#24 Salt Dough Ornaments

I found a tutorial throught craftster on how to make salt dough ornaments! Pretty simple, so I gave it a shot. How hard can two ingredients be? Oh well, the factor that it takes ~forever~ to bake, that's how hard! Haha. Yeah, for thinned out sheets of the dough it look about an hour or more. Let's just say the oven was on a while that day. Yay a heater!

I made a few sets. Starting with the taste-tested gingerbread men:

My friend gave me these cookie cutter shapes when we moved into our apartment. I loved the goofy biten look, and really that's all I had for shapes, haha. So morbid gingerbread men it was!

Then the lovey-dovey ornaments! I painted our initials on one, then the date he proposed on another. Plus some random gold designs on the rest. :)

Then lastly, random Christmas-y themed ones. The pictures are awful, arggggh!

Anywho, tomorrow I head back to Kitimat for a vacation. Hopefully I'll get to craft out, but I'm almost too lazy to lug back my supplies... Hmmm. Not sure yet! Maybe I'll just get stuff there to use? Looking forward to the snow and holidays!

#23 Gnome Embroidery

My mom kinda has a thing for gnomes, so this year I wanted to make her a themed gift basket for Christmas. I bought her a gnome ornament at a craft fair (thanks CutesyPoo!), and I also made her a little something to hang up. I'm not sure whether or not make it an ornament too because it is a smaller hoop...Hmmm. (Other things include coffee for the tassimo that pops said he's getting her, bath bombs, chocolate, etc - I'm so excited to gift it!).

I finally found my camera, hence the massive (well in comparison) updating and cruddy night shots, haha.

I wrapped the frame in green ribbon. Looks much better in natural light!

And another shot!

On another note, I'm almost half way to 50! I did start this in May, so I have till May to achieve my goal of 50 projects. I'll probably keep going on using it though because it's nice to have a craft journal. :)

#22 Bacon Ornament

I found a really cute tutorial on how to make a felt bacon ornament! From this blog!

I kinda winged it because I didn't have all the materials (like wire). Work has been really getting me down so I just wanted to make something quick and cute to relax. :)

Picture time!

Ho hum.

The past few months have been super slow for crafting. :( I mean, I still do but I just don't feel like "OMG I NEED TO MAKE SOMETHING" as much. Eh I know it's just a slump, but I hate being in them!

I have a few things to post up at least, holiday related. I wanted to make things for Christmas presents, but unfortunately I'm not really sure if that was as well received last year as I had hoped it to be. I tried in the past to make something and get something for family but they're always like "Gee, thanks" and I'm never sure if tey really like it or not. Aaaawkward. :S

Oh man, I really want a mini Christmas tree for the apartment but this year it's too late to get one. We're both going home on Saturday for 2 weeks so there's no point. Sooo the plan is for me to make a bunch of cute things to save up for next year! ...Well that's ~my~ brilliant plan. Will's not exactly on board... "I still want to get glass ones!" hehe. I agree, but the homemade ones are the ones I remember most...besides the awesome Hallmarks (Princess Lea and Snow White I'm looking at you!).

Anywho, yay the holidays are almost here!

#21 Patchy Skirt

My halloween costume! I know, crazy late on this but it's been a slow November for crafting and I didn't take any decent pictures of what I did do yet.

The picture:

I was pretty much a rag doll sort of thing.

I think next year I'll start way earlier on a costume. I basically just sewed patches of fabric over top of each other into larger sheets of scraps, then sewed them together with a waistband. What a mess! I found the vest in my fabric box, which just goes to show how much stuff I have that doesn't really have much of a purpose.

#20 Jack O'Lantern Table Cloth

Hurray for scraps! I had a lot of orange fabric left over from my halloween banner, and got inspired to find a way to cover up our fugly ikea table for the living room.

Here are the results of a whim sewing adventure:

And a close-up!


Yup, I made a jack o'lantern tablecloth. :) Or it could hand on the wall. It's versatile. +1!

#19 Spooky Candy Jar Display

More Halloween crafts! I really want to have a party this year, and the craft bug is helping me get inspired to have a spooky-ish home, haha. The skull now resides with some pumpkin lanterns on the tv stand! Anywho, this craft is for candy storage!

