August 24th, 2011
This week’s Craft Blog of the Week is not so much a craft blog, but the blog author April (who is an awesome photographer in the Houston area), is super duper crafty! She recently threw a baby shower for her Sister-in-Law that was fit for a Queen! Here are some of her photos of this awesome celebration. To see more, visit her blog: Life in Print.
Totally cute invitations! I love me a great invitation.
Adorable banner and table. Those big fans are so much fun and the cake is too cute.
Bath Salt Party favors and a cute Entry/Guest Book table. This party had it all! And there is more… be sure to check out the rest of the photos including the awesome FOOD table. April sure knows how to party, and she’s a pretty great photographer too!
August 22nd, 2011
Janell here, In March I got a hold of some of Jen Allyson’s Quite Contrary Fabric Collection from Riley Blake and I made my daughter this cute summer dress, but what’s a girl to do without accessories? Make some of course!
There’s still time for a few summer craft projects, these flowers are so simple you can whip up a bunch to enjoy for the rest of the summer or give a few away, they make perfect gifts. Simple, sweet, and handmade.
The best part about these projects is that they can be made from fabric scraps. Those of you who work with fabric have oodles of scraps. I chose five different fabrics from Quite Contrary. For the first flower, you’ll need thread, a needle, scissors, and extra embellishments like buttons, hair clips, or a head band if you choose.
Start with cutting a circle about the size of your hand from one piece of fabric. You don’t need to make this is perfect circle, in fact a little imperfection adds to the fun of these flowers.
The take your threaded needle and simply stitch about a ¼ inch all around the border.
Then gently pull to cinch the circle together. Repeat with another circle of fabric slightly smaller than your first circle. You can make multiple layers to add depth and beauty to your flower. Once you have at least two circle flowers you can layer them one on top of the other and stitch together. I added a button so I sewed all three together at the same time. You can also use jewels or beads in the center, or leave the flowers plain.
Now you can attach the flower to a clip or a hair band or an elastic hair tie. I wanted to make a fabric covered hair hand to attach the flower to. This is also very simple to do. Take your head band that you want to cover and a few long strips of fabric. I chose to tear some strips because I like the raw frayed look of the edges. I started with two long strips that were about ¾ inch thick. Take a hot glue gun or your favorite craft glue and start at one end and wrap the headband with the fabric strips adding glue about every inch or so.
You can attach your flowers with a little glue or you can sew them on as well. I chose to do both to make sure they were very well attached since I knew my toddler might not be so gentle with her headband.
I even made a card with an extra fabric flower that I had.
The second flower is a “no-sew” flower, also great for scraps. Tear some strips of fabric anywhere from 1 inch thick to 2 inches. You can experiement with the thickness to find one you like. Tie a knot at the end of one strip and start twisting the ends around the knot to form a circle. As you go place glue around the edges. I used a hot glue gun, because that’s what I already had out, but a quick dry craft glue would be ideal and you don’t have to worry about getting burned.
Here are three examples of the different looks you can get from different fabrics using the Quite Contrary line.
The hair clips (below) I started with the pink polka dots for the center of the flowers and then wrapped them with green circles. I filled the center with brads and buttons.
Try layering multiple flowers for a larger hair barrette or attaching to a pin for a fun, colorful broach. Make a few for present toppers, magnets, scrapbooking or t-shirt embellishments, there are so many ways to use fabric flowers.
August 20th, 2011
^^ That is my little quilting helper! Unfortunately piecing 3 squares at one sitting is about his limit.
Spurred on by my new resolution to finally learn how to quilt AND an upcoming meeting of my local modern quilters guild I actually jumped feet first into quilting. I decided to do a SUPER DUPER simple quilt to get me started and found this easy-to-follow quilting tutorial online. Of course I felt the need to complicate it a bit by making more than 2x the squares so I can have a great big PICNIC quilt! And what better fabric for a picnic quilt than my Quite Contrary by Riley Blake that just feels so bright and summery. So last night I cut the fabric from the bolts, and this morning, I cut my squares and then cut them into slices and even got a few squares pieced! Here is me cutting with my helper who is not so entertained by this whole process.
See! I couldn’t even get him to smile for the camera! Not amused mom.
Anyway, since this tutorial was easy enough, I have thus far sewn 6 squares:
And a closeup:
And of course I would probably be done sewing the squares by now if I could get this baby to nap! There is also that pesky problem of not being able to find the Iron… details details. Either way, I am super excited to have begun my very first quilt! I’ll keep you posted!
July 30th, 2010
I’m sorry ahead of time for how long this post may take to load. It’s VERY heavy on the photo side! But also very heavy on the fun side!
