Halloween

I know, I know its only September.  As a crafter though I usually have to start planning EARLY for Christmas and Halloween if I plan to have time to make things.  Otherwise on Christmas Day my siblings get wrapped quilt tops that I have to take back home to finish :)  In browsing pinterest for Christmas ideas I found a gorgeous adult floor length tutu on etsy.  All black and perfect for a witch skirt so I decided I'll be a witch for Halloween this year.

Unfortunately, the skirt was $395.  It was labeled as for Prom or a Wedding or whatever.  If I was getting married I'd probably spend the 400 on this gorgeous skirt-it has a beautiful wide ribbon waist and I'm sure its a heck of a lot neater and well done than what I could make.  So instead I browsed some tutu tutorials and decided to give it a go.

While its super easy to do, cutting the tulle is time consuming and its taking an ungodly amount of it.  If my math is good I've already gone through about 3,168 square feet of tulle and its only a little more than halfway around me.  It does, however, look awesome so far.

The picture isn't so great.  I'm thinking its either the lighting in this apartment (which kinda sucks) or I'm due for a new camera.  Or maybe I need to take a class on photography.  Whichever it is- the skirt is mostly black with a burst of a really vibrant purple every so often.  

I've been cutting each strand of tulle 3" wide by 80" long and doing a basic knot around the ribbon waist.  Here's a close up of the waist.

The color is really awful in that photo.  

I started by getting tulle cut from the bolt, but figured out its only a tiny bit more expensive to get these rolls of tulle from Michaels that are 6" x 20 yards and they are immensely easier to deal with and cut.  This is one of the tutorials I looked at when figuring out how to make mine.  I don't think I'm doing the waist band like she did though.  We shall see when I finally make it to that stage though.

Anyone else have a costume planned yet?

Dreaming of a Craft Room

So its been a long time, but some of you may remember me giving you a peek into my craft corner a while ago.  Since then I've moved and now I craft on the dining room table and store my crafts in two bookcases worth of space in the corner of the living room.  We moved into a much smaller space (that's city life for you) so I had to give up what I had.

Thankfully, we're once again moving.  This time (knock on wood as long as something doesn't go horribly wrong) we'll be getting a 3 bedroom apartment.  This means that I get a full bedroom for my craft room!  I'm beyond stoked at the prospect of this and of course have taken to browsing Pinterest to get ideas for my new found space.  Somewhat related- I think I have a Pinterest addiction.

So some of the things I've been looking at are:

This one linked to a "page not found".  I really like the look of it, but I wonder if having the storage on one side while sitting on the other to work makes the most sense.  Plus I'm pretty sure this is the most expensive option.

This is nice and simple- I love all the wall shelves but again I think it would be a big investment for me.  

I love this piece (and the makeover if you go to the original site by clicking on the picture) but I'm not sure if the cubes are the best storage option for the variety of crafts that I have.  

This looks fantastic and the woman who runs that site does a good job of showing how to do it yourself.  From the picture I thought it was just store bought bookshelves, but she does it herself! I don't think I'm good enough at that sort of thing to do it all on my own but I could slap a flat board on some store bought book cases maybe?

This is another one that doesn't link right.  I think this is my most likely option- cobble together some desks, put some storage underneath and hang some shelves if I'm really ambitious.  

I think the first picture may be the most visually appealing to me but all the others look better organized for use.  What do you think?  Anyone have other ideas to share?  

Likely I'll wind up with some cobbled together craigslist mismatched thing due to my limited budget- but hey a girl can dream right?

Why Hello There

It's been a while.  Sorry I keep find myself saying that.  I've been re-inspired to work on selling my crafts and creating a business with them so I'm back.  And confident that this time I'm here to stay.  Well I never really stop crafting and selling my crafts but I'm here to stay in the blogosphere.

So I craft for work periodically.  I was doing a monthly program for teen crafts that I eventually stopped for lack of attendance.  One of the last crafts that I did for it earlier in the summer was this neat rag rug I found on pinterest (of course, sometimes I forget what life was like before pinterest).  Unfortunately it was just me and one teen girl in the craft and it wound up being far too time intensive to finish in the hour-ish I allow for the program but the two of us still dug it.

For the past few days I've been determined to finally finish the rug that I started way back at the beginning of the summer (moving and other busy-ness had left it in a pile somewhere) and here I am to share the results!

I'm really happy with the way it came out and glad to use up a bunch of fabric I had laying around but it took so much that I wound up making a run to JoAnn's to pick up a few fat quarters to finish it.  It's a super easy project but my estimate is that it took 11 hours or so to complete.  The plus side is that you can easily do it while watching TV.  The downside is I'm covered with strands of fabric from the fraying edges of the cloth.

Basically you just cut a bunch of strips of fabric- mine are 5x1 inches and weave them in the rug backing.  I found the backing at Hobby Lobby near the latch hook kits.  You can see that you don't need to use every hole for your weaving for a full rug.  I was kind of all over the place when I started and then I just got into a rhythm of skipping two rows, doing a full row, skipping three rows, doing a full row and then repeating.  I did every square on the edges and when I skipped three I usually added a strip or two in the middle to keep it looking full.  Who knows if I needed to though.

This is the site where I found the idea on and her description may be better for you than mine.  Or you may find yourself wandering her site and finding other things to interest yourself :)  Also, feel free to follow me on pinterest.  I pin mostly food, crafts, and home stuff with a little clothing, laughs, and adorable animals thrown in .