Holiday To-Do List

Hey there y'all....I am working right now on thinking through all I need to get done in the next few weeks. This is the busiest time of year, so I'm going to use this space to post my to do list, basically. Feel free to do the same and put a link to it in my comments!

*Tag animals for my show tomorrow and decorate my little Christmas tree with my bird ornaments. Plus, come up with a new display board.

* Start making Christmas presents for my family. I already know what I'm doing for my parents and grandparents, but I gotta figure out what I'm getting Suzi Q, my nieces and nephews, and a couple other people. I would post my gift ideas on here, but, uh, some of them read my blog.

* Come up with some awesome Christmas decorations- I'm thinking acorn balls, a chalkboard Christmas tree, Christmas pillows, and hanging letter flags.

* Get ready for my shows on December 7th, 8th, 15th, and 16th. It's gonna be NUTS! There's going to be stuffed animals coming out of my ears.

* Start my official training plan for the half marathon I want to do next summer.

* Practice flute for the Behold the Lamb concert on December 9th.

* Make sure to keep Just Be and Design Archives stocked.

Man, I have a lot to do. Sooo this to do list will be sprinkled with breaks for bubble baths, dates with Charlie, hanging out with my family, and possibly eating Mac and Cheese out of a box a lot so I don't have to cook. Andddd go.

How-To Videos for Embroidering An Animal Face!

Hey guys! Today I'm posting three videos that will show you how to embroider an animal face. They are longish, but walk you through each step slowly. You could use this technique to put an animal face on a stuffed animal, hat, pillow, or even clothing! If you end up using my video, I'd love to see what you make with it! Just post it here!

What I Wore Wednesday and the Pants Solution

Okay, so remember those sad pants that would not be bleached? I told you I wasn't finished with them and here they are!

 Pretty Purple Shirt (thrifted), Green handknitted circle scarf (thanks Jess Chen!), and my now orange pants.

 1. Okeedoke. So the first thing I needed to do was size the pants. They were too big and weren't really skinny pants. I got a pair of skinny pants that fit me and laid them out on top of my cords.

 2. Next, I cut open the seams very very carefully.

3. Then I cut the excess of, leaving 1/4 inch for the seam.

 3. Last I used a zig-zag stitch and stitched up the edges of the pants. After I went back and added the seam. See? Look to the right of the picture and you can see what I did.

4. I decided that even though my pants wouldn't bleach I would still try dying them. This was the color I wanted- Sunshine Orange. Doesn't that sound great?

5. This was the dye process- fill the sink with boiling water from the kettle and dump the dye in. To be honest, this was not the best method because it didn't allow the pants to move freely and dye evenly. I'm going to need to re-dye them eventually to make it totally even. Even so, I love the results!!!

Crafty Monday- Pinterest Fail

Hello hello! I am not one for being able to focus on blogging while my raucous family is around, so apologies for no Thanksgiving post! It was a fabulous time and most of my family was there, about 8 of the kids, 3 in-laws, and 2 parents. We ate lots of delicious food, sang some Christmas songs, played football and corn hole, and did some thrifting and Black Friday shopping (NOT to be repeated lol.) It was great to be with everyone, but it's nice for things to be back to normal now.

Getting back from vacationing time, I decided to get my craft on, to subsequent chagrin.
This post could have so many names, like: "Not Everything You Read On the Internet Is True," "There Is Such Thing As Impossible," "The Little Pants That Could (not be bleached)," and "Sometimes Maybe It's Better To Just Buy It."

Okeedokey, so here's what happened. I had this amazing vision of bleaching out a pair of denim or corduroy pants and dying it mustard, like this girl made hers pink: http://www.thelittlegiggler.com/2012/05/pink-skinny-jeans-re-fashion.html#.ULPCwGgkMr4

Unfortunately, not all pants are created equally and my brown cords simply would not be bleached! I went through two bottles of bleach and NOTHING HAPPENED. I was so mad I poured an entire bottle of comet in too and...absolutely nothing...See?

 Before

and after....

Charlie kept coming in the kitchen/laundry room where I was pouring in the bleach and asking me as nicely as possible why I would't just give up and buy some colored pants. Whatever. I'm not totally done with these pants, so check back for part 2 of this post!

What I Wore Wednesday

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” 

― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation from Round River

I love this quote-it expresses so much of what I feel so perfectly, aside from being by one of my heroes. Today has been one of those obviously pretty days. One that everyone can appreciate it-yellow and golden and soft but with a brisk breeze that keeps you awake. Here's what I wore on this pretty day!

 Red dress (hand-me-down), white mid-length sleeve shirt (Old-Navy), navy cardigan (Target), blue tights (Target), and brown shoes (thrift store)

 Cute, huh?

 This is really what I wear on MWF. Cutey patutey in his boba.

 See what a beautiful day it was in my neighborhood?

 The log cabin on my street that I would want to move into if it was in the middle of a forest. Actually I would move into it anyway.

 I accidentally ran into my husband at our local bakery! See how happy he is to see me?

Best bakery ever.

Happy Wednesday y'all!

Talk-it-up Tuesday with oKIDDo!

Hey y'all, today I'm going to talk about Ellen from oKiddo. I'm pretty psyched that I get to give a shout out to her and her shop as I've been a big fan for a while.  Ellen makes adorable, good quality kids clothes and stuffed animals with a whimsical twist. Here is some photos from her shop and a little more about her!

Hi there and welcome to my little shop "oKIDDo"!

I am Ellen and mum of three fantastic kids. I've always worked as a primary school teacher and child's psychotherapist. Besides my kids, being creative has always been my biggest passion! As long as I can remember I've always been busy designing and creating my own arty and crafty stuff, using a wide range of materials: at first just for my own children, later also for others.

After emigrating to New Zealand from The Netherlands with my family, I feel it's time for the next big change in my life and follow my dream: designing and creating art and accessories for young children!

A year ago I decided it was time and started designing and creating my own baby-line and founded "oKIDDo - Kid's Art and Accessories". Since then I've sold my pieces and Baby Shower Gift Baskets online and on local markets, with succes and a lot of positive feedback!

Everything at "oKIDDo" is handmade with natural materials. I'm trying to choose pieces that are contemporary yet timeless. I focus on simplicity and practicality and on graphics and colors that appeal to modern kids and their parents.

All pieces can be purchased separately, but can also be combined.
It's possible to purchase ready-made Baby Shower Gift Baskets or you can combine pieces and make your own!
Baby gift baskets are available in two different sizes and prices and always include an acrylic painting. If you wish, this painting can be personalized with the name and birth date of the child on it or painted in matching colors with the child's room.
Anything is possible: just mix and match to your hearts content and let me know!

Enjoy!

Ellen

Make-it Monday: fingerless gloves!

The other day I came home and saw something sad on my floor. My naughty pup, Maeby, was annoyed at the ONE day since I've gotten her that she hadn't been walked in the morning, and she wreaked her revenge by chewing up my beautiful new banana republic gloves that I found at a yard sale. If she hadn't looked so cute and and I hadn't been worried she might have swallowed the buttons on it I would have been M-A-D! As it was, I was still pretty sad she ruined my pretty gloves. So I decided to make some new gloves! I think they turned out okay although I think I might pick a different fabric next time.

Fingerless Gloves-

What You'll Need:

Old sweater or any thick fabric with a good amount of stretch

A secondary contrasting fabric, old sleeve cuffs work well

A sewing machine!

 1. First, get it all together.

 2. Next, remove any fabric you aren't going to need.

 3. Measure the narrowest part of your wrist and add half an inch to that measurement. Next, cut two squares. One side should be the measurement from your wrist, the other side can be however far down your arm you want your glove to go. For the secondary fabric cut the same length on one side, just narrower. This is where using cuffs from t-shirts can come in handy cause it removes a lot of work!

 4. Sew the cuffs onto the squares.

 5. Stitch up the sides of the gloves and turn them inside out. If your squares aren't pre-hemmed, use a zig-zag stitch on the top of your gloves at this point to keep them from fraying. You might need to do that to the inner seam as well if it's a particularly fraying-prone fabric.

 6. Use the zig-sag stitch to put a few stitches in about an inch in at the top of the glove to make a finger-hole. Do that on both gloves. And bing bang boom you have two new gloves!

Pre-show Madness

Tomorrow I am doing a show at the Children's Museum in Greensboro. It won't be a huge one, but it should be pretty fun, and, as usual, getting ready for a show means staying up late re-tagging items, making last minute critters, and in general, re-thinking my entire way of doing things as I anticipate strangers critiquing my work. I love the post-show feeling, even if I don't sell much, but pre-show is usually pure nervousness! I managed to make it through and finish before midnight though, so I'm going to take a bath and crash. I just want to leave you with a couple samples of the photos my sister took for my shop yesterday! Thank you Hannah! I'll have more up in a couple days.

Lazy Dayz- What I Wore Wednesday

Hey, good morning all! The kiddos I nanny for are little sickies today, so one is asleep and the other is zoning out to Go Diego Go!, the kids' show where the little boy yells Spanish words in repetition, occasionally to a melody. It's funny because I love most things that are made for kids, but kids' tv shows are almost all brain-numbingly dull.  Oh well, at least little man is happy!

Here is what I put on today!

 Black Cardigan (Goodwill), Flowy Shirt with lace and embroidery (Hand-me-down), Jeans (Hand-me-down), and my trusty black boots.

I positively love the lace and embroidery on this shirt-it makes me feel pretty and dressed-up without having to bother with wearing jewelry or put on tons of extra clothes. Which works great for a lazy tv-watching kinda day!

Talk-It-Up Tuesday

Good morning peeps! I think I'm going to use my Tuesday blog days as good days to promote other creative Etsy artists! There are so many wonderful/crafter artists on Etsy and I would love to be able to help even a couple of them get seen. I have a really deep respect for so many of these artists, probably especially so because I know what it's like to love what you create and want other people to as well. It gets confusing balancing creativity and enjoyment with practicality and the reality of needing to make money. I respect the people who find a way to make it happen without losing their passion!

I started a team on Etsy called Stuffed Animals of Etsy for stuffed animal creators to encourage and support one another. Here is one of the lovely ladies in my team!

Mama Mayberrys-

http://www.etsy.com/shop/mamamayberrys

Hello! 

I am a full-time Mom and a part-time artist. I have a BFA and an MFA in painting but I have always loved sewing. I've been sewing since I was a little girl. When I was a girl scout, I learned how to make my first skirt, and I was hooked! I made my own clothes and handbags for years then started making clothes and costumes for my kids. When they began requesting stuffed animals I discovered that making toys is a lot of fun! 

I like toys with a little humor. I want them to be funny, cute, and silly. Well, at least they make me laugh! I also try to make everything as durable as I can. As a Mom I know, toys need to be able to withstand lots of love!

Thanks for visiting my little plush toy shop! I hope my little toys will brighten your day and make you smile! Please come back again soon!. I will be adding new items regularly!

Kristin (Mama Mayberry)

Make It Monday- Upgraded Shoeboxes

It's Monday and I decided to use my making time to help out my studio a bit. It is cute in spots, like the old wood cabinet I found on the side of the road and cleaned up, or the chair I found and recovered (impractically) in pretty white fabric. Charlie keeps coming in and sighing and saying he thinks my room should look better since it's my inspiration space, so little by little I'm trying to make it more inspiring.

I have so many odds and ends I need to store, so using shoeboxes makes a lot of sense, but come on, they are just so ugly! So I decided to prettify them a bit! Here's what I came up with and how you can make it too:

What you will need:
A box with removable lid
Brown butcher paper
Tape
Hot glue gun
Scrap fabric
Chalk
Scissors

1. Gather up the things you need and find a flat surface to work on and plug up the hot glue gun. First thing you want to do is take care of the lid. To cover it up with butcher paper, lay the lid on the paper and trace around it, leaving a couple inches to spare to wrap over the lip. Cut out the paper. Then fold the paper over the edges of the lid as neatly as you can and tape it down.

2. Next, cut a piece of butcher paper that is two inches higher than the height of the box and two inches longer than the perimeter of the box. Then, wrap the paper around the box like this.

3. Next, fold over the two end pieces in the middle of one of the sides so they touch and tape them down. Then, tape the extra paper over the lip on the top and bottom of the box so it looks like this: 

4. I decided I wanted little flags on the side of my box, so I cut the fabric into three flags. Using the hot glue gun, glue the fabric down on the middle one so that it covers the tape. Then glue the other flags down on either side of it.

5. Cute, huh? Then, as I am really super forgetful, I needed a way to label the box and hopefully to change the label if need be. Chalk works pretty well on butcher paper and you just need to wipe it off with a damp (not wet) washcloth. Check this out!

 What do you think? I think I'm going to make like 20 million more of these.

Kidhood

Part of why I wanted to start a blog was to share stories about my rather unique childhood. As perviously mentioned, I grew up as one of 9 kids in the middle of the woods. We lived in a cabin that my mom dreamed up and my uncle, with some help from my dad, built. We were home schooled, which is really hard to explain to anyone who wasn't. My learning, at least till I was twelve or so, was very unorthodox. To learn history we would read about, say, Leif Errikson discovering America, and then go outside and act it out. Or, to study fractions, we would cook and add together the measuring amounts to understand it better. We raised chickens, had pet goats and a rather failed attempt at a pony,  tried to grow a series of gardens, and spent hours playing in the woods everyday. 

Once I spent an hour standing by a fence on the edge of a field, holding my breath as I watched four fauns eat. Something startled them and they ran and my heart jumped to see the tiny deer leap over the tall fence.

Once our dog scared a poor baby bunny have to death and we took it home and fed it strawberries and named it Bonnie.

Once, we had an ornery old pony named The Artful Dodger who was determined that no one should ever ride him ever and took to biting anyone who tried to put his saddle on, namely me.

 Although a lot of times I was a typical kid that couldn't appreciate what I had, especially on Saturdays when we did chores all day, I most definitely appreciate my childhood now. I do think that growing up in the woods, surrounded by trees and animals, and being so free to dream and learn so free of rigid structure allowed me to be creative and use my imagination in my own way. That may have something to do with the fact that I sew animals obsessively :-)

What I Wore Wednesdays

For anyone who knows me even slightly, clothes have never really been a priority. I've always tended toward being a tomboy and considered taking time to pretty myself a massive waste of time, as well as a bit fake. If someone doesn't like me in baggy sweats with no make-up than I don't want them to like me in a sexy dress. I know, I know, I don't get how people work. To add on, I've just never been that great at dressing cute. I'm creative, sure, but I've alway been a bit fashion-crippled. Anyway, lately I've been realizing that dressing well doesn't have to mean looking like someone I'm not or covering up what I really look like or even looking super fashionable. It may just mean wearing clothes that look good together and show off my personality and taste.

I'm really not fantastic at doing that, but joining up with the link party What I Wore Wednesdays will be my fledgling attempt. Feel free to comment and tell me what you think!

 White shirt, blue spaghetti strap jersey dress, gray blazer, gray tights, pink scarf, and black boots.  All of them are Goodwill, thrifted, or hand-me-downs except the boots, which are Isaac's from, oh geez, some store.

Make It Monday- Sampler Ornament

I've been exploring a bunch of blogs lately, and one of my favorite link parties that I definitely want to get in on is Make it Monday! This morning before work I decided to make one of the ornaments I had recently seen at a craft show. They are made from the sampler hoops that I used as a little girl to do cross-stitch on. Unfortunately, just like all of my favorite little girl book heroines, I proved a bit too impatient for the tediousness of cross-stitch, so I decided to put my hoops to a new use!

Sampler Ornament

Okay, so here is what you need to make it:
Scissors
1 Sampler Hoop (the smallest size would look the best on a Christmas tree)
Yarn
A Template cutout (I used a deer, but you could use anything!)
Iron-on fabric adhesive
An Iron
Some neutral background fabric
A patterned or contrasting fabric for the template

1. After you get your supplies together, cut out a piece of your template fabric that is big enough for your template to easily fit on it. Cut a matching piece of iron-on adhesive that fits with it. Iron the fabric to the shiny side of adhesive until it sticks.

 2. Next, trace the outline of the template you chose onto the fabric and cut it out. 

3. Then, peel the paper off the back of the fabric and iron the template onto the center of the neutral fabric you chose for the background.

4. Then, put the fabric and template over the inner hoop of the sampler hoop and push adjustable top hoop on top of it and tighten till taut. Trim all but a little of the extra fabric off the edges.

 5. Then I taped the edges to the back of the hoop. If I was going to give this as a gift or hang it somewhere where the back could be seen, I would hot glue the edges down to make it look better from behind. Last, I added a little yarn hoop to the gold clasp at the top to hang it!

 I really like how it turned out!