Full of Craft

Oh dear...

2011-01-26T14:33:00.001-06:00

I didn't write a blog post for Monday. I didn't write one for today. My sister introduced me Pocket Frogs last week so you can blame her. Feel free to leave me a really nasty "Shame on you!" comment if you want to - I totally deserve it! Now please excuse me. I need to get back to my frogs ;)

See you Friday! (I hope!)

Things I found on the internet this week that I thought were just swell!

2011-01-21T12:18:00.000-06:00

I forgot to write my blog post again last night... I'm not going to let myself off the hook though. It is too easy to go from letting myself off the hook for one blog post to letting myself off the hook for quitting the blog. I just need to get back into a writing schedule like I used to have. So, today I'm going to highlight a few projects that I saw this week that I thought were great, and I want to share (and really want to try if I ever get the time). That's cool right? Maybe you have seen these already but I know I would love it if one of my projects made it to like every single craft blog on the internet so... Here we go!

Fabulous find 1: V and Co. Ruffled Heart Pillow

How cute is this pillow? I want to make a ton of them to throw around my house. Or maybe I should make one for my office chair. I've had a Christmas tree pillow sitting on my chair for over a year now. (It was pretty exciting when it was back in season, but sadly, now I'm feeling like a goober again for still having it out, especially since I put away the rest of my Christmas stuff...) I've been toying with the idea of making myself a set of seasonal pillows that I could stash somewhere near my desk, since I am eternally forgetting things I want to bring to/take home from work. This pillow might be the jump-start I need. Also, I wish I had pretty white furniture/white walls to take photos against. I'm so jealous of good craft photographers! Great job Vanessa!

Fabulous find #2: Craftify It Ric Rac Rosettes

What a great idea! I kind of love the rosette trend going around right now, but am way to lazy to go to the effort to make them. Too much prep involved. But I already have ric-rac and I know I can roll things up! I even have some beads already so I'm on my way to making an adorable necklace like the one featured on Craftify It. So so cute! I'm all for simple projects with fantastic results. Thanks for the awesome tutorial Staci!

Fabulous find #3: Magnetic Bunting at Hickety Pickety Handmade

To me, this project is so so clever and so awesome! I just love it! Along with rosettes, I'm also kind of crazy about the bunting trend in the crafting world. I would love to dress my fridge up with this bunting (if my husband will let me, I already have about 8 billion magnets on there...) I have some old promotional magnets that I've been saving for a project and I think this is going to be the one! So cute Chrissy!

Thanks all of you for the inspiration! Where would I be without all the other crafters in the world to spark my creativity?

*All images featured here are property of the respective blog owners. I only wish I could take photos this nice.

Fun fun fun with the Family Creative Workshop!

2011-01-19T08:00:00.004-06:00

Have I talked about the Family Creative Workshop series on here before? I feel like I have... Regardless! I am talking about it again today!

The Family Creative Workshop is a very cool set of craft books from about the mid seventies. I was lucky enough to receive a set from my aunt (I get all kinds of cool stuff from her when she's cleaning out her closets!). It is sort an everything crafty reference guide. It's got things in there I'd never even think of as a craft (gold panning, hibachi...) to things I have no idea what they are (Sprang??). The cover art is beautiful too. Here are a few of my favorites:

I thought it might be fun to hi-light a few of the interesting things I find in this series here on the blog - what do you think? Once a week or so I'll skim the books and find something fun, funky, useful, or just plain weird. And if I'm able, I'll even have a go at some of their project ideas. Sounds good to me!

So here's my first quick hi-light. Today, I'm bringing you a project from Family Creative Workshop Vol 2:

This project is part of the beachcombing section, and I know it is something you will not be able to live without. So without further ado, may I present to you, Lobster Man!

Please enlarge the photo to get the full effect

Now you too can scour the beach in search of old lobster parts to create this work of art. You will be the envy of all your friends and family!

Ok ok - all kidding aside, I really do think this is a great set of books, and there really are some useful tips in here - I just thought I'd start you out with a little of the ridiculous.

Till next time,

The best card I've ever made - the iPad card.

2011-01-17T17:15:00.002-06:00

Do you ever make something, and you're so excited about it that you want to tell everyone you know about it? That is how it was for me with this card. Except I made it as a surprise for my husband so I couldn't put it up on the blog right away. And then I got distracted. And then it was like 6 months later, and I realized I never shared it. Well today is the day!

Check out the coolest card in the entire world, made by yours truly:

Ok, ok. I know not everyone is a mac person. And I know that there are people out there who think iPads are dumb. Still, you have to admit this is a cool card! BTW - it is the size of an actual iPad - I know right? Awesome!

I made this for Stephen for our first anniversary back in July. He is a huge apple fan, and was saving up for an iPad at the time, so I thought it was appropriate. I on the other hand, don't care all that much about apple, so I had to secretly surf the apple website, looking at all the iPad pictures I could find, and looking up all the dimensions I could to get my card as realistic as possible. Well, at least as realistic as and iPad made out of cardstock could get. And then I would lock myself in my craft room, and tell Stephen "You can't come in - I'm working on your card!" He probably thought I was nuts, because I was in there a loooong time... ANYWAYS - I'm super excited about how it turned out.

I felt super clever writing out my message using app icons. I had to browse the app store looking for icons with letters that fit my needs, but of course I had to adapt some of them (thank goodness for all the apps with big blank spaces to write on!)

I even tried to preserve the placement of the apps as they were on the apple website's iPad picture. I had to move some of course. My art skills aren't fantastic, but after hand drawing all these apps I'm pretty pleased with the results. Also, I tried my best to replicate the stock photo that is the iPad's default background.

Angry birds anyone?

The heart above the email means you've got love letters waiting in your inbox!

For the date I put our anniversary... Now I wish I had put Saturday since the wedding was on a Saturday, but that's not really a big deal.

And I had to go out and buy a new set of colored pencils so I'd have a white one to put the time/wi-fi/battery on the top. Full battery and wi-fi signal! I thought I had written the time of our wedding ceremony, but then I remembered it was at 2:30... oops!

This is my favorite part of the card. The button is an actual button! White embroidery thread looped through it to make the little square. Sometimes I'm so clever I just can't believe myself!

Inside was a little apple logo...

Sorry guys, this message is private!

...which was actually a little pocket which I stuffed with CASH! (To go towards the purchase of a real iPad)

Real money was included at the time of presentation.

And on the back of the card, I used a silver sharpie to draw the apple logo and a sweet sentiment. Awww!

I put a lot of work into this iPad. It took a lot of cutting and gluing (there are so many layers of cardstock going on - it is very hard to cut out clouds!) Now that Stephen has a real iPad, I can barely tell the difference...

The real one is on the right. You're welcome ;)

Things of interest (to me, and maybe to you too!)

2011-01-14T08:38:00.000-06:00

Oops! I forgot to write my blog post last night. That means I have to wing it and make up something quick this morning! How about a quick little blurb about a couple of the interesting crafty things I’ve come across lately?

Item 1: Iron Craft

First of all, have you heard about Iron Craft yet? If you’re involved in the crafting scene at all you probably have – it’s popping up on a lot of the craft blogs I read. Crafty friends Kathy and Susi host weekly craft challenges and anyone is free to join in. Then they post some of the submissions on their blog. It sounds like so much fun! I haven’t participated yet, but I hope to do at least a few of these challenges this year. So far, there have been broad challenges (lighting the winter gloom) and more concrete challenges (draft dodgers). This week’s challenge is bunting and garlands. I’ve been wanting to make a bunting for a long time (although the fabric I want to use is more summer themed…) so maybe I’ll have to jump in!

Item 2: Swap-bot

I also recently discovered swap-bot. It’s a site that hosts nationwide (and international) swaps for all sorts of stuff – a lot of it handmade. Ok, I guess the users host the swaps on the site. Anyways! I’ve just started getting into it, but it seems really fun to me. Like pen pal 2.0. I figure it will be a good way to get me crafting in a more timely manner, and if I ever decide to do the etsy shop thing, I will have some experience with shipping goodies. Plus you get neat stuff in the mail from all over the world!

That's all for today!

Stay crafty!

My Michaels Dollar Bin Scores: 1/9/11

2011-01-12T08:00:00.002-06:00

Ok. Time to come clean. I am totally addicted to the dollar bins at Michael's. Whew! I feel so much better now that I got that out there! Whenever I get one of those 15/20/25% off your entire purchase (including sale items! Woohoo!) coupons from Michael's I immediately start thinking about what dollar bin items I'm going to buy. Since they have been clearing out all the Christmas items lately I just KNEW there would be new dollar items soon. So I've been sort of stalking the store, wandering around and peeking into aisles that look like they will be restocked soon, thinking "hmm... this would be a good place for dollar bins..." It's a sickness I tell you. Anyways, I thought it might be fun to share with you all what I got! I know I always wish I could find a post like this when I get that feeling that new dollar items are coming. Then I know who I can be jealous of (All the people with the really GOOD Michael's in their town) and who I can commiserate with (All the people like me who have just "ok" Michael's in their town). And of course I pity everyone who doesn't even have a Michael's within driving distance. Now, looking back at what I've written, I'm imagining all the readers saying "Blah blah blah - get on with the dollar bin stuff!!", so without further ado, here's what I got on my 1/9/2011 dollar bin shopping trip!

Score #1: Michael's ink pads
I like to have a wide variety of inks and these little mini ink pads make it easy and affordable! I find that the Michael's brand ink pads aren't the best in the world, but they ain't bad! They have some cute colors right now too. Nice and springy!

Score #2: Decorative Tape
These were some of the leftovers from the Christmas dollar bins. I thought they might be cute for some greeting cards, and they were on super cheap clearance, so I bought all that was left. Sorry Waco people, if you want to get some of these you're out of luck!

Score #3: Mini salt and pepper shakers
There was a bunch of pic-nic-y stuff in the dollar aisle (I guess it's technically the $1/$2/$3 aisle) and I found these cute mini salt and pepper shakers. I knew they would be perfect for some of my Michael's dollar glitter! I think I'm going to have to go back to get some more! I'll have to take a photo of these filled up with glitter, because they are super cute!

Score #4: Pretty Shoe Stamps
I love shoes, and I love stamps, so when I came across these cute shoe stamps I couldn't resist! They will be a great addition to my stamp collection.

Score #5: Valentine's Stamps
Of course as soon as the Christmas stuff went away, the Valentine's day stock came out, so I had to pick out a few Valentine's stamps for my collection. There weren't a whole lot of stamps this year that I was crazy about, so I just picked out a few. I really like the birdy ones, and that bee is adorable!

Score #6: Studio G Ink Pads
Now for my crafty love of loves. Studio G mini ink pads! Ahh!! I love these things so much! As soon as I saw they had new colors out in the bins I had to buy them all! These are some of my very favorite ink pads, and for only $1 (or less with a coupon) you can't really go wrong! I really love this color set - totally different from anything I've got in my ink collection so far.

So there you have it. I got my Michael's dollar fix for the month. I'm sure I'll be back to the store for another quick browse before too long, so I'll keep you posted on what I find. Any other dollar bin addicts out there? Maybe we should start a support group.

My Crafty Christmas

2011-01-10T08:00:00.002-06:00

I'm back! My bloggy friend Jamie reminded me that it's been a month since I've last posted. Oops! Not really what I intended to happen, but you know how things kind of get away from you... Good thing I have people keeping up with me, or you'd all still be left without my wonderful internet presence ;)

I thought a good way to get back into the swing of blogging would be to let you in on what I've been up to in my time off. It seems like things have been going non-stop since Thanksgiving. We hosted this year's Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year, and it went off well, but as soon as it was over Christmas kind of took over and then before I knew it, Christmas was over, and then it was time for New Years, when we had our friends over for a couple of days. And then we had Stephen's birthday this weekend. Whew! Lots of activity - it was all a blast though.

Don't worry - I did manage to get some crafting done during my busy time! Here's a quick rundown of what I did.

First of all, I promised my mother-in-law I'd take a picture of our Christmas tree for her so here it is (Sorry for the delay Suanne!) I made sure to take the picture before I shipped off all the gifts. It was pretty bare under there for most of the time we had the tree up.

And here are a few close ups of my handmade ornaments in action:

For my gift wrapping, I made a big roll of hand stamped kraft paper. It came out so cute! I love it! I also used a bunch of hand made gift bows on my packages. I think I'll post a tutorial for the bows one of these days. They are pretty simple and cute! Here's a close up of the paper and bows:

Just curious, but did anyone else fall in love with this sweater wrapping paper in the dollar bins at Michael's as much as I did?

Oh my goodness! It's so cute! I had to keep myself from buying like 50 rolls of it. I also decided to put yarn bows on all of my presents I was shipping this year, that way it wouldn't make a difference if my bows got squashed in the mail. Great idea right? Oh, and I don't think I took any photos of the gift tags, but they are all handmade too, you can see them a little in my present shots.

Here is my stack of gifts at it's most impressive looking point. Beautiful!! Well, at least I think so. Maybe next year I'll just wrap up a bunch of dummy boxes to put under my tree so I can look at a cheery pile of presents for more than a few hours.

