Prized Possessions

My First Project of 2012

2012-01-02T22:42:00.001-06:00

Happy New Year! Today I completed my first craft project of the year so I thought I would share it with you. It will also be my first blog post of the year…hopefully I’ll get a little better at keeping up with my blog posts in 2012! The end of 2011 just got a little too busy for me!

Today was my New Year’s holiday from work, so after going to the fitness center, then out to lunch with my husband and son, I decided it was time to dig in and get started on a project, one that has been on my list for a while. My husband and I participated in a photo walk in Kansas City last summer. Every participant could enter one photo taken on the walk and taken in a certain area of town in a photo contest. My husband’s photo won third place! He got a poster sized print of his photo and it was on display at a local bank for one month. I told him I would mat and frame his picture for him as one of his Christmas presents.

So today was the day to do that. He took this photo of a train though some boards on a pedestrian bridge by Kansas City’s Union Station. Here is his wining photo.

I went to Hobby Lobby today and bought two pieces of 32X40-inch mat board, one a smooth silvery-gray color and one a matte finish yellow color. (Used my 40% off coupon for one of them!) Then I went to Michael’s and bought a 24X36-inch poster frame. It was a $60 frame, which was on sale for 50% off and I had a coupon for another 25% off, so it was a pretty good deal. (Seems like their frames are always on sale. I don’t know why they don’t just lower the regular prices!)

A few years ago, I bought a mat cutter, which is very easy to use. It’s MUCH less expensive to mat and frame my own pictures rather than paying the high prices to have something framed. First I cut my two pieces of mat board to 24X36 inches to fit inside my frame. (And I checked – they really did fit just right inside my frame.) My mat cutter came with a separate mat knife which I used to cut the boards down to the right size. Then on the back side, I measured and marked a 2-inch wide border on the gray board and a 2 3/8-inch wide border on the yellow board. Now it was time to cut out the opening of each.

My mat cutter is made up of two pieces, a piece that looks a lot like a paper cutter that holds the mat board in place and a separate angled blade. (See this post for how it works.) I haven’t used my mat cutter in a while. I had forgotten that it could only hold up to a 23-inch piece of mat board. It’s probably a good thing I forgot this, otherwise I may have not undertaken this project! Since my mats were 24X36 inches, I could not use the piece that holds the mat in place. I recruited my husband to help me hold a metal yard stick in place to use as my cutting guide. It turned out just fine. Here is a picture of my gray mat with the center piece cut out and a picture of the two mats layered on top of each other.

So I put it all together, using some scrapbooking acid-free mounting squares to stick the three layers together, the two mat layers and the photo. I put it all in the frame and discovered that the frame was not deep enough to hold two layers of mat board. The little metal things that hold the back on the frame when you turn them into the little slot did not go into the slot since the mats were too thick. We had some of those glaziers points that are used to hold window panes into a frame (left from a Halloween project). I could not push them into the sides of the frame, so my husband put those in for me.

Now I had these metal glazier points and the metal things on the frame that were all just waiting to scratch up my nicely painted basement wall, which is where the picture is going to be hung. I had some gray felt from which I cut strips long enough to cover the dangerous parts. I used foam scrapbooking mounting squares to adhere the felt to the back of the frame. Here is what the back of the frame looks like.

And…ta da…here is my finished matted and framed picture! I was pleased with how it turned out! Hopefully we’ll get it up on the basement wall very soon.

November Featured EtsyBlogger - Magdalene Jewels

2011-11-30T22:48:00.007-06:00

OK…Better late than never! I'm a little late for November, but it is still barely November!

The featured EtsyBlogger for November is MagdaleneJewels. She has two Etsy shops and also a couple blogs – not sure how she keeps up with all that! But please take a look at all her lovely items for sale and her interesting blogs.

Here is one of my favorite items from her MagdaleneJewels
Etsy shop. I love this beautiful bracelet! What a lovely addition to any outfit this would make for the holidays!

Her other Etsy shop, MagdaleneKnits, sells crocheted and knitted items. Look at these cute crocheted baby Mary Janes! Perfect for the holidays

In her Magdalene Jewels blog, she showcases many of her fellow EtsyBloggers in treasuries she has created. A very pretty blog to look at. And interesting to read about other EtsyBloggers.

Her other blog, Magdalene Jewels’ Blogs, is more about
everyday life, including many pretty Wordless Wednesday photos.

I don’t know how she can keep up two blogs and two Etsy shops! She’s a busy lady!

Please take a look at all the lovely items in both her Etsy shops and at her blogs, too!

Congratulations to MagdaleneJewels, the November EtsyBlogger!

EtsyBloggers October Blog Carnival - Halloween

2011-10-31T00:29:00.000-05:00

The blog carnival topic I chose to write about this month is

What are your plans for Halloween? Have you made anything in your shop with Halloween colors/theme? Show it to us.

I must say that although I had ideas for Halloween items for my shop, I did not make anything for Halloween this year. But I did have plans for Halloween this year, as well as the previous two years.

I hosted my third annual Halloween party on Saturday. My life usually becomes consumed with Halloween for the months of September and October. I would love to get to the point where I was preparing for Halloween throughout the year instead of fitting it all into two months, but I am not quite there yet.

This year, we had a haunted wedding reception. I had costumes, decorations and food to make. It was a fun theme because I could start with a normal party idea (i.e. wedding reception) and make it kind of creepy. Our guests really seemed to get into the theme and most came dressed for the occasion since I suggested that appropriate wedding attire (i.e. costumes) was recommended but not mandatory and that there would be a prize going to the best dressed and creepiest guests. My colors for the party were black, silver or gray, and blood red. I started with normal wedding things and changed the colors to fit the theme. For example, I got some of those honeycomb white paper bells and spray painted some black on them to make them fit in. My costume (the bride) was silver and dark red, trimmed in black. My husband’s costume (the groom) was gray and dark red. Here is a picture of us in our costumes.

I made a new wreath for the party. It was white marabou accented with black flowers.

And I made my first tiered cake. Between Martha Stewart’s web site and CakeCentral.com, I found lots of great photos and recipes. My cake had a bottom layer of chocolate, middle of red velvet and the top layer was a delicious white velvet recipe.

My husband decided to build this endless mausoleum after seeing it in one of my How to Haunt your House books. It turned out great! It’s in our dining room and it’s too bad it can’t stay on display for a longer time of the year because it is really cool!

So those were my Halloween plans. I’ll try to do a post on my flying bats (one of my favorite new decorations) soon.What did YOU do for Halloween? I’d love to hear!

Catching Up - My Last Three and a Half Months

2011-10-18T23:41:00.005-05:00

How to briefly summarize the three and a half months since my blogging took a break? I thought my summer would have been a little calmer since I was not travelling to baseball games this summer (they were all local), but life just got very busy. I did show you what I made in the classes I took at the Bead & Button show in June. Then in July, my mom and I had a long weekend in Dallas to go to the every-three-year family reunion. That’s always fun.

When I got back from that, it was time to figure out a family vacation (nothing like waiting till the last minute) in early August. We had to fit it in between the end of baseball season in late July and the start of school in late August. My husband was managing a project in Scotland and needed to take a couple trips over there. He was unsure of the exact timing of the trips, but then we realized we could plan a family vacation in conjunction with his second trip. So we spent 10 wonderful days in Scotland in early August. I LOVED it, in spite of the fact that I had to wear my waterproof jacket almost every day I was there. It never rained really hard. But you could hardly call it dry.

We stayed in Troon (across the road from the Royal Trool Golf Course), about 27 miles from Glasgow, as the first part of our trip. This was where my husband had to work for three days. So our son Joe and I went sightseeing in Glasgow those three days. To get to Glasgow, I drove those 27 miles there and back in our Ford diesel rental car on the left side of the road. That was kind of scary at first but kind of fun toward the end. We bought a ticket on a sightseeing bus that let us get on and off at stops all around town for two days. Those were the only two totally sunny days we had, so it was perfect for riding on the top of the open air double decker bus. We saw churches, museums, bagpipers, botanic gardens…all sorts of wonderful sights.

Then we had three days in Edinburgh. Lots of castles, ruins of abbeys and palaces, the Royal Yacht Britannia (the royal family’s retired yacht), Rosslyn Chapel where part of the DaVinci Code was filmed (I had to check it out from the library and watch it after we got home).

The last part of our stay was in Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. We stayed across the street from an arm of water, very quaint and scenic. We took a boat ride on Loch Ness, learned some history of the Loch Ness monster at the Loch Ness Centre, had a tour of a Scotch distillery, saw how tartan plaid fabric is woven, saw more ruins and castles. It was all just wonderful!

Here are some photos of my two favorite things – the Rosslyn Chapel and the Melrose Abbey ruins. I loved all the ruins. It was fascinating to think these structures were built hundreds of years ago and such huge pieces are still standing.

I’ve been very inconsistent about doing scrap books or photo albums after vacations, but we came home with so many wonderful photos, I didn’t want to NOT do an album. I decided to make an online photo book from Winkflash. They had a special where I could get up to a 100-page album for the price of a 20-page album. I furiously worked to finish my 94-page 12X12 album before the coupon expired, sometime staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning. I placed my order right before the deadline, only to find the next day they extended the offer another week. But I was glad the book was done. I did find a few typos in it, which I wasn’t terribly pleased with, but considering how much work I did after midnight, I’m surprised there weren’t more! I received my book in just a few days and I still love looking at it!

Less than week after we got home, it was time for Joe to head back to school. Helping him get ready to go and get packed kept us busy. He drove himself to school with a jam-packed car and we did not even go along with him this year. And there was no fall baseball game this year so I haven’t seen him since he left in late August!

Before we left for Scotland, we started making plans to get our deck rebuilt since it was about to fall apart. We enlarged the existing deck and added a lower level deck below it. That construction was going on while we were away. It was all finished by Labor Day, when we went shopping for new patio furniture (fortunately it was all on sale)!

And then, of course, it was time to start planning for Halloween. I have been busy with that for the last several weeks, making costumes, planning decorations, etc. I love Halloween- it’s so much fun!

But now I’m ready to get back into blogging. Not that I have any more spare time, I’ve just decided I’m ready to get back to it.

So there you have my last three and a half months. Whew! It went by quickly! But I’ll keep up with the next three and a half months better in my blog. It’s good to be back!

My Craft Room is in a Magazine Article!

2011-10-17T23:18:00.005-05:00

I’ve been in blogger retirement for too long. Time to change that. And today is a great day to change it. I’m very excited…My craft room was part of a magazine article! Of course, it’s a German magazine and I can only come close to knowing what it says using Google translator. But that’s just a small detail. It’s still pretty exciting to see a photo of my room in print!

When my craft room was newly built, I posted some photos of it on Flickr. I don’t use Flickr too much anymore but this summer I added some photos. I discovered a message which fortunately was not very old. It was from someone working on an article for the German Hello Kitty magazine. They were going to show photos of craft rooms and she found mine on Flickr. I wasn’t positive that mine would be used, but she took my address and said she would send me a copy of the magazine in October.

Well, today my magazine arrived and there was my craft room! That really made my day. Probably my entire week!

Here’s a picture of the two-page spread.
And here’s a close-up of my craft room, the photo in the upper right corner.
And tomorrow I will get back into blogging. I’ll give a brief update on what I’ve been doing for the last three and a half months. I can’t believe it’s been that long. But I’m back now. Talk to you tomorrow.

June Featured EtsyBlogger: Tammy

2011-06-29T23:00:00.010-05:00

The EtsyBlogger featured for June is Tammy. Her Etsy shop is http://www.tamdoll.etsy.com/ - Tamdoll SILVER Mountain Originals. She sells wearable art and unique accessories. Here are a couple of my favorites from her shop.

Being into recycling/upcycling as I am, I love Tammy’s “Don’t Be Blue Trendy Plaid Handbag.” It’s an upcycled wool scarf! What a great idea!

And look at this cute mermaid pattern! What fun it would be to make a bunch of these! I think they’re adorable.

Tammy’s blog is tamdoll.blogspot.com. I love it! It’s full of all kinds of crafty info. Lots of tutorials and other instructions and just some great ideas. I had a hard time getting back to writing this blog post because I got all caught up in some of Tammy’s blog posts. Here are a couple that caught my attention.
Look at these great papier-mache’ hearts for Valentine’s Day! (It’s never too early to start planning.)

And these cute ideas for decorated match boxes. I love them! They’re so clever!

I’m sure you’ll find tons of other ideas that will grab your interest on her blog since Tammy enjoys sewing, knitting, crocheting and many other types of crafting.

And one other thing…you can follow Tammy on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/tamdoll

Finished Baby Afghan

2011-06-16T21:19:00.009-05:00

Before I went out of town, I finished my crocheted baby afghan and got it sent off to the the new parents. I had some yarn left over and this was a fun and easy pattern to crochet so I bought the additional yarn I needed and decided to make a second one in the same colors. I could work on it while on my trip and have a baby gift on hand for the next time I need one.

My earlier post showed some beginning photos of the afghan, along with a link to the free pattern online. Here are photos of my finished afghan.

When I first finished the crocheting, I liked the way it looked and wondered if I really wanted or needed to weave in the additional yarn and make the tassels. But what I had was pretty stretchy and didn't hold its shape at all.
And here's what it looked like up close.
So I decided to go ahead with the weaving and do it like the pattern. Besides, I had plenty of yarn left anyway so I figured I might as well use it. You weave three strands of yard in and out between the rows. The ends of the yarn become part of the tassels. The instructions were rather unclear but I finally figured out what they wanted me to do. Here's what it looked like after I began the weaving. I used a big eye needle and did my weaving using that.
I was glad I went ahead and did the weaving. I did like the way the finished afghan looked much better after the strands of yarn were woven in.
And here is the finished afghan.
I got quite a bit finished on afghan number 2 while away. I finished four of the solid color stripes (10 rows each) and just started on my fifth solid color wide stripe. And I haven't crocheted a stitch since I've been home. So much to do, so little time...But I will get it done eventually!

Crystal Elements Class

2011-06-15T22:54:00.007-05:00

Time to show you what I made in my other class I took at the Bead & Button Show. I took a class called Crystal Elements taught by Leslee Frumin. We learned how to make beaded beads, squares and trianges made of Swarovski crystals and seed beads using beaded netting. I loved this class! I could make these various elements forever! They are fun to make, relatively easy and beautiful when they are completed. Take a look at Leslee's web site here. If you go to the bead work gallery link, the class I took was the first Crystal Elements. She had samples from all three Crystal Elements classes, as well as the Crystal Lace class. I wish I could have taken all of the classes. The finished items were all beautiful!

Leslee was very well organized. It was fun to take her class. I got to pick the color of my kit in advance by email and I chose Ocean Wave, an assortment of beautiful blue shades with silver seed beads. Here is what I made in my 3-hour class.

First I made this beaded bead made of 6mm, 4mm and 3mm bicone crystals with size 11 and 15 seed beads. It's a little more elongated. We were also provided instructions for a similar bead that is a little more round. I have not made one of those yet.

The other item I made during class was this open triangle which is composed of 4mm and 3mm bicone crystals along with size 15 seed beads.

Our class materials included a very nice instruction book that included items other than what we actually completed in class. There were instructions for a square which was very similar to the triangle. We also got instructions for incuding an 18mm crystal rivoli in either the square or the triangle. I bought a couple of kits and rivolis and made this square with rivoli outside of class but before I came home from my trip. Here are photos of both the front and the back of the square.

I made one more triangle since I got home which I haven't photographed yet. My friend Carolyn and I went to three different bead stores while we were out of town since we didn't actually attend the Bead & Button sale itelf. I was always looking for various size crystals and bought quite a few, so I will be making more of these crystal items soon!

Back from My Trip

2011-06-13T23:19:00.005-05:00

I got home from my trip to Chicago and Milwaukee on Saturday. A little late - you know how they always find some airplane part that needs to be repaired. After two baseball games on Saturday and two on Sunday, I'm ready to get back to blogging.

