Craft Sale Recap

So, as I had mentioned, I did my first craft sale on Saturday. Thank you so much to all of you who offered support and encouragement! It wound up being a pretty slow sale, with a lot of browsers over buyers overall, so I think I did pretty well considering that. Enough to make my time at the sale and the table worth it for the items that sold, and I’m planning to list a lot of what was left on etsy. Since I went into it with the mindset that this would likely happen and it would be a good chance to stock up my store with ready to sell items, I’m not at all disappointed!

I’m just going to embed some pictures from instagram, because it was a hectic week and I didn’t get around to taking good pictures, and whenever I get a good photography day whatever is left will get it’s little photoshoot and wind up on etsy anyhow.

I was really intimidated when I got to the sale because all of my stuff fit on top of the one brown basket and one load in from my van. The tables were much bigger than I expected and a lot of people really had their tables just full! I consoled myself with the thought that a lot of those folks were out of the stage of their lives where they had young kids at home, and/or had worked with others to fill their tables. The table beside me had a lockbox and I had this tiny little nearly empty ziploc bag of change, and wound up being quite grateful to my hubby when he popped by partway through to drop off some more.

 

These bibs were a very popular item. I only sold one, but many browsers declared their love and wished for grandchildren. (Apparently not many people there had babies to buy for, but half the items I sold were baby items anyways, and it was the baby stuff that was exclaimed over the most. I personally also enjoy exclaiming over baby gear and pining for babies, even when I have no business pining for babies.) I plan on releasing a free pattern for the bibs after I double check that someone hasn't already done so. The first two-tone bib was a bit of an accident, I was piecing to make the most of the fat quarter pack I had of this freakin' adorable Cloud 9 fabric by Made By Rae. Then I fell madly in love with the look, made pattern pieces for it, and went to town.

 

This girly outfit sold, and I was pleased as punch and simultaniously mourning just a little bit at the loss of the ability to take it out and coo over it at random moments.

 

The little foxy onesie went too, along with a bib, for an impending baby. Glad to see I'm not the only one who appreciates a little hand stitching. (You can blame Kristie for my current hand stitching obsession, she has been instagramming and blogging all sorts of goodies with horribly perfect hand stitching all over the place.)

That's it for now for the craft sale stuff. I'll leave you with a tiny little sneak peek video of Nicole's little bedroom, which I also finished last week and have yet to blog about. I'll be doing some catch-up next week so you may get two days of DIY posts!

See you on Friday for a round up!

April’s projects roundup

Here is a disjointed and disorganized collection of the projects I’ve completed this month. Happy April 30th! I think I might do monthly roundups more often, this makes me feel super accomplished, I have been a busy bee! I’ve actually done even more than this, I am not sure as to the timing, I’ve either done three tutus or five. Possibly 7.  I just fail at photographing tutus. I’ve done two pairs of jammie shorts for Nicole, as well. I even stayed on top of my housework more often than not, and reorganized my pantry and kid craft stuff into buckets. Ohoho. I reek of awesome. Don’t fall for it, though, I’ve been behind on laundry and my house has been ‘clean’ but not ‘pretty’ and my bedroom is a dis-as-ter. I was also antisocial for the last three weeks, partly to try catch up and partly because I’m trying really hard to get Olivia on some semblance of a schedule so I can get some semblance of a good sleep more than once a week. Ten minutes ago I would have said that was going great but now she’s crawling around on the floor so that’s definitely a bald-faced lie. It’s going off-and-on, is how it’s going.

What’s up, Buttercup?

Just a few pictures of what I’ve been up to, aside from sneezing and generally feeling sorry for myself. ;)

Yes, I just swooped in and replaced that picture because while cute, it was blurry, and it BOTHERED ME.

