My Michaels Dollar Bin Scores: 1/9/11

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.

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

Thread Project #2: Cute framed spools

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.

Crazy...

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...

Do you freecycle?

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

(I won these beauties from here)

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

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 :)

Grandma Stash Part 3: Tools and such

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 :)

Grandma Stash: Part 2 - Thread Galore!

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!

Mod Podge: My new favorite thing!

Let's have a warm welcome to the newest member of my crafty family, Mod Podge! Oh Mod Podge, I wanted to buy you for such a long time but you were so expensive at Michael's and Hobby Lobby, at least for a cheapo like me.  Then I saw you for a lot less at Joann and I had a 50% off coupon, so you finally got to come home with me!  And oh how I love you!  You are perfect for so many wonderful projects. You may have kicked the tacky glue out of it's place of honor!
Yes, after ages of wanting to, I got myself some of this stuff, which has been around for longer than I have!  I've already used up a ton of this bottle, it's come in handy for so many things! So get excited people, there will be Mod Podge projects coming soon!!

Grandma Stash: Part 1 - Notions

I have recently come into a huge stash of crafting supplies!  My mom has been working a while now no getting my Grandma's house cleaned out, and all the sewing and crafting supplies have been coming to me!  I've got so much amazing stuff, I hardly know what to do with myself!!  Instead of trying to load up a hundred pictures into one post I'm going to break it up into a few, starting with the notions!  Here's what I got:

A dozen or so cards of seam binding, bias tape, and rick-rack:

Some zippers, snaps and elastic.  I've actually used some of the elastic - I was super shocked that it was still good and stretchy!  Excellent!!

Also a big old roll of stretchy gold elastic cord.  Who knows what I'll end up doing with this... Maybe string for Christmas ornaments.

I also got some various lacy trims and such.  I didn't measure how much of these there were, so I don't know the total I hauled in, but there is a lot of this stuff!

All these trims came to me stuffed in this somewhat questionable baggie:

Definitely a sign that these came from a different time and place!

All I've used so far is some of the elastic, but I'm sure there are going to be a lot of great projects created using this stuff!