Monthly Archives: December 2010

Stocking swap goodies!

Wheeeee!! I recieved my wonderful package of goodies from my stocking swap buddy on Friday.  Strangely enough, it’s not the first time I’ve swapped with the lovely Amy.  We’ve randomly sent each other packages before. We keep taking the same online classes and courses. So I just laughed when I saw we were paired together again.

She sent me so much fun stuff, here’s a glimpse, starting with this super fun necklace she made.

Then I got these cute frames.

Some fun bits and pieces of fabric.

AAAAAAnd all this fun stuff too!!

Amy you rock! Sorry I’ve been a bad swap friend and sent my stuff late. Don’t worry it’ll be awesome too.

Well duh!

Ok so how lame is it that I’m a teacher, and a crafty one at that and I’m only realising now I should have made my son’s teacher a gift!?  Again a sign of how busy I have been these last few weeks.  So while I don’t have a gift to send in with Wesley today I’m totally planning on making this lovely teacher one of these before the school year ends!

It’s super cute, functional, personalized and handmade!! How can she not like it!  From a crafty sewer perspective my son can help with writing her name and choosing the buttons and fabric and I get to use up some of the fun scraps I have lying around.  It’s all win win. Thanks for sharing Make It Perfect!

Probably the reason I hadn’t picked her up a gift yet is because I know how tricky it is as a teacher at Christmas/end of year when you get gifts.  It’s sort of a weird time especially depending on the school you’re at.  Not every student will get you a gift and the ones who do might want to see you open the gifts but you don’t want to make a big deal about it if some students don’t have the means to buy gifts.  It can be awkward.  I’m also a terrible lair and have a horrible poker face and Christmas teacher gifts tend to be of the mug/snow globe/ornament nature, which while totally thoughtful there’s sort of only so many you can have.   So pencil case it is!  Perhaps I’ll even use my 2 weeks off to craft one and send it in for January, random gifts are cool too.

Wishlist

Wow, I’m swamped!! I’ve got a bunch of *must* ship items still to get on the way.  Then I have some things to make for friends and people I can see in person, I suppose my weekend tasks.  I changed things up a bit and spent some time Saturday night organizing my craft space in an effort to tidy up our basement, something I know regret since I’m behind on my other TO DOs now.  Note to self – holiday rush is crazy!

Here are some glimpses of things I have accomplished these past few days,

My growing collection of Keyka Lou keychain pouches, well and other pouches.  Plus a cute little donut ornament I was given as a trade for a scrappy pincushion and a crocheted hair clip from my Camp craft swap.

Collection of fun things including some handmade wooden buttons I also picked up at the craft show on the weekend.  I found this GINORMOUS roll of baker’s twine at Crate and Barrel!! I’ve been looking all over for this stuff and short of ordering it on Etsy, haven’t been able to locate any.  This is over 700 meters and it was only $9.99!! Score!

I’ll be glad when this week is over!  Hope you’re all having a productive gear up to the holidays!

ipad cover full of cute usefulness

I’m not sure why, but I keep taking my ipad to work.  I don’t have time to even look at it while I’m there, and we can’t use the wifi so it’s basically just a fun toy to look at.  I suppose we’re still in that early honeymoon lovey dovey stage of our relationship.

I was just tossing it in my ‘teacher bag’ and figured I needed to protect it a little bit more, especially from the freezing cold!  So I whipped this up last night.

Making this was really easy, I just laid out fabric and cut it a tad larger than the ipad and went from there.  The hardest part was deciding what print to use!! I went with this one because it’s a super fun design and also it’s a canvas so it’s a little bit thicker than just plain cotton.  I might add some red rick rack trim alone the top, haven’t decided yet.

Dear Blog,

I think this picture says it all.

Had my craft show today . . . yesterday?  It went well, met some fun people I’ll share more about later and completed some orders while I was sitting there.  Now I’m just making a list of what I still need to finish and send out and it’s longer than I’d like.  Then there was a ‘missing pillow’ incident today that needed attention.  I love my Etsy shop and my whole selling online experience, it’s been super awesome, but I must say it really stinks when shipping goes wrong!

But now that it’s 12:30am-ish I think I’ll go to bed and greet this nice clean workspace tomorrow morning ready to go and get some of these items to done!  Good night anyone who’s awake.

I’m doing this! (now you can actually see it)

Well I’m trying to but I’m not really sure where all my time is going lately.

I’m looking forward to 2 weeks off for the holidays, having the mornings off isn’t enough time lately.  Gotta love being a teacher!

One of a kind craft show scores.

Headed out to the One of a Kind Craft Show on the weekend.  Had a lovely day out wandering and looking at all the pretty things.

I picked up this fun little basket hamper thingie from Lovell designs. It’s super handy for all the ‘on the go’ crafts I’m constantly toting upstairs when I go to bed in the wee hours so I have something to craft while the kids are around in the mornings.

I also got this fun little button from Sister Sister Buttons. They had many silly buttons that made me smile, but I limited myself to this one.

The best find of the day was this old wooden tool box thingie that’s been refinished and makes an awesome display for my cup cozies in action! Can’t wait to use it on the weekend.

On Sunday, if I’ve recovered from the inventory building blitz, I’ll be sure to link some more of the fun, creative and handmade things I came across at the show.

Product redesign, just in time for the rest of my holiday orders.

I’ve been toying with the idea of changing my cup cozies for a while.  They fit nicely on almost all disposable cups but I thought it was a bit of an oxymoron that they go on disposable cups at all.  I use mine on a not-a-paper-cup porcelin travel mug but I had to make one a tad bigger so it would fit around it.  Also with my design they can’t go on handled travel mugs.  Sooooo I spent some time ironing out the whole button closure thing, with an elastic rather than a button hole to allow for some flexibility in the different sizes of cups out there.  Here’s my scrap busting prototype.

I also asked at the fabric store for something I could add to the middle to help insulate better and provide more layers between finger and hot cups.  I was introduced to a batting that has a thermal coating on one side which will help keep fingers cool and beverages warm!

Still folds down nice and flat for easy bag/purse/tote/pocket storage when not in use and easily slides onto many different cups now!  So off to complete these last few orders.

Another craft book? Ok!

Thanks to cashing in on some airmiles I was able to wander to the book store and browse for a book to spend my gift card on. But, let’s face it, I already knew I was going to head right for this one. Do I need another project? Not really. Another bag? Nope. Another craft book? Sure!

I’ve already used up all my lovely Cabin & Cub book plates, but coincidentally today my custom stamp from here and it’s soooo cool!!  I had it made with the Love You Like a Sister font that I’m totally crushing on.  I donated $5 to the wonderful creator of it, she’s saving to adopt a child and really appreciated the money.  I figured since I’m using it all over the place it’s a good thing I did that way back when.

I’ll edit this tomorrow and add a photo of the stamped inside page but I’m too lazy right now to fetch the camera, take the pics, copy off the card . .  blah blah blah.

It’s so fun to use!!!!

I’ve been stamping EVERYTHING!!

Just kidding!