Melanie Toye's Hobbies

It’s been about a year where I have a draw full of washi tape but it’s all everywhere. It wasn’t until I was given a wooden cutlery draw filled with cutlery and after I took out the cutlery, I nearly chucked it and then I thought I wonder if my washi tape could fit in here and I wonder if the cutlery draw could fit in my washi tape draw. So I took a brave step and decided to give it a try.  I took all my loose washi tapes. Some came in packs in circular containers but I had emptied them previously because that was annoying to get one out from the bottom of the container each time.  Picture of the cutlery holder I was going to chuck with my loose washi tapes:  So the cutlery draw fits the only other problem I have and maybe I should buy another cutlery draw to solve this and repeat the same process and add it to the top. So I can easily see all the washi tape, if I take out one cutlery draw.  In the meantime, I put the other washi tape on top of the cutlery draw and t...

 So I like to read and I like to leave important points that I may write down later or just come back to, so have plenty of book marks means I don’t have to destroy the book by marking it using the page itself, instead I can mark the page with a book mark.  If you missed it and prefer to crochet a bookmark, see my blog post here on how to do that:  https://melanietoyeshobbies.blogspot.com/2024/12/how-to-make-crochet-bookmarks.html This time I thought it would be fun, because you can never have enough book marks to scrapbook my own.  How to scrapbook a bookmark: It’s actually quite quick and easy to do and just remember it’s for you to see, so make it something you want to look out. Ideally you want to keep the size less than the book size. But as you will see below, I made some thicker sized ones and thin sized ones. Then choose a piece of card paper or any paper that is thicker than scrapbooking paper. This can even be coloured or styled and you can use it to showca...

Welcome!  If you are a beginner scrapbooker or even an advanced one, today I am sharing one of my scrapbooking ideas. See recently, I found some exercise books and titled each one a different topic so I could brainstorm each topic and let the thoughts out of my mind. You can see why I did this at my blog post here:  https://melanietoyeshobbies.blogspot.com/2025/03/sometimes-you-need-to-get-organised.html?m=1 . Now like any exercise books, they are looking rather dull. So I decided to scrap book one of those exercise books. The front cover and the front title page and here are the results:  I didn’t go all out and use stickers or washi tape. I just found it was enough to just using cut out images. With the first image, which is my new front cover, I used a fairy image out of a calendar. And then from my cut offs ice cream container, I literally found other images and just patterned paper to create the rest.  Now what do I mean about my cut offs container?  Well i...

Image by Lori from Pixabay So I’m well aware we are more than six months ahead before Christmas arrives. But it did make me think, if I want to give crochet gifts to a lot of people for Christmas including my friends and family, I am going to have to start now and crochet one a week to at least make enough gifts by Christmas. So how do you work out a plan to craft for Christmas?  First work out what you can make that doesn’t take too long? For me crocheting is what I will be gifting. A scarf takes too long and it’s summer at Christmas in Australia. So the best crochet item so far that I have made that doesn’t take too long to make is a crochet koala. Which I feel is a great Christmas gift being an Australian native animal. Plus it’s cute.  So to make a plan, what you first need to do is work out what will take you less than five hours to make.  Then work out how many friends and family you want to make this for?  Work out how many weeks till Christmas.  Can you...