A Shabby Sweet headband (hand stitches only on this thing) and some leggies… okay, a LOT of leggies for SHOP{thelaundry}LINE… right now there’s a lot more on facebook than on etsy. I’ll start shifting things over to etsy on Monday. Once I hit 20 fans on facebook for that, I’m going to have not one but two contests, the winners will get their choice of a piece of haircandy or a pair of leggies. And look, boy leggies! I make stuff for boys! GASP! Actually between leggies and a superhero cape for my nephew (I know, tutorial on that still pending) I may possibly have made more boy than girl stuff this month. Fear not, I have a super girly and ruffly sleepsac in my head and on paper, it just has to make friends with my scissors and sewing machine now.

A doodle for a friend who also has the sickies, Shannon. I doodled it in a line notebook thinking ‘ah, I’ll just scan it in and redo the lineart in photoshop.’ Well, listen. As it turns out, drawing with a mouse is NOT like a bicycle, you have to learn all over again if you go like three years without doing it, and boo urn to that. I maybe want a graphics tablet again. My husband will hang me for sure if he catches whiff of that, though. “Oh, I told you not to get rid of it…” Listen, it was huge. When I bought it I had decided I was going to be an illustrator when I grew up (I was all of seventeen at the time.) Anyways, back on topic, Surprise, Shannon! When my friends felt sick or sad I used to do little doodles for them to try make them feel better. Now I tend to deliver soup and fresh buns, but the buns would be much less fresh by the time they got to you, so back to doodles it is! I feel dorky though because I didn’t draw it as carefully as I would have if I had realized it was going to be seen as-is. But I figured if I didn’t share it anyways you’d always wonder why I was creeping through your old pics. I was trying to figure out what kind of shirt to draw! LOL! This was based on your About Me pic…. no shirt!

It’s been nice again the last few days! I bought Nicole some sidewalk chalk paint from the dollar store and then watered it down by half since it was so thick it’d be gone in no time. It still turned out quite vibrant!

Olivia got Put Down Outside for the first time ever in her little bitty life. She was very excited!! I was snapping pictures of Nicole so I figured meh, why not. She loved it right up until she sneezed and smacked her face on the concrete patio. Everybody lived, she just got a bit dirty and was less thrilled.

Nicole has been outside almost constantly in this weather. When she gets bored of one outdoor toy I haul out another… nothing beats how well kids sleep when they get in some good outside time! I pulled out the sandbox toys this morning after she was done painting and she spent more than half of her waking and at-home time in there after that. I’m so glad for warmer weather, woohoo!!! I feel like such a good mommy when my kid is outside licking sand off her fingers and getting dirt in her hair like a three year old should really be doing.

There won’t be any more of the crochet series until next week, I think I’ll do two videos a week until the series is done, then it’s still a bit more manageable. Also I expect a new niece or nephew to make an appearance in the next week, my sister in law is apparently trying to compete with me for Most Overdue Baby. I hope for her sake she doesn’t win ;) I’m very excited to have a new baby around to make for and snuggle! Her babies tend to stay babies, unlike my own, so that’s something to look forwards to.

I’m spending time with the fam for the long weekend so I’m not sure how things will roll on the post front… if you don’t hear from me then I hope you have a blessed Good Friday and a happy Easter!

faux-chenille baby blanket

I’ve finally finished my faux-chenille baby blanket! A lot of love went into this project, from both myself and from Chris! No, not just ‘he worked for the money to buy the materials needed to…’ (; Chris put in more than his fair share of time on this project, cutting rows and rows and rows of lines to make the faux-chenille on the back.

This project was one of the main things I did to pass the time when I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay overdue with Olivia. Then it took me forever after she was born to get back into the sewing room to finish the binding. Finally I remembered that you don’t have to have time to finish a project to work on it when you have a craft room. It’s why you have a craft room. So nobody can touch your shit and you can just abandon it mid-project and come back to it next time you have five minutes to steal.
 So I ironed the fabric one day… cut the binding another… sewed the binding into a long strip… ironed it again… ironed it folded… and finally got to the part where I sewed it on! That took another two days, of course.

Above you can see the faux chenille on the back, which is created by sewing four fabrics together with approximatly one million tiny lines of quilting, and then cutting three of the four layers. When I read the tutorial for this over at Aesthetic Nest one of my first thoughts was actually something along the lines of “and Chris can help me with the cutting because he LOVES helping me with my sewing projects!” This may possibly be a slight exaggeration in my own mind, but he does enjoy helping me out with my little projects. So he logged in a few hours of cutting while watching Deadliest Catch on Netflix.

