tea and laundry

For the rehearsal dinner picnic the night before our wedding, my mom had two cases of Jones Soda made with a photo of us on the labels. For almost four years now, I have kept two full bottles, always displaying them somewhere in our kitchen. As part of my new year’s resolution I did the unthinkable one week - I decided to recycle them. My intent was to peel off the labels, keep the caps (which have fortunes on the insides), and do something crafty with the two. After various ways of trying, I realized I was never going to get the labels off in one piece - the glue was just too hardened and the paper was flaking off. Not to be deterred, I photographed them instead. After drinking seven bottles of cream soda looking for a cap with a fortune appropriate to life / a wedding / whatever, and having my best friend mail a bag of the wine corks she’d saved from our reception, I put together this tiny 4×6 shadowbox. Much prettier than a couple of glass bottles of dark vanilla soda - I don’t know what took me so long :) We’ve never really had much from our wedding displayed - one framed photo on my dresser and our funky cake servers hanging in our kitchen - so I am happy to finally have a wedding-something all prettied up, and not as ho-hum as one of our invitations in a boring silver frame.

Also, a quick thank you to tldg rainwear for featuring my little pink umbrella studs in a treasury last week - and for letting me know, since I never remember to check :)

That’s it, folks. I’m going home to WV - and to various places from there - on Saturday. Won’t be back here until the first week of August, so no updates for awhile!

Tiny, vintage, mustard-colored elementary school chairs for hazel - $2.00 each at yardsale… freshened up the legs with black rustoleum and they are patiently waiting for her to get big enough to use them.

Pretty fruit skewers for a summer picnic - I love projects where everything comes from the dollarstore. Skewers, wooden bees and flowers, and glittery hot glue - all $1.00 per pack.

Shirt for Hazel’s first rock show :) Stitched a handmade patch onto a long-sleeved shirt that she already had - felt was twenty cents per sheet.

Ok, not a craft project, but she’s so darn cute - Hazel & I sitting on a caboose. She’s wearing her banjo shirt from Sarah Holsapple. She’s going to bust out of it by the end of summer so I really need to buy the next size up… it’s Mikey’s favorite.

Listening: Ryan Adams
Reading: almost done with Columbine
Working on: Etsy photo revamp - after a battle with Ritz camera, who lost the macro filters I ordered and wouldn’t respond to emails, Amazon has refunded my money, I bought filters from elsewhere, spraypainted my props, and I’m ready to go…

I remember sitting to have my profile sketched when I was little so that we could have silhouettes made of my brother and I. It was tedious for me - I can’t imagine actually making them that way.

a.) because I can’t draw.
b.) that’s pretty much it.

Enter technology. You can still do the cutting (which you don’t even really need to do, I guess - you could just use the printed silhouettes), but digital cameras and photo-editing software and printers do all the drawing. Yay! These were very satisfying to make. I love my little family, and desperately needed to spice up the wall over our diningroom table. Pretty things to look at = ability to tolerate this microscopic apartment for another handful of months.

Take headshot profile photo (silhouetted against a bright window is good), make black & white, up contrast as far as it will go, neaten up with a drawing tool if you wish, and print the mirror of the finished image that you want to see (i.e. - I wanted us all to be looking left, so I printed us looking right). Mount on black paper - I glued all over and taped the edges down. Or you could skip the whole cutting process and just frame the printed version, but then you don’t get to use an xacto knife.

Use cutting mat & precision cutting tool to cut out the image. The glue I used let me easily peel the printed version off of the back (junk gluestick), but you don’t have to. It shouldn’t show.

Pick a background paper. My frames are 10 x 13 and I wanted to use this 12 x 12 scrapbooking paper, so I had to trim and match up my edges. If you put your shorter “extra” piece towards the top of the frame and fix them together so that it’s tucked down behind the “outer” layer, the seam won’t show when it’s hung - even with this really thick, double-sided paper. I love these (expensive, wasteful, gifted, delightful) glue runners for exact matching that is acid-free & won’t rumple the paper.

Mount silhouettes on paper and frame. Ta-da! I am so happy with these :) But I really do need to get a polarizing filter so the photos aren’t all glare-y…

Frames: on sale for $5.00 each at Michael’s
Pretty paper: $1.69 per sheet at Michael’s
Black paper: $1.19 per sheet at Michael’s (I got 12 x 12, turned out I could have gotten away with 8 1/2 x 11)

Listening: Billy Bragg & Wilco
Reading: Columbine
Working on: crochet lessons from a friend this evening! hopefully there are some amigurumi animals (etc.) in Hazel’s future.

(or whatevers)

(1.) Pick a size
(2.) Cut some cardstock to match envelopes (or buy some prepackaged envelopes and matching flats, like me:)
(3.) Cut pretty paper a little smaller than flats
(4.) Print and cut text slightly smaller than the pretty paper
(5.) Sew text to pretty paper
(6.) Mount on flats
(7.) The end :)

Listening: sleeping-baby-silence
Reading: Columbine by Dave Cullen
Working on: baby bibs… that I can wipe clean :)

My sister-in-law bought this awesome bib (and a matching burp cloth) at our friend’s shop in Louisville, KY, before Hazel was born:

I loooooveeee it - it’s such good quality, the perfect size/shape and washes up like a charm, which is a must now that she is eating solid foods. I also love that it’s a snap closure, because snaps don’t stick to other laundry in the wash :) I went to the shop of the maker - hoobaleedoos - to hopefully snag a couple more… only to see that she has closed due to CPSIA.

Boo, boo, BOOOOOO to CPSIA!!!

She looks so cute rockin’ her one lone hoobaleedoo bib though, no? :) She is getting so big - seven months old this weekend! She’s a majorly foodie baby - trying anything you put in front of her and guzzling water (AND still nursing, which I am very happy about!). Very very busy baby - sits up and plays on her own, babbles constantly, has two teeth… loves to be out and about, listening to (live or recorded) music, playing tambourine, reading books… she is all kinds of fun!

I made this for her little wallspace the other day - she is so in love with our dog, Paisley, and vica versa. This photo doesn’t exactly show the love, but it makes me laugh so hard.

Frame: $1.00 at dollar store
Charley Harper flashcard: from a damaged set on a remnant table (more here)
Paper: 35 cents for paisley-printed piece - solid cardstock from a pack

Listening: Morrissey
Reading: Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
Working on: invitations; (always) baby gifts; much-needed organization and pre-baby-proofing!

I’m super excited about this find: vintage kids’ puzzles that arrived in mint condition, still in their shrink wrap. They look so nice framed… things like this make the time spent sifting through all the total junk in Etsy’s “vintage” category worth it!

Puzzles: $9 for the pair from bouquet
Frames: $7 each at Michael’s

Listening: rain, rain, rain
Reading: I need to start a new book tomorrow - can’t decide
Working on: in reality, probably nothing more than getting us ready to go home for a week :)

…but I’m often lacking good ideas. Weird, I know. Clothes, blankets, burp cloths, simple toys, standard baby stuff. Nothing too exciting - at six months old, she’s perfectly happy with some measuring cups and playsilks. She LOVES photos though, and since we are so far from all of her family and all of our friends from home, I decided to make her a fairly drool-proof album. I just printed a bunch of black & white photos, purged some scrapbooking paper and stickers (I’m trying to hard to get rid of things), and put together this Hazel-sized album so she can start to learn faces of far-away people. She loves it, and it was so easy. Absolutly minimal crafty skills, but hey - anything is an accomplishment these days.

Photo album: $4.95 in Michael’s clearance bin
Paper and stickers: from my own stash - some I’ve had for years
Photos: free with coupons :)

Listening: Elliott Smith
Reading: Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Working on: Hazel clothes, diaper doublers for a friend

…to Kelly, for mentioning me on her pretty pretty blog, lawn fawn cards. It certainly made my monday!

In the form of terrariums. My brother and I used to make these as kids, and once he unknowingly nestled a praying mantis eggcase into his little glass container of mossy goodness. Not too long afterwards there was a pretty horrible number of teensy creatures in our midst - hopefully I haven’t brought any living creatures into my apartment.

It’s a pretty simple process, although you can buy books on how to make elaborate terrariums with complex layers of nutrients & drainage materials. My mom & I pieced together things she remembered trying in the past and layered the following from the bottom up: crushed terra cotta pots, charcoal (we got a container from the aquarium supplies), sandy dirt from my parents’ garden, potting soil, and some nice crumblydamp rotted log. On top we put the odds and ends we’d gathered from the woods - moss, bark or rocks with lichen attached, some tiny plants.

We used several glass containers with various-sized openings, from an old glass bottle to a small goldfish bowl. This is a pretty way to recycle glass conatiners, although we bought a few. After “planting” we watered them while simultaneously rinsing off the inside of the glass with drinking straws full of water, and the ones with larger openings were sealed with plastic wrap for a couple of days so they settled before beginning to dry. Now that they are a few days established I’ll sprinkle them with water every day or two, depending on what sort of puddling I do or do not see in the bottoms of the containers.

They are so pretty and they smell wonderful! As long as no bugs hatch and they live for awhile I will be happy. It’s all practice for big ones with more plantlife when we have the space. I know it didn’t involve any stitching or glue or anything, but it’s still pretty crafty.

[1.] Collect moss & whatever else you want to try.

[2.] Get together your glass containers, drainage materials (pebbles, crushed pots, rocks, whatever) and soils - consider nutrients AND aesthetics :)

[3.] Layer drainage materials on the bottom and nutrient soils at the top, with something nice and damp as the top layer.

[4.] Add your bits and pieces of things to grow or that just look pretty.

[5.] Use chopsticks or skewers to insert and arrange bits of moss into containers with small openings.

[6.] Water / rinse inside of glass. Everything should be nice & drippy but not swimming in water. Seal openings of larger containers for a day or two, and then water as needed.

[7.] Admire!

Glass containers: $3 - $4 apiece at walmart; $4.95 at JoAnn fabrics; pocket change at a yardsale; $9.00 at Target (left over wedding decoration)
Charcoal: about $5.00 for already-finely crushed charcoal in the aquarium supplies
Terra cotta pots: a few quarters anywhere - free in your mother’s backyard :)
Soils & moss & stuff: free during Hazel’s first hike in the woods

Listening: Paul Simon
Reading: Annie Dillard (is THIS why I wanted to make terrariums?)
Working on: ideas for babyproofing craft space; Hazel clothes; never-ending baby gifts!

Mine is! And so are the living spaces of a few mommies-to-be in my life, so I wanted to make some wall art to go with their more practical baby gifts. With a five-month old I don’t have all the time in the world for intricate, pretty art, but these turned out so cute and are perfect for all of that scrapbooking supplies that is just too cute to hide between the pages of a book:

Chipboard letters: $1.00 per set at a dollar store
Clippy frames: $1.00 each
Pretty paper: some from a huge pack that was on clearance for $5.00; one sheet was thirty-five cents
Skill required: you must be knowledgable in the fine art of applying glue :)

Listening: Frank Proffitt
Reading: Annie Dillard
Working on: nothing crafty - packing to go home to the states tomorrow, yay!