Category — Crafty Goodness

And I will wear a flower in my hair! For my wedding that is. Even before I knew what dress I wanted to wear, I knew that I wanted to wear a birdcage veil with a big flower fascinator of some sort. I wasn’t exactly sure whether I wanted just a flower, just feathers, or a combination.

I spent hours scouring Etsy for just the right thing. They were reasonably priced and amazing, but eventually I thought I would give it a go at making my own fascinator. So I started hunting for DIY tutorials. I found this one on the WeddingBee forums, and it was perfect. I had something in mind for my own, that didn’t include feathers, but this was the perfect tutorial. It was so much easier than I thought it would be!

Here are pictures from my process.

And here is a photo of the final product.

This was so easy to make on my own and took about an hour total. I think it could have taken less time, but I had a difficult time deciding exactly how big I wanted it to be and which petal I would use as my base to achieve the look I wanted. I am thrilled that it is something else that I can add to my (already quite long) list of wedding DIY projects! I can’t wait to wear it on my wedding day, it’s going to go so perfectly with my dress and my veil. What projects are you super-excited about making for your wedding? Or have you already made for your wedding?

So my secret project is finally complete! This is my new Advent / Holiday Countdown calendar.

It was completely inspired by Elsie’s calendar over at Red Velvet Art. I fell in love at first sight and knew I had to make one of my own! I would have bought the kit from her shop, but I wanted to make it in my new Christmas color scheme.

This is also a special project because it is my first sewing project. Last year, for Christmas, Shawn’s mom bought me a sewing machine and I had a goal to complete two sewing projects this year. Well, I am definitely a procrastinator, so here it is down to the wire and I have just completed my first project. It’s not perfect, but I think that’s why I love it so much!

Materials are just felt, sewing machine, pinking shears, embroidery thread, and fabric paint.

Although I am very pleased with how it has turned out, it’s not quite finished yet. I am going to fill each day with a holiday activity for Shawn and I to do for every day of December. I will try to post as many of them here as I can as they occur, I am brimming with fun ideas and activities for my new calendar!

So tonight’s holiday activity was a simple movie. Shawn is still feeling a little under the weather and I had a hair appointment that kept me out late, and I needed to finish the calendar project. So we enjoyed Scrooged starring Bill Murray. We downloaded this movie to our AppleTV last year and never got a chance to watch it, so tonight seemed like the perfect opportunity. We have a TON more holiday movies to watch. What is your favorite holiday movie? Any suggestions for must see holiday flicks?

Of course I didn’t forget already, here’s tonight’s holiday music video…a little throwback to the 80s child in all of us! (Shawn and I also have “A Claymation Christmas” that I can’t wait to watch!)

This was a project I created for Shawn for his birthday, which was yesterday. This trio is comprised of three of Shawn’s favorite things as only stitching and felt could represent them! These favorites are the camera, a Mac look-alike computer, and an iPhone. The iPhone was inspired by an embroidery pattern* from a class I took this spring with Elsie Flannigan. I love the way this turned out and Shawn was quite happy as well. This was so simple to make and came together quite quickly, which was good since I didn’t decide until almost the last minute that I was going to make it for him! Now he just has to decide where to put it, here in the new office space, or in his space at work! So much fun! Can’t wait to make one for myself….hmmmm…maybe I will have Shawn make it for me! Ha!

*I would link to the patterns themselves, but they were part of a past class, that we had to pay for and it is password protected…wouldn’t feel right giving that info out to someone who didn’t take the class! So NOT cool!

i have been so inspired by the class i am taking with elsie flannigan! we are in week two of a six week time together and it is absolutely awesome! my weeks are generally too busy to work on any of the projects, but i was able to spend a lot of time on friday night working on last week’s projects which included painting a new journal, creating some new journal entries, and creating a mini album – which i have only done once or twice before and never like this. i forgot to take pictures of my new journal which i love so i will have to post that later this week.

but for now, i can post the mini album pictures. this was a book i made to show some of the pictures of my sister jackie and i together when i visited her in san diego in february. enjoy!

this was so much fun to make and i can’t wait to make more mini albums. i also can’t wait to make more of the projects for this class.

in other news, this weekend was a blast! friday night shawn was home working on the nistico’s pictures so i spent the evening cooped up in my scraproom listening to my favorite music and crafting away. it was so nice to spend that time, i haven’t done that in a long time.

saturday shawn and his sister, amber, and myself ventured down to baltimore for the holiday heap craft show sponsored by charm city craft mafia. we had such a great time. there was so much eye candy, and it was so nice to see all of the different handmade goodies that each crafter had to offer. i got a few prints for my living room and a cute handmade purse and a few awesome cards to send to friends during the holiday season. after the show, we went to hampden for lunch at cafe hon which shawn and i have wanted to do for quite a while. it is such a great little place. after lunch we visited a fave store of ours atomic pop so we could each buy a munny to decorate at our munny decorating party this weekend. you can see the munny here…munny (i will have to update to include photos of the finished product after the decorating party).

sunday we had a photo shoot with zach and stacie and simon howes here at the house. we were shooting christmas pictures for them. we had so much fun with the three of them and the pictures turned out great! we are having so much fun with our recent shoots. particularly those involving the little ones (when did kids get so darn cute?!?!?) we concluded the weekend with our usual grimes/parto family dinner at outback steakhouse, which is always such a nice treat!

this week at school is american education week and i expect to have lots of visitors in and out of my classroom all week, joy of joys! wish me luck!