Welcome to the New and Improved I’m Feelin’ Crafty!!

The silence…. The anticipation… The curtains rise… And the audience goes wild!!!

The facelift is complete!! Yea!! Please join me in a round of applause for the all new I’m Feelin’ Crafty! (Insert a cute little curtsy from I’m Feelin’ Crafty here)

Last year I took a little online blogging course and some of the feedback I got on my blog was that it was a little too simple and the title looked like a blog post title. Sooooo… Those comments have stuck in my head this whole time and I finally did something about it. With the help of Lisa from My Little Buffalo, we came up with a new image for the blog!

Lisa was awesome to work with and was always sweet to me, even though I’m sure I was driving her crazy with my ‘what about this…’ and ‘What do you think about that idea…’ and and and…

If you’ve checked in during the last couple of days, I’ve been doing the updating, so my apologies if anything wasn’t working. or you caught me in the middle of trying to figure this whole formating thing out!

Ok, ok, it only looks different. I don’t see a change in the content any time soon. I love what I’m doing and I hope you enjoy it as well. If there are any suggestions out there, feel free to let me know. And if you see anything that isn’t working, please, please, let me know!

I’ve made pages for all the tutorials and printables. Finally… This is another thing I”ve been wanting to do for some time now!

ok, I’m going to leave it at that today…. I’ve been working on this thing for a long long time and I need to turn it off! We’ve got a couple of great weeks coming up with the Sew Ready to Play series!!

Collections and a Printable

Do you collect things? My husband and I collect art. Not real fancy art, just art we can afford and pieces we like. We lean towards the outsider art world… My husband also collects old radios. Me? As a kid I collected fairies and dragons. And I love to collect old and first edition books. Although I haven’t gotten any in quite some time now. Now… I haven’t been ‘collecting’ too much these days. I have a stash of old cameras. I was going to start collecting old wooden thread spools. I got one. That’s a far as that collection has gone.

My son on the other hand…. rocks, sticks, sand, shells, grass, flowers….. 

When my son was tiny, I decided I wanted to collect things from our travels for him. And it was just about this time that we were into baby food and baby food jars. I guess you could say I was collecting the jars! I rarely recycled a single one….

I think I have enough to last us for at least a few years of collecting! ha!

That was about two years ago! Did I put the plan in action? Noooooo. Well, partly… I have been collecting, but noting what the pieces are and where they are from, well…. um, no. So we have little jars around the house and I have no idea why the jars have particular things in them….

Then last weekend we were out at the beach and my son yells, ‘Wait, Wait, (imagine hand waving for everyone to stop what they are doing and come see what he’s doing) I need some sand for my collection!’ HUH? I stopped dead in my tracks! Does he know about my plan? I don’t know that I have ever really told him about my grand scheme of collecting for him or not. I grabbed a zip lock bag I just happened to have in my bag and helped him fill it up with his baggie with sand!! Totally giddy that he was excited about his ‘collection’! Hearing him saying that, got me in gear to finally follow through with my collection plan!

So this weekend, I got out the supplies and here’s a quick photo tutorial of how I made our collection.

And click here for the printable labels. These are sized for the baby food jars. And I recommend printing on a full sheet clear label.

What do you think? Black text on the labels? Or should they be a different color? Maybe I should match the lid? I don’t know. I wanted the black so it didn’t take away from the contents, but…. 

So far we just have sand… But I need to try to remember where the special shells and rocks came from. Oh, and I forgot about our collection of teeny tiny sand dollars from Max’s first trip Orange Beach! Ohhhh… So excited I just remembered that collection!

So what are you going to collect??? And will it fit in a baby food jar?

linked to these parties!

A Quilting Link Love

I’ve had quilting on the brain lately trying to finish up my Quilt #4. So then I can finish up some other projects and go back to Quilt #3. Anyway…. I have been obsessing with my thoughts on quilting so I thought I’d share a few of my most recent favorites!

 

1. I always love Skyo’s pieces. I love her birds and then this one had a fox! (I have another fox project on my mind, but more about that later….)

2. Katie, from Sew Katie Did, is a local quilter and I have to say one of my all time favorites! I pretty much am in love with everything she does. I have to admit that there have been a few nights that I have sat and just stared at this blue one! And I’m so excited to say that she’ll be going us one day soon!!

3. I saw this one a while back via My Owl Barn and the image just stuck in my head! I love the bright red owls. And check out the detailing in the quilt….

4. I’ve been seeing a ton of the ‘ombre’ style around lately. Love it. But I was totally hooked on when I saw this ‘Orange Paint Chip Quilt’ on Kimem’s etsy site . I fell in love! I just think it’s amazing!

Sew Excited to Share Some News!!!

I’ve been working on something exciting!!!!

Starting next Friday, I’m Feelin’ Crafty is having a series of guest bloggers sharing projects and tutorials inspired by their families favorite games. I can’t wait to share the projects from some awesome women who just happen to be inspiring bloggers, crafters and sew-ers!!!

