A Little Bit of a Photo Diary

I have been making crafty things all along this time, but have not had time to post things as so many things were happening in my life at the same time. Over the weekend I will post more crafty things and tips. But for now, I wanted to share my inspiration. I traveled back to Finland for a month this summer to go see my friends and family. Nature is always a big draw. I am familiar with the woods around our house and love to go for walks to see what I happenstance on. Among the hustle and bustle of making sure I get to see all my friends and family- nature offers a place to relax and recharge my batteries. Here are some pictures that inspire me over my trip.


A view from the country road leading to our summer house. If you are unaware of it, most Finish families own a small summer cottage.

The view of our sauna from the other side of the lake. I love the gnarly old pine trees that insist on growing high up on the large rock by the lake.
It was fall, and the harvest has begun.

A lovely little fairytale mushroom. The one below looks like the most average mushroom, so I named him Mr. Smith.
I love the dance of colors on a mossy hillside.
Some fall colors

A little creek we drove over on our road trip.
I think I will use this picture for art one day. I imagine a bird sitting on top of the post.
Pretty lake views from a friend's summer house.

Mr Beetle.
In the woods the young birches can sometimes be seen bent over from the weight of winter snow.
I wish I could have captured it when the puffs of seeds were floating at their fullest. Here is a picture right after.
Don't cross the line neighbor!
This mushroom seemed to sprawl all over.
What did the doggies see?
Well wouldn't you know... We get a lot of deer, rabbits and fox on our front yard.

It was the best blueberry season ever! I picked gallons of them.
Love the pictures of these colorful berries. I am not sure what they are called in english. In finnish they are Puolukka.

The little bee was right behind me working as I was taking pictures of the berries.
On my walks I ran into an addeer, it had just been run over by something and was still very life like.
I saw this little clever guy as I visited one of my friends in the city.

Dress, skirt and Cake

What could be better than that!

I made the New Look 6674 wrap around dress a couple of weeks ago. This was going to be my practice dress, with some pretty flower fabric that I had bought from the thrift store (used to be sheets). It was a pretty easy pattern to sew, but of course I wantd to make things complicated for myself by making it into a reversible dress.

The idea with the reversibility worked out pretty well, except for one spot where the fabric is pulling from my armpit to the neck. I also wish that the dress would cover up more in the celavage area, now I have to wear a top underneath it if I would ever dare to wear this in public. I think for my next try I will also make it out of a stretchy fabric, and add the contrasting color band to the neckline. I will also have to figure out what to do with that part around my neck thats pulling. If anyone has any ideas on where to add or change the pattern, ideas are welcome.

I am posting two views of the dress, one turned each way. Here are also a couple of other pictures of successful NL 6674 dresses.

While I was sewing, I whipped up a little summer skirt with pockets. It was an old pillowcase, and the fabric was just so cute I had to do something with it. (its still a little wrinkly here) I just kept fitting it on and sewing as I went along. Not the professional way of making things, but it wasn't a serious project, so I just winged it. The top part is a stretchy fabric to make it comfortable to wear to the beach or a walk with the dogs.

I seem to have also been made the designated cake baker for my husbands unit. I made a chocolate cake yesterday for a birthday, but forgot to take a picture before my husband took it to work. This caramel and almond topped cake was for another b-day about a month ago. It was super tasty with fruity filling and whipped cream on the inside.

Interview

If you aren't already tired about reading about me, come check out my interview with Deborah from Deborah's Daily Dish!

Watercolor Class

So I remembered to bring the camera to the botanical watercolor class I have been taking for over a month now. Its a nice small group only about 10 people. Above is the finished colored version of the artichoke that we worked on for a couple of weeks. Our new assignment is a pansy. This week we learned how to mix colors for the floer and next week we are learning how to mix greens. I have done a little bit of an underpainting on the leaves, but didn't want to get ahead of myself. The artichoke looks good, but the color is all wrong. I couldn't mix the right shade of green. Its a lot harder than it seems. I guess I could blame my limited color palette. ;)
Here is Louise Smith, our teacher with one of the students in the class, talking about pansies.

Another student working hard on a pansy, my workspace is the mess on the table behind her.

