DIY Archives - thesoutherninstitute.com

Perler Bead Bangles

March 7, 2013 By Amy Johnson 8 Comments

I’m sure many of you remember playing with perler beads as a kid (at least I know I do). I’ve fallen in love with them again after seeing so many awesome ideas floating around online lately. So I got inspired and picked up some supplies to make these fun perler bead bangles–I even made a Vine video at the craft store.

To make your own bangles you’ll need some beads, a circular pegboard, parchment paper, an iron, and a bangle for sizing.

Pick out your colors and set them in something so they won’t roll all over the place.

Use your original bracelet as a guide for the perler beads, placing your beads outside to make sure it’ll fit.

Set your iron to medium and no steam, then place the parchment paper and iron over the beads until you can see them melting together.

I made a hexagonal bangle too, just to see how it would turn out.

Flip the beads over onto the flat side of your pegboard and iron again to make your bangle stronger.

And there you have it–perler bead bangles! You could make just about any shape you want, and having shaped pegboards on hand makes it easy.

My four-year-old loved modeling the bracelets for me. These make a great accesory for big and little girls alike, and they’d be a perfect DIY gift.

What color would you make your bangles?

Fallen in love with any other perler bead crafts?

I’d love to see what you’re making!

Filed Under: crafts Tagged With: bangles, bracelets, color, DIY, perler bead crafts

DIY Pretty Paper Flowers

February 19, 2013 By Karin Schaefer 2 Comments

Hello Southern Institute readers! Many parts of Sweden are still covered in a heavy layer of snow and we long for spring. To cheer ourselves up and get some color in the house we decided to make a bouquet of paper flowers. Let us show you how!

You need scraps of wallpaper, a pair of scissors, aluminium wire for the stem and a few big pearls.

1. Making paper flowers is really easy and if you search the net you’ll find all sorts of flowers to cut and fold. We are making a really easy flower and we use one of the flowers in our wallpaper pattern as a template. You’ll need 4-5 paper petals for every flower. Start cutting!

2. The aluminium wire is soft and easy to work with and a big plastic pearl will serve as the center of our flower. Thread the petals on to the stem.

3. With all the petals on the stem, turn it over and make a crook or a little knot to make the petals stay in place. Shape the petals by gently press them to the center, like Freja does on the picture.

We’ve used four petals in two different sizes for each of the paper flowers and they turned out like this.

The flowers brightens up our house and they will help us cope until real flower bloom in our garden.

We hope you like them too!

Karin & Freja at Pysselbolaget.se

Filed Under: crafts Tagged With: crafts, DIY, flowers, paper crafts, spring

Creative Me Linky Party.

December 30, 2012 By Jenny Yarbrough 9 Comments

Welcome to the Creative Me Linky Party! Whew, we made it through the holidays. Are you as tired as I am? Several nights in a row staying up after 1 am does not a happy Jenny make. My body is screaming for rest, but it was all worth it. We had such a fun Christmas as well as the weeks leading up to it.

What about you? How was your Christmas?

I wonder how many of you stayed home like we did. I love celebrating the season with family, but I also love staying home and avoiding the stress of traveling at this time of the year.

I’ve made a decision as we are heading into 2013…

no more Creative Me Linky Party after this week.

This is the last Creative Me Linky Party, so let’s finish off the year with a bang! I’ve enjoyed being less tied to my computer this past couple of weeks so much that I just want to keep it going, so I’m eliminating anything that makes me feel like I have to post. I won’t have side bar advertising anymore either, just a few affiliates that I love. This gives me the freedom to post when I want to… heck, I can even take two weeks off if I want and not feel like I’m disappointing anyone! Does anyone else struggle with giving themselves a break? I’m looking forward to a more relaxed year, more time spent with my children (and less with the laptop), and more time for sewing and creating. I’m excited!

Thank you all for making the Creative Me Linky Party so much fun! You are so amazingly creative and inspiring! I want to continue to feature you all as members of The Southern Institute community, so I’ll be thinking of ways to make that happen.

In light of that announcement, the last Creative Me Linky Party featured blog of the week is First Comes Love. Meghan linked up these scrumptious chocolate pecan caramels. These look delicious and I love that she has her children involved in this family Christmas baking tradition.

This is my kind of treat! Thanks for linking up with us last week, Meghan!

Now it’s your last chance to link up with Creative Me! I love seeing what you all are up to. Just a few guidelines for linking up. Please:

Follow The Southern Institute and display the Creative Me button somewhere in your post or on your blog.
Don’t have anything new? Show us something from your archives…old to you is new to us!
You can link up as many things as you’d like.
Visit at least two other blogs and leave some comment love. We are a community that supports one another, right? Right?
You can link up your shops as long as you sell handmade goods. (I also have advertising and sponsored posts available here on the blog if you’re interested.)

Don’t forget to grab and proudly display the “featured” button if you’re project has been featured at The Southern Institute.