Valentine's

My Valentine's have been sent off on their way so now I figure I can share them with you!

They are simple, but fun. An origami heart with a simple flat card stuck inside. The heart design was from an origami book from the library, I'm sorry I don't recall which one. I'm sure it's a pretty common pattern. The hearts can be reused as a bookmark.

The polka-dot paper is from Paper-Source. I am in love with it and quite proud of myself for using it up. The colors are a little outside the typical pink and red of Valentine's day, but they look bright and springy to me. The envelopes are also handmade from brown postal paper. If you've never made your own envelopes you should definitely try it. Very simple, just disassemble an envelope you have on hand and adjust the dimensions to fit your card.

Kid versions of the valentine were made from a quarter sheet of origami paper. They ended up really small and cute! I made little paper books and stuck the valentine inside. I also included a Valentine pencil that I picked up last year on clearance.

On a different note, I just got flowers delivered to me! I was completely surprised and had no clue who they could be from. My husband? No. A friend, family member? Nope! A long lost love hoping to rekindle an old flame? Hope not!

They were from my husband's office! He has been working constantly lately, with multiple meetings every evening. And I guess his office just wanted to keep me happy and not go off on him when he shows up tomorrow and has forgotten that its even Valentine's Day. Odd, but nice I guess. Is this supposed to mean my husband's off the hook? Is it weird that I feel a little manipulated like this is supposed to make it all okay? Or am I over thinking it and I should just say thanks and appreciate the fact that they do realize he has a family at home. Probably the latter.

Hope your planning for a sweet Valentine's Day tomorrow!

Twin Turtles

My husband's cousin is expecting twin boys any day now. What a great excuse to try out the soft turtle buddy pattern from the Bend the Rules Sewing book! Aren't they the cutest?

Now that I've got 2 under my belt, they are pretty easy. I have plans to make a girl version for Sydney who insisted she needed one too. I'm going to make her's a bit larger than these 2. Those tiny pieces are just annoying to turn and stuff. To give you a sense of the size, the body of the turtle fits in the palm of my hand.

The patterns calls for eyes made from felt, but I really liked them without.

I think it's hard to think up good handmade gifts for boys, so I'm definitely happy to have found this pattern. I'm sure you will be seeing more of these, at least until Sydney is satisfied!

Picture Book

My Dad's birthday was on Saturday and now that he has received his gift I can share it with you. I decided to make him a mini scrapbook of pictures of him and Sydney from the past year. It was short and simple but I think he liked it. Sydney loved looking through it, which shows me how bad I really need to do a scrapbook for her. She would love it. Anyway, here are the pages from the book. You should be able to zoom in and check out each page.











(I scanned the original paintings that Sydney has done and just had them printed with my pictures. I think they turned out pretty good!)




The mini scrapbook I used came from the dollar aisle at Target last summer. I ended up using about 4 pieces of paper total, so definitely a great project on a budget!

Happy Birthday Dad!

My Space

Here it is folks, a clean craft room. I think it's pretty self explanatory, not much comentary needed. Zoom in, make yourself at home!











Have you ever noticed how taking pictures of your space makes you notice things you don't see in person? All I see in all these pictures are cords - everywhere! I think I need to work on a solution for that.

In other news...


If you haven't already done so, please go vote for my friend Mary Ann A. She is participating in a Valentine's Day Art Contest. So head on over and vote for her (her work really is the best anyway) then stop by her blog and tell her hello. She is sending out handmade cards to everyone who votes and comments today.

Tonight is the first night for my new knitting class! I am very excited to be learning something new. We are making mittens on double pointed needles - very scary stuff! Not to mention that I am going alone, which is really not like me at all. I am such a chicken! But I really wanted to take the class, so time to be a grown-up! Wish me luck!!

I've been hiding...

Sorry for the long break. I've had zero creative juices flowing these days, so I've been using my time cleaning my craft room. I think most of you have seen pictures of my space before, but this is all I've got so bear with me! Honestly, I don't think it's ever been this clean, so it's best to document it then, right?

Today, a couple shots of my favorite new/old storage solutions. Tomorrow an overall view of the room.

Because of the mass quantity of things to be organized in this room, I've had to become a little creative in my storage solutions. I have a ton of plastic, clear rubbermaid tubs which are totally functional and work well, they just don't look the greatest. My solution to this is to find unique functional pieces that serve the same purpose but also add a little something in the style department too (be that my own style, not real style!) These three pieces are my favorite in that department. All found at garage sales last summer. Total cost for all three pieces is $2.50. Less than one plastic tub! The top faux leather box holds felt. The middle round box holds vintage scarves and the bottom yellow suitcase holds miscellaneous papers.

Fabric was one thing I wanted to bring into this space when I cleaned and rearranged. Currently all my fabric is stored in the laundry room next door because of the sheer quantity of it all. (I've shared that with you before.) But fabric is one of the things that really inspires me to create so I tried to find a way to bring a little in here without it getting out of control. This is one of my solutions...

This basket contains most of my vintage fabric supply. I honestly spent the whole weekend watching movies and ironing and fold this fabric. But it makes me very happy to have it close by so that I can go through it and hopefully use some of it! For some reason it just didn't feel right to mix it up with all my other fabrics. The basket lives under my cutting table next to the boxes you saw above.

My second solution was to just hang this basket on the wall. I had my husband put 2 screws in the wall to hang it - one is directly in the stud, the other has an anchor in the sheetrock. The basket itself was pretty heavy so we were careful to hang it properly. Then I just filled it up with some of my current favorite prints! I think this idea will open up a lot of options for me to hang more things on the wall, even if they aren't convention wall mounted pieces. I love the look of this and love seeing all of this beautiful fabric.

Tomorrow I'll show off some pictures of the whole space. In the meantime, what's your solution to overcome a creative block?

Stuff That I Made...

Yes, finally a post about stuff I've made! I gave you all a little sneak peak of this last week (remember all those rows and rows.) Here is the finished product.

It is a table runner for my friend Stacy's birthday. I gave it to her early, yes that's right EARLY (I don't recall the last time I gave a gift early, or even on time!) I really like the way it turned out - hope she does too! :)

I was trying to match Stacy's kitchen, so I wasn't able to use fabric from my stash, but I was proud of myself for only buying exactly what I needed and using up every last piece. I pieced the back in order to accomplish this, and I almost like it as much as the front!

I did a ton of quilting on this...5 rows in each 2" strip. But I absolutely love the texture and stiffness the fabric gets with that much stitching. So cool. What's not cool is invisible thread. For some reason that stuff gets caught on my machine constantly. But, I made it work and finished it with time to spare!

These closeups are for my mom. See Mom, continuous binding - not too shabby huh?

And mitered corners too!

Stuff Other People Make - Part II

Can you say spoiled? Well, I am. I won a contest on Amy Jo's blog a while back. I've been waiting to show off until Amy got back from Texas (and because I have been very lazy and unmotivated lately.)

This adorable Valentine's table runner. (The cute little pink dish was a gift from my niece Kelsey - she made it in her pottery class!) I don't have very many Valentine decorations so I was so excited to receive this.

Also included in my package was this awesome necklace, which I love!

And one of her new projects - the wonder wallet! It is so cute and works great! Check out Amy's blog for details on the pattern she used.

She also included some adorable handmade cards that I can't wait to use.
Thank you Amy! I love every bit of it. You spoiled me rotten!!