Can’t have a mini photo shoot without Nicole hopping in to say hi! Check out the difference in skin tones on these girls… Nicole has Chris’ skin tone, Olivia has mine. Pale delicate flowers that we are. Ha. (And Nicole, of course, can look out a window in spring and develop a suntan. And she still has a swimsuit tanline on her little bum, I noticed today. I lost my tanlines on… hmmm…. September 1st? Something like that?)

What I really love about this blanket is the more it is loved the more lovely the back will become. It will soften up more every time it goes through the wash and frays. I absolutely adore that about this project! This is the first time I’ve really done a project with ‘forever’ in mind and it makes me feel very happy to think that this blanket might someday be cherished and snuggled by Olivia’s own children, all soft and aged and cute. Bestill my heart. Perhaps there is a little bit of a romantic in me, after all.

I am still hemming and hawing over how much I like the binding. Instead of going with the thin binding, I used the Wide Binding Tutorial at Sew Dang Cute Crafts. Well, I sortof used it, I read it like sixty times and then did it off of my memory and did things a wee bit differently but it still worked out! Anyways, I thought the thick brown binding might ground the blanket a bit, but now I’m not sure if it looks good or if it wrecks it a bit. Feel free to weigh in, I’m not against ripping it off and sewing on a thin delicate pink or white binding instead! This is supposed to be an heirloom type project and I have logged so much time into it already, I don’t mind redoing that part to perfect it. Especially because I think it’s already showing that the binding was a cheaper fabric than the blanket itself. The binding color has been growing on me these last few days, but I’m still not sure. What do you all think?

working the room

So Nicole and I went and played downstairs in my/our craft room for a while. Her crafting involved foam sheets/stickers, a glue stick, and lots of googly eyes. I’m not sure what she was doing but she was quite happy. At one point she proudly presented to me her hands with a googly eye on each fingertip. To each her own. ;) I had burned a kazillion of these little circles when I was helping a friend make a hairpiece for a wedding. I always meant to do something with the extras, and today I sat down and whipped them up into two flowers, a smallish-medium one for my hair and a tiny one for my ring. I’m not entirely 100% certain which blogger inspired the little ring one, I think it was Mrs. Priss. She’s hilarious, btw, go laugh at her. Except maybe don’t because she’s kindof pregnant and hormonal right now, like somebody else we know *cough* and you never know how she might interpret it. Funny story in regards to the hairpin one. I was sitting in the furthest corner of the basement, aka my craft room, and thinking angstily about how my bobby pins were all the way upstairs. I was considering finishing it up later, with the hassle of going up and down over just one little bitty bobby bin. Just then, I kidd you not, a bobby pin fell out of my hair and plinked onto the floor. Yup, yesterday I did some sort of swiss-miss around-the-head braid and secured it with pins and it’s still in there today, so there were a kazillion bobby pins in my hair and I had forgotten all about it until one fell out just at that moment.

Too funny :)

(I’m not going to try to come close to the large number of amazing tutorials on how to do these flowers that are out there. If you’re curious, just ask and I’ll hunt a few down for you.)

Craft Room – 99% finished!

It needs new chairs, and the drop ceiling and lighting need to be dealt with. Also, the plug in thingers are still kindof hanging out of the wall. But not bad for a corner that started off like this when we moved into our house:

The wall to the left there that the TV was on was actually a stone panelling, so that makes three types of panelling in here, plus another kind in the hallway leading up to this, if I recall correctly. Very stylin. Also, the carpet had the texture of astro-turf, so that was nice. Chris stripped it down to the concrete and reinsulated, framed everything up differently, and now we have our gorgeous playroom and MY gorgeous ‘play’room! My husband totally ROCKS.

