Thing-a-day.com

I’ve been very lax about posting this week. I blame my boyfriend completely. I take absolutely no responsibility. Really, it’s his fault, he’s the one that kept turning on Law & Order…..But regardless, I have been doing stuff, and here it is….

more of my alphabet, letters C and E (C was a bitch, I HATE little tiny circles!) I skipped D because it was another complicated pattern and I didn’t really have time for it. Hopefully I’ll get to it this weekend…..but other factors may prevent me from being too active in crafting for the rest of the month (godDAMN my landlord! I hate moving!)

Dessert for Valentine’s dinner made a day early. Based on Bakerella’s red velvet cake balls. My supermarket didn’t have red velvet cake mix, so I used strawberry. Note to self: never try to make a dessert involving small balls of something rolled in molten chocolate again, it’s just a pain in the butt (but oh-so delicious!)

Here’s the Valentine’s card that I made for my boyfriend. It’s hard to tell in this pic, but the words love are backed with red paper, the rest of the text is a dark brown, and the kisses are silver:

And my final thing for this week was cooking Valentine’s dinner. I didn’t get any pictures of it before we ate, but my boyfriend did. Now all I have to do is try to pry the pictures out of his DSLR-baby. Now, where did my butterknife go, I wonder……

paper cut of the letter B on a temporary background. Oh, I also made some chili today (first real cooking I’ve done in quite a while….)

Today was the day my boyfriend was supposed to get back from a week of skiing in Colorado. But apparently Vail got about 2 feet of snow this past week, so all the highways were closed, and he couldn’t get out of Vail in time to make his flight last night. Anyway, he won’t be back till late this evening, and I ended up with a whole day of time to kill, which very rarely happens, so I ended up working on one of my more time-consuming projects, a bedskirt for my poor bed, which has been naked since I bought it. Figured it’s about time to remedy that. For our Halloween party last year, I bought a bunch of sheets from thrift stores to use as dust sheets over the furniture (drunk friends + unprotected furniture = sticky oozy stuff embedded in places you didn’t think were possible). I used a couple of the leftover sheets (properly laundered, of course). It was pretty easy, although the corners gave me a little trouble. I didn’t bother taking any progress shots because, honestly, a monkey could probably learn to sew better than me. (I generally prefer harder materials - materials that don’t slip and slide around when I’m not looking at them.) If you’d like directions for this, I more or less followed these directions, although I used a sheet for the platform, rather than just attaching it with velcro.

By the way, my bed has never been so well-made….poor, poor bed…….

Next big project = a duvet cover out of more leftover sheets

For today, I did another papercut, this time of the letter “A” with some lovely flourishes. Design courtesy of another wonderful Dover book, this one of illustrated Art Nouveau letters. I’ve decided that I want to do a framed grouping of papercuts, and I needed a theme, so I think that I will do the entire alphabet. So, expect more letters (hopefully some more elaborate ones) later this month. The backing for this letter is temporary, because I only have a very limited supply of this color, but I do like the contrast of light on dark. I’m planning on using a bunch of random frames that I have left over, which I plan to use for this project, but they’re all different, so I’d like to keep the color palette of the letters the same. This letter also turned out a little larger relative to the frame than I intended, so I may switch it to a different frame (but I have plenty of those). Anyway, lemme know what ya’ll think!

Oh, and what happened to my Day 7 thing, you ask? Well, I didn’t make anything yesterday, but I did do something that I think counts….I got my hairs cut

(first haircut in over a year, I lost about 6-7 inches!)

I was trying to finish a book I was reading yesterday (Pillars of Earth by Ken Follett - it was very, very good), so I did a little sketch, ’cause it was quick and didn’t take any kind of preparation. It’s the first real sketch I’ve done in probably more than a year, so it kind of sucks. I based out off this photo of an owl. In retrospect, maybe I should have gone for something with a little less texture (i’ve never figured out how to draw feathers. advice anyone?), but I like owls

Anyway, I left my laptop at work yesterday, so I couldn’t post this till I got to work (shh! don’t tell my boss!)

My cat’s demanding a lap so I have to right this quickly (back off, kitty!). I framed a piece of sheer fabric that I had laying around. The fabric has these floral appliques adhered to it. I backed the sheer fabric with a light turquoise fabric, and wrapped it all (no kitty, bad kitty!) around a piece of adhesive foam core. Then I lined the edge with two different kinds of ribbon. I was going to do two of these, but I ran out of ribbon, and since it’s a 20-odd year old remnant, I don’t think I’ll be able to find any more of it. Anyway, here it is. Sorry the picture’s so dark, but I have terrible lighting in my house. I’ll try to get a better photo tomorrow.

