Ready for Spring - You're Own Little Flower Box

Vintage craft magazines can be such great sources of inspiration! McCall's Needlework and Crafts magazine from 1967 is the source for this charming little project.

It's a trinket box, but what I like about it is the technique can be adapted to so many materials end uses. They suggest you use felt for the flowers and leaves, but you could also use different types and colors of paper, fabric, leather or even rolled fondant! Here's the template for the flowers:

Just right click, or command click on the image above and choose save to download them for your own use. You can resize them as needed in photo editing software.

I did a needlework project based in part on this idea. Instead of glue I used french knots to embroider the felt flowers to the surface. Here's the end result:

What would you do with this idea?

Pretty Little Package - Vintage Crafting Kits

Hi people! I love vintage craft kits. I have a nice little collection of them. They represent pure potential when they're in their uncompleted condition and I'm afraid I haven't tapped that potential in a lot of the ones I have. Here are a few of my favorites:

This one is so cute for a boys room! It's from Avon (who knew they made embroidery kits?), and it features antique cars on a linen ground.

It's unusual in that it's designed to hang as a strip from a simulated wood mount that's included in the kit. It's all about crewel work. I picked this one up at a thrift shop on Long Island years ago.

Here's another crewel kit. This one features flowers in a basket.

This one is unusual in a number of ways - the dark linen ground, the variety of stitches including the pompon centers and, perhaps most notably the three dimensional butterfly that's worked separately and then applied to the surface of the finished piece. This was an Etsy purchase.

This last one was quite an inspiration to me. It's a multi-media kit that features felt applique and embroidery.

I love the dimensional flowers made of felt and accented with french knots. Look at the little jeweled centers - so cute.
This was the basis for a kit I designed myself.

It's a felt applique kit with embroidered stems and leaves.

 I loved the idea of anchoring the felt flowers with french knots so that's how I designed the centers of the daisies. 

Vintage crafting kits are such fun to find and work. They hail from the past, so you can be reasonably assured that you won't find a lot of copies around. They can be found on Etsy and eBay, as well as at thrift shops and yard sales.

If you don't have the patience to go digging around for a vintage one, you can find my daisy kit in two different colorways on Etsy and in my Brini Maxwell Shop at Felix Populi. Do you like crafting with kits, or do you prefer to design your own projects?

Happy crafting!