glittergoods

pincushion challenge: winter wonderland

Wow, nothing like shuffling your entire life over to a new computer, finally getting a nerve-wracking project done, taking to bed with a migraine, then completely losing internet access for a full day to throw a hiccup into your blog posting patterns, hm?

Ok, but this little project was not so nerve-wracking:

The theme for this round of the pincushion challenge was Winter Wonderland, &, as it turns out, when I think "winter wonderland pincushion," the one thing I think is "snow globe."

After a couple of doomed attempts at constructing the base out of cute cotton prints, using proper geometry & my sewing machine, I gave it up & hand-stitched it together out of wool felt.  The biggest challenge was coming up with the right sort of "globe" for the top, but luckily I am the mother of two tiny little pack rats, so after deciding that the top part of one of those junky little prize-filled capsules would be the right thing, I actually managed to find one kicking around in the bottom of the toybox.  Though I would have dearly loved to have figured out something along the lines of Martha's snow jars, with actual swirling glitter, I settled for a few decoupaged tissue paper snowflakes.

Making the pins is always my favorite part, even though I can't manage to keep my clay from getting be-glittered.  Also, please excuse the fact that, if you use the trees for scale, my snowman is approximately the size of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

pincushion challenge: recycle

I think I took the "recycle" pincushion challenge a little more literally than most other participants, but for some reason my mind went immediately to the recycle symbol & stayed there.  The top is a felted piece of an old pea-soup green wool sweater (apologies for the photo, the cloudy season is upon us), & I used a freezer paper stencil* for the recycling symbol.  The paper bag is my favorite pin, but I also really like the way the bottles turned out after baking (I mixed translucent + opaque polymer clay for them).

The back is made from an old pair of my son's corduroy pants & a scrap of wool felt that came from one of  Alicia's passamenterie packages.  The text, "always recycle numbers 1, 2, & 5" is best imagined as a line from a recycling jingle that played endlessly on tv when you lived in Oregon 10 or so years ago, & though you've forgotten most of the rest of the words (except the cheery "do the recycle routine!" that started the whole song off), you're pretty sure that the number line will be popping into your head at random for the rest of your life.  In practical pincushion terms, I thought that it was both decorative and instructive (& I confess that I was half-hoping for a little musical-exorcism-through-pincushion.  It didn't work.).  The whole thing is stuffed with the handfuls of wool fuzz left in my washing machine after felting wool sweaters.  The only thing I ended up purchasing for this one was some brown clay; everything else was either actual recycling or stuff that I had hanging around (pins, thread, screenprint ink), so I feel pretty good about sticking to theme.

*regarding freezer paper stencils on felted wool:  I wasn't sure this would work out, but I was really happy with the results.  After it dried, the ink had sunk into the wool quite a bit, giving it a faded look -- appropriate for this project, but I think that if I were doing it again in the future, I'd make sure to really ink it heavily.  I also used screenprinting ink instead of fabric paint, which may make a difference in terms of how the color was absorbed.

blog? what blog?

Let me tell you, when I left on my little weekend trip to LA, I did not expect things to snowball into a whole month off from blogging (both writing & reading), but it's been a nice break.  I have been working on the yard, staining deck furniture, waiting patiently for our never-ending backyard fence project to be finished already, taking my kids to the pool, rediscovering pleasure reading, & basically doing as little as I could get away with.  It was not such a bad way to spend a month.

I'm ready to get back into the swing of things (though the official tally at bloglines is that I'm 364 posts behind, so it will take me a while to catch up, ha), I think.

And, in honor of my attempt to reclaim some sort of structure, here's the first craft project I've done in a while (a month, in fact, though I did pick up (& then fail to start) a few fun projects in the interim), my answer to the Flower Pincushion Challenge:

This was a hard theme for me for some reason, but things fell pretty well into place once I decided to go in an entirely different direction than last time (except for the pins, which are just too fun not to do & which give me an excuse to collect lots of colors of polymer clay).

So then, I finished the first one & decided that I'd probably better make another one with the leftover circle of pink felt that was sitting there already cut out.  And maybe some more pins.  (There are two rows of snaps on the wristband, for size adjustment.)

The cushions also unsnap from the bracelet part, for those less flamboyant sewing moments, although I have to say that sewing is usually such a dramatic event around here (jubilation!  disaster!  frustration!  success!) that a big pink pincushion wrist corsage is just the thing.

will work for tiny cupcakes

The gallery for the first pincushion challenge is up, & it's really fun to see all the different takes on the fruit theme (I like what I came up with, but it feels like a little bit of a cop-out compared to all of the ones that are shaped like actual pieces of fruit. I may have to up the ante a bit for the next round). I'm hooked!

Things have been pretty quiet around here lately, tiny-stitching away on the quilt binding, trying to figure out where to hang a couple of pictures, failing to settle on a back hallway color, stuff like that. The thing I've gotten the most excited about in the past few days is my new grout brush. Seriously, my shower has never been so sparkly. Work is starting to heat up again (things are not really feast/famine for me, but I definitely notice surges), & this was the scene here a couple of nights ago:

 

a big pile of custom birth announcements about to head off to the Netherlands, shortly before I discover the fatal flaw that completely ruins my plans for a quick packaging-up & then early to bed. The discovery of a fatal flaw isn't something that happens that often, but when it does, it's always the result of stupidity &/or sloppy proofing on my part, it's always in the 11th hour, & it always makes me want to eat my own head.

 

Luckily, moments later my excellent husband arrived home from the grocery with an extremely tiny cupcake in hand, & I ate that instead. The strange-looking bumpiness on top was the site of a giant blackberry (attractive but too early & sour), almost as big as the pile of frosting (good), which was definitely as big as the cake itself (dry, but points for being so tiny).  In the end, I got everything done on time & still managed to get a decent amount of sleep, which I don't think would have been possible if I'd ended up with a less charming late night snack. glamscience: will work for tiny cupcakes.

little lemon garden

So, my first issue of Blueprint arrived yesterday, & I still haven't decided if I want to pony up for the whole year yet.  I probably will, just to see if it grows into itself, but I have to say that my first read-through left me pretty ambivalent.  The most interesting feature, I thought, was the one about using giant photo enlargements as art -- although I've seen this idea a variety of other places & it's the one that kept showing up on the mag's promo materials, so it felt...pretty but not fresh, I guess.  Overall, I think it's trying to do too much, & I think that Real Simple is generally better at the whole cover-all-bases thing.  (Plus, too much makeup, not enough room makeovers!)

I was happy to see the Laura Zeck ad, though -- she's a Seattle artist who does these wonderful tiny etchings.  I've got a couple single images, but would love one of her excellent big grids.

In crafty news!  I finished my fruit-themed pincushion for the May challenge, & because I see my crafting free-for-all window closing a little bit, I went a little wild with it & combined my first attempt at two-color screenprinting, my first effort at designing a fabric print, & my very first log cabin square in this first challenge pincushion, which, come to think of it, may actually be my first pincushion to boot.  Never let it be said that I think small when it comes to craft projects, ok?  (Think tiny, sure, but that's a different issue.)

"It's like a lemon garden", said my daughter.  That's my lemon fabric from the other day in the middle, surrounded by the super-excellent piecing fun of a totally uneven log cabin square.  I tried out finger pressing on the seams, & it worked like a charm, with bonus of not having to use my crummy iron.  (Oh, & those lemon pins are fimo, of course.)

The back is a snip of the lemon fabric + some happy little sheep along with some stripes that I thought were regular old straight stripes but which turn out to undulate, so that's not just wacky sewing on my part.

(It says "sour" in that far back corner.)

So fun!  I'm already wondering what the next theme will be...maybe I'll try out one of those adorable MSL tomatoes in the meantime.