Feel free to grab the button HTML and share the news!!

<img src=”https://feelincrafty.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/srtpbutton11.jpg” alt=”I’m Feelin’ Crafty” style=”border:none;” />

OK, this is kinda like a PS…. Do you write letters anymore?? I love to! I remember writing letters as a kid and all the PS and PPS and PPPS’s that would end up at the bottom… Anyway… This whole blogging thing is crazy!! 🙂  I’m sorry that this post is sooo late today! I’ve been trying to figure out the whole ‘Grab a Button’ thing… Not so easy over here on WordPress. Maybe it’s easier on Blogger?? Who knows. Man, I find code here and there and then…. I found this website! You just fill in the info and it gives you all the code you need. VERY VERY COOL!

PPS.. hehehe… I just had to do it… Now I’m finally off to quilting!

Crafting With the Kids Recap

Friday I mentioned that we were going out of town with friends and I was in charge of the crafting projects for the kids.

Well…. I got box ready with all sorts of crafty things…

Baby Oil, bottles, food coloring for making wave bottles

Paper plates, paint and the salad spinner for salad spinner art

Clear cups and Glow in the Dark bracelets for the Glow in the Dark cups

Seashells and paints for Seashell Painting

Cork, paint and glue for the Cork Boats

Paper, paint and all sorts of things to glue to make Self Portraits

Pie tins, paint, straws and bubbles for Bubble Art

All that and did we make them??? Well, not exactly! The beach was calling, as was the football, bikes and giant bubbles… So, no, we didn’t really make too many projects…

We started the self portraits. But then that just turned in to a glue and paint project. Which was totally cool, but the portraits kinda went to the wayside.

But the boats… They were a hit! I made the boats but they didn’t really get painted before we headed down to the beach.

On another trip we made the boats and did paint them. Only that trip was just the opposite. We painted the boats, but they never saw the water!

I’ll share a funny story about the time we did paint them. We were camping with other friends and I have to say that the funniest quote of the weekend came from the boat painting activity. My son was still painting with his friend’s sister and she tells my son, ‘I like pink best because I am very girlie.’ My two year old son responded, ‘I’m manly. I’m a man. I’m mannnnly.’ Hilarious! I had to turn around to make sure I was hearing everything correctly!

Back to this weekend… After our boating adventure, we left the boat in the neighborhood Gnome Village at this little ladies home….. Ms. Gnome and her friend Mr. Googly Eye Rock seemed grateful for the new mode of transportation!

Did yall make anything fun with the kiddos this weekend?

Crafting With Kids Link Love

We’re spending time with friends and their kids this weekend and I was put in charge of the kids projects! So I thought I’d share a few of my Pinterest favorites that we might try out!

1. I love love love these boats from Ohdeedoh! We did this project before on a camping trip, but the boats still haven’t seen the water. we might have to try it again this weekend and float the boats!

2. And a wave in a bottle! How fun is this wave project from Babble for the little ones!

3. What little kid doesn’t love bubbles???? So if the kids love bubbles and they loving making things, won’t they want to make art out of bubbles?? I think so! Check out the how to at Disney Family Fun.

and 4. As you might know, my son loves glow in the dark… So if the kids are up late enough to be drinking anything outside in the dark, these glow in the dark cups from Making Memories with Your Kids will be fun. If not, the adults can partake!

Do you have a fun art projects that your family enjoys doing together?

I’ll be back with an update about which projects we tried out!

Another Process Post for Quilt #4

A little update on Quilt #4…..  I’m sooooo ready to just sit down and finish it. The front and back are complete, I just have to quilt it together…. That’s all. Just quilt it together. Oh, and add the binding….

Here’s another little sneak peek….

I’ve gotten the dragonflies on with their puffy eyes (wasn’t as easy to do as I had planned on it being…)

And an H on the back for Little Miss Haley. And do you notice that the H fabric also has dragonflies???

Ok, Next week… Finished!

Has anyone else taken the Process Pledge?

Guest Posting at Prudent Baby Today!

The other day I posted about the Germ Drops. (Used them again this morning and got some more germs taken care of!) I was totally inspired by the Prudent Baby Monster Spray, so I emailed the ladies to show them. They liked it so much they asked me to guest post to share the Germ Drops on their blog!

Yes, I always blush when I’m featured somewhere, but this time I’m glad I was sitting down when they asked to share via a guest post!!!

Thank you Prudent Baby!

Campin’ Out with a New Sleepin’ Bag!

When we go camping, we don’t really rough it too much! We have a little camper that we sleep in, with beds, sheets, comforters, heat when it’s cold…. But this weekend we were going to go camping with a real tent and sleeping bags on the ground…. As we were planning this I realized that my son doesn’t even have a sleeping bag. Well, he does now!

The other thing, we’ve been reading a book, Time To Sleep, Sheep the Sheep by Mo Willems. Do you know that one? We absolutely love Mo Willems! Anyway, I could easily get side tracked talking about his books! in this book the animals all go to sleep in sleeping bags under the stars. My son uses a boppy as a pillow, so I was going to make a sleeping bag with a boppy attachment, but he said no he wanted a real pillow like the animals sleeping bags in the Sheep the Sheep book.

So that’s exactly what he got!

A nice warm quilted fleece sleeping bag with a real pillow!

Would you like to make one? I’ll tell you how I did it!

1. Materials:

Background fleece (in mine, the red), 2 yds

Accent fleece (in mine, the outer space pattern), 1 yd

Batting

14×28 pillow

Thread

Scissors

Zipper

Step 2: Cut out all the pieces.

Red Pieces:

(2) 28×42 for the front and back of the mat piece.

(2) 18×16 for the back of the pillow

(1) 6×36 for top of the blanket layer (optional. You can just enlarge the blanket dimensions below)

Outer Space Pieces

(1) 16×28 for the top of the pillow

(1) 38×36 for the blanket layer.

Batting

(1) 28×42

Step 3: Hem the end on the two back pillow pieces. We’re making an envelope style pillow so the back of the pillow will have two overlapping pieces.

Step 4: Sew the pillow pieces to the mat pieces, right sides together.

Step 5: Attach the batting to the back side of either the front or back of the mat. The batting I had on hand was small pieces, so I pinned mine to the back of the back side of the mat. Only add batting below the pillow area.

Step 6: This step is kinda like making a quilt. Put the back and front of the mat together with right sides together and the batting on the outside. Sew all the way around the outside edges (including the pillow), leaving a hole to pull it through. I left about a 8 inch hole. Once you’re done sewing, pull it through the hole.

Step 7: Topstitch around the pillow top, all four sides. Topstitching along the bottom side will secure the batting in place for the mat piece.

Step 8: And back to the quilting. A little bit of quilting on the mat section to keep the batting in place. I quilted mine in about 9 inch squares. If you’re not a quilter, in other words, I just topstitched over the three layers!

Step 9: Time to work on the blanket top! If you want the contrasting top edge, now is the time to sew it on. And I topstitched this seam. I also folded it over and did a little hem at the top. (sorry, forgot to take a picture of this step! I’ll have to add one!).

Step 10. Cut a slit in the blanket top layer. About 4 inches in and almost the whole length of the top. I stopped mine about 8 inches up from the bottom.

Step 11: Sew in the zipper. I used a ‘by the yard’ zipper and then sewed a piece of fleece across the top of one side so that the handle piece doesn’t come off.

Step 12: Pin the top to the mat. Put the right side of the blanket top to the back side of the mat. Pin the bottoms together. The top is wider than the mat. I don’t know about you, but those mummy style sleeping bags make me claustrophobic, so I added a little extra foot room in this one! So, pin the corners, in about 9 inches and in the middle. Then fold the extra over towards the outsides.

Step 13: Sew the top to the mat. I rounded the corners just a tiny bit.

Step 14: Turn the bag right side out. Insert the pillow. And WahLa! You have yourself a sleeping bag!

OK, the truth comes out… We didn’t actually go camping… But one day! And he’s already had fun playing in it in the tent set up in the backyard, so that makes it worth it!

Let me know if  you have any questions! And be sure to upload pictures to my flickr page if you make one yourself!

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Happy Weekend

I’m totally off track here… This week was a crazy one! Good crazy! Been busy at work and busy at home quilting and crafting and just living.

I had my weekly link love post ready. Ok, ready in my head. I knew everything that was going to go in it, but it never got done. Then Friday I realized I hadn’t written it yet. But instead of sitting down at the computer so I could write a blog post, the family played hookey from work and preschool and went out to enjoy the day!

So I thought this weekend I’d just share a little bit of life. It’s something I don’t do much around this blog. I debate this topic, more about me? Or stick to just crafting related stories?? And even that’s kinda weird. My life is all about crafting, so in a way I share my life with you everyday I post anything. I guess I’m talking about my family life. Should or shouldn’t I share more about my family life, that’s the question….

So today the answer is yes…

Our adventure to the Northwest Trek Animal Park. There’s a tiny zoo like area, but the main thing is the 400 acres of free roam area. You take a tram around and see all sorts of animals like deer, bison, moose, caribou, elk, mountain goats and more! And the setting with Mount Rainier in the distance is just beautiful!

When we saw the baby deer with it’s Momma (the top left picture), my son said, ‘ahhhhhh, they’re cuddlin’.’ The people around us started giggling!  I loved how they dated this super old tree and included other historical dates like when Leonardo Da Vinci was born. The other funny thing about the day… My husband got dressed in jeans and a shirt he had made with a monkey on it. Max already had on his jeans, but when he saw what Daddy was wearing, he ran and got the same monkey shirt his Daddy had made for him. So off we went with Father and son in matching outfits! cute!

And how was your week?