I just got back from CHA and I’m exhausted, but I had to share all these lovely photos of the My Mind’s Eye Booth. Particularly the line that I designed called Lost & Found. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll have noticed that I took a bit of a break from blogging. The reason was because I was working my tail off getting this gorgeous line designed! I am so in love with it – but photos just don’t do it justice. It must be experienced in person! The glitter is amazing and the designs are timeless and beautiful.
Here is me standing in front of the display — I should have taken this photo on the first day of the show — at this point, I just wanted to go home and see my hubby.
Lost & Found has all sorts of goodies — including acrylic stamps, layered stickers, 3-d embellishments, trims, brads (epoxy, pearl, flower), chipboard album covers & rings, buttons, alpha stickers, and all sorts of glittery bits and pieces.
My most favorite project at the MME booth was a mini album that Amber Packer created using the “Union Square” papers and pieces. It’s all black, cream, and red — and 100% gorgeous. Don’t forget the amazing red glitter that is already on almost everything in the Union Square collection.
There was another lovely mini album – created with two sets of album covers from the “Market Street” collection. I’m not sure who this one is by, though Amber will probably let me know. My Most favorite part of this album was the use of my banner acrylic stamps. She must have stamped different colors on cream paper and then cut them out to create these adorable banners inside the mini album.
Here are those stamps — also you can see the awesome coral glitter that is all over the Market Street Collection.
Here are some photos of each of the sides of the display so you can get an idea of how much product is in this line (and why I’ve been missing for so long). I’m tired just looking at it all! That’s 40 double-sided papers folks!
And here are a few little close-ups – hopefully you can see some of the foil glitter detailing.
I can’t believe I didn’t get any close-ups of the buttons! They are one of my favorite items — all the sets look like mixed vintage sets of buttons like you would find in an antique shop – and they are sewn to little unique button cards. So fun!
Here are some of the amazing Lost & Found layouts by the Design Team:
And a few close-ups – notice the crepe paper trim in this one — thats part of the line!
I keep hearing over and over again how easy it is to build layouts with this line. I love to hear that!
And here is one of my favorite photos… if you squint hard enough you can see my teeny little name there by the logo. Love it!
Well thats all the photos I have for Lost and Found. Hopefully you can get a good idea for what the line looks like. It will be in stores VERY SOON — 2-3 weeks! This is a great time to ask your LSS if they are going to carry it though — if they get their order in soon then they’ll get it right after the shops who ordered it at CHA.
Of course this wasn’t the only line that My Mind’s Eye debuted at CHA. There were lots of other goodies too!
First off we have Zoe Pearn’s Alphabet Soup. This line is so adorable! My favorite part are the matching decks of ABC cards. I can think of a million cute things to do with those! The chipboard and epoxy brads are fabulous too.
Next we have Halloween. These two lines are done by Deena Rutter (top) and Carina Gardner (bottom). Blackbird is all illustrated and such a cute line. Haunted is kraft paper that has white printed on it as well as black flocking which feels like velvet. It’s beautiful and such a unique Halloween line. I love both of these lines and hope that they jump off the shelves!
Last but not least, here is Christmas! This is actually my Christmas line called Holly Jolly. I am so happy how it printed out. The colors are very vibrant without looking garish. I think I’m going to cover some wood blocks or something with it. I can’t wait to play! Also I need to get started early this year on neighbor gifts — now that I actually know people here.
Here you can see both Christmas releases from MME – Holly Jolly & I believe.
And finally here is a shot of the booth from the outside… This was at the end of set-up so it’s a bit candid and you can see everyone taking a load off and resting. My favorite part is the vacuum cleaner.
This one is less messy — from the front:
Sorry about the bad quality of all these photos — I’m not the best photographer and the lighting is horrid inside convention centers. Hopefully you got a good feel for Lost and Found and also all the other fun lines that My Mind’s Eye released at CHA Summer 2010! Thanks for reading all the way to the bottom! Maybe next CHA you can come meet me at the show!
April 1st, 2010
Happy April Fools Day! I’ve never really celebrated this silly day because I’m not much of a prankster, but I decided to make a silly printable Disguise kit this year. Print out a few of these for your kids to play with after school, or if you’re at work on this fine holiday, you can wear them around the office if you want to pretend to be Steve down the hall. Heck, if you still have Halloween pumpkins out, or a Santa hanging around, you can dress them up and have instant April Fools decor! I’m sure all of you can think of lots of funny things to do with it!
To download the kit you’ll have to go to Design House Digital’s Blog and download it there, but its free and easy, and in the end you can pretend to be Steve, so it’s totally worth it.
Have a great April Fools!
Disguise kit is for Personal Use only.
Adorable banner and table. Those big fans are so much fun and the cake is too cute.