My first report is of the Wire Forms and Resin class that I took on Tuesday evening. It was taught by Tracy Stanley. I had never worked with resin before and thought doing so in a class would be a good way to get started. Here are the two pendants that I made in class.

I enjoyed the class and resin is definitely something I'd like to do again. I'll have to start looking for little elements to use in future projects. Tracy provided mostly these cute little shells, which I like. The lady sitting next to me brought her own watch parts and made a nice pendant with a steampunk look. I'll add resin projects to my list of all the things I want to do and hopefully someday I'll do more!

If you'd like to take a look at Tracy's web site, take a look here at www.WiredArts.net.

Update

2011-06-02T23:35:00.002-05:00

Well, I have been quite remiss in my blog posts lately. I did finish my baby afghan. I will be posting finished pictures of that eventually. And I finally worked on the Shutterfly photo book for my mom of my son's senior year and graduation pictures (from a year ago) that I have been wanting to do forever. It's looking pretty good but needs a little fine tuning and rearranging and some additional captions added. I was hoping to have that done by tonight, but that didn't quite work out.

Tomorrow afternoon I am leaving town for a girls' week away. I am meeting a wonderful friend who lives in California in Chicago. First we will have a sorority reunion weekend in Evanston (Delta Zetas at Northwestern University). Then we will go to Milwaukee to take a couple classes at the Bead & Button Show, but unfortunately we will be leaving before the actual bead show begins. Then I will be returning to Chicago to spend a couple nights with another dear friend that I have known since first grade. (I won't say how many years that is!) The guys in my house will be on their own for a while. But I know they will do fine.

So that means no blog posts for the next week. At least I have a good excuse this time. But when I return, I should have some photos of what I made in my classes in Milwaukee.

I hope everyone reading this is well and has a great week while I am away! And I really will post another update when I get home a little over a week from now!

May Featured EtsyBlogger - NanjoDogz

2011-05-21T22:42:00.007-05:00

The featured EtsyBlogger for May is Nancy, whose shop, NanjoDogz, sells beautiful polymer clay beads that look like various dog breeds. I don’t know how many different breeds she sells, but there are a LOT. And they all really look like that breed! I have no idea how she does this…If I tried to make a bead that was supposed to look like a dog, every bead would look the same and would resemble no known breed. It would look like a kindergartner made it. But these beads are great!

My favorite was one I found in the sold items, a golden retriever. Since I used to have two golden retrievers and I happen to believe that they are the greatest breed on earth (just my personal opinion, however), this is the bead I must show you. But all the other beads are very nice and characteristic of the breed, too! If you’re a dog lover or need to buy for a dog lover, you must go take a look at her Etsy shop!

Nancy has a blog also – nanjodogz.blogspot.com. In it, she features her lovely work. I especially like looking at her custom beads she has made from dog photos. Here is an Australian Shepard she made.

And here is a Jack Russell Terrier.

I think these beads are just amazing! Keep up the great work, Nancy!

Lucite Necklace and Bracelet

2011-05-13T23:32:00.008-05:00

After my Mother's Day pillow was finished, I was able to move on to my next project. I don't think I ever mentioned that I attended a bead show in the Kansas City area (about 5 minutes from my house!) that was held April 30th and May 1st. I didn't buy a lot, but I had some projects in mind that I had seen in magazines and always wanted to do. I bought what I needed for a new necklace and bracelet made from lucite flowers.

I spent a couple evenings this past week working on first my necklace then my bracelet. Here is my finished necklace.
I got the idea for this last year when I saw an article in the August 2010 issue of my Bead & Button magazine. Here's a picture of the necklace in the magazine. I really liked the necklace, but I didn't like the colors. I don't think flowers should be brown (unless they are dead!). I loved the necklace but I knew I had to make it in spring colors.

And with the flowers I had left over, I made this bracelet. I got the idea from the article in the May 2011 issue of Bead Style magazine. Here is their bracelet.
I liked the way these turned out. I wore them with my pink floral skirt on Thursday and think they looked pretty good with it, if I do say so myself. I got a couple compliments on my jewelry that day, which is always kind of fun. I wouldn't mind making more lucite flower jewelry, but I think I need to research other sources for my flowers. These were a little more expensive than I would like to pay very often. So we'll see what else I find. There was only one vendor selling these at the bead show. Definitley worth looking around to see what kind of price I can find.

Mother's Day Pillow

2011-05-09T22:12:00.005-05:00

The idea came to me on Thursday, I started it Friday evening, finished it Saturday night, wrapped it and gave it to my mom on Sunday. Yes, it's the last minute Mother's Day gift. Which did happen to be a big success with my mom.

Since the end of last year, I've already lost track of the number of pillows I've made. A few Christmas gifts with a giant Christmas ornament applique, a cat pillow, a tulip pillow, the crazy quilt gift and my crazy quilt pillow. I seem to have pillow on the brain. So when I just finished my own crazy quilt pillow and needed to think of a Mother's Day gift, what would come to mind besides a pillow?

After my aunt gave me the pillow with my mom's photo on it, I started thinking about doing a pillow with photos. So for Mother's Day, I decided to use some of my son's senior pictures from last year, a couple other pictures of him and one of him and my mom at graduation.

I had never printed photos on fabric before and it did not go as well as I had hoped. I bought a package of three 8.5 X 11 sheets of fabric with a backing that would enable it to go through a printer. The directions said to set my printer for normal paper. I had arranged four photos per sheet and printed a sample on regular paper but when the first sheet of fabric paper went through the printer, it started printing the bottom half of my 8.5 X 11 sheet of photos. The two photos that printed were very nice, but I wanted four photos, not two.

I had put together a second sheet of four photos, the fifth one for the pillow and three extra ones that I was going to use for myself. Well, that sheet did not print correctly either. It printed about the bottom 2/3 of my photo sheet. I did get my fifth photo, but the extras that I was going to use for myself were not usable. I still needed the top two photos from the first sheet so I reformatted a sheet of photos with those two on the bottom half. Sent that through the printer and it worked.

I don't know why I could not print an entire sheet of photos. I'm sure it has something to do with the thickness of the paper and my particular printer, but it was very frustrating. If I decide to try this again, I will need to do very careful research for my printer to determine how to make this work. But I did finally get five usable photos for my pillow.

I decided to make four 4-inch square quilt blocks in neutral colors to separate the photos. I didn't want bright colors to distract from the photos. I had all the scraps for my quilt blocks and bought a yard of fabric for the ruffle and pillow back. I liked the wider ruffle on my crazy quilt pillow but wanted wider lace to go with the wider ruffle, so I found this lace to use for the ruffle at JoAnn's. I bought a light colored braid to use for the "frames" around my photos, but it was a braided trim that would be hard to keep the edges from uravelling, so I scrapped that idea. I decided to use this gold trim that I have a ton of, sew it down and miter the corners.

And here is my finished pillow. I was very pleased with how it turned out. And my mom really liked it.

And here is a closeup of the center photo with its gold "frame".

One thing I learned while doing this pillow...Although I tried to allow for plenty of fullness at the corners when gathering the ruffle, because of this wider lace, which was pre-gathered, I should have allowed for a little extra lace at each corner. Doesn't look awful, but another lesson learned. A little more fullness would have been better.

My Bracelet is in an Etsy Treasury

2011-05-08T21:10:00.004-05:00

I learned a couple days ago that my "Something's Fishy" bracelet was included in this pretty treasury on Etsy. I love this combination of red bracelets...so pretty to look at. The treasury was created by the owner of Etsy shop AidforAbby. This shop sells artwork created by the owner's autistic daughter. Lots of bright colors are used in this cheery-looking artwork. Please take a look at it in AidforAbby!

New Pillow in Progress

2011-05-07T02:08:00.003-05:00

I did decide to make my mom a pillow for Mother's Day. It's coming along nicely, as of 2 AM Saturday morning, although I did run into some challenges I hadn't anticipated. I will elaborate in a future post, when it isn't 2 AM! But here's my pillow top in progress.

Finally! My Crazy Quilt Pillow is Finished!

2011-05-05T23:23:00.011-05:00

I just don’t know where the time goes. It’s been way too long since my last post. But I finally have something I MUST blog about – I FINALLY finished my own crazy quilt pillow! I started one for myself after the one I made for the birthday gift in mid-March. I think I get things done faster when I have a deadline, like a birthday. Of course, I did put mine on hold while I made my lamp shade, my Easter Peeps wreaths, did my Easter baking, etc. But now it’s finally finished! Now I’ll let myself move on to all the other projects that are accumulating. But here is MY pillow…

In case you don’t recognize it, the ruffle and border fabric (along with the back, which you can’t see) is the leftover fabric from my lamp shade. So even though I don’t like the lamp shade much, I do like this fabric in my pillow. I wish I hadn’t made the ruffle so wide. Or I wish I had bought wider lace. I would like the double ruffle better that way. But it is what it is...DONE!

I made four 6-inch square crazy quilt blocks and used a 1-inch border for my 14-inch pillow form. Here are close-up photos of each square.

Upper left…I didn’t use a fan in my gift pillow, but they were a pretty common type of block used in Victorian crazy quilts. I decided to embellish the bottom of my fan with silk ribbon embroidery.
The highlights of my lower left block are the ribbon bow, tacked down using French knots. And the center fabric is a ram. I have a piece of fabric that has various country-looking animals on it. I cut out parts of the fabric for various projects. I used the ram here because I am an Aries.

My upper right block has a variety of beads and embroidery. I like the gathered lace circle (I’ve used some of these on greeting cards with a flatter button in the center) and my flower made of beads.

And finally, the lower right block contains my woven ribbon piece. And my spider web and bead spider. Spider webs were very common on Victorian crazy quilts because they were believed to be symbols of good luck. (Glad I didn’t live back then. I personally don’t care for spiders and don’t see how they can represent good luck!)

I guess I’ll see how well I perform to meet a deadline. Just this morning, I was still wondering what to give my mom for Mother’s Day. I’m seriously considering making her a pillow with photos of my son printed on it. I’ve never printed photos on fabric before, so why not try something totally new with a deadline three days away? We’ll see what I end up with!

Lamp Shade Adventure - Part 2

2011-04-25T21:31:00.011-05:00

I had gotten it into my head that I had to have lace on my new lamp shade, so that’s what I went shopping for. And I had been looking for lamp shade tutorials and blog posts to see how others had done it to get some ideas. I found some nice tutorials here and here and here. But those tutorials were to cover a plain shade with fabric or to cover a wire frame with lace, neither of which exactly fit what I was doing. Anyway, back to the fabric. Here’s what I ended up buying at JoAnn’s.
I cut out my blue fabric and my lace fabric using my paper pattern and leaving about an inch all around.
I layered the fabric and lace and machine basted around all the edges to hold the two layers together.
I turned under the edge of the back seam and pinned it all together on my two wire rings. I should have paid better attention to how it was all fitting together at this time, but I just assumed when I had it all sewn together that things would fit together better and blindly and optimistically went on my merry way.
I sewed the bottom seam, as in the photo below, then later trimmed the edge.
At the top, because of the three wires joining the circle, I cut slits in my fabric, sewed around the ring where I could then sewed the rest down by hand. I sewed the back seam by machine and had to sew the very top and bottom by hand.
Here’s the lamp shade before I added the trim. Second place I should have evaluated and decided whether to keep going. But I really assumed that sheer will power of wanting it to look a certain way would make it so!
And here’s what my back seam looked like. Not bad really!
I hot glued the trim around the top and bottom edges.
Here’s the lamp in the bedroom.
And here’s what I learned.
1. There’s a reason most lamp shades you see are white, off-white, light tan, etc. A blue lamp shade really cuts down on the amount of light the lamp puts out into the room. Do not make a colored lamp shade unless you purposely want to limit the amount of light for the right kind of mood or setting. Stick with the light colors.
2. Without a stiff frame like in the first tutorial link, you really need to use a stiff covering so your shade does not look saggy like mine. If you have a stiff, well defined shade form, I think you have a lot more flexibility in how you cover it.

I do consider this lamp shade more pleasant than the ugly broken shade it replaced, but I am not really happy with it. It will do as a temporary shade. My next attempt will have two important features: 1) Use some sort of stiffener or interfacing so the shade will not be floppy or saggy and 2) do not use blue fabric! I need to finish up some other projects, give myself a little time before I try again and then I will try attempt number two at a new bedroom lamp shade!

If you’ve covered any lamp shades, please leave a comment with a link to a photo. I’d love to see yours! Eventually I will be on a mission to prove that this lamp shade will NOT get the better of me!

Lamp Shade Adventure - Part 1

2011-04-24T21:49:00.012-05:00

We have had this lamp on the nightstand in our bedroom forever.
It doesn’t look too bad in this photo with the light on, but here’s what it looked like with the light off. The shade was plastic and over the years it had yellowed and cracked. I don’t know exactly where the pieces went or when they broke off, (A few broke off the last time we moved – 11 years ago! – but I don’t think it looked THIS bad after the move.) but I finally got fed up with this lamp shade. I had thought about buying another one a while back, but it wasn’t a high enough priority to actually do it. And now I am much more into recycling and upcycling, so I decided to make a new lamp shade a couple weeks ago.
The shade was made of two layers, a flat layer and the pleated outer layer. It would have been nice if it were some material I could remove in one piece and use as a pattern for the new shade, but that was not the case. The first thing I did was remove the pleated part so I would have a flat shade and could draw a pattern.
Some pieces came off pretty easily, but others were pretty solidly glued to the under layer so when I removed the pleats, the bottom layer broke into pieces also. Here’s all I had left when I had the pleated layer removed.
Next I drew a pattern on newsprint . I carefully rolled the shade along the paper and drew a line along the top and bottom to create a pattern. This was not terribly easy since there was not much left of the shade.
Here is the pattern I ended up with.
I wrapped the pattern around what was left of my old shade to see if it looked like it would fit. From what I could tell, I thought my pattern would be just fine.
After removing all the old plastic from my shade, here is all I had left! I now was getting closer to realizing exactly what I had gotten myself into!
Come back tomorrow for the end of my story…

April Featured EtsyBlogger - lindab142

2011-04-17T22:41:00.004-05:00

This month's featured EtsyBlogger is lindab142. Linda designs jewelry using a lot of gemstones and she likes bright colors. She also writes and sells how-to guides for using Facebook, blogs and press releases.

Here is one of my favorite items from Linda's Etsy shop. Of course, I am attracted to the pink items and I love the way the pink and gray shades in this bracelet work together. Take a look at this and the other items in Linda's Etsy shop. Linda also has a blog - http://www.linorstorecom.blogspot.com/. In her blog, she does posts about her jewelry, top Etsy finds, Etsy tips, interviews with other Etsy artists...a wide range of interesting items. I found this post to be very interesting on Pet Parent's Day - April 17 - that's today!

Go like Linda's Facebook page here.

And follow her on Twitter here.

Keep up all your great work, Linda! I enjoyed learning more about you through your blog and shop!

More Peeps Wreaths

2011-04-11T22:53:00.004-05:00

Where does the time go? A week since my last post! I spent WAY too much time over the weekend making a lamp shade. I finally finished it but it's only marginally better than the old one. I learned a lot about making lamp shades by trying it. I'll probably end up redoing it in the not too distant future. And my lamp shade lessons will be the subject of a future blog post.

But tonight I will show you my two latest Peeps Easter wreaths. I love these! They're so easy and cute. And I found an additional way to attach my Peeps to a grapevine wreath. I used hot glue wherever I could but since Peeps are flat and a grapevine wreath is not, there were gaps between the two. I wanted more places to adhere the Peeps to the wreath, so I took one or two of my 3D foam scrapbook adhesive squares and put them under the Peeps to stick to a piece of grapevine. Better than nothing...

So here are my latest.
The pink one is mine. The yellow one will be a gift.

