Bazaar preview

Last year was my first experience selling at holiday bazaars. I did two, and loved them so much! I think because it's like playing store. Half the fun is setting up my table display, making it all pretty and organized. I was hooked. So I've officially signed up for one this year, and tomorrow I'm mailing my registration for another. 

The first one of the year is this coming weekend! And it's two days long! I love that idea. Same amount of work setting up, but two days worth of sales! Here are the details:

St. Paul of Damascus Lutheran Church

24510 SE Hwy. 212

Boring, OR 97089

Friday Nov. 4th 1pm-8pm

Saturday Nov. 5th 9am-4pm

Here's a link to the flier with more information.

So, naturally, I've been getting very crafty. I'll be bringing lots of new things to see how they sell! My absolute favorite things to make so far are wreaths!

I've always loved wreaths for all seasons. Especially unique ones. I have a fall one hanging on my door, a feather one in my living room, and usually we have several displayed around Christmas time- my favorite is a lavender beaded one. I know it doesn't sound Christmas-y, but it works with our decor! 

These twig wreaths are embellished with a variety of leaves, glittered pinecones, satin flowers, feathers, beads, buttons and tulle. 

These were such a refreshing creative outlet for me! Something different than my usual sewing. I've been having a blast with my glue gun.

This is a shabby chic fabric scrap wreath! Embellished with a bow and flower. 

I've seen tulle wreaths on pinterest lately and fallen in love with them. I just so happened to have a fair amount of peacock colored tulle lying around... thanks to my halloween bunco costume...

And you all know I love repurposing! So here is my first peacock tulle wreath. 

I just love it. I think a peacock Christmas would be fabulous.

While I was having fun making satin flowers I decided to make some hair clips. Here they are, clipped to my fall garland. So fun and glam!

Of course I'll also have my usual items: reusable snack bags, stuffed owls, tons of coffee cozies... and most likely ducks and beavers embellished onesies, super cute ironing board covers, embellished wipes cases, pretty sleep masks, maybe even a diaper cake or two! I just love making them. 

A great friend will be joining me and bringing her gorgeous knitted hats, baby headbands, and possibly little girls peasant blouses! 

Should be lots of fun. Come stop by if you're local! I'd love visitors! 

A few new baby crafts

 A sweet friend of mine recently asked if I could make a few things for her new baby girl~ who will be born tomorrow! Super excited for her and her family. Congrats to you, J & C!

Here is what I came up with, based on her ideas and preferences. 

This is something I would never have thought of, but what a fun idea! They are personalized luggage tags, with baby's name on them (blurred for the family's privacy). Mama plans to use them on her diaper bag and baby's carseat/carrier. 

 Mike helped with the design of her name; I chose several fonts I liked, and he worked them together to make these look great! Then I inked the edges and added some pretty ribbon. I just love how they turned out. 

 Another project I had never attempted but always meant to: pacifier clips. So much prettier than store bought ones, and very inexpensive to make! Plus these were just so fun, once I learned how to set the snaps (so simple! why have I never used snaps? they look so much nicer than velcro!).

This one is made with cozy, soft minky and grosgrain ribbon, plus a bow so it looks pretty clipped onto baby's outfit. 

I just used a combination of fabrics and ribbons (all nice, sturdy grosgrain), snaps, and suspender clips. I may be adding these to my etsy store soon! I love making them!

I've made these stretchy baby headbands before, but I always just sewed on a little fabric yo-yo (like in the 3rd picture below). My friend was hoping for bows on alligator clips for some mixing and matching. I think that is such a great idea! Then I can make bigger bows as baby girl grows, and she can use them as hair clips separate from the headbands. They also work for the big sisters! So versatile.

The bow clips were more time-consuming than I thought, but very fun. I wanted the metal parts to be covered in ribbon for comfort, so I used grosgrain again for a bit of grip on baby's fine hair. Plus it just looks pretty!

These also may appear in my etsy shop at some point; although etsy is saturated with baby headbands and hair clips. 

