sushi booties and onsies

I have to say that I feel like I am going to a lot of baby showers these days, and I am SUPER excited for the one I am going to go to tomorrow.  My brother (a fellow sushi lover) served as a full time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for two years in Japan.  (So did I! if you didn't know.)  And after 10 long years of trying to have a baby, he and his wife are happy to be expecting a baby boy this next month!  So, needless to say, at her shower tomorrow, I knew that I needed to do something really special. 

I got the idea for these sushi booties at the original sushi bootie shop on etsy.  They are so great, but to be completely honest, I have a hard time paying good money for something I know I can easily make.

And just to compliment the booties, I decided to throw in some onsies as well.  

Can't wait to give these to my brother and his wife tomorrow!!!! (as usual, sorry the pics are so bad....all thanks to me finishing all of my projects late at night after the little one sleeps...)

ruffle pillow

Yeah, I have pretty much fallen in love with ruffles lately!

This was a "quick" project that I put together for a birthday present.   They say that you should only give gifts that you would want yourself.  Aside from the many mistakes and the messed-up-looking borders, I think I would love to get this for a gift!  So, I hope that she likes it!

oh and P.S. sorry the picture isn't all that great...I had to take it at night, after the little one was asleep (because that's when I get all my projects done).

a new Easter dress

I think it is a pretty great tradition to give little girls a new dress for Easter.  This will be the first year that I have done this for my little one, and I am happy to say that this one cost me absolutely nothing! 

I have seen a lot of tutorials/images online (and by online we all know that I mean Pinterest) for how to turn a man's dress shirt into a dress for a little girl.  I have wanted to try it for a while and have been looking for ideas of how to make the final product look more like a dress than a hand-me-down shirt.  And I think that I have found the solution, ruffles! 

To be honest, this project was so much more fun than I imagined it ever being.  Like usual, I didn't have a pattern to go from so I just kind of made it all up, which means it fits a little funny, but for a first time DIY shirt-to-dress-conversion-project, I am quite pleased with how it turned out.  It did take a little more time than I thought, but that was mostly me being a perfectionist. 

So, first, I traced about 3/4" around one of Lynlee's dresses that currently fit in pencil on the original shirt.  Sewed up the sides and the top shoulders.  Next, I made a little bias-tape out of some extra scraps to make a nice edge on the front collar.  After that, I cut 4 more long strips (from the sleeves cause they were the longest) and used this tutorial for the ruffles.  What took the most time was ironing and finishing the edges of the strips so my ruffles wouldn't fray. 

After that, I am not sure where the idea came from, but I know I was inspired.  I cut the cuffs of the remaining sleeves and trimmed them to fit in place for the sleeves of the dress.  Genius idea, because I had no idea how to make sleeves.  I also feel like this adds a lot of "this used to be my daddy's shirt" personality to the dress but doesn't make it look too strange. 

Anyway, this isn't really much of a tutorial, but thought I should jot down some stuff just in case I ever want to remember this in the future.

winter boots

I finished them months ago, but  I have no good reason as to why I haven't put any pictures up yet.  I found the idea here on pinterest, but as you can see, there is only a picture, and all of the instructions are in Korean.  So, you know me, I just decided to figure out how to make them anyway.  After a long search for sherpa suade (that totally awesome double sided fuzzy fabric in the pictures) that came to a fail, I decided to feuse 2 fabrics together with interfacing.  If you don't know what this is, you need to look it up.  It's wonderful.

So, like most of my projects, these boots took a little more time than I had originally planned, but I am so happy with how they turned out, and Lynlee absolutely loves them.  Her favorite way to wear them is on her hands.

stockings

I just finished what I think will be my last big sewing project of the year, but I am not making any promises.  I am longing to paint again, so that means it is time. 

But I have to say that I am really happy with how my stockings turned out.  I took much of my inspiration from this tutorial.  i can't wait for Santa to come and fill them up!

Each year as we add more stockings to our family, I thought it would be a nice addition to embroider the year on the back.

Just in case anyone's wondering what Lynlee is up to while I am working on these...

quiet book

About a year ago, I was in a quiet book exchange with my cousin and 10 other people.  I just have to say that if you ever make a quiet book, they are so much work!  And this is definitely the way to go.  We each made one page 12 times and swapped.  I was at my in-laws for Thanksgiving last year and used my mother-in-law's machine to make my pages.  But with the lack of machine, I hadn't been able to finish the rest of the pages and book until now. 

Needless to say I have been working on it almost non-stop for the last few weeks.  There were a few pages that I made changes to, others that I re-did and some I didn't use, but all in all, the swap was great.  To give the whole book a sense of continuity, I added the words that label each page.  So without further adieu, here it is:

Here it is, all zipped up!  I ended up making more of a case than a cover for the outside because I wanted to be able to zip it all up.  This way hopefully we can reduce the number of missing pieces in the future.

The Family Tree is the only page that is not completely done.  Those little apples are picture frames and need to have pictures of mom, dad and grandma(s) and grandpa(s) inserted. 

The farm animals are little finger puppets!

Need to get a few more animals to put in Noah's ark...

(The lady bug puzzle is the one that I made for the swap.)

Can you see the little car on a string?  This little guy can fit inside both houses!

Last but not lease, I had a blank space at the end, so I wanted to have something fun to put there.  There isn't really an activity to go with this one, but The ribbons are pretty fun to run through your fingers!

Hope you enjoyed it!

Paintings for Lynlee

I finished these paintings a while ago...a few months before Lynlee was born. I am not sure why I nevr put them up...I guess life got busy with a baby:).

So I painted the 4 block paintings that say "baby".  I also made the airplane mobile.  Her name below is a vinyl cut out from my cricut and the animal picture is a gift from my cousin. I felt a little silly when i showed these paintings to my sister and she wasn't that impressed. You see she thought that I had taped off the background and used some sort of stencil for the letters. That would have saved me a ton of time, to be honest. And when she mentioned that, I felt very foolish because I had drawn and painted each of the paintings and all of the lines by hand. So needless to say, these paintings took me quite a bit more time to do than they should have.

Chevron Painting, 24"x36", acrylic

It has been a while since I have made a piece of art just for the sake of art, just for me.  I was inspired by this blog.  She has a really great demonstration for how to make this kind of painting on this post as well.

Anyway, I put it up in my room and the more I look at it, the more in I am in love.

Airplane Mobile

Tomorrow is my last day of maternity leave. It has been wonderful and gone by too quickly. As much as I would love to stay home forever and ever I know that returning to school is something that I must do. Luckily, for now, it is only for 4 weeks, then spring break, and then another 6 weeks after that before summer vacation.

So, needless to say, my mind and energy has been places other than my student's artwork lately. And that's how it should be. But that does not mean I have put my creative juices on hold.

I wanted to make something for Lynlee. Something that she could look at and think of her mommy and her daddy. I started this project during my "nesting" stage of pregnancy and finally finished it today. I hope it inspires our little girl to fly high, in the clouds.

Unfinished Projects

To say that is has been a while, would be an understatement, so let's just get down to it. It has been a while. But I have been working on things, I promise. I just haven't finished a lot of them lately, and for some reason I always feel like everything I put on here has to be finished.

So, this is what I was working on right after my last post:


As you can see, it is not finished, but almost there. It will eventually be one of five in a series I am painting for my mother-in-law. Sorry, Janet!
This project was put on hold so that I could work on this for Dane's Birthday:






Most of you have no idea what a big deal it is for me to scrapbook. I don't scrapbook. This was a true gift of love. Dane really wanted one, and I told him that it would never happen. It is happening, but as you can see there are several blank spots yet to be filled with captions, and basically the rest of our lives to finish it.
This project was also put on hold when pretty much every ounce of my energy became dedicated to making this:





This has pretty much put everything in my life on hold for the past 3 months. Yikes. It really is a lot of work! But for obvious reasons, this also remains unfinished.
So, now that I have hit month four and some of my energy is returning, it is once again taken elsewhere to work on putting my classroom together for the upcoming school year. I have so much to do--everything from organizing my cupboards, writing lesson plans, getting visual and posters ready along with classroom management stuff like seating charts, procedures...etc

I have 3 more weeks until school starts, half of a classroom to finish and an entire year's worth of lesson plans to get ready. I have a feeling that this will really be taking up the bulk of my time and energy, so the are that I may be posting will most likely be done by other artists like these.

Sorry for the absence, but know that I am still here, and ALWAYS working on something!

time to create

I am almost 100% positive that the people who read this blog also read my other one too, but also know me well enough as to why I haven't had much time to update this blog, and this part of my life to be quite honest. I am happy to say now that the chapter of my life where I was working 50-60 hrs/week is on hold--for at least 5 months. So what that means is that I have time to think for myself. Which means I have time to be creative. And I can't tell you how amazing it feels.

I am not just talking about having time to paint or crochet or do whatever new thing I am getting myself into, but also time to make dinner, try new recipes and even create some of my own. I think that if I had another life, I would go to culinary school. And in another, cosmetology school. And in another, study interior design. Who knows, maybe I can still do all of those. Either way, it feels good to have time to dream. It has been a while.

So, what have I been doing with all of this found time? Cooking a lot. Still crocheting. Finishing a painting that has been waiting for me for....ummmm...5 years? Wow. That long, huh? And getting ready to paint lots more little pleasures.

Yesterday I went to home depot to get some fresh masonite cut and today I made these. Waiting to become 22 6"x6" creations.


A few years ago at an art teachers' conference I got 2 free sample pads of canvas paper, one 6"x6" and another 6"x12". I love canvas paper. This is what I pasted to the boards. I haven't used it in years but remember how I loved the texture. The painting of the little boy in my blog heading was painted on canvas paper. (oh, and I love that I was able to make all of these panels for only $5.61.) Did I mention how good this feels?

I guess I am back

I have a good reason why it has taken me so long to update this, but I will have to explain later. For now, here is my latest: Christmas presents I crocheted for my sister and her daughters this last few months.

For Molly:


For Annie:


For Leslie Ann:


Click below to see bead details:

Afternoon Activity

Some of you may have seen the shoes I painted a few weeks ago for Dane.  I have been trying to figure out a design for me.  This idea was inspired by Joanne and her boys.  (Although she doesn't know that.)  I am just going to try and build up a portfolio for now and think I will paint myself another, less batman-y pair.  Oh yeah, and I am no where near charging the price Dane listed before.  Anyway, these were kinda fun.  

p.s. these shoes were a much cheaper alternative to Vans:  $5.99 at Rite-Aid.