Knot My Best

So, I made my first friendship bracelet since, oh I don't know, 1994?  You guys, this shit is way harder than I remember!  But then, I was never particularly skilled in this area.

Put a little birdhouse in your... tree

I watch more than my share of Sprout, but never on weekends, which is why I've never seen the awesomeness that is the Noodle and Doodle show. (I take it for granted that the show itself is way better than their poorly-designed, flash-happy, slow-loading, user-unfriendly website.)

On Monday I helped my favorite Lilybelle make a Bird Feeder House. I did the cutting and gluing, but the bricks are all her.

Printer-friendly directions are available here, or, see them in their entirety after the jump.

♥ Be Mine ♥

I decided to try making watercolor valentines for something to do. I bought some heart lace scrapbook paper and tacky glue spray, but managed to find everything else at home, including envelopes from my college graduation announcements (ha, knew I hung onto those for a reason).

I've been meaning to do this for weeks now, but, being a procrastinator, delayed until it's too late to snail-mail them. There's always next year...

Knit Jewelry Frame

Another belated Christmas gift for my friend Rachel was a knit jewelry frame and initial hooks. With two shades of blue acrylic paint (Caribbean and Paradise), a metallic gold paint pen, and spray-on acrylic sealer, I transformed these boring white initial hooks with the idea that they'd be perfect for displaying necklaces.

The Quilted Lattice Knit Jewelry Frame pattern is available for free at the Lion Brand Yarn website (after registration). In addition to the knit piece, I needed an 8x10 frame, low loft quilt batting, card stock, fabric, and buttons (optional). It's amazing how difficult it is to find an affordable and attractive 8x10 frame! Thankfully, my search for buttons only took me as far as my Mamaw's sewing box. Yay, upcycling! The key to this project is stapling, which was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I cursed like a sailor.

Success! Here's the frame with some of my jewelry, including my Christmas present from Rachel, a butterfly wing necklace for my collection (worthy of another post). She also got me those squirrel earrings for my birthday. Girl knows what I like.

And for presentation purposes, I used the cartoon effect on some jewelry pictures printed on and cut from card stock.

Hold the Pink!

Owning my 3rd laptop in 10.5 years, last week was the first time that I dropped one and seriously damaged it. Today, I picked up (and paid for it through the nose, of course) my newly renovated pink laptop. It was not pink before the incident, but the cheapest and closest replacement part was pink. I didn't realize exactly how pink until today. Yikes!

And so, I decided to make my own laptop sticker with some Shabby Chic vinyl shelf paper. Ah, much better!

Bearcubs, GRRR!

I'm not a particularly punctual person, whether it be birthdays or lunch dates. It's a bad habit. But I did manage to finish my belated Christmas presents before an entire month transpired! My friend is an assistant for a middle school marching band called the Bearcubs (too cute!) and I told her that I would make her a wrist band for summer band camp. First, since she will be marching in the summer sun, most likely sweating, I wanted to make the band with cotton yarn, which limited my choices of orange color hues, but eh close enough. Secondly, I wanted to spell "BEARCUBS" without making the circumference or width ridiculous. So, here is the final product. It's a little too big for the wrist, but works well on mid forearm. Also, in hindsight, I'd probably add an orange stitch to the top and bottom right of the letter "B." We'll consider this a prototype and work toward perfection. How many months 'til summer?

I also felt like getting crafty with candle holders. Obviously my friend is musical, so I ran with that theme. I used a color palette of pale pink, black, silver, and gold and two web images: a silhouette woman with musical hair and an excerpt from Debussy's "Clair de lune."

And she got me knitting books! Super excited!