Savor It

Blending Baseball and Blankets

 

The family at the Suns game (notice my vintage Suns jersey)
Me wearing it brought Jared much happiness, but it was hot and scratchy!

You may not know this but my husband LOVES BASEBALL WITH A PASSION. (Well, actually you may if you've been reading along for a while).   He is not crazy fanatical (i.e., making ME crazy) but he loves to go to games, collect memorabilia, tour around the country visiting minor league stadiums, and passing the passion on to Jonah.  We recently went to a Hagerstown Suns game (a class A affiliate of the Washington Nationals an hour and a half north of us) so Jonah could experience the thrill of our great American pastime.  In fact, Jared returned from his annual boy's baseball weekend on Sunday, where he went to Philly, Trenton, NJ and Pittsburgh to see games with 2 good friends.  

So needless to say, my love of baseball is not quite as strong.  Two games a season is enough for me to get the wonderful flavor of it all, but after that, well...I'm a bit bored.  It's not usually very action packed, I have no idea what's going on, it's hot and usually there are bugs.  ;) But because I love my boys, I have to find a way to love the game. 

Enter my sewing machine (which you know I have been having lots of fun with).  I made this adorable blanket for Jonah to experiment with my sewing skills.  The blanket (about 3 feet by 3 1/2 feet) was a kit I purchased from A.C. Moore (time constraint a factor when picking out fabric, etc.) so really all I had to do was cut the fabric and sew.  It came together in no time, and the big news is is that it is still stitched together!! I have renewed hope in my shoddy sewing skills and can't wait to make more STUFF.  Did Jonah need another blanket...absolutely not.  But if it makes me like baseball just a bit more...then it's worth it. Over the years, I see scrapbook pages about baseball games, crocheted baseball bat cozies, and other crazy baseball-related crafts.

  

My baseball quilt

And my own little baseball superhero found a very creative way to use his new blanket...

 

Postcards from the Edge (of my sewing machine, that is).

I have been getting my crafty goodness on lately and have been working on some very fun projects. The sad news is that to find time to create means less time to blog, but slowly I'll find a balance.  I'm finally able to share these fabric postcards I created. My sister and family received this goodie recently in the mail. Yep, you read that right.  I sent a FABRIC postcard through the MAIL.  Totally super cool.

The front (with address smudged out to eliminate unwanted houseguests)

 The back

This project was inspired by my crafting guru, Donna Downey.  She wrote a fabulous, drool-worthy book called Fabric Scrapbooking (Yes, It's a Scrapbook!).  If you at all like fabric and cherishing memories, you must buy this book.  I am not really a sewer, BUT I LONG TO BE ONE, and I thought this was a perfect small project to cut my teeth on.  I used 4" x 6" Heather Bailey fabric scraps (and a few scraps for appliques) and then small wallet-sized photos.  The "writing" is stamped on muslin with StazOn Ink.  This is ink that is permanent and great for all types of materials, including fabric.  There is special fabric ink, but I didn't have any in the house.  I used my Mom's 1970's sewing machine (thanks, Mom!) to sew some irregular (!) decorative stitches around the photos and the muslin, as well as the edges.  Fusible interfacing is placed between the two large pieces of fabric to give it some stiffness and weight.  To make it mail-ready, the piece must be 4" x 6" and no thicker than 1/8 of an inch.  I think the postal lady thought I was crazy when I went to send it (and asked it to be hand-canceled) but it got there! Woo-hoo!

Here's another one I did for my Mom and Dad.  No mail this time, because I saw my Mom in person first, but the concept is the same.  

The front

 

The back

I took this little baby with me on our trip to NYC and hand stitched around the photo, the muslin and the xo's on the felt heart in the car.  So happy to have a craft project to take on the go that is not messy and can easily be started, paused, then resumed.  I can't wait to make a few more of these babies!  I love the idea that you can use scraps, recycled bits of ephemera, notions, old photos, etc.  It's craft recycling at it's best. Let me know if you have any questions about this project and I'll do my best to answer them!  I encourage you to make one for yourself--they are so easy and incredibly satisfying!

