Happy Birthday Emily!

Is it barbecue season yet? We had some unseasonably warm weather in Kentucky this week (and some scary @ss tornadoes, but fortunately I missed the worst of those). Makes one want to sit around in the backyard, drinkin' beer, eatin' 'shmallows.




mmm...'smallows.


Which brings us to the birthday bit. My dear sister has an outdoor fire pit, which is a lovely thing to sit around on warm, tornado-free evenings. And for several years since she got it, she has had marshmallow roasting sticks on her Christmas list. (If your birthday is in February, don't think I'm not pulling out the same list I used in December)


So, roasting sticks it is. And because I can't help myself, of course I had to make them.





Et voila! Personalized 'shmallow roasters:

Because you can't have anyone trying to steal your perfectly toasted 'shmallows. And you know, some for guests:

They are made of salt dough (for which there are loads of recipes online - take your pick), acrylic paint and recycled coat hangers (for the holding of the 'smallows - not pictured). I'm not entirely sure how food-safe recycled coat hangers are, but meh, we used to use sticks we found on the ground. These are funnier.



The idea is from FamilyFun.com - I stuck with their 'shmallow and hot dog designs, but you could certainly branch out. The possibilities are limited only by your sculpting abilities, or possibly your sculpting abilities and your supply of old coat hangers.

Holiday Walk of Shame

Okay, I was so distracted by the arrival of my beautiful and perfect niece that I did very little crafting this holiday season... and even less photographing of the crafting that did occur... and even less blogging of the few photographs of the tiny amount of crafting. I suck.

My shame is only compounded by the fact that, even with a newborn, all of my sister's Christmas cards were still homemade. Sigh, I made one stinkin' card:

Outside based on supplies from one of Emily's card swaps. She sent me all of the ingredients. I'm still exploring the wonderful world of pop-ups, so I put a tree on the inside:

The color was a bit nicer on the original, but you get the idea.

I did virtually no holiday baking this year. I caught a bad cold (excuses excuses) the week before Christmas, so I'm not sure anyone would have wanted anything I cooked anyway, but before that all I managed was a single batch of porn star cookies:

I try to keep this a PG-13 website, so I'll spare you the cookies with ball gags in their mouths. (can't wait to see what sort of google traffic we get now that I have typed that - ick) Sadly, my limited cookie decorating skills preclude them from getting too racy. Chaps are about all I can make.

The last of my conscience clearing pre-holiday crafting documentation was a teeny baby sweater. Alas, I only have in-progress pictures. Hopefully Miss Eleanor will be kind enough to model it one of these days. This is the almost finished knitting shot:

and the Sarah's first attempt at intarsia shot:

Can you tell I started this back when we thought she was going to be a boy? I found a little yellow dress, so hopefully she'll just look preppy in the completed ensemble.

It is a Debbie Bliss pattern from Special Knits. I used Bernat Baby Softee, because frankly, I have a boatload of it.

And this concludes our guilty conscience belated holiday retrospective. May 2008 be a year of crafty goodness and more timely updates.

Happy New Year y'all!

'Tis the Season to Make Excuses

Fa la la la la la la la la

One more cookie won't hurt...

They'll never know that it's a re-gift...

Everyone's so busy - I can go weeks without posting and neglect to photograph my finished projects...

(are you buying this?)

strums fingers together a la Montgomery Burns

Ex-cellent

Over Thanksgiving, I finished up making the little orange hat for my nephew-to-be that matches the socks I made for his birthmother. But I forgot to take a picture, so I'll just have to try for a live-action shot after he gets here.

And as the other projects I'm working on are still in progress (what looming holiday deadlines?), how about some more onesies?

They come in a five-pack you know:

Monkey

(for future reference, freezer paper stencils don't stick that well to areas you have already painted, you may need to clean up the monkey's face a little)

Squirrelly Baby

RAWR!!

crap, can't think of another stencil to make, okay how about a Star

For the crafty baby

Surely if Aunt Sarah rubs off on this impending arrival at all, the kid's first words will be delivered with an eyeroll and dramatic sigh. Kind of like the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, my gift to the baby will be sarcasm.

Or possibly, sarcasm and a love of playing with scissors and glue.

To get him started on both counts, the latest in high fashion freezer paper stenciled baby snarkiness:

suck it

Step away from the glue gun...

I think I am officially excited about Halloween (which is but 2 weeks away my crafty procrastinators)...

In case anyone is wondering why the kitchen floor didn't get washed last night, it's because I was making these:

Scary skeleton napkin rings using the felt that was left over from the costume I made Maddie wear last year. Vaguely inspired by Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas and the super-great Day of the Dead projects you can find on the Crafty Chica's website. Vague inspiration is as good as it gets around here, since I am generally too lazy to follow directions.

Then, since I was glue gun-happy, I also made some pumpkin ones. And some candy corn ones. I was a little out of control with it all. At present they are operating as tea towel rings, since I don't actually have Halloween-themed napkins, but you get the general idea.

