My Little Piece of Crafty Heaven

 I was pretty embarrassed to post pictures of my art area the other day. That was probably the messiest it has ever looked since moving into the house. I don't know how that happens. How can things be so organized & my work area neat & tidy then, BAM! It looks like a bomb went off. Crazy!

I worked for a couple hours over the past few nights & I finally have my art area in working order again. 

It's nothing fancy but it serves it's purpose. A place for everything & everything in its place. Well.......almost everything. I have 4 more giant bins of fabric but Dean says another $50 cubical is not really in our budget right now, lol, so this will have to do until a later date. A great excuse to get working on projects. The more supplies I use the more I can move in from the garage & out of storage. How about you, where do you create?

Storytime

Zoe reading to Omri

My only regret is not capturing the "reading" of this story for posterity's sake. It was hilarious. Way more entertaining than the real story. 

7th Finish

I'm almost ashamed to post about this finish. Mostly for how very long it has taken me to get it done. I won this lovely giveaway almost two years ago. Two.....years.....ago. Well almost. Anywho. SO as I was going through my disaster of an art area I found the box with this darling felt cake inside. I knew my girls would love to play with this, but I wasn't willing to pick up felt cake pieces from morning until night. I wanted to sew the little felt embellishments on. So I sat down & did it. It only took me a few hours of hand sewing over two nights. 

I love how it turned out! 

The girls love it too.

Even though I didn't actually make the cake I'm still counting the hand sewing as a finish. It's a project that has haunted me for far too long. 

::7 Down, 45 to go::

6th Finish

Happy Anniversary

I Woke up this morning to a TON of snow. I made an executive decision to keep Sloan home from school. Her poor joints are all swollen & it seems like her flair ups are getting closer & closer together. Bless her little heart. She is my sweet little pumpkin, however when her flare ups hit she makes life miserable for everyone. Well she tries. I've been working with her on making better choices even if you aren't feeling well. It's tough. I know how hard it is for me to be happy when I'm feeling lousy. 

Most of the afternoon was spent with a super nice repair man from Charter. Our Internet has been acting up since Christmas. At first it was a little & now it's all the time. It's gotten to the point that we are unable to watch steaming video of any sort. I took our Mac to the Apple store & they said it wasn't the computer. We will be buying an external hard drive next week so we can back up this puppy & then take it in for a better look, just in case. Charter seems to think it's something to do with the old cables. They mentioned a whole lot of computer/tech terms that I didn't understand. It all boils down to one point, it is something on their end & they plan on fixing it. They are coming to change out the old wiring tomorrow or Tuesday. Hopefully that will remedy the situation. Seriously, I'm really missing all my Hulu shows.

Due to all the computer shenanigans I am a little late in posting the finished card. This is my 6th finish of the year. Woohoo! However I need to play a little catchup if I'm going to fit in all 52 projects that I hope to finish. I love seeing all the projects that you guys are finishing. So much talent! Well I'm getting ready to watch a movie while I cut out some patterns. It's too late to start my next illustration that I've sketched out. So I'll work on some sewing until tomorrow. Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

::6 down 46 to go::

Stitched Card Tutorial

I thought it would be fun to share a little tutorial on how I make my stitched illustrations. I shared a tutorial a couple years back & I tried to find it but I couldn't. So here goes. First I select the papers to use & I map out the illustration.

Of course every illustration starts out as a sketch. 

The tools you will need for this project are a hammer,scissors, double sided tape, pencil, cutting mat, nail, needle, & embroidery thread.

Next I sketch out the saying. In this case it's "Happy Anniversary". Sometimes this step takes me a little while to get the lettering just right. I don't use templates & always freehand but you could print out some lovely fonts from online & trace them using tracing paper.

For the next step I add a tiny amount of double back tape to the piece of paper. Then I lay the lettering down in the correct spot. When everything is in place I take my nail and tap my hammer to create holes along the letters. Take your time with this step. Allow similar spacing of holes for a more cohesive look when it comes to the stitching part of your illustration.

I had already started to stitch this one but I thought I'd show you what the back will look like. Sometimes I get lost when stitching my letters. When this happens I look at my sketch & can always figure out where I am. 

The front will look like this. I'll share the finished card with you tomorrow. Update:: Just added the finished picture so you can see the whole process. I really wanted to finish this up last night but Aris woke up from her nap with a high fever. No biggie until she threw up. Ugh. Poor little thing wanted to be held all.......night.......long.........

until the Tylenol set in and then she was running around on a medicine high. Thankfully she only threw up once & so far everyone else seems to be staying healthy. She's still running a fever but no barf today. Should I knock on wood here?

Check back here tomorrow for the finished illustration. You can download my past love card illustrations for free

::here::

and give one to your sweetie.