Shout Out

Our friend Jessie is taking a cake decorating class, and I was floored today when I saw this picture of her creation - she should be on Cake Boss! It's a beautiful arrangement of Fall flowers in a lovely basket, all fully edible and magically delicious, I have no doubt (tragically, I live much too far away to experience an actual mouthful of this masterpiece). Good job, Jessie! Let us know if it tastes as good as it looks - if you can ever bear to cut into it!

DIY Halloween Decorations

Oi, more pumpkins!!  This time smaller and only one panel, reminiscent of pincushions past.  I used the same base as the purlbee cushion, but tied off the gather and topped with a stem.  I think winding the thread around the cushion would still look awesome, creating the signature grooves of pumpkins, buuuuut, this looks fine too, and is less work :)

Aside from pumpkins, I spent last night tracing out Martha Stewart shapes and cutting them out of plain black construction paper.  The jack o'lantern is kind of a pain to cut out, but totally worth it.  I still have one cat to cut out but am putting it off because the millions of little spikes to cut out are wicked daunting.   

Anyhoo, back to pumpkins.  They aren't scented like the big ones, and these are stuffed with regular polyfil for guts, but the same tiny silca beads for weighted bottoms.

(Gratuitous shot of p'kins on the counter with my new smiley face mug I never knew I couldn't live without until today)

I'm not sure where to put them yet for the Halloween season.......maybe gathered in front of my boyfriend's cookbooks?  

For now they're in a sort of centerpiece on the kitchen table with some sprigs of berries I walked 40 minutes up the road for yesterday thinking they were going to be bittersweet.  Ah well...........I just ordered a couple packs of retro Halloween pictures that will be here soon, and tonight I'm going to work on felt eyeballs!

I just can't wait!!

Pumpkins!

  

Like a lot of people, it's very rare for me to get excited for upcoming holidays as early in the season as craft stores (and malls) do.  BUT, for whatever reason, this year I am SO in the mood, and am already gearing up for cold weather crafting!!

I had been feeling really crafting lazy for most of the second half of the summer...but the recent change in weather and the fact I can smell camp fires again on a regular basis has made me antsy to get back on the sewing machine. 

So I thought of making my mom some stuffed, scented pumpkins and wanted to get started early enough so she could decorate with them this year.  I knew I wanted Halloween prints, and I've always had good luck with holiday prints at Hancock fabrics.  I love how authentic my spider print turned out to be---check out the little fella who ran down my real pumpkin during the photo shoot:

I'm also not well versed on sewing spheres, so I used this AWEsome tutorial from the Purl Bee for the basic ball, then added my own doodads to the top.

Well it never occurred to me that my resident pumpkin patch was also ready for the Halloween season.  Since I didn't plant the vine, I had no idea what type of pumpkins I had, so I tried picking one up and it came right off in my hands.  Turns out my pumpkins are wee, but I love them.

Unlike the real ones, mine are stuffed with potpourri, tiny silica beads for weight, and bamboo stuffing.  The top is a piece of felt and the whole thing is finished with a pipe cleaner stem and curly-q's. 

Hope my mom likes them!

Girlguiding UK!

The Girlguiding UK Brownie Annual for 2012 came out recently. What in the world does this have to do with me? Well, said annual includes not one but two cute little stories featuring my illustrations! I was very pleased to receive a copy today. It is quite nice - nicer than I realized it would be - and the print quality is very good, very true to the original artwork. At other times in the past I have sometimes felt disappointed when I saw the printed versions of my work - distortions, poor color matching, et cetera - but the annual looks great, and I was very happy with the whole experience.

Blog love

I just discovered my piece "Tea Party" featured on this lovely crafting blog, along with several other adorable tea-themed illustrations and crafts. Run over there and check it out!

Summer plants!

Hi!  We are now knee deep in summer, and with it has come some fairly brutal hot days, but also some nice surprises.  Take this for example:

This huge plant-y thing stated growing spontaneously at the foot of my stairs about a month ago.  I thought from the leaves and orange fruit blossoms that I was the fortunate recipient of a free zucchini plant!  BUT, I could tell they weren't regular zucchinis, and only after picking these four helpless "squash" did I realize it's actually a pumpkin patch in full swing.

I was so sad when I realized what I had done, but thank goodness there are still plenty more orange blossoms in waiting,

And even more pumpkin babies on the way:

But just look at this thing, it's huge!

Next up is my poor potted plant that is a skeleton of what it was when I bought it in May.  Poor thing either hates the sun, or heat or all of the above.  I moved it out of the direct sun and am keeping my fingers crossed for the future.

Everyone else seems to be doing ok though, and make me so happy every time I go in or out of the house.

A nice box of orange and red things with tyme planted in the middle (sorry I have no idea what the flowers are...I bought them because they're orange).

Another nice box, crazily growing with oregano, basil, parsley and rosemary!!  Mmmm...

Aahhh, I just love fresh herbs and have already used the basil on pizza and the tyme in a summery white wine/lemon penne primavera lately.  So, so good!

These black eyed susans were an impulse buy because I walked by them and couldn't resist.  So hearty and doing well on their own which is awesome.  I totally dig plant independence.

Last but not least - my tomato plant!  I absolutely love cherry tomatoes, and though I couldn't figure out exactly what variety this was going to be, I went with it because it said it was good for pots on a patio.

They're wee, but definitely bigger than cherry, so who knows.  All I know is how excited I was when I spied the first RED one!

I haven't plucked it off yet, but I can't wait.  Ack!  Summer!  Home grown plants!  Yeah!!

Christmas Crafting

So!  For once, this past weekend was fairly productive on the Christmas gift making front.  First up was a sock monkey from this pattern that I've been wanting to try for a while.  It never occurred to me to make a monkey out of socks other than the traditional brown wool ones!

I'm so in love with her.  She makes me laugh every time I look at her because her arms and legs are like 10 feet long!  Just depends on how tall the socks are, and I used full length knee socks. 

I wish I thought to take a picture of her bum, because really it's the cutest part.  And I have to say I'll be a little sad to see her go, as she's been good company sitting pretty on the sewing table.  But alas, she'll be heading out to Dallas in the next couple of weeks to start a friendship with my niece.

My next project was totally inspired by this woman who I recently saw at Indie Craft Experience in Atlanta, but remembered her originally from Bele Chere in Asheville, earlier this summer.  I LOVE her stuff, and her awesome monster hoodies were a new edition at the Atlanta show.  In fact, some friends and I bought one that looks just like the one listed for a friend who was turning 28 that day...and he loves muppets...and he loved the hoodie.

Some of you may remember the hooded towels I've made in the past with stuffed monster eyes,  but as soon as I saw this girl's horns, I HAD to try it.  I was worried about them standing up, but they turned out all right!  This towel will be for my littlest nephew of dinosaur pillow case fame.

Lastly, I've been wanting to make Tires a scarf forever, and even bought some nice, masculine, blue fabric AGES ago.  Well, I never did, and now I had some left over Christmas material, so what better than to make him a fabulous Christmas outfit!

Amazingly, for such a small dog, Tires has a really big neck, so I wasn't able to tie his outfit on when I finished.  No sweat tho...I just added snaps to the ends and it fits him perfectly.

Now I have to make another set of pillowcases, crush more potpourri for three more hotpads waiting to be filled, and I have to make the mate to my first ever potholder.  Just a plain square, but I attempted quilting and attaching bias tape for the first time.  Not totally awfully, but it's more of a potholder that only a mom (particularly MY mom) will especially love.  More on the potholder experience (maybe) later.