I heart the internet

Seriously, the internet rules. Lookit what I learned to make:






(I made the necklace display. I cannot take credit for the necklace - it was made by the lovely Ms. Vanda at paraphernalia. Isn't it so great though?)



Admittedly, you can purchase such things - and if you make a lot of jewelry, you probably should. But if you are more of the crafty generalist and just need the occasional snapshot for your etsy shop or blog, it's way easy to make your own.



In my case, my officemate was organizing a silent auction for an alumni fundraiser. She was looking for a way to showcase some of the donated jewelry so that it wasn't just laying on the table looking ordinary and not attracting any bids.



She didn't have time left to order a pre-made display, so I found down a DIY version on the internet. This would be really pretty if you covered your cardboard with imitation leather the way they did in the instructions. But if your fundraiser is tomorrow, you can also MacGuyver one of these together with some recycled office supplies (a legal size file folder and spare rubber band if you were wondering).

Christmas in July sucks

Look what arrived on my doorstep yesterday:

This was the box of toys and blankets that I had shipped in early December for the GetCrafty Handmade Holiday project.

These guys should have been delivered to Project Night Night, but alas, they have apparenly been languishing in a PO Box somewhere for 6 months.





Not exactly the Christmas in July surprise I was hoping for. Oh well, I guess I'll send them along to Project Night Night direct.








In other news, check it out:

A sock! That looks like a sock! Of course, now it needs a friend, but I'll get there. I should have a little free time between now and when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows comes out next weekend.

A few hits and one major miss

(insert excuses for my lack of knitting progress here - I won't bore you with my need to re-read books 1-6 before the 7th Harry Potter comes out later this month - I'm such a nerd)

I have knocked out a couple of quick projects though. First the successes...

Quickie Head Band

I'm not sure where I got this ribbon, I'm sure it was tied to something. But for the past few weeks it has been sitting on top of my desk. I keep looking at it and thinking it would make a good headband. Finally got around to actually making said headband.

Ingredients: length of ribbon that will more or less fit around your head and one generic hair elastic.

I started out thinking I would measure things. My hair elastic was about 2.5 inches unstretched, so I would subtract 3 inches from the circumfrence of my head to cut my ribbon.

But that just seemed too fussy, so I sewed up one side, wrapped it around my head and winged it. If I knew how to take a photo of the top of my head (and don't think I didn't try), I could show you that we're calling this project a success. But, you'll just have to trust me.

Running Scrapbook Revisited

I had been making a scrapbook for the half marathon I "ran" back in April, but since I hadn't made much progress on it since the race. Much like my training regimen, it was pretty much shelved.

I pulled it back out yesterday and knocked out a couple of pages. I also figured out the cover.

I had purchased this album way back thinking that the little window would be a cool place to affix my finisher medal. But when I actually got the thing, the way it hung off the ribbon was the wrong dimensions for the window. So I had to improvise a bit.

I took the medal off the ribbon and just hot glued it in front of the ribbon. Otherwise, the red really wouldn't have shown up. Hopefully no one will notice that it isn't really hanging from the ribbon.

And for more MacGuyver-esque scrapbooking, I made these pages of our adoring fans.

The background papers are actually 6x8 sheets spliced together to make an 8x8 page. I needed something to cover the line where the papers switch.

Enter the flip flop.

Emily and her husband Chris - who both friggin' rule by the way - not only drove all the way to Kentucky to cheer me on during the race, but brought me a fun pedicure kit for afterwards when my feet were sore.

Although I have used most of it for its intended purpose, the kit came with those little disposable flip flops that they give you at the nail salon. Well, at my house I can just wear regular flip flops, which leaves these guys open for crafting.

Doesn't it look like it was meant to be scrapbooking supplies?

The flowers came from the signs that Emily made for me (I love that I have a crafty sister - ours were the fanciest signs on the whole route). You can see them in the finished pages...

So, I'm calling those the "hits." Which brings us to one serious "miss"

Gardening Disaster

This year, I decided to "garden" by purchasing two already planted flower boxes for my balcony. How could I mess this up - someone has already done all of the actual gardening for me?

Turns out, I can still totally mess that up. One flower box was doing just fine.

Almost everything had died in the other.

So, I decided to dig up some of the petunias from one box and move them to the other, to even things out a bit.

Oops.

That would be my downstairs neighbor's patio. That would also be the flower box that was alive. Of course the one where I had killed nearly everything wasn't the one to fall to its doom. Nope, all of the healthy, pretty flowers. Sigh.

Didja know?

March is National Craft Month

So why are you just sitting there? You could knit a hat...

or sew a bag...

or refashion a t-shirt...

or make someone a present...

or learn something new...

or support another crafter. There are lots of great folks out there covering the world in kitsch and glitter and just generally spreading the crafty love.

Let the world know you're crafty.

(okay, so that last one was a little self-serving)