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!

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!

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.

[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.

[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.

Somewhat Abstract

So I had this huge tube of metallic silver paint and wondered how it would look as a background color. I slapped some on, then grabbed some eggplant color and it sort of grew organically from there. I love this color combination.

Painting the Spring

I ran out of mounted canvases so this was painted using acryllics on canvas paper. Mary Blair's artwork served as inspiration (it was an easy transition from Eyvind Earle since both painted Disney animation concept art). I really like the combination of orange and aqua blue, so after starting with an aqua-colored background I decided that had to be sky, so why not have a blossoming orange tree? I also felt that the clouds in the sky were a little lonely without a few white doves frolicking in the breeze.

Tree in the [Grass]

I received a request from a friend to do a tree painting for her using the elements she liked from my previous tree paintings. So this is what I came up with based off of the following criteria she presented me with:

- whimsical like the Eyvind Earle trees
- mysterious (not obvious) background
- light-colored background but not too light
- "green is good"

Having learned a lesson from my last painting, I started this one by painting the background. I liked how subtle vertical stripes fading into the background color can look like trees in a fog, so I started with fat green vertical stripes blending into a yellow background and then painted over them with another layer of yellow.

Next, I added in the grass in several layers of shades of green but decided that the grass really should be the foreground, so after painting on the tree silhouette I repainted a lot more grass over the bottom of the tree. The nice thing about grass is you can keep adding on as many layers as you want and it keeps giving the illusion of more and more depth.

Upcycling [Plastic Bags]

After reading this article on Etsy I decided to try my hand at fusing plastic bags. This process creates a thicker plastic that you can use as a fabric similar to vinyl or polyurethane. The article covers the process in greater detail, but basically you just iron several layers of bags together between sheets of paper.


After ironing the layers together, I trimmed the edges then decided to make a little pencil pouch out of the "fabric" I had created.


You can't tell from the picture because I shot it from its good angle, but the pouch is totally lopsided because I failed to make a pattern first or do any measuring first. It's ugly but functional! I only used half of the plastic so I might make something else later too. This took 6 plastic bags from my hoard under the kitchen sink. It's better than having them all end up in a landfill!

Into the Woods of Teldrassil

The enchanting forest home of the Night Elves was the first area of Azeroth that I encountered when I began playing World of Warcraft.

This painting has been sitting on my easle for over a week now. Today I managed to finally add the last touches and get it to a finished state. I'm not completely happy with it but it was fun to paint on two different canvases and I think it at looks pretty good from a distance at least.

I painted this using acryllics on primed canvas with an in-game screenshot for reference.

On a /roll

Decorating the first group of pillowboxes was so much fun last night that I continued the project today and tried some different colors and styles. Mother's Day is coming up (my mom loves purple!) as well as several birthdays in our family. If I don't plan a gift ahead of time, there's always the last-minute gift card and if I already have these little boxes decorated, they would be a great way to quickly wrap up a gift card (with room to spare for a handful of candy!).