Craftyminx

Week in review

Wow I've been in a whirlwind this week. It has been so much fun and I know its just going to keep getting better as the wedding approaches.

I spent the weekend at the ranch working on my wedding gown. HAHA that didn't even get started. We spent all our time on the petticoat (note to self: never make one of these again). We went to my favorite antique store where we found 3 quilts for $20 that we can use at the wedding and I found some other cool things I'll share next time. I also got a chance to work on my portrait of Kristin Chenoweth for a local famousokie stitch-along/art show.

I finished the face on Sunday.

Monday, 200 of these came in the mail.

This is the part of wedding planning that terrifies me. Ordering things for guests that may or may not show, that we may or may not need if it rains and we have to go to our back up location. I get chills just thinking about the mays and may nots. But isn't it pretty? I love these fans and I got the best deal I could find on them anywhere here! Sheldon's reaction: "Why do we need fans? Think about how many tacos we could have bought with that money!" He's silly and I love him.

Tuesday I went to the Lady Gaga concert. I love Lady Gaga! I love her music, especially the fact that she's really a musician.  She played three different instruments that night. And I love her message of love and unity.

We had a great time!

Last night we had dinner with the fam to celebrate Sheldon's aunt's birthday. We had a great time even though I blew up a pyrex dish. Glass got in all of the food and we had to re-make everything. Not my finest moment. This face made it all better :)

This weekend my mom is coming to my house and we're actually going to work on my dress. I have a lot of other projects in the works as well. Tonight is devoted to finishing up some items I have to take to sell at local stores.  More about that later. Ta ta! I'm sure to be back with more fun soon :)

*Let's pretend I didn't take all the pictures for this post on my phone. K, thanks.

Appliqued Onesies

The onesie tutorial aired yesterday. I had some technical difficulties getting this posted last night, but typepad seems to be working ok today so here you go...

What you'll need:

 

• Onesie applique templates -  Download Onesie_template
• A cotton onesie in any size or a bib
• small amount of cotton fabric
• Fusible Webbing - Heat -N- Bond or Wonder Under
• Embroidery Floss
• Needle
• Iron
• Pencil
• Scissors

Print out the onesie template and trace the design on the paper side of the fusible webbing. If the Onesie is bigger than 12 months you may want to scale the templates up a little, but you don't have to.

Cut around the design, leaving about half of an inch of a border around the design. 

 Place the template pieces shiny side down (paper side up) on the back side of your fabric.

 
Iron these down according to the directions of your fusible webbing. Let everything cool down after you have ironed them down. Then, cut out the pieces using the lines that you traced as a guide.

 
Peel the paper backing off the fabric. The shiny glue should now be adhered to the fabric pieces.

Now, Iron the pieces onto the onesie. I usually put a 4 inch wide piece of paper inside the onesie just in case any glue sinks into the fabric. Also this covers up the gerber "tag" image on the neck that you don't want to melt with your iron.

Now that your appliques are adhered to the onesie, you must sew around the fabric so they don't come off. You can use a sewing machine on a tight zig-zag stitch  and sew around the fabric. Or use embroidery floss like I did and do a backstitch along the edge of the fabric applique.

If you don't know how to do the backstitch, you can check out my friend Amy's, awesome tutorial! 

And there you have it a great inexpensive present for the new babe in your life. Sorry there's not a pic of the finished elephant. I already gave it to my new niece, Olive :)

 

Restocking

Now that I am out of school,for  forever! I can focus on things that I like to do. Like making stuff for my wedding and making stuff for other people! So I'm sending some new things to DNA Galleries this week. Have a looksie at what you can find there...

Lots of baby stuff! But I'm working on some more adult lovies for a restock next week or so. I'm a machine! :)

Wedding Wednesday - Invitations

Let me just say... if I would have known how much stress invitations were going to be, I would have gladly handed them over to someone else, most likely Kathleen because she is awesome. But no, I have to be the controlling DIY freak of nature I am and do it myself. Also, we're on a budget and awesome invitations cost... a lot! I'm pretty sure I've hyperventilated a few times from sticker shock while browsing around the web. In a perfect world we would have beautiful letterpress invites with bold design, but we're in the real world and full on Dana kitsch is what we're getting. :)

Our Save the dates have been the proverbial nail in my coffin. They were super cute and everyone loved them. So of course, the invitations not only have to go with the save the dates, but they have to be even more awesome. So I've been sketching ideas, stitching up samples and ordering paper like a crazy woman for a couple of months. I'm not a graphic designer and I am reminded of this more and more as the days pass. With that said, I'm fairly proud of the progress that I have made.

Excuse the darkness of these pictures, I remembered at about 10:00 pm last night that today was Wedding Wednesday and I didn't have anything to share. They were taken by lamplight with a really bad yellow background choice. I wasn't using my head.

I've picked out paper from paperandmore.com and have decided that I like this layered look the most.

I normally wouldn't have wanted to give myself this much work to do with the layering and all, but I really fell in love with that aqua mod printed paper.

OK so scratch all of that. Now as I'm looking at it in photo form. I don't like it. It is just too busy. You'll see what I mean when I show you what's going on the darn things. And really who in their right mind would want to glue 150 invitations together?! Not me, damn the cute printed paper. Ok I think I'm back in my right state of being. Linen card stock with the Aqua envelope it will be! I'm so glad you all helped me with this decision ;) 

Here's the layout for the invite I have been playing around with.

I've already changed "Merriment to Follow" to "Dinner and merriment to follow." I want everyone to know they will get to eat. I love using "merriment", I think it is much better than "booze fest" which would be another great description for our reception.

I also stitched up this graphic for the direction cards:

 
I'm going to use some of the flowers from the invite on the rsvp cards as well. Here's where I really need guidance. The RSVP...