Here we can see how I’m allowed to be as ridiculous as I want to in here. Hot pink iron was a wedding gift (holla, Deen!) and the ironing board cover was from Winners. Also you can see a partially-pieced quilting project. It was technically my first project, but after I pieced it I pieced and quilted a dolly quilt with some scraps, since I figured I better actually try quilting first. I will find it and post about it later. Also you can see some blue hearts fabric, because EVERYTHING HAS TO BE BLUE for Nicole lately. Not that she hates pink or anything, thank goodness. But “No… I want blue.” is her fav phrase. When I work on a project that requires the serger, I have it pulled out all the way to the front of the desk and then there is ample room to use both machines at once. Not like I can actually physically do that, but I don’t have to move anything around (except say, myself) to be able to switch back and forth. I have a little nook for Nicole. In the storage thing goes craft supplies I don’t mind her having full access to. So, not her paints or glitter glue. She’s three. She still gets Bright Ideas sometimes. Okay I just love all the shiny whiteness and the organized-ness. I fit all of my crap priceless craft supplies in there! I love boxes. Theoretically I could hide lots of things in the cubbies under the desk but I am hippo-pregnant right now and crawling under a desk isn’t so much going to happen right now. When there is no flash, my memory makers cabinet looks like it was MADE to be in this room. (I got it a few years back with a 50% off Michaels coupon!) My spool ribbons live here… a cheese whiz jar full of little vials of glitter… thread… cutting tools… inks… some double-sided tape type adhesives… fabric glues, fabric paints, painty paints… and a bunch of random small things. From left to right… knits, clothing-type fabrics (denim, suiting, shiny, etc), upholstery/home dec fabrics, quilting cottons. And of course my little Janome serger had to sneak in the shot. Look, an almost empty shelf! I will probably put a few more pictures and little happy things in this one yet. Upper left shelf, this is where Nicole’s paints and glitter glues are hiding. Also my prismacolor pencil crayons, the craft supply that’s been with me the longest. It was a gift from my parents back in highschool! (I bet a lot of you didn’t even know I draw. Drawing was the first thing I did. Actually in highschool, the only thing. As opposed to schoolwork. cough.) And a box of fun pens and painting pens and gel pens and markers and doodad writing thingers. And of course, Mod Podge! My cricut, a gift from Chris the Christmas after Nicole was born. I don’t use it nearly often enough. Actually, I haven’t used it in forever. I do have some projects with it planned though, if I can find my Doodlecharms cartridge back! I have a lot of patterns. Not counting my supply of Ottobre magazines, which are all over the house. I love Ottobre…My broom! It makes me happy when I sweep. Chris would describe it as ‘the most hideous thing I have ever seen. In my life.’ …I think he’s just jealous. He asked incredulously where you even buy stuff like this. Well, this baby is from Winners, but I text messaged him victoriously on Saturday because at HomeSense there is an ENTIRE AISLE full of fancy brooms and mops and suchlike. Yay!  The view when you first enter the room. Nicole’s stuff is up in front so she has no excuses to hide under my table and ‘help’ me press the footpedal. And just for funsies, this is what I looked like when I finished doing all the dragging-downstairs-of-the-craft-supplies and organizing. No fear, Chris did the heavy lifting and I broke down my crap supplies into laundry baskets full and hauled it downstairs that way. Seriously, you have no idea how much crap supplies are in this room. Suffice it to say, more than several laundry baskets full, over several days/weeks.Awww, I love you baby. Even if you are made of lead. Seriously, my midwife didn’t even weigh my yesterday, she just felt the baby and was like, “Wow, baby sure grew a lot this time!” Yeah, I noticed. The three-point-turn middle of the night rollover has turned into a five-point-turn, occasionally with assist. We have a 24/7 Charlie Horse over here, too. Low, low baby. I’m gonna sneeze this little goober out when the time comes. There’s not much distance to travel. Six weeks left! Not enough time to get everything I’d like to finish done, but holy-cow-seriously-I-have-to-keep-getting-bigger-for-another-six-weeks?! at the same time. 

I’ll be linking up to a few linky parties. Don’t be shocked if this post gets edited a few times as I add some more. Here we be: