Epic New Blog!

In order to bring you more crafts, more often, my friend SmallRiniLady and I have started a new blog together:

Crafters in Disguise

Please follow me on my new blog!

Every week we will have new posts with crafts, art projects, costumes, etc. We'll be alternating between the two of us for variety and scheduling posts ahead of time... in fact we are already booked with lots of posts up through the end of the year!

Yes, I will of course re-post crafts from this blog as well but I will add new text and even some new pictures, and I promise to have new crafts as well, as fast as I can make them!

Organizing the House

Since moving in I have spent many hours unpacking and organizing what we have, attempting to set up the new house utilizing what we have in order to minimize what we will need to purchase. I did stop at Ikea this week to pick up these wire basket drawers, which have turned out to be really great for fabric storage. I love being able to easily see all of my fabrics, organized by color.


In the craft room I also moved my desk to the corner to make more room for the ironing board to the right of it (not pictured). This also puts my drawers of thread and tools within arm's reach while I am sitting at the table.


This is the extra bedroom, all that it has so far is a twin bed, which I have draped my quilt upon. I need window treatments and bed linens! I am thinking about doing a painting for the wall above the bed, or perhaps a grouping of smaller pieces. The closet in this room houses my costumes and the vacuum cleaner.


This is the library/music room. I picked up the chair at Ikea, which I might make a new slipcoved for someday. I think I might add an area rug and curtains, but I haven't decided where I want to go with the style yet. I would like to get better bookshelves first (these are falling apart) and perhaps MORE of them, but that will have to wait for another day. Right now it is clutter-free, organized and functional, which is more than can be said for the rest of the house!


We ran out of space on the first two shelves so I picked up this white one at Target. It is the RE brand and cost about $27. I do not recommend this bookcase, I actually returned the second one I had bought because it is not very sturdy. It is basically one unit sitting on top of another and might actually be dangerous around children. If we ever have any of those, then it will definately be time to upgrade the bookshelves!


Lastly, here is the office. My husband helped me hang the curtains last night. I still need to steam or iron them and hem the bottom, but I think they look nice and they make the room feel airy and cosy. I managed to crop most of the boxes and clutter out of the picture, but you can still see this room needs help! I'm thinking a bigger desk and some storage/organization, such as shelves.

Quick Quilted Pillow

Tonight I made this pillow! I had fun picking out whimsical fabrics from my collection of fat quarters. I love the yellow print especially, it looks like it was inspired by Mary Blair. I tried to pick out coordinating fabrics that also looked like they could belong in a Mary Blair painting.


To make this 8"x12" pillow, I cut out stripes of fabric 9" long and of different widths from the five fabrics. After sewing them together with half-inch seam allowances, I cut out a 9"x13" piece of fabric for the back and two duplicates of a plain yellow fabric (which I had leftover from a Gryffindor Quidditch robe), and then I sandwiched quilting batting between the nice fabric and the plain fabric. I quilted the layers together by hand-sewing with three strands of embroidery threads in vertical lines one inch apart, alternating between two lines of orange and two lines of lime green thread.


After quilting both the front and back, I put the two quilted pieces together back-to-back and sewed the edges (except for 4 inches on the bottom), clipped the corners, then turned it right-side out and pressed. I stuffed it with polyester fill and hand-sewed it closed. Ta-da!

Chair Transformation

Every once in a while I discover a fabulous fabric in the remnants bin at JoAnn's. This is a great way to get a yard or less of expensive fabric for a big discount. The only catch is that you then have to figure out what to do with that small amount of fabric!

So I had this piece of green and white decorator fabric which was obviously too small to make a curtain out of. I could have made pillows out of it, though I would have had to pair it with another fabric. However, I recalled one of those home improvement TV shows where the designer took a family's old dining set and made these little slipcases for the tops of the chairs to instantly update them and make them fresh and white.

It took about 30 minutes to make my own slipcover for the chair in my crafting room. It probably would have been a lot faster if I didn't waste time figuring out how to do it, but once I figured it out it was really easy and I could have replicated it quickly if I had more chairs (and more fabric) to go through. However, for this IKEA dining set I have banished the other 3 chairs to the downstairs office and entry way (in lieu of a bench). Maybe I will use the pink and white remnant fabric I also picked up to cover one of the other chairs.

