So, today’s fun craft was making new tags for the doggies. I used shrinky dink plastic and colored pencils to color them. Benjamin got a sea turtle, because he always lays like one. China got a lotus blossom. I based the art off of tattoos found online because the style went nice with the colored pencils.
No photos of the tags on yet – I have to wait for them to dry. I put a couple layers of varnish on the back side where my colored pencil is (I colored them backwards).
The weekend went fast – because I was busy! I did lots of braiding. I’ve now redone 65 of 105. Need to finish by Friday, as we leave for California on Saturday morning. We cooked out for dinner both nights. It was nice having friends join us!
On Sunday, I finally made a trip to the fabric store to get what I needed to make some summer clothes. I wanted to make a simple summer dress (no pattern needed for that) and some skirts. It took a while to find just the right pattern for the skirt. I didn’t want anything with a bulky waist (no elastic or draw strings.) I went with a pattern by Burda in their “Young Fashion” collection (view B here). Though doing a faced yoke (the waistband part of the skirt) with a hidden zipper is harder than elastic, it will lay smooth under a shirt.
I bought two types of fabric with matching zippers for skirts to start with. Last night I made the first one… And, I love it! I used A Fuji Afternoon Umbrellas for the fabric. I had to give myself a quick refresher course on hidden zippers, but I didn’t have to seam rip once. That’s good for me!
My next skirt is going to be a grey one (I don’t see that fabric online.) I want to get it done, and possibly the dress, before we go on vacation. I could seriously live in skirts and dresses all summer if I was able to. Skirts don’t work out well at the doggy daycare, though. 
I love my job (Art, technology and dogs. Perfect!), But I’m always glad for Friday! Even more exciting: our long-awaited vacation is just one week away! We are going out to California, though we have no plans yet.
As usual, I am redoing my braids for the trip. But, this time, I am 1.5 months later in doing so and the itch is driving me nuts! I didn’t want to redo them in March only to have to re-redo them in April, so I’ve suffered through the wait. Also, I’ve kept my hair strawberry blond with a bit of red mixed in since autumn, so I am switching back to my natural blond. I have 29/106 done so far and want to get to at least 70/106 by the end of the weekend.
Tonight we are heading to the mall (fun, fun) in hopes of finding me a sweater for the trip. All I want is a long-sleeve, button-down, brown (and maybe black) cardigan sweater for chilly nights on the beach. Is that too much to ask? Apparently it is, because everything I find is either not brown (brown matches most of my clothes, black would match the rest), not long-sleeved (why bother? sweaters are supposed to warm you!) or they are zip-up hoodies (too casual – I need something that can be dressed up too). Hopefully I’ll find something before we leave for California, but I’m not holding my breath that I’ll find something tonight. If you have any suggestions as to wear I should look, leave a comment or send me a twitter tweet thingie to @punquin.
Speaking of cardigans, I decided to do an upcycle/remake project. I took an old K-mart crew neck sweater from my donation pile and refashioned it into a cardigan. I think I will move the button slightly, but I’m too lazy to do it right now. I wore it yesterday, and it turned out really cute. The sweater had been way too short on me (like 7″ above my belly button!) and the neckline unflattering. Now it is really fun to wear.
It’s going to be really hot this weekend – around 90° F on Sunday. I don’t mind warm/hot weather, but our heater/air conditioner wasn’t working and I was worried about the dogs. Luckily it turned out to just be a power switch that was shorting out. The price they charged to replace it was kinda rediculous, but at least we are ready for the heat wave.
I’m about to head to bed, but I thought I’d write a quickie post first…
The weekend went fast! Saturday dan had a hair cut appointment at 10. I tagged along then we went to Home Depot to get 16 bags of mulch on sale. Dan spent the day working on our biggest planter bed out back, while i cleaned inside. Laura came over that night and we got some dinner (mm, bean tacos!). We did some work on our party decorations and played some Rock Band 2.
