Hello, my crafty peeps! A happy Tuesday to you all. I am completely in a sewing zone, but figured I had better take a break for a few to post something for our Crafty Tuesday today.

I got invited by my craft-aliscious friend, Jamie, (the one who gave me the book – my current obsession!) to a private paper crafting party this past weekend. So after a decadent breakfast we ventured over to PaperSource and had a little paper fun. By the way, the PaperSource is my achilles heel. It is the most amazing store and I always find a million things that I cannot live without.

Speaking of which, why did nobody clue me into the amazing world of embossing? I think I might be in love with embossing. Just a little.

We embossed some cool cards and envelopes…

And we also learned how to do envelope lining, which I will most definitely be doing a lot of from now on…

And a few others…

I LOVE this one. We used chalk stamppads for this…

One of these days I will prepare a little ahead of time, and maybe actually take some photos in the nice natural daylight so that they actually look decent, instead of scrambling around at the last minute on Monday night. For now, back to the sewing machine!

Whatchu got for me today?

Maybe we should title this CT – Christmas in July.

I have six months of projects ahead of me, thanks to my friend Jamie. She found this amazing book, and being that our birthdays are semi-close together, she bought one for me and one for herself. So we are on a serious sewing mission.

The book has gorgeous photos, lovely vintage fabrics, and is simply brimming with inspiration.
Every page I turned I thought “oh, I need one of those!” Like these cool desk organizers…

Or how nice would this be to curl up under on a cool winter evening?
(Although it is hard to think of that on a day like today when it is a scorching 95 degrees!)

I know Tiger and two little girlies that would love some floor pillows like these.

Or a quilt for their bed like this.

And how much do you love this robe?

Or these lounge-y pants?
(I think I spend a good 60-70% of my life in lounge pants, so they should at the very least be stylish, don’t you think?)

But my favorite is (and my first project will be) – this apron.
I love aprons, but oddly enough do not have any cool ones, and I am an extremely messy cook/baker!
(And this fabric is AWE-SUM!)

So I’m making a deal with myself. I’m going to make one of the aprons for myself first – I should definitely do a trial run, don’t you think? And then I’ll make TWO other things to give away as Christmas presents. Then I can make something for our house, and then TWO more Christmas presents, and so on. I figure by Christmas I should have a pretty good stash of handmade and cool gifts for everyone.

Family and friends: if you think you simply must have one of these, or have a preference for any of them – lemme know!

Before I get to those, I have to finish up a few other gifts. Addie and Emma picked out this great fabric and we are making a gown for my friend Vic. She was diagnosed about a month ago with Inflammatory Breast Cancer. She has begun the fight of her life and we are hoping this will help during all of the endless hospital visits. It’s getting there, all pinned and ready to be zipped up – I promise it’ll be to you soon, Vic!

I also organized all of my scraps of fabric late the other night so that I can make one of these fantastic Birthday banners for Em’s best friend, who also happens to be the daughter of Jamie  (who bought me the very cool book above). She is a crazy, crafty lady – so it has to be pretty good. Anybody have any experience with this Heat-n-Bond stuff? Anything I should know before I get all into this project?

So that is it for me today. Nothing concrete, but lots of inspiration. Lots of plans. What about you? Anything crafty to share and inspire us?

We are busily preparing for our vacation later this week, so I only have a few things and a few minutes to share our crafties for the week.

I finished my niece’s little sundress, and it will be sent on its’ merry way tomorrow, hopefully to arrive in plenty ‘o time for her birthday next week.

Yeah, again with the purchased shirred fabric – paired with a cute bottom fabric – and voila! Sundress goodness. The girls have worn their dresses twice each already, so I guess they are a hit.

Yesterday started our little Summer School Project ’09. Nena is here and we did some girly stuff (mani/pedicures) so we only had a few hours of school, but we started on Our Ocean World. We are turning the playroom into an underwater world.

Today we worked on alphabets (Addie), some spelling (Emma), alphabetizing (Emma again) and then went through our flashcards and started to find facts about all of our animals. Then we read the Rainbow Fish and made our own fish and hung them in our ocean. We are working on crabs and jellyfish today.

This time next week we will be lying under a palm tree or observing real fish up close and personal. So…Crafty Tuesday will be on hiatus, unless someone wants to guest host it at their place?

Have a great, crafty week!

Why, hello there! Just digging myself out from behind the sewing machine over here.  All of the costumes are done and just waiting for the musical this weekend. Can I get a “Hallelujah?”

Plus, I finally got Addie’s little pillowcase dress sewn up. She had it on for exactly 1.5 seconds, so photos of the dresses actually ON the the girls are still coming. But here is the finished dress…

It is a really small pink and green checked seersucker. It is girly and cute and looks really sweet on her!