I really haven't put as much time and effort into my etsy store as I'd like, but I do intend to focus more strongly on it eventually. Perhaps early 2012. For the last year (almost) I've been using most of my spare time to brand and promote what has turned into a wholesale coffee cozy business. With tons of hubby's help. It's all been very exciting, and I'm thrilled to be able to finally share more with you very soon! Check back!

And best wishes to you, J & C, for a happy, uneventful birth tomorrow, and a speedy recovery. Mia is such a blessing from the Lord and I can't wait to see what she brings to your family!

Homemade flubber!

This rainy day project was all hubby's doing! Ty wanted to make a "potion"... so Mike did a little googling and found this recipe for flubber, or "slime". 

All you need is Elmer's school glue and borax! If you've ever made the homemade laundry detergent I've posted in the past you'll have borax on hand. If not you can find it in the laundry aisle at most grocery stores for a few dollars. One box lasts forever. We also happened to have several bottles of the school glue because I like to stock up when the stores have it ridiculously cheap for back to school. I think I got ours for 25 cents or something crazy like that. 

Here's the recipe:

In one bowl mix one bottle elmer's school glue (the white bottle- 4oz) with 4 oz water. Set aside.

In another bowl mix 1 tablespoon borax with another 4 oz water (warm is better). Stir until borax is dissolved. 

Then add the borax mixture to the glue mixture. Stir and knead until incorporated. Add food coloring if desired! This green turned out so cool!

Mike ended up adding a bit more borax to his recipe, and the longer you work with it the better it gets. So keep kneading!

Store in a lidded container and it will keep for several weeks! Our boys had so much fun with this! It's really cool how it sort of stays together in one glob. Ty especially loved it, and asked to play with it again after Beckham went to bed, then again the next day. It keeps him occupied forever. 

I sat down to play for a while too, and it really is fun stuff!

It really doesn't make much mess either. Better than play-doh in my opinion. I gave him a placemat to use, but the globs that slipped off were no problem. They just lift right off the table. 

Hubby thinks we should make a few big batches of different colors and package them individually to hand out to trick or treaters on Halloween! With a 'do not eat' label of course. Fun idea I think!

Beckham's rag quilt

I've wanted to attempt a rag quilt forever. I love the way the frayed seams look. This was one of those accidental projects, completely unplanned. One day I was killing time at one of my favorite craft stores and saw this line of cozy flannel fabric as I was walking by. I didn't need it for anything, and wasn't even shopping for fabric, but I fell in love and had to buy some fat quarters. 

I envisioned it as a rag quilt right away, but really thought I'd make a baby gift or something. But I loved the fabric too much and decided to make it for Beckham. As if he needs another blanket...

He loves it though!

He wouldn't leave it alone long enough for me to snap some pics! Oh well. They are cuter with him anyway. 

I backed it with some dark gray satin, and used the satin quilt binding as well. He loves satin blankies. 

I kept the quilting super simple- just two concentric rectangles. I wasn't really sure how to quilt around all those fuzzy seams. 

I love this funny little guy.

Can you see the ragged edges here? I washed it so they would fluff up a bit. I imagine it will get fluffier with each wash. I love this look!

My newest crafty attempt

Hello. I'm back. For now, at least. 

Summer was great, Ty has started Kindergarten (!), and I've been crafting up a storm. So much craftiness around here that I haven't wanted to take the time to share any of it! I am completely hooked on sites like Pinterest and CraftGawker, both of which have handy iPhone apps, so I can get ideas constantly. There are seriously not enough hours in the day to try all the stuff I'm dying to try. 

My latest attempt. which I am now obsessed with, is embroidery. It is so fun! I've been googling all kinds of different stitches to learn. 

Recently I bought a box of Kleenex tissues, not because we needed them, but because the box was so adorable. It had the cutest monsters all over it. It occurred to me in the grocery store that they would make an awesome embroidery pattern... and so they did!

These were my four favorites. 

