Coffee and Cross Stitch

For those of you who like to sew in addition to cross stitch, etc., check out Sew4Home. They have fantastic project ideas on their site, complete with free patterns. I've found quite a few that I want to do and can't wait to get started!!

http://sew4home.com/

Simple "Thank You" notes

Hello all!!  You know I couldn't possibly go and entire weekend without doing something scrapbooking related.  

Today I want to share some SUPER easy "thank you" notes that I made to send to my fam for the faboo gifts they gave me for Christmas.  I know, I know, I'm a little late, but better late than never, right???

Ok so...no planned scrapbooking/papery event in my house is complete without at least a walk through Paper Source.  When I was there last weekend getting the supplies for my sister's "Save the Date" cards, I saw a FAAAAAAAAAAABULOUS new color called "Aubergine".  Oh, hello new color.  How I love thee.  Not only is it in the purple family (we all know my thoughts on purple!!!  well, as long as it's not barney purple and it's covering an entire wall in one of the rooms of my third floor, and then sponge/rag painted on top of a white base all over the remaining walls.  ahem......), but it's Paper Source's only textured paper!!  Oh, it's awesome.  LOVE. 

Mkay so.....I scouted out the Aubergine line last week, and this past Friday, decided to head on over and see what I could pick up for these thank you's I had buzzing around in my head.  Way back in March of last year, when I went to the opening of the Walnut Street Store, I saw a demo of a really cool idea.  Take a chalk stamp pad, and use IT as your stamp to create a color background.  Stay with me...then take another stamp, and ink it with regular ink, and stamp it on top of the chalk background you just created.  Viola!!!!  Magic!!!

Let's go through it....

Ok, so here are all my stamps and inks --

Yay!!  Ok - I forgot to take a pic of them, but the cards I got are #10 Paper Bag, and the envelopes are Aubergine.  I picked Paper Bag over Khaki because the Paper Bag ones actually have flecks of color throughout.  Way cool.

Now....here's the first step:  take your ink and make a color background:

Boom.  Next, take another stamp, ink it with a contrasting color (I used Frost White), and stamp it on top of the color block, like so:

Nifty, amiright???!!  The little "thank you" stamp was inked with the same chalk ink (Blackberry) as the background for the "j".  I took that stamp and put it in a different spot for each one - so some people have the thank you on the right in a spot, others have it on the left.  Gotta keep  'em all on their toes ;-)

The flap of the envelope I stamped with the "do something creative everyday" stamp that I got from Paper Source (all the stamps used for this project were purchased there, actually), because I FIRMLY believe that we should all do something creative every day.  I have a highly technical job, and I just have to dump all that stuff at the door when I leave, and turn my left brain on in full force, so that when I get home, I can fully engage it and either cross stitch, scrapbook, sew, or whatever!  It's such a great thing to be able to do that, and we all need to make time for it every day!!!

I digress...

I took the "do something creative..." stamp, inked it with Frost White, and then covered it with clear embossing powder to emboss it.  I'm not sure how I like it, to be honest.  I should have stamped it with a Versamark ink pad and embossed it with white powder instead, so it would be more vibrant white against the Aubergine...but oh well.  Ya live & learn, right??  :-)

That's it!!  Your 'thank you's' are all done!!  This project might be the quickest one I've done to date -- it only took me a whopping 30 minutes from start to finish, including clean-up!!  I'd say that's pretty daggone good!!!  haha!

That's all I have for today, crafters!  Have a fabulous Monday, and do something creative today!!!!!

Much love :-)

Huh. So...that's done already...

Um so....remember when I showed you this pretty WIP from Prairie Schooler??

Well......I finished it last night.

:-)

Isn't it cutie?!!??? I love it!  I will say - working on a larger project with tight stitching can be grueling on 40 count.  BUT, 40 count is my new love.   Like I said in my previous post about this piece, I didn't change any of the fiber colors (shocking, I know, since that's my  new favorite thing to do), so this is stitched in all the original DMC.  The fabric is Autumn Blush from Silkweaver.

There's something about that red bird that I just love! Now I just have to find the perfect frame for it :-)

I've moved on to a new project already (again, shocker, I know), this time a wedding gift for a friend at work.  Remember all these fun things I did for the work bridal shower??  Well, I also promised Danielle that I would stitch her something.  I had something in the works, but halfway through it, decided I didn't like it anymore.  This happens from time to time, unfortunately, so I had to pick something else.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, and the last time I was at my LNS, saw something perfect from My Big Toe designs and it's called "The Wedding".  It's simple, yet so pretty, and it's easily customizable - it's stitched in only 2 colors.  So, I'm stitching it in Blackbird (Crescent Colors) and Bubble Gum (Weeks Dye Works).

