Craft Blog Link of the Week #4

T-Shirt Scarf

I wear a scarf almost every day.  Winter, spring, summer or fall, I'm wearing one or have one in my purse.  The bottom line is that I'm always cold.  I'm cold in winter, spring, summer or fall.  Heaters are never on high enough during the cold months, and air conditioners are on too low in the warm months.

Several friends have told me they hate wearing scarves.  They claim I can “pull them off” fashionably and they can't.  To which I explain that I “pull them off” because I'm not making a fashion statement; I'm actually cold.  They keep my neck warm and prevent air from shooting down my shirt.  They are a necessity. 

I found this really neat scarf project last week.  I was a bit worried about posting this link because I don't want this to become the t-shirt craft blog but I absolutely love, love, love this idea!  And I love, love, LOVE repurposing stuff!  Okay, okay...and all the stripes remind me a little bit of retro Doctor Who!  Do your inner geek a favor and google “Doctor Who scarf”. Trust me ;)

      

"Crack is whack!"--Whitney Houston

I’m a big fan of the shabby chic style of decorating.  I love big flower prints, ruffles and cracked paint.  I love it despite my husband’s confusion over the idea that I would want to buy things that look used.  I love it despite Tori Spelling selling all of her shabby chic furniture in a yard sale and declaring it dead a few years ago.  I never thought my husband and Tori Spelling would agree on anything! 

Crackle medium is this crafty girl’s best friend.  It can make anything have the aged look that defines shabby chic.  It’s super easy to use.  Paint a layer of paint.  Let it dry.  Paint a layer of crackle.  Let it dry.  Paint a top layer of paint.  Let it crackle then dry. 

My sister and I spent a Saturday afternoon a few weekends ago in Savers (a giant thrift store chain in case you don’t know) where I found this jewelry box which seemed to have time travelled back from 1985.  Can you just imagine a teenage girl keeping her Swatch watch  and bangled bracelets in it?

I had been looking for something small to hold the jewelry I wear most.  However, in the above condition, it didn’t really fit in with my décor unless I planned to hang up some posters of Madonna and Scott Baio.  I paid the $4.99 for it and made big plans to make it shabby chic.  Luckily, several days later Arkansas was hit by the Snowpocolypse of 2011 which left me home from work for a few days to craft to my heart’s content.

 

I began by taking off the hardware on the front of the jewelry box and doing a little sanding.  There was a tense moment when I couldn’t find my sanding block and thought I was going to have to use a finger nail file. 

I painted on the base coat, a dark brown—though I plan to use a more bold color on my next project—and let it dry.  Then I added the crackle medium which paints on clear and running.  I let each application dry for about twenty-five minutes each or in my case one episode of The IT Crowd.

The next part is a little tricky.  I would advise anyone using crackle medium for the first time to practice on something you don’t mind messing up just to get the feel for it.  The best technique I have found is to put the final layer of paint on as thick as possible in the first pass. The paint begins to crack very quickly and painting a second coat might cause the paint to crumble.  Use a lot of paint, and paint fast.

This is the final result.  I’m pretty pleased with it…even if Tori Spelling wouldn’t be. 

Craft Blog Link of the Week #3

I’m going a bit retro for this Craft Blog Link of the Week post.  Yep, I’m going all the way back to 2009! 

Book Page Wreath

I really love this blogger and her post because she refused to pay $40 for something she could make for less than $10.  She’s a girl after my thrifty heart for sure.  I made one myself, and it turned out pretty cute.  However, I must admit as a booklover it was pretty hard to violate a book even for the sake of crafting.          

“If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”—Love Actually (2003)

I think Valentine’s Day is the most perfect holiday for crafting!  And I also think handmade valentines are the most perfect craft.  Make them.  Give them for love, like or appreciation.  One thing is for sure: no one will ever say they hate a handmade card…except for that Tiger Mom lady. 

This year I decided my handmade card efforts would be directed toward my coworkers.  You see, I have to brag.  I really like these folks.  We all work in the business of helping people, which sometimes leaves me in admiration of their patience and kindness.  The best part is sometimes they don’t know they’ve done anything at all other than do their job, which is pretty cool.  Since my valentine will be out of town and I will be spending the bulk of my V-Day with them, my coworkers will be receiving the reward of my handmade hard work. 

I knew I wanted to make very traditional cards.  And I, also, knew I wanted to use my “All You Need Is Love” rubber stamp I bought on sale last spring.  It’s one of my favorite Beatles songs and featured in Love Actually, one of my most favorite movies ever.





I thought I had hit the jackpot when I found dark red, heart-shaped cards at Michaels for the amazingly low price of ten for a dollar.  But when I got home and opened them up, I found out they weren’t exactly work appropriate.  Though they came in a clear plastic wrapper, the strip of paper on the front announcing the package’s contents covered an “XO” cutout right in the middle of the card.  It is one thing to remind my coworkers all they need is love, but hugs and kisses are another thing.  I thought at first it would just be a craft challenge to hide the “XO”.  Then I came to my senses and took the two-dollar hit.  (I bought two packages in case I had a crafting stamp disaster.)  I headed back to Michaels a few days later to purchase plain, square, red cards with plain red envelopes.

With a little help from Martha Stewart and her sale on wedding scrapbook stickers, as well as the funky letter stamps I bought on sale a few weeks ago, I ended up with a very simple and traditional Valentine’s Day card. 

