Creativity Week!

Looking for the 100 Followers Giveaway? Click HERE! Good luck!

Hi friends. It is quite possible that if you visit the really cool crafty 733 blog today, you might see someone you recognize. Well, read someone you recognize, at least :). Creativity Week has been a blast and I've met so many great bloggers, how about you?

100 Followers Giveaway!

Giveaway Now Closed! Thanks to everyone who entered!

Well friends, we did it. We reached 100 followers! It has been fun looking at all the new people who come visit my blog- there are so many talented people out there! I have found so many fun blogs to follow by looking through my followers :) My husband thinks I'm so silly, because any time I got a follower, I reported to him and did a little happy dance. Seriously. We joke that I would have a lot more if I distressed my furniture and inked the edges of my papers but hey, it's just not my style :)

In celebration of my bloggy milestone, I'm having a giveaway! Remember my etsy shop? The one that has been totally neglected, forgotten, and never advertised for? Yes, that one. Well, I'm giving away this coloring caddy to one lucky winner!

I love this caddy. It is just so. darn. cute. I slung it over my shoulder last night and told my husband I should just keep it, and use all the little crayon pockets to hold a huge collection of SoftLips or something :)

The munchkin uses her coloring caddy all the time. People always think it is so cool when they see it. But then again, anything using fabrics from the Park Slope fabric line is so cool. Agreed?

If you don't win the totally cute blue and yellow crayon caddy, you can look here and see how to make one. It isn't hard, just a lot of little steps!

TO ENTER:

You have three chances! (Make sure to leave a way for me to contact you in case your comment is picked!)

1. Follow my blog and leave a comment! If you are already following, let me know.

2. Write about this giveaway on your bliggity-blog and leave a comment with the link. I will check!

3. Tell me what you would like me to blog about. I'm always open to inspiration :)

There you go, people. I'll keep the giveaway open until next WEDNESDAY, MARCH 3rd at midnight Arizona time. Which is a time zone in itself :) Good luck!

Quilt Dilemma!

I pieced this quilt top tonight. It is nearly midnight right now... and my mind is totally and completely mush. This quilt was one problem after another! Probably because I didn't start with a pattern, cut random pieces without double-checking measurements, and started sewing blind. Dar be dar, that could present issues, right?

Well, this STARTED out in my HEAD as a 42" square quilt. After having to cut down nearly everything so it was square and my edges matched up, it is now 35 x 37. It was that bad. I had to do away with an entire row because I just didn't have a clue what to do with it.


I still don't.

So here's where I need your help. I wanted to bind this in brown. I'm thinking this needs a border. What should I do? Piece all my scraps? (There was an embarassing amount of waste in this project!) Get a coordinating solid? What is a good baby quilt size anyway? Should I get a haircut? Why are Target's doors totally backwards and force me to go against instinct and walk in on the left side of the store like I'm British or something? No offense to you Motherlanders, there.

I told you my mind was mush.

But really, any ideas on the quilt top? I am hoping to get this to a little NICU baby boy soon. If you are curious, it is the CHIRP! fat quarter bundle by Katie Hennagir Designs for Robert Kaufman in Neutral that I won from Amy at Park City Girl. I love it. I pulled it out of the package (super fast shipping from the Fat Quarter Shop!) and my munchkin and I ooh'd and aah'd over it. She even kissed it. I thought that was hilarious.

Happy Banner

I came home late last night from picking up a dresser I found on Craigslist (it needs some serious TLC but the bones are great) and my sweet husband had FINALLY hung my vintage banner. I've been draping it over his pillow, putting it on his chair, and following him around the house with my awesome knobs I found on clearance at Anthropologie. I guess the hints worked!

This morning when I opened the blinds, the light in the room made it really feel antiquated, so I thought I'd take a picture. I love it. The big polka dots are the favorite :)

To make my banner, I just created a 9" isosceles triangle in Word, printed it on card stock, and used it as a template. I just cut out the triangles with my rotary cutter. I interfaced them for more stability. I then attached them to a package of double-fold bias tape. Easy peasy.

