Quilting for Non Quilters

I really love quilts.  I love the use of color to create beautiful designs.  But sadly, I just don't have the sewing skills y'all.  But I just came up with a cool way to make a quilt block using rolls of paper from catalogs, magazines, and gift wrap.  You can get all the details and instructions here on my Hubpages!

I wanted to share some simple ideas for basic quilt blocks that would be great for this project.  These are just simple sketches - I didn't measure anything out or make sure my lines were straight, but hopefully it will give you some ideas if you want to make your own rolled paper quilt block.  Each space or area could be filled with a different color of paper rolls to create a design like a quilt block.

This is just a simple 9 block square.  Each block could be filled with a different color.  The arrows can give you an idea of which direction to lay out your rolls of paper.

I'm not a quilting expert, but I think this design is called "Courthouse Stairs."

My lines aren't straight here, but this is a basic "Log Cabin" block design.

Or, you can use multiple blocks, and trace a letter on each to fill in with paper, and spell out words like "baby", "love", "peace", or "noel".

I even made a festive holiday wreath decorated with little gold beads.  This would be great as a holiday card or cut out and hung with ribbon on a Christmas tree.  Check out the tutorial for more ideas!

{Friday Favorites}: Handmade Baskets

Handmade Basket by Eunice M. Hatley of Norwood, NC.

When my husband and I were dating, we'd often find arts & crafts fairs in the tri-state area and make a day of visiting a new town to see their arts festival.  It's a great way to check out a new place, see what's going on, try new restaurants, and see some wonderful handmade crafts.

This hobby of our's fell by the wayside when we bought our house and were working on our home and yard each weekend.  So last weekend, we were excited to go to the Mt. Mitchell Arts Festival in Burnsville, NC.

We had a great time, and while we were there I picked up this beautiful handmade basket by Eunice M. Hatley from Norwood, NC.  I particularly like the woven colored crosses in the pattern that remind me of knitting.  I'm just amazed at her craft and skill.

I had wanted to buy a basket for the bottom of our console table for a long time.  I picked up this beauty at the Goodwill store for $1.50.  The price was right and I love the basket, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted.  I assume it's handmade, but probably imported.

Goodwill bargin

Someday, I'd love to buy one of Clay Burnette's baskets.  I used to work with Clay and have seen a number of his woven baskets in person.  They are amazing!  More than baskets, they really are abstract sculptures.  I love his use of color and the fantastic shapes he's able to create using pine needles.  Check out Clay's blog to see more of his amazing baskets.

basket by Clay Burnette from http://clayburnette.wordpress.com/

{Favorites}: Building A Better Brooch

Sadly, I've been away from my crafting lately.  I started a full-time job a couple of months ago after a couple of years of working at home.  It's been a bit of a transition, and my crafting has suffered the worst of it (sad face).

But, I'm getting used to a new routine and have found time in my schedule to do a few craft projects here and there (though not as many as I'd like). Here's one of my latest projects:

I found these wonderful wooden shaped brooch and pendant bezels on Etsy at a store called artbase.  Marcos and Betty make these lovely bases that you can fill with whatever you want to make your own personal piece of jewelry.

You can see with this simple bird pin that I stacked some vintage buttons in the opening to make a colorful and cute little brooch.

To make this pin:  I found some of my favorite buttons that worked well together.  First, I chose a button that filled the entire opening as my first layer.  I superglued that large button into the circular opening.  Then I ran out of superglue.  I let that dry and used just basic white craft glue to adhere the dark purple button on the next layer.  Then as that dried, I just ran a few stitches through my littlest button in a complimentary thread color, tied it off, and glued it to the top of my button stack.

Once all my buttons were dry, I glued the pinback to the back of my brooch (artbase sends a pinback along with the brooch bezel).

I've bought a few of these empty bezels and have other plans for them.  I hope to share these ideas in the coming weeks:)

 

{Too} Long Time Coming: Anniversary Collages

Months ago, I posted about putting my nose to the grindstone and getting some much-procrastined (is this a word?) craft projects done.  I planned to finish these projects in March, but these collages have taken MUCH longer.  Ugh.

But they are finally done!  Conceived as an anniversary present for my husband in 2013 (!!!), there are four separate collages.  For each one, I've taken a photo of someplace we've visited, and then expanded the photo using collage materials, mainly images torn from magazines.

Each one includes a little snippet of a map image, showing the name of the place in the photo.

I originally planned for these collages to hang in a row, but now I wonder if they would look better grouped in a square?  I'll post (hopefully) better photos when we've decided how to arrange them and hung them in place.

Meet One of the Craftys Award Finalists - ME!

The Craftys Awards are an online contest for some of the best craft submissions.  This was the first year of the awards and submissions were accepted in a number of categories:  knitting and crochet, sewing and quilting, edible crafts, jewelry-making, and many other craft categories.

I submitted a few of my craft tutorials and was thrilled when my Field of Flowers Tote Bag was chosen as one of the ten finalists in the knitting and crochet category!!!

Ultimately, my tote bag was not chosen as the winner, but that's okay.  I'm over the moon that my tote bag was chosen as a finalist.  The knitting and crochet winner was a knit wedding dress that's just amazing!  I congratulate Stephanie Klose on her well-deserved win!  Great job!!

Check out all the winning crafters and projects on the Craftys website.  A big round of applause to all the winners!  Can't wait until next year :)

Ombré Necklace Tutorial

I really love the ombré color trend right now and I couldn't resist making an ombré necklace out of my favorite materials - VINTAGE BUTTONS!!!  My finished necklace took a whopping 95 buttons, but you could also make a beautiful necklace using fewer buttons as just a central detail, maybe using just one color and some neutral white and gray buttons.  You can find all the details and directions on my HubPages.  

Love it!

And if this wasn't enough jewelry excitement, my local library held a bead-stringing class this past weekend, where I made another beautiful necklace!  Gotta love your local library :)

Gardening for Dummies (and Journaling too)

photo after frost :(

Now that the weather is warming up, we're turning a bit of our attention to our backyard garden.  My husband and I don't really do much in this area - just stick some flowers in the ground and hope for the best (which, this year, was freezing temperatures and frost a few days after we planted).

But this year, I thought I would try to be a bit more responsible in our gardening.  So I've started a garden journal.  I read this interesting article about garden journals and thought it might be helpful to keep track of the types of plants we put in, how many plants we bought, when we planted them, and then the results.  Then we would know what worked and what didn't work for next year.  Smart, huh?

So I dug out this cheap but pretty spiral notebook that I bought at Big Lots for a $1 and the alphabet stamps my husband bought me for Christmas.  Using a larger mailing label, I started to make a decorative title block for my garden journal.  I soon realized that:

1.  The ink pad I had bought to use with the stamps is crap
2.  Stamping takes a bit of practice and preparation

You can see from the photo above that I need to work on getting the right pressure on the stamps and figure out how to get them to line up.  Instead of worrying about it, I decided to just go with it.

I continued to stamp my title is a jumblely kind of way, intentionally setting the letters unevenly and pressing the edge of the stamp down to create a block.  Then I took my color pencils and colored in the blocks and letters in different tones to match my notebook.

I actually quite pleased with the result.  And I was a good girl and immediately wrote down some notes about our plants and garden.  I think I might be getting the hang of this gardening thing ;)