Costume finished!

Andrew is going as Sherlock Holmes, and I’m going as Violet Hunter. Violet is a character from a Sherlock Holmes story and is reported to be the female character who got the closest to marrying Holmes of anyone (I think — Andrew is the Holmes fan, I have yet to read any).

Sadly, the pictures do not do justice to my costume. The main fabric of the bodice and skirt is shiny, so if we use a flash, it ends up having weird shadows. Andrew snapped a couple last night without flash, but they’re a bit grainy (and the seam up my bosom just looks wrong).

I decided to forgo the bustle pillow, though looking at the pictures, I might be better off with it. I figured that I have enough butt as it is, but the bustle might sit better with the pillow under there. Oh well — that will have to wait until later.

We have the Halloween Pops concert tonight, so everyone sent good costume-staying-together thoughts my way.

Tags: halloween, sewing

Elementary my dear

I finally finished Andrew’s Sherlock Holmes cloak. I’m very happy with how it turned it – it is the first time I’ve had a collar on a piece of clothing turn out well. Here’s the cloak and Andrew modelling it:

Actually, this cloak was relatively easy to make. The hardest part was just dealing with the sheer volume of fabric.

What’s next? My costume. (Eeep!)

Tags: my man, sewing

Not a scrap in sight

With only dial-up last weekend, and rain from Ernesto hitting the DC area, we stayed in most of the weekend. I pulled out my sewing machine, some fleece that had been sitting around (for almost a year), and sewed like a maniac. Oh, I also dragged Andrew to the fabric store so we could pick out a pattern for a Halloween costume (we’re going to a Halloween Pops concert the weekend before Halloween, and concert-goers are encouraged to wear costumes, so…I didn’t want to be the only one of the two of us to wear a costume…of course, now I’m going to make a new costume for myself to go along with Andrew’s, and it’s kind of a monster of a thing to make). While at the fabric store, I saw a pattern for cat and dog purses that were too cute to pass up.

So…I spent the weekend cutting fabric and sewing blanket bears and a cat purse. The blanket bears are listed on my Etsy store (here, here, here, and here…yup, four of them). And I finished the cat purse:
  

This weekend I’m continuing with Andrew’s costume, and may break out the scrappin’ stuff if I finish early tomorrow (don’t expect to finish very early, though). Or maybe I’ll just veg.

Tags: sewing

More scrappin’

I went up to visit Laurie again for a scrappin’ day. We had a great time, and successfully avoided going shopping, though not without some battles with our will-power. We kicked back with some margaritas and just scrapped the day away. Connor even helped a bit.

I continued working on my random 2003 pictures, and finished two more spreads of my parents’ visit in March that year.

I continued my momentum today, finishing the pictures from my parents’ visit, and making another layout for my Esty shop.

Tags: scrapping

Scrappy Day

Laurie came out my direction today so we could shop and scrap. Sadly, my normal scrapbook store was completely uninspiring today. They’re supplies seemed to be a bit thin, though they had gotten in a few new papers since I’d been there last. One problem might be that they’re making room for the new stock they’re expecting – scrapbook companies trot out their new lines at a convention in mid-July, and then ship to stores sometime after that, so new stuff should be on its way soon, I assume.

Anyway, despite the uninspiring store, we did walk out with some fun new supplies, and went back to my house where we each worked on a spread. Laurie did an awesome “Connor’s first ballgame” spread, and I worked on a spread with my two nieces.

As usual, we didn’t have enough time together, but we did get re-inspired to work on our own, and are talking about getting together in a couple weeks.

After Laurie headed home, I worked on a second spread of my Halloween pictures from 2003. I’m finished, for now, with the major scrapbooks that I had on my list (i.e. wedding and cruise), so I’m now going back and scrapping my random pictures from each year, going back to about 2003.

Tags: scrapping

First Etsy Listing

I’ve had a blanket bear lying around waiting for a home, so I’ve decided to try and make my first sale on Etsy. Check out the blanket bear here.

(Yes, I know things have been quiet around here – I was in Minnesota and Chicago last week, so I’ll post pictures and reflections on that soon.)

Tags: sewing

GASC: Saturday

My day started bright an early with a class at 8AM – a very difficult feat after the midnight crop last night. The class was called “What do I do with that?”, and promised to introduce us to various embellishements that we may not have seen before. This class was well worth the early wake-up! The coolest thing the teacher showed us was “magic mesh” – check out the pictures below. We used it as a page decoration with some “confetti” beneath it (I use the term confetti in quotes, because it’s actually more like crinkled up tinsel, but the teacher called it confetti).

I had just 45 minutes between my morning classes, but I popped out to the convention floor, and hit the dollar-scrapping booth, which had been hard to get at yesterday. I found a bunch of cool things there, including “irregular” paper (which was only printed on the wrong stock of paper, not smuged or anything) from Arctic Frog.