I'm linking up to:
Today's Creative Blog

Anthropologie on a dime

I love looking at Anthropologie's At Home items. They are so classy, simple, and just my taste. I kept looking at these printer's letter stands, and I even went to my nearby Anthro to take a closer look. They are reasonably priced at $28, but when you are on a tight budget, even that is too much for unnecessary home items. I decided to make one myself! You need:

Wood letter (found at craft stores, usually)
1x6-6 foot piece of pine (hardware store)
sand paper, medium and fine grit
wooden dowel (craft stores), 1/2"-3/4" diameter
drill and drill bits (word of advice... try and match your dowel size with a drill bit... otherwise you'll be doing lots of sanding!)
wood stain
wood glue
brushed nickel metallic spray paint

First, cut your wood. The nice guys at Home Depot cut my wood for me! I brought my letter with me to the hardware store to get a good idea of what size wood to use. My letter, from JoAnn's, used a piece of wood 7 1/4" long. The base for the letter stand was square, so 5 1/2"x 5 1/2". Did you know a 1x6 isn't actually 1 x 6? Yeah.

I got four sets out of one piece of wood!

Sand the edges really nice, making sure you sand in the direction of the grain. I didn't on some, and trust me, it makes a difference.

On the base pieces, find the center. I just drew lines from corner to corner to find the center.

I didn't want to drill all the way through the base, so I marked on my drill bit with tape where to stop. Then I drilled into the center of the base.

Next, I stained the top wood pieces. I used a deliciously dark mahogony stain for these.

I ended up doing only one coat of stain. This was the hardest part: waiting! It was rainy here so the stain took FOR. EVER. to dry.

Next, I found the center of the BOTTOM of the stained pieces and drilled about 1 1/2" into it. Again, I marked my drill bit with tape. I probably should have drilled these pieces before I stained, but oh well!

For the next step, cut your dowel into 3 pieces, each measuring about 12". You can go shorter if you want!

Next, I worked some spray-paint magic. Brushed nickel spray paint is my new best friend. I painted the letter, a dowel piece, and my base piece.

When everything dries, use your handy-dandy wood glue to keep your dowel in your base. Make sure it is plumb and level. Plumb= vertically straight, level= horizontally straight :)

I added a little wood glue to the back of my letter and placed it in the middle of the stained piece. Wipe away any glue that squeezes out with a moist q-tip. I put a book on top to weigh it down for a while to make sure it stayed.

Put a dab of wood glue on the top of your dowel and slide that letter piece on top. Again, make sure it is plumb and level!

Let it dry, and You are DONE! Great new home decor for a fraction of the cost.

What did the original look like again? That is pretty darn close! (the & was purchased at Kohls on clearance for $2!)

My cost breakdown:

$2 for wood (my piece had a damaged area, so it was discounted)

$2 for 2 dowels (enough for 4 stands)

$5 for stain

$3 for spray paint

$1 for letter (coupon!)

Time spent with husband (priceless)

_____________

$13 or $3.25 per printer's letter stand!

Not too shabby :)

Linking up to: (my blogger hates those button HTML codes!)

The Girl Creative

Making the World Cuter

Today's Creative Blog

DIY Show-Off

DIY Baby Decor

My good friend Whitney showed me her little girl's room decor, and I begged her to let me share it with you. There are some fantastic ideas here!

We've all seen the mod-podged letters. I even did some here. Whitney went another mile and a half with that idea and mounted her letters on painted canvas! After painting the canvas with her preferred design, she screwed the letters on through the back of the canvas. No exposed screws, and much stronger than glue ;)

See what I mean? Totally cute.

Those little dots of color on the wall are circular plaques. She painted what we would normally call the back side and mounted those to the wall. By doing it this way, they seem to be 3-dimensional, popping out of the wall right at ya! Each circle is different, and the circles were randomly placed on all four walls of the room.

She got her design idea and color scheme from her crib bedding. See the circles? I love it. When you are an apartment dweller like we are, these types of decor solutions are so awesome. I think Teagan really likes her room!

And another dress

I quickly whipped up another Sienna Dress the other day. They get faster every time. These two shirts I pulled out of the DI pile at my parent's house. Both were too large so had never been worn. Plus, they coordinated beautifully. Hooray! It is also a bonus that the white shirt is from a family reunion... now even the munchkin can proudly display her family name! Er, one of them, this one is from MY side of the family. (see that pink puppy? He's also part of the family. As in, I pray he never gets lost or we'd have a seriously sad little girl. Yes, it is a He.)

I really did this fast. So fast, in fact, that I totally sewed the bottom portion on WRONG SIDE OUT. Oh well, it adds character. Right?

I have more planned already. Maybe my next one I'll sew the sides together right :)

We just persist.

Sometimes, I have great ideas for a craft. I have the materials. I have the time (barely). But, I just don't have the skill, I suppose, for certain grade-school type crafts.

Take, for instance, this dictionary globe I was going to hang by my computer desk. All I had to do was glue circles together, right?


Well, after cutting out circles from two dictionaries and a thesaurus from the dollar store, I just didn't have enough circles.


No one likes floppy, lopsided dictionary globes hanging by their computer. Lack of fullness = lack of anything hang-worthy.

But I did learn one thing from this project:

to persist in all things crafty.


I think I'll take those circles and stick 'em on a styrofoam ball the same way Lindsay made her book wreath. Or is that doomed too?

Christmas in February?

One of the Christmas gifts I made this year was a table runner for my mother-in-law. I totally spaced it and never actually took a picture of it, so I had her take some pictures for me :). She sent them to me this morning and I thought I would share them with you! I used this tutorial and it came out great.

The fabric was just some Christmas stuff from Jo Ann's, and the backing is red with white snowflakes. She can turn it over if she wants something different! This was my first project doing free-motion quilting on my own, and it helped me learn a few things.

First, choose good quality thread. I was using cheap stuff and it was skipping stitches all over the place.

Second, make sure your project is well basted. There are several basting methods out there; I use curved safety pins. I didn't have enough in and I sewed a beautiful fold into the backing. That was lots and lots of unpicking.

Third, go slow and steady. I would get confident and start going too fast, but without a stitch regulator on my regular 'ol machine, it resulted in some wonky stitch lengths.

I hope that helps someone out there! I may have another project in the works soon because I won a fat quarter bundle from the Fat Quarter Shop, thanks to Park City Girl. I totally did the happy dance. :)

I'm linking this project to:

Rise and Shout, the Cougars are Out

I'm a last-minute person. Not on purpose... it just happens that way. So, Friday I got the Lil' Blue Boo Sienna Dress pattern and got right to work so I could submit something to the Lil' Blue Boo/Dharma Trading Design Challenge. Do ruffles count as embellishments? I hope so... I was in a hurry with ZERO time and with what I had on hand. If they don't, it was fun anyway! I love the dress. I made a 4T even though the munchkin is still in size 3T because I want to keep this one around until College Football season starts up again in the fall... :)

I totally thought about stenciling the BYU Cougar fight song along the bottom... and then realized I'd be doing a LOT of cutting and opted not to. Maybe I'll add mini footballs to the hem later on. Or on the sleeves? Lots of possibilities here, people!

Dress Specs:

I used the Sienna Dress pattern with short sleeves and a wide contrast band on the bottom. The seam for the band is hidden behind three separate ruffles.

Cute, huh? I went to Goodwill on Saturday and picked up a few more t-shirts. I wonder where Ashley gets all those cool graphic t's. Honestly- everything at our goodwill was pretty L-A-M-E. Maybe I need to shop in Palm Desert?

Here's to lots more dresses from old t-shirts. :)

Somewhat Simple

Dress for me and pattern review

I made myself a dress. Yep. I got some fabric in a remnant bin at JoAnn's a while back and thought it was about time I used it up.

Problem with using remnants... I didn't have quite enough. This dress was supposed to be lined... which didn't happen. Eh, I wear slips and undershirts all the time. No biggie.

Problem with sewing for myself... I still have 8th-grader proportions so I was a size 14 on waist, 12 on hips, and 10 in the bust. Please, every one have a good laugh over that one. I had some alterations to take care of.

Please excuse the hideous picture. I did crop my face out because I looked like... well words can't describe it. And it is big. Again... my apologies.

Just don't look too closely at my unshaven legs.



I did take a few close-ups of the pleats. I did them wrong. I don't really care.

There are pleats on the skirt part too. I like them.

Pattern review for Butterick B5242 View A:

Really easy! I'm sure it would be even easier with enough fabric and the ability to cut fabric on the right grain. ;) However, the pleats on the skirt do make a "maternity" look... which I am NOT specifically going for right now... but it works. It could be easily altered for maternity. Also, the sleeves were really, really rediculously long, so I shortened them probably 2". Much better. More normal. Shortening sleeves isn't rocket science so I didn't mind.

Make anything for yourself lately?

Linking Here: