See Wendy Craft.

Happy Stacker

This Happy Stacker ring toy from Heather Bailey is actually the first thing I've ever enjoyed sewing by hand. I was so surprised by that fact that I started to worry about myself a bit. Of course, this happened during the same week when I actually cooked a meal and didn't mind it. That only encouraged me to continue second guessing my mental state.

Anyway, this pattern involved a lot of sewing by hand, cutting, and pinning. It was fun, though, and I'm pleased with the results. Here it is almost finished:

Thank you for your help, Hello Kitty.

Letter Writing

Back in the day (high school, to be exact), I would make people little books that were really just  letters for their birthday, or sometimes I'd make them for no reason in particular. When I found these chipboard books for $1 at Michaels the other day, I felt inspired to make one again. Plus I knew it would give me a chance to bust out all of my lovely new woodland, forest inspired stamps. First it was the woodgrain letters, and now I have these:

I've been waiting for people to make awesome owl stamps, and now that they are, I'm afraid I'll never be able to stop buying them. So, friends and family, you have many years of forest themed letters and cards to look forward to.

At least it's better than the Spice Girls themed letters I used to write. Yeah, I liked the Spice Girls. Yeah, I was in high school when they were popular. Don't judge.

Coffee Love

I saw this tutorial on The Small Object blog for making a fabric coffee sleeve before Christmas, and thought it was pretty cool. I never intended to make one, but the counter lady at the fabric store mentioned something about making them to me, and then convinced me to buy some thermal batting. I am such a sucker for cutting counter suggestions. Oh well, I guess there are worse things in life.

Making this was easy and super fast, too. Now the only obstacle is remembering to bring them with me to Starbucks. It's not as easy as one might hope.

Bag It Up

For Christmas, I wanted to make something special for the secretaries, the principal, and some teachers. One day in November, the lady at the fabric store who was cutting my fabric suggested that I make reusable shopping bags. Then she went and found the free pattern that was hanging up in one of the aisles and brought it to me. Such customer service I have never experienced in that store.

I ended up making the five bags you see here. I did it assembly line style, but it did take me the better part of a weekend to make all of them. Halfway through the process I questioned the project. After all, these reusable shopping bags are usually like a dollar in the store. But, after taking some calming breaths, I realized that these are nicer than the store kind, and maybe more fun to carry around.

Anyway, everyone seemed to like them. And hopefully someday I'll get around to making myself some too.

Uh, how do you say? Faux Bois?

Say that title in a French accent. It's fun, trust me.

When I was sick after Christmas, I spent a lot of time on the internet clicking around looking at random things. That's when I stumbled upon these awesome stamps. Faux bois letter and number stamps? Can it get any better than that? I'm not sure it can.

Here's how little I knew about stamps. I didn't even realize that the clear stamps have to be mounted on an acrylic block in order to use them. Luckily I had an acrylic quilt template that I was able to use until I bought a real block.

I've been stamping everything and anything I could think of, including this letter to my cousin.

I also bought this set of woodsy stamps. Also very fun.

Christmas Blankets

I found these fleece blankets at Old Navy about three days before Christmas. I was standing in line for what seemed like forever, when I spied them by the register with a sign that read "$3". I didn't know what I would do with them, but I knew that I couldn't buy that much fleece at JoAnns for that price.

I decided I'd add little fabric appliques to the corners of each blanket to fancy them up a bit. Gotta love the woodland creatures. I actually sewed each and every one on by hand, which is amazing for me. What's even more amazing is that I actually kind of enjoyed it. Who would've thought?

Each of my girl cousins received one on Christmas day, and they seemed to enjoy them. It was nice to have a simple project come together last minute.

Hello Kitty

Just when you thought you could do nothing new with toast, they come up with this little gadget. Hello Kitty - making toast fun again.

Time After Time

A belated happy New Year to everyone! If I was a different person, I would have made a New Year's resolution to write more often in my blog. But, luckily for me and my procrastination tendencies, I am not that person. So, back to sporadic posting it is.

This is a clock that I made for my brother's girlfriend for her birthday. I wanted to make her something for her new apartment, but was coming up with exactly zero ideas. Then I made a trip to the crafty wonderland that is Daiso, and my problems were solved.

Basically, they sell all the pieces that you need to make a clock, and you put it together yourself. They sell the hands, the clock mechanism, the circle part (for lack of a better term), and the numbers or little decorations. It was very simple, and I liked the way it turned out.

Finally, as I was looking through my old pictures in iphoto, I found one of me at the La Brea tarpits. It's too good not to share with the world, so it is now my profile picture. You don't have to thank me.

Cowboy Baby

Freezer paper stenciling was just too satisfying for me to leave alone for long. Plus I had a whole roll of freezer paper sitting sadly in the closet, and a request for some cowboy themed shirts hanging out in the back of my mind.

So, I busted out the trusty clip art and found some cowboy related pictures. There were actually very few appropriate for a baby, I have to say. I just didn't think anyone would want to dress up their kid in a shirt with a old school revolver on it. Call me crazy.

I made these shirts during Make and Bake day with D and Nina. D and I were doing the making (crocheting and stenciling, respectively), and Nina did the baking. She made some awesome pumpkin cookies that I'm still thinking about weeks later. It was beyond wonderful to have someone baking me cookies while I was working. Man, I wish I had a personal chef.

Still Here

So, it's been awhile. Well over a month, in fact. Life has been busy. School has been busy. But that doesn't mean that I haven't been doing some crafty stuff. It has been slow going, but I have finished a couple of important projects. I'll be breaking these up into a couple of posts, because I certainly won't be wasting the opportunity to post more than once.

As you can tell, I finally finished the hexagon quilt. As of this afternoon, it is safely in the hands of its new owner. She loved it, which is really the best part of this whole quilt making thing.

Here is the obligatory quilt draped over the couch shot:

This quilt was probably the most technically challenging of all my quilts so far. All of those hexagons are actually three triangles that had to be cut individually and sewn together, making a half hexagon. Then the halves are sewn together. Basically it involved a lot of cutting, and sewing small pieces, and ironing open seams.

Then, I decided to do bias cut binding for the very first time. I thought that since the binding would have to go around all those edges, it would be better for the binding to have some give. It took me all morning to finish making the binding, and I was left with the question, "Why don't I just buy binding?" Hmm. That never occurred to me before.

I'm so happy that this huge project is finally finished. And I'm happy to have finished a hexagon quilt that involved no hand sewing at all. How sweet is that? Now I can move on to tackling my huge handmade Christmas gifts list. I'd better get busy!