TEMPTING ADS – Craft Gossip

I purchased the latest two issues of Interweave Crochet Magazine at my LYS last night. I just love this magazine. There were some ads that were so appealing looking that I decided to visit the websites to see exactly what they had to offer crocheters. Here’s what I found:

This beauty if from purlbee.com, but most of their goodies seem to be knitted (boo hoo):

Joelle's Giant Granny Square

Add this site to your faves for buttons. It takes you to two button manufacturers (they also have yarn and hooks). This set of irresistable hearts is from buttonmad.com:

buttonmad.com via accessoriesunlimitedinc.com

Hard to hold onto the one’s credit card with all these scrumptious goodies available at the touch of a key.

Elann.com offers many wonderful yarns and some free patterns (among other things). This ethereal little shawl is one of their free crochet patterns:

elann.com superplum capelet free pattern

I never expected to find information like this through an ad in a magazine, but if you’ve ever thought of yourself as a potential crochet designer, you gotta check out this extensive article at www.crochetasylum.com:
http://crochetasylum.com/cart/page.html?chapter=0&id=10

Doesn’t hurt that they also sell, among lots of crochet ‘hardware’, these appealing hook holders – each one is unique:

http://crochetasylum.com/cart/felted-wool-hook-rollup-custom-no-two-alike-p-23.html

Finally – for today – I’ll leave you with this sample of a Universal Yarns product. I had this stuff in my hands last night at the LYS. It’s luscious stuff. If I’d been able to see it swatched, I’d have bought several balls. I wasn’t familiar with Universal Yarns until yesterday! Glad this ad took me to their site so I’ll know what to look for at the LYS next time.

: Universal Yarns Classic Worsted Impressions – Color ‘Camouflage’ www.universalyarns.com

I’ll have more Tempting Ads details soon.

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I guess this isn’t exclusively a kid’s craft or learning activity (though cutting and folding are great for developing fine motor skills!) but I think kids would love having some of these printable holiday houses around the house or classroom to play with in the holiday season. Because they’re made of paper, they’re inexpensive to make, and while there is assembly involved the results are well worth the work.

If you have a cutting machine you can use the cut files from Delia Creates to make making your own paper village that much easier. She actually cut out all her buildings in different colors of card stock and used them to decorate a wreath, but you could also put them on the mantle or on a low table for kids to play with. Make a whole small world scene complete with fake snow, little characters and other elements, and kids are sure to start making their own stories to go with the setup.

This set of houses is printed and cut out using a craft knife. It’s meant to be an advent calendar, with each of the buildings numbered and you can stick a treat inside. But you could also just play with the buildings! You can get a free download of four buildings from Little House on the Corner, or head to the post to see where you can buy the whole set.

The Mavelo website isn’t in English, but their printable gingerbread house template is super cute to use as a gift box or to play with. If you need the instructions the website is in Polish but Google Translate seems to do a pretty good job.

Bora Illustrates has an adorable little house to print, cut and assemble featuring a cat, bird and gingerbread person. You could probably print it in black and white and have your kiddo color it, too.

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