Say What?

This is the conversation that my husband and I had this morning:

Me: Hey, Babe.... can you fix my super-duper-big-circle-paper-punch? There is one edge that just doesn't cut well. Technically it works, but I really have to push hard and my arm starts to hurt. This is for my Christmas cards and so I have to have this done ASAP.

Hubby: I can, but wouldn't it be easier if you just had me cut them out for you?

Me: If you would prefer, that would be great. Here is the stack of card stock, 2 circles per page please.

Hubby: How many circles do you need me to cut out?

Me: 60

Hubby: WHAAAAAA?????? You send out 60 Christmas cards EVERY YEAR?!?!?!?!?!

Me: No. Geeze!.... I send out 120, I already cut out the 1st 60 circles and now my arm is tired.

That's right!!!! This week is Christmas-Card-Crunch-Time!!!!! I have 120 Christmas cards to make and my deadline is Wednesday the 24th. And to throw in a real kink... we are going to be out of town this weekend and I will be unable to work on them at all from Friday to Sunday afternoon. I hope to get a lot accomplished this week but since my youngest has hit the terrible twos almost instantly this week, I might be setting the bar a little high. :-)

Oh AND this is my 100th blog post!!!! YAY for me!

Copy a Sweater?

I was on the website full of almost all of my inspiration... Anthropologie, and I found this sweater and fell in love. It is knitted with what looks like worsted weight yarn so I think I am going to try my hand at creating a pattern for this baby..... as if I don't already have enough to do. :-)

Costume

So, I cheated this year. My oldest wanted to be Darth Vader and a friend had given us a costume that her son wore last year. I planned on embellishing it a little but then I figured that it would be a hassle for him to dress himself at school for his party if there was all kinds of extra things on his costume. So he had a store bought costume this year... and he didn't care, it worked out.

Since my youngest is too young to pick his own costume, we made him into Yoda. I had to make his entire costume which turned out to be a piece of cake. I used a pattern for his pants and made them out of brown linen. I cut apart one of his long sleeve t-shirts that I was willing to sacrifice and used it as a pattern for the shirt, which I also made out of brown linen. I made a few alterations to the shirt to make it more "Yoda-ish". At times Yoda wears a cream colored cloak, so I also used the t-shirt for that pattern. When I made the hood I didn't allot for size so it didn't fit, but really Yoda's hood isn't big enough to fit those big ears anyway so I think it was fine. I also sewed the brown linen scraps together and created 3 long pieces of double fold biased tape that I sewed together and braided for the belt

The "hat" I made out of green polar fleece. I cut out a square that was bigger than his head, I draped it on his head and pinched each of the sides so that it cupped his head. I cut out 4 ear shapes, sewed them together, stuffed them and then sewed them on top of the gathered sides. I used a machine to sew the front and back of the ears together but the gathers on the hat and attaching the ears had to be done by hand. I think if I had it to do over, I would have sewed some details into the ears but all in all I think it tuned out just fine.

As a bonus, the glow stick that I bought for "little Yoda" just happened to be green so he had his own mini light saber in the appropriate Yoda green. I had a toy light saber for him but it didn't light up and was frankly too big for him to carry around anyway.

My oldest wants to be Indiana Jones next year, so I better get started on that! :-) But 1st, my Christmas cards need to be made BY Thanksgiving!

NYC!!!

I never did get a chance to share the pictures that I took in August when I was in NYC. So here are some of my favorites:

Necklace

It has been CRAZY around here! Right now I am trying to get the sketches put together and plans made for the Halloween Costumes for this year. I also have most of the products purchased to make my Christmas cards and I have some other projects in the works, mostly Christmas presents.


I took time out of my busy schedule to make this necklace for my friend, Jenny's, birthday. I saw a necklace that was near identical to this one on Anthropologie.com recently and I decided to make one. I am calling this my "up-cycled" necklace since I used an old t-shirt for the flower petals. I think it turned out nice and I have a bunch of other jewelry ideas floating around in my head that will go into my sketch book until I become less swamped with craziness.


I hope to post soon on some projects that are in the works, but I can't make any promises! eek!

Self Portrait

I have tons to post but no time to do it in!!! I am compiling and working on posting some crafty things but it is taking longer than expected. So with the limited time that I had today, I decided to post my new favorite picture!!! This is a self portrait that I did while in New York. This is when we first arrived at night in a cab. I am completely smitten.... with New York and this picture!

Quilt

My latest venture: quilting. Here is the 1st one, it took me about a week to piece together and quilt. I kept the pieces simple and rectangular and I only quilted a few of the pieces just for function. I used old sheets for the batting so that it would be "green" and also washable. I enjoyed doing this and I am definitely going to make more!

Inspiration

Here are some of the things that are inspiring me lately. (click on the images for links)

Recent Things

Here are a few things that I have made recently:

My Sister-in-law had a new baby. Her 1st was a girl and I made a slightly modified version of Amy Butler's Nappy Bag in PINK.

Well, the new baby was a boy (Max) and she couldn't carry around a pink diaper bag, so I made her another slightly modified version of Amy Butler's Nappy Bag. I use my Nappy Bag even when there are no nappies in there so I try to make them look more like a purse and less like a diaper bag so they can actually be functional even after the kids are bigger. Here is what I came up with. The "leaves" on the front are hand appliqued with some embroidery on the top.I also wanted to make a smaller purse for her daughter, Chloe, so that she could match mom so I drew out a pattern for a nappy bag that was half the size of the other. I machine sewed in the appliques and the embroidery except when I personalized hers... I did that by hand :-)And I couldn't leave out Max, so I made this crocheted stacking toy that was a free pattern on Lion Brand's website. I sewed the frogs eyes on a little weird, but other then that I liked how it turned out. Chloe was playing with it when we went to visit Max, so I think it was a hit.I also made a baby sling for Max to be carried in. I didn't have a sling with my 1st but I did with my 2nd and I LOVED IT!!!! We took a trip to Washington and my 9 month old was in it the entire time. It was great! So that is my new go-to gift for new moms. It was the knitted baby booties, but with all these babies being born in the summer... It thought that I should go with something else. The sling is fitted and reversible and matches the nappy bag that I made her.

