Peace...

My dh hurt his back a few weeks ago, and hasn't been working, so I worked today for my old boss, to help out the old financial situation, and am going back tomorrow, too, and I am WIPED. It's physical work, cleaning....I feel like I should have dropped at least 5 pounds today...right??

Anyway..point was....I wanted to post a pic of where I want to be right now...this gorgeous picture of a bed on a beach at twilight.

Well, I can't find it right now...but I did discover I seem to have a thing for sleeping out of doors.



Even if the out of doors is decidedly fake.


Credits:
1 and 2. Don't know...old, saved pics. If you know, please share!!
3. Hidden In France
4. Anthropologie

Breathtaking..

Dita Von Teese for Harper's Bazaar. Dress created by J'Aton, a Melbourne design team. Read the story of it here. The details are as amazing as the dress itself.

Help help help...

So I went and joined a pincushion swap over on Craftster.



Except, apparently, I haven't been paying attention, and the bar has been completely raised in the pincushion dept.






I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.





I guess this is why I craft, though...it's the challenge of the whole thing!



And the individuality and creativity....who says pincushions have to be sweet and charming??


They can be super simple..


To as complicated and fiddly as you want to make it (that's a thimble there, folks!)


I think this particular one totally rocks.


It's a 3-D interpretation of Tim Burton's Pincushion Queen. You can't see it, but it even has the little pincushions on the top of the chair. :p


To make matters worse, my partner is Hoxierice. Hello..I have to match up to THAT?? :p





I joined the swap because I really need a new pincushion.


And yes, my pins are color graded. Doesn't EVERYONE do that?? Oh, and the white ones are the ones I pinched from Collette Dinnigan..If anyone is curious, the pins used by a fashion goddess for the creation of her heavenly confections, basically suck. :p They are the same as the crappy bulk ones you get in any five and dime. I feel so much better about myself. Rofl.

I have been feeling itchy to create lately, but with no direction...I guess this is a sign I need to pick up my game? :lol:

This here, though, is one pincushion I am happy to know nothing about. Ouch. Poor little guy (or girl...can't tell.)



Credits:
1. Anna Maria Horner
2. Beth's Bagz
3 and 6. Laurie's Charming Designs
4. Paper Pony
5. Sownlove
7. Roadside Pictures
8. RoseyPoseyConfections
9. Llama/PJ
10. Alleluja
11. Draußen nur Kännchen!
12. MimiK
13. Silverlining
14. KatarinaW
15, 16, 17. Hoxierice
19. Not sure..was saved in my folders.

Japanese swimming....

Well, that's what the poor little girl will be doing, when she wears these. Swimming. In my first Japanese pattern.


I busted into my vintage sheets (I bought some more since that post), and tried out a pattern from a book I saw around awhile ago, and HAD to buy ...Girly Style Wardrobe, Pattern G, ISBN 9784579111329. OMG....I have used Ottobre mags for years, and Topkids (similar, but Australian, out of print now) for longer, and even traced a Burda pattern or two...so I am not exactly a total noob at tracing patterns. But trying to trace those Japanese ones, I swear to God, I was going crosseyed, and my eyes actually HURT the next day, from the strain of it! Not to mention how freaking hard it was to even find the right pattern pieces, even WITH the identifying letters next to the pattern pieces!! Even after double, triple, and quadruple checking, I still managed to cut one of the pieces from another pattern, instead of the right one. I got it in the end, though. Finally. On to the next problem.


Since the patterns are in centimetre sizes, and I don't have the little girl around to measure, I tried to use the Burda conversion chart, over on SewingMamas, to pick a size three. Okay. So. I have no idea what happened. I traced super carefully, and cut just as carefully, since I didn't want any problems I might encounter be a result of my own sloppiness; so I know it wasn't that. But somehow, I ended up with two little tops that look like they will be short little swing tops for a 5 year old, rather than a little 3 year old. These things are SO wide. I don't know what happened! I double checked pattern pieces, sizes, measurements, etc, and everything matched up; but I still have these little oceans to swim in. :( Very annoying. I'm going to send them anyway, since I know they at least won't be too SMALL, but what a disappointment. (I have just finished googling, and apparently that is a common problem for these patterns..they run wide and short. Hmm...)


