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Toilet Paper Craft

Here a list of few amazing ideas to realize with toilet paper and toilet paper rolls

The wallet experiment

Since I got the sewing machine last year I did a billion of experiments and followed a trillion tutorials in any possible language and I failed every time. 🙂

But, I never give up.

There are some criteria I follow when I look for tutorials:

  1. It has to be short (less than 10 minutes)
  2. It has to have little talking (no talking is the best)
  3. If there is someone talking she/he has to have a pleasant voice (If the tutorial is really good and short but the person has an unbearable voice I usually remove the audio…)

The only one I liked is this one and it is clearly much longer for me.

It is done very well and easy to follow (if you know what you are doing, which probably it is not my case)

Unfortunately, the result was a total disaster.

Maybe because I’ve sped up the video to save time, maybe because I didn’t have the right tools or experience.

The main problem was to convince my sewing machine to sew the many layers of the wallet. I could not put the bias tape so, in a desperate attempt to save what I had done and stopping breaking needles, I have used glue. Yes, I’ve said it. I’ve used fabric glue.

  1. Used glue for bias tape and credit cards slots too short.
  2. I’ve glued the pockets inside so I guess they could come off any moment
  3. Tried another model but too soft.

I left the wallet alone for a while.

Finally, I have found another brilliant tutorial.

The first attempt was really bad

The second one was a success!

Instead of the bow I have used one of the Eclastic mini Elephants.

What do you think?

The evolution of a product

I was working as camp Manager in Maasai Mara when one of the Maasai in charge of security gave me a gift; a small elephant necklace carved in cow bones.

What if I did it with plastic from a CD? The idea was stuck in my mind for the entire season.

Once home, I tried to cut the same shape on a DVD but it was harder than expected. The trunk was getting broken all the time, the plastic was not melting together, the colours were fading.

After trying hundreds times the elephant necklace was born.

We started to sell at the camp and it was a huge success.

We got featured on the Air Kenya magazine “Ndege News” and some people came to the camp just to buy the small red elephant necklace.

I was very proud, but not totally satisfied.

My mum told me once that Elephants with the trunks up bring good luck and that is what everyone needs, isn’t it? So I changed the original design.

Cutting was even more challenging than before.  But the result was much nicer.

At the same time, I discovered metal stamping. I totally fell in love with it.

But plastic cannot be hammered…so I wrote something on a piece of aluminium taken from an old broken teapot. I wrote a message to myself “NEVER GIVE UP”.

This is how I started “The Elephant with a Message” that got sold out in very short time at the camp.