Day 14: Ransom Art

Inspired by blank canvases and a large bottle of mod podge I started looking around my house and garage for what to do with the two.  I thought maybe some cool pop art images or some groovy vintage ads out of one of my old magazines.  I started thumbing through the magazines and was drawn to certain words and tore them off the pages and set them aside.  Before too long I realized that I was creating ransom art.

I tried a few different combinations of words before I decided this my favorite.

Time for Mod Podge.

I really like my Ransom Art and think that you will see more in the future.

The artful life is being earnest inside.

Passion glowing,
you create the most satisfying
extraordinary life.

Be more inside.
Reinvent your delightful self.
Enjoy the magic, the world awaits.

Day 13: Drowning my sorrows in Mod Podge

 My guy left today for Taiwan and I won't see him for 6 weeks!! He is working on a film that Ang Lee is directing. What's a girl to do?! Pour a glass of wine and crack open the mod podge.  I can think of few other alternatives.
Inspired by luminaries made by Cathie Fillian, I am attempting to make some of my own.

Cathie made beautiful luminaries using posters from a movie that my guy and her husband produced and directed.  The colors on the posters are vibrant and have a nice balance of dark and light.
I thought old sheet music would look beautiful on a luminary as the yellowing of the pages would let off a warm glow.  I finally found sheet music with nice graphics at a thrift store.

Not as bright as I had hoped.

I also made a Christmas luminary with scrapbook paper.  The paper is a cream color with gold glitter snowflakes.

This one has a nice glow. 

I was on a roll so I made this cute smaller luminary using greeting cards I picked up at a thrift store.  Of course I got them from a thrift store!  Can you tell I love thrift stores?!

Day 12: Day of the Dead

My day started off with making some "healthy" pancakes for Hannah and I.  She stayed home from school with a cold, poor baby.  She requested pancakes and all I had available was oatmeal pancake mix.  My kids get so annoyed with all of the flax, bran, and whole grains I try to sneak in their food.  This time there was no masking it.
The pancakes were pretty bad.  We needed a lot of syrup to get them down.  Some things will just have to be enjoyed in their originally intended formulation, so we will stick to bisquick for our pancake needs.

Lately I can't seem to stop myself from making baby stuff, sewing for babies is just so easy and fun! I promise that the next thing I create will have nothing to do with babies  Todays creation is inspired by Dia de la Muerte fabric.  I absolutely love Mexican folk art and in particular the skeletons that are featured in Dia de la Muerte art.

While at Target I browsed the Halloween isle where everything was 75% off.  I bought the witch bib for $.37 so I can use it as a template for my bibs.  The design is so simple.

Rather than satin stitching around this, I used another kind of stitch (I don't know the name) to make it a little edgy-er than your run of the mill satin stitched applique.

 So there it is!  A little burp cloth and bib for the hipster baby who likes to drool in style.

Day 11: Cowboy Up

I am so excited!!  The little I Love Grandma outfit I made the other day has been sold!  I have an etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/TheCraftersLoft) where I sell things that I have made and I even have a part of the shop where my 13 year old daughter, Hannah, sells her own creations.  This is my first sale and I feel proud that I've made something that someone else enjoys enough to purchase.  I must admit though, I feel like I want to remake it.  I am a bit of a perfectionist with some things and want to make sure that what I send out of my shop needs to be perfect!  I am going to remake the headband, I think it needs to be softer and stretchier (stretchy-er?) for a babies head.
Anyhow, I need to make some cute little things for boys.  The fabric that inspired me was this super cute cowboy fabric.

I tried cutting out a few different western themed shapes and they didn't turn out so well.  Hat, horseshoe, steer horns, seems the boot was as far as my applique making skills can go.
I satin stitched around the perimeter.
.

    

I made matching diaper covers.  For a girl we would call these bloomers, but for a boy, hmmmmm... maybe fitted boxers would be a better descriptor.  

Now time to make the casing for the elastic waistband

For the girls outfit I made a headband so for the boy I decided a coordinating bib would be a bit more appropriate.

All done!

Day 10: Getting my hands dirty

I needed a little break from the sewing machine and I promised my daughters school that I would make a plant arrangement bowl thing for their annual Christmas fundraiser boutique. So, off to Home Depot to pick up some plants and soil.

Came home and decided that a plain pot was not good enough, it needs a little something. I picked up some burlap at a thrift store a while back for a paltry $.20. Fired up the glue gun (insert a vrooming motorcycle noise here) and glued the burlap to the pot.

The bottom of the pot has several drainage holes which are giant. Since I don't want soil coming out of the bottom constantly I put small stones over the holes to allow for drainage but not too much of it.  I grabbed a Christmas bow that I saved from one of last years lovely packages and tied it around the pot. Now its time to get my hands dirty.

                                                                                




I wanted to go with a Christmas theme so I chose red, white and green plants. The flowers are small now but will be blooming more abundantly in the near future.

This was my first attempt above. I didn't like the way it looked, too messy and the plants cover the bow so I took a couple of plants out of my own garden and put them in the pot.

The final arrangement conjures up images of an English garden retreat.  My miniature version for placement next to your favorite rocking chair where you sit every morning with your cup of tea as you ponder how your day will unfold.

 I sent it off to school and hope that someone else will like it enough to buy it!!

Day 9: I love grandma outfit

By the time creativity struck it was getting late. I had purchased some onesies at Target to embellish and dress up in whatever way struck my fancy. Well, this evening my fancy was struck by the super cute "I Love Grandma" flannel I had picked up a couple of weeks ago.



I decided to applique a heart in the center. Then I was going to make little pants to match the heart but couldn't quite get the pants right so changed gears and made a little skirt instead.



I felt that the look needed a little something more. a little accessory item that wouldn't take too much time to make. Using a strip of the flannel I made a rosette and a headband.







In a little over an hour I made a super cute baby outfit!

Day 8: Halloween!

I am a tad late in posting this one, as today is the day after Halloween. After putting the finishing touches on her costume, Hannah headed to her Dad's house for trick or treating. When she came back to me at 10pm, she was already in her pajama's. So the picture I have is of her costume on the hangar. :(

Hannah loves the Native American culture and their clothing, pottery and beadwork. So it was only natural for her to seize the opportunity to dress as a Native American girl.







I closed the back up with velcro because I really hate putting zippers in. I always seem to mess them up. Turns out Hannah didn't care for the velcro so I took it out and we cut little holes along the back and laced some soft leather string through the holes and tied a bow at the top to keep it closed.

After that I needed some nutrition to power through the rest of the costume.



Originally this is what Hannah's costume looked like. She politely told me that it was way plainer than any costumes she saw at the store, to which we both agreed should not be the case since I can sew and embellish. So, we changed the bottom and added some ribbon and fringe.