The yellow top, btw, is using yellow polka dot fabric. Which I never found yet. I gave up and bought more. So somewhere in my sewing room, there is some rogue yellow polka dot fabric.


The pink and blue was is also a little bit of a disappointment....when I planned it out, I envisioned it with a binding and ruffle in the green on the leaves..it looks fantastic in my head. But I couldn't find that green at all when I went looking, and had to settle for the gingham..it was the right color, at least. But just doesn't have the pop I was looking for.

So there you have it. Two cute little tops, that still managed to be disappointments. That isn't stopping me from itching to get into it and try another pattern, though...when I got past all the tracing problems, MAKING them was ridiculously simple, even WITH making all my own bias binding!!!

Credits:
1 and 2: Pomadour24

I'd like to thank the Academy...

Okay, so I go for the corn...everybody already knows that. :p So move past it. The important news is My First Award!! Tonya over at PuddinPop gave me the "Prestigious" Arte Y Pico Award (I had to look that up....cause I always think of it as the Pico de Gallo award...you know, chilli and lime.....mmmmmmmm), which is like, you know, totally awesome, cause she is one of those people that makes me wonder when the heck am *I* going to grow up and become an amazing, super together Wonder Woman, too! :D She has 7 kids, and homeschools, AND still manages to out-create me!! I am working hard just trying to do my now *ONE* kid, and I STILL don't have her output! :p

Okay, so, the strings attached mean I have to pick five blogs of my own to pass it on to. Can I just go on the record right here and now that I believe if you have already gotten the award, you should put it on the sidebar, so people know, and don't double up?? Because the blogs I want to pass it on to are all so great, I have a really hard time believing none of them have been given this yet, but I have no idea how far down to search through their archives!!!

Anyway..on to the blogs:

Donna at Purple Kappa...she is just totally creative, and is in the same category in my head as Tonya...super together Wonder Woman. :p She's even teaching herself Japanese, too. Oh, yeah, AND she is unschooling her two kids, which, as a mostly unschooler myself, I can tell you is HARD!!! Did I mention Wonder Woman already??

Sara at Sadie Olive...I like pretty pictures, and she has them by the truckload. I am a sucker for pretty pictures everytime.

Small Hands..I don't know what her name is, and I am not really interested in quilting, which seems to be her main focus, but I have had her bookmarked for a couple of years, way, way before I ever even started regularly following blogs, because for some reason, she just strikes a chord with me, and I can't stay away.

Okay, so she only has four posts...and I only just discovered her this morning...and I don't know her name, either....but based on what I can see so far, I am going to be following her for a loooong time!!! Oh...it's Pintuck.

Nadia (I think), at One Silent Winter. She visited my blog a little while ago, and I was so bowled over by her images, I had to make a whole post about it. She puts into pictures and words, how I feel when I am not happy.

There ya go!! Five awesome blogs!!! I am sure you will find them just as splendiferous as I do!! :p

Glamour in the Home...

Well, I don't have my pics ready of my latest creation, so I'm not showing them yet. But there is other creating going on in my house....relatively. :p

My inlaws are currently staying here, in between houses at the moment, including my sister-in-law, who is taking a professional makeup course. It includes everything from conventional makeup to movie special effects, and everything in between. And she needs guinea pigs fairly regularly. So here is me, being a high fashion model.




The theme is Africa..or Safari...or something. Anyway, I got to be a jaguar. With false eyelashes with little gold dots on them. Lemme tell you, those things look COOL...it makes me totally regret that my life has absolutely ZERO cause to ever use them. :p And don't tell me if it makes me happy, do them anyway. Because I can speak from first hand experience, they seriously get in the way of your vision when you are trying to peel and mash the spuds for dinner.

ETA Scuze the hair...what a MESS!!

I get it now...

So if anyone is wondering, I *did* get all those diapers done, at least the first set, anyway, sent off on time, and everythings hunky dory. Til I have to start the next size. Yeesh. :p And yepp, that's how I sent them. Threads totally unclipped, and hanging everywhere. How lazy is that?? lol

And I get it now. I read a fair amount of sewing forums, blogs, email lists, etc. And a lot of them have to do with sewing for kids, since that has been a main focus for my sewing for about 14 years now. :p So I see a lot of SnS's (that's Sew and Shows to the uninitiated) featuring a diaper, and I would just be like huh..okay, it's a diaper. Yay. But. Having sewn ninety million of the mindnumbingly boring things, I get it. When you finish sewing them, you feel like you deserve a prize for getting through it, or at the very least some acknowledgment!!! So you put it up for the world to see, all 20 diapers, 10 inserts, and 10 pockets, cause that was a LOT OF WORK, DAMMIT!!! :p

I have killed my blog, people..

