gratitude wrap

Over the weekend I made this cute little "gratitude wrap." You can download a free PDF with directions to make one on the SouleMama blog (over on the left side under "For you!"). Isn't the fabric adorable? I got it from good-ness but unfortunately I'm not seeing it in her shop now.

I think it's the perfect house for my Gwen Frostic cards. :)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here's a few fun things to make or print. :)

Saint Patrick's Day Cupcakes from Martha (pictured above)

Shamrock pin how-to by Stitcher Scribbler

Crochet a Four Leaf Clover from Crochet Spot

Make a rainbow cake at Omnomicon

Bake some Irish Soda Bread from All Recipes

Download and print a Shamrock party kit at HP

Saint Patrick's Day Pins from Martha

colorful

This past week, whenever I had some extra time, I was busy working on a few things for my shop, including the bookmarks in the photo. I'll be listing them over the next few days. I wanted some colorful ones and I really like how they turned out. I'm also working on a couple other fun things but they're not ready for their close-ups yet. :)And I have something free (and colorful) for you all : labels you can download and print. You can print them out on sticker paper, or print them on cardstock and make tags. I also made a sheet of all red labels and one of all black. :)

Download the colorful label sheet here

Download the red label sheet here

Download the black label sheet here

Hope you like them.. Have a great weekend!

felt food

I've been a little into felt food lately (never mind that I don't have kids!). They're so cute and the perfect thing to work on while watching a movie. I figured a purchased pattern would be a great place to start, so I bought this one from Etsy seller umecrafts (she has a bunch of really cute patterns. I'm still thinking about getting the veggies).

Pictured above are my creations. The banana has a removable skin.. neat right? And the apple has velcro on it so it can stick together, but I won't make any more apples like that. It wasn't fun hand sewing the velcro on and it looks silly all stuck together, not at all like a whole apple.

But anyway, when I was searching around for free tutorials and ideas for other foods I found a few links that I thought I'd share:

- A pattern for a loaf of bread from cherrymix. I just noticed that she also has a pattern for a cupcake and a fortune cookie (and more) on her site.

- A couple tutorials here including a strawberry. (This is umecrafts's blog.)

- Ravioli, lemon slices, tomato slices, ice cream, egg and orange slices all from One Crafty Mumma

- Finally, here and here you can find a ton more ideas, photos, instructions, and tips.
Oh, and about the felt. I used this ecospun felt that's made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles which I think is awesome. It's a good quality, nice and thick and strong. I bought it at Joann's on sale for 8 for 96 cents or something like that. If you want real wool felt (which I love.. maybe someday I'll make some out of wool..), you can find a large selection here, or here if you want to shop from Etsy.

Tutorial Tuesday - Drawstring Bag

I love drawstring bags. They are so useful! I use them to store little projects and my toiletries when we're camping. I think they're such a better container than plastic bags or bins. So it's no coincidence that all of my handmade gifts for Christmas were housed in drawstring bags. The last time I made one I took some photos and wrote up a little tutorial for you all.

You can find the tutorial right here.

Enjoy! Oh, and tomorrow you'll see what's in the bag pictured above. :)

tags!

Sorry for the late post.. it's my birthday today so I've been eating and decorating the tree and enjoying myself. :) Not that I don't enjoy blogging! You know what I mean.

Well being new to the blog world, I didn't realize that the traditional holiday gift to offer blog readers was printable gift tags. Please forgive me on this terrible mistake... I'll have to make a note for next year to ensure I don't repeat it. I hope you accept instead a variety of wonderful gift tags that are already out in the blog world: Black Apple tags (adorable!)

Paper Crave gift tags, available in three colorways!

Delight.com gift tags. I found these through Creature Comforts

From Martha. Get them here.

And this blog, iDiY, is about Do-it-yourself weddings but they have some really cute tags and labels that would work for Christmas. Check them out here. Pictured above are canning labels. Aren't they great?