I finally made use of some old jars that I was saving for just such an occassion...actually, I have a compulsion to keep jars and Will ~hates~ it, haha. I made 3 labels/jars to hold spooky candies in.


Jar 1: Filled with candycorn and labelled as "Tears of Rainbow Brite".
Jar 2: Filled with black/orange gummy worms labelled as "Nightcrawlers".
Jar 3: Filled with chocolate eyeballs labelled as "Pickled eyeballs".

They're going to live on the kitchen table. I want to make that the main attraction of our place if we do have people over for Halloween. Also coming up, a Hitchcock wall display! It's not quite done yet.

#18 Skull Candle Holder

Still on Halloween crafts! I was inspired by a recent craftzine post where they showed how to make flour dough and bake your own clay, so I decided to make a candle holder. I'm really going all out this year with the decorations. :D


Tadaaa!
Pardon the crappy photo, it's my work space!

I've also made an Alfred Hitchcock silhouette for the kitchen wall (thanks Meg from Decor-it-yourself for the great idea!), which I'll post when I get a decent picture of it.

#17 Halloween Banner

Happy Rocktober everyone! This is pretty much my favourite month of the year. It's got "eat a lot of food" day for us Canadians (aka Thanksgiving), Will's birthday, and the almight Halloween! It's my absolute favourite holiday! You get to dress up, eat a lot of candy AND watch scary movies shamelessly/force friends to watch it with you in the spirit of halloween! Aaaaah it's the best. :D

Anywho, so I had the day off yesterday and went to fabricland. I found some wicked cheap Halloween fabric. The downside was that it was glittery, so I still have glitter all over me from handling the stuff. To kick off my halloween crafting, I made a banner to hang up on the wall! I'm pretty happy with it, so here are the pictures:

The triangles! It's the sheer glittery fabric on top of orange broadcloth, with bias tape as the "rope". I was inspired by Meg's mother's day banner in the Decor It Yourself segment of threadbanger. :D

In action! It's really hard to get decent action shots of it when it's above a huge ass window. So during the day it's way to bright to get a decent picture, and at night it also sucks, lol.

Yay! I hope to make many more halloween crafts...to Will's dismay probably, haha.

Upcoming Crafts

I just wanna post to keep myself on track, lol.

But upcoming things I'm working on include:
- Flareon cross-stitch (Michael's was missing two colours that I needed so it's like.. 80% finished. Of course those 2 colours make up a huge chunk of it :P). I want to make more Pokemon in general because they're fun and quick to make!
- Planet cross-stitches. I found a site with x-stitch planet coasters that were really neat so I wanted to try the patterns out. I've started a venus already. :D Probably won't use them as a coasters though.

Yeah that much actually, haha. I just want to do more cross-stitches mainly because it's been a while.

Of course I'll be posting any wedding crafty stuff too!

#16 Wedding Sampler

My friend Colleen got married this past friday, and is having a small wedding dinner to celebrate this coming weekend, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a special gift for her.

I decided to go with making a sweet embroidery wall hanging for them, even though they said no gifts, lol. How can I not do something?! So the embroidery part is finished, but I plan on making a fabric "frame" then have a solid fabric backing for it, with a ribbon to hang it up. I have uh...2 days to finish it before we head on the ferry over to Victoria. Oooh crap. Posting it now because the most time consuming part is done!

Picspam:

Detail shot of the french knot flower bouquet. I looove how these turned out. <3

Detail shot of the lettering and wedding rings. I just used my own handwriting as a template for it.

And the full image! It's about 6"x7.5", and took me about 3 days to finish completely. I just wanted to throw in as much detail as possible, haha. The lazy dazy stitches gave me a lot of trouble, urhghg.

Now to get to work on the border!

#15 Booze X-Stitches

I bought these patterns (along with a few others) from anawasabi on etsy. They have suuuh a cute shop! It was hard just picking 4 patterns! Anywho, I made these to decorate the kitchen a bit more. I need to iron them out and frame it somehow still, but here we go!

#14 Bridesmaid Invites

Sooo I've had a really good few weeks here, and working on a ton of crafts! BIG NEWS! My boyfriend proposed! We're getting hitched. :D Will's back in school and I have more time to do crafty things since I just work now. The dream is to do a handmade wedding, but I know it can't be completely handmade *sadface*. We plan on doing it in the north, in Terrace, as that's where Will is from (Kitimat is a short drive away) and really most of the people we want to invite live there or near there. Plus it would be cheaper to do it there hopefully, unless they overcharge because there is no competition. Also slightly worried about what kind of supplies/vendors would be there and how good they will be... I want to do as much creating down here as possible, lol. Either way, it's gonna be a long engagement so we can afford it.

