Craftyminx

Studio Complete!!

Before and after

It is finished and I am sooo happy with how it turned out. The painting took 4 days and I spent the rest of the week putting shelves and chairs together. Sheldon, Levi, Shannon, and my mom helped out soo much and I owe them all big time.

There are still a few things left to do, but it is about 95% finished. I still need to add the peg board and possibly paint some of the door with chalkboard paint.

The paint is showing up a little lighter in these pictures. It is the same color as the pink chairs. 

The shelves aren't as industrial as I thought they would be and they fit sooo much stuff. I love all of the space!

I also love that the table fits in the middle of the room so I can have friends over to craft. 

YAY!

Wedding Wednesday

Today I'm going to share a few of online tools that we are using. There are so many useful tools out there and I can't review all of them, but these are the ones that I'm using because they are free, easy to use, and make wedding planning efficient.  Sorry this post is so wordy. I'll share some photos later.

Registry

I have found myregistry.com to be a godsend. You can link all of your registries to this one site, or you can choose to keep it as an "everything else we want" list, which is what we are using it for. We are registered at Target and Macy's for the sake of our family and friends that don't like to shop online. There are people in our families that don't even have the internet.  But with Myregistry.com, you can link to any item in any online store on the web and this includes places like etsy. I love it! The downfall is that things change so quickly on the internet and items sell out fast, especially on etsy. You have to check up on the items you list to make sure that they are still available. As someone that has shopped a lot of registry lists, it is very annoying when you find out what you want to buy is no longer available.

Planners

This is the part where I sing the praises of google docs! I have never really used google docs for the purpose of online collaboration, but a wedding in this day and age requires it. Style me Pretty has teamed up with google to make some pretty awesome and free tools. Before you get overwhelmed with the 20 different templates you can download, I would suggest looking at the wedding planner first. It has all of the templates in one workbook. We didn't need the whole planner so we are just using it for a guest list (we changed up some of the columns to match our preferences) and the address form. Let me tell you about the address form... If you know a lot of your wedding guests' emails, you can send a form to them and they can fill out the spreadsheet for you! I don't know a lot of the email addresses, but I have been able to use it by sending the form to my mom so she can add all the people that they want to invite to the wedding. Sheldon and I share the document, so any changes that either of us makes can be seen by the other person, that way we always have the most updated list.

A rep from myweddingworkbook.com recently tipped me off to a really great wedding organizational tool. My Wedding Workbook is a must for anyone planning a big traditional wedding with lots of vendors and many guests.  I could see someone with a smaller wedding being able to use it, but I think a lot of it's functionality wouldn't get used. I have too much information in other places to want to move it all over at this point, but this is a wonderful tool that is robust enough for any wedding. I might have to use it for our budget, since we haven't got a lot of that in writing yet. We'll see.

Websites

Oh wedding websites... what a headache you have caused me. I really didn't want to pay for a website that was only going to be live for a year. Wedding websites, through the actual wedding website vendors are expensive compared to a regular website's costs per year. A few of the more popular sites are ewedding.com mywedding.com theknot.com weddingtracker.com and weddingjojo.com.

We went with mywedding.com because their site is 100% free and has a lot of functionality. I also found that they had way more theme options than the others. However, wedding websites are kind of corny and if you're a DIY gal like me, you're not going to be 100% happy with the themes that they have and then throw the fiance into the mix who thinks that "all wedding websites are lame" and you'll have issues. It took Sheldon and me quite awhile to agree on the template and in the end the one we are using is kind of boring, but it works. I really had to get past the fact that the website was in no way going to match our Save the Dates or Invites and that it was only going to be an information tool for our guests.

I hope you all enjoy this little detour from my normal crafty exploits. I promise Wedding Wednesdays will have a lot of my DIY projects in the future, but right now it is all about the planning. In fact, next week I have an exciting thing to share with you all... our save the date cards! Handmade the lazy way by yours truly :)

Studio Progress

Paint from original to now.

We've had two big painting sessions. One for ceiling and trim and last night we had to do two coats of primer to cover the squares.  This pink is behr candy coated, it was my original choice for the room, because I didn't want to go to dark, but then I decided to go for it so the final color will be the watermelon pink. This is solely my room, so I want it to be completely me and the darker pink is my favorite.

We went to IKEA in Frisco on Sunday where I bought the chairs for the room and I found some cute curtains. They were $15 for two which is much better than the $80 that the tuxedo ruffle curtains at UO will cost. Plus they have  a print. With so many solid colors in the room, it will be nice to have a pretty print to catch the eye.

I'm picking up the shelving, lighting, and the peg board on Thursday. My goal is to have the shelving up and some of the room put together by Saturday. My mom is coming into town to make the muslin of my wedding dress so I need to at least have the sewing stuff together.

So this will be the last update until the room is finished. I want you to have the full effect of how different and wonderful it will be :) Wish me luck, this is quite the undertaking!

Oh Hai

Bella wanted to peek in and say hello this evening. She had a bath and was feeling pretty.

I have class this weekend and hopefully we'll be painting on Sunday, so I may not be around until Monday. I might have some studio progress to share :)

Have a good weekend! And for you Okies out there, I took some new goods over to DNA. Galleries in the plaza district if you feel like shopping. There are Embroidered onesies and bibs, crocheted bows, scarves and some jewelry.

Wedding Wednesday

I've decided that I should have a scheduled wedding talk post once a week, so welcome to Wedding Wednesdays!

With all of the crazy things I have going on in my life right now, wedding planning is probably somewhere closer to the bottom of the list at this point, when it should be at the top. However, I am on schedule and have a lot of plans already in the works. My favorite friend throughout all of this is the Real Simple Weddings publication.

 I know there are plenty of books and planners out there to assist with the wedding planning process. I've looked through all of them, but none of them have been as helpful as this little magazine. I'm not sure when Real Simple began this publication, but I bought the 2009 copy as soon as we got engaged. And when 2010 rolled around I bought that one too. They are pretty much the same as far as all the resources are concerned. All of the inspiration photos, real wedding features and everything else are updated in the new issue.

While you should definintely pay the $15 for this magazine (it's so much cheaper than many of the planners out there and comes with some really great inspiration as well) most of the best resources in the magazine are free! All of the great checklists and lots of other great information are on the Real Simple website. The ultimate wedding planning checklist is perfect for me because it has about 10 things you should be doing at certain times throughout the months before the wedding. I do those, I check them off the list and I'm  golden. I love it. :)

We also found the registry essentials checklist to be very helpful while we were registering at Target on Saturday. We were able to decide what we could get at Target and what we wanted to get at Macy's or other online stores through myregistry.com.  There were a few things we could check off because we already had them, and didn't need an upgrade. It really helped keep Sheldon from getting trigger happy, although we did get a little over excited in the electronics section. 

This publication is my bible right now. And did I mention that if you buy the magazine all of the checklists are in a little tear out booklet that you can keep on your person at all times?! The 2009 version was smaller than the 2010 so I have it taped into my little inspiration notebook I keep in my purse. I love being able to have everything at hand and not having to lug around a big notebook.

So wedding graduates, what were your favorite tools for wedding planning when you had to go through the process?

This post brought to you by...

...my neighbors who are wonderful and don't have a password on their wireless network. Our internet has been down all day so I've found the perfect spot in the house to leach off of a neighbor. 

I just thought I would share a few things from our Valentine's Day. 

Sheldon was sick all weekend so we didn't do much. He had some beautiful flowers delivered on Friday. 

We registered at Target on Saturday. This was great fun! Sheldon was so excited he could hardly contain himself. 

On Sunday, I decided to make donuts. I used the Pioneer Woman's recipe, because really she's never led me astray so far. I have had a really bad history of making homemade donuts so I was a little skeptical that these would be any better. They turned out perfect! Light, airy, and not overly sweet. Ok, so they could have been even lighter, but I have a super drafty kitchen and it just wasn't going to get better, but even in my case, these were awesome! The only thing I will change next time is to make chocolate glaze, because that's my favorite. 

I would like to say that these are hearts just because I thought it would be cute for Valentine's Day. They are awfully cute, but really hearts are the only cookie cutters I have in the right sizes. I don't even have circle cutters. I make biscuits with a Wonder Woman glass from the 70s. That's the biscuit making glass, not the donut making glass. 

We also had dinner at the Paseo Grill on Sunday. It was wonderful! Best food I've had this year. 

Anyway, we had a great weekend of love. What crafty/fun things did you all do for heart day?

The studio makeover

Well the craft room is now empty...a clean slate... ready for me to work my magic. Our garage is full of tubs of craft supplies. I had no idea I had that much stuff in this tiny room.

So here's the full plan... I want to work on it this weekend. There's no better way to say I love you than with physical labor right? I'm hoping Sheldon agrees :)

p.s. I'm loving these washi tape frames from kitschy digitals. I almost forgot I bought them.

I bought the paint last night. I'm hoping to get the pegboard and those ugly industrial shelves from home depot after the paint dries. About those ugly shelves, if you know of something better that I can get two of for $160 and will be 4 feet wide let me know. I like to buy those track system shelves from rubbermaid, but they really are expensive once you start to add up all the pieces and the shelves are only 12 inches deep. I like the idea of having shelves 24 inches deep to hold all of my crap. Since these are such a good deal, I'll probably just end up painting them, putting white sticky shelf liner on the mdf and adding some cute fabric scallops or something to the front. Eh, there are plenty of ways to make them look less garish.

I really wish I could redo the floor while I'm at it, but the brick and black tiles will just have to stay a little longer. Eventually, I plan to put laminate wood down in the dining room, studio, and the hallway of death so the back of the house will match the laminate in the kitchen and the rest of the natural wood floors in the front part of the house.

I am still trying to decide how the layout should be. Right now, I have the table on one wall and shelves on either side. the sewing station and fabric shelves are on the other side. I would like to have the table in the center of the room, so I have have people over to craft with me, but with the room being so narrow I don't see this as an option. I guess visitors will just have to craft in the dining room.

We're also painting the dining room the Sea Life color. We both agree that the aqua with the already red everything else will look good and have that retro flair we like so much.

My big question is lighting. I have to change out the overhead light but I have no clue what to put in. I have two windows that get pretty good daytime light, but since I have a day job, I do most of my crafting in the evenings. Any suggestions? What kind of lighting do you have in your studio or craft space?

A few Thank Yous

Wow! I never imagined so many of you would take to these stitched valentines the way you have. Thank you to everyone that has posted comments or favorited them in flickr!!

Also, thank you to the following special peeps who have shared my patterns with their readers:

Early Bird Special
Feeling Stitchy
One Pearl Button
Thompson Family-Life
PeptoGirl - StyleCrush
Strumpet's Crumpets
stitchado
Craft Gossip: Needle Work
Friendstitch
Loves To Dream

Also I forgot to mention on the other blogs, if you're not into embroidery I have a couple of other fun V-day craft tutorials as well, Just look over to the right for the links.

Have an aweseome Valentine's Day and Happy Stitching, everyone!

Perfect Match

I figured not everyone would love the animals and these two are too cute!!

flipped

You can't see it very well in these pictures, but the white ruffle is iridescent DMC light effects. I like the subtle sparkle it gives to the valentine.  

Thank you to everyone for the awesome comments! I am so glad that so many of you appreciate these little freebies. I've really been excited to share them with you!

Feelin' Foxy

I've been in mad love with foxes lately. I guess I'm just adding to my love of woodland creatures. So when I saw this valentine I had to stitch it too!

And the pattern for  you...

 flipped version

I decided I wanted a polka dot shirt instead of plaid so I didn't transfer the plaid and added a bunch of french knots for dots. 

I have one more pattern to stitch up and share. These are taking me about two evenings per image to finish. I'll have the last one up by Sunday. 

Let me know if you have any questions and if you stitch it please send me a photo or link so I can check it out. Enjoy!