Love these silly little guys. I intend to sew up something for one of the boys out of the embroidered gray fabric, but have yet to decide what. Suggestions?

This owl I saw on craftgawker, and had to give it a try. It's a bit crooked because this was before I learned to trace the drawing onto the fabric, so I drew him freehand. He's perfect for Beckham's room. This wall with the wooden owl art was always missing something. 

I love his eyes. 

Becks loves him too. He loves "counting" all his owls before bed. "one, two, two, one."

Destination deck

 Our house backs up to a big greenspace, and our yard slopes steeply down towards it. It tends to be wet and marshy down there, due to a small creek. Soon after we bought the house, we brought in several dump trucks full of dirt to fill in the yard and make it a bit more usable. But it's still pretty small. It'll work for five years or so, but we are always looking for ways to get more use out of the space we have, because we love spending time outside.

Hubby came up with the idea for a tiny, second deck near our new sign. It hangs over the steep edge of our yard and makes the useless space functional. The adirondack chairs we got on clearance at Joann fabric store for $27 each! And they even came whitewashed already. 

We decided to paint the deck one of the colors in our sign to unify the look a little. The color we chose is called 'head to the beach'. Love it. 

We are hoping to build a short railing of some sort across the back since the drop-off is pretty steep- but we aren't sure yet what would look good on this funny little deck. Hubby also plans to add some stairs to the left side to make it seem bigger. 

There is a small, ornamental tree to the left of the deck that provides a bit of welcome shade during the hot afternoons- the only shade we have out back. 

This spot provides a 180 degree view of the entire yard, so it's much easier to see the kids while they play than on our upper deck. 

On a side note, here's our pretty new banana tree from my parents! It's a hardy banana, so it grows here in the NW but doesn't produce fruit. Just gives a great tropical look. They get super tall, too- and if you plant them in the ground they multiply like crazy. Even in the pot ours already has three baby shoots starting. 

Tissue pom pom tutorial

Ok, here's a fun and easy tutorial. My sis-in-law and I made these for a baby shower we hosted, and they were so cute hanging as decor!

Here's what you need:

tissue paper

scissors

floral wire (or any wire, really)

Lay out a stack of tissue paper, 8-10 sheets. The paper I used came in packs of 20 sheets, about 20"x25". I was able to make four pom poms per pack. 

Cut your stack in half so you have two stacks of around 20"x12.5". This doesn't have to be exact- different brands are different sizes. You just want rectangles, basically. 

Set aside one stack for your second pom pom. Then start accordion folding a stack, starting at the short end. 

Your folds don't have to be perfect, but I think the narrower the folds, the prettier the pom turns out. Maybe an inch or so. 

While holding your accordion, cut the ends into a curve. You can also cut them into a V shape for pointy petals. 

Now find the center and cut a small notch on each side. This makes it easier to fluff once it's held by the wire. 

Now bend a piece of wire into a hook...

...and wrap it around the tissue into the notches you cut. Twist the end around the rest of the wire to secure. 

Open it up into a nice little fan...

....and start gently peeling each layer away from the rest of the fan. Peel all the way down to the wire so your pom gets really fluffy. Peel a few layers one direction, then switch and pull from the other side so you get an even sphere. 

Shoo the kittens away over and over and over...

Keep peeling and fluffing until you have a gorgeous pom! Bend your wire into a loop so you can hang it, then fluff the tissue around it to help hide the wire. 

You can really experiment with variations... Use the entire stack of 8-10 tissues without cutting it in half for a giant pom. You may need more than 10 to keep it nice and full when it's that large. You could also cut a six inch strip off your big stack to make one big pom, then cut the 6" strip into two for mini poms! I've discovered the smaller the pom, the fewer tissues you need to make it full. So the minis could be made with less, but the giant ones will need more. 

You can also peel your layers just one direction to make more of a flower rather than a full sphere. In that case keep the wire straight and use it as a stem. 

I'm thinking these could be really fun July 4th decor! Also Christmas!

Fun fun!