Like I've said before, we're really trying to keep from having a lot of waste associated with the wedding so we're forgoing traditional RSVP mailing cards. I know, the horror! But really, people always forget to mail those back so they end up being more of a waste of resources and postage than anything. So I would like the RSVPs to ask our guests to RSVP via our wedding website, email, or phone instead. I'm adding phone because we have family that live in the land of no interwebs.

I'm just having issues with this wording. Do I let people know that we're not being cheap, just waste conscious? Or should I say the hell with it and go ahead and get the traditional cards? I would like to believe that humanity has evolved to a state where technology is more accepted, but eh, I do live in Oklahoma where there are people that still can't even get internet service faster than dial up. I've seen a lot of cards that are traditional but give the option at the bottom to respond on the wedding website, but why would you give that option if you've already bought postage and a second envelope? This gives me headaches and I would love any thoughts you might want to share.

Sorry this post had so much inner monologue, apparently I have not completely made up my mind on any of this. I told you these things were making me lose sleep.

Oops I almost forgot to show you something else I made. This is totally for Sheldon, and I'm pretty sure we'll use them for the Thank You cards instead of the invitations.

 
  Can you tell how much I love him?

Hoping for a new niece

Sheldon's (and my soon to be) sister-in-law is 8 months pregnant and I've been holding off making her anything because they are waiting to be surprised with the sex of the baby. But I just had to make these...

I've been stitching bibs and onesies like crazy for the stores I sell at and knew these two leftover bibs needed to be stitched with these Kitschy Digitals super cute Kawaii fruit patterns. So now I'm hoping that her baby is a girl so it can wear these bibs.

I mean look at the cuteness of these cherries

And these are definitely not sour lemons.

If she doesn't have a girl, there might be a giveaway in the future.

Mini Tutorial

Well my test went pretty well... at least I think. I don't find out anything until the 2nd so I have to nervously await my score all week. I have lots of crafting and homework assignments to keep me busy though. 

I originally wanted to share some pictures of my process of stitching on the vintage camera bag, but I didn't take pictures and didn't have time to work on a tutorial before the test. So when Danielle asked me about the process this morning I knew I had to share the process that I described in the camera bag post. 

Here's what you need:

A pattern, it's good to start out with something simple, for this tutorial I used the extra heart pattern that comes with the Kawaii Cute Vintage Camera pattern. 
A stick pin. I used a t-pin because they are more sturdy.
Embroidery thread, tapestry needle (I used size 26), and a rubber finger to help with stitching
Optional: an ultra fine sharpie. This is for more detailed patterns. 

First, place your pattern, right side up on the bag. I haven't found a tape that won't rip the vinyl from the bag, but if you know of any you might want to tape the pattern down so it doesn't shift while you are poking the pattern into the bag. I just held the pattern in place.

Next, take your pin and poke a long the pattern lines. Make sure the pattern doesn't shift during this process. I try to make the holes the same distance that I would want to stitch because I use these holes for my embroidery needle later. 

Here's what it looks like after all the holes are poked:

If you are doing a more detailed pattern, like the camera, you will want to play connect the dots with a ultra fine sharpie so you can see the lines better as you are stitching.

Finally, thread your tapestry needle and stitch the pattern. 

And you're finished!

I hope that helps any of you that might want to try stitching on such a material. :)

The best of both worlds

Vintage and Kawaii... yes please!

 

While thinking of projects for Danielle's patterns, I kept coming back to this vintage camera bag I thrifted a couple of months ago. I've never stitched on anything like it so I knew it would be a challenge. But I knew the vintage kawaii camera patterns would be perfect for this bag so I had to go for it. 

You may notice something about this piece that is unlike a lot of my other pieces... it's kind of wonky and the lines are kind of crooked. This is because there really isn't a good way to transfer a pattern to this kind of bag. Iron on methods will melt it. Since it is a cushioned camera case, transfer paper doesn't work. So I went with the poke method (hold the pattern on the material and poke dots along the lines). The holes that are poked do not go away so you have to be very careful. 

Something else different about this project was that it took me three weeks to stitch! After two weeks of only being able to stitch for 10 minutes at a time, I thought I would never be able to finish. Then my friend Amy told me I should try to use rubber fingers. That is why I love this lady, she knows what she is talking about. 

 These made stitching through the thick fabric easy. I started with two but later realized that I just needed one on my middle finger since that's the one I use to push the needle through the fabric. 

It was worth it all though, because now I have an awesome one-of-a-kind bag!

Did you see the good news?!

If you follow Danielle Thompson's personal blog or the Kitschy Digitals blog, you would have seen her creative team announcement yesterday. And guess what? I'm on it!

In fact, my friend Amy and I are both new members! We'll both be embroidering up cuteness to share from Danielle's designs. We have be brainstorming like crazy so get ready for some great projects!

Embroidery patterns are only a tiny portion of the awesome things Danielle designs. The other new creative team members will be working with her other digital scrapbooking/art tools. I dabble in that realm and I am always amazed at the awesome pages that come from her creative team. Everything they do is inspiring.

Wedding Wednesday - Save the Date

If you were following my flickr account around mid January you would have seen this little peek of an embroidery design I was working on.

Well that peek was of a piece I designed (with a little help from the sublime stitching sparrows) and embroidered to be on the front of our save the date postcards. I can show you the full design now that they have been mailed and received by our wonderful invitees.

FYI - ths piece is pretty big. It's probably 11 inches at the widest point. That's how I could get all the small details.

I'm pretty proud of how they turned out. I wanted a handmade touch to our invitations and what not, but there was no way I was going to embroider 150 save the date cards. I think this was the perfect solution.

Thanks to VistaPrint, these were also very economical.

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!