Happy Father's Day.

We had a lovely Father's Day around these parts and I made Jared a special card that I wanted to share. 

Believe it or not, this card started out blue.  I adhered green card stock to the front, after capturing Jonah's hand prints in orange acrylic craft paint (he immediately went into the bathtub for clean-up). :) I sewed two sides of the card just for fun and attached some embellishments and a tag.  I found a kids writing font and downloaded it to my computer to create the adorable labeling.

Here's what the inside top looks like:

I adhered card stock over the top half of the inside, rounded the edges of the wallet sized photos and glued it down, added embellishments and wrote a border around the photo.  The "da-da" is plain chipboard that I painted orange (same color as the hand prints) and then distressed a bit with brown ink. 

Here's the inside bottom of the card:



Pretty much the same idea as above as far as "techniques". 

And finally, the back:

I painted the card orange, rounded the corners of some green card stock (a scrap!) and adhered it, added a stamp and an embellishment with a brad, and viola! the card was finished. 

I'm so excited Jared has this keepsake that he can now take to his office to display.  I got this done just under the wire, so I'm just pretty pleased I was able to make something at all.  Maybe next year it will get to be even more elaborate....

Happy Father's Day, honey. You are the best and we love you lots and lots! XO.

Still So Very Inspired

It's been 19 days since Inspired, and I am still so very enthused about all things artsy and craftsy.  The ideas floating through my head are in over-drive and I think I have been having dreams about Donna Downey.  Creepy, but true. 

I thought I would share some of the projects that I created during this Art Fest of Epic Proportions.  I'm digging up some inner courage to share, in the hopes that you, too, will be Inspired to get your creativity on soon.  The projects that I am sharing are, I would say either done, or 90% done, and the others..well, still in the works.  But if I don't share now, it may be 2012 before I get around to it.  So without further ado, here we go with the show and tell--pull up a chair:

First, Jennifer Stewart's class.  Loved this project with all its layered goodness, memory art madness and most importantly, the glitter!! I was in heaven, since glitter was  banned from our home in 2005 by the husband (due to an unfortunate New Year's Eve disaster). The project is a stretched canvas with fabric, and then lots of multi-media elements, like beeswax, sewing, vintage jewelry, etc.

This is a little chipboard book and when you open it, it looks like this:

Next up is Heather Bailey's Flutterby Flip-book. The photos are of Jonah and his cousin, Mina.  This is undoubtedly girly, so I think I'm going to fill the rest of it with photos of the nieces. 

Then comes Jennifer Grant's "Picasso Who?" class.  This was actually the last workshop I took and I COMPLETELY veered off course.  We were actually supposed to create a photo canvas, but I just wanted to have fun playing with the paints and gluing things down.  Going against the "rules" is so unlike me that I was giddy with the rebellion of it all.  :)  No one else even noticed though, because that's what Inspired is all about.  Doing your own thing, finding your own voice and shaping every project to work the way you want it to. 

Next is a wall hanging created in Susan Edmonson's class.  This class both terrified and excited me because I do not sew, but I've always wanted to truly learn and excel at it.  Although the class was truly free-form, I loved it because there were no rules, no measuring, and no cutting--just tearing of fabric! And thanks to the incredibly sweet Aimee, I was able to sew most of it in the class. I'm in the process of finishing the edges of the piece as we speak and might add a few more layers of embellishment, but we'll see. 

And this was from Paulette Insall's class on expressive mixed-media painting.  Well, I'm not sure how expressive she is, but at least she looks like a person, right? She needs some more work on the face and hair, but for now, I'm okay with her just hanging out like this.

And finally, Carol Wingert's class where we made a travel journey folio.  We actually made this book and then created all the embellishments and used lots of different techniques.  Waiting for my cropadile in the mail so I can punch holes in the tags and add ribbons, the last remaining finishing touches.  Loved this class too and am excited about trying to replicate in the future! 

 

Overall, I had an AMAZING time at Inspired and I am really revved up to get messy and dirty and create something everyday.  It's been a challenge, but I am much happier when I am able to do an act of self-expression (even if it's a tiny one) every day. 

Wishing you a VERY creative weekend!

 

Angels & Demons.

First order of business:  I had a GREAT time at Claudine Hellmuth's Collage Discovery Workshop on Saturday.  It was great fun to learn new collaging techniques and just to set aside some uninterrupted time to just play and get messy.  It was also great to hang with my friend Cameron, who I hope to be spending more time with at Inspired (just 2.5 weeks away!).  Thanks for giving me some much needed time away, Jared!

I wasn't really expecting to come out of the workshop with anything, but I was hoping that I would!  Here's some pictures of a small collage I created (6x6) on an artist panel (a wood board essentially that is coated for use with oils or acrylics).  I used the peeled paper and peeling paint techniques that Claudine taught us.  It was a bit of a collaborative effort, as fellow table mates provided some background images, suggested ideas, and gave feedback.  I am so excited by this little piece, and thrilled to be able to use my friend Sally's photo of Jonah (in angel wings no less!). 

So it's quite interesting that Jonah looks so sweet and angelic here.  Which brings me to my next order of business--our week last week.  It's not like Jonah was purposefully being a demon, but it was one HELL of a week.  I think know we are still recovering.  Jonah was getting his second tooth on the bottom, which finally popped through on Wednesday.  There was very little sleep to be had beginning on Monday night, and no real napping to speak of.  And when he was up, he was clingy, fussy and pretty miserable to be around.  Then, when I thought we were in the clear, he had his one year check up on Thursday, and he got SHOTS.  Which led to 4 days of fever and a full body rash (all quite normal, so they say).  So there was STILL no sleep.  For any of us.  We were are all a wreck. 

Quite honestly, I don't know what's up with water boarding and electric shock and all that torture of war prisoner nonsense.  JUST DON'T LET THEM SLEEP.  They will tell you anything you want to know.  It is pure and utter torture to be denied this basic human need.  Anyway, I *think* we are getting back on track, since Jonah slept the whole night through on Monday, woke up briefly around 6 am, only to go back to sleep and sleep in until 9 am!! Then I forced the naps yesterday--YOU WILL SLEEP DANGGIT!--and am doing the same method today.  So hopefully this will be a week of catch up and we will all be more pleasant people to be around.  And Jonah will get to use the smile that lights up an entire room much more often than the horrible scowl and wail that so often empties it completely. 

The Art of Finishing

I am finally done my art journal pages.  I think I went a little too beyond what I was supposed to do for the swap (which is why it took me so long), but I had fun doing it. For a little background, I participated in a swap for the upcoming event Inspired and the rules were to create an art journal page based on your "one word" for the year that was defining your outlook.  If you remember, my one word was baby steps.  We had to leave space for others to share their thoughts about our word (using various forms of media) and in the end, we will all end up with a bound art journal of approximately 30 pages.  I'm very excited to see the end project. 

Here are some pics of my finished pages:

This is the front.  I used acrylics to paint the background, created the white circles using a plastic cup, made the envelopes by hand (crazy, I know!) and then made the little tags that say "step 1". 

Close up of my word

Close up of the envelope. You open it to find a a little inspiration inside:

The back page.  Painted the background yellow.  Used contrasting orange paint and the end of a metal paintbrush to create the circles.

Drew an abstract dandelion in the corner with baby steps as the petals, and the quote "let the winds of fate blow you to your final destination." 

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out, but most importantly I am thrilled to be able to bust past my fear of a white piece of paper and just put something out there in the name of art.  Already, I'm incredibly inspired to keep going and keep creating.  I'm attending a workshop on Saturday with the talented Claudine Hellmuth and am so excited to get my hands messy in collage and learn some exciting techniques.  If I end up with anything reasonable, I'll share it here! Wishing you a wonderfully creative weekend!   

