It's A Wrap (2009 Edition)

So this is another in the never-ending collection of holiday posts. Presenting, this year's homemade package wrap -- sewn bags! Here's the background. A few months ago my mother and I were in the clearance section of a fabric warehouse in the seedy, seedy Harry Hines fabric warehouse district or whatever you want to call that particularly unsavory sector of Dallas, and I saw this fabric on closeout special for $0.50 a yard. I bought six yards for -- no calculators needed -- $3 and planned to use it to wrap every small to medium sized Christmas gift. I did use it for every gift I gave this year with a couple of big box items as the exception. And I still have fabric left over. What really amazed me was how easy it was to sew them all. I didn't spend a lot of time ironing hems or pinning things, I pretty much just freehand sewed little pouches for every gift. I sealed them all with safety pins and then attached ribbons. Pretty simple, eh? My favorite part is the green factor... During the year, you can use the bags to store breakable Christmas ornaments and during the holidays, you can reuse them to give new gifts away. My dad has already decreed that from here on out, the ones I gave to him and my mom will only stay in the nuclear family so they can get maximum usage out of them. Considering that I didn't bother with pinning or ironing, I'm serious when I say I think I got a run for my money in terms of time. A couple of bags in, I'm pretty sure I was sewing cloth baggies as fast as I could wrap a paper package.

If you are in the mood to make your Christmas a little more green or sustainable or you would rather hoard wrapping paper for more fun uses than just as package covers, give this option a try. I'm not one who puts too much stock in carbon footprints (or carbon pawprints as far as my cat is concerned), but perhaps I was able to balance out live tree with the cloth wrap? The point for me was to do something that was unique and fun, to try out a new idea and to make something worth keeping.

Also, there's no coincidence vis a vis the Longhorn package topper (above) and today's date. One last plug... Texas Fight!

Finally, don't judge the sparkley red leopard print tree skirt. I bought that fabric to use for Beta/Theta toga party (feel free to judge on that) but I never got around to wearing it as a toga. I've dutifully kept the fabric for years and it fit perfectly as a makeshift tree skirt. So exotic and classy...

Screen Saver

Lately I've been finding more and more reasons to exercise the old sewing machine. I'm not going to lie, back in September when my coworker when my coworker said my hems looked like they'd been done by Helen Keller, I was inspired to get better at sewing.

Don't get me wrong, I love this little flat screen monitor that serves as my substitute TV. It's the bestest way to watch movies and baseball games and the occasional TV show from hulu.com (Why is Parks and Recreation so amazingly hilarious? The whole cast is awesome.) However, I didn't like the way the screen looked, so sleek and gadgety just sitting out on my tabletop.

And when I saw this fabric at the fabric warehouse on Harry Hines for, like, fifty cents a yard, I couldn't pass it up. It's perfect. Trust me, if you are a regular blog follower, you'll see this fabric being used in all kinds of ways (at $0.50 a yard, I bought enough to do many many crafts!). This project must be the easiest ever though. I measured the size of the screen, cut the fabric, hemmed the bottom edge (no Helen Keller here thanks) and sewed the two sides together. Easy breezy beautiful cover girl.

Postcards from Switzerland

If I had to classify myself as one type of crafter, I'd call myself a jack of all trades. I mean, I like to paint, sew, draw, write, cut, build, embroider, color, glue and string. And those are just the verbs I thought of off the top of my head.

And so when I thought of the merchandise I'd want to sell if it was all handmade and home designed, I thought it needed to represent my jack-of-all-trades-ness. So in addition to the necklaces, I have a couple of other ventures on display (i.e., for sale). A while back I bought a set of vintage printed linen place mats with scenes from Zurich, Switzerland. They reminded me of many a fantasy European cityscape (echoes of Paris in there, right?) and I loved the color scheme. Plus the mid-century sketches capture so many details from their era, the cars, the fashion. When I got home with these place mats, I realized that they are a bit small to actually use for meals. And then the poor cloths got shelved because I didn't know what to do with them. I finally decided on pillows and I'm excited to use them in my own home if I don't sell them.

They were easy as can be to pin and sew. Actually, snaps for my Marmadoo (mom) for pinning them for me. She's helping where she can. I think actually that she's more excited about the craft fair than I am, as we have always dreamed of running a mother/daughter store called, and I coined this name when I was in the fourth grade, "Ye Olde Cute Shoppe." So whenever we have any opportunity to work together and hawk we call it a chance to "Ye Olde Cute." That term can also be applied to items that we agree should be sold in our dream venue. But getting back to the original sentence of this paragraph, the sewing was super easy, but I discovered that pillow stuffing is its own separate ball of wax. If you don't treat the stuffing just right, you'll end up with sad, lumpy looking pillows, like mashed potatoes that need several more mashings. It's a frightening affair. I think I got them kneaded properly at this point and I'm ready to send them as merchandise to "Ye Olde Cute."