Bear with me while I figure out what the )(*I$)(*$)(%*u_)(@#$ I did to it. :(


Edit: Okay...I THINK I've got it relatively back to normal...anyone notice anything weird? Funky? Lemme know if you do!! I've looked at so many bizarre variations of my template tonight that I almost didn't recognize the original background color when I reached it!! Unless that's not my normal background?? I can't remember!!! Wahhhh!!!!!

Spare time...

I really need Corine right about here....I picked up a magazine, Maison Francaise, in Borders today, based on the cover...

I loved the bright colors, and all the graphic elements....I may not actually want them in my home, but they were gorgeous on the front, and I was looking forward to more inside! Sadly, I found all the interiors inside to be cold and seriously unwelcoming....I would put it down to being French style, and not mine, but I have seen enough French blogs around now to know French style is NOT all about grim and cold!

Aside from all that, though, it was all in French, and I couldn't understand a word! lol I was very proud of myself for being able to pore over the page and find the right information that let me find the stuff I WAS interested in on the net!! Go, me! :p

I found a couple of lights, that would be a continuation of my lighting post...I only found one picture, though....Marcel Wander's Zeppelin:

Come on...that's cool...who cares if it seriously reminds me of those bizarre performance art dancers stretching and pulling inside one of those fabric cocoon things! :lol:

The other was a vertical crystal chandelier by Herve Van Der Straeten..I couldn't find the picture, though, sadly. :(

Then there were these....umm..I am not saying I want to stay in one...but that's one of the most unique hotel rooms I have ever seen! lol


The other mag I picked up was Vogue Bambini, the Italian Vogue's children's fashion mag...I have got to say, seriously uninspiring. I mean, there were a couple of cute things in there, but nothing that made me lust after, and decide I needed to spend my last few bucks on it to take home for future inspiration. And looking at their website, gotta say, the Barbie line, the Looney Tunes line, and the Powerpuff Girls line, really brought down the tone of the place. Since when do I expect to see The Cartoon Network on an Italian Vogue site??? Oh...and the little Miss Blumarine mega tiny Daisy Dukes?? Just, no.

House Proud..

So, I had my dd's 14th b-day party, a little early cause that's how it worked best, and since my sewing room is my foyer, and all the parents were coming, I thought I should make it a little more presentable...so here it is. The cleanest and tidiest it has been since I first set it up.


It's been rainy and grim for close to 2 weeks, so it looks all grey, but if I held off til the sun came, who knows how bad it will look by that time! :p

I WAS going to show you my rainbow "pincushion", but the grim lighting ruined them, so I'll have to wait for the sun again.

So how many of you out there are actually one of those unnatural crafters, who actually have a clean and organized sewing area?? :D

Mac Attack..

This is for my mom...she is lost to the dark side, and refuses to see the light. :p

Visual learning..

If you read this blog with any frequency, you will pick on the fact that I am totally visual...I need PICTURES, people!! Sometimes that's all I need, too. :p

Keeping that in mind, you can imagine how EXCITED I would have been to find these new patterns by Sandi over at Portabellopixie!



Each pattern will be printed in booklet form, with "24 pages of glorious color". :p Can you imagine how easy it would be to figure out how to make them with that much illustration so visible?? :D


Of course, I have moved beyond needing a pattern to figure them out, but I just think the idea is brilliant, and wish more people would pick it up! I think I might have fainted from excitement way back when if I had stumbled across them way back when! :p

Maybe someone else out there knows my plight, and can empathize, and use this tip?? :D :D

EDIT: Hello, might have helped if I had put in her link the FIRST time! It's fixed now. :D

Relevence..

Someone did a brilliant job with this vid...it's so cool.

2 Days Old....

A better pic of the little sweetie pie, on day 2.




What the heck..another one, too...