Anywho! I was giddy and made cute little invites for the ladies I want to be my bridesmaids. I saw a tutorial on how to make crossword invites which I figured would be perfect! Pics spam!

So much fun to make! I used: double sided tape, MS word, a papercutter, black pen, and cute card paper. <3

Also for good measure here's a shot of my ring, hehe.

#13 Cousin Ichigo - Complete!

It's done! I did a lot of edits. The dress was easy, just had to sew in the armpit linings. The slippers...eh they weren't the best but they were functional at least. I fixed the head to have an antennae, and I decided it would be best for my sanity to cut out the face. All in all, I feel a bit like a cosplay fail because I didn't stick with the pain-in-the-ass of not being able to see that well, but it was really hard enough not having any peripheral vision.

I had a lot of fun anyways! A lot of people took pictures of me, well enough to be considered a lot. I would walk around and people would sing the Katamari theme song, haha.

Onto the pics:

I made a katamari ball last minute.

All the pieces without me in it, looking all sad without the face, haha.

At the convention! Found another cousing :D I posed really bad though all day, it was so embarassing.

Me and the Taiko drums! I wish I had taken the time to find a way to secure the head down. D: Urghghg.

Anyways, first cosplay evarrrr!! Next year I'll either go as a pokemon, Lotta Hart from Phoenix Wright or a disney character! Yay!

#12 Dawn of the Dead Embroidery!

Ack! It's been soooo long! The past month has been actually a fair bit busy, and when I wasn't working on homework or at the Sub, I was too drained to do much else. I vegged hardcore. :S Now my course is done so I have a lot more energy and creativity! Last weekend was AE so I'll post that in another completed projects post but for now...

It's Dawn of the Dead! When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth!


I want to do a series of classic horror movie posters to hang up in the living room. <3 It's going to be sooo epic. I have some in mind: The blob, Nosferatu, The Shining, Halloween... I dunno, the horrors I own kind of have crappy covers. Like the Dawn of the Dead remake was just... the words. :S Maybe Evil Dead would be good! Aaaah so excited.

#11 Orange Plaid Dress

I found the pattern instructions! Like a week later, haha. Thankfully, I was too lazy to go to Fabricland to replace the pattern so it just turned up on it's own. I am pretty much the worst finder of things ever.

I still have so much of this fabric left, omg. The lady convinced me to get the end of the roll...and honestly, it didn't take all that much convincing since I fell in love with the orange-ness of it instantly. It's probably enough to make a skirt or something later on.

I'll be soaking up the sun and folky tunes at the Calgary folkfest next weekend in this dress. Mom will have a fit because I can't really wear a bra with it (she's always been a nag about covering up, lol).

Onto the pics!

So bright! I did my best ti match the stripes, but it did get a bit wonked out.

This was supposed to be long like the brown dress I made, but it's summer! What does summer stand for if not short dresses and crazy colours? So I hemmed the shit out of it, haha.

And the back! I'm sad that the weird top part doesn't really lie flat, but I think I can fix that easily enough (if I cared a little more, lol). This bodice pretty much makes it impossible for me to wear a bra with it. Or at least any that I own. Even my strapless would show in the back. I had sticky cup bra pieces once, but I lost them. :S

Oh well, I love this dress. Yaaaay!

Crafting woes!

Urhghghg! I lost my pattern instructions for half of the dress I'm making!

I already made this dress before (the patterned one posted in May), but I wanted to do a different view with spaghetti straps and triangle bust instead. I cut everything out, then realized I had lost the first half of the instructions - the half with the stuff I wouldn't know how to do. I mean, the bust is confusing me. :S Zippers I can rock, hems no problem...but wtf at this top! It's got a weird triangle back too that I have no idea what to do with, especially since it has lining to deal with too. \

Sooo mad. I've looked everywhere! Grrr.

#10 Dan Auerbach Embroidery

I loove The Black Keys. Their new album, Brothers, is frigging amazing. I found a picture through last.fm of Dan Auerbach (the singer) and his epic beardedness, so I stitched it up. It took me a few days to do on and off, and almost a whole skien of black thread.

#9 Yellow Sundress

Since I loved that pattern I used for the Ichigo costume so much, I decided to make it again! Normally, I don't make the same pattern twice but this is too easy and fun to make.

I headed out to Value Village on Saturday morning in hopes of finding some sweet cheap fabric, and voila! There was this beautiful, bold yellow linen that would be perfect for summer time and the heat that will hopefull come soon. It's been so cool here! Nothing over 20 degrees and it's July now. Ugggh. Anyways, I also found some lace and instantly had dreams of what to make. The fabric in total was about 5 dollars, hell yes! Turns out it was an Ikea fabric, haha.

Picture time!

^The dress laid out

^On me now :)

^ Eeeh the back. I used a zipper that was smaller than the pattern asked for, pretty much whatever was around the house. It was kind of huge and clunky, and doesn't really suit it that well...but oh well. :B I usually pair the dress with a cardigan that covers it up anyways, haha.

^ Yay! So happy about this dress. :D

WIP More Ichigo

I pretty well finished the dress, and the head so I feel like posting it so far because it feels like it's been too long since I posted here.



I did start on the slippers, but I still need to get felt for the antennae, then to make a ball!

#8 Ichigo's Head

I guess this is a part of a WIP, but I've finished the head completely so I'm counting it as a project. XD

It took me a couple of days to accomplish. So much hot glue and duct tape! I followed a livejournal tutorial for it, but since I found it a few months ago, it's been removed or set to private so I winged it after I got the general body of the thing finished. The only problem is that I got shitty posterboard for it so it flops around a lot. I'll probably add some cardboard to the inside to make it more sturdy. Hurray for working at a place where I can snag boxes easily!

Here's pictures in order of completion!

^Being all confused as to how to get it to stay put...

^With some of the felt on it and the face completed

^Then the final product!

...Wait, I think I forgot the antennae. :S Oh well, too excited - had to post! lol. I managed to find some green stockings for pretty cheap at Dressew too! So just need to get a ball made and some green slippers to go with it! :D

WIP: Ichigo Cosplay

I'm going to Anime Evolution this year in August, aaaand I decided to cosplay for it! I'm going as a cousin Ichigo from the video game Katamari Damacy.

Here's the cousin/inspiration:

And my dress thus far:

I'm going to add a few more seeds, sew in the collar/armpit stuff, aaand add a green band to the bottom. I don't really want to do a dress with sleeves because it'll be hot in August, and I'm allll about comfort, lol.

Crafty ADHD

I've got a ton of things on the go this week!

So far I've..
-Almost finished the dress for a cosplay I'm working on (cousin Ichigo from Katamari Damacy! Will post WIP! :D)
-Almost finished a beard embroidery
-Got fabric for another summer dress to make before the folk festival in July

...Well I guess that's it, but it feels like I've been busier in the hobby department since the Kingdom Hearts game I ordered came (been playing a lot of that too, lol), and I took out a book to read at night. I really should read more. :S

I aaaam soooooo excited for this cosplay! It's in August so I have a lot of time to perfect the costume and assemble all the pieces. Here's what I need to do:
-Make a head (out of posterboard, bowls, felt, ducttape, etc)
-Make green slippers
-Get green tights ...not sure if I want to tackle making spandexy tights and it might be the same cost to buy it already made.
-Aaaand make a katamari ball! I was thinking of putting magnets in it so it could stick to things. :) Not sure how big I want it to be yet.

Anywho, that's all for now! Off to work I go.

#7 Thistle Embroidery

I kinda want to get back into Etsy with my embroidery skills, but I need to build up a collection in a way. I want to just have a plan, then list things. Maybe have 10 or so to start? But the problem is getting inspired. I hate that feeling when I have a great image in my mind, but it doesn't come out right on paper/fabric.

To start, I did a thistle! Just a little something from my heritage (Scottish). It's about 4x4" and I painted the frame purple. :)

Picspam!

And close up

#6 Cowgirl Pin-up

As you can probably tell by now, I'm an embroidery addict! haha. I usually make something once a week that's embroidery related. Lately though, I haven't been too inspired to make my own designs (hopefully that's about to change!) so I've been keeping busy with patterns. :)

Here's another one I made from the Sew Lovely Embroidery pattern I ordered a few weeks ago. I love love love their designs, so I'll probably order more soon, haha.

She'll probably be going on the wall, or at least will be framed up. I literally have a box of finished needlework that has no home. It's kind of sad. :(

#5 Cowgirl Sew Lovely Embroidery Pattern

I ordered the cowgirl set of patterns from Sew Lovely a couple of weeks ago, and here's the first of which I've stitched up! I'm kind of so-so on the colours I chose for it, but I do like it overall. Urhghg I was finishing it up this morning after eating toast and nutella for breakfast, and without realizing it, I touched the side of the fabric next to the image with flippin' nutella fingers! I scrambled to get it off with some cruddy cleaning product, but it's still there faintly. Booooo.

Anyways, pictures!

And a close-up for good measure ;D

#4 Double Chocolate Cookies

Yesterday I worked a split shift, but between those shifts I baked! I just had the urge to try out this recipe I found here.

They are super rich chocolatey cookies, so again...taking some to work so I don't overdo it myself, lol. Last year I mastered the chocolate chip cookie, so this summer will be the one of baking exploration. More or less making different cookies, haha.

Mmmm cookies <3

#3 Peanut Butter Cookies!

Baking is an amazingly fun, especially on a Saturday night with a glass of some kind of sugary rum concoction - which is what down for me last Saturday. This was my first time trying out peanut butter cookies. My dad and sister recently came to visit and insisted on getting a ton of peanut butter. Normally, I don't really eat the stuff so I decided to make cookies out it. Soooo good! I took some to work to share so I wouldn't eat them all in day, haha.

Btw, totally using baking new things as projects! ;D


Next baking goal: double chocolate cookies!

WIP - Sew Lovely Freebie!

It's been a pretty busy week. Full of slaving away at work and writing a last minute paper. I'm not always last minute with papers, but what can you do when the prof doesn't give any guideline or topic until a week before? I wanted to smack him! haha.

I've been working on a Sew Lovely Embroidery freebie for a while now, but it's really close to finished. I ran out of the pink for the bike though. D: I also ordered their cowgirl patterns so look forward to seeing that here too! ;D I'm not sure what I'll do with her. Maybe give it to a friend? I like to spam my penpals with embroidery, lol.

Onto the pic!

#2 Blue Sequin Headband

Alright, I am on a huuuge headband kick. This project was just a quickie, and I'll honestly probably wear it more than the peach one just because it provides a good amount of funky to my daily wear and doesn't seem to fancy for my style currently. :)

Here's the finished headband:

All I did was sew black elastic the edges of the applique, and bam! Instant cute headband. XD

Next up: feathered headband! I was thinking of making it a fascinator, but a headband works better with the materials I currently have anyways so that's what it'll be. :D

#1 Peach Headband

I plan on making categories for posts, and official project posts will get labelled with numbers!

Onto to the project deets!

I've been really wanting to spruce up my wardrobe with more feminine clothing, so one step in that direction is to accessorize. I've also been feeling bland about my hair, so I went with the idea for making headbands. Today I went to Dressew on Hastings downtown, and had a field day pretty much, lol. They have an entire basement level just for notions. 2 or 3 *aisles* just for zippers! Ughgh, it was kind of a miracle that I only ended up spending 22 bucks there. I got some aaaamazing swag though.

Picspam time!

Here's my loot from that trip out! They had an entire wall with sparkly sequin appliques that I spent like 15 minutes staring at. I wanted to get small ones of each colour, but I just went with the blue...for now. ;) Aaah the cute fake flowers were super cheap too! There was also a section for feathers, so I might make a fascinator at some point, and got the red just in case (to match a dress I recently made <3).

And here's what first came from the stash. :) I took the plain small headband, and wrapped the peach ribbon around it using hot glue to keep it in place. After that step, I placed on the sparkly peach flowery item. A small pink ribbon is wrapped around the bottom, topped with a pink button! It probably only took like 20 minutes to make and looks super cute. :) Now just to find an outfit to wear with it... hehe.

What it looks like on me. I'm pretty happy with it, but at the moment I literally just have a ton of tank tops and not enough pretty things for it, haha. Sooo much fun to make though!

Coming up next: another headband using one of the sequin pieces. Simplier, and more funky for everyday wear, yay!