric glue bottle worked really well. I also made some flowers from denim (literally a cut up old pair of jeans, washed, of course) and while with denim the glue needs more time to dry, it still works.

For the leaves I used a trick I had seen on I am Momma Hear Me Roar. She cuts out a leaf (or petal) shape and then cuts a slit at the bottom, folding the two ends over and glues them in place. Works like a charm. What helped, especially with the denim leaves, was to use pins or clips to hold the leaf together until the glue is fully dry.

I ended up doing some flowers and leaves here and there, letting them dry completely overnight before I glued the pins on and then let that dry overnight, too. I guess it would work faster if you use hot glue, but the fabric glue worked just fine for me. So my desk looked like a mess for a while, which is fine since it's a desk and not a dining room table.


For packaging, I used cardboard scraps from boxes just like I did for the clay ornaments. And here we go, all packed up and ready to go. Well, except for the one not pictured with the blue felt that I just did last week. And of course haven't packaged yet. It's on my list. For today, actually. Instead I'm blogging...

I like how they turned out and how customizable they are. I used different combinations of felt and denim and different color combinations for each recipient. In fact, I like them so much, I'm keeping two of them for myself. But don't tell Santa.

A quick look at my watch reveals that it took me two hours to write this. Including taking and downloading some more pics. And some pics of books I really want to share with you. Oh, and I did make the beds meanwhile. I just can't stand unmade beds. I think I'll take of those crumbs on the floor after lunch (really, what is the point of vacuuming when you have preschoolers about to have lunch?!) and try to squeeze in a post about the books... Wish me luck for the weekend, because I have more things to share - dog biscuits, toffee, sibling gifts and my favorite Christmas cookies to name a few.

Anyone out there with advice about how to actually get Christmas posts done before Christmas is over and still get the actual Christmas things done, too?

Swenja