All Stuffed Up

Another day at home with a cold, another craft project started and completed! This project took probably an hour, I wasn't actually timing it though. I used a storebought pattern and the bear turned out much larger than I was expecting so I think for future bears I will take the pattern to a copy machine and shrink it down to a smaller scale!

I have a friend who makes bears like this for a charity called Operation Teddy Care. They give the bears to counselors, medical professionals, military personnel, etc. who then give the bears to kids who are impacted by abuse, neglect, illness, conflict, war, and so forth. I think this is a wonderful outlet for crafting energies so in the hopes that I might someday be proficient (and proliferent) enough to contribute to this cause, I decided to try making a bear. I've made wearable things, pillows, quilts, and bags before but never stuffed animals, so this was quite a fun opportunity to sew together a three-dimensional cuddle friend.

As a bonus I was able to use up most of this blue fabric I had leftover from a nursing cover I made for a friend a couple of years ago. Now I will need to make more stuffed animals and use up more fabric!

I also took the opportunity to snap a couple of new shots of my "Midnight Fantasy" quilt which is currently adorning a twin bed in our guest room. This is the first quilt I ever made, which I completed back in 2007. It is actually sized for a queen bed, but on a twin it drapes over the sides to cover the mattress nicely, which is a good thing because we don't have sheets on this bed yet!

Congrats Grads!

Two of my cousins just graduated from college and I am on my way to a family BBQ tonight to celebrate their success! We got them gift cards, and since I have like 200 plain white pillowboxes sitting around I had to decorate a couple to put the gift cards in. I decided not to use one of the pillowboxes I had decorated before because I wanted something that was brighter and more colorful and more appropriate for a congratulatory gift.

The scrapbooking paper I used for both of these boxes came from the same big stack. For each box I used two different coordinating papers. I made Peter's first, cutting out a 5-inch strip of the striped paper and wrapping it around the width of the blank box. The other paper I had was a bunch of squares so I wrote CONGRATS and PETER on two strips within the design, then cut them out and used double-sided tape to attach them to the box.

For Kari's box, I selected a nice spring green plaid and then I wanted to use a polka-dot paper to write CONGRATS and KARI. However, when I wrote out CONGRATS it was longer than the box because there was a lot of white space between the dots. Taking a tip from my sewing knowledge I decided to box pleat the paper, in effect making the word pop up away from the background. I think it turned out pretty cool!

Sewing Again!

I started this project about a year ago, it is intended to be a small patchwork quilt made from fabric scraps. When I left this project I had all of the squares cut out, but had only sewn a few of them together because my sewing machines weren't working correctly. Then we decided to put the condo on the market so I had to put all of my crafting things away. FINALLY I am able to pick up where I left off! I finished piecing together all of the squares today!


My new craft room has lots of natural light and lots of space to lay out quilts on the floor. The best part is I don't have to put it away when I am done working for the day, I can just close the door!

I need to make a trip to the fabric store to get some soft flannel or cotton for the back side of the quilt before I can put it all together and have a finished project. I have a working sewing machine now as well so I hope to be working on more sewing projects in the near future!

Issaquah Cuisine

There are some really great places to eat in Issaquah... Jak's is a really great steak place, XXX Rootbeer is a unique experience and Tutta Bella has yummy pizza and Italian food. Most recently my friend Kris encouraged me to check out this locally-owned diner called the 12th Avenue Cafe. She said this baked potato dish called "The Montana" was really great so I had to try it.

I ordered the Small and only finished a third of it! My husband and I both enjoyed the leftovers though.

I have also made a couple of trips to the Burger King right off of Exit 15. Both the drive-through and take-out have been good experiences, and I also had a bit of a chuckle over my order number.

I guess someone at Burger King doesn't like Jedi Knights!

Week 1 in the [New House]

We spent the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend moving all of our wordly posessions from my in-laws' place to our new house. To accomplish this feat, we invited family and friends (about 2 dozen people!) to come help. Fortunately my husband is friends with a bunch of 20-something strong young men who are wonderful, helpful people. We started around 9:30 after picking up two trucks (one 10' and one 16') and we finished at about 2pm after two trips with the 16' truck and only one with the 10' truck.