So... I have put myself on a spending freeze!!! I have done it before and didn't stick to, but this time I'm determined. I have so many unfinished projects and multitudes of craft supplies, that I really need to use what I have so I have decided to evoke the "poverty breeds ingenuity" initiative and so far this is what I have come up with.

I have a dress that I bought on sale a while ago that is really cute and very comfortable but I have never worn it because it is strapless and I have trouble wearing strapless undergarments. So I decided that a small lightweight/summer bolero would be perfect. After much thought I came up with this:

Here is an old Bink 182 t-shirt that I had set aside for my recycled t-shirt laundry basket. I only wore the t-shirt a few times, so it was really like brand new but since I have had the t-shirt since college, it was quite snug. I decided to cut it to shape, redesign the sleeves into a cap sleeve-ish shape and crocheted the all-over trim. Since this was also a functional bolero (used to cover up my bra straps) I didn't want to worry about it sliding off my shoulder so I made a strap for the front that has 2 button holes sewn into it, with the buttons sewn on the inside of the bolero.... so it was optional. I loved how the bolero turned out and the best things about it are 1. it was completely FREE because I used materials that were laying around in my craft room and 2. it was the 1st time I used my button hole maker on my new-ish sewing machine and it was PURE MAGIC!!!!!!

My other "free" piece of clothing wasn't exactly free.... I was at Target a few weeks ago (prior to my spending freeze) and they had a Liberty of London scarf on sale for $3.95. I folded it and held it up to myself and realized that it was big enough to make a skirt out of it. So I did. I initially planned on making it elastic at the top but since I am on a spending freeze and don't have that much elastic laying around, I made it drawstring. I made a channel at the top like I would for making it elastic but in the center front I sewed on another button hole :-) for the drawstring. I could always convert it if I want to in the future but for now, I like it.I also made a few hair clips. This one was made with a piece of left over Dupioni Silk, a piece of left over tulle and an old clip-on earring.This one is actually wool crocheted and felted flowers. I made this to go with my niece's play house that I made, but I didn't end up using them, so I made them into a hair clip :-)I am really into the recycled t-shirt yarn right now so I have been saving a strip (when I cut up the shirts for my laundry basket) for jewelry. Here are a few that I made for necklaces and I just added a brooch to each. The best part is that they are totally versatile because you can wear them without the pins, or with the pins, or with different pins. LOVE IT.

Printed Fabric

Here is the finished fat quarter. This is exactly what my son drew as an alien. I am pleased with the end result and I can't wait to do more!!

New Stuff

Last Week my husband took my almost-5-year-old to Florida for a short vacation to visit a friend. I decided to take that as an opportunity to redo his room, which was in dire need after the wall decal disaster. They were gone from Tuesday-Saturday and believe it or not, painting this room took me the entire time!!! The room before was a "little boy blue" and the ceiling was a lighter shade of blue (thanks to the previous owner). My son decided he wanted his room his favorite color, orange, and after painting 2 walls orange I quickly saw how bad of an idea it was. The color wasn't the problem, per say, but the orange next to the honey oak trim looked horrendous! I mean it was really bad!!!!! So since my son was expecting orange, I made the executive decision to paint one wall (which happened to not be one of the 2 that I just painted) orange. I picked that wall since it had the least amount of moulding, only a baseboard which would be mostly covered up by his bed. I decided to paint the other 3 bright white. Man it took a full gallon of orange and white to get the job done. Not to mention the several quarts of ceiling paint that it took to make the ceiling white again. There are still a few spots that need to be touched up and the ceiling could use another coat or two, but I am done for now. Here is the result:
I also decided that I would take this opportunity to try my hand at quilting. For the time being I am using the underside of my son's current bedspread until I get his quilt done. Quilting is a part of the craft world that I have yet to venture into. I have been itching to get into it and just needed a reason. I am going to start simple and just make rectangles that will be sewn vertically on the twin side spread. I had a few scraps that would work and now I am collecting fabric for the rest. I saw this baby quilt on the cover of Anna Maria Horner's new book and LOVED how she just threw all kinds of colors in there so this is my inspiration:

I am having trouble finding fabrics in some of the most important colors. I, of course, need orange to tie in the HUGE orange wall that is in his bedroom and his 2nd favorite color is yellow. Both of those colors evidently aren't very popular with the quilters, especially with cute patterns, so I decided to collaborate with my son and print my own. I had him draw some pictures, we picked one of his alien drawings and now I am in the process of printing it on a slightly patterned fat quarter that I purchased. The ink was a little clumpy so I stamped the image onto the fabric and then had to clean it up by painting in the fill. The first round is drying and the next will be the outline. I am excited to see how it turns out.

I am also getting some gifts finished up. I have a crochet project that I am working on, the picture makes it look like a large ottoman, but in reality it is only the size of a butter tub. :-)

And I am finishing up a sewing project. This is the first time that I have attempted applique. I am also embroidering on top of the applique and so far so good. I can't wait to see the final result on this either:

So I am keeping myself pretty busy. Hopefully I will have some completed projects soon to share :-)