Made by Maggie Mae Etsy Banner

My friend is opening up her own Etsy shop (Made by Maggie Mae) and asked if I would help her put together a banner. She gave me the colors she wants, we discussed fonts a little and with some emails and test banners back and forth we've finally come down to the final two banners. 

 And yes, the two turquoises are different colors, your eyes aren't tripping. 

I love designing banners and website pieces. It's a lot of fun. 

Oil Painting in Progress

My friend Randi invited me over to paint with her, so I drove up and we set up outside in the beautiful weather and visited and painted. It was such a nice afternoon. It had been a long time since I'd painted, but I was excited to get back into it. Deciding what to paint took a while, but finally I got an idea and I'm excited about it. I want to work on a few paintings, all of them based off or photos my great grandfather took. 

Here's the first photo I decided on:

And here's the progress I have after a day of painting. I still have a lot to do, but the basics are there. Although I did forget about the clouds before I started the trees, so those are going to be a little different. Now I just have to wait for this first layer to dry so I can get going on it again.

Baby Crochet Hats and Coordinating Gift Box

A friend of ours is having a little girl soon and I've been stumped over what to do for them. This is their 2nd baby, so I knew they'd have the essentials, so it took me a while to decide on what I wanted to do for them. I finally decided to crochet some cute little hats, and since their first baby was a boy I figured I'd make them girly girly. I found some really cute pink yarn at WalMart. I used Peaches and Creme #02416 (Rose is a Rose).  

Hat # 1:

I based this hat off of a picture I saw. It took me a few tries to get it right, but it finally came together. 

The flower tutorial is found at Bonita Patterns. 

Hat #2

I found the tutorial for this hat on Vallieskids. I bought wooden buttons to put on this, but when I got them home they just didn't look right. I dug through my stash of buttons and found these that fit much better. 

Hat #3

This hat was made from a tutorial off of The Dainty Daisy.

I didn't attach the flower to this hat since the other hat has a flower. I didn't know if she'd want just a plain beanie without a flower. So she can attach the flower if she wants or it can be used on a headband or tossed out or whatever. But I figured I'd let her decide. The flower tutorial can be found at Action Hero :: Knitting Weblog.  

I sat and stewed over how I was going to wrap these all up. I've made the goal to not use gift bags at all during 2012 and to put thought into how I wrap gifts. It forces me to be creative and the gifts end up looking a little nicer that way too. 

I rummaged through my craft room until I found this plain white box I'd stashed away (one of my "I can use this someday" moments that finally paid off). Instead of using tissue paper I filled the box with 2 fat quarters of pink fabric from my stash. Then I took a 3rd fat quarter and wrapped it around the box, taping the edges down on the underside of the box. I then wrapped white yarn around the box/fabric, taping the ends securely on the bottom of the box. Using a small piece of yarn I gathered the yarn stripes together and then tied the paper flower to them. Voila! A cute gift box. A bonus to wrapping this way...she can use the fat quarter pieces however she likes!

Big Projects

I have not dropped off the edge of the world, nor have I been carried off by giant crows. What have I been up to?

Making a quilt (still in progress), crocheting a blanket (still in progress), battling some sickness (I'm mostly better, but still after 2 weeks I don't feel 100% yet), visiting family, working on Pinstrosity, reading, making a bouquet (still in progress), job interviews, and trying some new recipes. Hopefully it won't be too long before I get these big projects I'm working on done so I can start posting again. 

Mystery Quilts

My sisters, sister in law, and her sister all did a mystery quilt project together. We all used the same pattern (only I did a crib size and they all did a twin), but we each picked our own fabric. It's fun to see how they each pulled together. Even though we all have the same pattern, they all look so different from each other!

Diedre's Quilt

Kate's Quilt

Suzanne's Quilt

My Quilt

Carolyn's Quilt

Crocheted Soap Saver

This isn't a project I would normally pick out and do, but after receiving an email for our Pinstrosity site, I decided I needed to do a little bit of homework before writing up tomorrow's post. Using the directions given at http://www.crazysockscrochet.blogspot.com/2010/05/crochet-pattern-textured-soap-saver.html I made a cute little crocheted soap saver bag to put all the tiny soap ends in so they are still usable. 

This was a pretty simple and quick little project.