Saturday, February 26, 2011

Easter gift tags using my own hand carved stamps!

I have found a new use for my hand carved stamps! I am now making gift tags with them; I really had a lot of fun making them :-) I would love to get some feedback, let me know what you think.




Thursday, February 24, 2011

Happy Frog Crochet

I probably should have posted this one before the bunny, but here is my version of the happy frog :-)

http://sue-mindnsoul.blogspot.com/2010/05/happy-frog-free-pattern.html


Crochet Easter bunny with Basket

I made this little yellow bunny by altering this adorable amigurumi pattern that I found here
http://sue-mindnsoul.blogspot.com/2010/05/happy-frog-free-pattern.html

What I did was leave off the eyes, elongated the body by 3 rows, added a few rows to the feet, made the arms and legs longer,  and instead of having a plain chain stitch for the arms and legs I just went up the side in a sc. Then, for the crinkle effect of the arms I left a long tail at the hands and after I stitched it up I ran the tail through the arm up to the top and pulled a little to gather. I then used that same tail to attach the arm to the body. Sounds pretty easy, right? :-)
It actually was pretty simple, the area that I spent unfortunate hours on was hand stitching the eyes and face. I am afraid I am not the best at this. I first tried to avoid this all together by attaching safety eyes to the bunny, but I did not like the way it looked, so off they went. Then I began to stitch.... and tear, and stitch, and tear, and after several times of this I think I got it OK. I started on the nose and mouth. You would not believe how many faces this bunny had!! :-) I wish I would have taken pictures of the "fails" as my daughter would call it. I finally just went the simple route, and it looked the best... believe me :-)

I think I will post it for sale on etsy later today and see what happens. I have sold a few amigurumi toys, so I will see how it goes.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Another card thanks to the help of cricut :-)

I had to make a whopping 25 invitations for a baby shower! That is  a lot of invitations :-) I used water color paint for the background, then used my nifty cricut to make the moon and cow shapes with all of the layers ( 25 times 3 layers for each animal = a lot :-), and used my own hand carved stamps to embellish the inside of the cards.

The theme is nursery rhymes. I like them, the only thing I am not really happy about is that the water in the water color paint made the card curl a bit, but I have them sitting under a heavy book now so I hope that will take care of it.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Paper Flowers for Michelle

I know a sweet young lady who is undergoing chemo due to her 2nd laps of Leukemia. There are no flowers allowed in the part of the hospital that she is admitted to so I made her paper flowers. I found the instructions at this site

http://www.origami-fun.com/origami-flower.html

I am sure I am not the best at following these type of instructions and I know I messed up quite a bit, but I am still happy with the way they turned out and hope they will bring a little cheer to Michelle.

In my quest to try to rid myself of chemicals I apply to my body I have been experimenting in making my own lotions and perfumes. This has been quite a trying experience for me ( I will write more in another post) but I did find one combination of ingredients that have worked pretty good so I sent a bottle of it to Michelle as well. I was able to use my cricut to embellish a little too :-)

 Michelle is in need of a bone marrow transplant, so please keep her in your prayers.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

A fellow letter-boxer custom!

I really enjoy carving custom orders... this one was a small challenge though. It required A LOT of lettering in less then a 2" space.... but I was up for the challenge :-) Actually the buyer was very kind and said that it would be fine to leave out the city and state. I thought I would give it a try though, and I was very glad I did! Here are the results!