Success!!!

I got my first sale today!!! Wahoooooooooooooooo!

I guess you can see I'm a little excited. Some lovely person in Lethbridge, Canada, (some of my favorite people are Canadians; you know who you are), ordered a matching set of burps and bibs. Don't you just love her! I was so excited I even threw in one of the little ruffled onesies also, just to celebrate a first sale. I hope she likes it. Here's what they looked like all wrapped and ready to go:

Today I can also report day 4 of meeting my goals for the week; man, does that ever feel good.

And just for fun: here's what my little helper looks like today--front view and top view:

 

Goal Check

Four more items posted on etsy. Wahoo!!!

Stitched bookmark

Day three in a row! Wahoo!

Our craft today is brought to you by Renae Curtz, MDF who gave me the pretty little dish in the photo of the bookmark. YTR, Renae!

Inspired by this kitchen towel at Anthropologie, I wanted to try my hand at stitching onto a printed cotton. I did a little bird on a pincushion for Christy for Christmas and thought it was okay, but not as cool as I had hoped. So then I tried just stitching around the printed images of the fabric and, with this fabric design at least (I think it's a Heather Bailey fabric--can't find it online), quite liked the results.

I also figured out after making Christy's pincushion, the thread color needed to contrast highly from the fabric colors. I think the next step will be to stitch a piece large enough to make a dishtowel.

So Excited

I found out today that I'm going to be featured on a blog later this month--well, actually I was invited to give away a heart wreath AND be featured. I'm super excited. Here's the wreath that will be in the giveaway on http://frugalmommyof2girls.blogspot.com/: I figured it is well worth the giveaway to get some traffic at my etsy store. Oh, and somebody "hearts" my etsy shop!  Wahoo! Baby steps to a first sale, I'm hoping. :)

I've been making these wreaths like there's no tomorrow, in fact today I actually ran out of straight pins even though I bought about 6 packages of them just last week. They are so super easy to make although they do take about 3 or 4 hours each and about 3 yards of wool-blend felt. I could make them out of the cheap acrylic felt, but I don't think they'd have the rich feel these have. I got the inspiration for the wreath from one of my favorite blogs, Design Sponge which found the wreath on domestifluff. Kristin, the maker of the wreath, offers a great tutorial with good instructions and photos.I've gotta say, though, that I just don't have the patience for that, so I cut my circles with a Sizzix machine and the creatively named Circles #2 die: I can cut 6 at a time with that machine. Thank you, Sizzix! You are a lifesaver!

Update on goals:

I posted 4 new items on etsy this morning (still working through all of the bibs and burps I made months ago) and here I am posting on my blog. Ohh, it feels so good. I could really get used to this life of leisure, if only the paychecks would keep rolling in.

Goals for this week

Since I have the whole week off of work (wahoo!), I've decided to kick start my etsy store (at long last--for 8 months I've had a bunch of photos taken by my uber-talented friend Kristina Werner just sitting there waiting to get uploaded! Arghhhh!). Here are my goals for the week:

1. List 4 items each day for a total of 20 this week
2. Post at least 1 project on my blog each day
3. Clean up my craft room (it was so bad this morning I couldn't even bear to take a "before" picture)

I'm happy to report that I'm starting out the week with a bang: I added baby boy and girl bibs and burps to my etsy store (compelledtocraft.etsy.com).

I posted some Valentine projects earlier today; and my craft room is MUCH cleaner tonight than it was this morning. Wahoo!!! I even had lots of help from {b} and still got it done. [grin]

Today {b}sat on my desk while I worked on a dark gray wreath for my living room, wearing (if it can be called that) a pair of glasses as he carefully emptied my tool mug. He makes me smile.

Valentines Decor

Being the sucker I am for a good sale, I picked up four one-yard pieces of fabric in shades of pink and red last week, thinking I'd make a pennant banner for Valentine's Day decor--they were on clearance at The Material Girls quilt shop right here in town for a mere $3.00 a yard, minus an additional 20%, making them just $2.40 a yard. I simply couldn't resist. Then to my delight, the fabrics were just like the loaves and the fishes--they went on and on and on! I ended up with enough banner for the front and back porches (granted, my front porch is miniscule--we refer to it as "the servant's entrance") and the loft (I'll snap pics once the Christmas decor is down and the Valentine's is up).

With the leftovers I made a dozen 3-d heart ornaments.

Then with the leftovers of that I made two pretty kitchen towels.

Then with the leftovers of that, I pieced a little tree skirt for the ornament tree.

Then with the leftovers of that I made binding for the skirt.

And there are STILL leftovers!

That was perhaps the best $9.80 I've ever spent.

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:

How Fast Can You Type?

I followed the link on Lauren's blog to the type test. Here are my results. I thought it was hard to type random words instead of typing sentences. Did anyone else have that experience?

82 words

Typing Test

Something Fabulous for the Five

Yay! Thanks for playing! I made something for each of you and will bring most of them to work tomorrow. Holly and Emily, I'll give yours to Justin. Sarah, can you stand to wait until I come to Houston in April?

I'm not going to post a picture so you'll be surprised. I hope you'll enjoy what I made and have fun using it. :)

In other crafting today, I finished the big, ol' Christmas stocking and put it in the washer to full (felt) it. I just can't get over how cool felted knitting is. Every time I take a shrunk wool item out of the washer I get a little frisson of excitement! Now I'm wondering if I want to embellish this stocking or leave as is to enjoy it's simplicity. FYI, the stocking as you see it is about 15" long--it shrunk to about half it's original size.


