Wedding garters: Fancy schmancy and dinofied!

One of my really good friends Lindsay got married last weekend in a absolutely beautiful ceremony in Brocton, NY. We met as undergrads at RIT and both went through the whole switching from art to science together...and that was a bonding experience! Anyways Lindsay gave me the honor of sewing her wedding garters - both the whimsical one to be thrown at the ceremony and the fancy one for her to keep. I have never made a garter before but I was up for the challenge. I unfortunately couldn't use my sewing machine that I am now officially addicted to because I was nervous ripping all the lace and ribbon. So sewing by hand it was!

Anyways, for the whimsical garter, I was given one key word - dinosaur. I used this pink and black garter featuring Betty Boop as inspiration, changing the pink for red to incorporate Lindsay's favorite colors: red and black!

 














Here's a close up of the dinosaur charm. Talk about an awesome find!
















For the fancy garter, Lindsay showed me a photo of this beautiful tulle garter as a sample of what she wanted. That may or may not have led to hours spent scoping out other absolutely beautiful garters on Etsy...anyways here's what I came up with.

 












Here's a close up of the beautiful, vintage-inspired charm I found for the garter.
















Here's the fancy garter all packed up neatly in a simple white box. 

I decorated the simple white boxes (made with white cardstock paper) with light yellow ribbon and some green patterned scrapbooking paper (yellow, green and white were the colors for the wedding). I also added some pearls for an elegant look.

A close up of the gift tag and the pearls.

Thanks for looking!

A is for Any Occasion Greeting Cards - A stretch, yes I know!

And now for the last item of the Spell your name swap. Drum roll please! For the last "A" in Barbara, I made any occasion greeting cards. I really wanted to make a set of blank greeting cards. So I tried really hard to make that one work!

Anyways here they are!















The cards feature cupcakes...because who doesn't smile at the thought of cupcakes?!

Thanks for stopping by!

R is for rainbow earrings

Alright, to continue with crafted goodies made for the Spell your name swap, I made some rainbow-colored earrings for that last "R" in Barbara. Here they are!

Enjoy your week! :)

A is for Altered Notebook - Altered with a pun of course!

So far, for the Spell your Name swap I participated in recently, I have shown you what I crafted (and bought in one case) for B-A-R-B. Now onto the second A, where I made an altered notebook. My swap partner had a crafted something with the pun "keep calm and carry yarn" on her wish list. Being a pun aficionado myself, I jumped at that opportunity! Here's how it turned out:

 



















I hand painted the pun onto the cover of the sketchbook with white paint. I then used embroidery thread and toothpicks to represent knitting needles and a ball of yarn.

Yup, this sketchbook has been punned! :D

B is for Bookmark: Embroidered corner bookmarks

To continue with the stream of crafted items I made especially for the Spell Your Name swap hosted by Craftster, here are some corner bookmarks I made for the second B in Barbara. These are super quick to put together, require little paper (great for those scraps that are useless for anything else) and make great mailable gifts!

So how do you make some? First of all, grab some paper that you want to use to make the bookmarks. I used some scraps of scrapbooking paper.

Draw two isosceles triangles that are the same size. I tend to make the shortest edges of the triangles between 2 and 2.5 inches. For one of the triangles, draw some flaps on the two shortest ends (see the triangle on the right). These flaps will be used to glue the two triangles together. Cut the triangles out using an exacto knife. Fold the flaps inwards for the second triangle.

As shown in steps 2 and 3, apply glue to the flaps and attach the two triangles together. I used a glue stick.

And there you go! I did the embroidery on the paper after cutting out the triangular pieces but before gluing them together. You may want to do that depending on how you plan on decorating the bookmarks. So have fun crafting! :)


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R is for Rugs: Mug rugs

Okay, so here it is! First project completed with my new sewing machine that I got....well, let's just say too long ago.

Anyways I decided to use the Spell Your Name craft swap as an opportunity to try my hand (and machine) on my first sewing project completed on my own. So what did I end up making?? Drum roll please....a set of six mug rugs!

As you can see, I also included some embroidery to add some visual and textural interest. I'm really happy with how it came out! Also I'm now officially addicted to my sewing machine. I have a long list of things I want to make as a result! :)

 
As usual, thanks for stopping by!


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A is for Artwork: One tree, four seasons

This past month (July), I've been happily working on a very involved swap hosted by Craftster...the Spell Your Name swap. The premise is to craft an item that begins with each letter of your partner's name. I thought that sounded super fun so I immediately signed up for the swap. My partner's name is Barbara...so I ended up crafting six items beginning in A's, R's and a B and sending a bundle of beads and buttons to take care of the other B (like that alliteration there?!).

Alright, so to begin showing off the crafted goodies, I made artwork (first A, check!) featuring the four seasons since Barbara really liked trees.

I made the outline of the tree featured in each piece in Illustrator. All the interior line work within the trees and the linework utilized to represent each of the four seasons was done with my favorite Stabilo markers. I then added a collage element by including scrap booking paper and buttons. Each piece was mounted on foam core and framed with customized frames made out of Balsa wood.

Here's a close up of Winter. And yes, my hands were cramping up like crazy after hole punching paper for what felt like hours!

And here's a close up of Summer. The labels for each of the pieces were made by hand-drawing letters on square pieces of white paper and passing some black embroidering thread through each of the letters to create this look.

Anyways that's about it for now. Thanks for looking!


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