What A Ghastlie Bag!

I just LOVE Alexander Henry's Ghastlies Fabrics. So I decided to make myself a lovely new purse out of the collection. The more I look at the illustrations the more details I notice. LOVE.

My favorite is this sweet little girl with the ballerina dress and if you look closely she's holding a hammer. Yikes! And of course I love those big, round, pink cheeks. There's another print where all of these characters are sitting at the dinner table together and this girl has her hammer sitting in front of her on the table. They put the whole story together on the fabric... I just love those little details. 

I used the Mail Sack Pattern by Pink Chalk Studios. This is the second time I've made this pattern and I really like it. The bag has a long handle that's meant to cross your body for hands-free carrying. I'm really tall and I'm usually packing a ton of odds and ends because everybody hands me their stuff to hang on to, so this BIG bag is perfect for me. And I think it's quite stylish too. There's also a "mini"version of the bag that I might make one of these days when I'm not packing so much stuff. 

Here's Sparky posing with the Mail Sack Pattern. She likes to help.

And I can't resist sharing my my spooky witch finger cookies from this weekend. So creepy looking, one little girl refused to eat one at our pumpkin carving party.

Eww! Look at the broken fingers nails!! I used the Witch Fingers recipe from Allrecipes.com and added some green food coloring for that "witchy" effect.

WIP - Mom's Bright & Beautiful Quilt

Here's a quilt I'm working on for my mom. She loves bright colors so I went a little wild with this one. All of a sudden I'm noticing orange in a lot of my projects. Maybe it's the season for orange?? I have been drinking a few pumpkin spice lattes and wearing my orange sneakers lately too. Hmmmmm....

Anytime I try and lay fabric on the floor Sparky (full name: Cinderella Sparkle Rose Barrett Roth - the kids named her) likes to help. Or maybe she just has a wicked sense of humor and enjoys running through my project on the floor for laughs. I can't tell what she's thinking, she's got a good poker face as you can see in the photo above. Here she is right before she starts doing her trademark "Tasmanian Devil Spin" through the middle of my block arrangement.

And speaking of orange in projects, this is my new favorite fabric. The photo doesn't do it justice, the colors are amazing! Orange, purple and cyan all mixed together with a lime green. So bright (OK, like my mom I love bright) and beautiful. I just keep staring at it draped on my couch.  It's Pom Pom Dahlias by Philip Jacobs for Rowan. So pretty!! I'm headed to International Quilt Market in Houston next week and I've been thinking about making a skirt out of it. I think it might even pair well with my orange sneakers.

Here's my other little project. I've been doodling away with my new Painter app. Isn't it cool? It looks like I doodled that little jack-o-lantern on paper with water colors. I'm finding that I'm really rusty with my doodling skills though. It's been awhile since I've just drawn a picture without going back and adjusting nodes or combing shapes and adding gradients etc, etc etc in Illustrator. I'm really enjoying practicing again, I forget how much I enjoy drawing until I get back to it. Hopefully I'll pick up my "style" soon with the Painter app. 

Oh Mylanta! Birthday Label Fun

Here's a vodka bottle label I made to celebrate Hailey's 21st Birthday. My step-mom asked me to make one for her granddaughter's BIG birthday. Cool! Then I started doing the math and realized - wait a minute, Hailey was born in 1990 ... and now she's 21.  I clearly remember 1990, I was just starting high school, how could that be 21 years ago!? It took a little bit to get over that shock and then I started playing with some typography and ended up with a pretty fun bottle label.

There's even a drink recipe on the back for the "Haileytini." I started with a bottle of Pinnacle Whipped Cream Vodka. I measured the bottle and label area and then designed a label that will fit in that area. My step-mom told me Hailey LOVES pink (how fun, I do too) and her favorite saying is "OH MYLANTA!" So with that in mind, here's the design I created.