I'm listening to David McCullough's 1776 right now and loving a deeper look and understanding of the America revolution than I've ever had. It's also been fun to hear about the places in Boston I've been able to see while visiting Suzie and Matt. I could picture it in my mind.

And finally, Levi and I had our first grandma date last night. At the advanced age of 7 months, Levi got to stay and play at my house alone last night for the first time. It was Erin and Nate's second anniversary and they celebrated with dinner and a movie. Levi and I played piggies and had nakey time on the floor (okay, he had nakey time and I patted his soft fanny) and ate dinner (grilled cheese sandwich for me and applesauce, olives, and toast for Levi) and watched Pride and Prejudice and looked at and tasted Goodnight Moon. He is a delight, as ever. Here's a self-portrait of us on our first official date:

Something Just for You

Lucky you! The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!

2- What I create will be just for you.

3- It'll be done this year. (might be a little while)

4- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a story. It may be poetry or an article on properly cleaning your face before a masque. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

5- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog.

The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!

One More Thing

I forgot to post a Levi picture today. This one shows his two little teeth (did I mention that I was the first to discover BOTH of his teeth?).

So today Erin decides to let Levi taste bread. Now let me tell you a little about Erin. She's very particular about what Levi eats: one new food a week; fresh and unprocessed; grind your own baby food at the table; etc. I couldn't even let him lick the chili spoon today! So she comes down the stairs with some spongy white bread today, ready to let the perfect baby take a taste. I very kindly, no pressure, suggest that perhaps a good full-grain wheat bread might be better for the bebe, and she pretends to agree. I mean, that white bread will give him constipation and could totally choke him--all gluey and sticky in his mouth!

Then the minute my back is turned, Erin is shoving white bread into the little dear's mouth. And she didn't even have the guts to confess! I had to use my deductive skills: empty bread sack, flecks of crust on the blanket around Levi, and a glazed look in his eyes! I'm shocked, I tell you, shocked!

A Late Night Preview

I think I'm getting smarter. :) Tonight I have been taking pictures all along while working on a Valentine's project. It's not done yet, so here's just a little taste--I hope you think it's yummy! It's made with red and white felt and a pink purl cotton blanket stitch. Oh, yeah. This project was inspired by something Martha did with a pink napkin and a pair of scissors in the current magazine. And talking about Martha, while I usually like her stuff, sometimes she really has some wonky ideas, like this Valentine's hat for a baby. This is NOT an idea I will be stealing from MDF Martha.

PS: CTR (Charlet Totally Rocks)

TRIM training: Coupon Clutch

At work last week I began TRIM training--eliminating waste and increasing value. One tool we learned about was called 5S--can't recall what it stands for but I remember that part of it means a place for everything and everything in it's place. That inspired me to clean out my purse, which reminded me of one of my biggest challenges at keeping paper stuff and my purse tidy: where to keep the coupons. So this morning I made a coupon clutch for my purse that was big enough for all of my favorite coupons: Joann's ads and Costco coupon booklets as well as printed-from-online coupons for Hobby Lobby and groceries. Now that I've got a place for coupons, we'll see how tidy I can keep my purse. (I'm not holding my breath while still feeling surprisingly hopeful.)



The next 5S project is my desk at work--arghhh! It's ALWAYS a disaster! I'll take before and after pics.

Renae's great idea

Just lost everything I'd written--dang! I'll try again. I think the computer is still in sleep mode since it's so early in the morning.

I just finished hanging the three mini ironing boards that I made into cork boards, per Renae's suggestion. She's so dang smart!

Here's what they look like all together . . .


And here's the middle one, close up so you can see the cute pattern . . .


All three are covered with Heather Bailey fabrics from my latest favorite fabric store: Material Girls. I should just sign over my paycheck to them--it would be faster!

And since you're here and I know you want to see his cute little face, here's the latest Levi pic . . .
I call this one "Levi wants to taste the camera."

Yay! Both goals achieved!!!

Here's what I just posted on etsy: a covered-button hair elastic and a pincushion. Boy, that feels good.

Cute little face

Oh yeah . . . this is the face I'm talking about.

A goal for today: to take pictures and post at least one new thing here and on etsy. Wahoo!

In the last three months, I've been crazy busy (and loving every minute of it) making things to sell at boutiques (two so far) and on etsy (one so far!). After seriously depleting my stash at the Christmas boutique at work (what a rush that was--so fun because it was so unexpected), I've been restocking and trying out some new things, too--felt snowflakes, felted wool pencil cases (idea from Patti that I made last year then refined last week with stabilizer ironed on to the wool before cutting out the pieces--I like it soooo much better than my last one) . (Thanks go to Annie, also, for passing on her unwanted wool sweaters--don't you just love recying!) I'm also working on some mini ironing board covers (thanks for the idea, Renae) to use as decoration/bulletin board in my sewing area. I'm just waiting for a 40% off coupon from Hobby Lobby (maybe this week?) to buy some cork board to put under the fabric and see how that works. Oh, and I want to make some mini covered-button tacks to go with the board.

An update on perfect-grandbaby Levi: he gets better everyday! It just doesn't seem possible. I never imagined the joy one little boy could bring into my life; his smile fills my whole soul with happiness and contentment; his solid little body, snuggled into me, brings calmness and warmth. Oh, how very, very grateful I am for him, especially today on his 6-month birthday. God gave me the most wonderful, personal gift ever when he sent little Levi to earth.