No post tomorrow. It's going to be a late night. Just last week we got tickets to the Rod Stewart - Stevie Nicks concert. They were buy one get one free. Not the best of seats, but I hadn't expected to be going at all. Should be fun!

Peeps Easter Wreath...Completed

2011-04-04T21:43:00.006-05:00

It was kind of late last night when I applied my last coat of sealer on my wreath. All I had left to do was let the sealer dry and attach my bow (which I made last night). So I didn't have much to do to finish my wreath tonight. Here is my finished wreath.
I was going to list it on Etsy but I was going to price it at maybe $10 or so, since it's really kind of an experiment. When I started researching mailing prices, I determined that it would almost cost as much to mail it as for the price of the wreath itself, once I also added in the cost of shipping materials. So no wreath on Etsy this year. Maybe if I start earlier next year, I can figure out a less expensive way to mail this.

But at least my wreath is completed! I'll probably make a couple more this week. And then I'll have to keep an eye on how it holds up until next year. If I do decide to sell them next year, at least I'll know whether it is at least a 2-year wreath!

I've added my wreath to Tip Junkie's Tip Me Tuesday. Take a look at all the great projects.

Peeps Easter Wreath...In Progress

2011-04-03T23:59:00.005-05:00

I've been playing with Peeps this weekend. Ever since I saw the cute Peeps wreath in St. Charles last weekend (see photo in this post), I've been trying to figure out how I want to make one. I've seen tutorials online and they all just use plain Peeps straight from the box. I wanted to find a way to seal mine and hope they will last longer. So I bought some Peeps and started playing. First I tried brushing on polyurethane finish. I didn't like the way that turned out. Too thick in places, took forever to dry and I couldn't get it in between the bunnies with a brush. So I got some Krylon spray matte finish. I gave the Peeps two coats of finish, front and back. I finally decided on a 12-inch grapevine wreath. And tonight I took the big step and glued the Peeps on the wreath. My first attempt is with bunnies. After I glued on the bunnies, I gave them another coat of spray finish. Tomorrow I will add a bow and it will be done! I was hoping to finish a wreath today but with church, a workout at the fitness center, grocery shopping, making a treat to take to work tomorrow for a birthday, it just didn't get finished. Here's a picture of my wreath in progress. I took this in my darker unfinished basement work area where I wanted to spray on my finish, so it's not the best or lighest of photos. But tune in tomorrow for a picture of my finished wreath!

Jewelry Display

2011-04-03T00:07:00.006-05:00

When we were in St. Charles, MO last weekend, we went into an antique shop on Main Street. I bought this cute hand there. I know it's not an antique, since the owner went and found its box to pack it in, but I liked it a lot and thought it would be a great addition to my jewelry display. They also had a red and a royal blue version for sale, and had a couple others in use in a display case. I liked this light aqua color the best. Now I'll just need to decide what I should display on my new hand. Perhaps bracelets......or maybe necklaces.
I'll just have to play it by ear and decide what I'll want to display when it's time to set things up. But I like my new hand and know it will come in "handy" when it's time for my next jewelry display!

Crocheted Baby Afghan

2011-03-31T22:38:00.005-05:00

I decided I needed something easy to work on while on my trip to St. Louis last weekend. Something to do in the car and evenings. I found this cute baby afghan to crochet. The night before we left home, I made a trip to JoAnn’s to shop for yarn and found a pretty rainbow colored yarn with matching lavender, aqua and kind of a lime green yarns. I haven’t done any crochet projects for a while, and this one is very simple, so I’m enjoying it. Just single crochet. I like patterns that don't require constantly looking at the instructions. All I have to do is count the number of rows before I change colors. Here’s my afghan so far. I will post updates as I make progress.

Catching Up...

2011-03-30T22:48:00.006-05:00

I'm still getting caught up after being out of town for a long weekend. Last Thursday afternoon we drove to St. Charles, Missouri, which is just outside of St. Louis. It’s a cute little historic town right on the Missouri River. The old buildings along the river are now shops and restaurants.
We spent three nights at a wonderful bed and breakfast called the Bittersweet Inn (above). Our hostess, Sandy, made us feel like guests. And did she ever feed us well! When she learned I had just had a birthday, she even made me a birthday cake! Take a look at photos of the Bittersweet Inn here and visit the web site here.

I wanted to go to have a birthday dinner with my son since I hadn’t seen him since the Christmas break ended. And his baseball team had double headers scheduled for Saturday and Sunday so we wanted to take in the games. Although temperatures in the 40’s were predicted, I was still looking forward to it. We arrived Thursday evening and got to have a casual dinner with Joe.

Friday morning it started snowing, but didn’t really last too long, so we decided to go to town and look at the shops. We were practically the only visitors in town that day – had the stores all to ourselves. After a while, little misty rain started falling. We picked up the pace of our shopping, had lunch and decided to look for something to do indoors. But before we left, I took a picture of this cute Easter wreath made of Peeps candy. I think I’m going to have to make something similar!
I saw in one of my bead magazines that there was to be a bead show in St. Charles Friday through Sunday, so my husband even said he would go to that with me. Well, we found the place it was to be held only to learn it had been cancelled due to a shortage of vendors. So to fill the remainder of the afternoon, we spent a couple hours in the casino. I don’t go to casinos very often at all, but it was something to do inside. We each spent our $10 on the slot machines then headed back to the B&B. We had a very nice dinner with Joe Friday night at a restaurant called Soulard’s.

When we first got to town, Joe told us the Saturday games had been moved to Monday because of the weather. It started snowing lightly around mid-day Saturday, but we decided to go visit the Arch anyway. It was coming down pretty good by the time we got there. When we first got to the top of the Arch, I couldn’t tell what direction I was facing since everything looked white. But if you waited a bit, waves of snow came and went and at good times, you could see the opposite bank of the Mississippi River. Not the best day for sightseeing from the top of the Arch, but how many people can say they’ve been to the top in a snowstorm? As we walked back to the car after our Arch visit, I snapped this picture of the Arch from the side.

We’re big hockey fans so Saturday night we got tickets to the NCAA Division I men’s regional hockey final and watched Michigan beat Colorado College 2-1. I’d seen a lot of levels of hockey from little kids (Joe played for three years starting in 3rd grade) to NHL, but I’d never seen a college game. So now I have. Saturday didn’t go quite as we had hoped, since we thought we’d be going to baseball games, but we probably got to visit with Joe more this way. And I know we stayed warmer than we would have at baseball games!

And of course, with 3 inches of snow on the ground, the Sunday baseball games were cancelled, too. We headed home fairly early on Sunday, only to encounter snow when we were about 40 miles from home. Here’s what my yard looked like on Monday morning.

The weekend didn’t exactly go as I had thought it would, but we learned a long time ago that spring baseball means you need to learn to be flexible. We got to visit with Joe quite a bit and that was what I wanted most from my trip anyway!

EtsyBloggers March Blog Carnival

2011-03-22T22:08:00.007-05:00

The topic I chose for my March blog carnival post is "What is your favorite gemstone and why?"

My favorite gemstone is the aquamarine. I like it because a) it's my birthstone and b) I'm lucky enough to have a birthstone that I really like. I love blue/aqua/turquoise shades, so the aquamarine shade is perfect for me! I'm really glad I'm not an emerald person (May) or topaz (November). Those are just not my colors. And while diamonds are pretty, they are kind of plain. But I have the perfect birthstone (in my humble opinion)!

And today is the perfect day to tell you about my birthstone because today is my birthday! (I'm not going to tell you which one.)

I thought I'd show you some photos of aquamarines to show you why I like them so much. First off, here is my birthstone ring. I have had this many, many years and I just love it. I wear it every day.
Next, here is a strand of aquamarine beads that I bought at one of the Tucson bead shows in 2010. I haven't made the time to design the perfect necklace for these. I need to give it some thought, then make something that I will love to wear. But I have the beads...just need the time!
And finally, I don't know if this is an aquamarine or not, but it is my March birthday charm on the Brighton charm bracelet that I have. Certainly is an aquamarine color. (I got three new charms today for my bracelet...already had the one in the photo.)

So while we're on the topic of birthdays, I need to share two more photos of things that made my birthday very special. My husband came home from work with these flowers, which was totally unexpected since he gave me my birthday present this morning.
And after I'd been home from work for a while, I got a call from a florist telling me they had delivered something to my neighbor's house today. I went to retrieve this beautiful arrangement and I had no idea who it could be from. I was very nicely surprised to find they were from one of my very best friends whom I have known since I was in the first grade.
What more could a person hope for on their birthday? Actually, there was one more thing I had hoped for and received. I got a call from my son, a freshman in college, wishing me a happy birthday. More than everything else, that really made my day!

New Earrings

2011-03-21T23:03:00.004-05:00

Did you see my early January blog post about the beads I got for Christmas? Well, a couple weeks ago, I decided I needed some new earrings, so I finally started playing with my Christmas beads. My first two creations are earrings...for me! I had fun making them and fun wearing them. Hopefully, I'll make more very soon!

New Closet Storage

2011-03-20T21:35:00.008-05:00

Not too long ago, I had this silly idea that I wanted to make some kind of purse. Maybe for myself or maybe for gifts. You know, some sort of Vera Bradley-type bag. So I started looking for some books to help me with that. I checked this book out of the library and didn’t really like any of the bags in the book. They were mostly drawstring bags or tote bags or messenger bags. (I have since come to my senses and realized that I have plenty of other projects to do without making bags or purses right now.) But there were some other things besides bags that caught my eye. There were three things I liked.
1. Little fabric covers for purse-sized Kleenex. (Great way to use up fabric scraps!)
2. A variation on the drawstring bag was a wine bottle gift bag. I liked that idea a lot.
3. A hanging caddy you could customize to any size you want with three pocket styles to store anything you need to store.

I’ve always wanted a little more storage space in my craft room, so I decided I would make a pair of these hanging caddies to get some extra “stuff” off my closet shelves and create a little more storage space.

Friday was my day off work, so I made a trip to JoAnn’s to look for fabric. I found some great solid fabric, a little heavier weight, which was what I wanted for the body of the caddy, in bright pink and lime green. There was a great collection of fabric called “tutti frutti” in some great bright colored prints that went so well with these solids I found. So I bought the fabric Friday and this became my weekend project.

I decided on the size of my caddies, picked out stuff I wanted to store, decided what style (pleated or flat) and size of pockets I needed and drew it all out on graph paper so I could determine what size pocket pieces to cut out. Yesterday I finished pink caddy number one and today I finished green caddy number two. At the top of number two, I added a pink fabric strip with snaps on either end to store rolls of ribbon. We'll see how that goes. It seemed like it would work when I was playing around with it when the caddy was lying flat. My husband helped me hang the caddies inside my closet double doors this afternoon and I’ve started to reorganize my storage.

Here are some photos of my new caddies. Sewing them was lots of fun and never boring because I loved looking at the bright and cheery prints. I just love the colors! If you need some bright cute fabric, go to JoAnn’s and look for tutti frutti!

Crazy Quilt Pillow

2011-03-17T23:02:00.011-05:00

Making a crazy quilt pillow had not been on my huge list of things to do someday. It kind of just happened.

I suppose it started with the tulip pillow. My friend with the February birthday, for whom I made the tulip pillow, told me her daughter loved the tulip pillow and all the details of it. I had been trying to find out what the daughter, Lorrain, might like for her 17th birthday in March. When her mom told me she had to pry the tulip pillow away from Lorrain, I decided I would make Lorrain a pillow. And if she liked detail, then detail she would get!

I paged through some of my quilting books to see if anything jumped out at me because her mom told me there was no particular subject or "thing" on a pillow that Lorrain would really like. And then I paged past crazy quilts. What a great idea for someone who likes detail! And not long ago, I had been trying to figure out what I could make that would work on using up some of my fabric scraps since my current collection of scraps takes up a little too much space. So I decided Lorrain would get a crazy quilt pillow.

I looked online for sites that would give me ideas, inspiration and instruction. I found a few to get me started. And then I found the wonderful book at Borders (last book in yesterday's post). I found a great deal on pillow forms online at JoAnn's, much better than the price in the stores, even with a coupon. So the project quickly took on a life of its own!

I decided on a 14-inch square pillow. So I decided on four 6X6-inch blocks with a 1-inch border around them. Here are a couple of my finished blocks.

Here is a photo of the four blocks sewn together.

My wonderful book, in yesterday's blog post, had tons of embellishment ideas in addition to the 100 embroidery stitches. I added the spider and web because these were very common elements on crazy quilts in the past. The Victorians considered spider webs to be symbols of good luck. I had a book on silk ribbon embroidery and lots of leftover ribbon from the time I embellished a denim shirt. (I gave the shirt to the school clothesline sale after I lost 30 pounds and the shirt was too big. Guess I'm going to need to make another someday. I really liked that shirt.) I used up bits of ribbon and lace that I had. I used buttons (too many of those left over also) and beads and made a ribbon flower I'd always wanted to try. It was a lot of fun making this pillow!

Here's a photo of the left half of the finished pillow.
Here's the right half.
And here is the finished pillow.
I liked the way this pillow turned out a lot. I now have three blocks pieced for my own pillow. I haven't started to embellish yet. That will come next. And I learned a lot about the order in which I should embellish that should actually make my pillow a little easier to work on than Lorrain's.

Tomorrow is my day off work so I plan to spend some time working on my pillow. Hopefully it will be done fairly soon. I will share the details of my pillow with you when it's finished. Please check back soon!

More New Craft Books

2011-03-16T22:08:00.005-05:00

If you've read very many of my blog posts, you have probably stumbled across one sometime that has given you the idea I love books. I love to read fiction, but I can live without owning it. I'd rather have it taking up space on the library's shelves, not mine. But craft books are the books I have a hard time not owning. Especially craft books on sale.

Two or three weeks ago, while there was snow on the ground, I was spending some of my Christmas gift money on some new spring clothes at one of my favorite stores, Christopher & Banks. It was in a part of town a little farther from where I live in a shopping center I've only been to once before. There is a Borders book store in this shopping center and, while Borders is not my favorite of book stores, since it was closing, everything was on sale. So after I purchased a few cute pieces of spring clothing, I thought, what harm can it do just to pop in?

I came home with three great new books.
The Beader's Bible by Dorothy Wood has been on my wish list for a while. It covers every basic beading technique you can think of. A great reference, along with directions for many projects so you'll have a way to use those techniques.

Applique The basics & beyond, by Janet Pittman, gives instructions for different techniques to applique the same quilt shape. There are plenty of patterns, along with finished quilts for lots of ideas. Just looking at the picture on the cover should give you an idea of the different ways one applique design could be used. If you read my recent post about my tulip pillow, you know that I just got my feet wet at doing hand applique. I'd love to try something else someday and this book would be a great inspiration for that.

I've saved the best for last, the one I've already used a lot. Crazy Quilting by J. Marsha Michler is wonderful! It gives different methods of piecing a crazy quilt block, along with 100 embroidery stitches that can be used to embellish your crazy quilting, along with other embellishment techniques. This book was truly a terrific find! I had just started a crazy quilt project and I was scouring the web for sites to give me ideas and instructions. And then I came across this book. Well, I just had to have it! And has it ever come in handy! Come back tomorrow to hear about my first crazy quilting project.

March Featured EtsyBlogger - MysticWynd

2011-03-15T20:48:00.004-05:00

Today’s post is on the March featured EtsyBlogger. I’m a little more timely than I was with my February post!

The featured EtsyBlogger for March is Karen, from Scottsdale, AZ. Her Etsy shop is MysticWynd.etsy.com. She’s got many lovely jewelry items in her shop. It was hard to decide what to show here, but because I REALLY need to feel like spring is near and because I love pink, I chose these two items to show you.I LOVE this necklace! I love the colors and I love the design. It’s kind of different and very elegant and charming.

And because I love hearts and the vintage look (and more pink – but just a little), I want to show you this pretty brass necklace with a heart and little rose. Please go take a look at Karen’s shop!