Oh, you want more?? Try right here.

Why did I ever buy gift tags? :)

this morning

It snowed last night so we awoke to a beautiful fresh blanket of snow. We just had to go out and play.I don't think I've posted any photos of our dogs, which is weird because they're such a big part of our lives. So here they are, wrestling and romping in the snow. Lucy is the beagle on the left and Bobo (um, he came with the name) is the shepherd mix on the right.

This photo was taken right before he stole my glove off of my hand and ran around the yard like a lunatic with it. lol

Oh and would you like to be carbon neutral for a day? For free? Just click here (or check out the little badge to the right), type in your name and email address, and you and five friends can be carbon neutral for a day! Great right? (from Brighter Planet)

bake it pretty

I was checking out the Craftzine blog and saw this:


(Don't these look delicious? I love that snowman!)

Details from the Craftzine blog: "The new Bake It Pretty shop has opened, offering all kinds of fabulous cupcake toppers and baking accessories. They're also offering a giveaway: Just leave a comment on their blog post and they'll draw one winner for every 50 comments received. Winners receive a $30 gift certificate to the shop! The drawing will take place on Tuesday, November 25th in the evening."

Check out her shop too, oh boy there's some cute stuff over there. I don't really make cupcakes all that much but this stuff makes me feel like I should!

Want some more cupcakes?

Here's a cupcake blog: Cupcakes Take The Cake

And a few recipes:

Vanilla cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes

Lemon cupcakes

Red velvet cupcakes

Whoops.

Well.. I wanted to show you all some pretty embroidered items that were recently given to me.. but I haven't been able to go through the photos yet (sorry!)... so instead I've gathered a couple random fun things that I think are worth sharing.

First, a tutorial to make this cute little pouch from Three Bears. Don't you love that fabric?

And this! Directions on how to unravel a sweater to reuse the yarn. I love it!

I've been trying to manage my time better lately. I'm a huge list maker (which helps!), but sometimes there's just so much to do that I end up making multiple lists. So I designed a weekly schedule sheet to keep it all straight. And I'm sharing it with you! Because of the sections I made, it will only really be helpful for those of you who blog and have an Etsy shop, but hopefully some of you will find it useful.

Get it here: Download weekly schedule PDF
(for personal use only please!)

So... pretty embroidery next week. Also next week - Election Day!
I cannot wait.

It's almost Halloween...

Maybe I'm the last one to see these adorable (free!) Halloween cards, but I love them both and I thought I'd share. And it's not too late to give someone a Halloween card, right? No, of course it isn't. :)
The one above is from Emily from Inside A Black Apple. You can find it here.
The one below is from Vanessa from A Fanciful Twist. You can get that one right here. She even has a printable envelope template!

And just because I like witches, I wanted to share with you this cute knitted witch from The Purl Bee. I unfortunately cannot knit it up because I messed up my wrist by knitting! It used to just bother me a bit only when I was actually knitting, and stupid me, I ignored it. Well now it hurts all the time.. so no knitting for me for awhile. It's pretty maddening... what the heck am I supposed to do with my hands while watching a movie now?! Quilting and embroidery require too much attention (because I'm not that good! ha).

Anyway, sorry for that rant :) ... it's a cute witch though isn't it?

Cute Crafty Projects

While cruising around to various blogs I found a few cute projects that I love..

An adorable free embroidery pattern from Craft Pudding.

A tutorial for a sweet little needle book/sewing kit from Nini Makes.

And The Small Object shows us how to make fabric covered floss bobbins. What a great idea, no?

free calendar download

Here's a neat download from A Print A Day, a Carnivorous Plants Calendar. Scroll down on her blog because she has lots of other downloads.

Oh and tonight Brian and I will be going here for this. I'm so excited! We love Greenfield Village and go all the time but we've never been to the Hallowe'en event.. it should be fun! (If you're in the Detroit area, the Holiday Nights at Christmastime is lots of fun too)