Our house is three stories (basement, main floor, bedrooms on upper level) so as you can imagine I was very greatful for the guys who hauled all of our things up the stairs and put them in the right rooms. I think I only had like 5 boxes that ended up in the wrong place. It really helps to label all of the boxes clearly AND put signs on all of the rooms so everyone knows what goes where. Pointing out which floor it goes to is key to not having to move things up and down the stairs later!

So here we are almost a week later, settling into the new house and resuming our typical lives at home though in a new environment. My husband in enjoying going through his collections and putting them up to display on shelves and I am actually enjoying cooking in the new kitchen. I went through my collection of science fiction books and most of them are now in our new library (one of the extra bedrooms). It is really nice to have them all in one place again instead of just in boxes. We need better shelves though, the cheap RE shelves from Target are really not very good, it is basically one shelf sitting on top of another, not even connected well. They used to have better shelves for the same price but I guess with the recession they cut back a little by removing the support braces and only finishing one side of the top piece. That was disappointing because we liked those inexpensive shelves. Unfortunately the carboard backing to those shelves did not survive multiple moves and our third shelving unit is completely trashed anyway. Nicer shelves are going on my wish list!

iMove, Final Edition

The last 7 months or so have been pretty exciting! My husband and I decided to sell our 1-bedroom condo and buy a big new house. It took 6 months to get an offer we liked (I blame the crazy market and the winter season), but finally the condo has been sold! My husband bought it five years prior at the peak of the market but we actually managed to sell a little higher than the purchase price.

I am really looking forward to the new house and the prospect of never having to move again (at least not for a while, right?). Ever since I have graduated from high school I have seriously moved at least once a year, sometimes twice a year (during college). That makes me a l33t PRO at moving, with more than ten years of experience. Allow me to outline my experience:

1. 2000 - graduated high school, left my childhood home to go to college

2. moved back home for the summer

3. moved back to college my sophomore year

4. Mom remarried; I moved my stuff from my childhood home to Mom's new house

5. moved to the new house for the summer

6. moved back to college my Jr. year

7. moved back home for the summer

8. back to college for my Sr. year

9. 2004 - graduated, moved back home and Mom started charging me rent to make me get a job

10. moved to a tiny basement room of a house in Greenlake with 4 roommates (cheap rent)

11. got my own studio apartment (no roommates!)

12. moved to a 1-bedroom apartment

13. Fall 2008 - got married, moved in with the hubby (the 1-bedroom condo)

14. 2010 - sold the condo, moved in with hubby's parents (temporarily!)

15. COMING SOON: the FINAL move to our new house! (Seriously, we better not move again in the next 15 years...)

In less than two weeks we will be closing on our new house! I am already planning out where to put everything. We found a great new house which was new construction a couple of years ago but was barely lived in. The neighborhood is gorgeous and new, and Target and Costco are conveniently close by (woot!). The best part is that we are going from a 1-bedroom+den condo to a house with enough space that my husband will get his own man cave in the basement where he can display his action figures and I will get.... my own CRAFT ROOM! Woohoo!

Seriously, I cannot wait to start working on crafts again, it has been impossible to work on anything ever since we staged the condo and put it on the market. I have unfinished projects to complete and blog about! I feel like my life has been in limbo the past 7 months. Heck, I even cancelled my World of Warcraft subscription. Fortunately I had a StarCraft 2 beta key from BlizzCon 2008 so I have had a game to play whenever I have 20 minutes to kill. It's much easier to just sit down and spawn zerglings for a few minutes than it is to get sucked into raid dungeons for 3 hours straight.

Some Idle Idol Advice

With the new season of America's favorite televised singing competition well underway, next season's hopefuls are currently dreaming about next year's tryouts. Many young adults and teens will show up woefully unprepared and unrealistic about their chances but the smart ones will be browsing the web for all the helpful hints they can dig up to hopefully gain an edge.

I tried out for American Idol two seasons ago, realistically expecting that at my best I might get through the first round, but just planning on having a fun day seeing what it was all about and trying to sing well enough to not get pushed through as one of the "bad singers". I managed to lose my voice during the "warm-ups" (and due to standing in the cold and rain for 4 hours) but was able to walk out with a good experience and my dignity in-tact.

In the two years since my humbling audition experience I have learned a lot of "need to know" tips that others may not be aware of.

