Use it Up Month

I've had an idea, and I'm really excited about it. I have a closet room full of craft supplies that I have collected over the past few years. You know how it works..."Ooh, I could paint that to look so cool!" In the box it goes, only to be discovered...unpainted...a year later. On top of that we have way more stuff in this 3 bedroom house than 2 people really need. There's just stuff everywhere. So what am I going to do about this? I'm making the entire month of August my "Use it Up" month. Here are my goals:

• I will not buy any craft supplies. Sounds easy enough, but...
• I want to finish at least 2 projects a week. I'm hoping for more, but we have a few vacations planned, so I'm trying to be realistic here. My first idea was to finish one project a day...and that will still be my goal, but there are just some weeks that won't happen. So, since I'm not buying any craft supplies for the month of August, I have to use what I have and figure it out. I'll be sure to take pictures of the  befores and afters, of processes, and of the progress. 
• I want to downsize all the stuff we have. I'll be dropping off boxes at the thrift store, re-purposing items to be more useful, re-organizing, and giving stuff away. We really don't need all the stuff we have. 

So today I am cleaning the house as thoroughly as I can to get ready for August. I've got the hobby room straightened up, the bathrooms clean, the laundry half way done, the guest bedroom shaping up, and the living room spiffified. Now to finish up the rest of the house this evening and tomorrow so I'll be ready to start on this adventure. 

No-Sew Pillow Cover

We were asked at Pinstrosity if anyone had ever tried the No-Sew Pillow Cover, and since I hadn't tried it I thought I would. 

http://organizeyourstuffnow.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Fabric-Crafts-2011-011.jpg

Pretty cute I think. Well I tried it and it worked out great, only I didn't have fabric on hand that was quite the right size so I had to modify a little bit. I'll show you what I did. 

You are supposed to have fabric that has a width that is 3x the width of your pillow and a height that is 2x the height of your pillow. Mine was about 2x the height, but only about 2.25 or 2.5x the width (as you see below). 

Yes, I own a iron. Yes, I know how to use it. Yes, I am lazy today. 

 So I went ahead and followed the directions on the website as best as I could. The hardest part for me was the corners. Mine kept looking like this:

I couldn't get it to fold over into perfect corners, so once it was all folded, I tucked and pulled the fabric until I got corners I liked. 

So, you can see here that I don't have enough fabric to make a pretty knot. 

This is the knot I was able to finally get with the tiny tails. Not so cute. 

I did have a long skinny scrap of the same fabric I was using, so I decided to make a little knot cover-up. I folded the edges of the scrap (lengthwise) to the middle, then folded it in half to get me the width I wanted and to hide the raw edges. Then I looped it through the "bow" on the pillow cover. 

From there I tied a knot (not a super snug one), and then turned it so the smooth side is on top and the tails were underneath. 

Then I just tucked the tails in the bow and voila! 

Another thing I tried was hiding the ugly knot with a flower. Again, I'm not feeling super productive today so I just went hunting through my flower jar for one I'd already made. I couldn't find the really big one I wanted, but this little one did the job alright!

Fairy Watercolor Painting

A few Christmases ago I did a watercolor painting of a fairy for my sister in law (who was huge into fairies at the time), but I never got a  photo of it until this past weekend. So, here it is!