Letters and Pages

It seems to be scrapbooking week over in my neck of the woods.  I've put the pajamas and other projects on hold while I do this.  I've also moved out of my craft room and into the dining room.  Sometimes it gets lonely up there and sometimes I like to share the pages with my husband for feedback, so it's easier to do that from the dining room.

So here are some bathtime pictures on a page:

I used a sheet from the Citrus stack and those stickers have been in my sticker stash for over seven years, I bet.

And then there's this page to commemorate her first election.

I had this sheet of stickers from the 2008 election that were not doing anything except take up space, so I cut them up and this is the result.

And then the next pages are sort of subdued.

So, the other day, when I was wandering around the craft store, I kept looking for new styles of stencils for letters, like these:

I have a couple sets of stencils from a bunch of years ago and have always liked them, but I wanted some different options.  These were no where to be found.  So what do people do nowadays?  Does everyone use those cutting machines?  I have a cricut, but am sort of afraid of it.  I got it from someone who was selling hers and I don't think it came with directions.  It also didn't seem to cut very well.  I don't know.  Anyway, so is that what people do?  

Also.  I went into Archiver's.  Dude.  That place is serious and intimidating.  There's no way I am going to get my pages that fancy.  And everything in that store is so expensive. Insane.

A Few Pages

I've been filling the baby book with photos lately and working on a few pages of my own.  A few months ago, Shutterfly had a big promotion, so I got a ton of pictures and I am so glad to reducing that pile of photos.

The first pages I worked on only reduced the pile by three photos, but the concept was too cute, so I don't mind.

Dude!  Are those my toes!  Obviously I am too lazy to crop them out.
At least the toenails are obscured so you can't see that bit of hideousness.  Blah!

Anyway, I wanted to feature these cute photos of bedtime stories with her dad and then the idea came to me about showcasing all of the titles that we like to read to her.  

I wanted to give the books on the shelves some dimension, so I used that foam stick-um tape.  Next, I tried to give the edges some shadows with some black smudgings.  My husband says they just look like dirty books.  Oh well.  By the time I realized that, I was already committed.  I like the touches of gold on the spines.

I also like what I did here with the title of the page.  They are books!  And in that first photo I did the journaling on the spines of the books.  I don't know if that works or not, but it was the only place I could think to do it.

Next up, I used six photos on one page!  Yes!  Reduce, reduce, we must reduce the pile!

For the previous set of pages and this page, I used backgrounds from a book of Far East pages.  The solid colors have some shimmer to them.  I love the glitter letters.  I sometimes wish I could put glitter on everything.

And for the final page, I only pulled two photos off the pile.  Oh well...better luck next time.

That fun fence border sheet is from the Goodwill via Target's scrapbooking section, I think.  It was a little packet of fun autumn pages like that one.  I picked up those glittery stickers a while back when they were on sale.  I have a huge pack of them.  I guess I need to start scrapping all previous Halloween costumes in order to use them up.  

Anyway, I think that is it for now.  I'm also working on a hush-hush scrapbooking project as a gift for my husband.  DO NOT TELL HIM!  (And I can tell the world, here, on this bloggity blog, because he does not pay any attention to my crafts.  I've also got the album sitting in plain sight on the buffet, but again, he pays no attention to these things.)

Brewing

I've got something brewing in my head that uses these three fabrics.  Hmmm...what could it be???

Pajama Party: Start

I started cutting out the fabric for Advance 2143 (possibly circa 1939) on Saturday.  This is the first time using an actual old old vintage pattern and, I don't know if you know this, but the pattern pieces had no markings.  Seriously...no markings.  And all pattern pieces were pre-cut for you.  See for yourself:

So how do you tell what's what?  They give you little perforated holes to indicate to cut on the fold, the grain line, etc.  And the pattern pieces are labeled with little tiny perforated letters, like this:

Can you even see that?  It's an "M."  

Anyway, so I started the top and had to teach myself a little bit about a flat felled seam.  They gave a little diagram on the pattern instructions, but I went with this tutorial at the Coletterie.  I sort of love it.  I don't know how I'll do it for the arm holes, but this is how it looks at the shoulders:

Dude!  check out the nearly perfect matching stripes!  Oh, yeah!  And I didn't even plan that.  

Here's the other shoulder.  I had a little trouble with that side and there's some puckering:

 And here's the underside of the seam:

Nice and tidy!  I really love it.  I would love to use it on future garments, you know, because I'm still afraid of my serger.

I have to do a half inch seam for this and I'm so bad at keeping things straight, but this whacha-ma-gadget has been really helpful:

It's a big magnet gadget to help you with measuring out seams.  The red tape underneath is for 5/8", but this is great for all those other measurements.

