Craft projects in the works: PYOP and felt fruit ornaments

Yay! Now that I have passed my exam and am done studying, I was able to spend some time on crafty things this weekend.

I had been wanting to try making felt fruit ornaments for a long time so yesterday I started with apples and pears. I think they are pretty darn cute!


I really enjoyed stitching these and they are much faster to make than my owl ornaments!

 

Today I went back to The Pottery Stop to finish my last PYOP coaster and work on my other wax resist pieces (the plates for my brother). My elephant coaster from last time was done!

 

 

The plates are going kind of slowly...I finished one side of each plate. I think I will finish them this week. Love the toucan! And I did something a little different on the back of my whale plate (instead of the usual bees). Here are the "before" pictures...neither piece has been fired in the kiln yet, the colors will be darker after that. What do you think?

I totally love the ducky and umbrella!  :) 

PYOP (Paint Your Own Pottery) Coasters (well...half of them)

I finished two of the four PYOP coasters I started...then last week I went back to finish the other two but forgot to bring them with me! So I ended up working on some plates instead. But here are the two finished coasters!




On the backs I decided to put the little bees again with my initials...with a slightly different configuration on each coaster. The little white dots I painted worked out surprisingly well, they nicely camouflage the three little marks from when they put the pieces in the kiln.

 

 

Here are the "before" pictures--after I painted but before the pieces were fired. I used the same wax resist technique I enjoy so much. It's fun to paint the picture, and then color it in like a coloring book :)

As you can see we usually accompany our pottery painting with a fine meal at Qdoba...mmm quesadillas with extra queso...

 

 

Here are the other two coasters...a ship and an elephant! Totally random but that's what I felt like painting.

 

 And here are the two plates I started last time...

 

Lots of painting to do! Can't wait to see how these turn out. The whale and/or toucan plates are for my brother...we'll see which one of them he prefers.

Back to The Pottery Stop later this week to finish!

Outdoor owl photo shoot!

There are lots of pretty cherry blossoms near my place, so I figured I'd re-photo some of my owl ornaments outside.

 

Next: new red owls!

Winter projects and downtime

It's nice to have some downtime this week. I've taken a break from a lot of my other activities over the past month or so to try and relax from all the craziness. I had a bunch of crap go wrong: one of the birds got sick (repeatedly), I got sick (also repeatedly), I got in a minor car accident, etc.
 

Just for the sake of amusement, here is the email I wrote to the rental car/repair/insurance people about the first car they gave me. To their credit, they did replace it with a car of my choice that was a major improvement.

---

Hi Dave,

Thanks for sending this and thanks for your message as well. Your service has been great and I was very pleased with how fast and easy everything was the other day!

Quick question (maybe you know or the Enterprise folks do)...is there an "air freshener" hidden somewhere in the rental car? It is very strong and smells horrendous, like a toilet, and I'm having to drive with the windows open even in the cold to keep from gagging. I looked around in the car but couldn't find the source--I would REALLY like to remove whatever has created this nasty smell if I'm driving this car for the next week.

Thanks!

 

---

 

I also finished several new batches of coasters, some elephant ornaments (including a custom order for a mom with baby elephant--how cute is that?!), and a crapton of pins. These are mostly available in my etsy shop right now.

Green leaves coaster set

Autumn heather rainbow coaster set

  

Brown and tan woodland flowers pin

 

Elephant mom and baby custom Christmas ornament 

 

Green woodland flowers felt pin 

 

Pair of gray elephant Christmas ornaments

 

Purple poppies felt pin

 

 Zen black and gray leaves coaster set

New ornaments, necklaces, and other items in my shop!

Check out these new listings in my etsy shop!


Elephant felt Christmas ornament



Three purple hearts and flowers felt pins



Set of 4 felt owl Christmas ornaments



Pretty posies medallion felt necklace in shades of gray



Pretty posies woodland medallion felt necklace



Purple heart felt pin



Red poppies medallion felt pin



Woodland flowers medallion felt pin in light green



Woodland flowers medallion felt pin

In other news, I seem to be sick again...but I also got a really cool custom order for 15 felt flower pins last week, so that kept me somewhat busy.

I tried to make each one a little different. Didn't they turn out nice? :)

Elephants, owls, and pendants!

I've been doing a lot of sewing lately and working on a variety of new felt creations!

These are a bunch of pendant necklaces I made earlier in the month while traveling. I'd seen a metal/glass pendant in JoAnn several months ago with a picture of lollipop flowers and thought, I can make something cuter than that...so finally I got around to it!

Since I love (ok, am sort of obsessed with) experimenting with color combinations, I also made more of these (ok, like 30) as pins/brooches. The necklaces and pins should both be up in my etsy shop later this week. My favorite color combinations are the red flowers that look like poppies, and also the yellow/orange/white/gray pendant (cockatiel colors, as my brother suggested I make!)

 

Another project I'd been thinking about for months was felt Christmas tree ornaments...I decided to start with my usual owls, since I've been working with that image so much and therefore knew exactly how I'd want it to look. And it came out exactly as I imagined!

 

Once I made the owl, I decided to branch out and make some cute little elephant ornaments too!

 

I've been doodling elephants on everything for weeks so I think they were trying to come out and play :) What do you think?

 

Materials: Eco-felt, DMC, thread, ribbon, quilt batting, jump rings, Darice faux suede necklace cords