Happy Spring!

This morning I woke up with a hankering for just a little something special to celebrate Easter, (more like spring time, for us. Although, look here….still snowing). We ran to the store so I could get some vinegar and I picked up a loaf of just baked french bread, too. We almost ate the whole thing instead of making bread pudding but I really do love bread pudding. I served it in my girly cups with whipped cream and it was super.

 

“Now, you can’t have any till I photograph it. Oh screw it, let’s eat!”
(Edited to add: the recipe for this pudding is in the comments on my flickr photo. I add a little heavy cream to top it off.)

After that Paul went to the studio and I stayed home dyeing eggs. I only dyed 7 since I’m really the only one who likes hard-boiled eggs. And actually, that left plenty of room for experimenting. I decided to use wine glasses to hold the dyes and they turned out to be the perfect size.  Here are the tablets dissolving in vinegar:

 

This year I wanted to try wrapping the eggs in lace, which I saw in Martha Stewart Living. On top of that, I wrapped them up tight in hosiery to hold the lace in place (seal the hosiery with a twist tie). I wasn’t sure it would work but figured I would try some other things while I was at it, too- so I also tried metallic mesh, rick rack and paper flowers. Here’s one of them about to go into the dye bath.

 

The added benefit of the hosiery is that you can run a skewer through it and then hang just part of the egg in the dye bath. As a girl I used to sit there with my wire egg dipper, ever so patiently. I once tried to make a plaid egg using all of the different dyes– I don’t recommend it.

Here’s the finished lace batch. I don’t quite understand why the lace works at resisting the dye but the pantyhose don’t affect it.  Easter magic, I say. I love the seeping in quality of it, too. On the red/yellow one, I first dyed the lace-wrapped egg in yellow, then moved it, hanging skewer style, into the red bath. The dye creeped up the hosiery and gave it a weird marbled effect, which I like.

And here are the eggs I made with the other materials. The paper flowers worked quite well- almost better than the stickers (which made the hearts). The heart egg was also wrapped in metallic mesh which gave it a cool faded grid effect. To get the yellow flowers on the blue egg, I dyed the whole egg in yellow first, let it dry, then added the flowers/hosiery combo and let it sit in the blue dye.

 

I also made one with rickrack at the far right of this photo (see me removing it here). You can see more pics of the process over at flickr. Hope you’re all having fun, wherever you are.

Craft Fair Prep

 

Here it is, in all its glory, our joint project: a hat tree! Paul helped me make this from dowels, doll head knobs and a strange bun like  furniture piece that we found at home depot. It’s not the sturdiest thing ever, but it will help get my hats up off the table and hopefully attract some attention. I’ve been cranking out some new hats just in time for Saturday, and I’m excited about meeting more crafty people. If you happen to live in Bozeman, please stop by the Emerson Bazaar and say hello.  If you can’t make it, I’ll likely be placing most of the leftovers in my etsy shop, just in time to ship for the holidays.

 

I also went to a local craft fair as a shopper this weekend. The vendors were *very* traditional, but I was excited to find these hand crocheted snowflakes for $3 a pop. I know how long they take to make, and I’d much rather pay someone else to do it. Plus, they were starched so perfectly! I love that each one is different- this is kind of important to me as a shopper, because it makes me think the person at least had a little bit of fun figuring something out while making it. I scooped up six to hang in the windows, along with a gorgeous doily that I’ll have to photograph later. I also got a hand carved wooden ”Animals of Yellowstone” mobile with gorgeous pieces of oak, apricot, locust, cherry and black walnut dangling from it- in the form of moose, bears, and bison of course. I bought an ornament from the same guy last year, and I love his simple shapes.

Turkey Day Place Cards

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week! Luckily I am not the one making the turkey, although I will be bringing a very large version of my cheddar corn spoon bread, which seems to be a hit. I also wanted to make some place cards for the table, just to cheer things up, and here’s what I came  up with. Everything was from my stash, bonus points for not acquiring new stuff!

Supplies:
-Assorted scrapbook paper in solids and patterns. If you have 8 x 8 paper,  cutting the 4 x 4 squares is a breeze.
-Ruler
-Scissors and Decorative Edge scissors
-Felt flowers (I used pre-cut flowers from American Crafts, you could also cut your own, use paper flowers, stickers, or whatever you want!)
-Sewing machine
-White Gel Pen or letter stamps and white pigment ink

Making It: Determine how many tags you’ll need. Cut that number of 4″ x 4″ squares from patterned scrapbooking papers. Fold each square in half. Next, cut that same number of 3 1/2″ X 1″ rectangles from  your solid papers with decorative scissors to make the name rectangle. For each card, center one rectangle over the bottom (”front”) half of a folded square. Place flowers on top as desired. Put the whole shebang under your sewing machine needle and stitch around the name rectangle with a long stitch. If you’re nervous about the flowers and papers moving while you sew, you may secure them with a glue stick, just make sure the glue dries before you sew so your needle won’t get sticky.

 
Note: The needle will  dull from sewing through paper, so you may want to mark it and set it aside for your next paper project– don’t sew fabric with it after sewing paper.

And voila! Place cards! To finish them off, I’m either going to write or stamp the names in white ink. There will be fifteen people at our dinner, so I’m going to wait until I have a list to do that part.

 

Gobble Gobble!

Whoooo’s in the Halloween spirit?

Sorry, I had to.

I finished my halloween garland today. It was a relatively simple project idea formed  while I was in the Martha Stewart Crafts section of Michael’s. I first saw the owl stamp on someone’s blog (can’t remember where, but they recieved it in a swap). I walked all the way around Michael’s with the itch to buy something, then wandered my way back to the MSC section in a daze because I wanted to make something halloweeny, but not disposable.  Here’s what I did:

First, I sewed some fabric flags  that were slightly larger than the stamp. (With wrong sides facing, fold a piece of fabric twice as wide as the stamp plus two inches or so in half. Sew up one long and one short side. Turn inside out, press). I made twelve. I painted the foam stamp with acrylic paint and stamped each flag.

(Tip: Start with white paint, then orange, then black. It’ll just be easier!)

After that, I trimmed all of the flags to the same height with my rotary cutter. As you can see, I’m in the middle of some other projects which I had to push out of the way.

I pinned each flag into the fold of a double wide bias tape, spacing them about 2 1/2″ from each other. I sewed a straight line for the length of the tape, making sure to catch all of the layers, and voila! A garland!

Although I intended to hang it the wall somewhere, it looked best on the couch with its other handmade friends. Now I have a halloween decoration that’s not just junk I’ll throw away after this month is over. Plus, I busted some of my stash. Mission accomplished.