After the design is done, I take a PDF file to my local Kinko's and have them print it out on bright white laser paper. The stores are officially called FedEx Office Print Centers, but I used to work for them way back when they were Kinko's Copies and I can't think of them as anything other than Kinko's, besides Kinko's is a way cooler name anyway. My next step is cutting out the label and spraying adhesive on the back and slap it on the bottle. Ta da!! Super cute, personalized and unique gift.

I finally finished my first quilt!

Ta da!! I finally finished my first quilt. I started this quilt in May with a class I took at a local quilt shop. I zipped along on the quilt top, I even got the back and borders put together pretty quick. Yep, I was thinking this quilting thing was no big deal. I had a local longarm quilter do the quilting for me. I chose a teal thread which blended nicely on the front and contrasted really neat on the solid brown back. It was looking lovely and going so smoothly and then came the last step... hand sew on the binding. WHAT?! Hand sew?!

Really, hand sew on the binding. This quilt is big (well, only twin size but that seemed big to me thinking about hand sewing on the binding)! I didn't really pay much attention to binding "talk" before this little step popped up on the instructions... How come more quilters aren't complaining about hand sewing this thing on at the end? *Sigh*... So I set off on hand sewing the binding on in late June. I would work on little bits of it here and there and it was so SLOW going. In late August I was still working on whipstitching this binding on (yep, I said whip stitching *shudder*), then along came this smart new gal at work who let me in on a little secret - YOU DON'T WHIPSTITCH THE BINDING. Oh man!! I'd already gotten half way around this twin size quilt, diligently whipstitching along when I could find time (have I mentioned I sometimes have up to 5 kids running around the house and I work full-time?). ACK! What was I thinking?? I'd seen quilt backs and hand sewn binding, and now come to think of it they never looked whipstitched.

I just thought those other quilters were better and stitching than me (which they probably are) but they were actually just using the right technique *sigh*. Well, I decided to just start doing it the right way "blindstitching" the rest of the way around. I guess it makes my first quilt a little more special with the learning mistakes making it uniquely mine.

 In other news... I need to convert these bottles into my world famous, fancy "birthday label" bottles. Stay tuned for before and after pics.

AND!!! Look at this sweet new program I just purchased. Corel Painter Essentials 4. It's like painting on the computer. I'm super excited to learn all of the bells and whistles and hopefully master it soon for my 2011 Christmas Card.
Thanks for stopping by to read my rambling blog post.

Owl Cupcakes Really Are A HOOT!

I made these super cute owl cupcakes for Kyle's Birthday. I googled "Cute Cupcakes" and found These Three Girlies. You can get the play by play on how to create these adorable cupcakes there. But I will tell you the secret to Oreos that pop open perfectly - Double Stuf. I originally tried to use regular Oreos cookies and after several failed attempts and a whole lot of grumbling I went back to the store for Double Stuf. They worked perfectly, I was so anxious I started popping open cookies right in the front seat of the car. I don't know what I was thinking with the regular Oreos anyway, I always get the Double Stuf anytime I actually eat Oreos and they always pop open perfectly.

And when you have a few extra "eye balls" left over you can add them to other baked goods for laughs. Chocolate chip cookies taste better with cookie eye balls right? Yep, I think so too.

WIP Wednesday: Halloween Table Runner

Here's my WIP for Wednesday — a Halloween Table Runner. I'm feeling a little behind since it's already October and I'm just now finally getting around to sewing this baby together. I've had the Halloween fabric kicking around since July. It seems like I work best with a looming deadline.

My other WIP would be this blog (I'm still figuring out all the bells and whistles of how to make this thing look how I want it to, for now it's a basic template). I've wanted to blog for a while now.... but I didn't really know what to say, or if what I had to say would be remotely interesting to anybody out there. This posting seems so lack-luster with the amount of time I've spend pondering a blog, but here I am... finally. Hello everybody! Or hello anybody that might just stop by and read my random ramblings.

Stay tuned for all of my creative endeavors!