Today you'll see a couple of my "non jewelry" items because I'd hate for you to think that I'm a one-trick pony.

Oh and one more desk item...

Last but not least in this desk upgrade: the ink blotter. My friends, there comes a time when something that you love, something that you find very pretty and perfectly appropriate, something that someone you love gave you must go. It is old, it is dirty, it looks tired, it is worn out.

That's the story of this ink blotter. Stained from years of both use and storage -- poor thing was even used as a makeup tray (ultimate death to all white-fabric-based products) at one point and endured moving trucks, storage units and one accidental Modge Podge spill.

You see, the trouble is, I still wanted an ink blotter. I still liked the overall size and dimensions of ye olde ink blotter and, well, I'm cheap. So I decided to upgrade. I have a small stash of fabric (Have you ever heard the slogan, "She who dies with the most fabric wins?" because I try to avoid that) and I dug around for the right pieces to help me. I found the pink quickly and decided that was a great frame piece but i wanted something extra special for the center panel. At one point in my mother's industrious career as a fabric collector -- she is going for a hoarding title -- she worked at one of Dallas' high-end furniture and interior decorating stores. And she asked the designers if she could have the outdated, unused or leftover fabric sample books. They are a treasure-trove of fabulous pieces of fabric. The trick is finding projects that can accommodate upholstery-thick fabric that is less than two square feet.

My friends I'd been eyeballing this sample for years before this project came about and I finally had a chance to use these whimsical frogs and Lilly-pad fabric for something.

The assembly was super easy. I painted the old blotter with white primer a few times, For the flat parts, I stretched the fabric and used duck tape to secure it in place. I cut a few small pieces of bunting for the padded part, wrapped that in fabric and glued the whole thing together with hot glue. It's not a piece that can withstand being used as a Frisbee or anything like that, but in its place, it's just fine.

Ahoy! Welcome Prince

I'm just plain kicking myself for not taking better (or more) pictures of this craft project. What was I thinking? Just two decent pictures to show and only four pictures taken in all. And I'm so proud of this project. Today and, well, sometime soon I'm showing pictures of some crafts I created for a baby shower for a lovely lady from my church. Today I'm showing off the nautical theme flags. I see these sorts of stringed pennant flags in Pottery Barn kids catalogues (seriously, buy something from them once and you're on the list for years) and in Martha Stewart magazines and I was dieing to give them a try myself. Most of the flags you'll see are sewn. And I have a bit of a phobia about dusting off the sewing machine so I tried to think of how I could do pennants without using a sewing machine. And here's the recipe I came up with.
I'm a huge fan of liquid starch. It's uses are limitless. I completely saturated the fabric (approximately 2 yards) with the sticky stuff and hung the fabric over my shower bar to dry overnight. And when dry, the seersucker was like paper. I was able to cut it with scissors for paper and paint on it with poster paints. I cut an isosceles triangle out of a box of Ritz Crackers, leaving two little inch long tabs along the top of the triangle to use to attach the flags to the rope. And here's a true essential for something like this -- I created a template for where and how large to place the letters so that the lettering was consistent from "W" to "O" and each letter in between. I used the same box of crackers to cut out a box for the letter and I made sure that each letter touched the top, bottom and sides of the box when it was placed over each flag.
I used scrapbooking brads (cheap from the craft store) to attach the flags to the rope.
This is something worth doing for a party because it provides some great craft bang for your buck. I should also mention that a trio of Command Adhesive hooks anchored the project to its walls and came off with no problems. This project cost around $13 in total:

• Fabric -- $5 from the Harry Hines fabric outlets
• Brads -- $3 for 80
• Rope -- $2 from the hardware store
• Liquid Starch -- $3 from any old grocery store, near the fabric softeners and detergents.

And from that I have plenty of starch and brads left. The compliments came pouring in as the guests arrived for the party.

Gingerbread Man of My Dreams

And now for the Theta Christmas tree topper.
First I'll tell you the supplies and then I'll tell you the process... This is an
old school crafting post, one that actually offers advice on making the above
pictured tree topper.

• brown foam
• six green and red buttons
• two packages of white brick-a-brack trim, medium thickness
• scissors
• craft glue
• a hot glue gun with glue sticks
• brown thread
• a sewing machine or the will power to sew quite a lot by hand
• lots and lots of straight pins
• cheap cotton cloth, appropriately ginger colored
• several examples of other gingerbread men, to use for inspiration
• something to use as eyeballs, four of 'em
• a brown crayon
• red paint, to use as a mouth.

