Temari Ball

If  you are the sort of person who likes crafts and enjoys a challenge then making Temari balls to use as Christmas ornaments should appeal to you.  Temari is a very old Japanese craft where the women used the silk from old kimonos to make soft toys for young children to play with.  It has developed over the years to become a specialized craft form and there are Temari schools with very high standards.

In its most basic form a Temari ball is a thick silk or wool wrapped around anything that can be formed into a ball shape: rice, paper, felt, wood chips (not suitable for children) or today Styrofoam.  The core will not be visible in the finished article, and is completely covered by the thick silk wrapping, which is carried out until the effect is uniform.  The next step is to use fine silk or cotton thread and wrap the ball again until all the wool is covered.  It does not matter what color you choose for the first layer, but the last layer will be the background for the detailed design that appears on the ornament.

There are many designs available for decorating Temari balls in a Christmas theme.  Flowers such as poinsettia are very popular, as are snowflakes.  This is the challenging part of making a Temari Christmas decoration.  The ball has be divided into sections using pins and thin paper.  This helps to keep the design centered and symmetrical which is an important aspect of Temari.  Once you have chosen a design and marked out the sections, it is time to begin hand sewing the design using appropriate colors.  Gold and silver work well with Christmas themes.  The Temari can be finished by  sewing a cord or ribbon onto it, to be used to hang your newest Christmas decoration up.

Photo by openarms on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/openarms/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Awareness Ribbons Guide

Visit the guide to awareness ribbon colors at Fire Mountain Gems to see what each ribbon color stands for. I had no idea that there were so many different colors of awareness ribbons.

It makes me wonder if they will lose their effectiveness due to overuse though. Did you know that some colors stand for more than one cause? The pink ribbon can represent four different causes, but since breast cancer is the most well-known, people will think of breast cancer even if you are wearing it to bring attention to another cause. Some of the ribbon colors have more than thirty causes attached to them! Perhaps we will have to start adding words to our ribbons to make sure the meaning is clear to anyone who sees us wearing them.

Island Girl Blockhead

I won the giveaway held by Wee Woobies, and the prize was my choice of any item from the Wee Woobies Etsy shop. I chose the Island Girl Blockhead. I think she is just beautiful! Wee Woobies has some really neat items in her Etsy store. Here are a few I especially like:

Bernat Baby Boucle

I made it past the scrapbooking stuff without too much trouble. That’s one of those crafts I might like to get involved with someday, but I haven’t yet. So it’s not so tempting. Getting past the beads without buying anything was a LOT harder. I did it, but not until after spending quite some time drooling over all the new beads. It’s been awhile since I looked at Walmart’s beads and they have gotten a lot of new styles.

Coin Beads Made From Shells

I ended up getting two huge skeins of Bernat Baby Boucle. They are 10.5-oz skeins in a variegated blue and lavender color that is called water slide. Very pretty. At $3 each, they were about half price. Then I got four packages of 12 mm coin ring beads made from shells. I have plans to make them into bracelets. They were only 25 cents per package.