Homemade washi tape of the week

I love masking tape for wrapping gifts, hanging stuff on the wall etc.. I saw this cute and clever homemade washi tape tutorial (I'm not too sure what the difference is but I believe washi tape is fabric whereas masking tape is paper) on the Mollie Makes website and thought I'd give it a go.

The idea (and pictures) comes from A Spoonful of Sugar, explanations here on Mollie Makes.

Love those Japanese fabrics! I don't have any so I just used pretty floral prints.

All you need is scraps of fabric/paper, scissors, cardboard tube and something to keep the tape attached to the tube (the best would be twist ties but I didn't have any so used masking tape instead). No sewing involved, so quick and easy to make - the hardest part for me was finding and cutting the cardboard tube!

Clever, isn't it? Come on, give it a go!

Fabric notebook cover of the week

And here's the last thing I made to go with the London bag for lil sis' birthday (apologies for the pictures, I never iron anything!) - a fabric book cover (or a bag with handles) from January's issue of Mollie Makes.
You can either fit a standard paperback or an A5 size notebook inside.

Explanations here:

Again, this looked like a simple enough project, straight lines etc.. and I even simplified it by not doing the handles, but for some reason I always end up undoing and redoing things a couple of times!! I really have to learn to be neater and not to rush everything just to get it finished asap!

I thought I might use one of the Russian dolls to put at the end of the bookmark ribbon but they're far too big, thought they'd be a lot smaller than that!

So this is the end of my London stuff (bag, tissue case, pencil roll and notebook cover), this is all going off to Lille very soon - one tick off the list and about 20 things left on it hum hum..

Rainbow pencil roll

Here's a rainbow pencil roll I made for M - a bit of a botched job if I'm honest. There's so many things that aren't quite right with it but I wanted to finish it before picking M up from school and I did!
We put his brand new pens in it. And here it is in action..

I'd always wanted to make one of those and I'm quite pleased that I could use all my dotty fabrics. The only colour I didn't have was black so I used navy blue instead and it looks fine.
OK, got a few more of those to make for my niece and nephew and for my neatly lined up pencils obsessed sister (yes, the same one!).

Rainbow pencil roll seen here and here. Also, explanations in French here. I read the explanations but again, kind of did my own thing..

M "putting the pencils to bed"