Christmas Wonderland

Last year around this time, I got a little homesick.  My husband and I had our first Christmas here in New York, away from our families back in our hometown.  We had a great time and made the best of it, but the thing that I missed most was my Mom's house.  Every year she goes over the top with decorations and it always looks amazing and really makes you feel like the holidays are here. 

This year we are in a new apartment, and are trying to fill it with decorations for the season.  I think some of the best traditions are crafts.  Last year, I started doing cross-stitch family stockings for us.  That was a tradition that my mother started.  

I thought I would take pictures of them to inspire other people to start their own holiday crafting!

Yes, I did attempt to stitch jingle bells. 

End to the Adventure Quilt

I officially declare that the Adventure Quilt is done.  Whew!

oh baby! quilt

i am working on a new project - i am so excited that one of my family members is having a baby.

this is the oh baby! quilt.  the concept is going to be flanking 6" squares of cotton voile with long strips of baby flannel that will result in one large square with 6" squares of yellow flannel showing through where i can embroider designs.

here is the fabric - ordered this from quilthome.com, the "little ones" and "folksy flannels" AMH fabric of course!

The yellow background flannel is basic from fabric.com. 

This lamp needs you!

Hello friends,

I've lost my inspiration.  Its been a couple of weeks since my last blog entry.  I've been feeling a bit beat down by work and the stress of life.  my artistic side is suffering.

perfect example - this clear glass lamp. its sitting on top of an amplifier.  it would love to be a display for treasures. arts, crafts, terrarium... but nothings coming to me.

would love any ideas you have.  more on the quilt progress tomorrow.

love you all.

Purse Attack!

made this purse with leftover fabric from the adventure quilt. 

About Vase

ingredients: 


*plain round cylinder glass vase - don't go crazy here, you should be able to find a cheap one, just make sure it is tall enough
*24 high quality fake flowers
*16 oz. package of liquid illusion or similar type floral setting resin
*clean river rocks, pebbles, or some other type of filler for the bottom of the vase
*wire cutters


this project can be very affordable if you can source high quality fake flowers etc. somewhere reasonable.  i used save-on-crafts for all of my ingredients and did this project for less than $50 bucks. 


for the flowers - keep in mind that you should not just order 24 of the exact same flower.  this will look fake - remember in real life flowers are in slightly different stages.  i recommend that you try to find some that are in full bloom and others that are at a bud stage to mix it up. 


next tip: make sure the rocks that will go in the bottom of your vase are CLEAN.  otherwise, your resin will mix with dirt and make a gigantic mess. 


1. clean everything.  the vase, the pebbles, make sure the flowers are completely free of dust.  


2.  lay the pebbles or river rocks carefully at the bottom of the vase. 


3. pull out your resin packages and follow the directions to mix the resin.  use a funnel to carefully pour the resin on top of the river rocks.  remember that any splashes will result in plastic drops ending up stuck to the sides of your vase. 


4. start putting the flowers into the vase counterclockwise, creating a spiral with the stems by putting each flower at an angle in a circle.  tuck the stems of the flowers into the rocks to hide the bottoms (especially if you had to cut the flower stems with your wire cutters).  the cool thing is that by putting the flowers into the resin, it creates tiny oxygen bubbles that will help make the vase look like it has water in it. 

5. when you are happy with the arrangement, leave it alone for 24 - 48 hours to set. 


voila!

Makeover for your Crappy Starter Furniture

yeah, we all have that left-over crappy starter furniture (most of mine is from ikea and still serves its purpose)...  if you aren't ready to kick it to the curb yet.  i have one word for you :  ANTHROPOLOGIE.

it does wonders for anything involving a drawer pull.

sound-absorbing pictures

this was an old project from last year that i keep finding myself using over and over.  my husband is a sound engineer.  he needed to have sound-absorbing panels to change the acoustics of the room he was recording in.  we went shopping for some studio-foam panels and wedges.. but they were REALLY ugly.  so... with my leftover AMH fabric we made our own sound absorbing panels, that i thought were better suited to the apartment.

ingredients:

*soundproofing / sound absorbing foam material. (note - this is the most important consideration in the project, after much debate we went with the 80% recycled echo absorber sound absorbing baffles:  http://www.soundprooffoam.com/echo-absorber-baffles.html   that being said - there are a lot of neat products on the site that i think have potential such as the quiet door absorber and other wedges / ceiling tiles.

*very thin plywood squares cut to the desired dimensions or you can use sturdy cardboard. consider finding some cardboard in nice condition and just re-use it.

*cute fabric

*tons of pins

*hot glue gun

*copper wire

Step 1: create a plywood / cardboard template that has the desired dimensions that you want (mine are 2 ft x 2 ft) and use it to cut the other backing material to the desired dimensions.  use same template as a guide to cut the sound absorbing baffles with a SHARP razor blade / X-acto knife.  if you want to remove a step but pay more money - then just pick out the pre-made sound absorbing tiles in your preferred dimensions.

Step 2: assembly:  lay the fabric out over the backing material and baffling to cover.  this is where the advantage of cardboard really counts because you can stick pins in place right through the fabric onto the cardboard.

Step 4: use hot glue to glue the fabric in place over the cardboard / backing.  remove the pins after it cools.

Step 5: cut little pieces of wire and curl both ends in a spiral with a peak in the middle - use this to hang the panels on the wall with very small nails.  alternatively - you can try to use velcro to attach to the walls, however, i had mixed success with that method.



ideas:

sound-absorbing panels have multiple uses.  obviously the primary reason for these is that my husband moves them around the room where he records music to change the acoustics, but i absolutely love them too.  we recently moved to a larger apartment with wood floors that had a horrible echo.  the echo is gone now that the panels are in place.  but keep in mind that if you have wood floors you really need a few carpets around to help with the echo as well.

you can also move these panels around for easy decorating options. if you have a bunch of them you can also create a giant mural on the wall.

Pearl Tendrils

i created this hair piece for my sister's wedding.  it was made entirely out of pearls that one of my friends tracked down for me wholesale.

ingredients:

*freshwater pearls (if you are in nyc fun-2-bead is a great place - they have a ton of inventory to choose from. http://www.fun2bead.com)
*long freshwater pearls
*very small pearls - think the size of a small seed
*silver wire
*wire hair comb
*small pliers

(1) the design is structured by taking 4-5 inch strands of silver wire, creating a tiny loop at the end with pliers to hold the pearls.  put one large pearl on the end of each tendril, and then fill with tiny pearls until you have a strand.  repeat this process for all five tendrils.

(2) for the petals - use pliers to create a tiny loop at the end of three inch strands of silver wire again, but this time, put a tiny pearl at the end of each wire and then put the large pearls in to create the petals. repeat for  15 petals.

(3) loop all of the ends of the wire together and twist to hold - then use the remaining silver wire to wind around the wire toothed comb.  place one final large pearl on a strand of silver wire and loop it to the comb in the middle to create the center of the flower.

i think that some of the best gifts in are handmade.

garden dining room - update

wow - a craft project for less than $10 bucks.  in my quest to turn my dining room into an indoor garden i stumbled across these awesome wood planters on save-on-crafts, they were super-cheap.  its nice they are lined with plastic so i don't have to deal with a mess when i water them.

i bought three of them and i am filling them up with random plants.   this one is rosemary.

i also have a crazy maidenhair fern that really took off recently.  i think the idea for my windows is to have a bunch of tiny planters and terrariums and then i will line the sides of the dining room with bamboo.  i am trying to find plants that are easy to care for, and that don't grow too quickly. open to suggestions as always.

Adventure Quilt Part II

the last post was all about creating different fabric panels, now we are going to assemble the quilt.

the fabric panels were probably the most creative / fun part! now for the most boring part - you have to iron out all of your fabric.  hopefully you pre-washed it to make sure its not going to shrink or do anything crazy on you in the event you have to wash it.  i recommend combining this activity with an episode of Mad Men so you don't give up on your project / die of boredom.

ingredients:

*iron
*ironing board
*all of the background fabric you bought
*batting
*thread etc.
*tons of pins

at this point, i stopped, and laid all of the fabric layers down on the floor and made a "sandwich" out of the front layer of background fabric, a batting layer, and then the back layer of the background fabric.  for those who are lucky enough to have an enormous quilting frame and professional quilting supplies - go for it! but if you don't have one of those, and if you are willing to improvise you just have to make do with a wood floor and a lot of running around.

once all of your fabric is laid out on the floor and all of the wrinkles have been smoothed out - then its time to lay down your fabric panels from part I onto the front layer of background fabric.  Use whatever pattern you like - in this quilt i used measuring tape to find the exact middle of the quilt and then marked off increments along the quilt to try to make all of the fabric panels somewhat evenly spaced.

