Wordless Wednesday - Crafts

Crafts in progress.

I thought maybe I would do a post about some yarn and embroidery crafts I am working on.  I think I have posted before about the bags my folks and I are making for the pregnancy center at Christmas time, but if not here is a re-cap.  We are putting together some small diaper-like bags for under-privileged new mothers at Christmas time.  My job is to get the 10 bags (5 girl, 5 boy) and make baby hats.  As well as some monetary contributions for clothes.  My mom is getting the clothes (about 2 sets for each bag) some small size baby toiletry items, a toy and a few diapers.  We also want to put a little something in there for the moms, but are still working on that idea.

I wanted to start working on my embroidery so I decided to jazz up the canvas bags.  I decided to do a small design as well as the word baby in blue and pink.  Be kind, as this is my first real needlepoint project.

I got the designs from a small starter packet I bought at a cute craft store in NE Portland.  They are created by Tigerpup Embroidery which is a business located here in Portland.  It comes with the designs on large sheets of paper you can cut out as well as a large sheet of carbon paper.  It costs about $4.50 and the designs were super cute.  I had intended to get some Jenny Hart "Sublime Stitching" patterns as I saw her on She's Crafty and fell in love, but I thought Tigerpup designs were way cuter and were actually a little cheaper.

I think my favorite so far is the rocket and I will probably end up doing another one of those.  I have to admit, the boy designs I got are a little bit cuter than the girl ones.  I have some cute girl ones, but they are either really large or really detailed and I don't know if I can pull that off.

I am also still working on those apple hats.  I actually decided to make red apples for the girls and green apples for the boys.

As you can see I haven't quite finished any of the boys hats yet.  But I am working on them!!  I'm making slow progress, but progress none the less.  I think I am going to take a couple days off from work in October to finish up this project and also finish the kids Halloween costumes.  They want to go as Garfield and Odie this year and I'm a little afraid I'm going to have the some problem as last year with keeping the ears standing straight up.

We ended up using skewers and that worked pretty well.  And I'm a little worried about how we are going to keep Garfield's tail standing up.  Something to ponder.  All I have is the yarn right now which I just bought yesterday.

The lady at Joann's asked if I had a coupon and I told her I forgot them and she said she would throw a couple extra in my bag.  I just went through my bag to take this photo and boy howdy.  She sure did throw in a couple extra.

If anybody needs some coupons for next weekend, I'm your girl!

All is Vanity. And the winner is finally announced...

I should probably announce the winner of my giveaway.  Whoops!  In my defense, I did let the winner know she won two weeks ago.  Patti was the winner!!  Yay!!  Patti and I used to work at the newspaper together.  And then she got smart and moved away.  And then I got smart and moved away.  Congratulations Patti!  You'll be receiving your major award shortly.

Now onto other news.  I went garage saling at the coast a few weeks ago and found this vanity for ten bucks.  I have been looking for a vanity ever since I moved into my new place in March.

Years ago when I was living in a studio apartment, my mom was giving away her vanity.  It was kind of large, solid wood and beautiful.  She asked me if I wanted it and I said no, that I didn't have the room for it.  I've been thinking about that vanity a lot lately.

Here are the before shots.  You can't really tell from this picture, but the fabric covering the stool was stained.

 And here is the finished project, all clean and reupholstered:

 It doesn't really look right though, much too neat and tidy.  This is better:

Giveaway! Yay!

Ok so I have decided to do a giveaway.  The prize?  Pac-man magnets made by moi.

They are made from perler beads and are very sturdy.  I used the strong magnets so they aren't those lame ones that won't even hold up a piece of paper.

The deadline to win is Sunday 8/22/2010 at 11pm Pacific Standard Time.

There are a few rules.  Only one entry per person.  The winner will be drawn at random.

To win just leave a comment.**See below for more rules.

How long do you think is too long for installing a printer/scanner?  I didn't have the installation cd so bear that in mind.  And please don't say something like "15 minutes" because that would make me sad.

I did finally install my printer/scanner and I got to scan one of my favorite photos of Jasmine and Mikey.

I didn't clean the glass or even dust off the photo, but after FIFTEEN WHOLE MINUTES of installing I didn't feel like scanning any more photos.


**Also in order to win I will need some way to contact you.  If you have a blogger account just go into your blogger profile ("edit profile" on your dashboard) and click the "show my email address" box.

That way I will be able to email you if you have won.  If not, just check back on Monday 8/23/2010 and I will announce the winner and tell you how to contact me.  Please make sure you leave your name as anonymous comments will not have a chance to win.  As soon as I am able to contact you and obtain your mailing address I will ship your "major award."

Burn the land and boil the sea.

Will someone turn the heat down?  My hands are sweaty and it's hard to write my blog.

I haven't figured out a way to get the cool air from the air conditioned room into my spare room where my computer is.  I was going to take a photo of the current system, but my bedroom looks like a bomb exploded in there.  IT'S TOO HOT TO CLEAN!