Craft Blog Link of the Week #2

Naughty Secretary Club is one of my favorite craft blogs.  Now don’t get the wrong idea.  I promise it’s a blog about crafts.  I’ve had to explain this to my work every time their adult content filters block it from my computer.    

This lovely craft blogger always comes across as someone I would want to hang out with on a Saturday afternoon.  And her hair is an amazing shade of red I could never pull off...but I digress.  Her crafts are quite attainable and fun.  Below is Craft Blog Link of the Week #2:

Valentine Paper Chain

This particular craft makes me want to cut out hearts, make cards and, well, make a paper chain!  I simply adore Valentine's Day handmade retro!  However, the thing I love most about this craft is the possibility for interpretation since photo booths are hard to find these days and time travel back to 1950s Coney Island is impossible.  So, play with it and make it your own.  Get crafty!    

"Cock your hats--angles are attitudes."--Frank Sinatra

This is the tale of my biggest crafting disaster…the purple knit hat with no earflaps.  Argh!  It still hurts my heart to look at it.




The purple knit hat with no earflaps.  I kept it to remind myself

to never get too big for my crafty britches.



Yeah, so, the purple hat thing.  I begin this story by saying that I’m an amateur knitter.  I learned in college when, for reasons I don’t recall, I ended up spending a weekend alone in the dorm.  I bought a pair of needles, a skein of yarn and a book. Then—ta-da—I taught myself to knit.  Well, sort of.  I only knit stitch.  I only do scarves.  And they aren’t particularly well-made scarves.

However, one blustery Friday afternoon in the winter of ’06 I decided I was going to knit a hat with earflaps.  A coworker (a Rhode Island School of Design student being well trained in all things artfully perfect) who was showing off a sweater she was knitting, inspired me.  We chatted a bit about knitting, and at the end of our conversation she photocopied for me a hat with earflaps pattern from a book she had in her bag.  RISD Girl assured me if I followed the instructions carefully, I would have a hat by the end the weekend no matter how inexperienced I was in knitting.



I left work that day full of inspiration and intent!  I bought two skeins of a lovely purple yarn, my first pair of circular needles and everything else my hat pattern called for and raced home to feverishly begin my project.

To this day no one is quite sure what went wrong.  Despite my reputation for skipping steps when reading directions and leaving ingredients out of recipes, I followed the pattern to a T.  I knitted, counted, bound off and observed that my hat was a FREAKIN’.  HOT.  MESS.

It was pretty much shapeless.  Well, shapeless by the standards that it didn’t replicate the shape of a hat.  It was huge.  It looked like a yarn bowl.  I knitted a giant yarn bowl!  I can’t begin to tell you how broken hearted I was.  And maybe I cried a little.  I didn’t even bother with the earflaps.  (Let me tell you, four years ago when this story takes place you couldn’t find a freakin’ knit hat with earflaps anywhere.  You now can’t spit in Target without hitting seven of them!)

When Monday came I took my terrible hat to RISD Girl for inspection.  She, too, couldn’t figure out what I had done wrong.  Her theory: my yarn and its elasticity were the problem…maybe.  We joked I had made a great toaster cozy.  Later that night my husband wore it on his face declaring it a hockey mask while I laughed hysterically.  So, what is the lesson I learned from my knitting debacle of 2006?  I learned to laugh at my crafting mistakes…you know…because they are funny.  It’s as simple as that.







Craft Blog Link of the Week

I love reading craft blogs!  The only thing I love more than reading them is sharing the really cool stuff I find.  Below is my first craft blog link!

Ten Minute No-Sew Recycled T-Shirt Bag

The blogger behind this instructional post is not only a super crafty lady, but she wears a pair of orange glasses I find quite enviable.  This particular project seems simple enough for even the most inexperienced crafters.  And kudos for using recycled materials to make a bag that will fold up nicely in my purse until I need to whip it out at the grocery store or library.  I just love it when being environmentally friendly is easy and, in this case, fashionable!

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."--Maya Angelou

I thought my first crafty post, though technically my second post, should be about my current project.

It has been evolving for about a year or so.  It started out as a bright red canvas discarded by my sister which sat untouched in my craft room for quite a while.  Eventually, I ran across an interesting print in a magazine and decided to glue it to something to see where it might go.  The above picture is where it went.    

I must say at this point that Modge Podge is my craft true love.  It all began in junior high when my speech class was assigned the task of making a collage about ourselves from magazine clippings.  Little did I know this project would be the catalyst for my lifelong love of modge-podging.  Ever since I’ve kept a box filled with pictures, words and patterns I’ve found in magazines in the hopes I might someday glue them to something. 

 

Here is some of my very early and very embarrassing modge-podge work circa 1995.


 

Here is a lamp I’ve been modge-podging since 2007.  I’m a slow crafter to say the least.



So, now back to the “bird picture” as it has come to be known by my friends and family.  I’m not sure where it’s going. At first I didn’t think it had anything to do with me and my husband and our little nest of a home,  Yet the longer I work on it the more I realize it’s totally about us.  The bird’s nest is made of bright colors and patterns mixed with pictures of computer hardware.  The leaves are cut from pictures of flower gardens and industrial images.  It’s a nice blend of me, the bright, flowery one, and my husband, the concrete, technical one.  It has come to represent us, the unlikely pair who are in a constant state of building our nest.

I was recently told by my harshest craft critic, a dear friend whom I think of as a brother, that 1) he thought it was my “best work yet” and 2) I shouldn’t add a single thing to it because he declared it done.  But as a girl who never thinks a craft is really done…I’m not so sure.  When do you know a project is done?