Next, here are the Christmas cards I made for my co-workers this year. It is important to me to give handmade Christmas cards, but my list is just too long. So for the past couple years I've made up just enough for work people, and everyone else gets the pretty photo cards. Here's this year's card:

A cute little forest of trees! Here is a closer shot:

I sewed fabric scraps onto card stock using my sewing machine, then stitched around the edge and then sewed a few button ornaments on each one before sticking the card stock on to a blank card. Then I put a hand stamped message on the inside:

Ahh!! I'm totally in love with how they came out! Sooooo cute! (Sew cute?)

And, since I never posted it, here's the 2009 model:

Kinda the same idea but with a hand carved tree stamp instead (all the ornaments were mini hand-carved stamps too!)

Let's see... What next. How about the crafty gifts I made. I'll start with the nesting doll pillows I made for my mom and my sisters. We've kind of got a running nesting doll gift thing going in our family, so it seemed appropriate. I made these from a pattern I made up all by myself. Go me! I've still got a couple more to make, but I just couldn't get them done in time for Christmas. Here are the ones I did get done.

Cute right? Then this set of note cards went to my aunt. These were kind of fun to make because it isn't 4 individual stamps, it is one stamp inked with 4 different colors. That was kind of tricky!

My sisters-in-law each got one of these cute boxes:

Which held cute earrings! I'm learning how to make jewelry now - Yay!

And my nephew got a stuffed "One Yard Wonders" dinosaur.

And my mother in law got a cute flower pillow (I love this pillow so much! I have one of my own on my guest room bed! I've actually got the photos to post a walk through for this one - hopefully I'll get it up soon.)

Then, my niece turned 3 last week so I made her this cute card:

To accompany her new handmade fishing toy!

This was really fun to make! This project was inspired by From An Igloo. What a great idea right? It's little stuffed fishies (I just sketched out a simple fish pattern). Each fishy has a washer attached to it's nose, and there is a magnet inside the felt worm. I kind of wanted to keep it to play with on my own. Stephen demonstrated the proper fishing technique for me.

I also stitched up a quick drawstring bag for her fishies to live in. I found the perfect fish fabric at Hobby Lobby too!

That's about all I've got! And that's only the stuff I remembered to take pictures of! I'm exhausted just thinking about it... :) And just for fun, and because Stephen took these photos, and I forgot about them, and I don't usually post photos like this here, here are a few pictures of me hard at work.

This is me making cards at my crafting table crafting table - it is usually about this jam packed full of stuff.

And here I am sewing buttons at the sewing table. Wine is always a good accompaniment for crafting! And this is my standard crafting attire. Gotta love the pj pants!

Here's to a new year of blogging! Hope it's a good one!

There will be blog...

2010-12-06T08:34:00.000-06:00

just not right now. Since I didn't post on Friday, and I don't have anything ready for today, I thought it would be best to let you know I'm not giving up - I'm just REALLY busy. Actually, it's really Stephen who is the busy one He has lots of end of semester school work, lots of extra audio gigs lately due to the holidays among other things, and both of these require use of the computer, so that means no blogging time. That's ok though because I haven't exactly been doing great with taking photos of what I'm up to. Hopefully this crazy time will be over soon - hopefully it doesn't last till the new year. I will be back though - and I'll make it up to you. Promise!!

Until then, here is the saddest and/or most hilarious Christmas photo I've ever seen, courtesy of Josie and her cousins.

Wordless Wednesday: I might have a few more buttons than I need edition

2010-12-01T08:00:00.002-06:00

Ornament Month! Flower pot bells

2010-11-29T08:00:00.001-06:00

My last ornaments for the month are these cute little flower pot bells! My mom loves bells so we always have bells on our tree. When I saw these little flower pots at Michael's, I immediately thought of bells!

They were pretty easy to put together, but I admit I had to think a little bit about how to rig up the clapper for the inside. I started off by painting the flower puts in cute bright colors, just because that's what paint I had on hand. These guys aren't going to end up matching anything I have on my tree...

After that I had to figure out how to make the clapper for the inside. I wanted it to tied together with the hanger, but the hole in the bottom (well now the top...) of the flower pot was too big to just tie a knot on either side of the hole. Instead, I put a button on either side of the hole and strung my cording through that. I used a 2-hole button on the top, but a 4 hole on the bottom.

Let's see if I can say this clearly... I tied a knot on top of my outside button strung the cord through the 2 holes of the top button, and then I strung them through two opposite holes in the inside button. I another piece of cord through the other two holes of the inner button, and attached a bead and then tied a knot under the bead. THEN I tied the two ends of the hanger cord into a knot, and trimmed all the edges. You can kinda see what I'm talking about in this photo. Maybe...

So, that brings us to the end of ornament month! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I still have a few more ornaments that I haven't posted about yet, so I might be putting some of those up in December. Or I could just save them for next year :)

Ornament Month! Button Wreath

2010-11-26T08:00:00.001-06:00

Today's ornament turns this:

And this:

Into this!

When I started this ornament I wasn't sure it was going to work out, so I didn't take many "in process" photos, but I'll try to describe how I put it together as best I can. I started out by "sewing" together a bunch of large green buttons in a circular shape using dark green wire. I didn't really have a method for this, just up through one hole in the button, down in the opposite button, and then up through one hole of the next button and down through the opposite and on and on and on. I twisted on more wire whenever I needed it, and twisted together the two wire ends to connect the circle ends. My circle was pretty flimsy at this point.

Then I added a layer of smaller buttons on top of that, sewing them on to the previous layer using the holes in the bigger buttons. The more buttons I added the more solid my shape became. I kept adding buttons where they were needed to fill out my wreath and where I needed to add stability, always twisting together my wire ends when I got to them I kept going until I had a pretty stable wreath. Here's a photo of the finished wreath before I added my red "berries" on. You can also see the circle guide I drew for myself before I started.

After I got all my greens "sewn" together I cut off all the excess wire sticking out - there was a LOT - this thing was a mess... To help you picture this, here is how scraggly it looked after I attached the five red holly berry buttons.

And here's a close up of some of my twisted wire, maybe this will give you an idea of how I put this together.

Then I attached a red ribbon onto my wreath for a hanger.

I made sure to hide it under the buttons on the front, like so:

Then, although it was pretty stable at this point, I figured it could still get bent up pretty easily when it was packed up for the year, so I hot glued a felt ring on the back of the wreath.

Now all that was left was to glue my ribbon bow on the front. It was a lot of work, but I'm so so happy with how this turned out - it is pretty much exactly how I pictured it. It's my favorite ornament creation so far. Is it dorky to say that I'm really proud of myself?

Ornament Month! Cute Crocheted Baubles

2010-11-24T08:00:00.000-06:00

If you know how to crochet this is a super simple, super fun, super cute ornament you can make. In fact, I made mine while I was lying on the couch, sick with some sort of horrible cold, and I made it in like twenty minutes. While I was on my sick day I came across this great tutorial on Craft blog. I thought "Hey, I have everything I need to make this right now!" So I did. And it came out great - better than I thought it would. For mine I used purple sugar n' cream yarn and a size G hook. I think I'm going to try it again with some thinner yarn, I think it will look a little more delicate that way. The directions were really easy to understand, I think anyone with a little crochet experience could pull it off, so go ahead and give it a whirl! I think you'll be happy with the results.

Ornament Month! Pom Pom Ornaments

2010-11-22T08:00:00.000-06:00

If you've been following me for a while, you may remember that a long time ago I made a whole bunch of pom-poms for no apparent reason. Well, I put those pom-poms in a box, and they have been there ever since. Until NOW! I finally came up with something to do with them! (Apologies in advance for the photos - it was really hard to focus on these little suckers!)

I selected a couple of ornament sized pom poms from my stash, then added on some holiday embellishments. I just put a little glue on the ends of the embellishments and stuck the ends into the the center of the pom-pom. Then I added a tied a hanger onto each one using some cording I had on hand. I did this by cutting a fairly long piece of cording, folding it in half and tying a loop towards the folded end. Then I strung the loose ends through the pom-pom and tied a knot on the opposite side of the pom-pom. I secured each side with a little glue. I wish I had remembered to take photos of this part - it would probably make a lot more sense if I had... Anyways, here's a close up of the multi-colored ornament.

I'm very happy to have finally come up with a use for my pom-poms! They came out so cute too! Hooray! They came together so easily too - I know anyone could do it :)

Ornament Month! Button Snowman Ornament

2010-11-19T08:00:00.000-06:00

Here's another quick stacked button ornament I pulled together. Today it's a little snowman! (This is one of the shapes that Martha highlighted in her tutorial)

He was slightly more complicated than the little tree, but not much. He just required a little more button matching. Once I had all my buttons sorted out, I strung them on double ply black wire, and twisted in a few strands of brown for the arms. I opted not to put a nose on mine like Martha suggested, but I'm thinking I might tie a little red ribbon on the neck for a scarf. Totally cute right?

Ornament Month! The "This didn't actually work out" Ornaments

2010-11-17T18:05:00.000-06:00

I mentioned in a previous post that I'd reused an ornament that I'd screwed up from another ornament attempt. I decided to go ahead and show you that attempt, so you'd get that silly idea that I'm perfect out of your heads. I'm real, just like you. Sometimes, however rare it may be, I do make mistakes (ok - I screw stuff up all the time!) This is what happened with my "painted-on-the-inside" ornaments.

This seemed like SUCH a good idea when I thought of it. I'd seen some ornaments before that looked like they'd been painted on the inside, and here I had some clear glass ornaments and some paint leftover from another project. This was going to be a breeze!

I just squirted a couple colors of paint in each one, and swirled them around until the whole inside was covered, and then tipped them upside down until all the excess paint dripped out Well, the paint never actually dried. It just dribbled out little by little by little until they ended up...

Splotchy

and see through.

Oh well. So much for that idea. I just used cheap acrylic paints for this, and I'm pretty sure they still aren't entirely dry inside... I'm convinced that it would work with a different kind of paint though, because they looked awesome before they started to look awful.

Ornament Month! Sequined Ornament

2010-11-15T08:00:00.001-06:00

Today's ornament caused me a lot of physical and emotional stress. No - for real! It is one of those ones that starts out as a really simple idea and then kind of becomes bigger than you expected it to (due to poor planning on my part...) Anyways, as Monk would say, here's what happened.

I had some styrofoam balls left over from last Christmas so I decided I was going to make an ornament of sequins and pins. At one point I told my husband this and he said something along the lines of "What does secrets and pins mean?" I guess I need to work on my enunciation. Here's the initial supplies I gathered for this project.

1 box of pretty pearl head pins
1 styrofoam ball
2 packets of white sequins
1 spool of ribbon

My ball had a seam around the middle so that seemed (no pun intended until I realized it was "punny") like a good place to start. I stuck one pin and one sequin into the ball and continued that all the way around.

Like this:

I found it was easier to "stick" my sequins with the pins before I stuck them into the ball, but that is a personal preferance.

It became clear very early on that I was going to have sore fingers from sticking all these pins into the ball. It was a pretty solid one! This brings me to "things I would do differently next time #1": Buy a less dense styrofoam ball.

And Things I would do differently #2 - Buy shorter pins.

Moving on...

Once I finished the first row I added a second row on top of that. Everything was looking good!

This is where the pictures stop. This is because this is also where the frustrations start. That is because about 4 rows in I ran out of pins. Ummm... oops?

Things I would do differently #3 - buy more than one box of pins.

So I went to Jo-Ann and bought another box of pins. Yes, only one more. I don't know why I thought that one more box of pins would be enough, even though I clearly hadn't covered half of my ball yet.

Things I would do differently #4 - buy cheaper pins.

Those multicolored pearlized quilting pins sure are pretty but they aren't exactly cheap! I was looking for a quick, easy and cheap project to use up these styrofoam balls and this one was not it! So of course I ran out of pins again and went back to Jo-Ann's and bought 2 more boxes. Surely this would be then end of my troubles. Then, about 5 rows from finishing, I ran out of sequins. I mean, this was like maybe a little circle about an inch and a half in diameter left uncovered AHHHHH!!!!

Things I would do differently #5 - buy 2 packets of sequins OR buy bigger sequins.

I happened to be at Hobby Lobby one day so I thought I would buy another packet of sequins there, but it turns out their white sequins are yellow tinted and Jo-Ann's white sequins are pink tinted, so I had yet another trip to Jo-Ann's for sequins. That makes this 4 trips to Jo-Ann's to finish this ornament. Do you think I'm a doofus yet?

Here's my final supply list:

1 styrofoam ball
4 boxes pretty pearl head pins
3 packets white pink-tinted sequins
1 spool of ribbon

My original list? Way off. I didn't even use the same ribbon. If you're interested I just attached the hanging ribbon by sticking it under one of my sequins. This ball is so solid I was not worried at all about it pulling out. Anyways, I think in the end I ended up with a pretty cool ornament, but I definitely will not be making another - this one came with way too many "I'm such an idiot!" moments. So much for quick easy and cheap!! It does feel pretty cool to run your hands over all those pins though. Maybe one day I will be able to look at it without any feeling of resentment. Some day...

Christmas Card Fun!

2010-11-13T17:19:00.000-06:00

Hi everyone - I'm going to take a little time out from ornament month today - I hope that's all right! Instead, I thought I'd tell you about how much I love Shutterfly. I've been using Shutterfly for a while now for greeting cards. I like to take pretty photos of flowers and whatnot when I'm on vacation, and then I turn them into blank greeting cards when I get home. Then I always have a greeting card on hand when something comes up.

Pretty right? I've always been pleased with the results - high quality stuff!! And Shutterfly always have great deals too!

This year I think I'm going to get my Christmas cards from Shutterfly. They have a huge selection of Christmas Cards! I don't know how I'm going to choose, but here are a few of my current favorites.

I really like the holly detail on the top of this one. I'm not sure if I will be able to find three pictures of Stephen and myself though.

Here's another holly one that I love. So cute! I like all the white on this one.

I like this one for going the simple route. I fell like it really lets the picture do the talking.

I can see Stephen really liking this one. Who am I kidding - I like it too! I love the brown and plaid combo.

I feel like I'm really going for the red and brown ones here... I love the branch detail in the background of this one.

This one is a really strong contender for my favorite. I love the snowflakes! I really wanted a card that says "Merry Christmas" but most of the designs I like say "Happy Holidays". This one dodges the issue - I can just add my message to the inside. Love it!

I'm really liking the idea of having a folded greeting card to send out this year. I mean, I liked the cards we sent out last year, but they were just those printed-on-photo-paper-4x8 kind (which shutterfly has too if you are interested! Great for if you are on a budget!) An actual folded greeting card just seems so much more special to me. I'm so excited!!

So keep Shutterfly in mind for your holiday cards this year. They also have great calendars and photo gifts. I'm a big fan of their stationary cards too! Upload your photos and have fun!!

*This post is part of a special promotion Shutterfly is having for bloggers - check it out here!

Ornament Month! Decoupaged Ornament

2010-11-12T08:00:00.002-06:00

Today's ornament is a lovely decoupaged ornament!

I started with one of my clear glass baubles (actually I reused one that I screwed up from another ornament idea...) Then I pulled out my stack of gardening catalogs and cut out a bunch of pictures of white flowers. I trimmed them as close to the blooms as I could with my embroidery scissors. Next I Mod Podged them (glossy) all over the outside of my ornament. At this point I thought maybe white was not a good color choice, since my flower pictures started to get see-through when I podged them. However they dried back in their original state. Yay! I also just let the pictures wrinkle however they wanted, and squished them down as flat as they would go. Does that make sense? Then I gave it a good coating of podge all over the surface. Done!

I feel like this ornament doesn't come across that well in photos. Trust me, it looks great in person! Here's a photo of the other side - lovely lovely lily!

This ended up being a fun but very messy project (Who doesn't love peeling the mod podge skin off of your hands?), but I'm totally happy with the result!

Ornament Month! Fanned Security Paper Ball

2010-11-10T08:00:00.000-06:00

For today's ornament, I whipped out my collection of security envelopes - this time, I only chose the blue ones. Here's what I did:

1) Trace circles onto your envelopes. I used the top of a small tin for mine, it was probably about 3 inches in diameter. I don't know how great I am at eyeballing measurements though.

2) Cut out all your circles. I think I had about 24 in all.

3) Fold all your circles in half.

4) Take your glue stick and start gluing your halves together,

like so:

5) Once you have all your circles glued together, set them on an edge somewhere to dry. The edge of my stamp box worked nicely. Don't glue the two ends together yet though!

6) Ahh! I didn't take pictures of this part - try to use your imagination ok?? Cut several lengths of embroidery thread in various shades of blue, fold them in half, and tie a knot in it about an inch and a half from the folded end to form your hanging loop.

7) Put the loose end in the center of your paper fan ball and glue the remaining two sides together.

8) Tie a knot at the bottom of the ball to keep it from sliding off the thread.

TADA! You're done!!

I'd say this ornament turned out pretty well, although I didn't do a super excellent job with my gluing, so the ball is a little loose in some areas. Looks kind of like a Chinese lantern to me. If I were to do this again, I'd use fewer circles. Maybe something like 16? Mine is a little too full for all of the fan leaves to be seen. Not bad for just throwing together a few things I had lying around, huh?

Ornament Month! Tiny Tree Ornament

2010-11-08T07:50:00.000-06:00

Today's ornament idea came from everyone's favorite crafter (Besides me of course) Martha Stewart!
Here is her tutorial for these cute stacked button ornaments: Button Ornaments. Note that the little Christmas tree was totally my idea though ;)

I didn't use pipe cleaners. Instead I used this fun colored wire I got on clearance at Michael's!

If you happen to get your hands on this stuff, be careful. I've broken it a few times just by twisting too hard. So for my ornament I used double ply red wire and then CAREFULLY twisted it into a hanger at the top.

Other than that, all you need is buttons! I happen to have tons of buttons right now (I got a whole bunch in the dollar bin at Michael's with a 20% off entire purchase coupon, so that worked out to be a pretty good deal! In fact I might get some more this weekend when my new 20% off coupon becomes active. I absolutely love shopping the dollar bins with a 20% off coupon!)

I love buttons! Even though it is pretty tiny, and may get a little lost on a big Christmas tree, I really like how my little tree ornament turned out so I'm thinking I'll try a snowman next. Here's hoping it turns out great! And if you love buttons as much as me I have another even more awesome button ornament to show you soon :)

Ornament Month: Tiny Yarn Ball Ornaments

2010-11-05T08:00:00.001-05:00

One more quick and easy ornament to fill out the week! Aren't these tiny yarn balls adorable? They are some of my favorite ornaments so far :) I got my inspiration here. I didn't do mine exactly like this tutorial though. I didn't use a Styrofoam base, instead mine are solid yarn. Instead of dowels, mine are toothpicks with wooden beads on the end. I also didn't use any glue - I just left a long end at the end of my yarn ball, stuck the end through my little yarn ball using a needle, and tied a loop on the other side. Then I hid the remaining end inside the ball. I have tons of yarn, and already had the toothpicks, and found the beads on clearance at Michael's, so this ended up being a super cheapy cheap ornament - and I love them! Yay!

Ornament Month! The Spools are Back!

2010-11-03T08:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the second installment of Ornament Month! My collection of spools gets to make another appearance today, in this quick and easy ornament. We're going to have a lot of quick and easy ones to start the month out - mostly because I'm short on computer time! These were made simply by stringing beads, spools, and jingly bells on thin ribbon. Piece of cake!

This is the first one I made. I just strung the ribbon through the loop on the bell, and then put both ends of the ribbon through the spool and silver bead. Then I tied the ribbon in a bow to complete the hanging loop. Done!

The green one was the next one I made, when I decided I didn't really like having the bow at the top. So I kind of did this one backwards of the last one, and tied the bow around the top of the bell. Cute right?

This is the last one I made. I had some pretty purple ribbon that I cut out of a top I bought recently. Why it needed hanging ribbons as long as it had, I will never know. I just know those ribbons needed to go! They came in handy though! For this one, I added an extra pretty bead, and put a button between the silver bead and the spool to keep the silver bead from dropping too far down into the spool. Pretty clever right?

That's it for today's ornament installment. It's cute and totally appropriate for a crafty tree, don't you think? I bet, if you already have some spools on hand, you can make these with just stuff you have lying around the house!

Ornament Month! Yahoo!!

2010-11-01T08:00:00.001-05:00

First of all, let me apologize for the lack of crafts last week. Things were a little crazy! Stephen has been working on a paper for school, so my computer time is limited, and I've been double busy at work lately, so my brain is pretty much shot by the time I get home, which keeps me from being in a particularly craft mood... But enough excuses! Let's just pretend I didn't post any crafts last week because I've been so busy preparing for...

Ornament Month!

That's right! I'm declaring November to be ornament month on Full of Craft. I always say I'm going to make Christmas ornaments every year, but when it comes down to it, I don't actually get any done. I decided to put an end to that this year. I will try to have a new ornament up every M-W-F, and maybe even the in between days too. Some will be my very own creations, others will be linked to wonderful tutorials I've found out on the web. I hope you're as excited about this as I am :) And don't worry - if you really hate ornaments, I do plan to have one or two non-ornament posts throughout the month.

Enough talk! Let's get ornamenting!

I decided to start with something simple. Allow me to present the curly security paper ornament:

I can't remember where I got the inspiration for this one - let me know if you think I should be giving you credit! Anyways, I'd seen lots of tutorials where clear glass ornaments were filled up with various things, so I decided to put some more of my security paper collection to use. All I did was cut lengths of security paper about 1/2 inch wide, and curled them up around a chop stick. Then I just popped them into the ornament. Done! You could of course do this with any old kind of paper you have lying around that you like the look of. Enjoy, and I'll see you soon for more ornament fun!

Happy Birthday Nanny!

2010-10-29T07:33:00.001-05:00

This past weekend Stephen and I went to visit our family in Yoakum. It was Nanny's birthday so we knew it was going to be a big time party ;)

Happy Birthday Nanny!!

We ate yummy hamburgers...

I made Bryson's for him - when Stephen asked me why I didn't

make one for him I told him it's because Bryson is cuter!

We rode in the Mule with the boys...

Jadyn coming to pick us up

Dylan took us over some rough terrain.

Stephen got to drive too!

Driving was Stephen's favorite!

I saw some cats

Are these the kittens I saw last time I was here???

Bryson showed me a stick...

Actually, he was trying to get me to stop taking his picture

And the boys all played football.

While we're on the topic of football, let me take a moment to congratulate our Baylor Bears! Sic 'em bears! After years of disappointing seasons, we are finally bowl bound. What a great homecoming! I don't follow football that closely, especially college football, but I'm really really happy for the Baylor community this year. We're ranked all over the place! It almost makes up for the heartbreaking, gut wrenching, may-as-well-say-it-Cowboys-season-ending, broken Tony Romo clavicle. But let's not talk about that.

Dylan is our star Bulldog Pups football player. I made the mistake of calling them the puppies once. Stephen was quick to correct me though "It's the PUPS! Not Puppies!!" Or something along those lines.

Dylan about to throw a pass...

It must have been a good one!

Jadyn is looking pretty good himself!

I guess Bryson got tired of playing after a while

and decided to cut stickers out of the lawn instead.

But not Stephen - he plays to win!

Wordless Wednesday (sort of...)

2010-10-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

Happy early Halloween from the cutest little monkey around!

Have fun and be safe!

Howdy!

2010-10-25T21:23:00.000-05:00

Hello all. I took a day off. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming soon!

Paper Boxes - Quick, easy and fun wrapping idea!

2010-10-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

Have you ever made origami paper boxes? If you haven't you are missing out, because they are way easy, and a super cute way to "wrap" small gifts. There are tons of great tutorials out there, so I'm not going to rewrite one here. I can't remember what one I originally learned this technique from, but here's one that looks pretty good to me! I've seen ones where you don't cut the paper (I think...) but that seemed a little too complicated for me. I think I'm origami impaired.

Please excuse the ugly nasty dirty table. I don't know why

I thought this was a good place to take photos...

The box on the left is made from a couple full 12x12 sheets of scrapbook paper, the box on the right was made from paper cut down to about 8x8 I think.

Once you've mastered the basic box, go here to try your hand at some Magic Boxes! When they are closed they look like the orange and blue box in the first picture in this post but when they are open they look like this:

Ooooooh....

Ahhhh....

Perfect for filling up with multiple small gifts! Totally fun right? Now go get yourself some paper and fold some boxes already! It is a totally satisfying little craft to do - at least it is if you're me!

Wordless Wednesday - Jar Lid Pincushions!

2010-10-20T08:00:00.000-05:00

(Love, love, LOVE these - tutorial here)

Hand Stamped Wrapping Paper

2010-10-18T08:00:00.004-05:00

Since the holidays are fast approaching, I thought it would be fun to share some of the fun new crafty wrapping techniques I've been trying out. One that I really enjoy is hand stamped wrapping paper. A few months ago I decided I'd really like to start wrapping everything in brown paper and focus on bows and other embellishments instead of the predesigned patterns of paper available. Then I thought that it would be really cute to stamp onto the brown paper to make my own designs. It is a little extra work, but I think it's worth it for the cute factor :)

Here's a quick tutorial for you (not that I think you really need one, it's a pretty basic concept, but it will be good tutorial writing practice for me.)

First cut the size of paper you need from your roll. Unless you want to wrap a bunch of presents in the same stamped design, then go ahead and cut a bigger piece.

Next lay your paper out flat. Mine tried to curl back up on me so I weighted the corners and sides down as needed to make it lie down flat.

Then just stamp as desired - this is the fun part :)

I like to let mine dry for a little bit so my stamps don't smear, but you might not need to do this step depending on the kind of ink you use.

Now all that's left is to wrap your gift.

Tada! Super cute and fun! My brown paper is kind of thick so I wrapped it with packing tape, but plain old scotch tape should work fine. Probably not the method you want to use if you're a last minute gift wrapper though...

Winners!!!

2010-10-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

Now for the moment you've all been waiting for - the winners of my giveaway! And the winners are...

For the Rain Cloud notecards:

Jamie of What I Did Today

and for the Birdie Notecards:

Jami!

Jami and Jamie! What a fun coincidence :) Congratulations to my two winners, I'll be in touch for your addresses (actually, I already have yours Jami!) and then I'll get your prizes in the mail ASAP!

Chocolate Blobbers! Yummy yummy!

2010-10-15T08:00:00.001-05:00

Hello Internet! Today I am going to teach you one of my secret family recipes! I know - it's time to get excited! Our food-craft for the day is Chocolate Blobbers. Let's get started shall we?

**I forgot to mention - this recipe came into our family via my dear Aunt Becky!**

Here is what you will need:

That is, one box of Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter, Rice Krispies (you can use store brand, that is ok), one package of chocolate bark, and one can of Spanish peanuts (aka red-skinned peanuts). I'm pretty sure it's fine to use regular old peanuts, but who wants to take that risk!

The first step is to melt your whole package of chocolate bark in a nice big pot. Stir it occasionally, and don't turn your burner on too high or you'll scald your chocolate. That wouldn't be good.

While it is melting, measure yourself out two cups of each of your cereals. That's 2 cups of Cap'n crunch, and 2 cups of Krispies. Not 2 cups of cereal total. (Don't use Total cereal for this recipe - it would probably get soggy.)

You might as well go ahead and open up your can of peanuts now too.

Then Voila! Your chocolate is all melted! Actually, I'm not sure if I should really call it chocolate, since the package calls it "chocolate flavored coating". It does have cocoa in it though, so that's good enough for me.

Once it is melted, dump both cereals in it and the whole can of peanuts.

If you're like me and peanut butter crunch is your favorite, go ahead and add a little extra.

Then stir it up until everything in your pot looks well coated.

Oh - I should mention here, you should line a few cookie sheets with waxed paper at the beginning of this process, because now you want to scoop globs of chocolate cereal/peanut mixture onto your wax-paper-lined cookie sheet. Just make them good snack sized. My sizing always depends on what spoon I'm using.

Once your cookie sheet is full, stick it into your fridge wherever you have room. You can probably tell from this photo that my fridge was not prepared for the amount of chocolate blobbers it was going to have to accomodate.

Then once they have hardened up, take them out of the fridge and chow down! Yum!

That's it - super easy and quick! I'm pretty sure this would work well with whatever cereal you want to use, but I like 'em this way, so I've never seen a reason to change. My family's preferred method of storage is gallon zip-loc bags. This one is a big favorite with my people, so I'm guessing yours will like it too!! Enjoy!

Wordless Wednesday - Pastrami!

2010-10-13T08:00:00.004-05:00

Yo-Yo hair bows

2010-10-11T08:00:00.004-05:00

I'm a bad blogger. I did not get my blog writing done this weekend, so today I'm putting up a short and sweet little post about some cute yo-yo hair bows I made back in July. These are totally easy and quick to put together. All you need is a little bit of fabric, a few buttons and some sort of hair clip. My clips came from Jo-Ann Fabrics in the jewelry and beading section, I think I got a little baggie of 25 clips or so. Oh and you'll also need some thread, and the knowledge of how to make a yo-yo. (Trust me - you CAN do this. Also, I rarely turn under the edge of my yo-yo's since I usually cover the center with a button. It's not that pretty, but it works!

I made this first one to wear in my hair on the 4th of July this year. I know, I can't believe I wore this in my hair all day. I still think it's cute though. Anyways, it's two yo-yo's stacked on top of each other, and two stacked buttons on top of that. I think I sewed them all together in one fell swoop. Then I sewed it to the hair clip.

I made these two to match the sweet little dresses I made a while back. Totally cute, and much more age appropriate than my patriotic clip was, since they were going to little girls... I actually think I hot glued the yo-yo's to the hair clip on the one on the right. The one on the left is made exactly the same way as the patriotic one.

So there you have it. A quick and easy way to make hair accessories to match any outfit, so long as you can find the right color fabric and buttons that is. See you later this week when hopefully I'll have dedicated some more time to writing! Peace!

Today is my 100th Blog Post!

2010-10-08T08:00:00.010-05:00

Hooray for me! I made it to 100 blog posts. Just as every blogger says on this momentous day, I never thought I would make it to 100 posts. I'm not just saying that either - I am amazed at myself and feel like this is a real accomplishment. Go me!

You may not know this about me but I'm a big dork about numbers. No really. I like to sit around and think about specific numbers and decide if they are good numbers or boring numbers. Good usually means there is something mathematically interesting about them. Primes are always good of course. Squares are ok, but cubes are great.

I've gotta tell you though, 100 never really did it for me. I mean sure, it's the first triple digit number, and it's a square, and there is a certain completeness about it, but 100 never wowed me. So, in honor of this, my 100th blog post, I decided to turn to my trusty friend wikipedia to give me some interesting facts about 100. Here were my favorites:

- The prime factorization of 100 is 2 * 2 * 5 * 5, two primes squared. That's kinda neat.

- 100 is the sum of the first 9 prime numbers - awesome!

- 100 is the sum of the cubes of the first four integers (aka 1^3 + 2^3 + 3^3 + 4^3) - very good!

- 2^6 + 6^2 = 100 - that's just pretty, don't you think?

So, 100 has won itself over in my mind. And to reward you for putting up with my geekyness (and mostly for being my wonderful friends and readers!) I've decided to have a giveaway! Get excited everyone! Up for grabs is a set of my world famous raincloud cards (featured here this past Monday)!

These ones are extra special too because they use all kinds of pretty security paper instead of just one black variety, and one white variety, like I did in the first set I made. The winner of these of note cards will get a set of 8 cards and 8 matching envelopes. Of course if you are the winner, you can send the pink one in the purple envelope, and the green one in the yellow envelope if you want to. I know that's what I'd do.

And since I'm so wonderful and awesome, I decided to offer up a second prize. Another lucky winner will get this set of birdie cards. These were hand stamped by yours truly and I colored the little birdie in a contrasting color to the card. Fun! This is a set of 6, and it will come with matching envelopes as well. Oh and just FYI - I do carve my own stamps sometimes, but the birdie stamp is a store bought one.

Aaaand, just for the heck of it, each winner will also get a couple of my hand-carved, hand stamped Halloween cards. I know, I know. The lettering isn't exactly straight. Tell people your kids made 'em.

So how do you become one of my two wonderful winners? Just leave me a comment! Tell me congratulations, or how wonderful you think I am, or whatever you want. Following my blog is not required, but you do need to make sure I can get to your email address somehow. Either leave it in your comment (be sure to spell out the "dots" and the "ats" to keep spammers from finding it) or make sure it is easy for me to get to in your blogger profile. The easier it is for me to find your email address, the more I will like you. Not that this will affect your chance of winning at all. Oh and if you absolutely hate one set of cards, and love the other, you might want to mention that in your comment. I would hate for you to win something you think is just the worst.

Now, since I love my followers, there is a special bonus for people who are ALREADY following my blog before I put up this giveaway. If you were already following my blog - as in you've clicked on the "Follow with google friend connect" button on the side bar, and mention it in your comment, you get one extra entry! Don't say I don't love you ;) This will be verified - I have a list, so no cheating! If you want to sign up to follow now, great! I’m happy to have you here, and I will probably have another giveaway soon, so you can take advantage of the bonus entry then!

Giveaway is now closed - thanks for entering!

Thanks to all of you for reading! Here's hoping we get to 200!

Wordless Wednesday: It will be here before you know it edition

2010-10-06T08:00:00.000-05:00

(Christmas will be here before you know it - better get your craft on now!)

Rainy Day Note Cards

2010-10-04T08:00:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I sit down at my crafting table and I want to make something, but I don't know what. That is usually when I decide to make a set of note cards. Making note cards is quick, easy and satisfying! I like my cards really simple, so I'm always able to come up with something I like with little more than a stamp and a some glue. I always start with these:

This is a great set of note cards I picked up at Target sometime last year. Two-hundred cards for $10.00! It's just a box of colored cards with a matching envelopes. I mean, the colored envelopes alone make it worth it for me. The cards themselves are a little too plain to use on their own, especially the darker colored ones, so I started adding to them a little. For this set, I decided to cut into my supply of security paper. I thought to myself, "What is something that can use exclusively the colors blue and black." First I came up with bruises of course, but that doesn't make a very nice card, so next I thought of a raincloud. Perfect!

I start all my cards by gluing a white panel on top of the colored card. I just use a glue stick, or double sided tape, or whatever I have lying close at hand. Then for each card I cut out a cloud out of the black paper and glued that on too.

Next I cut out a whole mess of little raindrops. This was a major pain in the butt. Enough so that I decided to buy a raindrop shaped whole punch. The next set of rain cloud cards will go much faster I'm sure...

Then I glued 6 drops onto each card, wherever I thought they looked good. Then Voila - done!

I think they turned out really cute. Maybe to you rain clouds are a little gloomy for a note card, but I don't think so. What do you think? Too dreary?

Do it yourself Jack-O-Lantern Stamps

2010-10-01T08:00:00.003-05:00

Happy October! Fall is finally in the air, and all I want to do is go to Bath and Body Works and smell all their autumn scented candles - feel free to send me any of those if you want.

Also, today is my dad's birthday, so happy birthday to him :)

To start off the month of October, I thought I'd share with you a cute little set of stamps I carved last year. I really like stamps with multiple parts that can combine in unique and different ways for each person that uses them, so I came up with the idea for some "carve your own jack-o-lantern" stamps. Here are all the pieces:

I know it's a little silly, but I'm still super impressed with myself for that pumpkin. I drew that myself! I know right? Ok - it's not a masterpiece, but I think it looks close to what a real pumpkin looks like, and life-like drawings is not something I claim on my list of skills...

Here's a sample of some of the fun jack-o-lanterns you can create with this stamp set. You can go cute or scary. Whatever you like. And it will be easy to add elements to it whenever I want! It takes like 5 seconds (exaggeration) to carve a new eye or nose stamp. Hey! I just realized something - I literally carved these jack-o-lanterns, just out of rubber instead of an actual pumpkin! Ok, never mind - it was much funnier and more clever in my head than typed out on here.

After I carved them I made this little set of Halloween cards.

However, I forgot to give them out to anyone. Oops. Maybe I will remember about them this year.

Wordless Wednesday: My Signature Cocktail Edition

2010-09-29T08:00:00.001-05:00

It IS easy being green: Cloth Napkins

2010-09-27T08:00:00.001-05:00

A few months ago I decided Stephen and I would start using cloth napkins. Did I decide this because I wanted an excuse to buy a bunch of cute fat quarter packs, or because I wanted to cut down on our waste paper? Does it really matter? I made us a big pile of napkins so we didn't have to worry about washing them every day. They are each about 16"x16" and made from one fat quarter each.

First I made this cute set of flowered napkins. They are sewn around the edges with a simple straight stitch.

I decided to buy this set of fabric since I wanted a few that were a little less girly for Stephen's benefit. Most of them are still pretty girly though...

A fun added touch for these is the decorative stitching I used! Neato!

Then I made these two double layered napkins. I love these ones the most. So cute!

I had this remnant of blue fabric with polka dot circles from Hobby Lobby, so I made a pair of napkins with it. They are also double layered, and used some semi-solid-colored pieces for the back.

I keep all our napkins in this cute basket. I found it at Ikea - it is the PERFECT size!

I don't know if your Michael's had these in their clearance bin, but my Michael's had a ton of cute more "traditional" printed fat quarters on sale for $.79 each. Nice! I bought a bunch of my favorites and made a set for my friends when they were having a house warming party. I did a cute scalloped stitch on the edges of these.

And then I undid them from their neat stack pictured above and turned them into this awesome gift bow instead! I LOVE how these napkins turned out.

In fact, I loved them so much that I went back to Michael's and bought a whole bunch more fat quarters for myself.

Maybe when I finally get around to "napkinizing" these, I'll whip up a little tutorial to show you how I made them. Sound fun? What do you think?

Craft Room Overhaul Part 3: Hello New Shelves!

2010-09-24T07:45:00.000-05:00

Now that you have read all about the drama of the green chairs, let me share with you what it was all about. What my real motivation behind getting them out of here was. My new shelves and crafting table!

Yay for my new ikea furniture! I had been doing almost all of my crafting sitting on the floor since I had no table except my sewing table, and it was full of sewing things, as it should be. Also, I'm getting older (since 25 is practically ancient you know), and have a knee that starts to ache if it is bent for too long, so sitting on the floor for extended periods of time is just not comfortable! I decided I wanted a table, and maybe some shelves, and found this combo at ikea and knew it was perfect! It would fit perfectly in my "useless corner". Useless because all that was in it was a couple of boxes I'd never unpacked, my little rolling file cabinet, and of course, the green chairs. It is so useless, that this is the only picture I have of the corner, and it's not even really the corner, just the ironing board set up close to the corner.

I saved up my allowance so I could buy my lovely shelves, and was such a happy girl when they were all together! Oh hooray! Now I had somewhere to go with all my boxes of wonderful crafty things! They were just not accessible under the bed.

The craft room/guest room still isn't quite where I want it, but now thanks to the table and shelves, we are definitely moving in the right direction!

Wordless Wednesday: First day of Fall edition

2010-09-22T07:38:00.000-05:00

Craft Room Overhaul Part 2: Goodbye Green Chairs!

2010-09-20T07:28:00.001-05:00

I started writing last month about how I am updating my craft room, but then I didn't get past one post about it. Oops! Well I have been working on it, just not keeping up with it very well. One big hangup - actually two big hangups - in the redecorating process are two of these lovely green chairs:

Dear green chair: I hate you

Ok, hate is really a strong word for these chairs. I don't actually hate them, they are pretty comfortable, and only marginally ugly (mostly just because they are stained). I just hated having them in my house for so long after I'd decided to get rid of them. Stephen got a pair of these chairs from a friend of his back in the day when he had no furniture, and they came with him to our house now, and when we got married they became my green chairs too, and were extra seating in the living room. Then we decided to turn our big living room into a living/dining room, so there was no room for the green chairs in there anymore. So we stuck them in the guest bedroom. Then I decided to turn the guest bedroom into a bedroom/craft room. I coexisted peacefully with the green chairs in there for a long time.

I used them to store all my junk:

I used them to take photos on:

Then I decided to get organized. I also I decided I needed a separate table for crafts that didn't have my sewing machine on it. That's when I started hating these chairs. There they were, sitting in the corner of my craft room, taking up precious space that could be used for a craft table, which I knew would increase my creativity by leaps and bounds. It was time to kick them to the curb. I thought about freecycling them, but instead, I decided to be a good sister. My little sister was moving into her own apartment, so I asked her if she wanted them. "Sure!" she said. I started getting excited. I started planning a trip that weekend to pick up my new table that weekend. "I can get them in August," she said. I pouted. It was the beginning of July! I wanted things to happen, and I wanted them to happen NOW! The next day someone posted on my freecycle message board that they were looking for a set of living room chairs, and they would pick them up any time, anywhere. My resentment started to grow. Then the next Sunday the college minister made an announcement that they were collecting furniture for the college students, and one thing they really needed was living room chairs. Then I started to really hate those green chairs.

At this point, so he wouldn't have to put up with my grouching anymore, Stephen said, "Let's put one of the chairs in my studio, so you can get your table." YAY! I could manage to fit the remaining green chair somewhere else for the remainder of July in order to get my new table. I cheered up. Then I found out the actual removal date of the chairs was the END of August... I was about ready to just throw the things out in the yard and call it a day. But instead I persevered! Despite my impatience, the pickup day finally came. We moved the green chairs out into the breezeway that night:

And when we got home from work the next day, they were gone. Never to be seen again! WOOHOO! Goodbye green chairs, I will not miss you. You were not bad chairs, just misunderstood. I understand that this experience was a lot more dramatic for me than it was for anyone else, but it is very frustrating when you are ready to get rid of something and it just lingers and lingers. But I feel that now that I've gotten my story out, I can finally start to let it go - start to heal.

Also Becky, good luck ever getting rid of them.

Thread Project #2: Cute framed spools

2010-09-17T08:15:00.000-05:00

Stephen and I had these cute pictures hanging in our kitchen. They are supposed to look like this:

Instead, since there is a cabinet door that opens into them, and the door to the laundry room is right next to them, they often ended up looking like this instead:

I got sick of straightening them (ok, I didn't do it very often). I decided it was time for a change. I remembered when I posted about all my vintage spools someone had commented a suggestion to frame them. I thought that was a great idea, so now my frames look like this:

The frames (ikea ribba frames) are pretty deep, so there was room to throw the spools in there loose. I picked a few spools for each one, put a piece of white card stock for backing, and shook them up, letting the spools settle wherever they wanted. I love how they turned out! I picked the colors to match my bulletin board:

I think they turned out fantastically! I can't wait to get them up on the wall! I'll make sure to hang them away from any doorways and cabinets this time.

Wordful Wednesday

2010-09-15T08:00:00.007-05:00

I thought I would mix things up a little bit today - get excited everyone!

First of all, for all my local readers - are there any?? - I want to encourage you to come to the Waco Community Hymn Sing this Sunday at the Ferrell Center! I'm super excited about it because Stephen will be playing guitar! It's almost like he's a famous person - I'm so proud of him and all the work he's putting into it! It's sure to be an awesome time, so come on out if you are able!

Second of all, one of my bloggy friends tagged me to answer some questions, so I thought I'd give it a go! Fun right? And for all of you who have been missing seeing Josie pictures here - today is your day, because there are lots more fitting pictures of her than there are of me :).

What's the best decision you've ever made?
I would have to say applying for a student worker job at the Baylor Fine Arts Library, because that is how I ended up meeting my very best friends and my husband! I never would have guessed it at the time that it would be such a life changing decision...

My old work crew.

What's your favorite place for daydreaming?
I "daydream" all the time, any time any place. I call it "thinking about things" even though in actuality it is really just spacing out. Staring out the window has always been the best for thinking about things though.

When do you feel most confident?
I guess when I'm hanging around with my best friends, because they don't care if I act like a major doofus.

What's your most embarrassing moment?
I can't pinpoint one exact moment - I guess that's a good thing right? I must get over embarrassment pretty well. Or I just block it out. I did used to fall down in high school a lot. Like the completely wipe out, you're lying on the floor wondering how you got there kind of falling down. That was pretty embarrassing.

Wipeout!

What do you think about before going to sleep?

Just whatever random thoughts float through my head. I don't actually know!

Somehow I don't think a lot of sleeping got done here...

What are the most important things in your life?

My husband and my wonderful friends and family.

Photo by the fantastic Nicole Berrett

What would you do if you were invisible for a day?

I'll admit it - I'd be super nosy and spy on everyone I know.

Super spies! More like super fabulous!

What bad habit are you having a hard time breaking?

Forgetting to charge my phone/forgetting where my phone is/forgetting to take my phone off of silent and missing all my calls.

I think I am at least able to answer more calls on my phone than Josie does on hers

Who would you like to change places with for half a day?

My niece Josie. She's 2 and has all the best toys. Wouldn't it be great if all you had to do all day was play?

Who was the last person to make you laugh?
I can't remember for sure. It might have been the ladies teasing each other at work this morning that did it. Or maybe it was Stephen. And my friend Katie always makes me laugh...

Happy girl!!

How long could you go without talking?
For ages! I don't mind talking or anything, but when I lived by myself I was pretty silent at home. I would get on the phone with someone in the middle of the afternoon and realize I hadn't said a word all day.

This has nothing to do with the question, I just think it's a funny picture!

What makes you mad without fail?
Being bossed around

Josie, are you mad?

What is your most bizarre habit?
I hum random tunes when I'm working on something that really requires my concentration. Oh and maybe even weirder than that, I always put my finger in the tags on stuffed animals, clothing labels, etc. I even have this dress that has a sort of thick lace layer on it, and I put my fingers in the wholes on that. I feel like I can't wear it without looking like a nutcase. I have been doing this since I was a baby! I feel like those taggy blankets were invented for me.

That's me in the pink glasses

I was probably thinking about taggies in this photo...

What is something most people would find surprising to learn about you?
I have no idea... My family raised orphaned baby ducks on more than one occasion? I swam on a synchronized swimming team when I was little for six months (had to quit because it was too hard/I was too lazy)? My great uncle was governor of Iowa? Is any of that surprising or just random facts?

Synchro photos of me are a little hard to come by, however synchro photos of my sister are not!

What's on your night stand?
I'm not going to go look for sure, because it will be depressing, but I'm sure all of this is on there:
- half finished books
- water glass
- roll of toilet paper (for tissues)
- lamp
- ball of yarn
- little stuffed animals
- more half finished books
- headbands
- dust

No night stands on the beach!

If you were three inches taller...?
I would hope it would be torso height, my legs are long enough as is thank you! I actually was about a centimeter taller than I am now in my junior year of high school, since I had a back brace that kept my spine straight (scoliosis!). However, once I got to stop wearing it I shrank again.

Eat your breakfast Bageera and you can grow big and tall like me!

How can you tell when Fall was truly here?

When every restaurant/coffee shop has something pumpkin flavored on the menu, and when all the home decor stores smell like cinnamon.

Best way to wrap your guy around your little finger?
I can do it just by being my wonderful self!

So there you have it! Most of the bloggers I know just have personal (and in some cases invite only blogs) so I don't want to put direct links to those, so all my bloggy friends, if you'd like to answer some questions feel free! It's fun! Don't forget to add some pictures!

Crazy...

2010-09-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

In an effort to get my craft room cleaned up enough to act as a guest room in a few weeks, I've been trying to get all my "raw materials" that I've been saving up processed into usable craft supplies, so for the last few weeks or so I've been cutting up all my plastic bags and adding it to my big ball of Plarn. (I plan to crochet myself a bag out of it in the near future) The other day, Stephen saw me working on it, looked at me like I was nuts, and said "Oh I have to take a picture of that!" I guess he was right - I do look kind of like a crazy person...

...it might as well be me: Jewelry editions

2010-09-11T08:00:00.002-05:00

How about another post on some of the amazing things I've won? Sounds good? Great! Today I'm going to show off some of the pretty jewelry I've won! Yay!

Let's start with this awesome necklace and earrings set that I won from Fantasticrafts! I won a gift certificate from the Waterwaif and was lucky enough to snag these two on sale! And I have a top that matches these perfectly! How fun!! There is such a fun variety of items in this shop! I know I'll go back for more :)

Next I won a giveaway at my lazy apples for this oriental bracelet from Pikithins.

Hand modeling by yours truly

It is such a cool bracelet - not to mention the "green and gold" is great for a Baylor employee! And I'm kind of in love with that big green bead!

This next one is one of my favorite wins! It is the flock of birds earrings from Verderocks. I won them on the Bits of Beauty blog, but had no idea, I had to enter my address on the giveaway form and didn't realize I'd won them till they showed up at my door! They are not something I ever would have picked for myself, but I gotta say - I love them! They make me feel wild! They are SUPER long - taller than my "posing pitcher" as you can see. And since I was having a good hair day that day, you can see them modeled on myself too :) No need for a necklace with these babies!

I won a lot of earrings for a while! The next set I won from Being Tazim. They are these gorgeous wood inlay earrings from SSheilah. They remind me of the frets in a guitar - don't you agree? I thought they were going to be kind of heavy, but they are some of the lightest-weight earrings I own. I always get compliments on them when I wear them!

This next pair of earrings I won from What I Did Today. Aren't they darling? With all this big earrings I've collected, I'm glad to have some dainty ones! And I'm so happy I came acros this blog! It's one of my very favorites to read - totally down to earth and her kids are ADORABLE!

Another great blog I came upon through giveaways is Bead Happily Ever After! I won these great mermaid's tear earrings from her (I wish I'd gotten a better picture, they are so pretty!) I check on this blog daily - it's a lot of fun!!

Next I won these awesome vintage glass earrings from Jacaranda designs! I love the color of these ones! I wear them all the time!

Last but not least are these adorable butterfly heart earrings from 2 Just B you! I used to have a necklace like this when I was younger that had a teddy bear instead of butterflies, and I wore it was one of my absolute favorites (I bet I could find it if I tried...) These earrings remind me so much of that necklace! I love them!

That's all for today - go ahead and check out some of these wonderful shops and blogs! I know you'll be able to find something great :)

How to make a box into a different box

2010-09-10T08:00:00.000-05:00

Once upon a time, I was trying to organize my craft supplies and realized I had a problem. The problem of too much stuff, and nowhere to go with it.

My favorite way of cleaning up (or at least what I find most effective... I hate cleaning up) is putting everything all in one place and then putting it away. So I did this on my crafting table. Then I realized I had all my pens, scissors, rulers, various other tools crammed into one tiny little kitty planter (see upper right hand corner of photo) and still needed to cram more stuff into it to get it put away. Yeah, not gonna happen... Also, all of this stuff has gotten back to it's proper home now.

I decided what I needed was a special box just for "crafting tools" so the kitty could be dedicated to pencils and pens. And you pretty much have to keep your crafting tools in a box you crafted yourself, right? It just so happens I had the perfect box in mind!

(Pretend I took the picture before I cut the top off...)

I have a bad habit of keeping every "good sized" box I get, "just in case" and I remembered I had this one, I think from a candle fundraiser. I guess sometimes my hoarding comes in handy! Don't turn me in to TLC though, I do throw stuff away occasionally!!!

After I had located the perfect box I chopped off the top and side flaps, plus the little "closure tabby"

I saved the top to make a divider for my box. I wanted it to have two compartments so my paintbrushes and such didn't fall over and get lost in the bottom. So I sliced the top to the right height with my most beautiful box cutter.

Tools don't have to be ugly!

Voila - perfect height! I also used the piece I'd cut off to act as extra support for my center wall.

Originally I had planned on covering my box with scrapbook paper, quick and easy, stick it to my box with double sided tape. However, none of my pretty papers were speaking to me. That's when I remembered I had this box...

Which, I'm sure you can tell is full of...

Book Pages!! (leftover from this project - hoarder alert) All the sudden this had turned into a mod podge project!

Hooray for Mod Podge!

I prepared my workspace (Ikea cutting board) for the impending mess. I also tore up a bunch of my book pages. I like that rough look, plus it's a boring book so no one would want to read whole pages off of my box anyways...

R-E-C-Y-C-L-E Recycle!

First thing I did was coat the bottom of my box with Podge.

Then I realized this was a dumb idea and coated each individual piece of paper before I stuck it on.

Next I got messy and splattered some Mod Podge on my shirt, so I took a break to change into something I didn't plan on wearing to work again. You can skip this step if you aren't a major slob.

I continued covering the inside of the box, and over the top edge like so. I also covered my inside walls and left them to dry. I didn't do the whole thing the first night because I didn't want the box to glue itself to my cutting board (although the walls did that a little bit anyways...)

Next morning it was looking good!!

The next night I set to work on the rest of the box. My husband decided to take a few action shots. Probably a good idea, because then I didn't get Mod Podge all over his camera.

I also wore an apron this time.

Then I left that to dry overnight. I also glued the two wall pieces together in preparation for wall installation the next day. Once I got to this point I realized I'd done a lot of extraneous gluing and podging, since I was going to end up re-covering the whole wall piece once I'd put it in the box.

A totally unnecessary step...

especially since I dropped it glue side down on the floor...

But check out that lovely wall!

I podged more paper over all the edges of the wall, and then gave most of the inside another good coating of the stuff.

Then I just let that dry and voila! I'm done!!

It was everything I ever imagined it could be, and it looks great on the corner of my crafting table!

I think the kitty is happy about it too!

Wordless Wednesday: The best gift bow ever edition

2010-09-08T07:44:00.000-05:00

Wine Charms and Greeting Cards: A present for my BFF

2010-09-06T11:15:00.000-05:00

My best friend Katie graduated with her masters earlier this year. Oh Master Katie! You are so awesome! Of course I wanted to give her an awesome present to celebrate the event. Part of that present was the One Yard Wonders wine set I posted about earlier, but there were some other BONUS presents too! I thought I'd post about them since they were really simple to execute, but I think they also have the potential to be meaningful if you put a little thought into it.

First I made her an awesome set of wine glass charms to go along with the theme.

I picked out some special charms at Hobby Lobby that reminded me of Katie and all the fun things we've done together over the years, and put a little tag on each one so she could know why I picked them.

Then I packaged them all up in this cute little box!

Next, I made her a set of greeting cards on shutterfly featuring photos from Baylor, where we both graduated from (although I'm no master...) Stephen and I spent a fun afternoon running around taking photos. I tried to take at least a few photos of places that were significant to Katie.

I bound the cards up with some cut scrapbook paper and a mini yo-yo with some buttons. All in green and gold of course - sic 'em bears! I think it ended up being a really really cute and extremely simple presentation!

You'd be excited to get this gift right? I know I would ;)

Thanks for being my friend Katie! You're so awesome!

Blast from the past: Sewing projects from my youth

2010-09-04T10:21:00.000-05:00

Oops! I took the day off from work yesterday and completely forgot I hadn't scheduled something to post! So here's Friday's post, a day late. Since we have Monday off too, maybe I'll go ahead and schedule that one now... Enjoy!!

I've been crafty for a long long time. I can't remember when I first learned to sew, but I was pretty young. I started out making doll clothes for my baby doll. In my head I did most of it myself, and all my mom did was help me interpret the patterns, but I'm sure she did a lot of the work too, since now I don't really enjoy sewing itty bitty little things, but maybe I did really do most of it. After all, my hands were smaller then. Anyways, a while back I wandered around my mom's house taking pictures of things I made. One pattern that got tons of use at our house was Simplicty 7367. I was a little shocked at how simple it was for me to find this pattern online - and then I was shocked again to see that it was from 1967! My mom had this pattern for almost 20 years before I was even born - wowwie!

The most used view from this pattern at our house was the frog. I think we had about 5 of these around the house in various colors, but always in corduroy. My brother had Mr. Frog, Mrs. Frog and Grandpa frog (he was always a very creative namer). I decided I wanted to make some frogs for myself, so my mom helped me make these 2.

We always made them as bean bags instead of pillows. These frogs were super popular in our house! Grandpa frog sprung several leaks in his lifetime, but he always got "surgery" instead of being thrown in the trash. Now my frogs live on top of the DVD shelf with Grandpa frog.

The other view that I made was the pig.

Piggy has seen better days... He's got some pretty nasty orange spots that I have no idea where they came from, and his curly tail has seen better days. And he's always been really flat... Cute, but not nearly as cute as the one on the pattern envelope... Oh well!

Here's a funny story about this piggy. One week in Junior girl scouts, we had to make stuffed animals or some sort of toy and bring them to the meeting - I don't remember why, but that's not the important part. I made the piggy for my project. I was sure everyone would be really impressed with my pig, but then I got there and one of the other girls had made the EXACT same thing! Same pattern, same pig. Ok - the fabrics were different, but what are the odds right? I guess her mom held on to all her old patterns too! We were both kind of blown away. I still am actually. What a bizarre coincidence!

Anyways, I'm sure this pattern will be in my life forever! I'm surprised Josie doesn't have a beanbag froggy of her own yet!

Wordless Wednesday: Everything you could ever want to know and more edition

2010-09-01T07:25:00.000-05:00

A focus on the crafts of others: Stephen's homemade pickles!

2010-08-30T07:52:00.000-05:00

Last month my husband decided to make pickles! We tried to grow some cucumbers in the garden for pickles but all we ever got were a couple of sad little cucumbers. They were even curved in little frowns... Lucky for Stephen, he found the perfect little pickle sized cucumbers at the farmers market!

First he whipped up a batch of pickling spice. The recipe came from the book, Charcuterie, and it is full of all sorts of exciting stuff, or at least he thought so, because for weeks after he made them he'd come up to me like this once or twice a day:

What a goober...

Sorry honey, but I don't find your spices all that interesting...

Then he stuffed the cucumbers and spices in a couple of jars with some water and vinegar and other stuff and stuck them in the fridge. Our fridge pickles would be ready in about 2 weeks.

All done!

Take a look at those lovely pickles!

Now Stephen is such a happy boy! He loves homemade pickles. In fact, he likes to tell me sometimes how one time he ate so many of his grandma's homemade pickles that he threw up. Gross...

"Yay! I love pickles!"

I, on the other hand, hate pickles. No, I don't hate pickles, I HATE pickles. There are few things that I think are more disgusting than pickles. In fact, maybe there is nothing I think is more disgusting than pickles. However, Stephen really wanted me to try one. Since he is my husband, and I love him, I told him I'd try one bite, but he had to record my genuine reactions. I like to keep this blog real you know. So here's what happened...

You know, it wasn't the worst pickle I've ever had...

"Whatever! More for me!!"

Do you freecycle?

2010-08-27T11:52:00.000-05:00

I do! I haven't been super active in it, but freecycle is a great way to share your unneeded goods with your local community. And they will share back with you of course. I bet there's a freecycle group in your community! I sooooo wanted to freecycle my ugly green chairs, but I had already promised them to my sister so that would not have been nice...

Anyways, I haven't offered anything up on freecycle yet, but I did snag a bag of fabric pieces and sewing/crafting supplies! Hooray for me! Here's what I got!

A partially completed Christmas cross stitch

Some Pellon Wonder Under. I've never had any of this before, but so many tutorials I've read call for it, so I'm pretty happy to have a little to play around with!

Some cute quilting weight fabric - I love the strawberries/rose bud fabric (I can't really decide what I think they are...)

Some velvety and some sort of satiny purple fabric that photographs grayish-blue

A decent sized piece of batting. I can always use batting!

Some more purple/dark blue fabric. I think this pile was fleece, but I've stashed it away somewhere so now I can't remember...

Some baby printed flannel

Some small scraps of canvas weight fabric. Aren't the butterflies cute? They might make fun patches for something.

A BUNCH of interfacing. I've already made good use of this stuff!

And strangely enough some puffy paint. I found it stuck in the bottom of the bag, doesn't really go with the rest of the stash does it?

Go ahead and check out freecycle! You never know what you might find :)

Wordless Wednesday: The prettiest daffodil on campus edition

2010-08-25T07:25:00.000-05:00

Craft room overhaul part one

2010-08-23T08:06:00.000-05:00

I've been working on updating my craft room recently! Hooray! One of the updates I've made is to install some "daylight" lightbulbs in the ceiling fan.

Why would you take a picture of that??

It was totally weird having these lightbulbs for the first few days, but now I am in love with them! If I leave the lights on in the spare bedroom/craftroom Stephen and I find ourselves wondering "Are the windows open or are the lights on in there?" when we see the light pouring out of the open door into the hallway. Awesome! I think this has really made an improvement in my pictures taken in there (I'm still no professional though - sorry people). Things actually look the right color! For example

This:

Instead of this:

(My walls are NOT yellow)

There are still plenty of shadows to contend with of course, but I feel like an improvement has been made. At the very least, pictures are much easier to edit in Iphoto. I'd love to be able to get enough natural sunlight in from the windows, but since the majority of time I spend in there is in the evenings, I've gotta work with what I've got. More changes to come... :)

Josie's Bunnies: Purl Bee Bunny Finger Puppets

2010-08-20T08:33:00.000-05:00

Do you ever have those projects where you start off really excited about them, get to work on it, and then it fizzles out after a while? Man it happens to me all the time! This is one of those projects. First of all how could you not get excited about this tutorial? I found it over at the purl bee (which if you haven't checked it out, you should. It's such a fantastic blog!)

I started on these with the intention of them being an Easter gift for my niece Josie. That didn't exactly pan out, so I thought I would just send them as a surprise Josie present in my sister's birthday present box in May. If you recall, I think I mentioned in an earlier post that this didn't exactly pan out either. They did eventually get to Josie sometime in July and I hear they are a big hit!

I know I can't do any better than the tutorial over at the purl bee, so I'm just going to direct you there. As for my blog, please just enjoy the pretty pictures :)

I just noticed this! The tutorial took their bunny photos on a green back drop, and

I took mine on my ugly old green chairs - great minds think alike!

I did make some minor changes from the tutorial. I didn't use the recommended spring felt bundle, which I'm sure is just amazing! I have limited selection here, so I just went for run of the mill Hobby Lobby felt squares. I went ahead and picked up all the neon colors.

Also instead of stitching them with white thread, I used colored embroidery thread to match the felt. I was pretty impressed at how closely I got them to match. Go me! I sort of followed the order the tutorial told me to sew them in. I don't actually remember now, but I know I didn't do it exactly the same. I'd say, just do what works for you! Oh and instead of sewing the tail on, I just hot glued it. I was just sick of embroidery thread by then!

Anxiously awaiting their tails

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my bunnies! I did have a great time making them once I set my mind to it. And I think they are just about the most adorable things ever! Don't you?

Off to Josie's house we go!

Wordless Wednesday: "I can't wait to use these!!!" edition

2010-08-18T08:16:00.001-05:00

(I won these beauties from here)

Thread Project #1: The cop out super-easy thread in a vase project

2010-08-16T08:39:00.002-05:00

Raise your hand if you didn't do any writing for your blog this weekend. Yeah me neither. I ended up only being home long enough to watch one TV show about fancy cakes, watch one movie with friends, and sleep. I did manage to dig something up for the Monday post though :)

Remember all that thread I got from my grandma's house? I posted about it here if you don't. Did you wonder what in the world I was going to do with all of them, especially since they are so old and brittle, that they aren't actually useful for sewing? Well, I sent a gob of them to my sister, and she reported that my niece is now using them for blocks, but since I don't have a little girl (or boy) of my own, I had to think of something else. For my house, I wanted to throw together a quick and easy project to display some of the spools. I don't know if you can even really call it a project actually. I'll let you be the judge.

Here is what I "made":

Hey! It's thread spools in a vase! I think it's a really cute way to show off some of my threads. I only used colors that I only had multiple spools of for this project, and they wouldn't even all fit in there so I had to try and weed out some of the more "blah" colors.

Here's what it looks like from the other side:

This side is ok, but I really like the bright yellow spool front and center on the other side - don't you?

So, if you find yourself with an overabundance of thread spools, here's a possible way to display them. I still have tons more, so I promise the next thread project will be a little more exciting, if only slightly :)

I'm behind!! Oh dear...

2010-08-13T08:00:00.004-05:00

Happy Friday the 13th! It looks as if I've gotten behind in writing blog posts... oops! I try to do all my writing on the weekends when I've got some free time, and write up enough for a weeks worth of posts (or 2 weeks worth if I'm feeling ambitious!). However, I've had house guests recently for a couple of weekends, so didn't get a chance to get ahead in my writing. No big deal since real life takes precedence over the blog you know. But then last weekend I didn't do any writing, just because I was being lazy and I wanted to loaf around instead. And I've been doing so good keeping up with my M-W-F updates too... Sorry everyone. I'll try to do some real blog work this weekend :)

So no crafts for today, but here are a few things worth mentioning I think!

Earlier this week I was checking the mail, and turned around to say something to Stephen, and leaned on the screen door and OW! My arm started hurting! Well I looked at the door and there was a wasp on it! I got stung by a wasp!

I can't believe it! I don't know why but a few weeks ago I had decided for some reason that I probably wasn't ever going to get stung by a bee or wasp again in my life. I know that this is a weird conclusion to come to. But I did. I guess I figured I wasn't dumb enough to upset a wasp anymore, and only kids get stung. Haha - good one me...

Next, have you ever tried Swagbucks? I've been using it for the past couple of months and LOVE it! It is a site that rewards you for searching like you normally would! You just have to use their search engine (which I believe draws from google and ask.com). I've earned myself a couple great prizes already :) You can also take surveys and sign up for special offers to earn points, but really all you have to do is search.

My main goal is to save up enough amazon.com money to buy a few Christmas presents for free! So far so good!! Anyways, if you haven't tried it yet, I'd love it if you'd sign up using my referral link (http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/JennyBolech) because then I get matching swagbucks for any you earn from searches. It's good for both of us really! Trust me - this site is totally for real!

Finally, you may or may not have noticed that I added an email subscription option on the sidebar! If you are interested in keeping up with my posts but don't want to have to come out and check what's new, or don't have a reader to tell you when there is something new, go ahead and sign up :) No pressure! I decided to add it because the other day I kind of cornered a friend at work about why he wasn't reading my blog. His excuse was that his reader was so full that he couldn't keep up with it but if I had an email subscription he could know when to come read. Now I know this was just an excuse to get me off his back, I am aware that my blog probably doesn't have a lot of appeal to men ;) However, I thought this might be a valid excuse for some people, so now you have a new subscription option! You're welcome!

Thanks for suffering through my ramblings for the day, and I hope to be back to our regularly scheduled craft updates next week!

Wordless Wednesday: Josie at the zoo edition

2010-08-11T08:20:00.000-05:00

Grandma Stash Part 3: Tools and such

2010-08-09T09:05:00.000-05:00

Here we are at the last "Grandma Stash" post. This post will consist of all the tools/other stuff that came in my bag of wonderful goodies!

I've been telling people for ages "I need some pinking shears!" hoping that someone would buy me some out of the goodness of their heart. My mom did offer to give me hers once I think, maybe just to get me to stop asking for some, but as a crafter I felt I could not take such a useful tool away from her. So when she went to clean out my grandma's house she found these for me! They seem to still be in pretty good condition too! Great!!

Did you ever wish you could cut your hair with pinking shears and end up with perfect zig zag ends?

I know I did...

This is "The Perfect Fit" pattern maker book thingy. I haven't looked at it too much, but it appears to be for altering patterns. Seems pretty neat to me! I find that my patterns never fit me quite right. Do you have that problem too? Maybe you don't since you already know how to alter patterns...

I think I'm going to try and make that outfit on the far left...

I also got a Singer Circular Stitcher. This seems kind of cool. I don't have a singer machine though so I don't know if I'll ever be able to use it... Still, it's kind of fun to have around, if just for the vintageness.

Next is an old box of pins. Another cool vintagey thing if you ask me. And I can always use pins!

Next is this mysterious black box labeled "sewing kit." Actually, it's not mysterious at all, it's just a sewing kit. But it is jam packed with all kinds of goodies.

Inside is this US Navy Sewing Kit. My grandpa was in the navy so I'm guessing this was his. Did the sailors all have to learn how to sew on their buttons? And if they could do it, why can't my husband?

Looking inside the sewing kit, it's pretty much just a needle book now...

The big box also contained a number of spools of thread. I tried sewing a button for my husband with some of this but it's all pretty brittle now, it just snapped off any time I tried to pull it tight.

In the bottom of the box is a great assortment of safety pins and buttons. I have used some of these already!

There are also a bunch of little scissors and other various tools in the box. And a thimble! I never had one before now!

One of the tools in there is this thing below. Does anyone know what this is because I have no idea!

Mystery tool...

I kind of like the idea of keeping my grandma's sewing kit in tact, so I'm not going to try and put a lot of this into my sewing stash. I do pull out the buttons and safety pins now and again though.

I hope you enjoyed reading about all my new toys! I know I'm excited to have it :)

If someone's gotta win, it might as well be me... Stationary edition

2010-08-07T08:16:00.000-05:00

I'm going to let you in on my newest obsession. Blog giveaways! I've been lucky enough to win tons of great stuff on the internet in the last couple of months! Hooray for me! I kinda don't want to tell you about it because then I know you're all going to want to start doing the same thing, and that makes my chances of winning worse. But I feel that since all these blogs/artisans were generous enough to give me their stuff for free, the least I can do is spread the word about them to my little audience of readers! I haven't decided how often I'll post about my winnings, I guess it all depends on what I'm winning! My ultimate goal is to have a free (or really cheap) Christmas, so I don't know if I'll post about everything I win right away, since some things will be saved for gifts. Anyways, on with the winnings!

Today I'm going to feature some of the great handmade stationary I won!

First I won $20 worth of goods from Merry Blues Art which I spent on some various, adorable, banana paper cards. Aren't they just the cutest? This giveaway was hosted by The Ivy Twines.

The sweetest congratulations cards

I just love these mini thank you and happy birthday cards!

I won these great button flower cards from Copper Creek Designs! Adorable!!

These lovely personalized cards came from Paper in Style. I love the colors and the birds, and they came in a lovely storage bag!

Here's one I won from Pink Dandy Chatter - some sassy zebra thank you cards and address labels from Unique Scrap Design!

And last for today, some more cute bird stationary from Lily Jane. This giveaway was hosted at Haute Whimsy! I love the quote on these!

That's it for today! I guess I need to start writing more letters. Stay tuned till next time, and I know it's dorky and cliche, but you've gotta be in it to win it!

Embroidery Hoop Earring Holder!

2010-08-06T08:38:00.000-05:00

I've seen lots of picture frame lace earring holders lately. They are really cute, but I got it into my head that it would be equally as cute using an embroidery hoop instead of a picture frame! I like to try things for myself, but I figure if someone else has already ironed out the kinks (or at least experienced the kinks) it makes it easier for me in the long run, so I searched around to see if anyone else had tried this already and lo and behold - someone had! So cute right? I wanted mine to be a little less punky and a little more... shabby chic? (I actually don't know what defines shabby chic by the way), so I decided to leave out the paint and dye.

I was lucky enough to find a nice remnant of lace at Hobby Lobby a few days after this idea popped into my head. Score! Plenty for lots and lots and lots of earring holders!

Lovely lovely lacey lace!

I also had an old Christmas cross stitch kit that had an embroidery hoop included. I wasn't really planning on making the stitchery any time soon, so I repurposed the hoop for my new project! Sorry Christmas fans... This will have to wait for another day.

I wasn't planning on welcoming anyone this Christmas anyway...

I estimated the amount of lace I would need just by eyeballing it. I cut a sort of square a few inches bigger than the hoop on all sides.

Then I stretched the lace as tightly as I could in the hoop.

Then I realized that it would be much easier to see these pictures if I wasn't working on my white cutting board. Duh! I put it on my big scrap of cork board to take photos, which came in handy a few minutes later

I used Tacky Glue all around the edge of the hoop to hold the lace in place, and pinned the lace down to the cork board so that the lace laid flat on the hoop while it was drying.

Suggestion: The pins will hold the lace down better if you put it through the "designy" parts of the lace instead of the "holey" part

Then I just let the thing dry!

All Dry!!!

Then all that's left to do is trim the excess lace from the edges of the hoop. Try to get as close as you can to the edge. I found that my embroidery scissors were extremely helpful for this. And appropriate since it's an embroidery hoop, don't you think?

All that was left was to get a plate stand from the dollar store. Now you can oooh and ahhh at my magnificent earring collection! I know you're jealous ;)

Wordless Wednesday: Tons of mail edition

2010-08-04T08:17:00.000-05:00

My Sweet Little Dresses!

2010-08-02T10:57:00.000-05:00

Back in May I entered a giveaway on The Long Thread (fun blog - check it out!), and I WON! Lucky me! I won a sweet little dress from leila and ben! I'm finally ready to post about it since I FINALLY got it sent out to my niece. Isn't it adorable?

Along with that, I got the sewing pattern for the dress so I could make an endless supply of my own! I happen to know an adorable pair of sisters who I decided needed some matching sweet little dresses! We were going to visit them a few months ago, and since the pattern is pretty basic and simple, and I already had the fabric I wanted to use on hand, I decided I could whip them both up the night before we left. Big Sister's dress was a breeze!

I got through it in a snap, no problem! Also, I found a new useful tool in my box of grandma presents - my new "hem measurer"

I have no idea what this thing is actually called, or how you're actually supposed to use it, but I'm pretty sure it is for hems. I used it for ironing under my raw edges like so:

Fold it up to the tab, iron it down - simple as that

All you real seamstresses are probably shaking your heads and unfollowing my blog right now. Sorry guys! I don't claim to have any actual training in this!

Also, I got to use some of my Grandma elastic on this one - I was shocked to find that it was in perfect stretchy condition!

Anyways, let's move on to Little Sister's dress. I call it a disaster, only because it was late and I was crunched for time, in the light of day it probably wouldn't have upset me so much. For clarification, this disaster arose only by my own error - don't go blaming leila and ben, because their pattern is great! This is just a "Jenny screwed something up" story.

I had gotten through a significant amount of the sewing on Little Sister's dress and was trimming the seams as called for in the pattern and then, as I snipped the underarm corner, I cut through the seam. I sat there for a good 5 minutes staring at it in disbelief. Then I said a few bad words. Then I cried a few angry tears. Then I tried to fix it. It got worse and worse the more I tried to fix it. Then I looked at the other sleeve and saw that the seams were not lined up - AT ALL. Ummm... how did that happen? The whole thing was totally jacked up. I said a few more bad words, and tried to fix it again, which didn't work, again. I ended up throwing the whole thing in the trash. Poor Stephen didn't really know what to do that evening, because I was in such a bad mood. Anyways, the next day only Big Sister got a dress the next day.

About a week later I finally got over my distress over the Little Sister dress, ripped out the jacked up sleeves, cut out new ones, and reattached them. Came out super cute!! Then it hung on my closet door for about a month. But now it's all packed up and ready to send! Something to look forward to Little Sister! (Of course, given my record of getting packages to the post office in a timely fashion, I might just hand deliver it next time we visit...)

Note how my one and only zinnia bloom is color coordinated - woohoo!

So, the moral of this story is, this is a great pattern, and I'm 100% sure anyone could do it. But don't be a doofus like me - pay attention to what you're doing. (and thanks to leila and ben, and the long thread!)

Fun Rolled Paper Beads

2010-07-30T07:33:00.000-05:00

If you read a lot of craft blogs, you probably already know about making paper beads. I think it is such a cute fun way to make unique beads, and you can coordinate them to any project! As long as you can find coordinating paper that is.

I apologize in advance. I don't have an overabundance of pictures of this project. About five minutes in to this project my hands were covered in Mod Podge, so I decided it was in my best interest not to put my hands all over Stephen's fancy expensive camera. I'll try to be descriptive though, just in case you haven't heard of paper beads already :)

For this craft project I cut skinny strips of scrapbook paper. I think they were maybe a quarter of an inch wide, and the whole length of the scrapbook paper, tapered to a point at the end. Different shapes of paper will make different shapes of beads, so feel free to experiment with non-triangular strips!

I think this would be way easier to do with a wider strip, but I wanted my beads pretty small. I rolled my paper up around a toothpick applying mod podge to the paper as I went. I tried to only put it on the inside at first, but it occurred to me it didn't really matter where I put the mod podge, since I'd be rolling it all up and coating the bead in the stuff when I was done anyways. So go ahead and get the podge all over everything - it won't be a problem! One thing you do need to be careful of is not to glue the paper to the toothpick. I tried to slide the bead back and forth on the tooth pick every few rolls to make sure it didn't stick.

After my beads were rolled up tightly, I slid them off of the tooth pick and put them on my specialized paper bead drying device (one of my rolled felt pincushions with pins sticking out of the sides). Once they were on their pin skewers, I gave them a coating of Mod Podge so they would have a nice solid outside. You can sort of see in the picture how the orange and read beads haven't dried quite yet.

Once they are dry you can use your beads for whatever you want! I used mine for wine glass charms!

This is the set I made for myself. They are kind of yucko because I used a black gel pen to mark my cutting lines on the scrapbook paper. They were pretty obvious when I rolled them up. Ooops! Didn't think of that!

I made another set for my sister - the picture is kinda blurry, but it's all I got! They came out much better since I put care into the cutting lines. I'd go without cutting lines at all, but I don't really trust myself to cut "freestyle."

Now I don't have to worry about some gross face drinking out of my wine glass! Unless it is a color-blind gross face I guess...

Cheers!!

Wordless Wednesday

2010-07-28T07:39:00.000-05:00

Bottle cap magnets: Beercycling

2010-07-26T08:02:00.000-05:00

Did I mention in my bottle cap tacks post that my husband drinks a lot of beer? Not the "I'm drinking as soon as I get home until I go to bed" kind of beer drinking. And actually as beer drinking goes, he probably doesn't drink all that much. That's actually a bad way to start this post. It makes my husband look bad. He's not a lush or anything. He just enjoys beer, much more than I do is all. Anyways... I have tons and tons of bottlecaps. In fact, I have some very cool bottle caps sent to me by a sweet and friendly fellow blogger that I will hopefully be posting about soon so stay tuned for that!

Anyways, these were made before I got my super fun Australian bottle cap stash, and I haven't been able to post about it since I made this as a birthday gift for my sister and brother-in-law, and they just received the box in the mail this week. I should mention that I'm the worst package sender in the entire world - their birthdays were in May. Now it is July... ouch. Sorry guys... On with the craft!

I made a few sets of bottle cap magnets. They are pretty similar to the bottle cap tacks I made. I thought I'd give you a loose tutorial for them, just in case you wanted to make some of your own.The boy set is just plain bottle caps, the girl set has some embellishment. It's pretty easy, and you might have ideas that work better than this, but here's what I did.

My supply list:
- Bottle caps
- Round magnets - I think mine were 3/4 inch diameter, it doesn't really matter as long as they fit inside the caps
- Scrap cardboard
- Scrapbook papers and punches (for the girly set)
- Mod Podge (for the girly set)
- Tacky Glue
- hot glue

First, I remembered that my tacks sank into my bottle caps a little more than I wanted them to when I made them, and I didn't want the same to happen with my magnets. I was afraid if they sank in too far the sharp edges of the bottle caps would scratch up my refrigerator. My solution was to add a little cardboard base underneath each magnet. Cheap and easy! I cut out small scraps of cardboard that fit inside the magnet.

My cardboard was pretty thin so I used 2 layers inside each cap. I decided to tacky glue these together, and then tacky glue them into the caps. I thought about using hot glue, but I was afraid that might separated from the cap or something. And I didn't want to dig the glue gun out of the drawer just yet...
Regardless - I glued my bases into my caps and left them to dry.

This next part is for making an embellished set of magnets only. If you want your beer caps to look like beer caps you can skip this part! I decided to make my sister's magnets cuter than just plain beer caps. I added some cute scrapbook paper and little heart punchouts! I got a little heart shaped punch in the Michael's dollar bin a while back. I think I even had a 20% off coupon, so you really can't beat that! I'm glad I got it when I did because now all they have in the punch bin are angels, feet, and cats.

To attach the papers to the caps I used my old buddy Mod Podge! First I podged down the circle background, waited for that to dry, and added another layer and stuck on the hearts. After that was dry I put another layer of Podge on top. I think I added 2 or 3 layers on top of that - letting it dry between each step. Much like grandma recipes, I just added layers till it looked right.

Once everything was dry, the final step was to hot glue the magnets into the back. I realized I don't have any photos of this part, probably because you have to work kind of fast with hot glue. I just filled the cap up partway with hot glue and added the magnet, adding more glue where it looked like it needed it. Be careful with this, because the caps will get HOT! They are metal of course and metal is an excellent conductor of heat. I also found, that if you set your hot Mod-Podged bottle caps cute side down on an old shutterfly envelope to dry, they will stick to the envelope, and orange stuff will get stuck to them which you will have to scrape off later. I was able to get most of it off and they looked fine after another layer of Mod Podge was applied.

I think they turned out super cute! Don't you?

I actually made two sets of plain magnets, one for my BIL and one for my husband.

This is the one I made for Stephen - it's extra special because we got the Piton cap on our honeymoon. Awwww! Mmmmm - St. Lucian beer! And here's a fun fact: our tour guide taught Stephen how to open a beer bottle with a seat belt!

If you or your SO is a beer drinker, this might just be the craft for you! Just remember folks - drink responsibly!

Wedding Week: Hooray We're Finally Married!

2010-07-24T08:00:00.002-05:00

Thanks so much for joining me for wedding week! I hope you enjoyed it - I know I love sharing pieces of our special day :)

I don't know about you, but if I had to do it all again I would just elope. In a heartbeat! I'm going to comer right out and say it - I hate wedding planning. Don't get me wrong I loved having all my family and friends there to celebrate with me, but putting a wedding together is HARD! I'm not a huge fan of deciding what everyone is going to eat, I don't really care what anyone wears, and I'll let you in on a little secret - my decorating is random at best, so trying to figure all that out was a nightmare.

I have a question for all you married ladies out there. One of the very best moments of my life was when we were driving away from the church, knowing that I was officially done with wedding planning. Was it the same for you?

These pictures pretty much capture what after the wedding freedom felt like for me - this is us right after we pulled up at my parents' house, before we jetted off to Ft. Worth for the night. And this dress is waaaaay more comfortable than the wedding gown! Another kind of after the wedding freedom I guess!

Apparently Laura was happy too :)

Wedding Week: Wedding Day Survival Kit

2010-07-23T08:00:00.001-05:00

When I got married my good friend Tracy put together this handy and adorable wedding day survival kit for me!

Taking a look at all the goodies packed inside at the shower

Seriously, everything I could think to need was packed in here - from extra deoderant, to tylenol. Even a mini bottle of tequila! I didn't end up needing that one...

Plus it was all decorated super cute! With a little time and a little thought this would be a great gift for any brides in your life. I can pretty much guarantee yours won't be as cute as mine though ;)

Mine has already been passed on to my sister. Neither of us needed much of what was in there but it was sure nice to know it was on hand for emergencies!!! (Like cherry juice on the flower girl dress 5 minutes before the wedding is supposed to start!)

Thanks Tracy!!

Wedding Week: Library Shower Guest Book

2010-07-22T08:00:00.000-05:00

This post really ought to be one of my "Focus on the crafts of others" posts, but since I already had the "Wedding Week" headline, it felt like a little much...

Anyways, here's a quick little post about a fun craft one of our friends/coworkers whipped up for our shower! If you don't know, both Stephen and I are library employees. He works in the glamorous music library - I started out there as a student worker, but now I'm a real staff member, and I'm down in the dingy, falling-apart basement (It's not all as bad as that - at least I can see out the window into the garden from my desk). About a month before our wedding both of our departments got together and threw us an awesome summer/beach themed shower! It was a lot of fun!

One of my favorite things at the shower was the guest book.

Most of you have probably never checked out a score from our music library, but this is what they look like. I spent many years as a student worker sewing the loose scores into these gray covers so I was particularly tickled that the guest book was done up as a score, with it's own call number label, and reserve tape. I can't remember for sure, but I think there is a strip of tattle tape in there too...

I'm not sure about the opinions of the other student workers in the music library, but I loved sewing scores. It was probably my number one favorite duty during my student worker time. Just goes to show you I'm a crafter at heart! If you recall, I used the same technique to make my wedding programs.

Thanks library friends for the awesome guestbook and the awesome shower!

Wordless Wednesday Wedding Week: Cute flower girls edition

2010-07-21T08:00:00.001-05:00

*Photos by the wonderful Nicole Berrett

Wedding Week: Belgian Lace Wedding Veil

2010-07-20T08:00:00.001-05:00

Since I settle for nothing less than the best, I decided it was a good idea to fly to Brussels to shop for my wedding veil. After all, no expenses should be spared for my big day. Ok, the real deal is I got to go to Brussels for free since I'd just been canned (well technically "laid off") from my job, and my mom and my aunt were going anyways, so they invited me to come along. Regardless, I did get my wedding veil from Belgium!

Lace making demonstration in the lace shop - holy moly! How do they do it!

Granted, this is not a craft I made myself, but since the veil was handcrafted, and it is beautiful, I felt it deserved a place on the blog!

Modeling my future wedding veil - looks great with the pink sweater doesn't it??

Before the trip, I was about ready to say "no thanks, I'm going without a veil." All the ones we'd seen and tried on were just... bleh! I didn't want something that looks like I could have thrown it together with about $10 worth of tulle and other supplies that I picked up at jo-ann's (especially when they were charging 10 times as much for it!) My mom had the idea that when we were on our Belgium trip we could look for lace veils. Great plan! It was easy to fall in love with them! (BTW - All photos from here forward were taken by Nicole Berrett, except the one of my sister) During my bridal and wedding photo sessions, Nicole made sure to get some shots to high light the veil.

This style of lace is called "princess lace" it was a big oval that we folded over at the top and sewed to a hair comb which we just stuck into my bun, see?

Hey - I guess that I did do a little crafting on this one after all! Except my mom actually sewed it on. The idea was to attach it in a way that the next bride to use it could easily unattach the comb and style the veil as she chose, which my sister did for her wedding in February:

Sorry for the dark picture, but see how she wore it shorter than I did?

Now the veil has been tucked away again, waiting for the next bride to come along and make all her other bride friends jealous! Wanna wear it yourself? I've got a single brother ;)

Now for some more veil shots of beautiful beautiful me! During both of my photo sessions with Nicole we had designated veil-holder-outers. Don't be fooled, I'm pretty sure there wasn't a lick of wind in the air either day.

Look how sweet we are! Plenty of room for two in this veil!

And just for the heck of it - ain't I a sultry vixen?

Wedding Week: Wedding countdown calendar!

2010-07-19T08:00:00.002-05:00

In honor of my and my husband's first anniversary on Sunday, I chose this week to high light some of the crafts we did leading up to the big day! To start, I made a wedding countdown calendar to help us keep track of how long was left till our wedding day!

It's made of plain old construction paper and some red gingham print ribbon. It was super simple and super cute! I think it went about 1 or 2 months out. I cut the ribbon long enough to hang it on the cabinet. Jump to the last photo to get an idea of what I'm talking about. Each day had the date and the number of days left written on it, and each day we got to tear off a page. Fun!! Unfortunately any before pictures I have are missing somewhere in the depths of the computer. However I do have some action shots!

Here I am pulling off Day 43.

This was sometime in June, June 6th I think... It was also the day of Holly's wedding which is why I'm looking so gorgeous. I know I don't look it yet, but that's because the light is bad and my hair isn't dry yet. Don't believe me about how beautiful I ended up?

Tada! Told you :)

Here's me, suspiciously pulling off June 13th. Perhaps I'm rethinking the engagement? Nah! Probably just rethinking the photo op.

Stephen and I pulling off the final day - this was when we came home after the rehearsal dinner. Our final hours as singletons!

Zero days left! Hooray hooray hooray!!

One year ago...

2010-07-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

One year ago today, Stephen and I were married! I can hardly believe it's already been a year - it's flown by, and at the same time it feels like we've been married forever (in a good way of course!) I love you honey and look forward to many more happy years together!

*Photos by the wonderful Nicole Berrett

One Yard Wonders: Wine-Lovers' Special

2010-07-16T08:00:00.002-05:00

Just a quick note for all of you who follow me through Google Reader - I slipped up and published at least one post too early last night - clicked publish instead of schedule to publish... oops! Even though I deleted the post it's still showing up in my reader, so if it doesn't make sense where it is, just stay tuned. It will be published in it's correct place soon enough! Now on with today's scheduled post...

I love wine! If I had to choose my favorite drink (of the adult variety) it would be red wine! Pretty much any kind of red wine, unless it is a super nasty one of course. Or sweet. I don't like my alcohol sweet thank you very much. Unless it is a fruity island drink...

Ok - back on track! I love wine, especially drinking wine with my friends, so when my BFF graduated last may I knew I wanted to give her a bottle of wine. As a bonus, Stephen is my designated wine picker, so he would get to have a hand in the gift too! Being the crafty crafter that I am, I decided to cute the gift up a little bit with my One Yard Wonders book, and make the wine bag and coasters in the Wine-Lovers' Special.

My apologies, but I didn't take any "in process" pictures of this one. However, you can trust me when I say this is super easy! The wine bag takes like 5 minutes - at first I thought the ribbon tie was just a lazy excuse to not have a drawstring, but in the end, I think it looks much nicer to have the ribbon tied around the top in place of a scrunched up drawstring neck.

The coasters were a breeze too! Personally, I think the coasters are a little doofy - I've never needed a coaster for my wine before, much less one that slides over the bottom of the glass. But I figure they were fun and easy to make, and they could be used for regular drinks too - I made mine a little bigger than the book said to, since I have some really BIG wine glasses, and I made a set of six, so I would NOT be able to get 2 bag/coaster sets out of my one yard of fabric. I zipped through the coasters assembly line style, and ended up finishing the whole thing in a couple of hours, I probably would have finished faster if I hadn't been watching TV intermittently. I think the set turned out great! Don't you Tommy?

Wordless Wednesday

2010-07-14T07:46:00.000-05:00

Grandma Stash: Part 2 - Thread Galore!

2010-07-12T07:44:00.001-05:00

The majority of my newest craft acquisition is the motherload (or grandmotherload if you will) of thread! There have been a few previews of the thread stash floating around here, and now I'm ready to tell you all about it! This is a picture heavy post so get ready :)

The total score was a big old box of about 650 spools of thread, mostly on wooden spools, that had been stored in my grandma's sewing cabinet for ages! Where did all this thread come from? My mom says that someone donated all of it when she was young, and her family was taking a charity trip down to Mexico. I try not to feel bad that I'm now the owner of a bunch of stolen charity thread...

The majority are small spools of Belding Corticelli mercerized cotton.

There were 491 spools of this stuff in various colors! Lots of multiples too. I have no idea if this will be useful for sewing - it's so old, and I know at least some of it is so brittle it just breaks when you pull on it, but a few seem to stand up to the tugging, so maybe... I don't think I'd load it up into my sewing machine though. Regardless, they sure are pretty to look at!

Three small "tray" boxes of cotton

The bottom layer of the big box was filled with it too.

Besides all that, there was a shoebox stuffed with mercerized cotton spools!

Shoe box layer #1

Shoe box layer #2

Shoe box layer #3 - getting a little unruly!

Next I had this shoe box to dig through:

I thought it was just more of the same, but it was mostly all Belding Corticelli Poly Bond

There were 97 spools of Poly Bond, and the colors as a whole were a lot brighter than the cotton. It seems stronger too, so I'll probably try it in a sewing project before long!

The last definable group of thread was the silk twist. There were 32 spools of this in all, and it was mostly Belding Corticelli but there were a few Coats and Clarks in there too. This stuff is lovely, and nice and strong! I don't think I have that much green stuff that needs sewing though...

The last category is the "others" (Not to be confused with the Others from Lost. These others do not pose a threat to anyone). These are various large and small spools of Belding Corticelli, Coats and Clark, and Talon threads. There are a handful of plastic spools in here.

Now if you know anything about me at all, this next part won't be any kind of surprise to you, but after I went through the thread, I entertained myself by stacking and arranging my threads in pretty designs. And as I hope you noticed from my new header picture, it made for a great photo op!

I'm totally excited to have all this thread! Some of it is already on it's way to a new home, and I've got plans for some of the ones I'm not going to use for sewing! Stay tuned for thread projects in the near future!