Awesome Faux Food in its Many Forms...

Over at Diffractionfiber's Shop (a Chicagoan, yay!) you can find the neatest thing; foods you can throw on your couch - like eggs, bacon & toast, PBnJ sandwich, pie, peas, etc - all in pillow form, of course. They are just too cute. I love faux foods as it is. I teach ceramics and one of my favorite things to do is have a class where we create food. I like burgers myself:

We have recently gone to the Chicago Historical museum a few days ago. What better (faux) food to display than a Chicago style hot dog? Maddy had fun. Who wouldnt? You can be a hot dog!

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Cream(er) of the Crop

I've been thriftin lately and have found a boatload of super cute creamers - no sugar bowls, just the creamer. Whats cool is a creamer does not need to perform only as a vessel for cream, thus making your coffee or tea the best it can be. They can serve as pencil , paint brush, supply holders, planters, decoration, collecting, and the list goes on and on. Here are a few Ive recently picked up and put up in my shop: The Speckled yellow one is a Mikasa creamer, the middle one is a Berggren (i found this on another site for $31!) and the last is the little Forest n Trees - of which i found 2! I love vintage and all, but I need this stuff cleared out! Im having a birthday sale! See my shop for details!

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I want: Indoor Shoes

I would love some indoor shoes; they're better than hot sweaty slippers and the other shoes I wear, which I wear outside and step in God knows what to track inside the house. Etsy's Featured Artist is ElephantAndChickpea, and she makes these awesome indoor shoes. I think I may see if i can make myself a pair..Ive made ones for my kids, we'll see if I can make them for my large feet.

I've also made one of those Owl toys in the previous post for my Lucy - here is a pic of the finished toy ( I inserted an old wipes package from Target to make the crinkly sound) and her enjoying playtime with her new toy!

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(The Good Kind of ) Noisy Baby Toys!

Over at Craftstylish there is a great tutorial on how to make them crinkly noisy toys that all babies mysteriously love. It really is mysterious. I will Make one for my 9 month old sweetheart, Lucie. She will love love love it! Thank you Craftstylish! You got me out of my creative rut. :)

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Spring Cleaning

How can I even desire to make anything when my craft shelf is in such shambles. I decided to do a LOT of Spring Cleaning - which is more organizing than anything else. I organized this shelf, the walk in pantry, walk in closet, linen closet, kids closet...and there is more to do. I had boxes of clothes, toys, and random stuff for the Goodwill. But no complaints here, getting rid of stuff is quite cathartic.

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Before & After: Throw Pillows

I was lying on the couch the other day and it was not comfortable. I thought to myself " we need some pillows on this couch!" Especially since my head was lying against a solid wood armrest. We had some nice down ones - the red covers had to go though. They we're the epitome of boring to me so i decided to dress them up.
I found four 20 x 20 gray napkins at the nifty thrifty for $4 and thought if I screen printed a design on them, they'd be gussied up nicely. I made envelope style pillow covers which was a cinch since the ends were finished, all i had to do is print, cut one napkin in half, overlap the finished ends for the opening, then sew all the way around and pull right side out. E. Z.

You can see their transformation! They're like new custom made pillows for the price of a latte, or large coffee and a donut for me.

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Before & After: Making the boring UNboring

AS hard of a time I give IKEA, I do love the place and what I as a crafter like the most is how plain and simple their items can be - its makes an easy instant canvas for creativity.

Take these glass air-tight food storage jars. I got them for the many flours I use; bread, wheat, all-purpose. The only thing was how do I distinguish them from each other? Well, I had some left over Rub-ON Letters from Maddy's party favor coloring books and decided I'd use them - they were fun and colorful!
I rubbed each letter on, making sure I wasnt spelling the words wrong like "Beard Flour" or something. After all that, I sealed them with some sealer to waterproof it. Doing this is better than just using a sticker that would be ruined by water and my hands (covered in cooking oil, or whathaveyou) , or printing out a clever label and taping it to it...lame. Plus this has a very clean, seamless look. I was very pleased with the outcome of this idea and now search for cool rub-ons to put on our vast amount of glass jars I store our other dry goods in.

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