Wednesday, May 4, 2011

PoeTree Group Craft OR home decor idea!

http://rhythmofthehome.com/spring-2011/poetree-poetry-children-bookmaking-craft/
This gave me the idea for a tree formed out of verticle cursive handwritten lines of poetry.

For a group kids' project:  cut out tree form from brown butcher's paper, and have kids fill it with their own nature-inspired poetry or their favorite existing poetry.  Create leaves, birds and other embellishments out of appropriate poetry snippets or descriptive words and phrases.

For the wall of a bedroom, or just some art anywhere in your house:  lightly sketch a rough tree outline using pencil, then fill it in (also with light pencil lines) with cursive poetry, writing from bottom to top and top to bottom, possibly in a continuous line.  When satisfied, re-trace all of it using brown paint and a small paintbrush.  A sample-sized container from Lowe's should be plenty, even for a large-scale tree!

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Craftday on Pinterest

I don't have the wherewithall to double-post things, so I'm giving you a link to my new Pinterest board for Crafty and DIY things I'm loving:

http://pinterest.com/peacelovemath/craft-love/

If you haven't heard of Pinterest, you should check it out!  It's a great way to collect things you're digging as you surf the web; you can sort it into categories but still see everything in one place if you want to, which is awesome for discovering common themes among visuals you love, or just the general awesomeness of seeing all your recent interests at once!  I don't normally jump on the bandwagon like this, but Pinterest feels a need I have thought about and wished for often in the past - a place to easily collect links to stuff that sparks my interest, keep them all in one place where they're easy to see and find later, and the icing on the cake is, it's visually attractive too!  I really love it.

You still have to ask for an invite and wait a couple of weeks for it, or if you know me I can invite you.  I invited my mom yesterday, and now she's all signed up and busy collecting images that inspire her for a planned bathroom makeover!

Enjoy, and let me know what you think!

Greencraft

I have a few more pairs of crochet baby shoes in the works, including a finished pair for my coworker's twin girls arriving in May:
The shoes all have a main body color and a secondary color for the trim/inside, so it made me super happy to have the perfect opportunity to make two inverse pairs for the twins - one is purple with pink trim, and the other is pink with purple trim!

My scarf/shrug has been put on hold as I work on another few pairs of shoes plus a soft rattle toy that is going to be super cool for grabby baby hands.  More on that in a couple of weeks.

My other biggest craft-related triumph of late is the pot hangers I made last night!  I kept seeing them for sale in garden shops and thinking, I could make that!  So I took a close look at how they were knotted, then used some clothesline we already have, and made my own!  They were quite easy, and I felt so elated when I finished, because I saw something I liked in a store, and made a just-as-good-if-not-better version for myself using nothing but materials I already owned, so it cost me $0.00!  [pics of those coming soon, it was too dark out when I finished last night.]

All my other creative energy of late has been going into garden planning, which will turn into a whole lot of garden DOing as soon as it's not pouring down rain any time I'm at home when it's light outside!

Thursday, March 24, 2011

New start!

Beginning with the previous post, I am going to start posting both my personal craft projects and links to projects I want to tackle on this blog! I still haven't managed to make anything to post for sale on my Etsy store, so hopefully this will be a stepping stone to that!

Below I posted a great list of crochet flower patterns that I can't wait to try!

I'm also currently working on my own variation of this scarf pattern from Lion Brand, which I'm making with a dusty purple mercerized worsted weight cotton. I'm using that pattern but making a large rectangular scarf (instead of the crescent-shaped shawl the pattern makes), and I plan to finish it off with a knitted-on I-cord and tiny buttons all around the edge, which will be decorative, but also let me button it into a shrug or a poncho! Should be pretty cool.

This is the first project I've started for myself in quite a long time, and it's going to take a while to finish, so I'm trying really hard to do at least a little bit every day, because it would be nice to finish while it's still spring. But I made it cotton so it will be fair game to wear on a cool Summer evening as well. And won't it look nice with one of those crochet flowers pinned to it?

I also made 2 red potholders for Hannah last week, to match her other kitchen items she got to furnish her new apartment!

Here's all my knit and crochet pictures on facebook!

Crochet Flowers!

Here's a list of great crochet flower patterns! I'll be making some cute embellishments for upcoming gifts, hopefully for Easter baskets!


http://www.skiptomylou.org/2011/02/15/10-beautiful-ways-to-crochet-a-flower/