The co-op art gallery where I'm a member at is also having a spring face lift. We spackled and painted all the walls and are in the process of painting the floor with a new coat of color. Our opening reception for the next show is on April 25th, so it should all look great at that time! I am so excited about having the gallery look clean. I'll put a photo when were done. It just feels like another busy week!

March winner!

Congratulations! The give-away winner for the kitty earrings for March was Aminyitray! See the older post for details.

I was able to post a new hedgehog on Etsy and have some owls ready to go. Now I just need the time to get them posted...

Shrinky Dink Mania

We are planning a shrinky/dink-craft-get-together with the girls, so I wanted to find some inspiration before the pen hits the plastic. Above are keychains by Evie for mothersday; thats just around the corner... Here are some awesome little shrinky dink ideas:

I got this picture from Etsy a long time ago, but I dont remember the shop name. I'll do some research and try to post it later.

Cute little robots from the Little Lost Robot blog.

Jessica at How About Orange printed on her sheets from a printer to make these adorable tags.

I love Wee Wonderfuls from way back, and found that she also has a shrinky dink tutorial for some cute pins. I had to put two pictures...

Cute little dogtag idea from Making it Lovely. She also had a nice pink keychain.

The most awesome jewelry by Irina. I have to make something like this for myself.

Another place to get awesome shrinky dink jewelry is Fuzzy Bunny Shop on Etsy.

Before I make this post too long, I made a collage of some more pieces. There are so many people doing imaginative things with shrinky dinks its amazing and hard to choose! Going from top left corner clockwise:

Robot necklace from Luna 1375

DillonDesigns rings- I never even thought of that!

KaylaJane has really pretty charms and pendanst in her etsy store.

Passion Flower has cool cutouts.

DIY ice cream necklace with glitter and rhinestone for the younger kids out there.

Shrinky Dink Test Lab has a ton of great info on the product. Here are some wine glass markers.

I love everything that She Felt Pink has in her store. a lot of old tattoo design type of items.

I hope this post has a little bit of inspiration for everyone. I can't wait to get my hands on some plastic! I'll post some pictures of our creations next week. I know it is a new month, and I really need to do my give away, but its been crazy busy. I need to do that asap...

New Patterns

I visited a friend a couple of weeks ago and she borrowed a whole bunch of cute Japanese craft books to me. I loved flipping through everything and drooling over all the cute little critters.

I drew some of the patterns out, and in my enthusiasm was able to put them into practice. I started out with two owls and a hedge hog. I had seen the owls in so many places before, and it was nice to make some myself. I got so excited that I cut a whole bunch of fabric out and started 12 more. I had to go to a conference so I could not finish them all right away, but here is where I got so far.
Harry the hedgehog was fun to make. He is very small though, so it took a lot of effort to sew and turn the arms inside out. On such a small scale the corduroy was pretty stiff to maneuver. When finished he ended up turning out just as cute as the hedgehogs. I cut another hedgehog out, but haven’t had time to sew it together yet. It is fun to work on this miniature scale for a change. IT takes just as long to make as bigger stuffed animals, but smaller is always cuter.

The watercolor class I talked about earlier is also a lot of fun. I am learning some new tips, but mostly I enjoy just getting back into making drawings again. After the first week, the assignment was to work on basic watercolor techniques. I am not a very good student, since you can tell I never finished my exercises… I guess I should work on this again.

The next week we were working on shading, and had to bring in a round object. I had chosen a garlic, but had to use 5 cloves of it the night before for cooking, so it ended up being a half a garlic. We were just painting with a gray color to practice lights and darks.

Last week we had to bring an artichoke in and draw that with graphite. Tomorrow we are going to bring the completed drawings in and paint over them with watercolors. I am excited to do that, since I have done a lot of drawing and my prints are predominantly black and white, but don’t really know the intricacies of color in plant life. Listening to the teacher there seems to be a lot of things I never noticed. Apparently on a green leaf the highlights always have yellow undertones and highlights have blues. I would have thought opposite. So after my great attempt at painting this artichoke tomorrow I’ll post it here.

On a completely different note, if you have seen those pretty letter pressed cards in gift shops and wonder how they are made, I will soon post a video from a printmaking conference I just came home from.