Great!  Now the backs of my knees are getting sweaty.  We better make this quick.

It's July.  My favorite picture is on the calender.  It's shows a piglet diving into a lake while a duck wrapped in a towel watches from the shore.

I started a new craft project.  I wanted to start making some more things for mom's shop so they would be ready for Christmas shoppers.  They are potholders.  I know!  Potholders?  Sheesh.  Haven't I made enough of those yet?  But these are different and cool and I'm hoping they sell.

Oh and I want to say one thing about this Mel Gibson stuff.  Everybody is all shocked and appalled by him and HELLO! he did the same thing five years ago when I originally started boycotting him (give or take, it's too hot to look up facts.)  I have not knowingly watched a movie that Mel Gibson has been a part of for five years.  Everybody always makes fun of my boycotting things, but if we all banded together things might actually change.  If everybody canceled their cable tomorrow, you can bet your bottom dollar prices would come way down.  But the fact remains that no one but me and Katie are willing to go without cable.  Although she hasn't boycotted Mel Gibson one bit.  Kept trying to talk me into seeing that Apocalypto movie.  And NO, I HAVEN'T SEEN AVATAR BECAUSE I'M BOYCOTTING JAMES CAMERON FOR BEING A NOT VERY NICE PERSON.

Alright, I'm off.  I'll leave you with this so you don't think I've gone mad.

The duck:

 The pig:

The big picture:

All eyes on me, in the center of the ring, just like a circus.

So last season of Project Runway they had a circus challenge.  They had to make an outfit inspired by the circus.  I loved the idea because I like strips and red and the circus seems to use a lot of that.  I needed to make curtains for my bedroom.  Bad.  I mean really bad.  Especially with the ugly air conditioner in.

Just joking, happiness.  You know I love you!  Happiness is my a/c's name.  We're tight.

But seriously, look at that window.  Doesn't it just make you sad?

I'm kind of broke.  Well... Because... I spend a lot of money.  I had tons of left over fabric from my curtains at my old place and the curtains I made for the living room.  So I just decided to pull out the previous stitches and make it work!  Oh Tim Gunn.  Can you believe he has been to Portland AND Vancouver and I didn't even know about it until it was too late?  Apparently they like the Pacific Northwest because both of the contestants from these two places have won.

Anyway, I wanted to do a play on a circus tent with red and white fabric.  They were quite different fabrics and it turned out to be a giant pain in the neck every time I crossed the seam between the two fabrics as I had to change the top thread and the bobbin.  And man oh man do I hate my bobbin.  I wish I had a machine where you just set it in the top instead of having to remove that stupid metal part off the side and fiddle with it until it pops back in.  Ugh.  It's super annoying.

I think they turned out pretty good.  Here's a photo, please disregard the wonky hem at the bottom.  I didn't feel like pinning.  I did iron the top before I did it so that part is a lot straighter than the bottom.

And here's how it looks when the a/c is in use.

I actually think it looks better like this.  It also kind of reminds me of the Queen of Heart skirt in Alice in Wonderland.  The Disney cartoon one.  I haven't seen the new one yet.  Although, I was told it wasn't very good.

And Birdy where are you?  We miss you here in Portland!  I hope you are doing well!  And making lots of cool stuff!

SOAP. It's what's for dinner.

So Katie came over on Sunday night to make soap.

It was melt and pour soap, so you'll notice in the background (not the messy kitchen background) the chunks of soap we had cut up.  Then you melt it in a double boiler.

Don't we look happy?  Here's a creepy eye shot of the soap cubes.

We also made some shampoo and liquid hand soap.  Right as I was taking a photo of it Katie asked how her arm fat looked in the previous shot.  I said it looked like this:

Doesn't that look like bacon fat? This stuff was really easy.  You just mix it with filtered water.  Watch how Katie demonstrates:

Liquid soap turd.  You just blend that stuff up and put it into bottles.  We added a little orange oil to the hand soap to make it smell nice and just left the shampoo plain.  I didn't make any shampoo so you'll have to ask Katie if that stuff is any good.  Mom says it is fantastic though.

Now here are some cute photos of us cutting the soap.  Hey side-note... You know what's hard?  Writing a blog on commercial breaks from Hell's Kitchen.  Takes you like 1.5 minutes to figure out what you were talking about and by the time you start getting your rhythm again, the show is back on.

These photos are funny because first Katie pretended to cut and then I did.  Oh aren't we just the thing!

This photo is pretty unflattering, but I thought it was too cute to just not post it.  This is what I really look like.  Extra chins and all.  Plus the chef's knife.  I always pack one of those in case of zombies.

Look at the precision cutting technique Katie has.  Yummy.  That soap looks delicious!

 That girl has mad skillz.

Here are some finished pieces.  I made some face soaps.  Hold on, show is back on. Whoa.  Chef was mad!!  Ok, where was I?  Oh yeah, we made some face soaps with oatmeal in them.  Tip: if you let the soap set too long and then add moisture absorbing oatmeal, things might thicken up way fast.  But they still turned out pretty good.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out and they smell wonderful.