Now on to Karen’s blog. She has a wide variety of subjects covered in her blog posts. Some are very inspirational. Some are promoting her fellow Etsy artists, like her lovely post on cornflower blue items for sale. Another pretty post shows a variety of Easter items. Please go take a look at MysticWynd.blogspot.com. I promise you there’s something for everyone here!

Congratulations, Karen, on being the March featured EtsyBlogger! Thanks for being such a supportive member of the EtsyBloggers team! And wishing you all the best!

February Featured EtsyBlogger Artist - Bunnykissd

2011-03-14T21:29:00.005-05:00

I’m a little behind. Maybe more than a little. I know it’s kind of late to do a post on the February featured EtsyBlogger, but I do owe it to her. So better late than never.

The featured EtsyBlogger for February was Diana of bunnykissd.etsy.com. She's got some very cute jewelry items in her shop, many of which look good enough to eat! Go check them out!

But because St. Patrick’s Day is this week, I’m going to show you a great item to get you in the mood for the holiday. Take a look at this necklace…I love the shade of green. And the details in the clay and the glitter really add a lot. Very nice!
And because I’m wanting spring to come and STAY so badly, I have to show you this flower pendant. I want springtime items to grace the pages of my blog right now! So here is a very cute flower pendant made of polymer clay. How can you look at this and not think spring?!?

And take a look at Diana’s blog, too – bunnykissd.blogspot.com. She’s got some really pretty photos on her blog and a wide variety of subjects covered in her posts.

Congratulations, Diana, on being the February featured EtsyBlogger! And I’m really sorry I’m late with my blog post!

Cute Pillow

2011-03-06T21:57:00.004-06:00

I'm not quite sure what happened but it's been almost two weeks since my last blog post. Work has kept me busy, plus plenty of other things, and I just haven't quite been in the mood for blogging. I even forgot to do my featured Etsy blogger post for February. But I will make that one up soon! Hopefully, I'll get back in the swing of things and get my blogging going a little more regularly!

So here's my first post of many more to come! A couple weeks ago, I got this very cute belated Christmas gift from my aunt. I just love it! She makes tons of quilts (I promise I will show you the one she gave my mom recently!) and has recently been putting photos on her quilts. I got a lot of my calendar photos from her. Well, when she was practicing with her photos on fabric, she made this pillow for me. This is an old photo of my mom. She made this very cute pillow that now has an honored spot on my bed with my other pillows. Isn't it wonderful? I really love this little pillow! It's very special to me because of the photo and because of who made it! One of the best gifts I have received in a very long time!

Tulip Pillow

2011-02-23T23:55:00.005-06:00

Here is another of my recent projects. Being into pillows lately, I made this pillow for a tulip-loving friend's February birthday. I found a cute tulip quilt block in one of my Debbie Mumm quilting books. I've always wanted to try a real applique quilt block, so instead of doing the iron-on applique as called for in the book for the stems and leaves, I decided to applique by hand. (The colored tulips were pieced.) I've done machine applique but never by hand. This was a nice small project to get started on. My mom used to make huge applique quilts that were just beautiful. This wasn't too bad. I think I might be ready to try a slighly larger applique project someday!
Here is are closeup photos of the two quilt blocks in the pillow.

I'm having fun making pillows and I REALLY want to use up fabric scraps, so I'll have to see what my next fabric scrap project might be. You never know!

I Matted and Framed this Drawing

2011-02-20T22:56:00.006-06:00

At Thanksgiving, my aunt gave my mom and all her sisters a drawing that was made from a photo taken at my Grandma and Grandpa’s 50th wedding anniversary celebration. I told my mom I would frame the drawing for her as a Christmas present. Well, the drawing was temporarily misplaced. When 10 siblings exchange gifts at Thanksgiving and try to keep them all straight, it’s not easy! But around Valentine’s Day, my mom told me she had found the drawing and she gave it to me to frame.

Here's the drawing. It was done on an 8.5 X 11 piece of paper.

At first I thought I’d find a nice frame and cut a mat for it. But I found so many frames that included mats, that I selected one that had a nice double mat. But the opening of the mat didn’t quite fit the size of the drawing. A little too much of the drawing was cut off on each end using the mat that came with the frame.

I did decide to cut my own mat. I don’t do this very often so it’s kind of fun when I do it. I had quite a bit of a pretty blue mat board on hand, so I had thought that would be what I would use if I did cut my own mat. Here's what the drawing looked like in my mat.

While the pre-cut mat wasn't terrible, I liked the fact that my mat didn't cut off any of the drawing. If the artist was going to include arms in the drawing, I might as welll show all of the arms, right? Here's what my finished framed drawing looked like. I was very pleased with how it turned out! I love my mat cutter! It's so easy to use. And so much less expensive than having pictures matted and framed elsewhere.

My Newest Books

2011-02-18T22:08:00.005-06:00

Last weekend, I was at Costco and I did something I hadn’t done in a long time – I walked through the book section. I love books and I usually purposely avoid the book section of Costco so I don’t take home more books than I need. But last weekend, I decided to live dangerously and walk through that area.

I won’t let myself buy fiction. I’d rather check it out from the library and give it back rather than have it taking up my shelf space. But I’m a sucker for certain kinds of non-fiction. On this last trip, I found two books that I decided I must own. I got some money for Christmas that I hadn’t spent yet. I was waiting for the right thing to come along, so I bought myself a couple Christmas gifts. I love them both! Two new Martha Stewart books.

This was the first book that I looked through after I got them home. Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts. Now that I've gotten into making pillows recently, I've decided I want to start using up more of my fabric scraps. Plenty of great ideas in here for that! The book includes very clear instructions on basic techniques ranging from how to prepare fabric for sewing to how to batik. Many essential tools are described. And, of course, there are lots of very creative ideas for fabric projects. I love the pin cushions. And very clever rick rack flowers to embellish clothing. Pet toys, upholstery, linens, curtains, quilts...you name it, it's probably in this book. Oh, and I forgot to mention the CD of patterns and templates that comes with the book.

I loved the fabric book and then I looked through Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts. I was even more enthralled by this book, probably due to the wide range of crafts included. Crafts I've never tried looked so tempting, such as candle making and soap making. I always try to avoid new crafts for as long as possible since I have too many I love to do as it is. But Martha makes these look so enticing! I loved the wirework letters of the alphabet that can serve as paper clips. But they'd make great jewelry, Christmas ornaments or package decorations, too. The origami section includes instructions for a slightly different little gift box than the one my mom showed me how to make. I'm anxious to give that a try. While I'm not especially into paper flowers, the ones in this book are absolutely beautiful! I would never think of a rope craft napkin ring, but they're great.

In the past, I wasn't a huge fan of Martha, but she won me over with all her great Halloween ideas. As time goes on, I see more and more of her clever ideas with great instructions, and I'd definitely have to say I'm now a fan. If you love great craft books, you must take a look at these!

Cat Quilt Block Pillow

2011-02-12T22:12:00.006-06:00

I made a birthday gift - a patchwork pillow - for a cat-loving friend as one of my recent projects. I looked online for a cat quilt block and finally decided on this one. I looked through my fabric stash and found a nice combination of blue and brown prints. I found lace for the ruffle. All I bought to get started was a 12X16 inch pillow form (on sale at JoAnn's!).

Here's a photo of my finished pillow.
And here are close-up photos of each cat.

I made the pillow back using two overlapping pieces of fabric so the pillow form can be removed. When I was finished, I decided the kitties needed collars. I had the little bells, but I bought a roll of trim that kind of resembles jute. It would have been much easier to sew on the trim had I done it before the pillow was completed, but better late than never! Not a bad project considering all I bought was a pillow form and a roll of trim! I've decided I need to look for more projects like this so I can use up some of my fabric scraps. I have way more than I really need!

So...in my abundant spare time (not!), I've decided that I need to make my own seasonal pillows, using up leftover fabric. And while I was walking around the track at the fitness center the other day, a great thought came to me. By making my pillows so that the form can be removed, if I make all my seasonal pillows the same size, I can use the same pillow form and just change the pillow covering! This way, the out-of-season pillows will be much easier to store if I don't have the whole big pillow to put away. Not to mention less expensive if I don't have to buy a pillow form for each pillow. So this project is added to my every growing list of projects! So many projects, so little time...

New Greeting Cards

2011-02-07T22:24:00.004-06:00

Two or three weeks ago, I happened to be in JoAnn's with a 50% off coupon in my purse. I'm a sucker for books and at half off, they're REALLY hard for me to resist! I was paging through a few, found some titles to add to my Amazon wish list and ended up buying this one.
I wasn't too impressed by the cover, but when I started paging through the book, I loved it! Lots of great ideas..one for each day of the year, plus an extra at the start of each month. So it's now got a spot on my bookshelf. Click the photo to go to the link on Amazon. It's one of the books you can look inside and see lots of great card photos.

The book inspired me to make this thank you card, along with some other cards. (I can't post pictures of those cards until I mail them! But I'll show them later.)

February EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival - Winter!

2011-02-05T23:17:00.006-06:00

The topic I chose to write about this month for the EtsyBloggers blog carnival is this:
"We are also in the middle of winter! Write something about you/your family's winter experiences."

In 2009, it started snowing in the Kansas City area on Christmas Eve and we didn't see the grass in our yard for weeks. It was the longest time we had snow on the ground in many years. This year, the snow didn't get started quite as early. It's snowed a couple times throughout the winter season this year, but this last time seemed like it wanted to make up for all those non-snowy days all at once! We were part of the February 2011 blizzard.

The company I work for is located in four different suites within one office building. Twice this year, I was the only person who showed up for work in my suite due to the snow. Everyone else was working from home. But with the four wheel drive truck we have, I was able to make it into work pretty easily. But last week, with all the blizzard warnings being spread by the media, I didn't even try to go in to work for two days. I, too, worked from home and it was very nice to be able to do so! We had maybe a foot of snow last week, but it was kind of hard to tell how much snow really fell. When the snow blows sideways all day, it's hard to know how much actually fell vertically! We were really pretty lucky. There were other areas that had much more ice. (I'd much rather have snow than ice!) And central Missouri had about twice as much snow as we did, as did parts of Oklahoma. So while we had a lot of snow, it could have been worse.

Here are some pictures I took of the snow piled next to our driveway.

The good news is that the streets and highways have been clear and easy to navigate for days now. And today I went to wash my car. It looks much better so that's kind of a cheery thing. And even surrounded by snow, there are some pretty sights to be seen when you are lucky. We have a creek behind our backyard and there is a small park on the other side of the creek. This evening, we saw 6 deer by the creek. I took some pictures, but then the dogs next door started barking and the deer ran away. But it was fun to watch these pretty creatures for the short time they were nearby! I'm glad my husband spotted them and called me to go see them!

January Featured EtsyBlogger

2011-01-31T19:23:00.003-06:00

The featured EtsyBlogger for the month of January (yes, I WILL get this posted in January!) is Joy. Her Etsy shop, TheArtofJoy, features a very clever idea…PDF’s for you to customize for party invitations, announcements and calendars. Look at this cute baby shower invitation!

Joy’s blog is great – CreativeMamma.com. It’s so incredibly well organized! It’s all about balancing your family and your creativity. There are recipes, craft ideas, giveaways, links to other sites of interest to moms, and even free printables! Not to mention links to her Etsy shop and some of her other favorite Etsy shops. You really should check it out…especially all you moms out there reading this.

You can find Joy on Flickr here
And Twitter here
And Facebook here
Joy contributes a lot to the EtsyBloggers team. And very soon, if it hasn’t happened already, Joy will be welcoming the newest member into her family. Let’s all congratulate Joy and wish her well in both her family and her creative endeavors!

My Crystal Pendant in an Etsy Treasury

2011-01-30T23:15:00.005-06:00

Today my Swarovski Crystal Heart Pendant was included in a new Etsy treasury called "Clear? Crystal!". It's a very pretty treasury, don't you think? I'm honored to have my crystal pendant included.
This pretty treasury was created by TUTreasures. She sells vintage and reclaimed jewelry supplies and also jewelry she makes from reclaimed materials. Please take a look at her shop! I am very into recycling and reusing so I cerainly want to promote her efforts. Thank you so much for including me!

Two New Bracelets

2011-01-25T00:29:00.006-06:00

I've been in bracelet mode lately. I recently got a request for a mother's bracelet from the friend of a previous customer that I did some custom jewelry for. This latest request was for the customer's mother's upcoming birthday. After going through some alternatives for what to put on this bracelet, she decided on the first initial of her, her mother, her sister and her daughter. We decided to put a pair of birthstone crystals around each letter. Here is the finished bracelet.
My high school is having a benefit auction and is gathering donations for the auction. I decided to make a bracelet in the school colors, purple and white. I went to Notre Dame de Sion, or Sion for short. At first I was torn between NDS and SION as the letters on my bracelet, but I decided on SION. Wish I had had one of these when I was in high school!
I have one more bracelet to make to donate to my son's high school auction. I need to get some little spacers to separate the letters, then I will be all set to make my RAIDERS bracelet. Then on to other things!

The Gift of Giving

2011-01-21T23:53:00.007-06:00

I had checked out from the library a decorating book by Rachel Ashwell and have been looking at her web site recently, so when I discovered this book of hers, I reserved it at the library. I picked it up today and read it cover to cover. Just seeing the title and the cover photo, I assumed it would be about gift wrapping. It did include a section on wrapping gifts. But it included so much more also.
She talks about creating special gifts for people from flea market finds. Creating gifts by color or theme or culture. Her "wrapping" is not always wrapping, but some sort of extension of the gift to create a presentation. There are sections on floral displays and tea parties and just so many ways she comes up with to show people they are special to you.

It's a great book full of so many ideas! If you ever have the chance to take a look at this book, by all means do so!

Lisa's Earrings in an Etsy Treasury

2011-01-18T21:14:00.005-06:00

My light pink Lisa's Earrings (I just sold a pair last week, by the way - first Susan G. Komen donation of 2011) are featured in a new Etsy treasury. I recently joined the Handmadeology team. This pretty treasury was created by emakaye and features pink items for sale by members of this new team. Please go visit the emakaye Etsy shop. She sells beautiful handmade lampwork beads.

And please remember that when you order a pair of my Lisa's Earrings, the entire $5 purchase price amount goes to Susan G. Komen. I also have them in a bright pink color. Where else can you contribute $5 for a good cause and get a cute pair of earrings at the same time?

New Swarovski Pendants

2011-01-15T19:22:00.003-06:00

Today I spent a good portion of my day working on getting some Swarovski pendants that I made some time ago listed in my Etsy shop. Since I have a lot of heart-shaped ones, I thought it would be a smart thing to do to get them listed before Valentine's Day. I've taken all the photos, edited them to be the right size and have gotten three new pendants into my shop. Now I just need to get the rest of them listed.

These are all great colors that I have not had in my shop before. I think my favorite is the Fuschia AB, the bright pink one. I love the color! But you really can't go wrong with any color of Swarovski crystal, can you?

New Year's Resolution

2011-01-14T23:30:00.003-06:00

It's that time again...time for the January EtsyBloggers blog carnival. The question I chose to answer this month is
It's that time of year again! What's your New Years Resolution? Do you think it's a realistic one (will you accomplish your goal)?
My goal this year is to go to the fitness center on a regular basis. Throughout the year. The entire year. For the last couple years, I've worked out early in the year very religiously for about the first two and a half months of the year. And then in mid-March, we'd go skiing for spring break. As soon as we got home, high school baseball season would start and my fitness program came to an end. And then we moved into the summer season of travel baseball and there was still no more fitness center.

My goal last year was to make it to every varsity baseball game that I could since my son was a senior and that would be my last year of high school baseball. I did not miss one inning of high school ball in 2010, but I'd work long hours on the other days to make up for the days I had to leave early for baseball. But now that Joe is off in college (and might get red-shirted), I figure I won't be going to as many baseball games as in the past. I'm going to make a sincere effort to work out three times a week. And if I miss a week, I'll get back on schedule the next week.

