For Christmas, my sister and brother-in-law gave me a Kindle. It’s a very sleek eReader and I’ve been having a fun time playing around with it and downloading books off the Internet. While I was impressed with its capabilities – the ability to store more than 3,000 books (I don’t think I’ll get near that number) or that it has a battery life around a month – what really got me excited was the fact that I could now create some kind of holder for it…after all, it’s very cool design needs to be protected, right?!

I chose felt because it’s a durable fabric, it’s soft enough to provide padding for added protection and it doesn’t fray. I measured out the size, making sure to allow at least an extra 1/2 inch on each side for trimming later. The size I measured was 7.5 inches wide by 9.5 inches tall. For the strap, I measured 5 inches long by 2 inches wide. I layered three pieces of felt together and adhered them together using an iron-on adhesive (make sure to choose one that is also sewable.). I repeated this twice for the front and back panels and did the same thing for the strap.

After sewing a 1/4 inch border around the strap and trimming any excess felt, I sewed the strap onto the top of the back panel. If you decide to add any embellishment, the time is do it at this stage BEFORE you sew both panels together! In my case, I cut out two felt flowers and sewed a button in the middle and then onto the bottom corner of the front panel. Next, I sewed the front and back panels together. The key before sewing both sides together is to make sure that the Kindle fits nicely before completing the other side. After this, I sewed the bottom end.

For the finishing touches, I trimmed each side so that it was about 1/4 inch from the seam and sewed on snap buttons for the strap.

In addition to making this for an eReader, this would also be great for your cell phone or portable game device – all you would need to do differently is measure according to your device. The only complaint I got was from my husband who said that it’s too girly for him to be able to carry around so I’m going to have to make a “guy” version of it!

Paper is my current favorite medium at the moment (the Spring paper wreath was my last craft project). I also bought a paper cutter a while back that cuts out perfect circles…no longer will I try to cut circles out with regular scissors again.  So my latest craft project involves pretty paper, lots of circles and it just so happens to be another decoration that I made for my baby girl’s first birthday which is just a week away!

I cut out 7″ circles from design paper. It’s cardstock so it’s really nice and sturdy. I then cut out 5″ circles of solid color cardstock. Lastly, I printed the letters on regular white paper and cut them out with 4″ circles. I glued the 4″ circles to the 5″ and then glued it to the 7″ design paper.

Next, I punched out two holes on the top of each circle so that I could thread craft ribbon to string them all together. 

This is a super easy project (especially with the cirle paper cutter) that you can make for just about any occasion.

This past spring, I took two classes–HTML and Dreamweaver. Both were online classes–I had never taken an online class before and was pleasantly surprised at how much I learned without physically being in the classroom.

As a marketing professional, I used the Web quite extensively to market products as it is a powerful and cost-efficient way to reach a broad audience. I wanted to take my experience one step further and learn how a Web page is created. Just like knitting where the instructions look like another language, HTML is a computer language with its own set of instructions. In the 6-week class, I learned the fundamentals of Web design, planned the content, structure of my Web site and created pages with backgrounds, tables, hot buttons and animations. I even got more insight into search engine listings.

The other class I took was Dreamweaver which is an industry-standard Web design program. This class required purchasing Dreamweaver software. The challenge that I had was that I purchased the latest version of Dreamweaver (I mean, why would I buy an older version), but the course material was written for Dreamweaver 8. I’d say about 80% was still valid, but there were a lot of parts that I skipped because it was not relevant with the newer version.

Anyway, in this class, I learned how to create documents and work with text, images, links, tables and multimedia files. I learned that there are 5 primary questions to guarantee success for any Web site project:

1) What is the primary objective of my site?

2) Who is the intended audience?

3) How will visitors be viewing the site?

4) How should visitors navigate my site?

5) What will the site look like?

I highly recommend these classes for anyone interested in creating their own Web site!