At first, I wasn't quite sure I liked how bright the pink was against the fabric and the Blackbird.  But, as I kept stitching, it really started to grow on me, and I think it'll work out just fine.  Danielle is a pink person (I'm a purple person myself, so it's tough to not stitch this in something a little more subtle ;-)), and this will definitely fit her taste more than what I was originally stitching for her.  I hope she likes it!!!

That's it for tonight, kids.  I'm fighting a killer headache that wants to turn into a full-blown migraine SO BAD, but I refuse to let it.  So, I'm heading to bed.  Way lame for a Saturday night, but whatcha gonna do.

Love and stitches :-)

"Save the Date"

Hello my friends!  It has been a whirlwind of a week, complete with stitching and much papercrafting in this house!

I'm almost done the Prairie Schooler "Winter" that I showed you a few days ago (or has it been a week already...I seriously can't keep track...), but today's post isn't about stitching.

It's about cardmaking.

My sister is getting married in June, and way back when, I offered to do "Save the Date" cards for her if she wanted to send them out.  Well, she took me up on the offer, and today was the day that we decided to sit and get it all done!  It took a solid 5 (yes, 5) hours to do them, but they're all done and ready for mailing!

I had so much fun coming up with the idea, and I'm so glad she liked them :-)

Our bridesmaid's dresses are a granite color (in fact, i think that might actually be the color name), and sis wants us all in yellow shoes (funky, right?!  i see a trip to South Street in the very near future for some bangin' yellow pumps!! ha!), so I thought that we should continue that trend with the "save the dates" and came up with this:

Now, the background is more cream than yellow, but I didn't want it to be too bright on the front and take away from the stamp.  Fun, amiright??  These are 4-bar flat cards in Slate from one of my most favvvvorite places to go - Paper Source.  They're not very big, in fact I think they're the smallest card they sell, but they were perfect for what we needed them.  The above picture is the front side of the card.  Below is the back:

Now THIS is where the fun yellow comes into play!!  My flower stamp and little yellow & grey flower adornments.  Yayyy!  We had a regular assembly line going in my craft room today - I cut everything down to the correct sizes, and then we all set to work gluing and sticking and stamping and adorning so that we could just plow through everything and all sis had to do was go home and print labels!  Viola!!  In the blank space, we wrote all of the information (well, sis and cuz did that while I hole-punched and adorned), and they turned out just super cute :-)

It's not done there, though!  As most of you know by now, I have this love affair with my envelope liner templates that I got from, you guessed it, Paper Source.  Seriously love.that.store.  So, all of the envelopes are lined with pretty black/grey/yellow paper, much like the one in this pic -

All of the envelopes have a different lining, and all of the cards have a different black/white themed back paper on the front (the one under the cream).  So, even though all the recipients won't know that theirs is different from everyone else's, we know, and it makes it that much more special :-)

That's it for this afternoon, my wonderful crafty stitchy friends!  I thank all of you for following me and all the crazy crafty things that I do!  I hope to inspire you all as I have been inspired by so many here in the blogosphere!!!

Hugs and stitches :-)

Just a quick thought -- for those of you with a smart phone with the application "Instagram" follow me!! (alottalatte29) I often post pictures there of stuff I make that doesn't always make it here to my blog!!

:-)

So...this might be my new favorite website. Awesomely cute vintage inspired clothes and accessories. LOVE.

http://www.modcloth.com/

Winter is coming...

Any "Game of Thrones" fans out there???  I CANNOT wait for the new season to begin.  Cannot wait.  I love my HBO series......but I do not love that they make you wait a full friggin year for the new season of your favorite shows.  Makes me angry.  "Boardwalk Empire" just ended, now I gotta wait till April for GOT.  Not happy.  I need something to keep me going these cold winter nights.

Well.  Once it actually GETS cold.  I'm not complaining....but I'm kinda freaked out.  64 degrees today in Philly.  Way weird.  

Anyhooter.  I have pics of a WIP I got goin' on in my den.  It's fitting for the time of year despite the fact that it's not actually cold out.  Yet.

I have a few Prairie Schooler patterns, but I haven't done any of them...until now.  I found this one in my stash - "Winter" - and thought it was appropriate to do now that Christmas is behind us (anyone else feel like it was for serious a month ago already???  how does that happen??  the week after Christmas and I already think it's been behind us for months.).

So...I went through my fabric stash (which these days, is a bit ridiculous.  i signed up for the fabric of the month in 2011 with Shakespeare's Peddler, and i'm now the proud owner of 12 (yes, 12) fat halves of 40 count fabric.  i'll let you ponder that for a moment, and you can all gasp in astonishment and slight horror when you realize how long after i'm dead this fabric will last.  a small hint:  a long, long time.), and picked out a very pretty piece of "Autumn Blush" from Silkweaver.  I wanted something light so you could see the contrasting dark DMC colors once it's stitched.  

It's turning out rather nicely, if I do say so myself...even if it's taking me foreverandafreakingday since it's TINY.  Seriously.  I do not know what I was thinking when I got so much of this count fabric.  I mean....so much.  I'm swimming in 40 count.  

(sigh)

Pretty, huh?!  :-)  I put my scissors next to it so you could see just how tiny this comes out when you're stitching it on 40 count fabric.  Itsy bitsy teeny weeny (yellow polka dot bikini!).  No fiber changes on this one - I'm stitching it using the same DMC that the sample was stiched in.

I also have been spending some QT in my craft room doing some scrapbooking.  I have pictures from the shore from this past summer, but not enough to fill a big 12x12 book, so I decided to give these mini albums a whirl.  I've been seeing them all over the place, and finally gave it a go.

Let me tell you - these mini albums are GREAT!  I  used a book I already had, but I plan on doing a chipboard album soon so I can try some different stuff.  I don't know what the theme will be, but I'm def doing it!  Here's a peek at a few of the pages I did for the shore pics I took (sadly, I'm not in a single pic....):

Aren't they fun?!  I have to go back and add some embellishments to some of the pages, but for the most part, it's complete.  For those of you who do scrapbooking in addition to your needlework, I suggest you try a mini album!  They're super cute and tons of fun!  I also find they're a little less work than the big books, so you have (almost) instant gratification!

That's it for me for the moment.  I know you've all been so patient waiting for me to post pics of stuff I've been working on, and I appreciate you all hanging in there until I finally get around to posting them!

Much love ~

 

Organization

So...I got a label maker for Christmas, and just opened it today.

Pardon me while I go label everything in my entire house.

Currently on the craft table -- mini albums from the fam trip to the shore this past summer.

Stay tuned...I'm addicted to mini albums now....HA.

Happy New Year!

Ok...I might be a day late...but you're over it.  Ha!  I don't know how it happened, but here we are in 2012 all of the sudden.  Is everyone ready for Armageddon?  I am.  I have 1400 soaps that I got at Bath and Body Works when they had one of their fab promos and stocked up.  Anyone looking to wash up after the battle of good and evil, just stop on over my house.  I also have enough cross stitch projects to keep us all occupied until the shops open up again.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I've started the new year pretty ok.  I finally cleared off my desk, which is a giant glass table, and now only have one computer on it and infinite amounts of space for all my Post-its, etc.  Wait, what?  Only one computer on my desk now??  Ah, yup.  Remember way back when in the summer when I was having horrific computer problems and then finally went and got myself a pretty iMac at the beginning of September???  Welp, my shell of a crashed computer has been sitting on top of my desk alongside my pretty new iMac since the day I brought it home.

Pathetic.

BUT, I can explain.  There initially was a definite need -- I had to transfer my entire iTunes music library to my new computer.  That was fun and exciting, let me tell you.  However, the thought of losing all my music and having to manually reload all of my CDs into the new computer was daunting. I figured out how to do it pretty painlessly, and got all of my music transferred.

Then, my old computer never moved.  Weird.

So, today, I finally couldn't take it anymore, and cleaned up my desk, threw a bunch of sh-- away, and took my old computer to the 3rd floor for storage.  Since, you know, some day someone somewhere that I know will need an antiquated hard drive and a flat screen monitor to go with it.

Ahem.

I also finally took pics of my "Skeleton Crew" piece for you all to see!  It was brought to my attention that the link I previously provided to my LNS newsletter was no longer working, so I knew I had to get this posted asap for you all.

How.freaking.cool.is.THIS. OMG.  It is seriously one of my favorite pieces that I've done to date.  My Miribilia pieces win hands down, but this is a close third.  Second is "Sleepy Hollow".   I can't wait to have this framed and ready for Halloween this year!!  So cool.

AAAHHHH!!!  SO COOL!!!!

CREEPY.  I would NOT want this thing coming at me in the water.  No  thank you and good day.

But seriously.  Totally cool piece, amiright???!?!  Like I said in my previous post, I made fiber changes in this piece, and if you want to know what I changed, hit the Floss and Fabric changes link under Pages on the left sidebar of my page.  If you need to order them and don't have a needlework shop near you, the ladies at my LNS, The Strawberry Sampler, are at the ready to help you.  Just call or email them and ask them for my changes to Skeleton Crew, and they'll get you the supplies asap. 

What am I working on now that I'm done that crazy piece??  Well, I started "Winter Wind" by Prairie Schooler, and I've got miscellaneous smalls floating around that I need to do the finish work on, including the needlebook that I finished eons ago.  I really need to spend some QT with my sewing machine sometime soon and get them all finished so I can display them. 

I think that's it for now.  I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and are ready to start fresh this year!  I know I am!  So much stuff I want to do and so little time!! :-)

Love and stitches ~