How To Make Bracelets Out Of Old Shirts

So what are you going to do with the scrap fabric that you used for the shirt bag? Turn them into shirt bracelets! You will need to cut the excess fabric into half inch strips then stretch them to make the edges curl. For this one, I had four strips and tied them altogether.

This type of knot is the Macrame knot. Take the rightmost string and make an L-shape. Then take your leftmost string and place it over the L.

Take the leftmost string under and then out to the "hole" on the right side. That will be your first knot.

Then just tighten the knot to bring it to the top.

Then do the same steps on the other side!

When you're done it will look like this.

You can also do a fishtail braid or a regular braid if you want your bracelet to be nice and simple :)

Again, I promise I will post photos of the craft project that we had for Muni Market Day. :) Stay tuned!

Making Bags From Old Shirts

Today I will show you how to make a bag out of an old shirt! You can keep this inside your bag and use it if you are going to the grocery store for some quick shopping.

Start with an old cotton shirt. Something that you can easily cut, like this shirt that I used to wear when I was still at the University... so and so pounds lighter.

Cut the collar and the sleeves for the bag handles. By this time your shirt should look like a tank top.

Cut a 3 or 4 inch slit on both sides of the bottom of the shirt.

Cut the bottom part of the shirt into half inch wide and 3 inch long strips. You should cut both the front and back sides of the shirt.

Final step: Tie each strip twice, like a square knot. When you are done, stretch the shirt a bit if you don't want the bottom of your bag to be too tight.

And here is the final product!

By the way, I did this project for Muni Market Day, which was on June 1st. I will post photos of the event soon!

Katha Magazine Issue 05

Seeing as all of the Katha founders are women (and with only one male on the entire team), it wasn't really surprising that most of our ideas on features were women/for women. But we thought it was about time to get out of our comfort zone and feature some barely explored territory for us: men.

Check out the brand new issue, hot off the digital press! http://bit.ly/katha-issue05

Watercolor Leaf Garland

When was the last time you held a crayon? Here's another post that I made for the Childhood and Nostalgia issue of Katha Magazine. For this project we’ll show you how to make a leaf garland using crayons and watercolor. If you ask me, I really missed that waxy texture when you color with crayons! This is cute for nature themed parties especially since spring time is coming.

Materials:

- Watercolor paper or oslo paper

- Crayons

- Watercolor paint

- Paint brush

- Scissors

- String

With your crayons, draw different kinds of leaves on the paper. You can pick the leaves outside and copy their shapes. They don’t have to be perfect.

Paint the leaves with watercolor. Use more water if you want to blend two colors or more. Dark watercolor over light crayon will look best! I really loved the green paint and yellow crayon combination.

Let the leaves dry for about thirty minutes. When it’s completely dry, cut them one by one with a pair of scissors.

Punch holes at the top portion of the leaves with a puncher then string them altogether with yarn, or twine. Another option is use a needle to string all the leaves together.

Then hang your garland by the window, around the walls, or anywhere!

Peanut Butter and NIPS Cupcake

If you haven't read the latest issue of Katha Magazine, then go check it out now! I made a cupcake recipe for the Childhood and Nostalgia issue. If you are Filipino, then I'm sure you know what NIPS are. They're candy colored milk chocolate that's similar to M&M's. They remind me of my childhood because when I was younger NIPS were always included in birthday party loot bags. For this recipe, I used the peanut butter frosting and topped the cupcakes with NIPS.

This recipe, by the way, makes 12 cupcakes

Cupcake Recipe

1 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ cup milk

2 cups flour

½ tbsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

Preheat the oven at 350 F. Line the muffin pans with cupcake liners and set them aside. In a large bowl, cream the butter and together with sugar until smooth. Be sure to use an electric mixer to make the batter light and fluffy. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla. 

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly pour the dry ingredients into the bowl of wet ingredients, then add milk. Once everything is well blended, use an ice cream scooper to transfer the batter to the cupcake liners.

Bake the cupcakes for 15 minutes or until when a toothpick inserted at the center comes out clean. I know by this time you’re excited to frost. But cool the cupcakes on a cooling rack first before frosting!

Now while that’s cooling, let’s make the peanut butter frosting!

Peanut Butter Frosting

½ cup butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

4 heaping spoons of creamy peanut butter

3 tbsp soy milk, or regular milk

First make sure everything is at room temperature. You can use an electric mixer for this but a fork works just as fine. Add the powdered sugar and softened butter in a bowl and mix them together until it’s smooth. Then add the peanut butter one spoon at a time. Gradually add in the milk until the frosting is creamy.

