What you need:

• Fabric
• Needle and thread or sewing machine
• Wire

First thing you need to do is work out how long you want the usamimi to be and cut a rectangle of fabric to that size. Fold it in half on the long side (so it’s very thin and long) and cut the ends into slightly curved points. The photo below shows what the points should look like unfolded.

This is what you should end up with, two points on each end.

Fold it so the good side of the fabric is on the inside and start stitching at the crease. Go up to the point:

And back down the other side.

Continue stitching all the way down the side until you reach the end of the other point.

Tie off the thread and leave the other end of the point open.

Turn the whole thing inside out through the hole at the point.

If you need to, use something pointy like a pen to help push it all through.

You should have something along these lines:

Cut a length of wire a few inches longer than the fabric is point to point. Fold one end of the over and twist so it forms a loop. This will prevent it from poking through the stitching on the other side.  Push the piece of wire into the usamimi through the hole and all the way to the other point.

In the other tutorial I wrote the wire was stitched around the outside of the fabric, that works best if you have very thin wire, this technique works best if you have thicker wire.

Once the wire is all the way in, twist the other end in a loop too.

Fold the edges of the hole under and hand stitch it completely shut.

Test it out by twisting it together and you’re good to go :D

Very simple to do and super quick if you do them on the sewing machine too. If your fabric is very puffy you might like to topstitch the sides to flatten it a bit but I actually prefer the puffiness.

Hope you guys enjoyed, there’s a video version of this coming soon too!

• Black felt
• Thick velcro
• Other felt for the letters (I’m using grey)
• Needle/thread
• Ribbon or elastic to attach it
• Lace or more ribbon for edging
• Matching thick ribbon or more felt to match.

Now we need something to cover the edges and the rest of the backing. I had some pretty matching ribbon but you could also use some more felt. So cut a piece to go above and below the velcro like this:

The velcro makes it a bit harder to work with than regular fabric so pin it all in place.

And then cut it to shape.

To hold it all together you will need to edge it, I hand stitched some lace around all of the sides. If you didn’t want to use lace you could use matching ribbon or bias binding tape. Make sure you encase all of the raw edges in the lace so nothing can come undone later.

At this point you probably want to stop and have a bit of a giggle that you’ve inadvertently created a Kanye West style shutter glasses sleep mask XD If you’re into that kind of thing you could always just stop here haha!

Now you need a way of attaching it to your head, I sewed a piece of lace on each side to form ties but you could also use elastic.

Now cut out the words you want to spell from matching felt. If you want you could also cut out several options to use depending on your mood.

Press them firmly to the velcro and you’ve got a descriptive sleep mask!

Now if the mask actually said what my brain thought when people wake me up from naps it wouldn’t be suitable for the internet ;)

• Polar fleece
• Lace
• Needle and thread
• Embroider thread (optional)
• Lace
• Rice or something similar to put inside.

So there you go! Perfect for Winter, just make sure you don’t use anything meltable/flammable in the construction then pop it in the microwave for 10 seconds to warm up. Keep it in your pocket in winter or make two and pop them in your slippers :D Now if only I could come up with one of these that was cooling, it’s sooooooo hot right now ;_;

Someone want to come to my house and pour ice all over me? Or bring a snow machine and turn my apartment into a winter wonderland? Yes please!

• Paperclay (I’m going to try out a recipe I found to make my own next time, tutorial on that to come!)
• Magnet
• Hot glue
• Watercolour paint

The last thing to do is paint on some details. I used watercolour paint because it was on hand already and soaked into the clay easily. You could also use a marker or pen.

Bergamot has little hearts in her ears, big black eyes, blushing cheeks, little mouth and a V on her foot.

And that’s it! Little Bergamot magnets to live on your fridge :D These are so much quicker to make than actual Bergamots so I want to make some other animals now as gifts!

I placed the shadow onto the straightener and used it to gently heat the back, this loosens the glue and allows you to pry them out easily. I was careful not to heat it enough to melt the plastic, just enough to be warm.

Using a sewing needle I gently wedged the shadows out. It was a little hard at first because there wasn’t much room between the shadow and plastic but after working the various sides and reheating a few times I managed to pop it out.

Done!

Some of the shadows I depotted required a bit of clean up on the bottoms and sides to remove the extra glue or extra crushed shadow.

This was my placement, you can see that the gold (a super cheap one from a palette I hardly use now) didn’t quite fit so I used some scissors and snipped off the end. A couple of the shadows cracked while I was removing them but I fixed that easily by repressing with some hand sanitiser.

Some of the shadows were magnetic to start with but others I needed to add the magnets that came with the palette, this posed a bit of a problem with a couple of the larger ones because they were quite tall and with the added magnet the lid no longer closed. I also found the adhesive on the magnets didn’t want to stick to some of the shadows. I figured I probably wouldn’t be changing the shadows around any time soon so I used thin double sided tape instead.

So there you go, these are the colours I use the most and now they’re all in one place and I don’t have to pack a billion things when I travel!

Absolutely love it and it makes my morning make up routine so much more organised and easy! Thank you Celina!