So far, I've done well. My first regular trip to the fitness center was 12/27. Since then, I've been nine times. I try to plan my week in advance so I know exactly what days I'll be going. My next day is tomorrow. So far, so good in going three times a week!

Handmade Cards

2011-01-12T20:41:00.007-06:00

Well, I've been neglecting my blog lately. First I focused on getting all my Christmas decorations, my hundreds of ornaments and my tree all put away. Then over the weekend, I was doing some things, like making cookies and chex mix, before my son headed back to school. His nice 3-week stay came to an end on Sunday. (Sniff, sniff.) But now I'm returning to all the things I will hopefully have more time for with the holiday rush all behind me.

This wonderful book, Delight in the Details, was on my Christmas list and my husband gave it to me. I read it cover to cover on Christmas Day. Tons of great and different ideas for embellishing greeting cards, scrapbook pages, gift tags, frames, etc. Some different techniques are explained and illustrated very clearly. It's a great book.
One day over my Christmas vacation I went to JoAnn's. It was a day that all their scrapbook paper collections were on sale. I bought some very pretty paper collections and couldn't wait to try some things in my new book. I started with some cards.

Here is the first card I made.
I had never tried stitching on cards before, but after seeing this technique in the book, I decided to give it a try. Turned out quite well. There were some little flowers made by gathering ribbon into a circle, but I decided to do it with lace that was already slightly gathered to start with. I think the examples in the book used 12 inches of ribbon but since my lace started gathered, I didn't need nearly that much. And I saw some buttons used on cards, which I really liked. So I decided to start using up some of the tons of scraps of things that I have around my craft room.

I had a length of lace that I made 6 flowers from. I dug through my leftover button container and found some of these brown buttons. And I used up a scrap of this pink ribbon. I made three of these identical cards and realized it was great to put some of these scraps that I've had around for years to a good use finally. Here's a closeup of my flower.

If you like scrapbooking, making greeting cards and similar paper crafts, take a look at this book. It includes many great techniques that I'm anxious to try.

Christmas Beads

2011-01-05T21:23:00.003-06:00

A quick little post today, but something I wanted to share - one of the Christmas gifts I received. One of my very best friends since first grade sent me this wonderful assortment of beads for Christmas. I love the colors and the variety of beads! Can't wait to start creating with them! Thank you, Trudy!!!!

Fleece Jacket

2011-01-04T21:06:00.008-06:00

During my time off work at Christmas, I found a pattern I liked for a cute reversible jacket (2-hour sewing time),
bought some fleece at JoAnn at 50% off,

found the McCall’s pattern at Hancock’s for 99 cents (they were out of my size at JoAnn) and made my cute jacket. Here is a picture.
I like the way it turned out. It was easy to sew but it’s hard to say exactly how long I spent on the sewing. The lining fabric I found was not exactly fleece. I’m not sure what you call this fabric, but it sheds terribly. It looks like short curly hair! My craft room was a mess when I finished cutting out the pattern pieces.

And as I was sewing, I would stop periodically to vacuum this stuff off the floor, the ironing board, the walls…it was everywhere. Even in my mouth. So my choice of fabric definitely added some time to the project. I will probably not choose to use this type of fabric again for quite some time, but I do like the way it looks. I’m glad I finally found a project to do with fleece!

Soldered Pendants

2011-01-02T19:12:00.005-06:00

Hi, everyone! Happy New Year! I wish everyone a happy and healthy 2011! I had 10 fun days off work, starting with Christmas Eve. But now it's time to go back to work tomorrow. Time flies when you're having fun! I had a ton of things on my to-do list while I was off, mostly fun things I wanted to do. I knew I would never get through the entire list, but I did get a lot of things accomplished.

One of the things on my list was to make some soldered pendants, including ones for Valentine's Day. This was one of my projects over this last weekend. I made 18 pendants and have photographed them all. Now I need to get them listed in my Etsy shop.

Here is a picture of my new pendants. All of them have a different picture on the reverse side, so it's like having two pendants in one.
I purchased some collage sheets on Etsy some time ago and just bought another sheet of Valentine's images last week. Lauren Alexander is the artist who created the cute birds. The images of Paris and some of the other vintage-looking images are from Charmed Memory Collage. And some of the Cupids and the images that look more like vintage valentines are from Piddix.
I haven't made pendants in a while, so I had a great time doing it. And if I'm going to get all my stuff out, I might as well make a lot of them at one time. I'll start getting them listed tonight. If only there was time to do ALL the crafts I want to do, whenever I want to do them!

December Featured EtsyBlogger

2010-12-30T22:48:00.006-06:00

I'd better hurry if I'm going to do a post on the December featured EtsyBlogger! December is running out! This month's featured artist is Linda of pruitthandcrafts. Linda is a busy person...she has three Etsy shops (although the jewelry shop will be closing mid-January), a blog and 25 grandkids!

Here are some sample items from her shops.

First, pruitthandcrafts.etsy.com. Linda sells the fabric and paper items she creates here. She likes to quilt and has some pretty quilts in her quilts section. Linda is a breast cancer survivor and has some pink items in her shop to promote breast cancer awareness. This pretty pillow is one of my favorite items in her shop.
The next shop is pruittsupply.etsy.com. Here Linda sells a wide variety of useful items - beads, buttons, charms, fabric, lace and trim...something for everyone. I love this lavendar paisley fabric. A fat quarter of it.
The last shop, pruittdesign.etsy.com, is the jewelry shop that will be closing. Right now, all items are 50% off. Just look at this beautiful bracelet!
Linda's blog is pruitthandcrafts.blogspot.com. Lots of great posts, pretty photos and interesting links. Go check it out!

I hope you'll take a look at all of Linda's shops and her blog and join me in congratulating her on all the great work she does. I'm not quite sure how she manages to keep up with it all!

Christmas Pillows

2010-12-27T22:16:00.006-06:00

I saw this tutorial for cute Christmas pillows at tatertots & jello and had to make some! It was during the time when practically every craft I saw appealed to me and I just HAD to make something! So I made a pillow for myself and a few as Christmas gifts.

Here is a picture of the pillow in the tutorial.
In the tutorial, the ornament is painted onto the fabric. I decided I wanted to sew my pillows. I found some great Christmas fabric at JoAnn - lime green, red and white. And a nice bright red solid fabric that went well with it. I used a 14-inch pillow form and found a plate to trace around that was just the right size for the Christmas ball. So I made this pillow and realized that once the rick rack was on, it just seemed a little too busy for me. This is my pillow.
After finishing my pillow, I decided to swap the fabrics I was using for the front and back. I moved the solid lime I had chosen for the back to the front of the pillow and used the print on the back. I like this version better. I made some pillows with green ribbon with little white dots and other pillows with red and white striped ribbon. I like the way they turned out once I switched the front and back fabric, and I got to do some sewing, which apparently I was craving.

Thanks to tatertots & jello for the cute pillow ideas!

Another Christmas Stocking

2010-12-26T23:15:00.004-06:00

Time to get back to my Etsy shops (Prized Possessions and Prized Possessions Take 2) and my blog after all the preparations for Christmas (and Thanksgiving and Halloween) have come to an end. I always seem to take on a little more than I really have time for. But at least I don’t get bored! I ALWAYS have something to do!

Here’s the stocking I made on the morning of Christmas Eve. I wanted to make a new Christmas stocking for my mom, who always spends Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with us. After making Joe’s stocking earlier in the month, I knew I wanted to make the same type of stocking for my mom. Since I had already made one of these, this second one didn’t take too long to make. I didn’t get a name put on it, but at least I finished the stocking in time to hang by the chimney with care. And now I have another year to put a name on it!

EtsyBloggers Treasury

2010-12-15T18:58:00.005-06:00

A few days ago, I learned that my vintage wreath was included in another Etsy treasury, the EtsyBloggers treasury created by Linda of pruitthandcrafts. Isn't it a fun treasury? It sure puts me more in the Christmas spirit!
And I don't know if the treasury had anything to do with it or not (it certainly didn't hurt!), but I sold my wreath today! I decided to give one wreath to a local friend, so I have no wreaths left in my shop. I have a ton of vintage ornaments so I guess I can get started making more wreaths for next year soon!

Custom Mother's Bracelet

2010-12-13T19:59:00.004-06:00

Last year, I had a custom order for a two-strand mother's bracelet. There is a photo of that bracelet in this blog post, along with an adorable photo of the two little girls named in the bracelet. Several days ago, I heard from the mom who ordered that bracelet. She wanted a one-strand bracelet for her mother, a grandmother's bracelet. Last year, my buyer wasn't sure if she wanted a one- or two-strand bracelet, so I designed one of each and let her take a look at photos before she made up her mind. So this year, when she wanted the single strand bracelet, all I had to do was show her the old photo and that was what she wanted.

Here's my newest version of the Kasey-Mia bracelet. I sent it out on Saturday, so hopefully it will be arriving soon!

Please see my Etsy shop listing if you are interested in your own custom mother's or grandmother's bracelet. The very first one I made was for myself and that was back when Joe was Joey. It's one of my very favorite pieces of jewelry and I love it!

My Favorite Christmas Recipe

2010-12-12T18:23:00.002-06:00

The topic I chose for the December EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival is sharing my favorite holiday recipe and telling why it’s a favorite.

We create a different menu each year for our Christmas dinner, but the one item that has appeared on the menu every year for the last several years is Savory Herb Biscuits. I found this recipe in my Gooseberry Patch Christmas Book 2. These biscuits are very tasty and very easy to make.

SAVORY HERB BISCUITS
2 c. biscuit baking mix
1/2 c. Cheddar cheese, shredded
2/3 c. milk
1/2 tsp. dried basil leaves
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 c. butter or margarine, melted

Combine biscuit mix, cheese and milk until a soft dough forms. Beat vigorously for 30 seconds. Roll out dough to ½-inch thickness and cut with a star-shaped cookie cutter or drop by heaping tablespoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 450 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Combine basil and garlic powder with melted butter and brush over hot biscuits after removing from oven. Makes 12 biscuits.

My son, who is now 19, was sometimes assigned the job of making these biscuits for our Christmas dinner. While he used to make them most years when he was younger, he still does occasionally when we can talk him into it. Not only do I like these biscuits because they are very good and very easy, but they always remind me of Christmas Day with the whole family pitching in to make our scrumptious dinner.

Update on Yesterday's Bracelet

2010-12-07T23:00:00.004-06:00

I selected what I would wear to work today based on what I could wear my new red bracelet with, the bracelet in yesterday's blog post. I was all dressed and putting on my jewelry and one half of the clasp broke off my bracelet.

If you want to make a wire crochet bracelet, my advice to you is don't use 28 gauge wire. For as long as this clasp lasted on the bracelet, I'd say that 28 gauge wire is not strong enough. The article also mentioned that you could use 26 gauge wire. That will be what I try next time. For now, I'll just need to find a small piece of some larger gauge wire so I can reattach my clasp to my bracelet. And reinforce the other end, also.

New Wire Crochet Bracelet

2010-12-06T23:10:00.007-06:00

I've always loved all kinds of craft projects, but lately, I'm not sure what's come over me. Lately, I've been seeing tons of projects that I want to do SOOO badly. I just feel like I MUST make something! Saturday I made my Christmas stocking. And yesterday, I started a bracelet while watching part of the KC Chiefs game on TV.

My January Bead Style magazine arrived in the mail several days ago and I saw a bracelet in it that I knew I had to make. I've always wanted to try wire crochet with beads and this bracelet seemed like the perfect way to give it a try. The best part about this bracelet was that I bought absolutely nothing to make it. I already had everything I needed. I decided on red and white/clear beads since that looked kind of Christmas-y.

The longest part of this project was digging out the beads I wanted to use and stringing them on my 28 gauge wire. I was to string 16 - 22 inches of beads, so I went with 22, but I didn't need nearly that many. I didn't take photos all along the way, but all you do is a chain stitch, slipping one bead up close to the crochet hook before making the next chain. You make a beaded chain that will go around your wrist three times. Then you fold this chain into thirds, into sort of a wide flat 'S' shape, flatten the 'S' and use the tail on each end to hold what is now three strands together, then twist the whole thing together. More or less twists can adjust the size of the bracelet. Here's a picture after I got this far.

Next I used 20 gauge wire to make the two clasp pieces, one in an 'S' shape and one in a 'C' shape.
I used the wire ends to wrap around the center of one clasp piece on each end. Trim the excess wire and it's done! Here's the finished bracelet.
And here's a picture with the clasp closed.
I think tomorrow will be one of those days when I pick the clothes I wear to match the bracelet I want to wear! I can already tell that I will be making more of these bracelets in different colors. I like the way it looks and it was so simple! I'll need to try a necklace soon also.

Christmas Stocking

2010-12-05T18:03:00.018-06:00

After making the table runner that was the August “Create with Me” project on u-createcrafts.com, I started checking to see what the project was each month. I love the fabric pumpkins in September but I never quite had time to make any. But I saw the November Christmas stocking and knew I had to do that project. Chances were pretty slim that I would finish it in November, but I wanted to make it anyway. (The deadline has now been extended through December.)

While the project showed how to make two stockings from one strip pieced effort, I decided to make only one stocking. I’ve been wanting to make a stocking for my son for years. I bought him a stocking when he was a baby that doesn’t even have his name on it. That’s been his stocking for 18 years. A few years ago, I started looking for stockings or stocking patterns that had some sort of baseball theme (other than an MLB team) but have not yet found anything. I’d love to make him a baseball stocking. But I settled for the next best thing – a stocking in his new school colors, which are sort of a maroon shade of red and gold. Here’s the stocking I made yesterday for him. He came home for the weekend to attend the KC Chiefs game today (so we got to go out to dinner to celebrate his upcoming 19th birthday last night) and I finished the stocking not long before he got home. He liked it.

The web site points you to this tutorial. There were parts of it that I had to read several times because it was not quite clear to me what was being explained. Thinking it through, I was able to figure out what the author really meant. And I discovered that the author and I had different interpretations of what “lengthwise” means. Once I got past little things like this, it wasn’t hard to do.

Rather than enlarging the pattern given or drawing my own, which I considered doing, I realized that this stocking I own is a very similar shape and size to that in the instructions, so I traced around it to make my pattern.
I decided to combine the method used in the August table runner with the stocking tutorial instructions since I liked the way the pieced table runner turned out. I sewed each strip directly onto my batting, pressing after adding each new strip.
Here’s my finished pieced strips.
I cut out my stocking from the pieced strips using my traced pattern.
Then I cut out the stocking back and another piece of batting.
I sewed all these pieces together, per the instructions, and turned it right side out.
Next I cut out my two stocking pieces from my lining fabric and sewed them together, right sides together. I made my seam allowance just a tad larger than I did on my stocking so that my lining would be just a tad smaller than the stocking to allow for the bulk of the batting.
The instruction wording was a little confusing here. Just sew around the sides, leaving the top open and leaving about a two inch opening on a straight section of one side. I left the opening between my two fingers, shown in the next photo.
I made the loop by folding the fabric strip in half the long way, pressing it, then folding each long side in to the center pressed line. Finally, I stitched along the long edge to hold all these layers together.
I cut out the top band, making sure the piece I cut out was the right length to fit around the top of my stocking since I knew my stocking was not the exact size of that in the instructions. I didn’t want to just cut the band piece based on the size given in the instructions. I folded the band and determined where I wanted to put the name on the band. I cut out my letters (just played around drawing them until they were a size and shape I liked), lightly attached them with Stitch Witchery, applied some interfacing to the band on the wrong side behind where the letters would be and zig zag stitched around the letters. I carefully determined exactly where the band seam should be to fit just right around the top of my stocking. I stitched the band seam (the short side of the band), folded the band in half wrong sides together (the fold runs the long length of the band) and pressed. Here’s my finished band.

Next I pinned my band to the top of the stocking and the loop at the side seam.
The lining has been stitched but never turned, so it still has right sides together. I placed the stocking inside the lining so that the right side of the stocking faced the right side of the lining. I pinned the lining to the stocking around the top edge, then sewed all around the top edge. I sewed over the seam where the loop was attached a couple extra times to reinforce in case heavy gifts are put into the stocking! Now I pulled the stocking out through the opening in the lining seam to turn the whole thing right side out.
I tucked the lining inside the stocking, poking it into the toe and heel as nicely as possible. I pressed the top seam so the lining would lay down flat and I was all finished with my stocking! Here it is again.
I think I’ll make another one for my mom, who always spends Christmas with us, once I decide on the fabrics to use in hers. I think these turn out really cute and think this was a great project to feature in the “Create with Me” series! If you need a new stocking, give this project a try!

Credit Card Necklace

2010-12-01T21:27:00.003-06:00

I just finished making a custom credit card necklace. I've made bracelets and earrings but never a necklace until an Etsy customer requested one. I've been working with her over the last couple days to come up with the right color, length and style and here's what we ended up with.

I really like the way it turned out. It's 24 inches long, but because I used a lobster clasp and the type of chain I did, it can easily be adjusted to just about any shorter length. I think I'm going to have to make more necklaces now!

November Featured EtsyBlogger

2010-11-30T23:07:00.009-06:00

The featured EtsyBlogger of the month for November (I barely made it!) is DevineDesignsJewelry. Please go check out Cindy’s Etsy shop here. These are my favorite earrings in her shop…I LOVE the colors!.
And go take a look at Cindy’s blog, www.devinedesignsjewelry.blogspot.com. Not only does she have some great photos of her jewelry in her blog, but she lives in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and has some great WARM-LOOKING photos of Florida. If you’re like me and live somewhere that’s cold right now, it’s fun just to look at her Florida photos! Thanks, Cindy, for sharing! (And making me feel warmer.)

And, last but not least, no one can ever have too many Facebook friends or pages they like. Cindy’s Facebook page has even more great photos and posts. You can see it all for yourself here.
Love your jewelry, Cindy! Keep up the great work!

My Finished Printer's Tray

2010-11-26T18:39:00.009-06:00

Hi! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I look forward to Thanksgiving each year because my mom's family gets together every year. We had a smaller turnout this year (only 81 people) than the last two years (91 and 93 people), but there's always plenty of great food and lots of time to visit with my relatives that I don't get to see very often.

I didn't want to say too much about the printer's tray project I was working on (see earlier post) in case any family members read it. This project was for the gift exchange I do with my cousins on Thanksgiving. Now that Thanksgiving is past, I'll show pictures of my project. I made two of these trays, each with the same photos and embellishments, one for my gift exchange and one to keep for myself. Since I have been doing my family calendars for several years now, I have accumulated quite a few old family photos that I incorporated into the tray. I have a wedding photo of my grandparents, along with a photo from their 50th anniversary. I included photos of both sets of great-grandparents and their families, the last photo when my mom and her nine siblings were together before my Aunt Agnes passed away last year and a Thanksgiving photo of those of my 35 cousins who were present a couple years ago. Four generations of family photos is kind of fun to look at! And I have some photos of my grandparents' house, barn, granary and the outhouse that I can still remember.

Here's a photo of my finished tray. I'm very pleased with how it turned out.
And here are some closeups of the various sections. The section above is the top left section. My grandma and grandpa are in the corner by the car. You can't see it, but the license plate on the car has the year "49" on it. Next to them is a photo of the farmhouse they lived in which burned down when I was in high school. The small ranch house they built in its place just was not quite the same. Next to the house photo is a picture of my grandpa with his parents and siblings. This section also includes the anniversary and wedding photos, along with individual photos of my grandparents when they were young.
The section above is the top right section. In the corner is my grandma, her parents and sisters. Below that is a photo of my cousins and me from a recent Thanksgiving. And below that is an earier photo of my grandpa and his siblings.
The bottom left section includes the last picture of my mom and all of her siblings from Thanksgiving 2008, another photo of my Grandpa, the granary and a section of the 1930 census record listing my grandparents, along with some of my aunts and uncles.
The bottom right section shows the barn and, last but not least, the old outhouse.

This was a fun project to work on. It's made me decide that I need to put all my photos in one place and do a family scrapbook. I've added this to my list of things to do in 2011! I'm just glad I paged through the Archiver's ad when I did and saw the trays and project ideas or I wouldn't have ended up with such a great gift for the gift exchange!

Another Etsy Treasury

2010-11-19T19:12:00.006-06:00

My vintage ornament wreath is in another Etsy Treasury! I love the treasury name. The creator of this fun treasury says it's from a Wendy's jingle that was out last year. I guess I missed that one.

Please visit Shawnee's Etsy shop, MyFairLadee, and take a look at her new and vintage jewelry and headbands, along with other unique finds.

Thanks, Shawnee, for including my wreath in your lovely treasury!

My Current Project

2010-11-18T21:20:00.004-06:00

The November EtsyBloggers Blog Carnival topics are both about what inspires you. The choices of topics were

1) What item are you working on?? What is your inspiration for this piece??
2) What is always inspiring you for your shops, your works, or anything in your life??

I chose to answer the first question - what I'm working on and what my inspiration is.

My new project started when I was looking through an Archiver's ad that I got in the mail. I saw these great little printer trays, with lots of examples of photo displays that could be made using them. I then moved on to the Archiver's web site to look at the trays. Check it out here. And then take a look at their pages and pages of finished projects here. How can you not want one of these for your very own?

So I went to Archiver's and bought a tray. Since Halloween, I have been focused on nothing but my family calendar, trying to get it finished up before Thanksgiving. (I took it to the printer this evening. I recently learned of another new baby to include, bringing my total family members up to 173. I have 171 of those 173 people on the calendar!) With family on the mind, I decided to make a family themed tray.

Yesterday, on the way home from work, I stopped by Archiver's to find papers and embellishments that I could use in my tray. Last night, I started going through photos, trying to decide which ones I would use and what spot I would put them in. As I made decisions, I put a little slip of paper containing a description of the photo or embellishment in the compartment so I wouldn't forget what would go where. Since this post is about my current project and my current project isn't too far along yet, unfortunately the only photo I have of my work in progress is this one. Doesn't look like much yet, but I will post the finished project soon.
As for the inspiration for the project...My initial inspiration came from the Archiver's ad and all the great examples I looked at online. But my real inspiration is my family. The fact that I've been working on my calendar a lot lately and that I will get to see my aunts, uncles and cousins at Thanksgiving kept my family in the front of my mind. It was not difficult to decide the theme for my tray once I decided I wanted to make one.

Check back soon to see my completed project!

My Third Annual Mini Holiday Mart Open House

2010-11-14T22:04:00.010-06:00

This afternoon I held another fun and successful holiday open house. My third one. This year Jana participated, who makes lovely soldered pendants and ornaments and glass pendants and earrings. This is Jana's third year to participate in my open house and every year, the work she brings with her is more lovely than the year before!

My cousin Julie has been making fleece hats, along with some little ponchos and mittens, like crazy! All the pretty colors and patterns of fleece she uses made for a very pretty display.
Katie sold her pretty Christmas ornament wreaths and glass block Christmas decorations. With the bright lights in the glass blocks, it was hard to get a good focused photo.
And I was selling my beaded jewelry and Christmas ornaments.

Since I hold this in my basement, I don't want to open it up to the public, but all the sellers who participate invite their friends and acquaintances. I'm not too big into Christmas in early November since I don't like to totally lose Thanksgiving, but today is the one day that I put out Christmas decorations and play holiday music to get into the Christmas shopping spirit. And I must say that doing this does help me get more into the Christmas mood each year. We have refreshments and plenty of time to visit with friends. And each vendor donates a door prize for a drawing that we hold at the end of the event.

It's a fun way to see what other people make, to socialize and to get into the Christmas spirit. I'd love to find a bigger place to hold this, invite more vendors, open it up to the public...Gotta start thinking about 2011!

My Vintage Ornament Wreaths are in Two Etsy Treasuries!

2010-11-10T22:03:00.009-06:00

I recently learned that my ornament wreaths were selected to appear in two Etsy treasuries.

This first one was created by FridaAndMarilyn. This Etsy shop sells great jewelry. Please go take a look!

And the second treasury was created by Susanna at unabellavita where she sells very cute aprons.

Please check out each of these nice shops who chose my wreaths to be in their treasuries! Thank you to both of you for including me!

Family Calendar

2010-11-09T22:21:00.018-06:00

Wow. It's been a long time since my last post. I've been kind of busy. After my Halloween party, which kept me busy for the entire month of October, it was time to get my annual family calendar finished. I had started it, but still had quite a bit of work left on it. Every year, I create a calendar with all family birthdays on it to distribute at our Thanksgiving gathering. Since Halloween, I have spent every spare minute I have on my calendar, usually staying up much too late. Here are some pictures from my 2009 calendar.

I just realized that I never posted any pictures from my 2010 calendar last year. Last year was a big change for my calendar. I started creating my pages using digital scrapbooking elements and had a great time making it.

Here is my 2010 cover, in honor of my aunt Agnes who passed away last September.

And here is my very favorite page from inside the calendar, my Grandma and Grandpa's wedding picture.

This year, I may have undertaken a little too much. One year, I included a family photo or multiple photos of a family to include everyone in calendar pictures. This year, I heard that people wanted to see pictures of everyone on the calendar again so I decided to include everyone in an individual photo on the page facing their birthday month. While this doesn't sound too bad, when you take into account that there are approximately 170 people in my family, it becomes a rather daunting task. My mom is one of ten kids and I have 35 cousins. Many of those cousins have grandkids, which adds up to 172 people, at last count. As of now, I have 153 of them on the calendar. Not bad! I'm trying to round up the last remaining photos by this weekend so I can take it to the printer the next week.

Here are a couple of my finished pages from my 2011 calendar.

Halloween Dip

2010-10-29T11:46:00.004-05:00

Still looking for a great dip for Halloween? Give this one a try. I made it this morning. (Day off work!)

I bought a book called Hungry Halloween that contains some great recipes. I had decided to make the dip called Portrait of a Monster. I must admit, I selected this recipe based on the looks of the finished product. It's got a layer of artichoke dip and a layer of spinach dip. I like both of those, but I cannot look at a recipe and tell if it's going to taste good when it's finished or not. But both of these dips are great! So while I selected this based on a picture, I would make these dips again anytime!

The dips are layered in a 9X13 pan, then crushed blue tortilla chips are sprinkled on top to create a portrait of Frankenstein. While the template for the crumbs is in the back of the book and can be enlarged, a full size, ready-to-print template is on the Hungry Halloween web site. I discovered that this entire recipe, along with others in the book, is on the web site.

Last night, I printed the template. While they wanted me to create this template on plastic stencil material, I couldn't easily find the stencil plastic that I own and have stored somewhere or other, and it was too late to go to the store, so I cut out my template using a piece of heavy paper. This worked fine.

I made my artichoke dip and spread it in my pan. Then I made my spinach dip. I gently laid the template over the artichoke dip and made a line around Frank's head with the tip of a paring knife. I put my spinach dip into a gallon freezer bag and cut off a small bit of one corner. I wasn't sure how thick or thin I should apply this second layer, so I outlined the head and started filling in the head rather sparingly. I soon learned that I had plenty of spinach dip so I went back and added more dip to the thinner sections and filled in all empty spots. Since the dip did not look too good at this point, I spread the spinach dip around inside the head outline evenly with a knife. Here's a photo of my dip after I layered the two.

The next step was to crush the tortilla chips and sprinkle them on the dip using the template. This went much better than I thought it might have. I was careful to gently press the crumbs into the dip so they would stay put. I tried to brush as many crumbs off the template and into the empty slots in the template that were to be filled with crumbs so that when I lifted the template, crumbs did not fall into all the spots that were to remain crumbless. I discovered that my ears and neck bolts did not line up too well, so I just applied a few crumbs to those areas after I removed the template. All in all, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!

Vintage Christmas Ornament Wreaths

2010-10-24T14:56:00.005-05:00

Yesterday while I was watching some college football games, I decided I needed to be doing something more productive at the same time. My collection of vintage ornaments was getting a little too big to easily store, so I decided to start working on some wreaths. I got most of two wreaths completed, then finished up the last details today.

I love to look for vintage ornaments and I love to make them into pretty Christmas wreaths. I've given a lot as gifts, so I decided this year it's time to start selling them. I listed both of these wreaths today in my vintage Etsy shop, Prized Possessions Take 2. We'll see how selling them goes!

My Most Memorable Halloween Costume

2010-10-22T10:57:00.005-05:00

“Halloween is just around the corner. What is the best Halloween costume you've ever worn or designed for someone else to wear? What made it so special?”

This is the question I chose to answer for the EtsyBloggers’ October blog carnival. My favorite costume I ever made was a very cute pumpkin costume that I made for my son’s first Halloween when he was not quite a year old. I could only find a blurry photo and frankly, there’s not much story behind that costume.

So I’m changing the topic slightly. Here is my most memorable Halloween costume.

I made this Power Ranger costume when my son was not quite five years old.
We picked out the pattern from the pattern book and the costume was quite complex. If you look closely, you might be able to see that the tops of the sleeves are slightly puffy looking. Parts of the costume had to be padded with batting. In addition to what you see in the photo, there were some shoe covers that hung down over the foot and a head cover/mask. Joe never liked to wear the foot and head covers, although they added to the look significantly. I guess he liked the white sneaker look better.

So there was a lot of work to this costume and some hard deadline of the day care costume party looming ahead of me. I worked full time so the only time I had to sew during the week was in the evenings. The memories of making this costume have stuck with me for some very unique reasons.

My deadline was approaching and I had one evening available where I planned to make a lot of progress. Wouldn’t you know that we had a freak October snow storm in Kansas City that day! It did a lot of damage all over town. The leaves were still on the trees so when that heavy wet snow and freezing rain covered all the leaves, the branches were very heavy. Many trees and branches were broken all around town. And the worst part of the storm for me was when our power went out. No more sewing machine. No more lights. I remember sitting at my dining room table looking for things I could do by hand with my flashlight and candles nearby! It was quite an experience!

The costume did get done on time. All its pieces are still hanging in the back of my closet. It’s a costume making experience I will never forget and I hope I won’t ever repeat!

New Black Jack-O-Lanterns

2010-10-18T21:37:00.003-05:00

I used to carve really elaborate pumpkins, usually three, every Halloween. I would take pictures of them, put them in the windows around Halloween, then eventually I would have to throw them away.

When they started selling the fake pumpkins, I decided I would start carving these artificial pumpkins each year and add to my collection as time went on rather than throwing away my real pumpkins.

This year, I decided I would carve black pumpkins. Over the last few weeks, I had bought three black pumpkins at Michael's, all 50% off. My plan was to carve jack-o-lanterns to put on my hay bale by my front door. This last Saturday, I carved all three of my pumpkins. Here they are.

The two on the left are pretty simple compared to many of the ones I have done. The witch is a little more complex. I got all three of these patterns from BHG.com at this link. If you take a short quiz about your Halloween preferences, supposedly they will tailor the templates they show you according to those preferences. But there is a nice variety of templates that they have to offer. Check it out and show me your Halloween jack-o-lanterns in a comment to this post! I love to see what other people do with their pumpkins!

Vintage Black Cat Candle Holder

2010-10-17T18:51:00.007-05:00

On Friday, my husband dropped off his car for some service work and I had to pick him up. I had the day off work so I left home early and stopped by one of my favorite shops, Vintage Market, which I hadn't visited since it moved to a new location recently. Since it's only a few minutes from the car dealership, it was a great chance to go check it out.

I love the new location as much as the old! Such a fun shop in which to browse! And I didn't leave without making a purchase. I thought this wonderful cat candle holder would make a great addition to my Halloween decorating. The top is rusty and it needs a little cleaning up, but for $8, it was a great buy! It's 18 inches tall and will look great next to my fireplace!

Another Craigslist Find

2010-10-15T22:12:00.005-05:00

Here's one of the items I bought last month from Craigslist. I've always wanted a screen door to use in my jewelry display. I've seen several used and they always added that vintage look that I love. Well, now I have my own screen door!
This one needs a little work. It had been stored outside so it needs to be cleaned. And the paint is peeling quite a bit. I need to apply a sealer or do something to deal with the peeling, but still keep that old look. And I want to build some sort of base for it so it will stand on its own. Then I will be able to use it to display jewelry, Christmas ornaments and hopefully even vintage ornament wreaths! A future project that most realistically won't get started before Thanksgiving. But you know when I finish it, I will show pictures here! Someday...

Halloween Craft Answer

2010-10-14T16:35:00.004-05:00

Here's the answer to yesterday's riddle. My newest creation.

It's made from a piece of styrofoam in the center of PVC pipe. The styrofoam is carved out to hold a battery-operated tea light. Then the whole thing is covered with hot glue applied to look like melted wax. The plastic is glued to the top in three places to build up the height of the top and give it that uneven wavy look.

I started with a very small piece of pipe because I didn't really know how well it would turn out or how hard it would be to make. I'm ready to take on a larger one now! It really went pretty quickly. The only real problem was when I was trying to mend my styrofoam after I glued it into the pipe. I did not plan carefully where the glue might end up and hot glue dripped right on a couple fingers. I have a nice blister now, but I've been reminded to be more careful with my glue gun.

I want to make more candles glued to candle holders next. I found one candle holder a couple days ago at a thrift shop that I will paint black, but I want to find more of varying heights and sizes. I checked out some dollar stores today but no luck. Need to keep looking.

If you'd like to make your own Halloween candles, check out this two-part video on a great Halloween web site, How to Haunt your House.

Halloween Craft Riddle

2010-10-13T23:24:00.007-05:00

Several days ago, I found a great Halloween craft idea on a Halloween web site. I bought supplies last night and made the project tonight. Here are the supplies I used.

PVC coupling

Plastic packaging that I would have recycled (I reused instead)

Styrofoam that I would have recycled

Glue sticks and glue gun

Can you guess what I made? Come back tomorrow to see the answer!

October Featured Etsyblogger

2010-10-12T22:56:00.008-05:00

October’s featured etsyblogger is Margaret of SplendidLittleStars. Margaret has two Etsy shops that I’d like to share with you , as well as a blog containing some beautiful photographs!

Here is my favorite item from Margaret’s SparklyPark Etsy shop.
Margaret will donate 20% of the purchase price of these pretty pink crystal and pearl earrings to breast cancer research during the month of October. Go take a look at all of Margaret’s other SparklyPark jewelry, too.

I love this cute hat from the SplendidLittleStars shop! It would make an adorable addition to any little lady’s wardrobe. Margaret has many other cute kids’ items that are also hand dyed and painted.
And finally, Margaret’s blog is splendidlittlestars.blogspot.com. You have to go take a look at this blog! It is full of such beautiful photography that it’s hard to stop paging through just to see what the next photo will be!

Keep up the great work, Margaret, on your clothing, your jewelry and your blog!

Vaseline Glass

2010-10-11T22:43:00.005-05:00

I'm not a huge eBay person. I've bought a few things on eBay, all "buy it now" items. I got my pink Barbie shoes I use in my earrings on eBay. But yesterday I won my first item in an auction. I'm looking forward to receiving it. Here it is. (Once I receive it, I'll take my own photo of it. This was all I could get for now.)
I first heard of Vaseline glass a couple weeks ago in an Etsy forum. It's glass that has a small amount of uranium in it and it glows in the dark under black light. I'd like to learn more about this uranium thing...my first thought was it doesn't sound safe. So I'll do some research since I'm curious. I just know the pictures I've seen of Vaseline glass look pretty cool. I thought it would be perfect for Halloween! I'm looking forward to the arrival of my new vase. I've never taken a picture under a black light, but I'll give it a try!

Halloween Wreath

2010-10-10T21:26:00.006-05:00

I've had my materials for a while now, but today I finally made my Halloween wreath to go on my front door. I found a grapevine wreath on sale at Michael's, kind of a messy wreath that has leaves on many of the vines. It's hard to find black flowers, even at Halloween. I wanted plain black flowers, without the silver glitter. I had thought about spray painting some old flowers I have, but then decided to go with the stem of six black Halloween roses from Michael's, but they do have the silver glitter. I could have had purple glitter, but couldn't find any with no glitter. But I was willing to accept silver glitter to not have to mess with spray painting flowers! And I also bought a roll of organdy ribbon on sale. All in all, a pretty inexpensive wreath.

Here is a photo of my wreath on my craft table, right after I finished it.

And here is a picture of the wreath on my front door. It will make a nice addition to my Halloween decorations!

Jewelry Box from Craigslist

2010-10-09T17:40:00.007-05:00

More than once, I've seen jewelry displayed in vintage jewelry boxes and always liked the way it looked. Since I'm always looking for different ideas for displaying my jewelry, I told myself I needed to remember this. Every now and then I would look for jewelry boxes on Craigslist. Well, last week I found one for $3. I picked it up yesterday.
I love the floral pattern! It's got a lot of space inside.
I put a few items inside to get a feel for how it would look.
This will be a fun addition to my growing collection of jewelry display items. And before you know it, my home party in November will be here! This will be my third year I've done a home party open house before the holidays. More news on that later...

Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2010-10-06T23:30:00.005-05:00

I've done a post on these cute earrings before. (I can call them cute, because even though I make them, they weren't my idea.) Since it's October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I thought I should do another post. And today's a great day to do a post because of the $50 I just raised for Susan G. Komen.

I won't go into all the details again here. If you click on this photo, you can go to my Etsy shop listing and read the story behind the earrings. Basically, I'm donating the materials for these earrings, selling them for $5 a pair and donating the $5 to Susan G. Komen. Today was a fun day because when I got home from work, I discovered an order for 8 pairs of earrings! $40 for Susan G. Komen in one day! So I commented on this on Facebook and got an order from a friend for another two pairs! I'm pretty excited about raising $50 in one day!

My first customer ordered 8 pairs because her husband's grandmother just had surgery for breast cancer. She is going to send earrings to her family all over the country and even in France, then get their pictures wearing the earrings and make a scrapbook for the grandmother. What an awesome idea! Good luck to Ami on her scrapbook. And my thoughts and prayers are with her husband's grandmother!

If you'd like to do something small for Susan G. Komen, how about donating $5 and getting a pair of earrings for your effort?

Recent Find on Craigslist

2010-09-26T23:49:00.004-05:00

I've been planning my Halloween decorations lately and looking everywhere for all the right accessories. I found this great silver caldelabra on Craigslist and picked it up last week one day. It's nicely tarnished and has a little bit of melted wax on it. Too bad it doesn't have more wax. I'm tryng to decide exactly what I will do to it, if anything. I saw an idea in a Halloween book where you drape Spanish moss over an old candelabra and then drip melted wax over the moss. This added a wonderfully old and creepy look to the candelabra. I'll have to think about it. Meanwhile, even if I do nothing to it, it's a wonderful Halloween decoration!

I'm in Another Etsy Treasury!

2010-09-22T23:16:00.004-05:00

I just learned that my Earrings 2 to Honor Marilyn are featured in a lovely Etsy Treasury created by ohbabydotcom. Please go take a look at all these great items, getting us ready for October - Breast Cancer Awareness month! And a big thank you to ohbabydotcom for including me. I appreciate it!

I will donate $5 from the sale of these earrings to Susan G. Komen.

Vintage Jewelry Stand

2010-09-20T23:45:00.005-05:00

Time has slipped away from me once again. And I was getting better at posting more often! My mom had cataract surgery a couple weeks ago on her first eye. Tomorrow is her surgery on the second eye. Taking her to appointments and various other things, as well as trying to get organized for Halloween, has made the time go by very quickly. And a lack of good topics to write about didn't help the situation either.

But over the weekend, I made three purchases from Craigslist. I really love all the stuff you can find on Craigslist! Late last week, I found some vintage ornaments at a very good price. I thought I was buying 3 boxes of 12 each for $5. When I went to pick them up Saturday, the seller had many more in a bag to include. I ended up paying her an extra $5 for those. When I got home and counted them, I discovered there were 81 ornaments in the bag, in addition to the 3 dozen in the boxes! Quite a few were smaller ones, which is great because I can always use smaller ornaments to fill in smaller spaces when finishing up a wreath.

The seller was located a little ways north of where I live, but very close to a newer shopping area called Zona Rosa. And in Zona Rosa is a Vintage Market shop, one that is open all the time, as opposed to the one closer to me that is only open one weekend a month. So, after I picked up my ornaments, I spent I don't know how long in this wonderful shop. I love both the Vintage Market stores! I made one purchase there...a vintage jewelry stand. It's about 12 inches tall and will be great for displaying necklaces or bracelets.
Stay tuned later this week for details of my other Craigslist purchases and my first completed Halloween project of the year!

Life Remains Busy!

2010-09-09T22:45:00.004-05:00

Well, it's almost a week since my last blog post. I seem to have ups and downs of being good and not so good at consistent posting. Right when I think I'm on a roll, something changes. Even with Joe off at college, life remains busy. Over the Labor Day weekend, the weather here in the Kansas City area was gorgeous. My husband and I spent a lot of Saturday and Sunday working outside, trying to make up for a summer of totally neglecting the yard and plants and landscaping since we were never home. We replanted a lot of the ground cover on one side of our house that had become overgrown. My body has finally gotten over being sore from that! And I did buy some corn stalks, hay bales, mums and pansies for my fall decorating.

Sunday night, Joe came home from college for less than 24 hours. His roommate lives on the Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. Joe went home with him for two days and had a great time tubing. We were glad to have time with him Sunday night and Monday.

Then there was too much overtime at work this week. And today my mother had cataract surgery on her first eye. We didn't think it was going to work out to do the surgery this week, but last night I found out it would. It's very good to have that out of the way. Tomorrow morning I'll take her for her follow up doctor's appointment.

It was a short week at work, but nevertheless, a very busy week overall! I'm ready for my weekend tomorrow! And hopefully I'll get caught back up on my blog posting, beading and all the other things I love to do!

Next big projects are new Halloween costumes for the Halloween party and the family calendar, which I have gotten a bit of a start on. Stay tuned for progress...

More Christmas Ornaments

2010-09-03T22:18:00.008-05:00

Here are more Christmas ornaments that I made toward the end of the summer. The ornament on the left is one that I made with a different variation of netting than what I had been doing. I wanted something different and the ornament on the left is what I ended up with.
I always mark the projects and techniques that I want to try someday in my bead magazines. I had some of my magazines with me on one of our baseball trips this summer, as well as some ornaments and beads. I saw an article in the February 2010 Bead & Button magazine on Chevron Chains. I had never done this but it looked like a stitch that could be suited to round Christmas ornaments. I started the ornament on the right on one of our trips, I think maybe the one to Omaha, then finished it after I got home. I like the way it turned out. I hope I have time to make more ornaments similar to this one. The combinations of beads, colors and the ways you can do this stitch are endless! Chevron Chain was a fun stitch to do. I'll need to try it in a necklace someday!

I decided to try this next ornament because when I made so many beaded netting ornaments, I realized I really liked the way the bottom of the ornaments looked! It seemed too pretty to always have on the bottom side of an ornament. Here's a picture of the bottom of one of my ornaments. I made two circles of netting then figured out how to attach them at the sides and bottom to make this ornament. I think it kind of looks like clear snowflakes on the sides of this ornament.

Soon I need to list all my ornaments on Etsy. It will be that time again before we know it!

New Jewelry Display - Shutters

2010-09-01T21:35:00.003-05:00

I'm always looking for new ways to display my jewelry. Not that I have too many opportunities to do so yet, other than my annual open house, but I need to be prepared! Some time ago, I thought that hanging earrings on the slats of shutters would be a good way to display a lot of earrings. And I could hang other hooks (like all the Christmas ornament hooks that are sometimes on my vintage ornaments) on the slats to hang bracelets, necklaces or Christmas ornaments, if I wanted to. So I started looking around for shutters. Like when I was at my favorite junk shop in Omaha.

Not long ago, I discovered a local shop online that I wanted to visit, Vintage Market. There are two in town and the one closest to my house is only open the last Thursday through Sunday of the month. Sunday afternoon I made a trip there and I loved it! Different vendors sell their vintage items there. Most items were very reasonably priced. One of the types of things I was keeping my eye open for was jewelry display items. And then I saw them. These shutters.
They were nicely painted white and in good shape, not too brand new looking but hardly beat up or anything. And then I saw the price tag - $12. I was more than willing to pay $12 for a pretty sizeable item that could provide a large display area. I thought the price was per shutter. And when I learned the price was for the PAIR of shutters, there was no doubt in my mind I would buy them. They're a little dusty, so they need some cleaning, but that's all they need. I'm looking forward to figuring out how to incorporate the shutters into my open house display in November. Of course, I'll have photos in November, if not sooner! Stay tuned...

Table Runner - Finished!

2010-08-31T21:09:00.008-05:00

I finished my table runner last night. I like the way it turned out. I made it in response to the tutorial that I referenced in an earlier post, at u-createcrafts.com. I picked my fabrics to match my dining room wallpaper. Here's a photo of my finished runner.
And here's a closeup.
The backing fabric I used is a piece I had left over from my dining room window treatments and chair seats.
When we bought this house, they had very pretty swags on the window, but they were pink. We repapered the room and I took apart the pink swags to use as a pattern to make these mauve ones. I bought enough fabric to have the chair seats upholstered. You can see part of a chair on the far right of the photo below.

In the tutorial for the table runner is a separate tutorial for the binding. It was great! There were three tips in it that I loved. 1. Joining the two ends of the binding was very easy and looks great. I've never done it like this before and hope I always remember this way! 2. Mitering the corners was a piece of cake. 3. Sewing over the pins, then having them there to use when folding the binding to the back side saved time. Check this out if you want an easy way to do binding!

Bummer. I just realized the deadline for getting my photo in was 8/30. I thought it was tonight. I finished the runner late last night then worked at home for an hour after that till after 11:30. Oh, well. Guess I'll just have to show my photos here!

Purchases in St. Louis

2010-08-29T22:51:00.009-05:00

Before we left to take my son to UMSL, I looked on Craigslist for things in the St. Louis area that I might be interested in. I found a couple ads that were several days old that I was interested in. When I contacted the sellers, I was surprised to hear that the items I was interested in were still available. I made arrangements to purchase and pick up the items on Saturday. We were able to fit in these stops while we were shopping for apartment furniture.

My first purchase was this jewelry display rack. I really like it! It swivels around on the base and will hold quite a few bracelets or necklaces. Or maybe even Christmas ornaments.Six of the metal holders on each side will hold a lot!
And I'm always on the lookout for vintage Christmas ornaments for my wreaths. I found an ad for ornaments for $10. What a deal!
I got about 50 ornaments for $10! Only a few were solid colored balls. Most of them were the multi-colored or different shaped ones that I really want to find. Some of them were unlike any I have purchased in the past. Here are some of the different ones.

While we ended up being much busier in St. Louis than I had planned on, since we had to look for more furniture than I had planned on, we were still able to fit in the trips to pick up my jewelry display and ornament purchases. It worked out well and I'm glad I checked out craigslist before we went to St. Louis!

Table Runner - My New Project

2010-08-26T21:55:00.005-05:00

I don’t remember exactly how I found it, but sometime in early August, I found this August “create with me” project in a blog. I decided I would make this table runner for my dining room table. It would give me something to do (like I really need another project!) after my son was off at school.