once the fabric panels are laid out how you want - get a ton of pins and pin all of your fabric panels to the background layers. i also recommend that you pin the front background layer, batting, and back layer of fabric together along the edges.

now stitch the fabric panels to the background fabric with colorful embroidery thread in contrasting colors.  these stitches will show through to the other side of the quilt.

after all of the fabric panels are sewn to the fabric, things should start to come together (apologies for the wrinkled photo):

now you are ready to start sewing the edges to the quilt.  i made my own bias tape.  bias tape just basically is an easy way of finishing the edges of the quilt, and you can make it with left-over fabric.  you can (i) buy your own pre-made bias tape, (ii) use a bias-tape maker and an iron to make bias tape, or (iii) if you are too lazy to order a bias tape maker then use a ruler and an ironing board to shape the fabric.  Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing has several posts on bias tape that are helpful.  my method is to use a long metal ruler, cut out three ruler-widths of fabric in long strips, and when i get to an edge i just fold that over the ruler at an angle to keep the tape going.

after all of the bias tape is cut, fold the edges of the strips of fabric to meet in the middle over your metal ruler and iron them in place.  try not to burn yourself in the process. the next step is folding the bias tape over both sides of the quilt fabric and sewing this in place.

next time we will finish the edges of the and start quilting free-form patterns with embroidery thread. 

Adventure Quilt

here are some snapshots of my quilt progress to date.  i started this project a few months ago and have been hand-stitching the entire quilt in my spare time.  i am in love with the anna maria horner fabrics and had a bunch of left over scraps from previous projects so i decided to make a quilt.

ingredients:

*leftover fabric (i love:  annamariahorner.blogspot.com)
*embroidery thread
*regular thread
*iron / ironing board
*background fabric (flannel is always nice)
*batting

iron your fabric if its wrinkled and make sure you pre-wash it so if it shrinks you don't have any issues.  then just make a cardboard template of the size of the fabric panels that you want.  then - cut out background fabric in different colors and be creative about making different shapes to layer on top of them.  this quilt is all about texture - so each layer of fabric gives a little bit of three dimensional feeling to the quilt.

here are some examples of my fabric panels:

use a sewing machine or hand stitch each side of your fabric panels.  hand stitch the shapes that you are layering on top of each panel.  once you have gathered a critical mass of panels - then its time to plan out the quilt.


i really like quilts that look rustic and handmade.  i'm not a big fan of perfect precise quilting - so i like to emphasize that sort of feeling by hand stitching everything.

once your panels are done, pick the background fabric out and the batting.

to be continued....

necklace tree project

i had so many necklaces laying around getting tangled, and decided to get organized by making a necklace tree. this project is great because its functional art. 

ingredients: 

*vase

*florist foam

*rocks

*branches 

- if you find a giant vase like this one, then weighing down the base is the key to keeping your project from tipping over.  layer the rocks in the bottom third of the vase, then use the florists foam and stuff the ends of the branches into the foam in the arrangement you prefer.  top the florist foam with pebbles, add your necklaces and you should be good to go. 

-i recommend save-on-crafts.com for cheap supplies for projects like this.  you should be able to put this together for around $20 or less. 

next week i will start a series of posts on my first quilt! 

garden dining room I : the loving allspice trees

when we moved to a larger brooklyn apartment, i was overwhelmed by the space in the dining room.   the one thing that i wish this apartment had is a large outdoor terrace.  so if i can't go outdoors i am bringing the outdoors inside!

1. inspiration:  gorgeous indoor garden at the wynn las vegas

2. project 1: the loving allspice trees

ingredients:

* two Michaella Allspice Trees (5 gallon) : michaella allspice trees smell lovely and grow very slowly
http://www.monrovia.com/plant-catalog/plants/1846/allspice-michelia.php

they will bloom twice a year with large white flowers.. and they are an evergreen so they will always be green, imagine the possibilities - tiny fairy lights in winter, and how they will frame the windows as they grow

* two large restoration hardware planters : these are not meant to be used indoors, so i lined mine with plastic sheeting and my husband used a waterproofing silicon to keep the water in... these are also great because they have a shelf to give extra height to the trees

* two large 18x18 cake pans : these catch any water that does creep out and keeps your wood floors from getting wrecked.  recommend silver annotized cake pans to coordinate

* at least three bags of good quality potting soil

pictures:

and i see some large buds already that look like they will flower: