Craft, crafty, crating

I haven't been blogging with much, uh, frequency but I haven't stopped doing blog worthy crafty things. Here are some pictures of things I have made/done.

My fairly successful attempt at ring making. I should probably buy myself some jewelry making pliers because using my old rusty needle nose pliers resulted in my scraping off the black on the wire and revealing the copper color, which doesn't look awful but isn't what I was going for. I also need a ring thing.....you know the cone thing that you can wrap the wire around to get the right size, because I used chapstick tubes for this and the sizing is pretty awful. 

Simple chain earrings. Wore these all day when my mom got married but they are slightly heavy, after this day I took off 2 of the chains (went from 5 strands to 3) and they look just as good and pull less on my ears.  

I love Halloween time and the fabrics that show up. Bought myself this lovely black and silver spider print and made myself a new small purse. Lined it with a lovely purple and gold print and put a decorative skull button on the front. All it took for this bag was 2 fat quarters and it was rather simple to sew together. 

Bag pattern/instructions here. 

 Another simple funky looking necklace. I added a few more safety pins to the lowest chain (had to buy more). Saw this over at Trinkets in Bloom, she has some great things on her blog.

Don't think I posted this already but I may have. This was a lunch bag I made for my mom for her birthday I think. She had asked me to make her one. 

With the extra material I made a headband. 

Skirts! Making skirts is fun and pretty easy!  

I wore the red one to my moms wedding and the day walking around Balboa Park.

This one is sheer and I used an old tshirt of my husbands as a lining. 

(Me and my mom!)

Snake skin print is channeling my inner 80's personality!

From skirt making I moved onto dress making. This one took a few days and I love the way it turned out. These are some pretty crappy pictures of it, the flow and pattern are much nicer in person. 

 A few bracelets I made. 

 I took an old pair of heels that had stretched  a bit and I couldn't really wear anymore, painted the heels silver and added sliver laces too. 

Look at what I finally did, chalkboard paint and storage jars! My cabinet is still full of re-purposed jars but now they have chalkboard paint labels! Woohoo! It only took me years to accomplish this!

That's pretty much how I have been occupying my time this year. I am currently working on ideas for Halloween or Christmas cards, thinking I might skip Halloween cards this year but not sure. I enjoy Halloween much more than Christmas but I think people want/expect Christmas cards from me more than Halloween. Don't have any great ideas for either at this point. Need some inspiration. 

Anyone have any cool/fun things they have done or are planning on doing?

I've got a bug

A crafting bug. Which is made ten times worse by pinterest. (Here's my pinterest if you wanna follow my boards) I saw these paper clip earrings on pinterest and had to make a pair for myself.

I used some yarn left over from a sweater my grandma knit me when I was 10 or so. I love the color and knew I had to use some of it to make something some day and I saw these and knew I had to use the yarn. The tutorial suggests using a liquid stitch or something like that but I had no problems using hot glue. I can see how it can get kinda gloopy but it was pretty easy to work around that and I love being able to make things out of stuff I have lying around the house.

I've been de-cluttering, organizing, and of course cleaning as I go. I've completed the bedroom (but not the master bath yet, point a marital contention, it'll get done eventually, I think). I will post what I've done there at some point, don't have any before pictures, it's too hard to take before pictures. I am currently working on the bulk of the apartment, the living/dining areas. The hardest part is the de-cluttering, I am a bit of a pack rat. So much stuff. In the process I've been making things, like the can I made last night, see previous post. Today I made a charger corral of sorts.

It is made from the cardboard of a Tofuky pack of Italian sausages, which are really tasty by the way. I opened it up on it's seam and glued it back together backwards, so all the product stuff was on the inside and it was plain cardboard on the outside. To make it more decorative I took a picture from an old calendar and glued it to the outside.

This is also something that can be done with toilet paper rolls. I made one like that years ago for my husbands head phones. I used an add for some beach get-a-way or something like that if memory serves. It's just a pretty serene picture.

Make it Monday

Started with this

And end with this

 Super simple and can be used for all sorts of things. This was originally a can of coconut milk and is now a pen holder. 

Last Halloween post featuring my Halloween cards

I sent out Halloween cards, because as I've said before, it is my favorite holiday, oh and they were hand made cards. I got creative, something I love doing but have problems doing because I have no drawing/painting ability so I am limited. 

I used packing paper. My husband got a box of drinks from Hubert's Lemonade and this brown paper was what they were packed with. Perfect for what I was doing.

Not only did I make cards but I made envelopes as well. For the envelopes I used paper grocery bags. For a template I used a little card/envelope I had lying around. 

I actually had to ask my brother for a few grocery bags and got lucky with the packing paper. Before the packing paper surprisingly appeared I was kinda in a panic of what I would use. I didn't want to go out and buy something, I really wanted to reuse something. 

The hardest part in the process was keeping the paper from my cats.  We use cloth grocery bags and when we do get paper bags or any kind in general it goes on the floor for the cats to play with. They did not get why they didn't get to play and chew and tear this paper apart.

 Here are the cards and envelopes once they were finished. 

I ran out of ribbon so I wasn't able to make as many cards as I wanted and I wasn't about to mar the nice look of the front of the cards with my icky hand writing, it just wouldn't have looked as good.

One last time. Don't forget to enter for a chance to win one of my hand made fabric pumpkins. They'd make a great addition to Thanksgiving decoration. I'm picking a winner tomorrow (November 8th) at 2pm PST (or  sometime around then). GIVEAWAY  (click it!!)

Baby gifts

I made a few things for my friend and her new baby. It took me just under 5 months to mail them....have I ever said how bad I am at mailing things. I was actually just finishing up the blocks when she had the kid, literally I was finishing them while she was in labor. Better late than never right. Photos of what I made and the process, I can share now since I did finally mail them!

 Plush personalized baby blocks. I have made the blocks in the past for my cousins kids, this was my first time adding letters.

Cute little knot topped hats. Super simple, made from old t-shirts.

A few hot/cold eye pillow type things with lavender too. 

 

And finally some cat toys with cat nip of course. Sewing up the little bottom part after I had already put some catnip in the toys made the cats very interested in what I was doing. Of course they were just being impatient because I made some for them too and they did enjoy them very much.

I have 1 more thing but me and the sewing machine are on a break again. We go through spurts and it gets its feeling hurt that I use it so much so I stop and give it a break for a few months. It's been a while I will probably finish a few projects I have and then start some more as well.