Are these images too small? It was out friend, Yvonne’s birthday last week and I wanted to make her something. I spent a couple of weeks mulling it over and could not think of anything I would make that she might want to use! (Sorry, Yvonne!) So, I woke up the morning of her party, really still wanting to make something and still drawing a blank. I was also feeling bad because about a year ago, she started planning for this birthday and wanted to invite a couple of friends to celebrate it with her in Hawaii. Being the slacker I can sometimes be, I never really committed to coming along.
So, she did end up making plans to go but she ended up having a birthday bash instead, courtesy of Holland and Kristen (hubby and sis). It was awesome – we had some very yummy food and in a nutshell it was a party of meat and cupcakes. We ate, we laughed, we ate, warmed ourselves by the firepit while the sun was still out, ate some more, played scattergories, and then ate some more. Did I mention we ate a lot of food?
Well, I decided to make her an island-themed birthday card. I’m particularly excited about how the “happy”, “birthday” and “YVONNE” came out because it was 6 in the morning, i had not had my coffee and i did not pencil it in before i cut out those shapes – Yes, I did it FREEHAND! (is it obvious that I’m proud of it?) I’m in fact so excited about it that I’m posting a bigger one below so you can have a closer look. (I guess I should have taken individual pictures of the shapes, too, but it’s what I’ve got so there – incidentally, as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that the coffee i had today appears to be kicking in).
Archive for April, 2009
Second Etsy listing!!!
Eventually, I’m just going to post them up there, but I am still slow at it and it is still really exciting to complete my projects and be able to get them up there, so, check out my second etsy posting. I hope you enjoy the purse.
This time, I also used a “model” for my purse – I found a dress form at a thrift store that was closing down. I haven’t yet decided whether I am going to keep it or sell it, but I thought she can be useful in the meantime.
I also decided to start selling some stuff on ebay again. Here’s a link if you want to see what I’ve got up there. (Of course, I’m a bit more excited about my etsy stuff since every piece, so far, has been somewhat of a labor of love).
COFFEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
It’s midnight thirty and i am now trying to figure out how to force myself asleep. This weekend, McKay and I went thrifting and I found this great linen sheet that had an embroidery pattern on the edge. Without measuring it, I assumed it would be enough fabric to make curtains out of for our bay window. Besides, it was 10 bucks and I figured that if I can’t use it for that, I can probably use it for something else – it’s good fabric and cheap to boot!
Well, I made it home, unfolded the fabric and found that the edge had been patched on and the embroidery pattern overlaid on that – that edge, only able to fit one or two of the panels I’d be making, would have driven one of us crazy (or maybe both of us). So, I needed a new strategy.
I went to another thrift store and, what a lucky surprise – I found another flat sheet in ALMOST same fabric – a shade darker and a hair thicker and plain (no embroidery) for 8 bucks! Of course, I thought it was the same exact fabric until I got it home and compared them side by side. Fortunately, the second piece I found is actually big enough to make all 4 panels… maybe it was King Sized.
After some deliberation, preliminary designs, meetings with my husband/housemate/co-designer of our place, I decided to do what already was thinking of doing when I realized the fabrics didn’t match…
I’m cutting out the embroidery from the original fabric (sorry, I forgot to take pics BEFORE I started hacking away – it WAS 2 rows of flowers one one end of the sheet with some kind of squarish geographic pattern in between – the one with this post is of the “detached” flowers in progress), one embroidered flower at a time, and use each flower and applique (is that a verb?) it onto the other fabric. Now that I’m about 12 flowers cut into it, I ask myself, “WHY?”, which is immediately followed by the question “HOW… am I going to applique these flowers onto the other linen and not make a big mess of this project?”, for which I am still formulating an answer. Tune in to find out…
Meanwhile (speaking of tuning in) I also setup my blog on Feedburner and now have nifty buttons that you can click on to subscribe to my ramblings (or the responses to them). Yayy!!! (?) Here’s one now: 
karizmatic 