More Paper Beads

Well I thought I'd post a pic of more of the paper beads that I made and also the finished necklace.

I finally found the beads I wanted to go with it.

Homemade Mixer Cover

Well my husband has always wanted one of those Kitchen-aid mixers and he decided to buy one for us because of the deal Amazon had last month. So it has to sit on the counter because it is so heavy, you can't be moving it around all the time. I was afraid that the whole thing was going to be filled with dust before we were ready to use it again.....so that is the reason for the cover. And I was so excited to get these pictures on here, I didn't iron it yet...oops! :-)

So I started the hunt for fabric. For some reason I have a hard time choosing fabric and always second guess my choices. But this time I made a stop at Goodwill and found two brand new place mats and two cloth napkins that matched, that were originally sold at Target. They matched my kitchen color well, So I bought them. The placemats were 50 cents a piece and the two napkins were in a pack together for $2.

The place mat was the perfect size for the mixer. I didn't have to cut it at all. Then I just pieced sections of the napkins down the middle. I started with putting a section between the two placemats, that would be the top. Then pieced the front and back strips in there.

I believe it was a 6" wide strip going down the middle.

I'm not much for sewing clothing or fitted things, but this turned out o.k. and I had to keep telling myself..."it's ONLY a mixer cover!" :-)

I'm sure those of you who are better seamstresses than I am, can do a wonderful job at this....give it a whirl.. :-)

Making Paper Beads

Years ago my mom brought me a necklace from one of her trips through the mid-western United States and it was made out of church bulletins. I was fascinated by that necklace and years after that decided to check into how to make paper beads myself.

I decided to share that with you today. It is a bit time consuming, but fun and can be rolled up while you're watching t.v. or something....some people might consider it relaxing.

It is fun to see how the beads look after they're made opposed to how the paper looked in the beginning. You can also use 12" long triangles and thicker paper to make bigger beads.

Check out of the video tutorial LINK below.

Sorry about the length...I'm learning that I'm a little long winded....I actually edited a version down that I will try to put in place of this one soon. :-) ta da....I figured out how to get the edited version up....I'm learning soooo much... heehee

Here are some close up pictures to give you a better view of some of the aspects of making these little beauties. :-)

Here is the start of the rolling...

try to make sure that you keep the paper going down the middle...and keep good tension on it.

use a dab of the glue mixture on it to get it the end to stick and then give the rest of the bead a thin coat.

Something else that I forgot to mention....The longer your paper is the fatter your bead will be. Mine are pretty skinny, so if you used the whole 12" length of paper they would be fatter. Try one or two before you cut a ton of them.

So, go get some cool looking scrapbook paper and see what you can do it.....

you will do GREAT! :-)

T-Shirt Quilt

I have a tradition going, (which sometimes I wonder why I do such things to myself) that when the kids turned two, I made them a quilt and when they turn 12 they get a new quilt. Well a twelve year olds quilt is due in August..... it's the last quilt I'll be making for twelve year olds.

This one is going to be my son's and I was really stumped as to what design to go with. He loves baseball and I was looking for some fabric or something to make it look like a baseball theme, when I ran across t-shirt quilts and thought "that is perfect". I thought he had a lot of t-shirts, that is until I started this project and then ended up running to thrift stores looking for more

t-shirts.

But I think it's going to turn out cute if I can ever get it done. I'll post a pic of the finished project hopefully in the next few months.

So you start with old or "new to you" t-shirts. :-)

Then cut the front of the shirt off of the back and lay the back aside, you may need it later. :-) (that is what I use for the bordering strips.

Then Iron some fusible interfacing/stabilizer on the back so that it doesn't stretch and it's easier to sew.

You then decide how big you need your squares to be, based on the design on the front of the shirt. I tried to look at all the shirts I had and the designs on them and tried to cut them all to the same size if possible. Some shirts were smaller and needed strips added to them so then I decided to cut the squares so that they would all have some sort of border or strip piece around them. :-/ ayy ye yei!

Then you start making sections of strips and squares. I decided half way through :-/ that maybe I should have just made strips that were sewn to the quilt,....I am doing quilt as you go for this quilt, so when I get the top strip pieced I put the batting, and backing on and quilt it and then sew it to the main section of the quilt.... (are you confused yet?)

See the top row doesn't have all the squares yet, or isn't the right length, I'm still working on trying to put a piece in there that will fit. It really makes it hard when the squares are not all the same and the strips are not all the same....I will know better next time, if there is a next time. hee hee

In the picture below I wanted you to see the piecing close up and the quilting that was done on some of the strips. This is definitely an experiment, but it's been fun collecting the shirts and seeing his excitement as it progresses. He loves seeing all the different shirts that I've found.

So if you attempt one of these, good luck. They are really fun, but it's good to have a base plan...Stick with the same size squares and decide whether you are going to put strips between or not. I love the look of quilts that have that piecing in between but have never attempted one before now....And I'm "free-styling" which can

be a good thing or a bad thing. :-)

Have a great week, God bless!

Pictures Lost :-(

Can't even pretend that I know what happened to about 400 pictures on my camera, but they are gone. I have a habit of leaving my memory card in the computer and when I took it out to put into the camera....the camera said that I needed to "format the disk". :-( Of course I wanted someone to blame....I started asking who did "what" with the camera last and got the typical..."not me", "nothing", "it was fine when I was using it". (insert whimpering sound on my part, kind of a silent cry ) I cry because I'm a scrapbooker.

I can't even tell you what pictures were on there...probably a lot of the dog and some silly videos that the kids made, but I'm mourning the loss of the ones that I "probably" wanted....isn't that silly? The only thing I can think of is that maybe when the computer rebooted, a screen came up to wipe out all the pictures and someone in a hurry said "o.k."

But, it is time to move on and forget about it. (I'm not very good at that, by the way) I tend to hang on to things like this for years. In fact I'm still mourning the loss (at times) of my fathers toolbox that a certain "ex" took with him over 19 years ago. So I'm sure these pictures will haunt me for some time I'm sure. Kind of like the tickets and backstage passes to a concert, that we apparently lost, back in September. (BIG SIGH!!!!)

I think the only way around the issue is to start taking a ton of other pictures. Tomorrow maybe I'll start filling that card back up and maybe even trying to back it up more often. :-) Oh I just had a horrible thought.....I think Christmas was on there.....oh (big groan) O.k. I need to stop thinking about this or I'll never get back to sleep tonight, I mean today (2am).

Crafts That Go Awry!

All Hail the Dog Prince!

You know how every once in a while you have a craft that doesn't turn out just quite how you expected.

That is what happened to my daughter....she was trying to make a bag for herself and it wasn't looking quite right. I kept telling her that I thought it looked like a crown and the next thing I knew she tied it off and crocheted a strap and put it on the dog. And doesn't he look grand!

So you know, sometimes it doesn't always turn out perfect but we can always try again. :-)

Blogging

Wow! Who knew that blogging could be so difficult. I spent days trying to turn a picture that I drew, into my header....I even got my hubby in on the act.

We spent "some" hours on the project this weekend...from the drawing and painting of it, to the sizing issues and he got it to somewhat the right size for me last night.

I actually left it on here last night and then got up this morning and deleted it. :-/ My son said...."aw, you're taking it off, after all the work you did?" Yup! I decided that it really looked kind of tacky. I hope my hubby isn't too frustrated with my decision :-o

I got the idea in the first place, from a friend of mine who designed her own header....let me just say, she is a better artist than I am. I never did understand shadows and shading....oh well! So a picture is working better for me at the moment.

I just keep saying "whew!, who knew?" lol Not me. Next project is trying to figure out how to move everything into separate categories and pages.....oh boy!

I hope you are all having a great start to your week. The kids and I went to see the "Lorax" movie this afternoon....oooo all that color makes me want to paint truffala trees on my living room wall.....well maybe not... :-)

Dressing Screen

My two teenage daughters have been sharing a room for a while now and they seem to have had a problem with locking each other out of the room because they were getting dressed. I got tired of hearing the complaining that sounded something like this... "Mom, she locked me out of our room!" So I asked my dear hubby on Saturday if he thought he could make one somehow. I had some of my own ideas but the mechanics of it all was beyond me. And the arthritis in my hands and wrists keep me from doing anything that takes too much strength.

So he had an idea how to make it out of pvc pipe and here it is. Once he got the main frame done, the girls and I went to the store to pick out fabric and I started trying to figure out how to fit it on there.

Well it is done. And he made it so that it folds up out of the way. I hope this ends the arguing over the door being locked. :-)

Magnetic Picture Holder

Check out this new magnetic picture page for the refrigerator. Not bad for free...all stuff I had around the house. If you don't want to spend the money on a self adhesive magnetic sheet, just use old advertising magnets and glue them on the back. You may even know someone that could spare a page protector so you wouldn't have to buy those. The embossed metal accents you see are just foil stickers from the dollar store they came all connected. I cut them apart to make four "stamps". I wanted to keep it simple since I have a lot going on up on the fridge as it is. :-)

St. Patricks Day Wall Hanging

This one hour wall hanging is a great way to give some O' the green to your decor.

First you'll want to pick out your fabrics. I used three different shades and patterns of green. Fat quarters or

scraps work great for this. You may need two fat quarters of whatever your border is going to be made of and the backing. Then you'll want to draw a heart shape onto cardstock, to use as your clover leaf pattern and also a stem. You only have to draw one heart.

The squares that I used were 4 inch tan squares. Make sure when you are drawing your hearts that three leaves and a stem will fit in each square with some tan still showing as a border. I used fusible webbing on the fabric before cutting the heart shapes out and even though I ironed them on the tan square I still did some stitching over them just to make sure they stay. I put all the applique on before I start sewing the blocks to the borders.

Next the borders are 1 1/2 inches wide. I started piecing things together by piecing a border strip to the top and bottom of each block. This will make strips of pieced fabric....border, block, border, block, border. You will have two of these sets. One for the right side and one for the left. (see pic below)

You will then take another piece of border and put it along each outside edge of the strips. One on the left of the pieced set and one on the right side of the other set. (below just shows the left side.)

Once you have your top finished then you can cut a piece of fabric for the back and cut your batting. You could cut the backing fabric a bit larger than the front so that you could fold it around to the front to form a binding. I cut a 1 1/2 strip and folded it in half and ironed it, then fold each side into the middle and iron again to make a binding you can sew around the entire thing. I then hand quilted the squares to make the clovers pop.

Next I took a piece of fabric and fashioned a pocket to put a dowel in for hanging. I hand sewed this on.

I hope you have a good time with this. I love the colors of spring and look forward to March because that means spring is coming soon. :-) If you have any questions let me know and I'll help you out.

Pattern Created by Valerie Campbell