Christmas Boxes!

I made these pretty gift boxes for Christmas - they are in the style of chinese food takeout boxes. I saw some at the store that weren't nearly as cute, and they were about $2 a piece, so I decided to make my own.

I did so with some posterboard (1/2 a sheet for each box, so about $0.40), some fabric (1/2 yard total, $3.50, so about $0.88 each), and some glue and ribbon which I already had. (Notice that this is the same ribbon as from my purple dress - I knew it would come in handy some day!).

So, that's about $1.28 a piece, not a bad price for something so stinking cute! And totally reusable - it's fun when the packaging becomes part of the gift, I think! I have about 1/2 yard of fabric left, so maybe I'll make a few more! I will need to get some more ribbon though, I think that gold would look good too!

A Super Sweet Halloween Costume!!!

Well here it is! Unfortunately the only picture that I have is of me singing karaoke with some sort of empty liquor bottle in the way, but it will have to do! All the crises were averted, and it actually ended up looking ok, with exception of the strange sleeves, but those have never been my strong point anyways!

I have to admit, I'm a little miffed that I didn't win an award, but there is always next year, and I already have a few ideas in mind!

Pumpkin Contest!

Well, maybe it's not actually crafty, but I thought that our pumpkin competition turned out pretty sweet. Of course, I favor ours, Chewbacca, on the left, but we eventually lost to the pumpkin eater on the right (it would be the room full of men who carved that one!) The middle one got a surprising number of votes, considering it was a last minute job. :)

Costume, Pt 1.

I've been working on my halloween costume, and while the actual dress is a bit of a disaster, the hat is so totally sweet! Plus, it finally gave me a reason to buy a glue gun, the most awesome crafting tool ever invented. (Just don't try to convince my fingertips of that, ok?) Anyways, I'll wrap my head in some left over fabric to hold my hair in, and then pin the hat to that to hold it down. :)

Jewels!

As I was wandering the aisles of my favorite store the other day, I came across this jewlery making kit. I remembered that I thought about making some watches as Christmas presents, so I picked it up. It came with some wire, a whole bunch of glass, plastic and metal beads, some pliers, pieces for earrings, and a board to assemble and hold all of the beads. I also grabbed a couple of watch faces. I got home and dived right in! I started with some simple earrings and then moved along to the watches - I was up half the night it was so much fun. I'm pretty much out of beads now, but I'm sure I'll get some more sooner or later! This could become very dangerous!

Halloween!

I like Halloween because it is the perfect excuse to get all crafty and show up with a more creative costume than everyone else. (I'm totally not competitive at all!) Last year I made a pretty big hit with an Operation style costume, complete with removable velcro parts.

This year, I want to be Miss Chiquita Banana. I decided this before I really looked up the dress, mostly because I wanted to wear a bowl of fake fruit on my head. Yeah, her dress is actually a little ugly! It also looks like it would be hard to make. I'm goona give it a go though - but maybe I'll start by making paper mache fruit. That seems easy enough!

Here is a picture of Miss Chiquita from a few years back, her name is Jennifer. As far as the fruit in her hat goes, it looks like it's mostly bananas and apples, with a few oranges, maybe a pinapple and a couple of red grapes thrown in for good measure.

But where, oh where, am I going to find blue shoes????

A Pretty Purple Dress

This dress is to wear to the wedding that I made the quilt for. I decided that I needed a new pretty dress, so I found one that I loved in the McCall's catalouge (#5099). I walked around JoAnn frabrics for ages, trying to find the perfect fabric. I finally found a deep purple silky crepe type fabric, but I kept walking away from it because well, I don't really like purple. But, finally it won and I bought it - and some really sweet silver ribbon. These ruffle things on the front, they look pretty don't they? Let me tell you a little bit about them. Pain in the butt! Try cutting out a spiral of fabric, hemming one side and then straightening them out and sewing them to the rest of the dress. Whoa. That teaches me to get a girly style! Anyways, it finally go finished... I decided to go without the bow, just a straight ribbon. Now I just have to find shoes!

My First Quilt

This quilt was finished a little while ago, in fact right now it is all wrapped up, ready to be given away. It is a little sad acutally. I quite enjoyed having on my lap while I hand stitched the back of the border on. The pattern is called Antique Tile. The cross stitch pattern in the middle took a long time. The pattern was generated by this site, using a nice picture I found online. I hope it is well liked as a wedding gift!