Well, I can tell from the lack of comments by even my most faithful commenters that pictures of my craft room progress (or lack thereof) are pretty boring. I get it! Sorry! Moving on!!

My husband and I have a down comforter we absolutely love. Unfortunately, it is quite warm, and we live in Houston. So no down comforter during the summer. Right now we're just sleeping with our sheets and blanket, and no bedspread of any kind, but that doesn't look so good. I want to make a light weight quilt to keep on our bed during the summer... Our walls are dark green and our furniture is dark wood, so we've been using a white comforter cover, and I want to keep this look for the quilt. I am thinking something like this:



For the main open parts I will just cut up a white sheet or something, and then the strip will be various green fabrics to tie in with the walls. I want to try to just piece it randomly, not sticking to a specific pattern, just seeing what goes well together until it's the right width. I browsed eQuilter for fabrics in the right tone and put together this little assembly in their design board:



So. Thoughts? Will this look silly? I might actually pay to get this quilted since it will be king-sized, so I don't want to spend a ton on fabric. Once my craft room is organized, it could be I'll discover the perfect combination of greens in my stash! You never know...

This is the fastest we have ever made progress on a project in our house. For example, to start this project, we left behind putting up chair rail to finish the upstairs room and setting up our garage so we can actually put our cars in it.

That said, this is my "craft room" right now:





We have painted the walls behind where I stood to take this picture, and I think we've picked the color for the rest of the walls. All the shelves are built and currently reside in our dining room. One bright spot (ahh, the pun!) in all of this is my totally wonderful new lampshade.



Now, rather than crafting, I believe it is time for laundry, ick!

So would it be totally lame to show "before" pictures of my craft room when I don't really have "after" pictures yet? I love seeing projects like this on other people's sites, so hopefully I'm not alone in that... Projects around my house take a long time for some reason, but we might actually have a paint color picked and time to paint on Sunday, so who knows... This one might be a record for us! Maybe the motivation of a finished place to play helps!!

Here is what our "study" looks like now:





We have two sets of the new shelves built, so the next step is to do the third set, move a bunch of stuff around, paint, reorganize, etc... I'm actually really looking forward to it. This is how a lot of the shelf building looked:



See who's doing most of the work? It is really tiring!



Speaking of tiring, I've been up way too long and it's a work night, so I'll leave it at that for now!

Yesterday I shopped all day. I met my sister at 10am and we went to Ikea to get my craft room bookshelves. Woo! I love how much you get for your money there - I think everything will have a place to be put away! That's the only chance I have of keeping my craft room neat.

Then we went to lunch, and moved on to clothes shopping. Katy just switched from a business formal job to a business casual job, so boy did she have a long wish list. We had such a blast shopping! I managed to control myself and stick to my much shorter list of needs. I'm quite proud of myself.

Of course, I couldn't go see Katy empty handed! The dangle necklace was her idea, so I made her one of her own!



I do like this style! I think I'd better find more ball chains...

Labels: jewelry

It has been so long since I've sewn anything. There are many sketches on my desk, and I've gotten out fabric many times only to put it away again days later. Finally last night I was in a sewing groove, and this morning I finished up a new purse!



I tried out so many things on this bag, and boy was it a learning experience. I added some wooden rings to the strap and sewed TimTex in the bottom for stiffness. It was my first time using Wonder-Under to do applique, and boy do I love it!



The design wasn't supposed to look quite as much like a rainbow (well, that's what it looks like to me, anyway), but some of the adhesive didn't stick to the middle ring when I peeled off the paper layer, so I had to do some trimming.

I also made a second attempt at using a magnetic snap, and it came out much better this time. I added an afterthought pocket because I've been using my bright bag and it's a pain to dig for all the little things that sink to the bottom.



I've transferred all my stuff over and it's ready to go! I really need to sew up a purse organizer since I keep switching bags!

How awesome is Etsy's home page today?



All the featured items have to do with either snakes or planes. I love it!

I finally got a half decent picture of the necklace I mentioned. It doesn't really look right laying flat, and I was too impatient to set up a fancy photo shoot, so you just get a picture of me wearing it.



It's just a finished ball chain, with swarovski crystals hooked on with small enough loops they can't move. I really like it!

In other news, I am now the proud owner of a Small Things necklace!!



My sweet generous sister got us both one (hers is red) since it has sister birdies on it. I love it!!

And just to prove sewing is still on my mind, here's my kitchen table in its current state.



I have big plans for a crafty weekend, including the start of my study to craft room transition. I can't wait!

Labels: jewelry

Yikes! I am such the bad blogger these days... weeks... well, you know what I mean. I swear I have ideas. Things I want to make. But I'm stuck! I get things out and they sit there. I sketch ideas and they go in a pile. It's so frustrating! This weekend I am purchasing bookshelves/cabinets at Ikea to start the "study to craft room" transformation, so I am counting on that as my kick start to actually creating something.

In the mean time, I just have to share Heidi J. Hale jewelry. She is my current jewelry obsession.



I love her style, the colors, everything. I had such a hard time picking just two pieces to show! You must go to her site and browse.



I have made some jewelry recently, myself, but as usual I gave the earrings away without taking a picture and can't get a picture I like of the necklace. So you'll just have to be patient! Here's to me becoming a better blogger...

I think I've mentioned before that I'm settling into a style when I make my jewelry... I think part of it is having more to choose from when I browse my stash - I organized it recently and now I have a better feel for what I've been collecting of the past year or so. The point is that when Amanda emailed to request another pair of earrings, I had so much fun designing something for her.



These are very similar to some other earrings I've made recently, but I love the combination of pearls and crystals. I hope Amanda likes them! (And of course I sent them in a little box.)

Labels: jewelry

Things are finally starting to feel back to normal. The house is picked up, the suitcases are in the attic... It only took a week and a half!

I just had to share the crafting I did on vacation - I couldn't last over a week without doing something. My aunt-in-law (hee) taught my mother-in-law and I how to make adorable boxes to recycle greeting cards. I mentioned posting a tutorial on my website while we were practicing, and my aunt was horrified since she thinks it wouldn't be as special if everyone could do it, so just pictures for now. Chances are you'll get one if you ever do a swap or something with me, and I bet you're all clever enough to figure it out!

Here are the ones I made on vacation:



These were all out of Christmas cards. When I got home I had to make sure I still remembered how to make them, so I dug through the cards I've gotten this year and made a few more:



I wanted to give one to my sister and one to my mom as a souvenir "look what I learned" present, but I can't be giving away empty boxes, so I made...

These for my mom:



And these for my sister:



(I realized too late that the picture is wonky - they've already been gifted!)

I have since made even more boxes - I pulled a huge box of saved mail down from the attic and picked out so many good cards... But how many pictures of little tiny boxes can you stand?? I'll spare you the rest!

Believe it or not, I think I'll have another post before the end of the week... But don't hold your breath!!

Labels: jewelry

Just before going on vacation I finished up my last anniversary album that I have to do for a while. Currently, I don't know of any weddings we have coming up besides my cousin sometime next year! It seems like we're getting out of the stage when our friends get married and into the stage where our friends have babies... Yikes!



This one had different colors than I've worked with in a while. I love this paper, but for some reason I had a harder time working with it.







Overall, as usual, I'm happy with it. I guess I'm easy to please!

Click here for the whole album.