Thursday, February 25, 2010

Creative Guest on Ucreate!

I am soooo excited!!! I am going to be the Creative Guest on Ucreate !!! I love Ucreate. I always check out this blog when I'm looking for inspiration. I will be doing a tutorial on how to make my picture frames with vinyl images on the glass!
You can see more of my frames here.
If you are interested in purchasing some frames already made, visit my Etsy shop. -Anisa

Pony Pattern Review

I bought this simplicity pattern a few months ago for the stuffed elephant on it.

My son has a best buddy named Stinky who is an elephant and apparently, according to my little guy, in desperate need of a brother. I was planning on making one for them for Christmas. Well, life got in the way. Then my oldest daughter's birthday rolled around and as luck would have it I was going to be out of town on her special day. Being a mom, I couldn't not leave something for her, but I was trying to stick to a tight budget I'd set for myself. I found all the supplies for the horse in my scrap box.

I'm not sure this would be a great pattern for someone who's never worked with a pattern before. BUT-If you have used patterns before, it's not too bad. I did go slow to eliminate any unnecessary seam ripping (which you know happened anyway). I changed two things, though.

1-Instead of faux fur for the mane and tail, I stitched on yarn hair. (I actually like it much better, but both ways are cute.)

2-I added some free-handed embroidery on the hind quarter. It turned out nothing like I imagined, but I like it anyway. :) This pattern has 3 different animals and I have 3 kids. Hmm...they all may be getting one for their birthdays this year!!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Trinket Bag

In my blog surfing, I noticed that Made and Made by Rae were doing "Celebrate the Boy" for the month of February. Since I have 3 boys of my own, I've been checking out their blog all month. Both of the blogs had different posts about bags for boys. On Made, Dana has a super cute Hobo Sack. Love it, love it... totally cute!!! Then, over on Made by Rae, there was a guest post by Amazing Mae. She had these darling Trinket Keepers.

I have a little boy who I would say is a bit OCD. He decides that he likes a toy and will play with it non stop for days (until he's bored.) He's great about organizing things and lining things up and he loves to put things in groups in baggies. So, to save me some money on Ziploc bags, I thought I would make him is own drawstring bag. I liked the look of the trinket keeps on Amazing Mae, but I liked the idea of a bit bigger of a bag.

Right now his obsession is Trios. But that changes. So I didn't want his bag labeled for his toys because I'd be making a new bag every other day. So, my husband and I call our kids by the initial. I thought it would be cute to have is bag just say "Big J." Then he would use it for whatever his favorite toy is for the week.

So this is what I came up with:) I used my Cricut to cut the letter J out. I appliqued the J on the bag. Then I used my cricut to cut a stencil out of freezer paper. I stenciled acrylic paint over the bag and J and there it is. I then sewed it into a simple drawstring bag with a grosgrain ribbon tie.

He loves it and he takes his treasures everywhere with him now. -anisa