My second class was sponsored by Paper Tapestry, a company that supports a village in India where their paper is made. The paper is spectacular, and I ended up buying a supply after the class. In the class, we made mini-books that fit nicely in a box. Check out the pictures:

I have special plans for that book, and will post pictures when it’s done.

After that class, I had a few hours before my third and final class of the day. I was walked around the show floor, buying the things that I’d been thinking about (though, I talked myself out of several things, yay me). I also participated in several make and takes, but couldn’t seem to get in on the one at Little Black Dress. That one was really cool – it cost $4, but was well worth it. The participants made a little mini match-book type book (though larger than a matchbook). They embellished many of the pages with stamps and flowers, but the coolest thing was the front cover. There, they put an embellishment that’s made from that confetti I used in my first class this morning, but rather than just gluing it down, first the make and take teacher would iron a pat of the stuff on an inked stamp, and it turned out really cool. After getting home, I tried it myself, though I haven’t quite gotten the hang of it, the picture will give you an idea (you might need to click through to the larger version to see it better):

My final class was another mini book. This time it was made from plain papers, but we first folded the papers into a “paper bag”, and then into a book. The book has several places to poke and hide pictures or tags and journaling. We also played around with the EZ distressing inks – I need more practice with it if I’m going to use it, though!

After this class, I stopped by the convention floor again, to see if I could get in on that Little Black Dress mini-class, but it had just begun, and I was too tired to stick around for the half hour that it would take for it to finish up again.

All in all, though, a great convention. I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it again next year (and hopefully Laurie can go with me, at least on Saturday!).

Tags: scrapping

GASC: Friday

I went off to the Great American Scrapbook Convention today. I had signed up for a bunch of workshops a few weeks ago, and my first one was a 10:30 this morning. The convention show floor officially opened at 10, I arrived at about 10:05, and the parking lot in front of the North Hall (the hall for the convention) was already nearly full. I parked in the back of the South Hall’s lot. Wow!

My first workshop was actually a jewelry-making class, but some of the techniques could be used for scrapbook embellishements. The teacher was great, and I had a lot of fun. Plus, we ended up with a bunch of extra wire to keep and bring home. See pictures below (and click through one to see them all at flickr).

After that class, I went to the convention floor and walked around all the booths (and stopped at the Make and Take pavillion a couple of times. I tried not to spend too much, since I knew that I’d be back tomorrow, and I really wanted to try and get things that I can’t get at my normal scrapbook store. The booths were great, though, and I found a bunch of new products (that will be on my birthday and Christmas lists .

My second, and last, workshop for the day was at 4:00PM, and it was a page layout. One big thrust of the class was on adding doodling to pages. The teacher commented that many of the new rub-ons and products that she’s been seeing are basically pre-done doodles, and suggested that we might want to add them ourselves. The page, before the doodles, is really not all that interesting (see picture below), but after doodles it’s pretty cute. I only had time to just barely get going on the doodles, but I have a picture of what I finished in class. I’ll post an “after” picture later, when I’ve finished the doodles.

Before the midnight cropping party, I grabbed a quick dinner at Taco Bell (yum). Then it was back to my car to pick up my cropping supplies, and back into the convention all. I didn’t think I would stay until midnight, but when I finished my second page, it was 10:45, and I thought I could complete the third, and last of Sweetie’s 30th Birthday party pages, before midnight, so I pushed ahead. I did finish (and I think the pages turned out reallly well!), and it was a good thing that I stayed, because I won one of the door prizes during the 11:20 drawings! Yay me!

Here were my table-mates, Heidi and her grandmother Judy, and Donna:
 

One odd thing about the four of us at the table is that we had all lived in either North Dakota or Minnesota (or both). We didn’t know each other before the crop, and just happened to end up at the same table. I suppose it might just be that midwestern nice-ness.

Here are my completed pages:
  

All in all, a great day. I’m looking forward to tomorrow , even though I start bright and early at 8AM!!

Tags: scrapping

Scrapblogging

As if I needed more scrapping outlets, JD pointed me to Scrapblogs. It’s a site where you can put together online scrapbooks. I decided to try it with pictures from my 1999 trip to swim with dolphins with my aunt. You can see my results, just click the image below (WARNING: that link will launch flash, which, sadly, is the only way to view the scrapbook)

The interface was fairly easy to use, but it felt a bit clunky and slow (though that could be that I’m eating 100% of my cpu running data for my thesis). I would also like more choices for stickers, frames and backgrounds. I started with a template for my scrapbook, but then you can add more frames, stickers, and backgrounds; however, the pages for adding more took a while to load. On the other hand, it’s a nice way to display pictures online with a bit of decration and pizzazz.

Eclipse Scrapbook Done!!!

I finished the eclipse scrapbook today! Actually, I should say scrapbooks – I had to use two books to fit all the pages. Yay!

Here’s the last page I did – the intro page:

Tags: scrapping