I spent about an hour today playing around on the Paper Critters website, where you can design and print your own paper toys. All of the toys have the same basic body shape, and you decorate them to your taste. They have a pretty nice variety of decals in a couple of styles that you can use, and they have a few drawing tools if you happen to be one of those people who can actually free-hand draw with a mouse (if you are one of those people, I hate you. When I try to draw with a mouse it looks like an actual mouse did the drawing.) The drawing function is also limited by the fact that there is no erase tool. It would also be nice if there were a cut and paste option, but otherwise it’s a fun little site to play around with. You can also check out other peoples creations in their gallery. Here’s one of my creations below (unfortunately, I don’t have a color printer, so I’m limited to black and white designs).

Another fairly lazy day for me today. I did some laundry and washed the sheets that I intend to use to make a dust ruffle and a duvet cover. However, after a brief shopping trip out in the muck, I was very cranky and not in the mood to fight with my sewing machine. (My sewing machine and I are not really friends yet. I still haven’t figured out all of her quirks, and she’s not very forgiving of my lack of skill, that bitch). So I read a book for a couple of hours, watched me some Sense and Sensibility, and finally decided to get off my ass and make something around 10 tonight. I didn’t want to get into anything big, so I decided to try some easy paper-cutting. I used a drawing out of one of my Dover Chinese pattern books (love Dover!), an exacto knife, and some cardstock. I backed it with some dark blue scrapbooking paper, and then put it in a little frame I had lying around. I might try making another one of these this month, as it was pretty easy to do, and I think I can do better next time. I might also try embellishing this one a bit with some glitter or possibly some very small rhinestones. What do you guys think?

So, my previous post was a bit of a cheat. I made both the snow-Jabba and the skull on Friday. Today was the Mardi Gras parade in St. Louis, so I spent most of the day drinking and gathering beads, and I didn’t think I’d get around to making anything. But I’m still awake, and even if it is after midnight, I still consider this Day 2, cause the day’s not over till you go to bed. So, in honor of Mardi Gras I decided to make a mask. It’s paper, with paint and glitter, so it’s more for decoration (not very wearable). The paint’s still wet, so I’ll have to wait till morning to add the ribbon ties and maybe some feathers. But it’s close enough to done for me to claim it for my Day-2-thing. Hooray!

Day 1 was a snow day, after we got 9 inches of snow dropped on us here in St. Louis. My roommate and I decided, it had been far too long since either of us had made a snowman, so we went out to the backyard to make one. However, the snow wasn’t really cooperating (too powdery), so we made a snow”creature” instead. See if you can figure out who it is:

I also made this little fellow from skull-a-day.com:

yikes, what have I done?! I’m not much of a daily crafter, but I guess that’s the point of signing up for this. Most of my making is traditionally focused around Halloween (best. holiday. ever!). I usually spend mad hours of time in the two to three months before Halloween making stuff for our party, and then more or less take the rest of the year off. I occasionally get the urge to make something non-Halloween related, as the many random WIP lying abandoned in my office can atest to.  Sometimes I even finish them. But it’s been a while since my last (completed) project - hence signing up for this.

So, I’ve got a bunch of little, non-time-consuming projects to do on the days when time will be an issue, mainly some papercraft toys, some decorative masks, and such. I’m also hoping to cook something new at least once a week to kill a couple of my days (and up my sugar intake - cookies, and cupcakes, and candy, oh my!).  And I’m planning on working on a couple of sewing projects I’ve been meaning to start for a couple of months now, including: a dust ruffle for my bed, a duvet cover, and valance for my bed’s canopy (leftover from last year’s Halloween decorations, and still draped in black fabric - time to change that!)

I think the thing that’s got me most nervous about this is writing a daily blog post. It might turn out to be an every-other-day blog post, but I’ll try to talk about each project and post pictures (supposing I can figure out how to do such a thing, of course). Anyway, I’ve never blogged before, so y’all should let me know if I’m rambling too much (like right now, for instance

I’m glad I’ve signed up for this, and I hope to get to know all of you and get inspired by all of your wonderful projects.

Till Friday, my dears. Ta-ta.