For the topping, just sprinkle 1-2 packs of NIPS on to your frosted cupcakes to make them look happy and colorful!

Katha Magazine Issue 04 is out!

There are a lot of things we miss about being a kid, and we try to reminisce in the best way we know how, by sharing with you some great work and stories that are sure to give you one big nostalgic throwback.

Read it here: http://bit.ly/katha-issue04. Happy Sunday reading!

Valentine Greeting Cards with Rubber Erasers

Here's another craft project that I made for the latest issue of Katha Magazine. Create a simple greeting card that you can give to your loved ones. You don’t need to buy stamps to decorate your card. Simply use the rubber eraser at the back of your pencil and voila!

Materials:

Ink pad in different colors

Pencil with rubber eraser at the back

White card stock paper

Heart Cookie Cutter

On a piece of paper, trace the outline of the heart template with a pencil. You can use a heart shaped cookie cutter as a template or you can just draw the heart with your own hands. Cut it and tape it on the white card stock paper that you will be using as a greeting card.

Time to decorate! Press the pencil’s eraser on to the ink pad and start stamping on to the card stock paper. Make sure to use one color at a time so you won’t mix the colors on your eraser. I used pink, purple and red ink pads for this. If you do not have ink pads, you can lightly dip your eraser in poster paint instead. This will produce stronger shades.

If you don’t want to decorate your card with plain circles, you can carve your pencil eraser with a cutter into different shapes like triangles, hearts, or squares.

You can embellish your card some more with gold circles. I punched gold paper to create shiny circles, sprayed adhesive on the card stock, and sprinkled the circles all over.

When it’s completely dry, you may remove the heart template and you can write down your message with a pen or whatever medium that you want to use. To stick to the stamped theme, I used my alphabet stamp set to write down my message.

There is nothing more special and personal than a simple handmade gift to a loved one. Hope you enjoyed this! Have a great day! :) Read more articles in Katha Magazine.

Katha Magazine - Third Issue

Leaps of faith comes in all shapes and sizes. It's inspiring to know that there are a lot of people out there who have taken that proverbial leap in life and love, and we're thankful that some of them are sharing their stories with the rest of us within this issue's pages.

Read our third issue of Katha Magazine here: http://bit.ly/katha-issue03

Katha Magazine's Craft Workshop with Muni and Moonleaf

Hi guys! Let me share with you how my weekend went at Moonleaf. Muni has invited Katha Magazine to participate in The Better Closet and the launch of Muni x Moonleaf 2014 planner last November 16. It was a busy and tiring day, but all of us had fun!

There were a lot of good finds at The Better Closet. Lando was able to snag a nice wool jacket for P320. Such a good deal! Unfortunately for me, I used my money for shopping at Hallmark that day so I didn’t get to buy clothes.

We set up our booth outside and we sold craft items like my pine tree candle holder, Allie’s stamped post cards, Drea’s Merbirds, Geli’s cute paper bags and Aya’s scrapbooking paper. We were glad that we sold many of our items as 100% of the money we earned were for the people affected by the Typhoon Yolanda.

Aside from that, Katha also put together a free craft workshop. We made upcycled holiday projects, facilitated by yours truly :)

So what were the projects that we did? We made fancy snow globes out of glass jars, glitter glue and glitter powder

we also made pillow boxes from toilet paper cardboard tubes and scrapbooking paper

And finally we made magazine tassel garlands, which you can find my tutorial here. Cai from Moonleaf let us hang our masterpiece at one of their cork boards.

That was my first time to teach in a workshop and I was pretty nervous. But all is well! I’m proud of what my students did!

My favorite student was Keisha, our youngest participant. She really loves crafting and didn’t really need that much assistance! She got addicted to decorating her pillow boxes with washi tape :)

If you want to know how to make the craft projects that we did that day, don’t worry! I’m going to post the tutorials here on my blog ;) So stay tuned!

For the mean time, please do check out our catalog and participate on our online auction, Padayon. Just like our booth at Moonleaf, 100% of the proceeds will go to the Philippine Red Cross and it will definitely help the people affected by the typhoon. 

Photos via Katha Magazine

Padayon: Katha Magazine's Auction for a Cause

Katha Magazine, together with Paint Some Happy, will hold an online auction to raise funds for the benefit of relief efforts aimed towards survivors of Super Typhoon Yolanda. The chosen organization is the Philippine Red Cross.

The auction will feature works of local designers and crafters who generously donated their works for the cause. The auction catalogue showcasing all works will be released on November 18, 2013, which will also mark the start of the weeklong online auction.

The target amount of the auction is a minimum of Php 15,000. One hundred percent (100%) of the proceeds will be turned over to the Philippine Red Cross.