L'Amour Legwarmers

I love me some legwarmers.  As a yoga teacher teaching in winter, they are essential.  They have truly changed my outlook on the cold weather (which I hate).  Okay, maybe not changed fully (as I still hate it) but perhaps just brightened it.  Legwarmers make the winter so much more tolerable, especially when you wear them around the clock.  What I love even more than legwarmers is creativity and craftiness, so yesterday was a good day when I got to combine all 3 of those loves to create these:

 

My husband, whom I also love, shrunk this sweater that my sweet sister gave to me.   It's sweater shrinking #3, but hey..who's counting? So instead of sending it to my 8 and 6 1/2 year old nieces (like the others), I decided to re-purpose it into legwarmers and a sweater purse.  The tutorial for the purse can be found here.  I'm still working on completing the purse, but the legwarmers, made from the sweater sleeves, are complete and took no time at all!

Let me just say, I do not sew.  My skills are based on 7th grade home ec, a few lessons from Girl Scouts, and my mom. I don't own a sewing machine (although I REALLY want one and I want to learn how to use it for REAL).  Anyway, even a newbie with no skills can do this project.  I just used a whip stitch (I think?) to give it a real home-made vibe (since ahem, it is..).  Chances are, it might completely unravel after 2 wears, but for today, I am proud of my leg warmers.  The Pippi Longstocking style makes me smile. 

Here's a pic of the purse in progress.  Still needs to be sewn, but I may actually use my Mom's sewing machine for this one (so it will actually stay sewn and so I can reinforce the handles).

If you decide to embark on this project, leave a comment so I can check out your work/blog!  Or leave a comment if you have other ideas of what to do with shrunken sweaters.  I have a feeling that shrunken sweater #4 may be in our future soon.....

Oh, and if you adore legwarmers like me, check out the Legwarmer Flickr Pool for some fun photog!

 

The Wonder of the Season

This is our holiday card this year.  Of which, my lovely husband gets all the credit (he is the self-proclaimed Art Director of the project).  If it weren't for him, we wouldn't even have holiday cards because I wasn't going to attempt the process. However, as most things go around here, he proposed it, I usurped it, and then micro-managed it. :) I call it "making it better."  He calls it "control-freak"...go figure.  We printed out the photo, attached it to blue card stock with a message on the back that said "Enjoy the wonder of the season."  We stamped the front of the photo with a cute snowflake design with irradescendt platinum ink.  Overall, they turned out lovely and we are thinking that we might want to get Jonah (who is so darn CUTE!) into baby modeling to help us cover the mind-boggling expenses of child-rearing. 

Here's the back story on this photo and the debut of Jonah's modeling career.  My friend Sally, who is a WONDERFUL photographer, contacted a woman on Etsy to see if she could use her handmade crocheted hats for some photo shoots.  The woman happened to be in the market for a photographer (she needed some cute shots to post on her Etsy site to help her sell her wares).  So Sally called me up with the request to use Jonah for the shoot.  Never shy about posing my baby in cute things and photographing him for posterity, I jumped at the chance.  The result can be found for the whole world to see here.  At the time of this post, it looks like there is just one left (although I am sure she will make more). Perhaps I should tell her that if they buy the hat we will throw in the baby for free? Only on his bad days, of course. We like to keep him when he is in good spirits.

(By the way, this crafter makes ADORABLE things so check out her site at warmandfuzzybaby and snatch up a hat or booties for the little ones in your life).  

Jonah was quite the professional at the shoot and, I swear, came by the expression you see above totally naturally.  He is one expressive little dude at the moment, if you catch him in the right mood.  By the way, if you live in the Metro DC area and would like wonderful photos, contact Sally at sally(at)mannixphotography(dot)com. 

This Friday, Jonah will be nine months old!  Hard to believe how fast it is all going.  Hope you have a wonderful Christmakwanzukah, spending time with family and friends and taking a moment to savor all the delights of the season before they slip away. 

A Year Ago Today...

I found out I was pregnant with Jonah.  After trying for a year, Jared and I were ecstatic!  Just reminiscing on that and thinking man, how time flies.  It seems to be going faster and faster, but I am determined to continue to find moments to savor and to really try to tune into the present before it passes us by.  (This is hard to do with sleep deprivation, but dang-it, I'm trying!)

This past Friday was Jared's last half-day at work (bye bye summer! hello fall!) and we enjoyed it by going to visit the 'rents (my mom and dad) in Frederick.  Every time we go to downtown Frederick and explore the boutiques and restaurants, I always have this longing to live in DC and Frederick at the same time.  There is a great pull in my soul to combine the culture, the people, the vibrancy of DC with the quaint, the original, the small-town home-y-ness of Frederick.  Thankfully DC and Frederick are just 50 miles away, and that seems to be the only way to combine the best of both worlds for now.  Although Jared keeps suggesting a "weekend home" in Frederick. I just tell him that is odd. 

Anyway, we visited this lovely (and my favorite) store, The Muse, which holds all kinds of wondrous arts and crafts made by locals and not-so-locals.  I was immediately drawn into the store by the window display featuring works by Anahata Katkin, an artist's work I drool over.  So of course, I had to buy something.  This:  

The text on the large piece says "Love Who You Are."  Couldn't we all be reminded to that on a daily basis? The other two quotes have to do with creativity, which as you know, I am trying to invite more of into my life. I think this display will be a great addition to the guest room/yoga room/arts and crafts room/ironing room. :) 

Other highlights from the weekend include the news that Jonah (according to the developmental therapists sent by DC) does not have developmental delays (yay!!) and he is right on course for a 4 month old (which is his adjusted age).  So as long as we keep his preemie status in mind, we will be just fine.  While the therapists were here, Jonah was "talking" up a storm, so the speech therapist thinks he is just fine in that area.  (Is it any wonder he is vocal already, based on who is parents are? hehe..)

So we are just hanging out today, trying to get a whole heck of a lot accomplished and a great start to our week. Good luck to all of those who return to school today..especially the teachers! 

Special Delivery

So here she is.  My very own specially-made-just-for-me commissioned Tiny Art Lady.  She arrived in the mail yesterday and brought a huge smile to my face.  I couldn't stop looking at her.  So just what is a Tiny Art Lady, you ask? Well, they are small pieces of original mixed-media artwork created by probably the coolest woman on the planet*, Kal Barteski, that speak to the insecurities, the fears, the journeys and the triumphs of so many women. Her pieces are real, they are relate-able and they remind us of the empowerment and beauty that we all have inside. 

This little lady is all mine, and was based on an email that I sent to Kal shortly after giving birth to Jonah (about 8 weeks or so). That was a crazy time of transition for me and for my body, and I was feeling lost in my own identity.  I wanted to give myself a unique "birth" day present and I thought this art would be the perfect thing! When I look at it, it will always remind me of my inner radiance (yes, I said it!) and of the confidence that I can muster to pave my own way. 

Many of you know that I am a blog stalker--meaning that for over 2 years, I have religiously read the blogs of many inspiring women who have chosen to set their own career path and who find a way to balance it all with family--some with new babies, some with 5 children, some with babies on the way.  (You can check many of them out under the Visual Inspiration section of the blog. They are like eye-candy for the heart).  Well, Kal is one of these amazing women and she espouses a "bullet-proof positive attitude".  Along with her artwork, she sent a postcard that talks about her idea of what this means:

"Being bulletproof is about being fearless.  It's about creating without giving a rip about what anybody else thinks.  It's NOT about comparing or measuring or keeping score.  It's about never giving in to the negative-nancy-pants and the dream-squashers that will crush your spirit if you let them.  A Bulletproof Positive Attitude means keeping your eyes forward, your head high and carving a serious path of your own.  Your own way.  When it comes to art: being bulletproof is the difference between making stuff and being stagnant.  In life, being bulletproof is about rocking all night long--because this is the only chance you've got."

Admit it, you're now going to be a blog stalker too, aren't you?

Wishing you a bullet-proof day filled with inspiration. 

*I have never met Kal, but I would imagine she is incredibly cool.  After reading someone's blog for so long, you have a slightly-warped sense that you are friends with them and that if you just met them, you know they would want to be friends with you too. :)  The only problem with that is that they have thousands of fans and they can't be best friends with all of them.  Bummer.