Dinosaurs

My dear friend Rob and his lady recently had a little one join their lives. Rob and I met in high school when we were both interns at the Museum of Natural History. Being a high school student with full access to the Museum was a real treat, we would spend hours roaming the halls and looking at the exhibits.

So the arrival of Hayden (personally I wonder if there isn’t a connection to the planetarium) called for something special: dinosaur stencils. 

I am really please with how well these turned out. I think everything needs a dinosaur stencil now. Of course all this is leading up to a stencil tutorial, promise.

Grace and Nyla's goodies

I have several very cool projects that you all are going to have to wait to see because they are in the top secrete status. All I can say for now is that they are very cool and you will all like them a lot once you see them.
As I try to crawl out of the hole of 33 babies in a year I have turned to one of my favorite crafts stencils. This outfit is for Ms. Grace born this year to two friends from college.



Now Grace has a big sister named Nyla and because i don't believe in leaving out big sister's and brother's I made Nyla a sweatshirt...


...and yes I understand that this makes the hole of 33 grow exponentially.

The Great Gift Exchange

This year my guy and I decided make each other gifts. We have both been toiling away in secrete for the last several weeks. Here are the fruits of our labor.

I made him a series of stenciled t-shirts, with masculine stencils.

And he made me the best thing ever for a yarn obsessed girl like me: a yarn holder.

It attaches to the couch or can stand on the floor. It has a place for spools and balls of yarn. I love it! I don’t think I have ever gotten such a thoughtful and useful gift.

Holiday Sneak Peek

As you know I have been working over time to get all my holiday goodies made. Yesterday I hunkered down and made things after a very annoying sidestep to the post office. I made 15 new zippy pouches and 9 fused pins, including these new cute flower pins.

I am obsessed with the orange fairway zippy pouches I made. They may be my new favorite.

Here is also a sneak peek at what I made for Avice (AKA my surrogate grandmother). She loves all things black and white so I stenciled her these pillowcases. They took a little more work then I expected because my paint was old. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard to do and why the paint kept running. Finally a little light went off in my brain and I realized my paint was at least three years old and that might not be such a good thing. New paint helped immensely and I finished these up yesterday. One case has a pattern repeat three times and one has it twice, which felt right at the time but now I am not so sure. In truth it doesn’t matter I am leaving tomorrow and I am not allowed to add things back to the list!

I will be away for 10 days visiting the lovely Avice and other good family. I will bring my camera and try to give you updates while away. I hope everyone has a lovely holiday season.

Altered Clothing

In between doing what can only be described as an obscene amount of laundry I have been crafting. While doing all this laundry I noticed one of my favorite shirts had a stain in that just wouldn’t come out. I had been stenciling some baby cloths for some new arrives and had quite a bit of paint left over so it seemed only right to cover the stain with an old faithful stencil. No one will ever know, oh except all of you, but you won’t tell will you?


My other bit of altering is on a shirt I got on mega clearance from a yoga catalogue. Of course once it arrived I realized why it was on mega clearance.


See that? They used black thread to serge the entire side of the shirt resulting in an ugly Frankenstein effect. After a bit of consultation with my sister I decided a bit of flare was the only option. I am not sure why I have leopard print fabric in my stash but hey it works!

More Bag Fun

There are so many little holiday projects in the works it is hard to keep track! Of course I can’t tell you about many of them at this point for fear that the recipients will see all. My guy and I made a deal to only exchange gifts that we have made. This sent me into a craft overload as I tried to come up with the perfect gift. I think I have it figured out but any suggestions will be gladly accepted.

In the mean time I thought I would show off a belated birthday gift for my sister. She has a tendency to carry way too much so I made this tote a little small to help keep things under control. I had a bit of over eager fabric paint so it is far from perfect but I like the color combination.

Last Minute Baby Gift

I am amazed at how often I find myself making last minute baby gifts; I mean I should have 9 months, right? Well if you only speak to old friends once or twice a year then it happens more often then not.

A friend from college just sent me beautiful pictures of her newborn son. We don’t speak that often but she is certainly someone special and dear to me that I would make something for, so I give you the last minute baby gift.

Because I have scrambled more then once for a nice little gift I now keep blank onsies on hand, washed and ready to stencil. For baby Jake a little 3 pack of a moose, bugs, and dragonflies. Don’t be impressed unless I can make it to the post office before he starts preschool!