A total of eighteen (18) donors provided their work for the auction. The donors were given the freedom to create an original and unique work. Each work showcases their ingenuity, creativity and mastery of craft. The starting bid prices, which are recommended by the donors, range from Php 300 to Php 3,500.

Check out more details on the catalog that you can view here on issuu:

Chocolate Covered Potato Chips

Incase you haven't seen the second issue of Katha Magazine, you can read it on Issuu here. I did a write up on how to make these easy chocolate covered potato chips that you can serve at a party. At first I thought these wouldn't work, but when I tasted them the saltiness of the chips even complemented the sweetness of the chocolate.

There are three things that you will need:

1. A bag of potato chips (Net Weight 9 oz) -I prefer to use potato chips with ridges like Ruffles.

2. 1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

3. ¼ teaspoon of peppermint extract

Directions:

1. Make sure that the pot you will be using is completely dry. Even a small amount of water can cause the chocolate to be clumpy.

2. In a double boiler, slowly melt the chocolate. Once it has melted, mix ¼ teaspoon of peppermint extract

into the chocolate. You only need that much, if you add too much of the mint extract, the flavor might

be too strong and you won’t get to appreciate the chocolate-salt flavor.

3. From there, you can either dunk the potato chips one at a time on the pot of melted chocolate, or you can use a spoon to scoop the chocolate and pour it over the potato chip. Set it aside on a sheet of parchment paper and wait for it.

Katha Magazine - Second Issue

Everything has been a wonderful blur ever since we launched Katha and its maiden issue two months ago, and now we’re back with our second issue.

Our second issue is filled with articles about giving, receiving and giving back. Due to the overwhelming response we received from issue one, we’re giving back the good karma by filling up our second issue with giveaways from cover to cover 

In the meantime, you can read and view our second issue here http://bit.ly/katha-issue02.You can also download our issues here http://bitly.com/download-katha and bring it everywhere you go!

Choco Mallow Biscuits

When I was younger, we used to eat Choco-Mallows for dessert. Those chocolate treats wrapped in foil are just nice and fluffy, and yummy in my tummy! Well, up to now I still do eat them. But now that I know how to make my own choco mallows in my own kitchen, it makes me giddy and feel like a kid again. I'd like to share with you this recipe of Chocolate Marshmallow Biscuits that I made for Katha Magazine. If you want to read more about arts, crafts and other handmade things in the Philippines, then click do check us out.

Choco Mallow Biscuits

Biscuit Recipe:

3/4 cup unsalted butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking flour

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven at 400F

Mix butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until well blended. Add in two eggs and 1 teaspoon vanilla and continue mixing. Gradually add the all-purpose flour, baking powder, and salt into the batter and blend everything using an electric mixer or just using a spatula. Let the dough chill for 1 hour in the freezer.

Once it has chilled, use a rolling pin to flatten the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. You may use a cookie cutter or a small drinking glass to cut the dough into small circles about 2 inches in diameter. Lay them out on a baking pan with a cookie sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cookies cool in a rack while you make the marshmallow.

Marshmallow Recipe:

1/4 cup water

1/4 cup light corn syrup

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon powdered gelatin

2 tablespoons cold water

2 egg whites at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

Pour 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin on a bowl with 2 tablespoons cold water. Mix and set this aside.  In a medium sized mixing bowl, whip the two egg whites with an electric mixer until hard peaks form.

Combine water, corn syrup and sugar in a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Do not stir when while the sugar is boiling. You will need a candy thermometer to check that the sugar mixture does not go above 235F (soft ball). When it reaches the required temperature, remove from heat.

Slowly pour the hot sugar, gelatin and vanilla into the bowl of whipped egg whites while mixing with an electric mixer. You will notice that the outer side of bowl will feel warm. Just keep mixing until the mixture cools down.

Transfer the mixture in an icing bag. If you do not have any, you can use a zip loc and cut the tip of the bag. Pipe the marshmallow onto the biscuits and let it set for about 2 hours.

Chocolate Dip:

Melt a pack of semi-sweet chocolate chips in a double boiler. Dip the marshmallow biscuits into the melted chocolate. Let them cool on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Makes 36 biscuits

Katha Magazine - First Issue is Out!

Finally, I can share this newest project that I am most proud of! Just a couple of months ago, my friends and I came up with an idea to make a bi-monthly online magazine about arts, crafting, and design in the local scene. We named our baby Katha Magazine.

Katha in Filipino means to create, imagine, or make something. That's what our online magazine is all about - reimagining creativity. You can read our magazine on Issuu and download a copy for free.

Don't forget to subscribe!

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