diy idea

ok, so i have been sucked into the pottery barn website. and omg. you guys.

they are selling authentic vintage book bundles (of 4) for 39 dollars.

you know what those are? Its four old books, that they took the covers off of, and then tied together with twine to make into 'art objects'


if you guys could see my face right now. omg. not a pretty picture.

so i am going to make a diy tute for this. because. i have a stack of books i was gonna take to value village, and i have tons of twine and i have a camera.

check back soon for epic awesome

who got crafts for christmas?

oh i did! i got loads of crafts for christmas!!

my biggest haul is a set of fiskars special effect scissors, which are awesome.

i got two hanks of faux pearls, one in brown and one in blue-black, and i have many projects for them. i just love pearls, real and fake. they make me happy.

in my stocking i got some scrapping ink, which was followed by three other ink pads, plus i got two mat stacks, one in pastels (green-blue-purple-pink) and one in neutrals (white-cream-beige-brown). i'm already dreaming about scrap booking with them. the ink colors i got were peach, teal and purple.

then i'm taking today to clean the house and do some crafting. i'm working on a shrug with crazed octopus cables, and i want to do at least one scrapbooking page with my christmas goodies.

and if you didn't get any crafting presents, i suggest you pick some up. if you like yarn and fiber head over to dyeing for ewe for info on the boxing day sale or you can also head over tofateful fiber to check out some sweet handspun

book love

so i love me some books. if you add up my collection, i have more books than anything in my house but beads. and its a close race for the win there. i just love reading. books make me happy.

and i also love my library. because i sadly can not afford to buy all the books i want (theres just so many) the library lets me get my hands on them to see if i absolutely need need need them.

i also love craftster.org, so you can imagine my glee when i found a new book from craftster at the library. i may have giggled and done a victory dance (this is a totally normal procedure for me at the library). full of glee i took my prize to the counter and headed home

the book is question is the nifty thrifty and kitschy crafts, which contains fifty projects from the fifties and sixties. it looks awesome and i am happy to report that it follows up on the awesome once you start reading.

my fav projects are the tailored dickie, loom knit scarf and the felt flower appliques. i love the loom knit scarf because it walks through building the loom from scratch and then knitting on it. the tailored dickie is an easy sewing project, and the felt flowers look amazing.

my not fav project has got to be the crocheted doll face fridge magnets. various relatives of mine had these on their fridges when i was little and they have always creeped me out. thats the only reason i dislike the project, which is well written and looks well done, if slightly creepy

so one creepy project aside everything in this book looks cool, with varying levels of difficulty, from so easy i'll do it with my 6 year old, to definitly ones to tackle by myself. its a great book, and one i definitly reccomend getting, especially if you like a vintage look and feel.

beginning to look a lot like jewellery

today i got to lay out everything i've done this week and just look at it all.
i had 3 necklaces, 2 pendants, 4 pairs of earrings and one ring. which is pretty great for grabbing a couple minutes a day here and there.

i spent most of my beading time this week working on peices for my first collection. which has been a scary thing to contemplate. but i had this idea, and i just wanted to make a sweet little group of elegant, lovely peices, all themed around the idea of fairie wings.



i leaned towards demure, velvet-y, pastel tones that make me think of spring time, the first blush of growth and butteflies. i'm working out of my color groove by pairing them with mixed metals and brilliant gold toned chains.



then the fairie wings come in. i used a fantastic tutorial that i found over on craftster to put them together. I grabbed some amazing butterfly stickers and used them instead of plain paper as the backing for the wings, ending up with elegant little fairie wings.



the collection is about halfway done, with 5 peices made for it already, some will be sold by them selves, but others will be available in sets. when the collection is finished, i'll replicate my most popular item from it, and the other designs will be retired.

fantastic not friday features

so as i was soundly beaten by bloggers picture inserting thing, and forgot that there was a preview button. what i got was a post with pictures, but the text was not where i wanted it and defeated, i deleted.

but i'm back with a html cheat sheet, some resized images and now this should work.

when i got to etsy and the ring section, i was a little blown away. there are 19 sections of rings. so with my eyes the size of tea cups i went a little crazy. i have five amazing rings for ya'll to look at, and my are they pretty.

this ring expanded my horizons. when i thought ring, i never thought crocheted or fiber would ever be involved. check out the full view to see an amazing creation over on etsy



this ring was more of what i was expecting to feauture. I love the idea of casting twigs and making jewellery out of nature. and a rose twig ring is awesomely romantic. see the whole ring in its knobby natural beauty.



this ring was also not something i would have thought of. silk and silver just didn't seem right when it came to rings. but this ruffled delight is awesome. just look at it, don't you want one?



i don't like yellow. i don't. but i want this ring. i want one for ever finger and one of every toe. this ring is adorable. its made of felt and acrylic, and screams summer and flight.


this is a bit more what i was thinking i'd be showing, a fantastic wire wrapped ring. its so steampunk it looks like it crawled off a switch board and wrapped itself around your finger. check the whole thing out


so for my first set of features i learned that my preconceptions about rings were ... definitly wrong. and i'm pretty pleased by it. next week i'm gonna keep expanding my conceptions by trying to feature 5 wire wrapped rings, from simple to complex.


all images belong to original owners, they are reposted here in admiration only.

ok so my first featured friday was a great big mess of fail. my html-fu was soundly defeated by the blogger insert an image do-hickey, and none of my text ended up where i wanted it to be, and i got lost and bitchy about it. I will be reposting it today, and hopefully i'll get things to line up in a way that looks good and makes sense.

things to come

so i woke up this morning and it was december. i call crazy shenanigans on time. i mean really, november just started a couple days ago.

and my complaints aside, that means today is a big day. 24 days till christmas (which is a scary thought) but it also means that this is my first month of featured fridays.

every month i am going to pick a theme, and then every friday i will post examples of items with in that theme. most of my themes will be based in technique, either for jewellery making or crochet/knitting. my first theme is not. because i'm occasionally eccentric.

my first theme is ring, so every friday i will be posting some awesome awesome rings on this here blog.


i've also got some book reviews coming, i grabbed 4 of the yarn harlots books from my local library, and the first craftser craft book. i'll put reviews up as i get them read. the reviews will be constant, because i read like crazy and love craft books. i have a bunch requested at the library and am looking forward to getting my mitts on them.