On Sunday, I went with Laura to a brunch/jewelry sale party thrown by a coworker in Arlington. I am on a budget and was not allowed to order anything. Laura was awesome and ordered me some pretty silver earrings with a $10 gift card she won. After that, we drove around trying to find gold wrapping paper to decorate the party photo booth with (check!) and stopped for burgers (make mine a veggie) and fries. Back at home, we worked on more party decorations, and I got the photobooth covered in the gold paper while Laura figured out some work scheduling stuff. When she figured out that she wouldn’t be working on her birthday, I gave her the little gift I had made her (see below). Danny had gone to a Caps game with our friend/neighbor Dan, and they came home so we could all play Rock Band 2 together for a bit.
Yesterday was uneventful – a work from home day. We had our tax appointment in the evening. Glad that is over with! Today I was back in my office. My day was unproductive because of computer issues. I use a hand-me-down computer there (as all my desktops have been) and it has strange partitions/hds. OS X is on a 17 gig drive, another 17 gig drive is split in 2 equal parts, and a 40 gig was split unevenly. It was all very strange and with ever OS upgrade the main hd filled up more and more. Now I get “startup disk is full” errors every time I use big programs like Photoshop. It was making work impossible today. So I emptied the 40 gig drive’s partitions and repartitioned them to be 1 again. Then I used a utility to make an exact copy of my OS hd to it. It took a long time, and I was unable to work during it because my startup disk kept getting full still. I was scheduled to help up front in the doggy daycare 5 – 7 pm anyway. It was all done the copying when I got back to my desk. I rebooted to my new startup disk and quickly tested Mail before heading home. It seems like everythign is working perfectly.
Okay, this has gotten long! Big shout-out to the birthday girl, Laura! Look out for a post soon about all the fun decorations we’ve been working on for her party on the 18th. I’ll leave you with some pictures of the present I made for Laura and the practice piece I made for myself.
I had a lot of leftover fleece from sewing valentine hearts, so I figured out how to make braided doggy tug toys. It is super easy – no sewing involved. You basically just cut and braid. Here is a quick how-to. There are more photos from in between the step in my Flickr feed.
You’ll need some fleece. You can use up to 3 colors for each tug toy. Mine was leftover from another project.
Fold the fleece in half, selvage to selvage so you are cutting strips along the direction the fabric stretches (the selvage will be on the end of your strips, not on the length).
Cut a strip 3″ – 4″ wide. I went with 3.5″.
Repeat until you have three strips total.
Lay the strips lengthwise side-by-side. Fold them in to loose tubes at the middle so that the rough edges aren’t as noticeable when you start to braid.
Braid the middle 10″ or so of the strips. When you fold this in half, it will become the loop handle.
Fold the strips in half and line up the matching colors. If you are using all one color, just split the strips from each side into 3 groups of 2.
Start braiding tightly till the end. You can make it look neater by wrapping the pairs of strips around each other into a tube so you don’t see as many rough edges.
Tie the whole tug toy in a knot above the loose ends. I like to make the knot loosely but starting fairly high, then pull it down towards the end until it is nice and tight.
Trim the ends to make them even, and you are done!
Top and Pants, originally uploaded by punquin.
Despite fence painting most of the day, I managed to finish the bulk of my Halloween costume tonight! I still need to design/sew the thing that will wrap around my ponytail. I have to find or make some jewelry that matches (including a tikka). I have to get nude-colored undies for underneath the pants. My genie lamp is on order.
Now I just have to work on Danny’s costume! I am hoping for minimal sewing on his. I need to go thrift store shopping…
Genie Top, originally uploaded by punquin.
I finished the top tonight (and started the pants)! I had some trouble getting my sewing machine to do button holes until I took it apart and messed with it a bit. The ribbon I bought off of eBay 2 days ago arrived so I was able to add that already.
I took tomorrow off because I worked all day Sunday and we have a mile of backyard fence to paint. So tired. Long week.
Top Almost Done, originally uploaded by punquin.
Here’s what I have of my Halloween costume so far… I’m too tired to write anything else! My work week started Sunday morning.
If you don’t know what it is, click the link for more pictures in my Flickr.
Genie, originally uploaded by punquin.
One of my favorite things about fall is Halloween. And, I’m really excited about it this year because our new neighborhood really gets into decorating their houses. We found this house around Halloween last year, and I’ve been looking forward to it ever since. There are so many kids that I’m sure I’ll have to buy a ton of candy.
I’ve started sewing my costume. I am going to be a genie this year. I definitely chose the most over-complicated genie costume pattern on earth. So far I’ve only done the pleated bust part. The instructions were simple, but it wasn’t easy. It is a little bit above my sewing level, but that is how I improve – by forcing myself to do something harder each time. I’m starting early so that if Danny actually thinks of a costume idea, I can sew it for him too. Oh, and my costume will not be pink like in that picture. She looks like Genie-Barbie-goes-to-Prom. My colors are closer to the upper left. I still need to get 9 yards of various trims, but I can’t find any that are the right color in any local stores. I wish Potomac Mills wasn’t so far. They have a huge G Street fabrics with a big trim section.
We’ve decided, with our two friends, that this year we are hosting a Halloween party here at our house the Saturday before Halloween. Last year they had one at their house and we went early to help set up. So we are reversing this year. I want to send out the Evite today, but Danny still owes me his guest list.
So with the trick-or-treaters AND the party, I want to really decorate well. I’d love to do a graveyard in our front yard and then lots of spooky cobwebs and stuff on the porch. I’ve been researching places to buy tombstone props and various ways to make my own, and I’ll probably go with bought ones. I don’t have time to make anything tha would hold up to the elements. I’ve saved many to an Amazon wishlist for reference, but if a graveyard sugar daddy feels inspired, they could certainly send some my way. Hah!
We also need to plan our yearly apple/pumpkin picking trip. I’ll probably want a bunch of pumpkins. Last year I got a lot of tiny ones and made tea light holders for the party. Though I might need to get a few carvable fake ones for the party from Michael’s so I can light them for the party. I remember my pumpkins tend to go mushy after being lit all night, so they wouldn’t last until Halloween day.
I have more to say, but that is it for Halloween for now…
Crewel: 21, originally uploaded by punquin.
It’s been so stressful around here, paying for two houses at once, so I’ve been taking time away from my computer to do crafty projects to relax myself. On the house-selling front, we are accepting an offer today. But, I won’t relax until we are past all possibility of the buyer backing out. Can you believe we’ve had 7 written offers before this? They were all too low, and didn’t respond to our counters. This buyer actually accepted our 5k higher counter offer. But, this post isn’t about that. It’s about my craft projects.
Anyone who knows me well enough personally, knows that I love to bead jewelry. Unfortunately, I haven’t really had money for beads lately. I did buy a $5 1 lb. grab bag of glass beads. You end up with a lot of broken, misfit beads, but you do get a lot of fun and interesting beads as well. So far, I’ve made three necklaces using those beads, and leftovers from my stash.
One project I’ve wanted to do for over a year is a crewel/jacobean embroidered bag. i have a bag my mom made that I love, love, love. Unfortunately, it is probably 30 years old, and the fibers are starting to degrade, I want to take apart the bag, do some repair work on the needlepoint, and frame it. But I also don’t want to loose my bag. So, I am making a recreation. Two recreations, actually. I will be doing one in the original colors, and one in vibrant colors of my choice. The design I am working on right now is the vibrant one. I am loving this kind of needle work. All the women in my family have done needle arts (in fact my aunt owns a store in New Mexico for it). I’ve enjoyed it, but get frustrated having to count to follow the patterns. I inevitably count wrong. This style of free embroidery that needs no counting is perfect! And, I don’t have to make a million X’s like in cross-stitch. There are so many interesting stitches.
I’ve been taking photos of my project as I progress. Here are a few. If you want to see more, just head over to the the set.
