Painted Easter Eggs

I bought some wooden easter eggs during a sale at Joann Fabric's online site. Of course, this sale occurred after easter, so my eggs will be waiting almost a year to be displayed in our house. We don't even really do easter. I never had an easter basket as a kid, never did the easter dress thing, never did the egg hunt... And, to be honest, I'll never desire participation in most of the traditional easter rituals. So, this is one of the holidays for which I have the fewest decorations.

I love spring, though. And I love a pile of brightly painted eggs. So, I painted me some.

And I used some varnish to seal them afterward.

I used a glue gun to lay down circle stands where the eggs could sit as they dried. This worked moderately well. The glue circles should be sized appropriately to your egg size. And taller than mine were to truly hold the egg. They did work. But I'd more carefully plan their measurements next time.

I do love my eggs, though. Bright and cheery and springy. Just what they should be.

April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day is fun when you mess with your husband. Mine is a technology lover. To be fair, I suppose that anyone might be upset if they thought their laptop might have been ruined with nail polish.

I purposely spilled nail polish I never wore anymore onto plastic wrap and let it dry in the basement for a couple of days. When dry, I could lift it like this:

 

Then, on April Fool's Day, I placed it on his keyboard like this:

And then I gasped, and called for him. 

I stared at the spill with a horrified expression. His reaction: to grab tissues from the coffee table and yell, "Well, don't just stare at it!" I started laughing right about then. Because I'm terrible at holding it in or keeping a straight face.

Then, I got spanked. ;) All in good fun, of course.

Totally hilarious.

Totally worth it.

Crocheted Wrap

I decided to make a spring wrap which I love to wear as I sit and read on my couch or on a chair on my porch. It's cozy. It makes me feel snuggly and refined all at once. Yes. I could put on a sweater. Or, I could throw a wrap around my shoulders and feel casually elegant.

I used this vintage pattern for a fantasy shawl. Hilarious name. Super simple wrap pattern with two repeating rows. And, it's nice for spring since the filet stitch makes it a bit lacy. I love it.

Crocheted Cotton Doilies

Lately, I've been making lots of doilies. For me, it's so soothing to complete each round and watch as a symmetrical, satisfyingly even, pretty piece comes together. Sometimes, I can't think of anything more calming than to make a doily.

There are so many free patterns online. I especially love ravelry.com. Free membership and there are so many free patterns. Of course, there are plenty for purchase, too. Also, freepatterns.com has a pretty good size database. Of course, Pinterest is a motherload of links for free patterns from everywhere. Ah, the internet...

Here's my mantilla doily:

And a pineapple doily (can't find the pattern link again):

And a pretty table runner:

Valentine's Day

I made this really simple and small runner for the dining room table. It's a very easy to sew rectangle that I then stamped with some stamps from my small collection.

One end is a French love saying:

The other end is an Italian love saying:

We're so cultured. :)

DIY Cuff Links for the Husband

My husband's birthday is in January, so I thought I'd share these cuff links I made him for his special day. I apologize for the quality of the photos in this post - using my cell phone to take the pictures wasn't the best idea!

These first ones are viking scenes on metal buttons that I bought online. I snipped off the button shank with wire cutters and then used E6000 glue to seal them to pre-bought cuff link findings (blank cuff link backs) which I bought on ebay. To dry them, I placed the buttons image side down on a board, dabbed them with glue, and then set the cuff link backs on top of them, holding them in place until I was certain that they would not move and could dry centered.

For these gear cuff links (which are so expensive to buy!), I found gear findings at Michaels on sale and then layered the various gears on top of one another, carefully using the E6000 glue to hold them in place. Once the gears were dried in their patterns, I used the same technique as I did above in order to attach the cuff link backs.

I placed them in this box I arranged for him. I covered foam strips with crushed velvet and then laid them tightly side by side to imitate a man's jewelry box. Those are tie clips on the left. The one with the gears is made with a simple alligator clip.

It was fun to make something special for him. He certainly deserves it.

And what birthday wouldn't be more fun without a load of balloons tumbling down on you as you leave your bedroom in the morning? ;)

Dessert was a "healthy key lime pie." Not half bad.

I hope he had a special day and that he knows how much he means to me. :)

Christmas Stockings

Look, look! Pretty Christmas stockings! 

I love how these turned out. I think they're pretty, traditional, but also modern in their simplicity. Plus, I already had the fabric! So, buy the trimmings and I'm all set! 

You could really use any fabric at all for these. I had some indoor red canvas type fabric hanging around from an old sewing project. I also had some white cotton fabric from a set of old sheets that I used for lining. My mother-in-law gave me a bunch of them to make pillow cases. Well, I've made quiet a few pillow cases (they're so fast on a serger - have I sung the praises of my serger yet?) and had plenty left over. 

So, first I ironed that fabric. Of course, it was already pre-washed and dried. 

I made myself a template for the stocking. I just taped together three pieces of paper and drew it out free hand. I love having the ability to choose my own shape.

Now, I'm super lazy, so I don't usually use pins for placement when sewing. In fact, I didn't use any pins at all for this project. I have no patience. I just laid out the template and traced around it with a pen. In my opinion, all of this hullabaloo about erasable/vanishing ink is nonsense for this kind of thing. None of those lines will ever show. Ever. So use whatever you have. Not a big deal here.

Of course, I tried to place the template in such a way that I would conserve the most fabric possible. Then, I cut out my shapes. Don't forget that you'll need two for each stocking! Ha. Do the same for the lining.

Once you're finished cutting them out, you'll need to stitch each one together. Since they're Christmas stockings and don't have to fit any bodies, you can choose whatever seam width you're comfortable with on the machine. Just make sure to use the same one consistently so things are uniform.

Then, clip your curves. It makes turning your stockings so much easier! Of course, you won't be turning the linings. They're going to be plopped right down inside your turned red ones. So, I guess it's up to you whether you want to clip them. I didn't think it mattered. I didn't clip them. My hands said no. I'm sure my grandma would slap me.

 Okay, so we know the linings fit inside. But before sewing them in place, we get to do the fun part. Trimmings! Lace and ribbon and bows and other pretty things! I gathered all the ribbon I would need and measured it to fit around the stocking. Of course, trimmings could have been done before the stockings were sewn together, but this way made it so much easier for me to see exactly where things were going in order to line them up. So, that's what I did.

 I found these great snowflake buttons at Joann and the initial charms at Walmart. The awesome thing is that the charms actually fit through the button shank! They dangle and sparkle and please me very much.

I kind of laid out the way that I wanted the ribbon to look on the stocking. Though the thin silver ribbon can be seen in the plans, it didn't make the cut. Just couldn't cut it. Didn't look right. That is all.

Here are all of the trimmings laid out. The top shorter ribbons will be looped (as seen on the far right) in order to hang the stockings. I also ironed flat the ribbon at the bottom. That stuff had a crazy attitude after being wound so tightly for so long. So, I hit it with heat. And it worked. Also, because I wanted to add some more interest and texture to the white ribbon, I sewed thin colored ribbon on top of the white (silver and red), so it was all attached and ready before I began stitching it to the stocking. You could, of course, use whatever decorations you want!

I measured with a ruler where I wanted the lowest ribbon to be sewn. I liked the placement at three inches.

I went ahead and marked around each stocking at three inches down. Then, I sewed around my ribbons, simply folding the ends as I finished and securing them with a back stitch.

When I was finished with the lower ribbons, it was time to stuff the lining. Put your fingers down in the toes and make sure that your curves are all matching up. Since I used a template, they all fit really nicely. I decided to use the top ribbon as a binding. This way, I didn't have to finish and hem the top. So much easier. So much lazier. So me. I did iron the ribbons for this binding in half, long ways. This made them so much easier to handle and was really necessary. Lastly, I folded the short ribbon into a loop and sewed it on to the side where I wanted the stocking to hang. I sewed a nice, strong rectangle to secure that guy in place. Why? To hold lots of nice, heavy stocking stuffers. For me, of course. Wouldn't want someone to have to consider weight when picking me a gift....

Finally, I sewed on those beautiful buttons with the initial charms. And hung them up to snap loads of pictures.

 Seriously, what's better than a stack of pretty Christmas stockings? Not much.