But the REAL project around here the past two days has been our playroom/office/craftroom.

So the story. We had our desk on the big wall of the room, which also has the outlet that is controlled by the lightswitch. So for awhile, we had an extension cord for all of the desk stuff (phones, computers, etc.) that ran across the doorway to another outlet. Not optimal.

And then, we had the great flood of ’09 and I had to rearrange the cords to get make sure nobody got electrocuted and therefore the lightswitch did not, in fact, turn on any lights, but would shut our computer off if it was on. It was very inconvenient.

So this weekend, J. went in to rig it all back up properly, and he innocently suggested that maybe I would like to move the office and craft area back into the little nook area – otherwise known as the “black hole of toys.”

First, I LOVE to rearrange and organize rooms, but I’m not really able to rearrange many of the rooms in our house now because we have lots of windows, and most of the rooms have really only one “way.”

So, of course, I had to accept that challenge! Plus the toys have been needing a good whittling down for awhile, and we are having a garage sale in a few weeks, so perfect opportunity. Three garbage bags for the tag sale, and one garbage bag to recycle later, and we are getting close to a finished room. Again.

The new layout leaves a lot more room for the girls to actually hang out and play.

And it also tucks all of my stuff back into this little area, full of beautiful natural light. I love it!

Of course, I’m not doing any real close-ups of my area yet. I’m going to tackle that tomorrow (today). But I could possibly even put up a little curtain and hideout back there. Maybe I shouldn’t have put my sewing machine away so quickly, hmmm…

What about everyone else? Any good crafty stuff? Any Clean House projects? Let me have ’em!

Painting and sewing, sewing and painting. But, none of it is what I would call exciting or photo-worthy.

I finished the 20 tunics last week and I have three more for this week. Didn’t get to Addie’s little dress, and she is quite upset over it, but I guess she’ll live. I love how all of you knew exactly what those types of dresses were called though! Pillowcase dresses. I love it. Hopefully next week I’ll have  Ad’s done to show you.

Over the weekend we all went to help paint sets for the church spring musical, and I also have some homework. I’ve been painting the map of Paul’s second mission tonight. Complete with Macedonia, Crete and the whole Mediterranean area. It is truly a work of art. Like I said, not really “photo-worthy.”

I do have a question for my nurse friends and veteran moms out there. I must add a disclaimer here though, if you are drinking your morning coffee or eating anything, or are easily disgusted – you might not want to look at this.

Ok, ready?

Really?

Here goes…

What do you think?

And no, not “she seriously needs a pedicure.”

Do you think it is broken? And there isn’t really anything they can do even if it is broken, right?

And excuse the blood, I just took the bandage off of it, apparently it has not stopped bleeding from about five hours ago. That probably isn’t good either, huh?

Now you know – no more wondering where my graceful girls get it from. I actually managed to have a “run in” with the table while I was trying to whisk a whiny Addie off to timeout.

So I’m off to mix some more paint, and whine about the incredible pain in my toe. Show me the GOOD craftiness you have today, won’t you?

Man…I actually DO have a real, honest-to-goodness project to show today. But alas, not very good photos of it. Bah! Sometimes you just can’t win.

So I finished the little dress for Em that has been in pieces for a good two months. I had found these cute little dresses on Etsy and now I cannot find the dresses or the artist. But I tried to eyeball it and make a little pattern that I could use to make some of the dresses for the girls. They are pretty easy, just little slip dresses with ribbons in the collar that tie at the shoulder. Em actually had it on this afternoon, and instead of taking a photo of it on a live model, in good light, I got sidetracked. So you get this photo instead…

I will take a photo of it actually on tomorrow – she has already decided she is going to wear it to school. Because of the stupid flash I had to use, you can’t see that it has a little glitter stripe in the fabric – so Emma calls it “fancy” fabric. 🙂

I have Ad’s all cut out and ready to go as well, but I am in the process of making 20 tunics for the church’s spring musical. So I’m going to try to power through all of those tomorrow and maybe get Ad’s done for her for to wear to school on Thursday. She is so very concerned that her dress still has pins in it!

What other crafty goodness do you all have that we can gaze longingly upon?

My parents are here this week – well, until tomorrow – so I haven’t had a chance to craft much again.

But before they came Addie and I had a little crafty day with her friend, while their older sisters went to a birthday party. We had found a little suncatcher kit and did some painting.

These were the two I completed…

And these was the day’s haul…

It was a fun little activity. Although it was not washable paint…um, sorry Erin! I hope it came out of little E.’s dress!

And, I made this one little card for the birthday party. I love how it turned out and I was thinking I would make some as backups, but I guess I would have to make some with like 4, 5, and 6 little tags. Eh, maybe it isn’t really something I can make ahead of time.

I haven’t had a lot of time to read blogs this week, but I’ll be catching up later in the week!