Crochet Headband

Just a quick project share. I finished this up the other night at our Chicks with Sticks meeting (it's so fun to have friends to get crafty with!) I broke the 'rules' a bit and busted out the crochet (not the knitting) because I still can't get enough of it.

Gosh, I look a bit evil in that picture--must be the smirky grin.

Here's a close up:
The pattern uses the shell stitch (just groups of double-crochets).  The Suite 101 website where I originally found this pattern no longer exists.  Here it is for you:

• ch14
• foundation row: sc in 2nd ch from hook; (skip next 2 ch, 5dc in next ch, skip next 2 ch, sc in next ch) twice; turn. (2 shells made)
• row1: ch3 (counts as 1dc); 2dc in first sc, skip next 2dc, sc in next dc, skip next 2 dc, 5dc in next sc, skip next 2dc, sc in next dc, skip next 2dc, 3dc in last sc; turn. (2 partial shells and 1 complete shell made)
• row 2: ch1 sc in first dc; (skip 2 dc, 5dc in next sc, skip next 2 dc, sc in next dc) twice; turn. (2 shells made)
• Repeat rows 1 and 2 until work measures approx. 21½" long, ending with row 1.  Fasten off
• Sew the first and last rows together.

100 Things I Love

In honor of Valentine's Day this year (and because some of my blogging friends were creating similar lists), I jotted down a list of 100 things I love. Then I turned it into a simple LO filled with little doodles, a stitched border, some Thickers, and a bit of felt. And when it was done, I realized I'm a simple girl and it doesn't take a whole lot to make me happy (though who doesn't love a small shopping spree once in a while?)
How about you? What makes you happy? What comforts you? What do you love?

More Flowers

I'm so jazzed by Lolly's Wall Flowers Week and this whole blooming spring thing, that I whipped up a few more flowers:

A great way to use up those fabric scraps. I've attempted these a couple of times and had mixed results. Today I tried a different tactic and they worked so much better (and my fingers weren't coated with glue after). I will attempt to list the steps here, but Rhonna Farrer does a super vid.

1. Tear strips of fabric about 1 1/2" to 2" wide and I don't know, maybe 24" long (this is not an exact science and you can always add in another strip of fabric--even try mixing different fabrics on the same flower).
2. Tie a knot at one end of the strip.
3. Starting at the knot, turn the fabric over, and gather it around the knot, turn and gather, turn and gather, working from the center outwards. You should see a flower start to take shape.
4. When you have a flower you like, use fabric glue or hot glue to glue it to a scrap of felt.
5. Let dry and trim away excess felt backing and voila! a beautiful blooming rose. Embellish with a jewel or pearl button, or whatever fits your style.

These fluffy flowers are also courtesy of Rhonna (video here), and, are you ready for this? They are made with coffee filters! Now, it just so happens that the pot to my coffee maker broke a few years back and we switched to a filterless system. But as luck would have it, the pot broke days after I had just bought a new box of coffee filters. How many coffee filter butterflies can one mom and her three boys really make? Well, I was tickled to rip out that box of filters and whip this up.

Rhonna used 12 filters--6 on each half of the flower. I found that this was not as pooffy as I wanted and added lots more filters in the spaces. It's as easy as folding and stapling individual filters and then hot gluing them into 2 clusters, then gluing them to make a sphere. So super fast and easy!

Flower Power

Spring is finally here, and sometimes the weather even seems to realize it (though not lately with chilly rain and winds). So I thought I would do a little flower tutorial thingie here on my blog. Well, low-and-behold, that crafty Lolly has a flower week going on at her blog right now, and it is AMAZING! So, as I see it, she's doing all the work coming up with the fantabulous ideas and pointing us in the direction of all the how-to's and we can just sit back and create all the fun projects, like these two little beauties I made from her post for yesterday.

Felt flower made with the Sizzix circles die

Wire ribbon rose

Oh my golly, jump on over to Lolly's and check out what she's got blooming!

Method Playground: Cardboard

This week, Amanda is asking us to think OF the box and use cardboard on our pages. I used cardboard to create some flower embellishments for this Easter LO. I spray painted die cut flowers (Sizzix Flower Layers #3), and then peeled back some of the paper to reveal the corrugated cardboard beneath. I added a touch more of paint with some swipes of a dry brush, and glued on button centers. Easy and inexpensive embellies.

u r such a cutie

The gorgeous spring weather we've had this past week inspired me to use some bright cheerful colors on my layout. A few dabs of paint accented with brads, rub-ons, and a black pen help to ground the title. I carried the doodle-y feel of the rubons (from Rusty Pickle's Candy Land line) into the patterned paper (My Little Shoebox Who's There line) by adding a few doodles of my own.

Use some doodles to put some fun into your next page. Don't be afraid. . .it's just paper!

Bundled Up Photo challenge

I just came across this site tonight through a little blog hopping, and thought I would post one of my favorite photos for their "Bundled Up" challenge.

Seriously, those lashes. Yeah, whenever it snows, those lashes gather up snowflakes better than a shovel. And just how is it that the boys always end up with the killer lashes?! Life is so unfair!

There are loads of inspiring photographs from super talented photographers:

Create

My youngest and I played around with some oil pastels the other day and we created some resists with watercolor paints. It turned out to be the perfect accent strip for a page about his creativity. The sketch for this page is from Pencil Lines.

A mish-mash of Bloggie catch-up-ness

My, how time flies when you're taking an unplanned break! Didn't really mean to be on hiatus this long. Didn't really mean to be on hiatus at all, truth be told, but sometimes one day turns into the next, and then on into a week, and well here we are. So let's move on to the crafty stuff I've been up to lately, shall we?

First, Method Playground's challenge is in full swing. This week: use white out on your layout: use it as you would paint, to distress, as a spot for your journaling, to accent patterned paper, to edge your photos or your papers. For my very simple LO, I wrote the letters of my title using white out tape and wrote my journaling along some lines of tape. Check out what the rest of the DT did here.

Did a little sewing last week and whipped up this little tooth fairy pillow from an old blue jean pocket. With three boys, I am never at a loss for jeans with holes in the knees. I never throw them away, so have collected quite a stash of them. It's a thrill to come up with a project that uses bits of blue jeans. The pillow is sewn out of super soft fleece, and the pattern for the tooth is from a pattern created by this chicita (as seen in this sewing calendar that I {heart}.)

Perhaps the reason I've not been creating very many layouts lately can be blamed on my new passion for crochet. Oh, how I am so in love with this new crafty form. The projects whip up so, so quickly (which makes impatient me very happy), and the look of crochet can be so varied. I was on a mission last week to scout out some free patterns on the web and here's a couple that I found and used:

My first go at this hat was not pretty (somehow in joining each round I was increasing the number of stitches resulting in this point that stuck way out at the back of the hat). I tore the whole thing out and carefully counted each row to keep it in check. The hat took only about 3 hours. (Did I mention how much I love crochet?!) I haven't permanently attched the flower yet because I'm on the fence about adding a third color and layer to it.

[Here's the link to the hat and flower pattern. Note to self: bookmark all patterns so I can share them]

The pattern for this cuff is from Crochet Me. I love these 8-petal flowers. I'm going to make some more and stitch them together for a headband.

Well, that's my craftyness for now. It's good to be back!