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!