The Kira Nichols Etsy Shop

Plenty more to see at kiranichols.etsy.com! Bookmarks, planner clips, digital stamps, ornaments, and many more unique gifts. Thanks for supporting this artist!

Simple headband

I made this kuh-yoot headband this morning. After the YW presidency meeting at Jessica's, she let me go through her stash (she's an amazing quilter) and pick out a TON of excellent scraps. They were 2" x 34", perfect size for making headbands! Then she had a ton that were about 4" x 34", perfect for card wallets! SCORE!!!!!!!! She said she had them for like 6 years, so was glad to get them off her hands and put to good use.
I stitched on some felt flowers with seed bead accents and some additional branches! I am super pleased. I made them kinda tight because I HATE when headbands ride up my head and don't stay put.
Super fun RITE?! (>.<)
Posted by Picasa

Yellow Bear Card Wallet/Wristlet

Ah, the lovely fabrics you can find in the remnants bin at Walmart... I can actually say "I crafted this today" about this project. I'm starting to get te hang of the sewing machine, slowly. I hope I'm not speaking too soon, but I think I could actually get pretty decent at sewing. I just need to learn to keep my cool.
I actually screwed this up by sewing the wrist strap in backwards, so it would be sticking out the INSIDE instead of the right way. Luckily, my husband, in his infinite wisdom, told me to get a seam ripper while at the fabric store this weekend, so I didn't have to curse the world and my sewing machine... I fixed it, and I'm glad for it.
The inside isn't anything to have a party over, but it's not bad, right? No frills, no gimmicks. I just may make a few more of these for swaps, friends, fam, whatev... I need some other good ideas of small-sized projects to help me improve my sewing skills. I'm thinking headbands next. I use headbands.
Posted by Picasa

Laughing Birds Pillow Case

I made this yesterday after church! I'm not really a quilter, and I wouldn't really call myself a seamstress... More like a seamstrocity. But I've made a couple of projects like this and they turn out very well. I used some vintage cotton prints from my stash, then felt and fleece scraps for the birds.
The back is not vintage, but one of the prints I bought at the fabric store on Saturday. I thought about sewing the pillowform INSIDE of the pillowcase, but then decided against it and made this little envelopey opening for easy washing. I totally forgot to shrink the back fabric first, soooo looks like this will not be going in the dryer.
These are my favorite laughing birds I handstitched. I like how they all have different faces. Haha, upper right-corner-bird is SO AZN!!
Posted by Picasa

Dark Harp Records Painting

Here's another project I came across while going through digital photos on my computer...I painted this for a friend's recording studio about a year ago.
I took a photo of the gang jumping pool balls, then using photoshop, I made a high-contrast xerox-like image...
I started out with a canvas that I had painted a random texture onto in lots of layers to look sort of tie-dyed, then used that grid method (whatever it's called) to sketch the image on the canvas for painting.
It took a few days, but it was pretty fun. Turned out pretty cool.

Posted by Picasa

Bunny Baby Pilloh

This here is a pretty dang old project, or at least it seems like it. I've been going through the some odd 16,000 digital photos on my computer and am digging up some good stuff! I sewed this bunny pillow for my niece over a year ago.
The fabric is just various cotton prints cut to 4" x 4", then sewn together. like a quilt.
I cut the various elements of the bunny design from felt, then handstitched them all on. I made a lined pillowcase and then the correct sized pillow separately, in case the baby puked on it :) It was much loved by my niece when I gave it to her
Posted by Picasa

Amigurumis

Here's another round of old projects! This time the theme is crocheted amigurumi!

This guy is about the size of a large pummello grapefruit. His body was originally going to be the abdomen of a big yellow spider, but I got sick of the yarn color and just wanted the project to be done, so I turned him into a little fox!
Here are three little red birds. I used Modea Dream Yarn, and boy is it so soft. Perfect for baby chick feathers.
Here are some miscellaneous other old projects. The most recent of which I made friday evening, the pink cupcake! Sometimes I start with patterns from the book Amigurumi World, but I usually get sick of counting and just end up wingin' it.
Posted by Picasa

Lolcats Charms

For ur lol'ing pleshure:
LOLCATS SHRINKY DINK CHARMS!!!!
I made 3 different rounds of eight charms each for a total of 24 styles of lols. I totally love lolcats. I think they are so funny.
My favorite is "I HAS A HAPPY". I sold a bunch of these on Etsy initially, but sales have seriously slowed. My intitial thoughts on Etsy that it was too much work for too little gratification. Maybe I was right. I don't really keep my shop stocked, but at least it's there as a tool when people from craftster want some of my crap! I always thought it would be funner to get a booth at a craft fair!
Posted by Picasa

Shrinky Dink Charm Bracelets

Shrinky dink is one of my FAVORITE materials right now, seriously! The following are the charm bracelets I've made over the past 3 months or so. I love how I can have such tiny detail because of the shrinkage!
These cuuuute lil guys are Sanrio characters of Coro Coro Kuririn. I made this for a swap that hasn't been sent yet, soooo hopefully my swap partner doesn't read this. If so, DANGIT! Oh well.
This one has original drawing designs from Alice & Wonderland. My favorite is the Cheshire Cat. So mischief!
I flippin' love Disney and Mickey Mouse! I added some swarovski crystal beads, as the mouse deserves a little *bling*. I will keep this one indefiniately, where I will probably sell or give away the others. My only thing is that I can barely stand to keep a bracelet on for more than an hour or two. My wrists get tired, lol.
This one has little birdies and roosters on it. These charms are sooooo tiny. Think like 3 mm x 5 mm. It's hard to draw a real detailed image on these, as they are so small to begin with. So, the tiny birdie designs are perfect.

I'm hoping to make a bunch more of these, but as you can see from the Alice & Kuririn bracelets, I am out of clasps. They're on the way , though. I ordered some from Joann. I found 2 AWESOME necklaces at Goodwill with an unbelievable amount of chain on each, so I've got plenty of that. I've also made a lot of mini-charms from shrinky scraps, so yay.
Posted by Picasa

Beaded butterflies

Today was a magnificent Saturday. Bobby said no to the overtime, and he had today OFF! We drove the long drive "into town" (ha! that makes it sound like we live in the boonies, right?) and he took me to the fabric store AND the craft store!!!!!!! I got some awesome cotton prints and batiks. No specific plans for the new fabrics, but I might smell some wallets and stuff in the near future. Then my sweety took me out to eat at Olive Garden. We haven't been there in FOREVER. The salad was amazing, because it's so dang hot outside.
Having not crafted anything this busy day (GASP!!!?!) I will post an oldie, new to this blog. These are beaded butterflies! I've made five total, I think, the latest of which I have not photographed. I will get it on here eventually.
They are basically just cut from a cotton butterfly print and then heavily embellished with seed beads and sequins. The results are pretty, if I do say so myself.
Each butterfly take about 3-4 hours total. Good thing I have a lot of free time :) I love my job. (I love that I call this my job, too)
I made one into an ornament and sent it off to a swap partner! This is me being happy with it! And Bobby photo-bombing in the background. Haha, I love that man. Especially when he takes me to the craft store :D
Posted by Picasa

My pokemans!! Jigglypuff Rag Rug


I made this cute lil fella on Wednesday. It's made with the basic technique of "toothbrush" rugmaking. It's called that because traditionally, the tool you use to make this rug is a sawed off toothbrush handle. It's kinda melted and shaped to be a big ol' needle. There are some good instructions on ragrugcafe.com. That's where I learned a few months ago.

This jigglypuff took about 2.5 yards of pink cotton fabric, then I fashioned his eyes, mouth, and ear-blackness out of leftover fleece scraps and felt. I was thiiiinking about handsewing these details on, but after handstitching the eyes together, I thought, "meh" and just used the hot glue gun.

I took it to mutual along with some other crafts, because the yw were having a planning meeting to figure out what things they would like to do for Wednesday night activities. It was a hit, so the girls want to make these things on July 8th. Hopefully I can be a good teacher!

So, for now, this puff must remain unused to be an example...he will eventually find his way to just outside my bathroom shower.
Posted by Picasa

Goodwill Dresses

So ignore my HORRIBLY MESSY craftroom for a second and check out this ridiculous formal dress from the 70's or 80's. The story goes, that I have had my eye on these two particular sequined monstrocities for months now at the thrift store. I was there on Monday to browse, and had to ask, "Do y'all ever have sales?" to which the super-friendly cashier, Tina, responded that since they are so short staffed, they haven't been able to keep up cycling out the merchandise and clearancing stale goods, but asked me what I was looking for. I told her about me lurking these dresses for a while now, and she was SO NICE! She took the dresses aside and told me to call the store in the morning, she would ask her supervisor if she would mark them down. Apparently they had been on the rack since February.










LO! Behold! I called back, the dresses were marked down 50% off! I bought them for $7.50 each! My original purpose for these was to tear them down and reconstruct into multiple handbags with stitched-on felt designs. This dress, however, I think I love. Unfortunately, it does not zip fully, as the dress is a size 8, and my booty is decidedly still a size 12. I could be size 8 again if I lost a measly 15-20 lbs... Easier said than done. I love my eats. But I figure, it's hard to find a modest formal dress, and what if I need one some day, for a princess ball or (more likely) a cruise?!

No, I sha'nt be destroying THIS dress.

THIS one, however, will meet the scizzors. It's such a great color with such intense sequining. Ah, it would look so good on stage. My stage days are over, though, so be afraid, teal-sparkle-dress, be very afraid!

GRATUITOUS SEQUIN SHOT!!!! Wouldn't this look sooo good as a handbag wif mermaid or shark motif?!
Posted by Picasa

Dinosaur Crafts

I made all this crap last week for a Dinosaur swap on craftster.org

I love swapping...It inspires me to craft such fun thingies
This bag was a huge success for me. It was the first project I've done on the sewing machine where I didn't lose my cool. The sewing machine just seems to always be making me so angry... This time, it did not. I used felt for the T-rex of my own design, handstitched it on using embroidery floss. The inside is lined with ivory-colored felt, and there is even a little pocket for your cell phone :)

Envelopes reconstructed from the children's book DINOSAUR GARDEN. They are little, notecard-sized envelopes. Good for writing letters!
Two stuffies, one's a stegosaurus, the other is a triceratops. I hand-sewed the stego, for fear of the sewing machine, but got brave and did the triceratops on the sewing machine. I totally rule.

This is a shrinky dink necklace with all the super0cute dino-designs I drew. I accented the charms with swarovsky rhinestones.
Since I had to send the necklace off to my swap partner, I HAD to make another set of charms. This set is slightly smaller.
Here's a set of watercolor paintings inspired by the artwork of Morgan O'Brien. I was really pleased with the stego.
Lastly, a pop-up notecard with a watercolor-painted stegosaurus. Says, "brontosaurus loves you..." Aw.
Posted by Picasa