Start preparing months early:

Take vocal lessons from a contemporary singing coach early on. Get at least one session with a coach who can help you discover your problem areas and give you a training plan that you can work on on your own.

Develop your chest voice. If you don't know what that is, find out or quit now! Work on the range of your chest voice, how you transition to head voice on higher notes, and develop your range and tone. Do "nyah nyah nyah" exercises to train your chest voice to sing higher so you can belt those high notes. If you can do that, the judges will love you.

Eliminate tension. Watch yourself in the mirror or videotape yourself singing and look for any place where you are tensing up physically. It looks bad and it constricts your tone. Relax those muscles and try singing it again.

Learn 2-3 audition songs. Find songs that fit your voice, style, and your range. Learn them inside-out. Once you know the song, try singing it slower, faster, higher, lower, louder or softer until you figure out the best way to sing each phrase.

Get someone else's opinion. Perform in front of friends (not your parents, they are biased) to get their opinions. Find someone who really knows music, not just someone who thinks you are wonderful.

On the day of the audition:

DRINK WATER. Make sure your voice and throat are in the best condition possible. DRINK WATER. Start drinking water as soon as you get up. You need to start hydrating yourself at least an hour prior to singing. This will help your vocal chords and throat be at its best. Don't eat anything that day that will coat your throat like dairy or sugary foods. Pack apples and celery sticks for breakfast and lunch the day of the audition and bring a two or three bottles of water. Throat spray for singers such as Vocalese or Entertainer's Secret are also helpful right before you are about to sing.

Do your own warm-ups. After you get your seat (which is assigned), go to the bathroom and do all your warm-ups. Don't blow out your voice screaming for Ryan Seacrest.

Don't be sick. Take Vitamin C for a week or so prior to the audition, wash your hands, do whatever you can do avoid getting ill.

Dress comfortably but stylishly. This is a job interview, after all. Personality is great, but you also want to show that you are taking the audition seriously. If you are going to wear high heels, bring slip-ons to wear until the actual audition. Dress to fit your voice type too, don't wear a cowboy hat unless you are singing country. If you have a rock vocal style, don't be a poser and dress like a goth or rock star unless you already are one. An outfit from Express would be more mainstream, but looking like you're going to a garden party would really be weird if you start singing some Janice Joplin.

Bring a friend... or not. Ask yourself - will this person make me more extroverted or more introverted? Will this person make me nervous if they are watching me audition? Or will I have a lot more fun if I bring this friend with me?

Bring your Nintendo DS. I made friends in line purely becuase we both had Animal Crossing. I gave him pears and he gave me a golden rose. Seriously, you will probably spend a lot of time waiting so bring something to calm your nerves. Boredom can also make you a lot less patient and nobody wants to see you rant and rave on live television because you got cut after waiting 8 hours for an audition. Or do they?

The main thing is to have fun and be realistic. If you want to win, you have to put in the work.

After the audition, if you walk away without a golden ticket, there is always next year.

Lastly, if someone tells you that you can't sing, that really means you are a very bad singer and clearly have no idea what you have gotten yourself into. HOWEVER - this does not mean that you can never sing. It just means that you need a LOT of work. If you seriously want to sing, get a vocal coach and learn what singing it about. Singing doesn't happen overnight, it can take years of practice, especially if you are starting from scratch without any clue or natural talent. But there is ALWAYS room for improvement and the first steps are the ones that will make the biggest difference.

Dipped in Chocolate

Homemade treats are a quick and easy holiday gift to do in bulk. I bought a bunch of graham crackers and cookies and dipped them in melted chocoloate, added sprinkles, then packaged them up and delivered them to hungry recipients for Christmas. This was also a quick way to put together gifts for all of my extended family on Christmas Eve. It only took one evening in the kitchen to complete the whole project by myself and the results were nothing short of yummy!

The goodie bags came in a pack of 2 dozen for only a couple dollars at Target. I made the gift tags myself and tied them on with satin ribbon and a jingle bell for flair.

Book Review: The Gathering Storm

I have been waiting for this book ever since I finished reading the last of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and discovered that the author had passed away prior to completing the final installment of this epic saga. Brandon Sanderson is releasing the last book as three separate novels and after seeing the size of this one I am happily looking forward to all the nice long hours I will spend enjoying the final two books.

I finished reading The Gathering Storm this weekend, possibly due to the fact that I had nothing better to do on Halloween. Once I started reading this I did have a hard time putting it down and only the Harry Potter-esque thickness of the tome kept me from finishing it 24 hours after bringing it home.

Brandon Sanderson did a wonderful job of keeping the story feeling like Robert Jordan's work. His interpretation of the characters, places and storyline fit in exactly with how I expected things to be and I was able to immerse myself in the story without any distraction of being aware that someone other than Robert Jordan had penned the words.

However, Brandon Sanderson did make use of one technique that I felt worked well coming from him that would not have felt right if it had come from Robert Jordan - now and again he would revisit places and events from the earlier volumes. In a way it felt like a tribute to Robert Jordan's work but also served the purpose of coming full circle and building up towards the impending goosebump-enducing ending to the epic.

I loved how the story ended; after it just seemed to get darker and darker, finally there is a ray of hope shining through that makes me look forward to what will happen next. However, it's making me think that in contrast the second book of the final trilogy should end up with an Empire Strikes Back type of cliffhanger ending to lead into the final book. But I'm going to have to wait to find out!

Book Review: Elantris

This Labor Day weekend I read Elantris by Brandon Sanderson.

I decided to read this book because I enjoyed Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series and Brandon Sanderson will be writing the final installment since Robert Jordan passed away before finishing the last book. I thought it would be best to familiarize myself with Brandon Sanderson's work prior to the release of the next Wheel of Time novel.

I like to rank books by how I read them. I either a) love them and can't put them down, b) enjoy them but find it a little tedious to get through them, c) stop reading them and never finish them, or d) never start reading them in the first place because they don't appeal to me at all. To my delight, Elantris was an "a"-category book.

It's not a book I would read again right away, but it was a very enjoyable one-volume fantasy story that had the epic feel I enjoy. As the story went along I found myself expecting and predicting how the plot would turn out in the end quite easily, but this did not take away from the enjoyment of reading it through. There were enough surprises thrown in as well to make things interesting.

It's hard not to compare his writing to Robert Jordan's even though this was his first novel, but I felt like Brandon Sanderson dealt with plot better than characters, but he did a great job of tidying up the ending of the story and not letting it come to abruptly. Fortunately Robert Jordan has already established the characters in the Wheel of Time series very well, and what is needed for the final trilogy is plot development and a tidy, climactic ending. After reading Elantris I am really looking forward to The Gathering Storm.

[Whimsical Willow] on the Water

I just finished this painting today. It's sort of like a willow tree on the edge of a little green river with a forest on the opposite bank. I liked the pink accent color against the greens so I added some flowers.

We raided Ulduar last night, wiping for three hours while trying to kill Thorim on Hard Mode. This allowed for a lot of downtime so I set up my little easle in front of my second monitor and painted while raiding.


You can actually see the forest background better in this picture. I thought it looked awesome before I painted a tree on top of it, but I had to put some sort of object in the painting. It's actually really easy to paint trees like this. I start with a solid green background and let it dry. Then feather in some black around the edges on top, then mix some green and black and slop on some vertical lines like trees. Before it completely dries, add in lighter shades of green to create depth (highlights) to define individual tree trunks. I used a similar process when I did that purple Night Elf forest painting a while ago.

Must-Have iPhone Apps

Having recently bought an iPhone, I have been relentlessly searching for new apps to download from the iTunes App Store, especially free apps. So far I have come across a few that I really enjoy. Some are useful, some are informative, and some are merely hillariously amusing. Here are my favorites:

Apps that are useful for staying up-to-date:

TweetDeck (FREE) - Excellent Twitter interface.
WootWatch (FREE) - Check what's up for sale on the Woot sites.
Facebook (FREE) - A simple Facebook interface.

Apps that can make you look smart:

Tipulicious (FREE) - Calculate tips and split bills.
Dictionary (FREE) - Includes a thesaurus and dictionary.
Keeper (FREE) - Track passwords in one place under one PIN.
Shazam (FREE) - Identify songs you hear.

Apps to help you get ahead (especially fashion designers!):

Fasio Network (FREE) - View the latest collections of top designers.
TouchCloset (FREE) - Catalog your clothes and accessories.
Units (FREE) - Quick measurement conversions.
Lose It! (FREE) - Weight loss goal and calorie intake tracker.

Apps that you will get a kick out of:

SmackTalk ($.99) - Instantly make people laugh.
EggShaker (FREE) - Not quite the same as the real thing.
Lightsaber (FREE) - Turns your iPhone into a lightsaber.
StickWars Lite (FREE) - The best free iPhone game ever.
BubbleWrap (FREE) - You know you want to pop bubbles.
Fluid (FREE) - It looks and acts like water when you touch it.

[Priest Costume] update

The sleeves are finished now except for the gold details. I plain to paint the swirls on using fabric paint. I bought several shades so I can add some depth to the designs. I will try out all of the colors on scraps first because I'm not sure how thick the paint should be or what it will look like after it dries. It would be horrible to just start painting directly on the sleeves and then have it turn out really ugly. So my planned process is:

1. Trace the design onto a piece of tagboard or cardstock to make a stencil. Label one side "right" and one side "left" so I can make sure it will be mirrored exactly on the left and right sleeves.

2. Test the paint on scrap pieces of the purple satin fabric to make sure it bonds well and looks good. Also test the design to figure out which colors to use and how to add depth with highlights and lowlights.

3. Pin the design stencil onto one sleeve and paint on the design. After it dries (if paint got on the stencil), flip the stencil and do the other sleeve.

The lower half of the robe is closer to completion now too. The side seams are finished, including adding a zipper. I am currently working on the bottom hem. I am sewing yellow double-fold bias tape along the bottom hem to give it the gold border at the bottom. The added stiffness should also make the hem less flowing so it is more like a robe than a skirt. Once this is done I should be able to paint the designs on at the same time (and via the same process) as the designs on the sleeves.

Once the sleeves and skirt are complete I will probably start focusing on the side panels or finish the top. I may save the top for last because I could decide to skip some of the back details and opt for a cloak instead.

Putting Crafts to Work

My push pins that I made a while ago out of glass marble rocks and scrapbook paper have made themselves useful at work. I often have notes and Post-Its all over my desk so it has been helpful to use tacks to paste notes on the wall and clear up desk space.

I've had this little box for a long time and I think it has gone through at least four different color schemes by now. I decided to bring it to work and fill it with stacks of Post-It Notes, headphones, glass wipes... all sort of things that had been hiding behind my monitors. Now they are out of sight but still within reach when I need them!

[Resurrection] on Unfinished Projects

Lately I haven't had much to post about because I've been focusing on finishing some projects. Yesterday I finished a second drawstring damask bag for my sister's wedding so she and her husband-to-be will both have one to collect money in for their "money dance" at the reception.

Raiding in the World of Warcraft has also taken up a lot of my free time because my guild on Gorgonnash is working on hard-mode content in Ulduar on 10-man and trying to kill Yogg-Saron in the 25-man group. I scored tickets to BlizzCon so I am considering working on finishing my Tier 4 priest costume as soon as I finish a couple of other projects related to my sister's wedding.

I began the purple-and-gold priest costume about a year and a half ago, but projects for my own wedding began to consume my crafting hours. Moving also meant that I had to redefine my crafting space and I have a hard time spreading out and working on large sewing projects in our condo because there isn't a lot of space. I don't like leaving my stuff in my husband's way when I am in the middle of a project.

After BlizzCon last year I also decided that I want to take an easier approach to the designs on the priest robes and paint them on with fabric paint instead of sewing on applique. It should be a lot less time-consuming and still look great. It's a costume after all, not a couture dress.

Here are some shots of the construction when I was working on the costume in my old apartment. I have the top and skirt cut out and pieced together. I created a pattern for the collar but it will need a lot of reinforcing to get it to stick up correctly. I think I will attach it to the top via snaps instead of sewing it in.

The sleeves are almost finished, except for the gold details which I might paint on instead of using fabric. I am debating whether to create a crop jacket or sew the sleeves directly into the top. I think a crop jacket could be a more interesting way to put the outfit together, and I could attach the collar to the jacket as well.

Painting [Cherry Blossoms]

I haven't had a lot of time to work on crafts over the last week but I did manage to do a little painting. I'm not sure that I am done with this one or not, but here's what it looks like so far! I feel like I need something on the top, but I'm not feeling inspired right now. Perhaps I will come back to it later. I like the color combination of aqua and red though.