I thought it might be fun to start posting a random photo from my archives at the end of blogs.  So here is this one.  It's our pumpkins we carved last Halloween.  Mine is the clown face at the end.  It started as one that was much more difficult, but I didn't realize how crummy my carving skills were so I just turned the pumpkin around and started over with the "easy" pattern.  Yeah.  I did that.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son.

You know what is fun?  What is really, really fun?  Taking a hundred bucks to Ikea and pretending you are rich.  You can get a lot of crap there for a hundred bucks.  I'm really trying to resist the urge to list off all the things I got there because I don't think anyone would find that remotely interesting.  Or would they?  Maybe I should.  No.  Definitely Not.

I will tell you this though, I did find an 8 foot long curtain rod for my front window.

And I bought this gorgeous red fabric to make curtains for my front window.

I actually did that thing my mom always does that makes the ruffles at the top of the curtain.  Man, that sure makes them look better than not doing that.  The fabric was $8.50 a yard and I had a 25% off coupon so it actually wasn't bad on the money front.  I bought 5 yards though when I actually only needed 4, but I always worry about not having enough fabric.  Better safe than sorry.  I watch Project Runway so I know what happens when you don't buy enough fabric.  Some poor model has to wear an obscene skirt down the runway.  It's not a catwalk, it's a street walk.  And all because you skimped on the chiffon so you could get more boning for the bodice.  Nobody is looking at the bodice.  We are all looking at that model's behind.

Anyhoot, here's the curtains:

I couldn't get them to look right, so I closed the shades and took one with a flash:

I love them!  I love the color which I am glad because sometimes I will buy fabric and by the time I get it home I am already second guessing my choices, but this is perfect.  The fabric has a good weight and hangs very well too.  Lori helped me pick it out.  Yes, my friend Lori was in town this weekend.  Yay!!  No photos.  Not one.  Can you stand it?  Oh was I bummed out about that after she left and I realized I had no photos.  Luckily I have all my Ikea crap to remind me of her visit.

It was so nice having her here and having a much bigger apartment to entertain.  I also made her watch the North & South British miniseries that I love and we got some crafting in so it was pretty darn fun.  I can't believe all the beautiful sweaters she is knitting.  I remember back when I MADE her learn how to crochet and now she is way better at yarn crafts then I could ever imagine being.

We skipped all over town shopping on Sunday.  Ikea, Michaels, The Mall, Mill End Store, Scrap and Target.  It was pretty fabulous because I had been saving money for the last few months anticipating this and what is even better is I got everything I wanted and I didn't even go over budget.  I even have fabric for the office window and I think I have enough left over fabric to make some curtains for the kitchen as well.

Is it wrong that I totally want to get this set?  I just can't think of anything cooler for my bathroom.  I don't know if my mother would approve.

The family that crafts together...

Man, am I tired!!  I had the best weekend though because I got to spend it with my niece and nephew Jasmine and Mikey.  Not only are they sweet and kind and little anti-depressants, they are also crafty.  Especially Jasmine.  She was constantly asking me for scissors and pipe cleaners and every time I turned around she had finished another craft project.  It was pretty awesome.

The first thing Jasmine made was a diorama of a lion's habitat while Mikey made dinner for all his puffles in his tent.

Jazzy crafting:

Mikey being crazy:

Jazzy crafting:

Mikey being crazy:

I was really impressed with how well her diorama turned out.  That girl has mad skillz.

It was a project to earn a girl scout badge and you had to make a habitat including food and water.  So she put a zebra in for food.  That girl kills me.

On Sunday it was raining pretty hard all day so we stayed inside and played Uno and Parcheesi all morning.

Aren't they just the cutest?  It's 11am and they are still wearing their pajamas.

Here they are at 3pm painting their bird and butterfly houses in their pajamas.

I love watching Jasmine work.  She is so serious and really takes a lot of time working on things.  Mikey is more of a fly by the seat of your pants crafter.  It's more about how fast you can do it than how it looks when it is done.  He did do a pretty awesome job on his though.  He painted his puffles on the side of his house.

If you don't know what a puffle is, it looks like this:

And Katie and Jesse bought Mikey a new puffle on Saturday so he was pretty stoked at how many he had.  I think he did a pretty awesome job capturing them in his paintings.

I really liked how Jasmine birdhouse turned out too.  Those kids are awesome.

I'm just going to start posting photos because they are so cute.

Then we tyedyed some new clothes.  I forgot to take photos because tyedyeing by yourself with two small children can be really stressful.  I did remember at the end of the day, but then I forgot to take photos of the completed work, but it was really fun and the kids did awesome.

Alright, that's all I got right now.  I'll try and do better about writing.  I've just been so busy lately!!  I did start a new craft project though and I'm totally loving it, so hopefully I will share soon!!