Monday afternoon, after I got back from St. Louis, since I was taking the whole day off work, I went to JoAnn’s to find more fabrics to add to the collection I had already pulled from my fabric stash. Here are all the fabrics I will be using.
I couldn’t find Warm and Natural batting in a good size, but found this Mountain Mist brand. And all batting was 40% off!
I’ve cut my batting piece and am ready to start pressing and cutting fabric. Stay tuned for my finished project! I have to finish it in August, so I still have a few more days, including a weekend. And I’ve decided that if I like this project, I want to make another table runner in Christmas fabrics. Maybe I could even give some as Christmas gifts. Hadn’t thought of that until just now. We’ll see how it goes…

Seed Bead Bracelet and Earrings

2010-08-24T22:48:00.004-05:00

OK. The college move is over. We got my son settled and we kept very busy for a couple days, going to estate sales and even a hotel liquidation warehouse. Craigslist is great! We got some great buys to furnish the apartment. But when things slowed down and when it was time to drive away and leave my one and only child behind, things got kind of hard. So now I’m home in my empty-nest house…I have plenty of ways to keep busy. Like catch up on all my blog posts. But this is going to take some getting used to.

Here’s a photo of the bracelet and earrings I made for myself during my “make stuff for myself to cheer up” phase before leaving for school. These are made with two colors of size 11 seed beads. I got the instructions in the February 2010 Bead & Button magazine.
There are variations for stringing together the beaded flowers to make three different bracelets. I came up with the earring design (not too hard to do) myself. This was a fun little pattern to stitch. If you’ve got a couple colors of seed beads handy, you might want to give something like this a try!

My Beads from Wichita

2010-08-18T23:29:00.010-05:00

Last year, when we went to a baseball tournament in Wichita, I found a wonderful bead shop called Beadazzled. The owner sold lovely lampworked beads and jewelry she had made from her beads. I bought some beads and made this bracelet.

This year, I had to go back to that great bead shop. I went there to buy some beads for myself, but there were so many pretty ones to pick from, I had a hard time deciding what to buy. In the end, I came home with these cute parcels.
What's in these cute bags, you ask?

For myself, I bought these beads to make a bracelet and necklace.
And since I loved so many beads, I bought these beads to make some necklaces to sell.
Once my son is off at school, some of my future projects will use these beads. Aren't they all great?

My New Chiminea

2010-08-17T23:37:00.007-05:00

My son’s last baseball tournament of the summer was in Stillwater, OK. My husband was not able to go to this tournament, so just Joe and I went. We played a game at OSU, then some games in various nearby locations, until we went back to OSU on Sunday for the quarterfinals and semifinals (where we lost).

We played a couple games in Guthrie. Guthrie was very memorable for a number of reasons. I saw some things on a baseball field that I had never seen before. The field opened up to the football field, so there was a goal post in deep, deep center field.There was a hill in right field. I got to go visit my cousin and her two daughters in Edmond between games and have lunch with them. And I brought home a souvenir from our trip to Guthrie. All of these are reasons I will remember Guthrie.

To get to Guthrie, we drove along some country roads. On the way there, I noticed a little place along the side of the road that was selling Mexican pottery sorts of things. It really caught my attention and I thought about it some. On the way back to our hotel, I decided to stop and look around. Our wooden deck is badly in need of replacement. We’re going to start planning what to do with it after school starts and we have a little more time. I know we’ll do some sort of multi-level deck since we live on a fairly steep lot with a walk-out basement. When we redid our basement a couple years ago, we added a nice patio door, which right now goes to nowhere, but will go out onto the future lower level of our redone deck. So I’ve been kind of interested in chimineas whenever I see them, thinking that I will obviously be able to fit one into the future deck arrangement somehow.

There is a very cute shop in Omaha that has lot of Mexican pottery and art, right next door to my favorite junk shop. The chimineas always caught my eye there, as they did this last summer when we visited the shop. This place along the road in Oklahoma had the same sort of pottery, including some cute fish-shaped chimineas that I love.

So Joe and I stopped on the way back to the hotel. When the owner told me that everything was on sale, that made the shopping even better! I ended up buying this - I love it!
Fortunately, I had Joe with me to help get it into the back seat of my two-door car. We had lots of old baseball towels to use as padding around it. And it had a very uneventful ride back to Kansas City in my back seat.

When we plan the deck this fall, a seating area where my new chiminea will have a spot is definitely a requirement!

Patch – Featured EtsyBlogger for August

2010-08-16T22:13:00.007-05:00

This is my second blog post as a new member of the EtsyBloggers team. Each month, I will be posting an article on the featured EtsyBlogger. This month, the featured member is Patch. She is truly incredible, with three Etsy shops and two blogs! I don’t know how she keeps up with it all.

Etsy shop number 1 is PatchFirstShop.etsy.com. In it, she sells beautiful jewelry, made mostly with Swarovski crystals. I love this aquamarine pendant (that’s my birthstone), but she can make it in other colors, too.
The second shop is PatchVintageShop.etsy.com, which sells vintage clothing items. This shocking pink blouse is great, don’t you think?
And finally is PatchSupplyShop.etsy.com. In this shop, Patch sells mostly packaging supplies – gift bags, cute plastic boxes and also some pretty origami flowers.

Patch has two blogs, also. PatchFirstShop.wordpress.com addresses jewelry and her other Etsy shops. Many interesting posts related to her work.

And her wedding guide is at WeddingGuideByPatch.blogspot.com, which can be found from PatchFIrstShop.blogspot.com . Lots of interesting info on weddings, from hair styles to fashion, invitations…all sorts of things.

So please take a look at the Etsy shops and blogs of Patch! She is a valuable member of the EtsyBloggers team, full of energy and great ideas!

My Earrings are in an Etsy Treasury

2010-08-15T11:20:00.007-05:00

I just learned that some of my earrings to benefit Susan G. Komen are featured in a lovely Etsy treasury entitled "Race for the Cure". Here's a picture of the treasury. My earrings are in the bottom row.
I will donate $5 from the sale of these earrings to Susan G. Komen.

While on the Susan G. Komen topic... I just sold a pair of light pink Lisa's Earrings. I will donate the entire $5 purchase price from these cute Barbie shoe earrings to Susan G. Komen. I've only sold three pair of Lisa's Earrings and I have MANY. Once school starts and I have more time, I'm going to focus my efforts more on promoting these earrings and raising more money for Susan G. Komen. Please think about buying a pair! I also have them in bright pink.

Back to School

2010-08-13T21:01:00.004-05:00

The question I chose to answer for August, my first blog carnival month, is

It's back to school time...How are you preparing to get the kids or yourself back to school?...

Well, if you’ve read even a few of my recent posts, and I know they have not been abundant, you know that I’m preparing to send my first (and only) child off to college. I am preparing for school in a way I’ve never had to prepare before…and I mean that in more than one way.

We live in the Kansas City area. My son Joe will be going to University of Missouri – St. Louis, about 4 hours away, and playing baseball there. The baseball team, along with some of the other athletes, live in an apartment complex that is part of campus housing, rather than in a dorm. Since so much of our summer was taken up with out-of-town baseball tournaments, we’ve really just recently started preparing for school. My son and I have had a couple major shopping outings for clothes, school supplies, linens and other miscellaneous items. I love to shop and he has really enjoyed shopping for school items, but I must admit that after 6 hours of shopping on that first day, even I was getting a little worn down! I told him last night that an experienced shopping pair, like a mom and a daughter, could have breezed through this much faster. But he has been very careful in his selections, which took up a lot of time. The main reason I didn’t mind was that it was a chance to spend a lot of time with him, the most I’ve spent in ages. And it has been fun watching him have so much fun carefully picking out his new belongings.

We bought a used 2008 Scion tC for him to take to school because the truck he had been driving had become less than reliable. We did this in record time – 4 days between the first shopping outing and the night we drove the car home. Of course, some online research and phone calls had taken place earlier. But the start of shopping through the purchase time possibly took less time than the sheets and towels shopping time combined! Joe took care of getting the license plates, getting the name on the title corrected, etc., so that was a big help.

One of the most important things I’ve done to prepare for school is to start spending time for ME. I’m not looking forward to Joe’s leaving, so I’m trying to cheer myself up. A couple days ago, I went to dinner with some of my baseball mom friends, who are all going through the same thing. It was a fun evening. While I love to do beading projects, I usually make things to list in my Etsy shop. My recent projects have been earrings and bracelets for ME. (One of my bracelets is featured in this post.) And I’m thinking about things to do after school starts, like plan some weekend trips, start planning my second annual Halloween party and my fall jewelry open house, organize all my graduation and baseball photos, make my family calendar, focus more on my Etsy shops, finish my unfinished projects, then it will be time to start my Christmas shopping…I will have plenty to do to keep my busy. All I have to do is make it through the next couple weeks. That will be the hardest part.

If anyone has suggestions for coping with sending your child off to college, I'd love to hear them!

EtsyBloggers

2010-08-12T22:43:00.002-05:00

Earlier this week, I learned that my membership in the EtsyBloggers group had been finalized. I applied for membership a while back and this email came at a perfect time. With my son leaving for school in only one short week now, I will have much more time to spend on this in the future.

As the name implies, members of this group are either buyers or sellers on Etsy and they have a blog. It’s all about promoting Etsy sellers and helping each other get noticed. To remain a part of this group, I will post two blog articles a month. One is a blog carnival article and the other will promote the Etsy seller of the month.

What is a blog carnival, you ask? I wondered that myself! Each month, there will be a total of four topics to choose from, two in the first half of the month and two in the last half. I’ll create a blog post about one of those four topics, then send the link to the host of the carnival, one host for the first two topics and one for the second two. The host will post links to all the articles on their two topics. I think this will be fun to read a variety of articles on the same topic, especially when the topic is one that really interests me. The topic I will write about, and I must write about soon since it’s the first half carnival for August, is how I’m preparing to get the kids back to school. Boy, can I write about that with all my preparations for sending my first (and only) child off to college! So stay tuned for that…

Take a look at the EtsyBloggers blog at EtsyBloggers.blogspot.com for interesting info. Also, EtsyBloggers.etsy.com has a list of members and various info about the team. For example, right now, many members are participating in the EtsyBloggers 3rd Anniversary sale. Please take a look at some of these great sellers and think about them when you do your next online shopping! And if you'd like more info on joining the group, check out EtsyBloggers.com.

P.S. Did you see my new EtsyBloggers widget on the left of my page?

Seed Bead Bracelet

2010-08-09T21:09:00.006-05:00

Hello! I'm back! My summer turned much too busy to keep up with my blog posts. I haven't kept up with much at all lately. After my trip to Omaha, I was out of town four straight weekends for baseball tournaments. And by weekend I mean Thursday through Sunday. All four of those weeks, my son's team lost in the semifinals, so we played a lot of games. The three days I actually went to work each week, I worked some pretty long days. After baseball ended, we went to college orientation. And we've started shopping for all the stuff needed for college, so that is keeping me busy, too.

But now I've got blog catching up to do. I managed to fit in some additional beaded ornaments at home. I bought some new beads in Wichita that I will show you. I've been working on a knitted belt. And recently, I've been doing some beading for myself. To cheer myself up over my son going away, I've been making things for ME!

I always mark the projects in my bead magazines that I'd like to make someday. I've been taking some of my magazines on trips with me and marking the interesting projects in the magazines I hadn't yet marked. I picked out some of those recently marked projects and have made three of them so far.

Here are some pictures of the bracelet I made from size 11 seed beads. It was in the June/July 2010 issue of Beadwork magazine. It uses four colors of size 11 seed beads and is stitched in circular peyote. I made it in two evenings. It was fun and easy.

Beaded Ornaments

2010-07-03T12:06:00.002-05:00

I took a bead project with me to Omaha in case I found myself with time on my hands. Tuesday night, while in our hotel room, I had a chance to work on some beaded Christmas ornaments. I made one ornament that night and worked on one in the car on the way home Thursday until I decided it was really too much trouble to do this in the car. But when I got home, I had 1.5 ornaments completed. I always forget how much I enjoy doing the netting on ornaments once I’ve set them aside. After I got home, not only did I finish the ornament I started, but I also made three more. Here is a picture of the ornaments I made recently. I’ll be listing them on Etsy pretty soon, once I decide it’s time to start showing Christmas ornaments.
I was hoping to find some item that would make a good ornament display when I was shopping at my favorite junk store, but nothing jumped out at me. I need to continue to look for something that will make the perfect display. When I do my home shows, I use a small artificial Christmas tree, but it’s a little large to take to other shows. So I will just have to keep looking and thinking about display ideas. Anyone have any good ideas, other than a somewhat smaller Christmas tree?

My Purchases in Omaha

2010-06-30T22:19:00.007-05:00

Here are the fun purchases I made while shopping in the Old Market area in Omaha.

I bought 66 more vintage ornaments to use in wreaths at Second Chance Antiques. I love this shop!

I also found this cute little shelf or rack or whatever you want to call it. I’m going to use it to display probably bracelets or pendants when I need to set up a jewelry display. I love to find old items that I’ve repurposed to display my jewelry. I was just about done looking around and getting ready to leave the store when I found this.
Then we went on to Cornerstone Gems and Beads. It was getting pretty warm out so my husband and son were very happy to just sit in the nice cool shop while I looked around and talked to the very nice owner of the shop. While last year I bought a boulder opal stone to use in a necklace for myself (I have not yet made my necklace), this year I found two stings of stones that I really loved and they were very different. I’ll make something for myself and also make some items to sell. This first photo is dolomite.
And this is green opal jasper.
I thought they were both very different and had to come home with both of them.

Come back tomorrow to see how I filled some of my spare time in the hotel room in Omaha.

Tourists in Omaha

2010-06-29T22:58:00.005-05:00

The baseball tournament in Omaha was supposed to start on the Monday that my son played in the game at Kauffman Stadium. He was going to miss the two games that day and we were going to drive to Omaha that evening. However, because of all the rain in the Omaha area, the Monday games were both cancelled so he didn’t miss any games. The schedule was redone and we didn’t have games until Tuesday afternoon, so we went to Omaha on Tuesday morning. As it turned out, those two Tuesday games were the only ones we played. It stormed all Tuesday night and the games Wednesday were cancelled. While we toyed with the idea of going home Wednesday morning, we had tickets to the College World Series Wednesday night. And Wednesday was our wedding anniversary so we decided to stay in Omaha and be tourists for the day on Wednesday and go to the game that evening.

We went to the Strategic Air Command Museum. They have two huge hangars of planes on display. While I’m not overly into bombers and aircraft, I enjoyed the museum. My favorites were the B-52 (it’s huge!) and the B-1 bomber. They also had on display the pod racer from Star Wars. That was kind of fun to see!
After the museum, we had lunch in the Old Market area. I think that’s a very fun area. Lots of interesting shops and restaurants. Then we went to the great junk/antique shop that I discovered a year ago, Second Chance Antiques on Jackson Street. What a fun shop! Then we went to Cornerstone Gem and Bead Company, another shop I discovered last year. I’ll show photos of my purchases tomorrow.

After my shopping, we headed to Rosenblatt Stadium for the College World Series game. In case all you craft fans are not aware of this, 2010 is the last year for the World Series at Rosenblatt. They are building a new stadium downtown. Rosenblatt will be torn down and the space used to expand the Henry Doorly Zoo. While I love animals and zoos (I used to be a docent at the KC Zoo), it’s kind of sad to think a nice stadium, with all its history and 60 years of baseball, will be torn down. We bought tee shirts before the game then watched a pretty exciting game between Florida State and TCU. While I wasn’t rooting for either team, it was still fun to watch. TCU won 11-7. It was pretty exciting to see a grand slam in a CWS game!

If you live in the Midwest, or are there visiting sometime, I highly recommend a trip to Omaha. There is a lot to do there and it’s a nice sized city. Not too big, so it’s easy to get around. And not too small, so there’s a lot to do. Check it out sometime! And come back tomorrow to see my Omaha purchases.