Lil' Artists

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my niece and nephew came over and we had craft time! See some super cute photos of them painting. Now I have some great artwork to decorate my craft room!

Here is a cute video of lil' Shay painting a "Turkey"!

Happy Friday (well almost...)!

Friday Night Earrings

Well the title may lead you to believe these earrings are made for wearing on a Friday night, but actually they were just created on a Friday night.

So the only reason I got out my bead box tonight after dinner was to fix a pair of earrings for my aunt. I forgot she could only wear clip earrings so I had to convert the earrings I gave her over Christmas. Since I had everything out...and I am challenged when it comes to doing only one crafting task...I made a few more pairs.

I have been so excited to wear some earrings made of these bright light green stones!

I think I will veg out the rest of the evening and pack my stuff for my mini-trip tomorrow after spin class! Have a great weekend!

The Source...

....of my creative mind likely came from this woman, my maternal grandmother, or Nana to those who knew her. She was a very talented women, especially talented in painting. I will try to take some photos of the beautiful pieces she created. She taught me how to paint when I was about 12 and I won a few ribbons in the state fair. 

I love the cuff around her upper arm in the childhood photo (one with and one without auto touch up!).

And here is another photo of her in her stunning teenage years. I believe she is 19 here, just the year she and my Pa got married. She is a beauty!

Cute Clutches Continued

I was so excited after the first two clutches I made, that I made two more this last week. Cutting pieces here and there and finally buying some zippers so that I could assemble them. I made these two entirely out of fabric scraps that I had laying around...yes literally laying under and around my sewing table.

Fun! The owl clutch surely shows off my awful stitching. Both of my machines are in dyer need of some TLC...I promise I can sew a straight line. Going to see if my Pa can give my machines a tune up this weekend.

Cute Clutches!

When I go to Target or any other department store, I often browse past the clutches and wallets to check for sales! I love clutches, but rarely buy them because they are usually over priced and made of cheap materials. I found this fantastic tutorial on how to make a clutch so today jumped right in and made two. I have never really sewn in zippers before, so I was so EXCITED for what I did today.

The full zipper clutch tutorial is available from Skip To My Lou.

Here are some photos that I took along the way.

The front of the floral clutch. 

The inside lining with credit card holder slots.

 The zipper end tabs. 

Close ups of the zipper end tabs. 

Pinning the outside and liner pieces to the zipper.  

One side sewed to the zipper, ready for the next. 

 Pinning the outside and liner pieces to the zipper. Because of the pleats, I pinned very frequently. 

You must leave a gap when sewing up the liner piece. The first clutch I made, I left the gap in the side of the liner. This make it extremely hard to sew once I had the clutch right side out. This time, I put the hole in the bottom of the liner to make it easier to sew once finished. 

Here are the finished products, each one has place for credit cards/ids and a divider pocket for a checkbook or receipts.

Keeping Warm on the Mountain

One of my most favorite things to do this winter and any other winter is snowboard. Some days on the mountain are extremely cold so I created a face mask that looks like a bandanna but much warmer. I have changed them up a little since I first started making them and here is a quick tutorial on how I make them now.

Cut your main fabric like the photo below. If you fold it in half, the dimensions are approximately 12" across the top (24" total width), 4" along the sides, and 14" down the centerline toward the point. Reduce the length and width a few inches for a kids sized face mask.

I wanted to use up some fabric I had so I put two pieces together, otherwise there is not a seam in the point that you see in the photo.

Cut a piece of fleece the same size.

Lay out two strips of velcro so that you can see exactly where you need to sew them. Sew on the velcro pieces keeping in mind that you need about 1/4" on each edge for your hem.  

Sew on your velcro to the front of each piece. Then take your two pieces and place them front to front and sew 1/4" around each edge, leaving about 2-3" to turn the piece inside out. 

Once the piece is turned right side out and you have sewed up the hole, I do some decorative stitching as shown below. 

Now it's complete and ready to wear on those chilly days snowboarding, skiing, biking, or anything else! 

Yoga in Style

I was looking for a pattern for a bag for my yoga mat and mentioned so at the January ABQ Modern Sewing Guild meeting at Hipstitch last month. There just so happened to be a yoga mat bag right there in the studio that was made from a great Amy Butler pattern. I loved the pattern except for the large pocket around the bottom half of the bag. I'll admit that it looks cute, but doesn't really serve a purpose. So my bag has a smaller pocket toward the top for keys, id card, phone, etc. After taking a peek at some bags at Target tonight (~$26.99), I thought my bag (1 yard of heavy fabric and 1 yard of a lining fabric) for a total cost of about $6 (sale plus old fabric) + 2 hours of time was well worth it.

Since the pattern has such a great tutorial, I really don't need to elaborate. So here are some photos of the final product!

PS - Big thanks to Tandy for making me read my sewing machine manual! 

Valen-TINY

So one thing that I love about Valentine's Day is that my mom always says "Happy Valentiny". When I was a kiddo I thought it was goofy, but now I love it and will look forward to Monday when she says it to me. As you may have seen in my previous post, I bought like a 1,000 4-inch fabric squares for $4 at a thrift store in Angel Fire. The first time I browsed through the bag I saw a couple of heart patterned squares. Well I dug out a few...

...cute little heart and Valentine patterns. So I cut them into strips and sewed them together.

I cut this piece in 1-inch strips to use on the front of some Valentine's Day cards. Here are a few cards I quickly made with my fabric strips and some little buttons I had. 

I added some pink paper inside the cards to write on. 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Tiny Skulls

So I have some super cute tiny sugar skulls with ornament hooks in them that need decorating. If you have any ideas about how I should decorate/use these, let me know. I wanted to get some finished before Christmas, but obviously didn't *hmmm two months later*.

I placed a beer bottle cap next to them to give you an idea of how small they really are. I'll post some more pics if I get around to decorating them soon!