Wire Wrapping

This post is for my sister Sarah. Here is your personal wire wrapping picture tutorial without writing out explanations, because I am going to call you and explain......and there's not time to type it all out....  :)

Craft Show

Mom and I did a craft show this weekend. I thought I'd post a couple of pictures of our booth since none of the family ever gets to see what those booths look like.  So, here it is.  See something you want???? Let us know because if it doesn't sell, you will most likely be getting it for Christmas!

Tag, tag, tag, sew, sew, sew

What a week! Between finishing up my contract with Bead For Life, getting ready for craft shows, teaching and writing a talk for Stake Conference, I am ready for a break!  Well, I',m not going to get one, but I do get a break from tagging and that is awesome. I was able to tag all 3000 items in my last batch in less than a week which has left me with lots of time to do all the other stuff I mentioned. Here are some pictures that represent the process of "tagging"....   

Beads in the Box

Necklaces sorted out on the table with the end that the tag goes on all on the same side.  

A close up of the end that gets the tag....

The tools.....Jump rings, Metal tags, and pliers...

The finished product...on it's way back into the box..

And bracelets look like this....

And that's what I've been up to for the past six months.....1500 bracelets or necklaces every week.  It gets a little tedious but thanks to things like all 4 seasons of Felicity and a Netflix account, I get through it and get a nice bit of additional income. I hope they give me another contract soon...We'll see. 

But, for now, it's time to sew!  Mom and I have been working furiously to get ready for the craft and doll shows that are coming up beginning next week. So here is what I made yesterday....

3 of these

And One of these (made with all of the different batiks that I found in my stash)...

And now I am off to go to the Bead Show to buy some more beads for the jewelry making efforts.  Gotta go!

Table Runner

So, A couple of weeks ago, we had a wedding reception to go to and we needed a gift.  After looking at the registry and seeing that the bride had chosen red and black dishcloths and tablecloths and accessories for their kitchen, I decided to dig into my ever-growing fabric stash and make a table runner.  It took a couple of hours to make, but now that I've done it once I think I could make it faster the next time. So here's how it turned out. 

I think it's super cute and I love the colors.  Can't wait to make another one....maybe one for Fall or Christmas next?

What I've Been Making

So I haven't blogged in forever and I thought I would just start by putting up a few pictures of what I've been making. I attempted to make a hexagon quilt that I thought was going to be awesome.....until I put is all together and realized that the green was a little blaring.   So, I took out all of the green pieces from the original quilt and made a smaller version  of the quilt using all of the green.  I thought it would be too ugly to do anything with, but it actually turned out alright.  I decided that this would be a good quilt to try to machine quilt since I didn't care about it that much anyway, so if I ruined it it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I sewed light blue ric rac around the center of all of the green.  I think it looks really good. 

Here's the full picture.  It turned out to be about crib size.  Now I just need to figure out who on earth I will give it to.....

I have been wanting to make a foot stool for my grandmother's little green rocking chair that now sits in my room.  It's a super comfortable chair, but it's a little low, which made it really difficult to find something the right height.  So, with some help from my brother and my mom, I made this little foot stool.  I love the fabric I found.  It has a slightly sueded feel to it and looks like faux tooled leather.

This is a purse I made for my friend Kami out of corduroy and a couple of left over quilt blocks that I used to make her a quilt for her wedding.  It's completely reversible and turned out really well. I do have to say that sewing on that bias tape around the whole thing ended up defeating me after I had unpicked it 3 times. Mom finished that part of it for me because I was so frustrated at that point that I was ready to chuck it and just go buy a purse!  Anyway.... thanks to her, it ended up getting done. (Thanks mom, you're the best!)

Finally, I have been making these name banners for my nieces and nephews throughout the year. (Thanks for the idea Liz and Sarah!)  I don't have pictures of all of them, but here are a few of them.

Magic Tile Quilt

My sister Sarah has been finishing projects and she has inspired me to do the same. So, I have a few quilts that have been in process. This one I started about 2 years ago and then haven't really touched it since. I began on Friday, finishing the magic tile blocks. They look like they're hard to do, but they are not difficult. I was just going to let the purple border be the outside and leave it as a small quilt that could be hung on a wall, but then I had vision of adding a strip pieced border. So, it took me about two hours to cut out ans sew all of the strips together to make the black/white/purple border. Today, I ran to the fabric store and picked out the black border and a purple backing. Now that the top is finished, I have to decide whether to hand quilt this one or tie it. I think it's going to have to be hand quilted. There's just no good way to tie it! Anyway, the picture that looks purple is the actual color. All the other pictures that were closer to the true color were blurry, so the one that looks blue is not actually blue, it's purple......

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With a cherry on top!

Today was the Lafayette Quaker Oatmeal Festival. It happens here every year and includes a 5K run, an oatmeal breakfast with a huge topping bar, and a baking contest. I entered the contest once before with a different recipe and nothing came of it. This year, I decided to enter the recipe that I created for the Pillsbury contest since it met the "1 cup of oatmeal in the recipe" requirement. So, I baked my Cherry Chocolate Fudge Bars yesterday and cut them up into bite-size pieces for sampling and mom put a cherry piece on each one for garnish. I put each piece into a mini-cupcake paper and filled up my mini-cupcake tree and took it over and entered them in the contest. They looked so pretty! I wish I had taken a picture, but the best I could do is take a picture of what is left in the pan so you can see what they look like.

I dropped off my bars to be judged by the officials and tasted by the public and then I ran off for a full day of teaching. The winners were announced at noon and since I couldn't be there, my parents went to pick up my cupcake tree and see if I won anything. After a long day of teaching I came home this afternoon and found THIS on the counter waiting for me.....

What, you can't see the sign? Well, let me zoom in......

That's right! I won 1st Place in the Desserts category!!! YAY!!!! Look at that happy smiling Quaker man on the oatmeal box. That's exactly what I looked like when I saw it (Just with shorter, brown-er hair *wink* ) I was so excited. I ACTUALLY won a prize in a baking contest! Who would have guessed. Here's a picture of everything that I got for winning. The cake pans are heavy and nice and I love the bowls. The spatula is a high heat resistant silicone - I've always wanted one of those. I even got a shot glass liquid teaspoon measure and free oatmeal. What more could a girl want??? See, good things do happen even when you have a bad haircut ;)