Lark Crafts

Once again, we welcome Crochet Garden author Suzann Thompson to LarkCrafts.com! This week, you’re in for a treat as she shares a free pattern for the Leaves and Berries Spray. Made up in any palette – spring, summer, fall, or winter – these leaves are so sweet. Happy stitching!

These Leaves and Berries are inspired by blue and white Zwiebelmuster chinaware. You’ll find instructions for crocheted berries here, but you can use buttons for berries, too.
Skill Level: Intermediate

Materials and Tools
2 colors of yarn of similar weight: dark and light leaf colors (A and B), berry color (C)
Hook: Appropriate size hook to achieve a firm gauge with selected yarn
Tapestry needle
Buttons (optional)

For these leaves we used:
Berroco Ultra® Alpaca (50% super fine alpaca, 50% Peruvian wool; 3.5oz/100g = 215yd/198m): (A) color royal blue #6260; (B) color light blue #6239—light weight yarn; <3> and mother-of-pearl buttons as berries
Gauge Circle = 1″/2.5cm worked on 4.00mm (size G-6 U.S.) hook
Finished Measurements: 3 7/8″/9.8cm x 7″/17.8cm

Louet KidLin (49% linen, 35% kid mohair, 16% nylon; 1.75oz/50g = 250yd/228m): (A) color Grasshopper #33; (B) color Colorado Spruce #17; (C) color Mexican Orange #06—fine weight yarn; <2>
Gauge Circle = 3/4″/1.8cm worked on 3.50mm (size E-4 U.S.) hook
Finished Measurements: 3 1/8″/7.9cm x 5 1/2″/14cm

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Do you have an old lamp that you want to freshen up? Good! Here’s where your old lamp and Mod Podge collide: this lovely project from Amy Anderson’s book Mod Podge Rocks!

All you’ll need is a piece of fabric (or fabric scraps), some ribbon, and Fabric Mod Podge. And your old lampshade, of course.

Download these free project instructions for the Geo Birds Fabric Lampshade and put your Mod Podge creativity to work–you’ll be so very pleased with your crafty bright idea.

Ahh, the 4^th of July—a time to celebrate the good ol’ USA with fireworks, the national anthem, parades, and all things red, white, and blue. Since lots of us gather with friends and family to observe this holiday (and lots of that gathering includes summertime treats), I thought it might be nice to take a little tour of some delicious red, white, and blue desserts made by a collection of incredibly talented bakers and kitchen creatives.

Start your holiday with patriotic toast for breakfast, beat the afternoon heat with red, white, and blueberry yogurt pops, and wind down on the porch while sipping a fresh fruit spritzer. With this gorgeous and mouth-watering array of recipes to explore, you may find yourself extending our national holiday by a few days!

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Blueberry Pie :: from CosmoCookie

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Red, White, and Blueberry Yogurt Pops :: from Back to Her Roots

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Red, White, and Blue Ice Cream Sandwiches :: from Taste and Tell

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Red, White, and Blue Cookies :: from Ari’s Menu

***(See more delicious treats after the jump…)***

To celebrate July 4th and Heart-Felt Holidays, our follow-up to the best-selling Fa la la la Felt, we’re giving away this lovely bunting made by Constança Cabral. It may seem odd that we asked a native of Lisbon, Portugal, now living in and blogging from the English countryside, to design a bunting to celebrate our nation’s independence, but we’ve always loved Constança’s way with red, white, and blue.

If you’re the lucky winner of this bunting, you can hang it year round, knowing it came a long way from Constança’s home to yours.

If you want to make this easy bunting, and 39 other adorable felt projects for holidays and celebrations, buy the book for under $10 online.

Enter for a chance to win the July 4th bunting from Heart-Felt Holidays! Simply leave a comment on this post by 9 p.m. EST on Friday, June 28th. Any comment is fine, but we’d love to hear about your favorite summer crafting project. One winner will be selected at random from among all eligible entries and notified by Monday, July 2. Click here for the official rules.

UPDATE: Congratulations to Carrie Pippins of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Carrie was randomly selected as the winner of Constança Cabral’s 4th of July bunting. Our thanks to everyone who participated!

One of the things that I enjoy most about making handmade books and journals is imagining what will fill their pages, especially when I give those items away as gifts. When I make a journal I always make the effort to create an artful, finished cover. I recently realized, though, that perhaps the end recipient would like to embellish and personalize the cover to their own tastes. Since it’s hard to find such a blank canvas journal I’m offering one up here for one lucky person.

As you can see below, I left an exposed spine so you can also show off the inside pages. It would be fun to match up the art from the outside in.

I also find that many art sketchbooks come with so many pages than I hardly ever get around to finishing a whole book that feels cohesive and focused on a central theme. So this journal only has a handful of pages to craft a short visual story.

And one last detail: I made these blank covers from recycling the boards of three ring binders, so they have that nice rounded corner. Let’s hear it for determined, creative repurposing!

To enter for a chance to win this handmade journal, please leave a comment on this post by 9 p.m. EST on Monday, July 2nd. One winner will be selected at random from among all eligible entries and notified by Friday, July 6th. Click here for the official rules.

In the spirit of our recent book Mod Podge Rocks! perhaps you would like to decoupage a design on the cover using one of the various Mod Podge finishes and their brand new Design Elements just launched this month. Or maybe you’re more into the creative exploration of collage. Then let The Collage Workbook be your guide. Whatever your medium or inspiration, we hope that whoever receives this journal will use it as a creative spark!

Crochet Garden author Suzann Thompson will be joining us for a series of Friday posts through July. Her first installment: a lovely, colorful flower scarf, all made up from trilliums!

This Trillium Flower Cloth Scarf is crocheted with the deliciously colorful “Falk” from Dale of Norway Yarns and trillium flower and leaf patterns from Crochet Garden. But first, what in the world is flower cloth?

Flower cloth is a lacy cloth made by arranging and pinning crocheted motifs face-down on a fabric template, then hand-sewing them together.  The fabric template can be any shape. Since the template provides the shape, you have lots of freedom in choosing motifs and yarns for your flower cloth.  You can use yarns in all kinds of textures, colors, weights, fiber content, because—may we have a drum roll, please?—gauge doesn’t matter!

Are you headed to TNNA this weekend? If so, stop by and say hello to some of your favorite Lark authors while you’re there! Here’s a list of when and where they’ll be at the show:

Suzann Thompson (author of Crochet Garden and Crochet Bouquet) – Find Suzann Saturday at the Dale of Norway Booth (510-512).

Iris Schreier (author of many books, including the new One + One series) – Find Iris at the ArtYarns booths (641, 740, 639, 738) and at 10:00 am on Sunday at the R&M West Coast booth. Don’t forget to grab a postcard link to a free project download from the book.

Carol J. Sulcoski (author of Sock Yarn Studio, coming this fall!) – Find Carol roaming the show and get a link to a free (gorgeous!) project download from the book.

Katherine Shaughnessy (author of New Crewel and New Crewel: The Motif Collection) – In the Columbus area? Take a class with Katherine on Saturday (5-7pm) at Wholly Craft (3169 North High Street).

Showcase 500 Beaded Jewelry promises to be one of the fall’s most sought after gems. In this beautiful gallery book, nearly 300 bead artists present exquisite, innovative, and often fun and surprising works in bead weaving, embroidery, stringing, handmade beads, and more.

Color proofs of the book were sent to Publishers Weekly, the leading trade magazine for the book publishing industry, and here’s an excerpt from the very enthusiastic review that just released: “Opening this gorgeous hunk of a book is like walking into a high-end jewelry gallery. There are 500 full-color photographs of beaded jewelry — necklaces, rings, bracelets, pins and earrings — created by 275 artists with beads, wire, filament, and fiber. Some of the artists are well-known to beaders, like Carol Wilcox Wells and Diane Fitzgerald, and some not-so-well-known, with their work published for the first time. This makes for a heady blend of inspiration, ideas, and expression. Editor Hemachandra selected the 500 beaded objects from submissions by 360 artists from 30 countries. To his credit, no single style — bead weaving, bead embroidery, bead stringing — gets short shrift. The photography is of high professional standards, no Instagram shots by amateurs posted to Facebook, and is also instructively illustrative of the beadwork, offering closeup shots that will help the aspiring bead worker reproduce some of the techniques.” (You can read the full review — including two debatable criticisms! — online here.)

Our advance copies are in, and I’m going to give away one advance copy of the book signed by me. The winner will be the first person outside the company and book industry to see the book.

How can you enter for a chance to win? Leave a comment on this blog post by 9 p.m. EST on Wednesday, June 27. Any comment counts as an entry, but why don’t you let us know which bead designer inspires you the very most (tough question!). One winner will be selected at random and announced on Tuesday, July 5. Click here for the official rules.

The book is available for preorder at your local bead store or bookstore, or online at BN.com or Amazon.com (go over, take a look, and please give the book’s page a “Like”). Be sure to join Lark Jewelry & Beading on Facebook for book and community news, as well as images of beautiful jewelry. And good luck!

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UPDATE: Congratulations to Adele Recklies of Brooklyn, New York. Adele was randomly selected as the winner of the signed advance copy of Showcase 500 Beaded Jewelry. Our thanks to everyone who participated … and we hope you love the book!

It’s officially summer and we all know what that means…summer craft fairs and festivals are upon us! No matter what part of the country you’re in, chances are there will be something nearby. Or, if not, you may be lucky enough to pass through a big city when a mega-fair is going on. The best thing to do is search before you go, but below are a few we have on our radar.

The Big Ones:
TNNA Trade Show, 6.23-24, Greater Columbus Convention Center, Columbus, OH
Urban Craft Uprising Summer Show, 7.7-8, The Seattle Center Exhibition Hall, Seattle, WA
Craft fair of the Southern Highlands, 7.19-22, US Cellular Center, Asheville, NC
Stitches Midwest, 8.9-12, Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center, Schaumburg, IL

Renegade Craft Fair Brooklyn, 6.23-24, Williamsburg Waterfront, Brooklyn NY

Our office has been absolutely abuzz the past few weeks over the publication of Mod Podge Rocks! The book is a fun celebration of one of the world’s favorite craft brands and line of products and has therefore resulted in a huge (and still growing!) wave of attention from the craft and blogging world. Okay, so perhaps we stoked the flames just a bit by partnering with our good friends at PLAID to offer up some really fantastic prize packages for select blog giveaways.

But we have saved the best for you, Lark Crafts readers.

That’s right, crafty friends. I have been stashing away a huge collection of Mod Podge goodies to offer up here to one lucky winner. There is so much in the prize collection that I was not able to fit all of the items in one photo. Believe me, I tried.

Here’s what the package includes:

* a copy of the Mod Podge Rocks! book

* Mod Podge Tee Shirt

* Essential Tool Kit (brayer and squeegee)

* Silicone Craft Mat

* Roller Applicator Kit

* Brush Applicator

* Rub-On Transfers

* 3D Adhesive Mounts

* Photo Transfer Medium with Brush

* Glow-in-the-Dark with Brush

* Dimensional Magic (original + gold glitter)

* Tracing Templates (alphabet + shapes)

* Podgeable Papers (classic + travel + romance)

* Podgeable Shapes (basic + designer)

* Starter Pack (five 2 oz. bottles)

* Sampler Set (six mini .44 oz. pots)

* Antique Matte (8 oz.)

* Wash Out for Kids (8 oz.)

* Original Gloss (8 oz.)

* Repositionable Glue (2 oz.)

* Jewel Glue (2 oz.)

* Craft Glue (2 oz.)

How can you enter for a chance to win? Leave a comment on this blog post by 9 p.m. EST on Sunday, June 24. Any comment will do, but why don’t you tell us how you like to use Mod Podge. One winner will be selected at random and announced on Monday, June 25. Click here for the official rules. Good luck! Congratulations to Nicole B for winning this amazing giveaway package!