Take yer brown crayon and your brown foam, draw a gingerbread man. Cut out the gingerbread man from foam. I used two pieces of foam and cut them both out so that I could give, as a coworker called it, the poor final product a Christmas-tree enema. I took a picture to explain what I'm talking about. So next you take your fabric and lay it out on a flat surface folded in half so that it is two pieces of fabric thick and place the gingerbread man cutout on top. Trace around the man, leaving about an inch and a half border. Cut out the fabric so that you have two pieces of gingerbread man looking fabric. Now it's time to put the foam bit on the inside of the fabric pieces and pin all around him. Sew him up, leaving a space between his legs so that you can take out the foam and eventually install him on top of a Christmas tree (thus the enema comment). Turn the sewn product inside out so that the hem is on the inside, replace the foam inside to give him a taut look and feel. Real cookies are never wrinkled. Not to get naughty here, but you'll need to glue the fabric from between his legs to the foam, so that he is complete, all around. Next you'll add the brick brack using craft glue (or hot glue depending on your personal preferences). I left about a quarter inch on the outside of the brick brack, but again, it's up to you. Add your buttons for his tummy and your sparkly eyes and then paint on a mouth. I added a gross grain ribbon sash around his neck to make him extra pretty. My guy was double sided for a tree to be displayed in the round, so I had to do the last several steps twice. Stick a tree up his bum and you're done!

I've uploaded lots of pictures to show off the project (and my somewhat messy process).

So here's the guy all covered in pins. And you get a good idea of the supplies I used to create the man. Note the shoe in the top left of the photo and the trash on the floor. I was so messy the night I made this dude!

So I needed brown thread. I bought some when I bought the fabric only to come home and find almost an identical color thread in my sewing box. Think of all the gingerbread men I could sew with these two spools.

This is my dude when I'd sewn him up. Notice how snug his cover his to the foam underneath. Also notice that I cut my finger while doing this craft. Whoops. Suffer for the love of the craft.

And here I've added brick brack but have yet to add the face. I really liked the way it looked at this stage in the process.

And finally... here we see the backside of the tree. My craft on display at the Dallas Country Club -- what a proud moment for this crafter!

First Carved From Stone, Then Painted On

So my friends, this is a t-shirt with an Easter Island head painted on it in glittery silver paint. So that doesn't need an explanation, right? Pretty simple?

Well, it goes something like this. My coworker was in quite a tizzy. It seems schools these days won't just let their kiddos dress in costumes for Halloween. (Yes, this is the first of several extremely belated Halloween posts. Sorry about that folks, I got a little teensy weensy bit behind.) Her middle school daughter had to dress in a costume that reflected her geography research project, which happened to be the mystery of the Easter Island heads. And as my coworker had neither the budget (hey, she blew the costume money assembling a kick-booty Hermoine Grainger outfit for Halloween night) nor the time to find a true Easter Island head costume, she decided to go for a different tack -- she decided to play up the fact one silly explanation for the statues is that aliens from outer space came down in their shiny silver UFOs and built the statues and lined them up facing the East. So she made a lovely foil headpiece and got up extra early to paint her daughter's face silver. All she needed was a t-shirt to tie the alien bit to the Easter Island thing.

And that's where I come in. She was lamenting this ridiculous story to me and asked if I had any iron-on transfers so she could print something off the Internet. I volunteered to undertake the project because its just the kind of ridiculousness that makes me love public schools in America. Off to target went my coworker for a cheap t-shirt -- got this one off the clearance rack -- and I brainstormed to make the Easter Island thing as alien-y as possible. Silver paint and some extraterrestrial stars do the trick as far as I'm concerned.

I sketched the guy on paper until he looked just right, put the paper beneath the t, used a sharpie to outline the design on the shirt and then filled in the rest with a home-mixed paint that used silver craft paint with some high-end pigment dust from Azel Art Supply. I used real silver flakes to up the luster and voila!

Little Miss Julia looked awesome, so I'm told, and she was really excited about her shirt. Too bad the silver flakes can't weather the washing machine. It's kind of a one time use only project. It was fun. Let me know next time you need something this ridiculous.

Don't Scowl at SCAW

Presenting Susan's craft...

I've literally been blogging for months about Susan (aka Dj Jazzy) and her visit to Dallas. Well, over the weekend, she came, we ate and shopped like champs, and now she's gone again (So sad!). And if we didn't have time to craft together, I at least had time to whip up a Dallas-visit souvenir for Susan.

She was quite smitten with my calligraphy skills and wanted me to make something for her using my bottle of ink and old-school quill. So, I wrote out her monogram (about 1 bellion times, to quote the Adelphia girl) and made a frame for it. We decided it's about the preppiest thing ever, which is fitting because Susan is in love with all things preppy!

The frame was a super cheap Ikea purchase covered in fabric (watch how you do those inside corners! That part can be really tricky) and then covered in a couple of thick layers of modge podge (low gloss, I believe it's called the "matte finish"). And, I lied when I said Susan didn't craft--she assembled the finished pieces. We were both pretty pleased with how it turned out. She has promised to put the frame above her kitchen sink (an upgrade from the original planned location of above the commode... Thanks Susan). Perhaps she'll even send in a picture when it's installed??