Craftyminx

Wedding Wednesday - Dresses and Tattoos

Hello all! Last week's list post made me dizzy. I can not believe how close this thing is! My countdown clock tells me the wedding is 66 days away. I am feverishly trying to finish everything in time. Throw in contracts with a couple of stores in town that I need to supply and an embroidered portrait I need to finish this weekend for an art show and yeah, I'm way busy. But I know everything will come together in the end. It always does.

We finished another bridesmaid dress this Saturday! We totally have this pattern down :)

 
Xochit's Dress

 
Bri's Dress

I love that the back of the dress needs shank style buttons. I have so many vintage buttons to use! These are the ones I picked out for their dresses:

 
Xochit's Dress

 
Bri's Dress

I love them! I'm really excited to finish my dress. we made the muslin of it this weekend too and it is going to be awesome! I'm sad I can't share it with you until after the wedding, I definitely want it to be a surprise to Sheldon and everyone else.

I thought I'd share our tattoos on here as well. I've already tweeted about them and posted pictures on flickr, but they do have something to do with the wedding so they need to be shared here too.

It is no secret that Sheldon and I both love tattoos.  I'm a little behind Sheldon with only 3 while he almost has two half-sleeves finished. We had been throwing around the idea of some kind of couples tattoos for quite a while. There were many different things we talked about, but we both agreed that we liked the lock and key idea for their traditional appeal.

Our next decision was to decide who we would get to do them. We both kind of wanted to get them done on our honeymoon, but later decided we needed to get them done by our tattoo guy Travis at No Regrets here in OKC. And since we were going to have him do them, we thought why not go ahead and do it now? We're spontaneous like that. :)

We love Travis, he's even coming to our wedding, so we had to have him create these for us. I love that they complement each other and each of us individually! Mine is sooo girlie and Sheldon's is much more traditional which matches a lot of his other work. We're both totally in love with them!

Year end review (in lots of pictures)

January
 
My uncle made some awesomeness for my bedroom!

I turned 26 and sheldon got me Hello Kitty Cupcakes - thus proving that I would marry him one day ;)

February

I made meat cupcakes!


Sheldon and I celebrated our first Valentine's Day together.

March

I made a pretty baby blanket in awesome colors for an awesome person.

 
 I got my first tattoos!

April

We went to Vegas for Viva Las Vegas... Yeah that's pretty much all I did.

May
 
I made a lot of these in preparation for the May Deluxe.
 
 
Sheldon moved in.

 June

Sheldon's dog Dewey moved in.


I made some family silhouettes for our bedroom. 

July
 
We spent a lot of time with Sheldon's family in Muskogee, OK where we found this awesome cabinet that now holds, dvds, cds, and ps2 and 3 games.

 
 We had our first dinner party as a couple.

August

I decided I needed to embroider more, and I started by adding embroidered animals to my knitted baby blankets.

 
I started my next big embroidery project/tattoo design

September
 
Sheldon proposed! We'll be getting married September 18, 2010.

 
I decided to try my hand at quilting.

October
 
 I crafted this awesome costume!


We had a family pumpkin carving party!

November
 
Amy and I taught an embroidery class together. We had a great time!

 
Sheldon and I started our own Thanksgiving traditions. Including friendsgiving with my friends.

December
 
I participated in my 3rd Deluxe Indie Bazaar.


Most recently, we had our first family ordeal. Dewey bit Bella on the 28th, resulting in a freaked out mama and 7 stitches to Bella's noggin. She's doing great now. I'm sure it was an accident, where he snapped and accidentally made contact. If it was on purpose he would have done a lot more damage.

Anyways, thanks for reading this year and next year will be full of more crafting, and definitely more wedding planning! Come back tomorrow to see my 2010 goals!

It's finished! Plus some extras...

The Bella embroidery is finished! I'm pretty happy with the results, but not happy enough.

She just looks kind of bored...

If you've ever met Bella in person, you probably realized that she's really not a dog at all, she's her own weird breed of cat/pig/alien baby. And since I can't embroider her infamous Bella yell, I had a hard time making this embroidery 100% Bella. So I went back to the drawing board... literally. I came up with this.

For some reason, this one captures her essence just a little more. It's weird, because the first one looks like her. I'm pretty sure I would be happy with it if it weren't going to be tattooed on me. I want my tattoo to look exactly like my baby girl. And really, it only took about 6 hours to make a new one.

What do you all think? Which do you like better? Sheldon insists that they are both perfect. I think he just wants me to stop embroidering her so he doesn't end up with a couch full of Bella pillows with ball trim edges (because you know that is what these are turning into).

Side note - don't you love my new $1.50 afghan from the thrift store?!

Ok, so now for a shameless plug...

I'm teaching a class on creating and transferring your own embroidery patterns at the Deluxe Craft Weekend. So if you want to make a dog portrait for yourself this is the place to be!  (like my segway?)

If you sign up for the craft weekend, you get Friday to Sunday from 9am-9pm full of crafting, socializing and fun. All your meals are provided and you get to leave your stuff out for 3 days without having to clean up. I know those of you without a studio would probably love that idea (and so would your household). 

But wait, there's more... If you can't do the whole weekend, for any number of reasons, you can sign up to take a la carte workshops, like the one I'm teaching. If you don't embroider, take my class to make your own design, then take the embroidery 101 class to learn the basics. There are tons of workshops on everything from whittling to serger basics. Take a look.

The weekend is September 25th - 27th at okcCoCo. This is also the place that has a crafting get together once a month. I'm super excited to finally make it out there and have some fun with crafters!

My First Tattoo!

I really should say tattoos since I got two at the same time. Three weeks ago, on March 7th I went to Travis at No Regrets  to get my first tattoos. I have always thought that bow tattoos were really cute, but I also thought they were a little overdone. So I decided if I wanted bows, they had to be different and Hello Kitty bows definitely fit that purpose. I know a lot of people might ask "why didn't you get a crafty tattoo?" Those are coming. I have big plans for the crafting tattoos, but I thought H.K. needed to come first. I have loved H.K. since I was a wee little girl and figured that anything I could love for 20+ years had to be something that I would be able to stand on my body for the rest of my life.

Since I went the week before to make the appointment, I spent the whole week in anticipation. I really wasn't that nervous until the day of. I was having a lot of stomach problems before I went and I just thought it was nerves (these ended up being the stomach flu from hell, but I won't share those details).  Once I got there, the nerves calmed and were replaced by excitement. I was REALLY scared I was going to faint, I often faint when I'm in pain. Thankfully, there was no fainting involved. It hurt... BAD, but I never got to the point where it was unbearably painful. Boyfriend held my hand throughout the process, which really helped. Having something to squeeze helped me keep from thinking about the pain. Travis warned me that most people think the second one hurts more than the first, and it did. It may have just been in my head, but the first few lines that he did on the second one were the most painful. They took 2 hours for him to complete. They are so bold with color. Maybe I should have picked something a little more simple and less time consuming for my first tattoo. Oh well, I LOVE them and think they are perfect!

Sorry I kept this story a secret for so long. I put the pictures up on flickr, but I didn't want to do a post until I had a chance to show my mom. I didn't want her to find out on my blog. I was able to show them to her this past weekend. She hates tattoos so it was interesting. I think it is so funny when parents say the "I guess it's your body" line. I guess it is supposed to take away from them thinking you are ridiculous or sinful.

Anyways, Here is what they look like now, all healed. They are the best ever!

This one has flash spots but I think it is funny because you can see how hard it is to take pictures of the back of your legs. I should have waited for boyfriend to be able to take these haha.