Holiday happenings

This year, I spent Christmas Eve baking cookies and pizza with my brother...mmm pizza...

 

 

...and then a few days visiting with friends. I went to visit Gleb and we ambled through downtown Ambler and did a little shopping.

 

And even though the holidays were over, the owl ornaments were not! I made a large batch....most of these are now available in my etsy shop.

Fall is here...and projects in progress

Yay fall! The leaves are just starting to change and it's getting cooler finally (man I hate the heat). Other things to love about fall:

• Boots weather! I can finally wear all the awesome boots I bought this year.
• Halloween. Jenny and I purchased some crazy costumes online so we can at last go as ABBA...although I'm not sure if we'll get any guys to agree to dressing up as Bjorn or Benny...
• Candy corn season! I always forget how much I love candy corn until it hits the stores again in the fall. Along with some coworkers, I ate a whole bag of candy corn this week and it was delicious!

This inspired me to finally start on a project I'd had in mind for at least a year--a candy corn purse.. Here's the purse in progress...I decided to go with a variety of candy sizes.

Picking out the fabric for the lining should also be interesting. I'm thinking either a black/white print or something with both yellow and orange. I want to finish it this week to have it in my shop for Halloween.

I finished my second felt cockatiel softie in time for Bill and Allison's wedding a few weeks ago...

This one presented a little more of a challenge as I was trying to make it look like a pearl cockatiel. I used sticky felt to make the white spots on the back.

I also managed to stitch a bunch of new pins this week (while watching lots of bad tv, of course--current favorites are Say Yes to the Dress, What Not to Wear, and Millionaire Matchmaker).

I should have the new pins available in my etsy shop shortly!

May Craft Blog Giveaway Winner

Yay! The winner of my giveaway for the Pink Leaves Felt Cuff Bracelet is:
MommyWantsToRead

Thank you to everyone for entering! Have a great day :)

May Craft Blog Giveaway: Pink Leaf Cuff Bracelet!

Happy Friday everyone!

I know it's been a while since I did a giveaway so here it is! My May giveaway is for one of my new felt cuffs--this one with lovely pink leaves. I made this piece while at a craft fair last week in an attempt to brighten the dreary gray day.

I hand-stitched this bracelet out of two layers of recycled felt, with a bright pink ribbon sandwiched in between. This cuff will fit most size wrists and is quite sturdy.

It's super easy...just leave a comment on this post below including your email address. So enter below and get yourself a free piece of my hand-stitched felt jewelry!

You can leave your email address in this format if you like: pickychickybird AT gmail DOT com, just to avoid spam.

Last day to enter is Monday, May 16th...I'll announce the winner here on my blog the following day, so stay posted!

A few more pics of the prize:

Good luck to all my giveaway enthusiasts!

New Felt Cuff Bracelets and Hobo Craft Fair Recap

I was playing around with my felt the other day and came up with this new blue/cream/peach color combination--I love how it looks on the felt cuff bracelets!

These would look awesome with jeans, or as the "something blue" in a bridal ensemble. I made the one on the blue ribbon with a long ribbon so that it could also be worn as a headband. I love the way they look together as a set.

  

In other news, the hobo craft fair on Sunday was not too hobo-y...until it started raining at 2pm. The rain wasn't going anywhere, so I packed up shortly after that. The morning was pretty good though--good temperature, nice people, decent traffic.

Some of my new crafty items out on display.

Lots of pins and barrettes!

People seemed to really like the MOO business cards I had available--they're really pretty and a great way to show lots of your different projects. Plus, they're inexpensive and super easy to make. I think I have only one left--time for another order!

Getting ready for craft fair--and spring flower cuffs!

Reminder--tomorrow is the Riverdale Park Arts Festival! Please stop by and see me if you're in the area...it's from 11am to 6pm. I make no guarantees as to the hobo-ness this year though :)

I'm currently packing up for the fair and just finished a new batch of my flower felt cuffs for spring!

Happy spring everyone!

Decoupage frenzy! Baskets, plaques, and boxes

I spent most of the day yesterday working on additional decoupage projects. Here are the ones I finished!

Close ups of some of the pieces...

Small ship tins--I have about 100 of these cute little circle tins lying around so I thought I might as well decoupage a few.

Castle wall art--love the fairy tale look!
 

Ship wall art--I never get tired of this image.

The backs of the nesting ship boxes are painted with a palm tree on a beach.

I'm so excited to be using up a big chunk of my stash of wooden and other boxes, frames, trays, drawers, etc. More coming soon!

What else should I paint on these? Flowers, octopi, leaves, Sean Connery?

New decoupage frames: whales, ships, fishies, castles, and a mutiny

Kate's birthday was this weekend and I wanted to make her something original and cool, so I decoupaged a picture frame with pages from an abridged illustrated version of The Mutiny On Board HMS Bounty. Then I painted a cute little ship in the corner with acrylic paints. Turned out just as I imagined it!

I loved the ship frame so much that I made some other versions.

Here's one on a wall hanging piece instead of a frame--love how it looks with the rope!

And here's one with a whole bunch of stuff painted on it. Yes, I know the text is sideways. It was an accident but I like it!

In progress: new flower cuffs for spring

After making the felt leaf cuff bracelets, I decided I wanted to do more of them, but with a springlike theme.  Here are a few of my felt flower cuffs in progress...

I probably will have to get some more ribbon (as if I didn't have 1000 spools already) because the kinds I currently have didn't really suit the cuffs. I do have some yellow grosgrain ribbon with daisies that I'm going to use for the one on the right.

If these come out cute, I want to do some purple and pink ones next!

Leaves and bugs and Robin Hood

Ok so I'm still fairly sick but at least yesterday I recovered the use of my brain! I've been working on some new felt accessories for my etsy shop.

All of the blog reading the other day came somewhat in handy, I got some new ideas for crafty items to make, and different ways to list them.

I started by making this ladybug gift set, which I adore!

I've also been thinking about making a felt cuff bracelet for a long time, I keep seeing them in craft books and online. I wanted mine to be all forest-y so I did leaves (and an acorn, on one). Why foresty? Because of this:

Yeah, that's Jason Connery (yep, son of Sean!) as Robin Hood in the 80's TV series. I've always liked Robin Hood things and I must admit I was mildly obsessed with the show, even as a kid. Check out his fantastic armband wrist-cuff things!

As I recall, Kevin Sorbo had some pretty sweet armbands in Hercules as well.

Although his armbands usually had lots of metal hardware and stuff on them. (For what? Did he attach things to them, and pull like a boat trailer or something?)

In any case, here are my felt leaf cuffs.

It was a lot easier to photograph on a towel than on my own wrist! However, it made me think that these might make nice napkin rings too :)

 All three cuffs (the acorn one is not quite finished):

The ribbon is kind of thick, I think for my next batch I would use something smaller.  

A look at the backs. You can see a little stitching, but not tons.

What do you think?