Holiday Trees

The day we created these masterpieces, I was enjoying a rare friday afternoon off from work, having the luxury of getting to make whatever we wanted. I'm obsessive about reusing things, but Selina really takes it to the next level. So, our only limitations were that we use what was on hand, and of course, make it beautiful.

First up, the classic holiday red yarn, we wound it around the styrofoam form, and it stuck pretty great like velcro. Then we had to take it to the next level and affixed giant jewels on it, and topped it off with a circle of felt to keep it all cohesive.

Yarn Tree

For the next 2, you can see the purple one in the background on the right, Selina cut individual felt squares and pinned them on for a shingled effect. I covered the one in the foreground w/ linen scraps left from a bookmark project that you can see Selina hand embroidered!! That was just the base coat, b/c I didn't want any of that green styro showing. Then, those rounds of burlap which were leftover from this project of hers, were layered with pins and sequins for the rustic tree.

Add some tinsel that has been literally in my gift wrap drawer since the 90's, and there you have it!

Next up, we took a circle punch to this beautiful Japanese paper and then with pin and sequin in hand, attached them. It's pretty and fluttery in person. You get the idea. :)

Lastly, going with the hole punch theme, the martha stewart butterfly punch was put to good use, yet again to decorate this linen covered one....

Until it dawned on us that d'oh!!! GLITTER TREE needs some help, and the butterflies, pins & sequins and all flew over to that one.

And our crafternoon resulted in this pretty assortment. I can so see it in the window of a chic little boutique, or in Selina's living room. ;)

Reupholstery-a-rama

Hello Reader!

Which brings me to some of my latest projects, reupholstery. I recovered the seats of  some fabulous danish style dining room chairs which, after over 10 years of use were showing their wear. And it was just as easy as they say it is, pop out the old cushion and staple gun the new one on, presto. Unless you are like me and prefer to remove the fancy backing so you can put it back on when you are done for that less homemade look. ;) all in all, it took me about 8 hours for 5 chairs.


before-ish, what great bone structure!



AFTER!!

Then, my friend Selina and I had been steadily working on recovering a giant cornice for her house. The most challenging part of that project was matching up the fabric & sewing it to have (seemingly) invisible seams. (this is a great resource for an option we didn't try to use) Turns out, we just aren’t the kind of crafters who give up easily, and 6 times is a charm! Stapling it back over the original cornice was comparatively a piece of cake. Here's the story on the fabric used.

hospital corners @ the edges

the back

voila! the front

a better look at that perfect corner

Of all these pictures, I didn't get one of it after it was put up!! D'oh!!

Pride and Parody

Hello Reader!

 

Simple Times by Amy Sedaris

 Sorry for the gap in posts, but you know when one gets to crafting, the blogging takes a back seat. So, to start, I have a review (sort of) of Simple Times by Amy Sedaris. Much like her talented brother, David Sedaris who has written many memoirish, hilarious books, their humor is a little offbeat, and seems to be equally appealling to and appalling people. Sometimes, the same people at different times! I find that more with Amy’s books, they alternately crack me up and creep me out. And her latest is all about how people are on the crafting bandwagon these days in the spirit of saving money and expressing their artistic side with varying results. Craft parody all over the place. I figure, if I can’t laugh about my crafty craziness, then I think I might go off the deep end.

Tiling and styling

Hey Dear Reader!

So, I thought now was a good time to take a trip down memory lane of crafts of yesteryear. I made this quite a few years ago, and it is still one of my favorites, unfortunately, it was sooo long ago, I didn't even have a digital camera and didn't think to take pix while it was in progress. I've always been inspired by mosaic tiled pieces, and had dabbled in tiling flowerpots and smaller objects and frames. When I found the table in a summer clearance sale, I new it was fate! I was obessed with the sun and moon & colors that went w/, much more so than I am now, but I still love it all the same.

undercover mother

Hello....so, one of my recent posts was re: the burp cloths for the newest addition in my family, my sister's daughter, so now she's realized that she'll be feeding baby K on the go and would like to have some cover from prying eyes without shelling out big bucks, and naturally, she called upon me, her fairy god-sewing sister for some help. I had previously never heard of this, but after googling it, the enigma was solved. I perused many blogs and tutorials and happily chose this @ Freshly Picked to follow. Add some pretty fabric from Hobby Lobby's private label, Brother and Sister Design Studio and the notions, (boning is a noun!) and I was ready to go. Freshly Picked's tut was in a word, AWESOME and as a beginner/intermediate/somewhat lazy sewer, I'm happy to report that it's turned out a lot like hers did. :) Unfort, it went so, sew quickly, I didn't even take time to snap work-in-progress photos, but I'll post the final product soon. Then I just have to hope that it meets my sister's approval too!

Simple Treasures

I first learned about this craft from my crafting buddy and lifestyle maven in-training, Selina, on her inspiring blog. Selina has boundless energy and creativity for everything she does, and her crafting is no exception. She let me go through her fabric stash to choose the perfect decorative accent to make these burp cloths truly one of a kind. We chose this pretty print, since I knew that I had to feature pink prominently.

Then she had the perfect soft brown polka dotted mini corderoy and pink flannel left from a project she'd made for another lucky little girl. Then she challenged me to get crazy and 'get cute' with the fabrics. So I did, unintentionally, which is the best kind of crafting. I knew right away that I wanted to do a colorblock one

and after I finished that one, I had applique on my mind. I've never really tried machine applique so it it was unchartered territory, and on the 2nd try, I'm mostly happy with the results....but there is still room for improvement, as you may see on the closeup...but (upon further reflection, looking at it 24 hours later) I love it and I hope my sister will love using them for her bundle of joy. And I was excited to 'make it my own' as well by adding a little fabric loop on the corner so they can hook the cloth on to a (teething?) ring or something so it'll be less likely to be lost.

Glee-fiti

Happy October, dear blog reader!

I love Oct, the weather is cooling off, and all the creativity that comes along with Halloween!!! But first, I have to show you how crafters do glee-fiti or glee graffiti....this is my fav pizza by the slice restaurant...mmm mmm good. Please pardon the glare, it was a beautiful sunny day! Thanks to Sharmee for being the best hand model and always being game for fun!

Edwina Scissorhands

So did you know that Sept was national sewing month? I had no idea, but if Fiskars says it is so, who am I to disagree? I was in NY over Labor Day visiting my sister & her family, and we stole away for a quick visit to Mood, the same one from Project Runway, like I had to tell you! I'm mad about that show, so actually going to the store was a real kick! And, while I was there, I actually saw a fellow Houstonian(!) & past winner(!!), Chloe Dao shopping there!!! But much to my chagrin, I was too shy to say hi. I digress, anyway, the expedition was to buy fabrics for my nieces' halloween costumes -- super heroines. We were aiming for shiny silver fabrics and after an exhaustive search, bought some silver lame, b/c we didn't want to leave empty handed. It had the shine factor, but the weight wasn't quite what we envisioned. Then, as fate would have it, there was a shop across the street specializing in what can best be described as swimwear fabric with crazy shine all over the place, and the vision was back on track. We had made the capes out of a shiny polyester and the silver was for a cute skirt and accessories to go w/ the leotards. Flash forward back to their apt and I met the coolest oldest electric sewing machine that still works!! It only sews a straight stitch, and we estimated it must have been made in the 1950's or earlier. It runs like a dream, and weighs about a metric ton naturally, so there was no way I could smuggle it out in my suitcase back home. ;)

meet the flockers

Let's see, dear reader, as I am somewhat sure I only have one :) if I can recount the crafts of the past month... I should start w/ the bonanza from August which was getting re-aquainted with the world of silk screening, which I love! A few years ago when I tried it for the first time, I stuck with more crude and time consuming method of cutting out stencils from plastic. This time, I went to the big leagues, photoemulsion, which is not for the faint of heart. I read about it all over the net and what you hear is true, it takes a lot of trial and error. Lots of errors on my part until I finally got it to work. It's all in the timing of exposing your design to the light, and I was overdoing it by underestimating the power of the SUN!

So once that was down, I 'burned' my design which was to screen a tote bag for my book club buddies. With lots of help from my awesome crafting buddies, we had a good little assembly line going, and voila!

Inspiration

I'm being inspired all over the place right now for all the irons I've got in the fire. I'm trying to master the process of photoemulsion for silkscreening, but so far it is mastering me. I've been told by several people to keep trying, so try I must. More to come on that once I have something concrete to show.

I also found this great quote which really applies to this blog, aside from my 2 loyal followers...

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.



- Cyril Connelly

This man just might have been a craft blogger. ;)

Om Sweet Om

This card was to celebrate my cousin and her husband's very first house. No more apartment living here! So I wanted to have something unique as a feature for this card. After visiting it for the first time, I came up blank. They hadn't moved in yet, and it was literally a blank canvas. Then when I was brainstorming, I realized their door had a nice stained glass feature and it met the requirements for unique.

So, I had my cousin's husband covertly take a picture of the door and email it to me so I could get it just right. It's a good thing too, because my memory was way off.

I recreated it on a plastic transparency, but it was too....transparent. Then Sharmee with the burgeoning craft room came through for me with adhesive vellum! I didn't even know this existed. So w/ 2 layers of that behind it, I was off to the races.



Then I figured, with a window, we should be peering in on something, and consulting with my Mom, who said an Om would be nice. So Sharmee cricut-ed it out for me, and I used some gold leaf I've been hanging on for more years than I care to admit, and voila, the perfect new house card!

They loved the card, of course! ;) And it was made all the more special when my Dad composed a lovely personal note that was positively poetic. He's a poet and I didn't know it! Anyway, you'll have to ask my cousin to show you... :)

Sisterhood of the travelling stamps

Oh my how time flies when you are crafting, this is just too true in my case.  Well, true to my word from post #3, I am sticking to that one post/one month pledge, on this, the eve of the new month. I know, you are overwhelmed. :) But REALLY, I have been busy crafting, and a lot of it had to be kept under wraps since one of the only people who read this blog-ette (ette, b/c it is so small) was a recipient of the crafty goodness. But now all can be revealed!

So, early in June was Sharmee's bday and mrs pint0bean blogged about the card project so nicely, I'll have to link to it here. Well, then late in June, was Mrs Pint0bean's bday, so naturally, Sharmee and I put our heads together for her card.. We knew it had to be clever, colorful, and 'suitable for framing' so we came up with a twist on the traditional quilling technique, which is basically rolling up thin strips of paper into pretty coils and swirls. Our twist was that we used curling ribbon instead since it comes in such vibrant colors, which are essential when you are celebrating someone's bday who also has a vibrant personality. 

From Drop Box

 So it kind of looks like fruit loops, no? Anyway, we made lots of them and carefully glued them down...

and as I'm trying to upload these pix, as an aside, darn you, Picasa, for not playing well with windows!! I finally got the hang of tagging my photos in windows, and Picasa doesn't speak the same tag language. hmph.



add some rhymes to complete the inside...



and voila!!!!

More to come...

In upcoming posts, you'll see the cards for all occaisions, the magic of the cricut, the agony of the letterpress, & a dash of sewing just for good measure! And I do solemnly pledge to post at least once a month, weekly might be too ambitious, and might bore my 2 'real' readers. :)

Blast and then whimper

Ok, so I started this blog with the best of intentions and now I am nearly 6 months behind! My apologies to all of my devoted followers and fellow craft-ionistas. Now, to get down to business. First, there was the sparkleball, assembled from christmas lights and plastic cups. As seen here:

It took the 3 of us about 5 hours and countless old timey clothes pins plus add an old soldering tool, and voila! Of course this includes the trial and error aspect of it, but I'm sure if and when we have it to do over again, it'll only take 3 hours. ;)