So that's as far as I made it with the pajamas.  They are hanging on My Mann right now and they seem rather hulking.  My husband is not hulking.  I'll have to figure that out later.

Glow

Here's another thing that my mom brought up with her a few weeks ago.  This was made by someone that she knows using an empty bottle of sparkling wine from my wedding, some iridescent cellophane, and pink LED lights.

 It is very glowy.

Destiny

I picked up some more sewing treasures at thrift and antique stores this weekend.  Check out these new additions to my stash:

 Red and white graph paper flannel, destined for pajamas.  Dark denim with red pinstripes, destined for a skirt for me.  A girly button-down is in the near future for the stretchy plaid.  The green is a mystery fabric, so its future is unknown.  The lovely blue cotton's destiny is also unknown.

 These towels will be reincarnated as the backs of bibs.

And then there was this pattern circa 1939 for $3.00 at Your Turn Vintage, which will someday be made into pajamas for my husband using some very soft vintage material found at a thrift store sometime in the past.

Advance, 2141

Reusing Calendars

Maybe this is not an original idea (I haven't bothered to google it), but I thought I would highlight something that I do to repurpose calendars.  

About six or so years ago I got into a scrapbooking phase.  I was putting together my college and high school albums, when it dawned on me that those calendars that my college had been sending me each year since graduation were exactly 12x12, the same size as a scrapbook page.

The calendars featured gorgeous campus scenery, so I chose a bunch and used them as the backdrops for some of my college pages.

I also had an old Wonder Woman calendar that I had saved and I managed to incorporate some of those pages into my album, as well.

Here I am demonstrating my lack of roller blading skills:

And then I cut out the caption in this next one and inserted my own.  I kept the thought bubble theme going for photo commentary.

Anyway, since I have a hard time throwing things away (future hoarder?), I have a small collection of calendars accumulating in my scrapbooking supplies.  I'm not sure what else to do with the college ones, because I am pretty much done with my college years.  I have considered making little tiny handmade books with them, but I have not made any progress with that idea.

Pile o' Ribbons

I mentioned last week how my mom came to visit with suitcases bursting at the seams with goodies.  Included in the mix, were a bunch of vintage gift wrapping ribbons.  She's the best!

California Bound

I sent off a belated birthday present to California this week, but this gift was only overdue by two weeks, unlike the dinosaur capes (here and here), which were six and three months past due.  Phew. No more birthday presents until June, though I do have some new baby gifts to make.  Nuts.

Anyway, as I just mentioned, I sent this gift to California and what is California best known for?  Hippies?  No, not hippies.  Sunshine!  Or is that Florida?  Anyway, they are both sunny places and, to guard against those solar rays, I made my niece a batch of hats.  

I made five hats.  I had intended on making six, but the pattern pieces on the last one did not align properly, so instead of fiddling with it, I just abandoned the thing.  It was going to be the cutest little plaid cap, but I just wanted to be done with the project.

For the first two hats, I used the Prairie Bonnet pattern from Sweet Booties! by Valerie van Arsdale Shrader.  The one thing that I don't like about pattern books is when you have to go and enlarge the pattern.  That drives me nuts.  I would rather have a large sheet with 800 different pattern lines to trace, than to go out and deal with an enlargement process.  This book has one of those sheets, but it also has some patterns that require 200% enlargement.  

For this particular bonnet, I was required to enlarge the brim pattern piece, but I decided against it.  Instead, I estimated how large the brim would be and just sort of winged it.  I made two and it seemed to work out:

I am particularly fond of the red one.  I hand-tacked all of that daisy trim!

 And the back is just a ribbon in a casing:

For the next two hats, I used the Reversible Bucket Hat pattern from Oliver + S: Little Things to Sew by Liesl Gibson, except that I did not reverse them.  

I probably should have added chin straps, but I didn't.  I hope they stay on.  Here's a close-up of the brim details and my uneven lines:

For the final hat, I used McCall's M5865, which seems to be out of print on the McCall's site.  I chose View G...

This one is cuter in person.  The yellow fabric doesn't tie into a bow very well, but it is still pretty sweet.

And if you are wondering why I did not use my kid as a model, she was very uncooperative.  Turns out she is sick of anything on her head after these winter months.  Here she is pulling and tugging...she looked so cute in it, though:

Pile o' Satin

My mom came to visit a week or so ago and filled her suitcases with goodies for me.  She thought I could use some additions to my fancy fabrics stash after seeing my attempt at crazy quilting.  She had all of these little pieces from her Barbie doll dressmaking craze a number of years ago.  I'm not sure that I can see any of these fabrics as part of a crazy quilt, because I seriously only see them as Barbie clothes.  Ack!