This month on emuse

This month has been pretty much all about Japanese hair ornaments, otherwise known as kanzashi! And I've had so many ideas on the subject that I've not had time to try them all!

Most tutorials I've found online have only shown how to make tsumami kanzashi (the folded fabric flowers), so I've posted a lot of tutorials this month showing you how you can make some other styles of Japanese hair ornaments and accessories:

Beaded hair stick (tama)

Pentagonal fabric knot (chirimen tegarami)

Pink and silver flower (bonten)

Padded fabric tie (kanoko)
Red fabric tie
Bun ring
Beaded hair comb
Paper kanzashi

And showed off my collection of kanzashi and other hair ornaments that I've made or bought:

My kanzashi collection

Usamimi

Flower kanzashi comb

I also showed how I've worn some of my kanzashi:

Nihongami inspired hairstyle

Kimono outfit and hairstyle

Some kanzashi related art:

Types of hairstyle and hair ornaments drawing

Seasonal kanzashi drawing

And a few paper craft projects on a Japanese theme:

Japanese woman paper sculpture

Paper mini-nihongami
Art college project
Kusudama

Some book and movie reviews:

Geisha

Sakuran
Retro Home

Design Bloggers at Home

And, of course, with Fathers' Day, there were some card ideas:

Cards for men

I also started a new feature, about things I love:
I love... yellow

This month I have been mostly...

Listening to:


Watching:
The final season of Wallander (the Krister Henriksson version)
Amber
Dirty Dancing (I forgot how much I loved that film, it's been a long time since I last saw it!)

Learning:
Microbiology (for work)

Eating:
At the Gallery Restaurant at Forth Valley College (got lunch there on the Microbiology course, and it was amazing!)

Reading:
Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell - I loved this book so much and I'm never embarrassed to read Young Adult fiction or any other genre
Seeing Voices by Oliver Sacks - I always find his books interesting and this one really made me think about language and how it relates to how our mind works

And I got these cute new glasses!

Tutorial: mini nihongami

Here's a fun ornament that I made, a paper sculpture of a traditional Japanese hairstyle!

To make one you will need:

Black card

Coloured card scraps

Patterned paper scraps

Silver card scraps

Jewel stickers

Two sewing pins

Something to display the hairstyle on, for example a wooden doll shape like I have used, or a large bead or a small doll

1. Cut out the two large shapes from black card, and cut slits where marked

2. Roll the sides of the base/side piece around your finger, and do the same with the front/back piece

3. Place the base/side piece on the item it will be displayed on, and press the card to mould it to shape

4. Glue the side flaps to the top of this piece

5. Glue the front/back piece on top, and glue the front and back flaps of it in place

6. Make a little parcel from patterned paper

7. Cut out the top piece from black card, and wrap this around the parcel and glue it

8. Glue this on top of the other pieces

9. Push the sewing pins in place

10. Cut the bira bira and kanoko dome pieces from silver card

11. Cut small repeating slits in these, across the bottom of the bira bira and all around the kanoko dome

12. Glue these in place

13. Punch some flower shapes from coloured card, and cut a small notch in each petal

14. Glue the flowers in place

15. Add some small jewel stickers to the flowers and kanoko dome

Tutorial: Kanoko

A kanoko is a padded tube of fabric that can be wrapped around or woven through various hairstyles. It's often worn by maiko as part of the momoware (split peach) hairstyle.

Traditionally the kanoko is made from a fabric also called kanoko, with a design of small dots. This symbolises the spots on a baby deer, from which the fabric takes its name. I didn't have kanoko fabric, so I used a pink textured fabric.

Here's how to make one!

1. Cut a piece of fabric 30 inches x 4 inches

2. Cut a piece of wadding 28 inches x 2 inches

3. Fold the fabric in half lengthwise with the right side together and pin the wadding in place

4. Sew along the long side (it would be easier if the wadding was at the bottom when you are sewing, as I found out!)

5. Turn it out the right way - this is a bit fiddly and may take some time!

6. Fold each end in, gather and sew

7. Thread some embroidery thread through the end and secure in a knot

Now you can experiment and try out different hairstyles using your kanoko! I tied mine around a bun, and found that it was very comfortable and kept the bun tidy and secure. I'd love to try making these in other colours and patterns!

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Queen's Baton Relay

Today the Queen's Baton for the Commonwealth Games came through Glenrothes, and I headed out at lunchtime to see it. I drove along from work to the end of Scott Road to park, then set off on foot. There was no sign of any runners, so I ended up walking to just outside the sports centre, where I met some of the staff and pupils from work, waiting for their fellow pupil who was a baton bearer. After a long wait (apparently the baton bearers had gone inside to have their lunch!), finally Robbie Simpson appeared holding the baton, cheered along by the crowd.

I then made the mad dash back to the car to get back to work (in fact I was beating the baton at one stage because I took a shortcut!). Luckily my boss didn't mind me being a bit late (it helped that I bumped into his wife on the way, and she phoned to soften him up!). I'm glad that I went all the way to the sports centre, because the baton was carried in a car through parts of the town.

Shortly after I arrived back at school, my boss saw Robbie coming in to the building, so I was able to quickly print off a copy of one of the photos for him!

Kanzashi flower comb

Making kanzashi flowers is a craft I haven't quite mastered yet! This is only the second time I've tried (the first attempt, a few years ago, went straight in the bin!). I think I have now got the hang of choosing a suitable fabric, preparing it, and folding the petals, and my next step is to figure out the best technique gluing of them to the base. I did try making my own rice glue for this, but it didn't hold the petals strongly enough, so I don't think it was thick enough. I used hot glue instead, but this only gave a limited time for repositioning the petals.

I dream of making a beautiful ball of kanzashi flowers, with strings of dangling petals, but I need a bit more practice!

Beaded hair comb

This comb is based on the beaded hair ornament worn by maiko when they have their hair in the yakko shimada hairstyle. My version is one of the quickest and easiest hair ornaments I've ever made!

1. Gather 10 beads of one size and colour, and one larger bead of a contrasting colour (traditionally the beads are red coral and green jade).

2. Thread the beads on a 20cm long piece of wire, with the large bead in the centre and the others arranged symmetrically around it, bending the wire into a smooth curve.

3. Wind the ends of the wire around the comb.

That's it, it's that simple!

I placed my comb above a ponytail and also above a bun. I'd also like to try making a butterfly hair ornament from beads and wire.

Movie review: Sakuran

Sakuran is the most kanzashi-laden film ever! From the very first scene the screen is filled with the most elaborate hair ornaments, and brightest kimonos, I've ever seen. The sets are beautiful, and there are stunning cherry blossoms and gorgeous goldfish.

This film is most certainly not about geisha, but instead about tayuu or oiran, courtesans who "entertain" men in a completely different way, if you know what I mean! The film centres around the rivalry between rebellious Kiyoha and the top courtesan, the Oiran.

It's a bit like a Japanese version of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette - not much substance, but stunningly beautiful and with a soundtrack of modern music that complements the period setting. It's fun, colourful, over-the-top, silly, and has the most ridiculous death scene ever. It's the most visually stunning film I've seen, and I love it.

Tutorial: Momoware bun ring

The hairstyle worn by the maiko in the picture above is called momoware, meaning split peach. Here's how I made a bun ring to make my own version of this hairstyle.

1. Cut the toes off two socks

2. Turn the socks inside out and place one inside the other

3. Starting at the top of the sock, roll both layers outwards

4. When you reach the end, tuck it under and sew 

Make the hairstyle like a normal sock-bun, then pull the hair to the sides to expose the red fabric of the bun ring. Add a sparkly clip to the centre of the bun, and a hair stick.

Craft room reveal!

Here at last are some photos of my craft room in its nearly finished state! There are still a few little projects to finish off, but it’s nearly there!

You’ll see from the before photos that the room was very purple! I really did love the colour, one of the first room ideas I had when buying my house was that I wanted a purple craft room. But, more than 15 years on, I decided that I’d like a more neutral look for the room. This was mainly because it would make it easier to display some of my finished craft items around the room without clashing with the walls, but it also had the added effect of making the room feel much lighter and brighter!

The first step was to have a massive clearout of the room! I filled quite a few bin bags, and also made a trip to the tip. Then I needed to remove some of the furniture from the room, which wasn’t easy as there isn’t much space to put it in the bedroom. I realised that even after my clearout there was a huge amount of stuff left! I ended up pushing most of the furniture to one end of the room while I painted the opposite end, and then doing the same for the other end of the room.

I painted the two longer walls and the ceiling brilliant white (the ceiling was a real pain to do, because it’s polystyrene tiles), and the two shorter walls were painted with Dulux Perfectly Taupe, which is a lovely greyish beige that seems to change colour at different times of day between grey, beige and almost lilac – I love it!

 

After painting one of the white walls, I marked out an area I wanted to paint with blackboard paint. The blackboard paint was a little difficult to work with as it was so runny on the brush that it spattered a lot, but when it was on the wall it was surprisingly difficult to spread about! But I was hugely impressed with the effect, especially after I’d rubbed it with chalk, and if I didn’t love the Perfectly Taupe so much I’d paint a whole wall with it! I also used it to paint the fronts of some Ikea drawers.

I painted the shelving units brilliant white, including the cutlery racks and small shelves I use for my rubber stamps, and decorated a set of plastic drawers with patterned papers. One of my favourite projects was decorating a drawer unit with papers in Japanese designs.

I got a small white lampshade from Ikea, and a retro style clock from Asda. I’ve also done some fun little projects like spray painting a letter rack, and decorating a green pot with washi tape and ribbon for my scissors. I made a couple of little curtains to hide clutter under some of the desks, and it was a good chance to get all the cables for my computer tidied up too!

I don’t really need a lot of privacy in the room, so I took down the vertical blinds and the curtains. This immediately made the room much lighter and brighter, and makes it much easier to take photos there. I do sometimes need a little shade from the sun while using the computer, so I replaced the heavy curtain pole with the thinnest one I could find, and attached some thin voile curtains using clips (but this was after I took the photos). And now that the blinds are out of the way I can use the windowsill (which I stained a darker colour) for displaying some odds and ends like the big pincushion my mum got me recently.

I’m really enjoying having areas to display and photograph my craft projects, and a light, bright craft room to work in!

I love... yellow!

This new feature, I love..., was inspired by a memory from my earliest days at primary school. I remember we had a table, and each month we had to bring in objects of a particular colour to put on the table. Here on my blog, it won't only be colours I'll be looking at, but patterns, textures and styles that inspire me.

Yellow was my favourite colour when I was a little girl, and, after going through my lilac phase, I've come back to it as one of my all-time favourites. Recently I've been bringing some yellow elements into my retro living room, and this made me look at all the other yellow items I've got all around my home. I almost use yellow as a neutral in my wardrobe, using my mustard and lemon cardigans and yellow satchel with nearly any other colour!

Here are some yellow things I've made:
Teapot inspired pendant
Blythe doll hat