Zan!!!

I'm just heading out to pick up Zan from the airport, coming to spend Christmas here from Belize. This is the first Christmas in three years that Zan will be home and I can hardly stand the excitement!

Button Overload

Sometimes when I'm not home, I think about what I want to make next and it about kills me to BE not home. It's worst when I have a project in mind or half done--I absolutely itch to get at it! Such was the case with this seemingly simple lampshade project.

A couple of weeks ago I bought thousands of buttons (really--I'm embarrassed to admit the actual number) and hundreds of yards of ribbon (a sadly low estimate of the actual yardage--expect to see some ribbon projects here soon) at a clearance sale. Since then my mind has been racing with ideas for using them, hence the lampshade project.

Since the buttons, when augmented with some orange buttons, were the colors of my basement areas (craft room, sleeping room, bathroom) it seemed like a great idea to cover the plain little lampshade in the bedroom with buttons, a button mosaic.

So one evening I sat down to apply the buttons. An hour later I was still only about 1/4 of the way done! What I thought would be a quick project actually took 3 sittings and 3 boxes of glue dots! Arghhhhh! Fortunately I'm pleased with the finished project, so it was worth all of the effort. My skeptical daughter Suzie thinks the shade is now so heavy with buttons, it's likely to break through the table on which it sits and dent the cement beneath. Oh, ye of little faith, my Suzie!

Here's the lamp in all its buttoned glory:



And a close up of this thing of beauty:


Eat your heart out, my dear Suzie!

I felt like felting it, that's why

When I first got into felting thrifted sweaters for crafting, my nephew asked, "why are you shrinking all of those sweaters?" I guess the answer is that I felt like it!

In the last couple of weeks I've found 5 wool sweaters at yard sales, four for 50 cents each and one for a mere quarter! After running them through a couple of hot cycles in the washer, they were fully felted and ready for crafting.

I've been wanting to try needle felting, so I used some of the sage sweater fabric to felt details onto a butterfly I cut with a Stampin' Up! butterfly die out of the lovely cream sweater fabric. Here's what it looks like all put together on a hair clip:

And then tonight I wanted to try adding a ruffle to a T-shirt, inspired by the blog, My Mama Made It. I quite like the results and am going to wear it to work tomorrow.


Erin is waiting for me to watch Levi now so she can sew a wedding gift for a friend. Hasta la vista!

Staycation Wahoo!!!

Right off the bat, you need to know that Levi is sitting on the desk next to the keyboard, so I'm blaming any wonkiness on him.

I just talked to Sarah on the phone and told her about all of the fun I'm having during my week of week off of work staycation: rearranging the craft room and buying a cutting table; putting together bookshelves for my sleeping room; spray painting garage sale frames; going to movies at noon and taking a nap every day! She wanted to see evidence and accused me of always saying I'll take pictures then I never to. Here's proof she's wrong and I'm right!


The new cutting table on bed risers to be easier on my back . . . It's 36" x 36" with really cool extensions that make it 36" by 72". Erin keeps upping the amount she'd pay me for it, but I'm holding firm.

And from another angle . . .

We moved over the central desk to make room for the table . . .


Dang, it always looks so messy.

My old bookshelf, but I like the combo of frames, etc. and the hooters picture from the salt lake city indie craft fair. . .. .

The latest bookcases with painted frames . . . and the garage sale duvet cover and the kiwi kiss side tables . . . I simply adore Kiwi Kiss.

Bed and tables again

Frames again . . . and yes, I do know the books aren't stacked the usual way. I have so many books and buy so many from the library that I really need to pack them into the shelves.

One more for the frames.

Now Levi and I are going to costco to buy wheat tortillas (thanks for the heads up, Amy) to eat with the savory pork (thanks for the recipe, Joellyn) we made in the crock pot. Yum yum.

Quarterly seems pretty good to me.

It's only been three months since that last post so that means I'm on a pretty good quarterly schedule. It won't win me any prizes, but it's certainly doable and won't keep me awake at nights fretting about my blog. Now that would truly be a disaster!

I've kind of been stuck on trying to make the blog itself look better, so I stitched up a header with the blog title, then I realized it is way too square and should be much skinnier (hmmm--maybe that's a virtual reflection of my physical self . . .). Thanks to the magic of Photoshop, and thanks to the fabulous Dirk for photographing and editing the photo, I just plucked out the offending parts and ended up with a banner than works. At least it works enough to go with for now.

So there you have it--a fancy, schmancy header for a poor, ignored blog!

Summer Reading

Wahoo!! The Salt Lake County Library System has an ADULT summer reading program including prizes, a reading record, and a recycled art contest! I'm soooo doing it! My first book is Homefront by Chuck Logan, just because it is the one I found under my bed yesterday when I needed a new read. :) So far it's pretty good--nothing spectacular but not so bad that I have to skip right to the end. I finished our book club book while in Moldova and thoroughly enjoyed it, but for the life of me I can't remember the name of it right now. I left it there for Taunya to read (I'm pretty sure I mispelled her name, but I know for sure her last name is Lasar--sorry).

Now I'm thinking about what I could recycle into art for the art contest . . . hmmm. I'm thinking something with fabric . . . Maybe inspiration will strike this morning while I'm cleaning out my clothes closet. I've come home from Moldova with a well-developed sense of guilt at the obscene amount of clothing I have in my closet. If I was wearing them regularly that would be one thing, but I don't, so there they sit, in messy piles or filling the hangers when they could be used by someone else. By the end of the day I anticipate 1/3 to 1/2 the clothing will be on its way to DI and I'll have a tidy closet and quiet mind. :)

New Etsy Listings!

Finally! Finally! Finally! I just finished posting two bulletin boards on Etsy and I'm quite pleased with myself. I keep making stuff and never posting it and then wonder why I never sell anything. :)

I found these fabrics at Ikea this week and they absolutely called out to be made into bulletin boards. I think the photos even turned out pretty good . . . for me, that is. Here--take a look: