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The mixer was a couple of weeks ago on the 18th. We had it at Common Ground, a really nice loungy feel bar in the East Village. I liked it so much, we are having the September mixer there on trivia night on a Wednesday! And Robyn is pregnant! Woohoo!! She’s due December 30th.

For my mix this month I did a tribute to John Hughes as he passed away earlier this month. I hunted for a bunch of quotes from his movies and was really happy with the way the mix turned out. I did so much work on the actual mix that I got lazy to do the cover so here is just a screen shot of the playlist:

I have the mix uploaded so if you are interested in downloading it, leave me a comment and I’ll send you the link and password.

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Here’s an update on the last few things I’ve sewn. I think this should make me up to date on most of my crafts!

This bag is from the Sew What! Bags book. After already made a smaller messenger bag type, I took some liberties with this one but not too many! I knew I wanted to make the strap wider and longer (I ended up making it too long and had to fold it onto itself to shorten it) and added an elastic strap to the bag to hold in magazines (which I ended up cutting off since it was useless!) Because of it’s size (it’s pretty big), it’s a little flimsy and I wish I knew that so I could have used a heavier interfacing for the base of the bag. I think if I can figure out how to add a zipper to the top, I should be ok with it.

Next up is a pencil/marker roll I made for Sienna. I wanted to have this for travel. There are lots of tutorials on the internet but I liked this one because it has a place for a pad. I messed up on the closure of it because the instructions aren’t as detailed as I like but I fixed it ok. I really like this Snoopy fabric.
I really liked the pattern so I made another one for a swap and added a cover to it so the markers wouldn’t fall out.

Then I saw this blog tutorial and thought it was a great idea because it holds a coloring book too. Even though she includes a ton of photos, I did get a little confused and wondered how a standard sized coloring book was going to fit in the slot (it didn’t!) I found a small pad to put in but was perturbed that I didn’t follow my instinct about it. I’m not crazy about the raw edges showing but live and learn!

I made this little pouch for a July birthday swap. My partner loves Mickey Mouse (as well as the color purple) and found this stencil online and printed it out on fabric paper and outlined it with fabric paint.

This pouch was for a Share Your Favorite Craft swap. I have lots of favorite crafts but figured since I’ve been making so many pouches lately, I’d make one for this swap. My partner likes her monogram so I did a reverse applique on this pouch. The first time I’ve done this and I think it’s cute! (She also likes purple!)

This one is also for a swap, Reversable Purse pattern from martha stewart’s site. My partner likes pink and orange.

(I realize now that I should have just reversed the bag to show the other fabric! My brain wasn’t functioning the day I took photos of this!)

And lastly! A project on the to do list! Sienna got this Old Navy dress as a hand me down from either Maia or Eli. I wanted to applique an S on there. I finally did it and used cupcake fabric that I got from a swap. First I did a zig zag stitch around the letter (not very well!) and then a straight stitch for all the missed spots (not that well either!) It’s hard sewing around so many curves!

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For Nico’s 3rd birthday:

Brobee from Yo Gabba Gabba and an N pillow where his name is supposed to glow in the dark.

For Elanor’s first birthday:

An E pillow and my first ever stuffie, the Wee Bunny from Wee Wonderfuls

For some swaps:

A pencil roll for a July birthday swap for a 10 year old.

Embrace your Geekness day as part of the Wacky July Holidays swap. My partner loves bowling so I carved this from my clip art book. She also loves to play cards so make her this pouch for Stay Out of the Sun day:

This was for another birthday swap for Cancers:

She is a Texan living in Chicago so I thought it would be fun to print out these shots I took in Chicago with my holga. I bought her the funky purple fabric and included a card. I also made her a Mexican skull wristlet that I forgot to photograph but she has it on her flickr page!

And these were made just because:

Yves humored me and let me crochet him an apple cozy as he brings apples to work every day.

I’ve been wanting to make this crochet bead bracelet for awhile and finally sat down to do it. Summer is here and in the hot weather, I can’t stand to wear necklaces so wanted to compensate by wearing bracelets. I got the pattern from futuregirl’s blog. Her wrists are smaller than mine as I followed her instructions to the T and it was too short for my wrists. Since I already strung on the beads, the last few rows had to go beadless as you can see from the last photo. I don’t mind.

I also made a pencil roll for Sienna using Snoopy fabric that I haven’t downloaded from my camera and a new messenger bag that I haven’t photographed yet so there is still more to come! I just love making things!

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Here’s an update on my latest crafty creations and swaps!

My first real complicated bag (for me anyway!) A messenger type bag from the New Handmade book. The biggest pain about this bag was just cutting out all the pieces. I just got to be patient and realize it cannot be done in a day!

I was going on a fabric buying binge for a little bit and then vowed not to buy any more fabric until I start to use some of my stash up. So I decided to make gifts for all of Sienna’s friend’s birthdays. Unfortunately for Phoenix, hers was next and I made her this P pillow. It didn’t quite turn out the way I had envisioned it but she seemed to have liked it and Geneva said she slept with it! I also made her a little tote bag to match. I don’t like to handstitch so I try to avoid it and see what happens? I went a little crazy on the inside of the P and then used no fray glue without realizing that it dries a little tacky! So I used glittery fabric glue to cover that up! (I discovered on reading a sewing blog that using the zipper foot to close up gaps is very helpful! Noted!)

This was for a handmade whatever you want swap. My partner is a fan of Lenore and since I have not heard of her, was very intrigued. She’s a fictional character created by Roman Dirge and inspired from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. She is quite interesting and macabre! I haven’t watched all the videos yet.

This was for a Wacky and Unusual June Holidays swap. I procrastinated on this so sent it late but once I got into it, it was fun! My partner likes the Union Jack flag so made these photo magnets with photos from flickr for Flag Day. She likes gargoyles so I altered the gargoyle photo I took from Eastern State for Camera Day. She likes hot cocoa so sent her that for Name your poison day. And then I made her this reversable cotton cuff (from the New Handmade book) for Sewing Machine Day.

Close up of the photo and the cuff. I really liked how the photo turned out!

Wearing the cuff and showing the reverse side.

I put the photo magnets in this altered Sucrets tin.

Here’s a bird stamp I carved for yet another swap!

And a crochet mushroom for the same swap (the top opens but I failed to photograph that!)

And just so you know that not everything I try works out, here is a hat I attempted to make. I had to take measurements of my head and make a template. It was actually pretty easy to do. I know my error tho. Since I wanted to make it easier on myself, I had rounded out one of the measurements I made (and a very important one at that!) and found out that it really messes the whole thing up. I will try it again! Good thing I practiced on old sheets!

(I am smirking underneath the hat)

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The cupcake craze is really in full swing now and Sienna is all into cupcakes too! It must have started when I gave her a cupcake at the Easter Egg Hunt! There are these 2 stuffed cupcakes that came with the kitchen set the 1st floor tenants gave to her and she loves those things! Well, if you know me, you know I love me some cupcakes so she must have inherited from me! On Monday afternoon, I finally made the chocolate cupcakes with banana cream cheese frosting that I had on my list to bake. I didn’t plan this very well because Monday night I attended Cupcake Night at Etsy labs. I’ve been meaning to go to a couple of their recent craft nights but it turned out those nights were rainy and I got lazy. But I was intent on going to cupcake night! Free cupcakes and cupcake crafts! And then after cupcake night, Brenda met me so I could give her her camera back (I was testing it out for her) and she gave me the leftover mini cupcakes that her friend (who is a pastry chef and used to work at Union Cafe!) baked. Oh man. I thought I would never say this but…cupcake overload!! Good thing I signed up for that aerobics class at the Community College!

Filled and ready for the oven!

Frosted (I opted not to add the yellow food coloring) I really need to take more care in photographing food! I looked so much better than this!

I thought these cupcakes were good but they taste best the same day they are baked. I noticed the bottom of the cupcakes got dry as each day passed. Also, the recipe says it should make 12-15 cupcakes, I got 21! (I gave some to Jana and some to Peter!)

My cheesey attempt at coloring. Good thing I can bake the real thing better than I can color the fake thing! HA!

I was delighted to find that they had cupcakes from Ivy bakery in Bay Ridge. A place I attempted to go to twice but were closed both times! They were good! (Now I’m dying to try Robicelli’s cupcakes!)

Cupcakes from One Girl Cookies. I was intrigued with the blue icing. I’m such a sucker. The icing tasted a bit too sugary. I prefer the more creamy type. They had other cupcakes from other places but these were the two I tried.

These were the cupcake crafts I did, they are tags, or going to be tags.

I also got to meet Rachel, the founder of swap-bot and a new transplant to Brooklyn! Such a sweet person!

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 Recent crafts for swaps!

My very first sewn potholder from the book The New Handmade. Front and back.

My 2nd and 3rd attempts at a sewn potholder from the same book. I got bold and tried a cupcake applique and did the cherry using the freehand embroidery needle. I was a little confused with the handle but I improvised and just did it the way I thought it should be. Came out cute, I think! The blue one is the same on the back.

A crochet water bottle holder (my partner loved it!)

Reverse applique coasters for the Coaster swap.

A card I made at a Stampin Up meetup using watercolor crayons. I sent this to Geneva.

For the zippered pouch swap. My partner likes Asian themes.

I had fun doing the watercolor cards so made a couple more for a swap. This is one of them.

And this one isn’t for a swap but for Sienna!

She may not look it but she really liked the apron. I think she wanted to go into the kitchen and start helping daddy. The cheap one that came with the little baking set she got for Christmas ripped and I used that as a template. I had no idea she’d be so into ‘cooking’!

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Tuesday was the April mixer and that was the title of my mix. I made chocolate lollipops to give out in lieu of making a cover for my mix. Sienna sort of helped me with some of them by putting the sticks in. You could see that on Shuggy’s blog. I bought the edible food writer pens to add some color and details but I was very disappointed in how they worked. As in, they didn’t work very well! That’s what I get for being lazy!

This was a mold for covering sandwich cookies. I couldn’t resist the cute animals on them!

It did get a bit messy!

We met up at the Ace bar at first but it was so crowded and I think they were having some event there. So after the first drink, we hightailed it outta there to a more quiet bar down the street. I think it was called Sophia’s. Me, Brenda and Joy met up beforehand to grab some dinner and we intended to go to Porchetta’s, there wasn’t any room (super small) so got indian food instead (which was delicious too!)

I have also uploaded my mix so if you are interested in downloading it, let me know and I can send you the password! Here’s my setlist:
No Dice    Beirut
Feel Flows    Beach Boys
Bag of Hammers    Thao
The Lion & The Teacup    Bishop Allen
The Great Defector    BellX1
Best Imitation Of Myself    Ben Folds
Gay Peace    The 1900s
Spiralling    Keane
Go Full Circle    Dah-Veed
Sister I’m A Poet    Morrissey
Girls & Boys    Blur
The Size Of A Cow    The Wonder Stuff
Crash    The Primitives
Calcutta    Hopewell
Tattva    Kula Shaker

And here’s a funny photo of Brenda and Joy playing the shooting game at the second bar!

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Big surprise, I am still behind on my blog posts. In my quest to keep off the computer and not get sucked into it, my blog gets neglected. So I’m going to try to make this quick post about some recent swaps I’ve done. A fun one that I was excited about was March is Craft month swap. You make a different item each week and then send them off to your partner. Actually, I have not sent mine off yet as my partner seems to be having trouble with swap-bot and her address is incomplete. (I actually have her full address written down but want to wait to hear from her!) I started off making this super cute Noriko purse from Lazy Girl Designs. My first time doing something of this design and I’m so proud of myself for sewing on a curve well! I have sewn on a curve before, or rather, attempted to sew on a curve before and my results were not worth bragging about! So I guess I just need practice!
The inside was a glittery red fabric. Seems kinda plasticy but the label said 100% cotton.

My partner likes owls so I crocheted this owl ami from the Lion Brand site.

My partner also loves pink and purple so I wanted to make something with those colors and found this simple wallet pattern. I got a little confused with the instructions so I don’t even know if it’s correct. (I think the pockets are wrong!)

I had gotten these dangles by accident on an order and was told I could keep them (!) so since I’m not a gold person, I’m glad I could use them for swaps! My partner likes Winnie the pooh so made this pendant.

The second swap I’m writing about is the Colorific Tote swap. You make or buy a colorful tote and fill it with things with the colors red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, brown and black. Some stuff I bought but here are the things I made:

This is a market tote from bunny bum. I love how she set up this tute!

I carved her a stamp using the orange material from PZ Kut.

Her husband is a Marine and she said she is very patriotic so I thought it would be cute to crochet this USA magnet using camouflage yarn.

And here is everything all packaged together. I know she received the package earlier this week but she hasn’t rated me yet so I hope she likes it! I made her a set of coasters using leopard print fabric (a favorite of hers) and I forgot to take a photo of it so you can only see it in the upper left of this photo.

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This week I haven’t much mojo in the creating department (only bits of crocheting) but the last couple of weeks I was doing well! First off, I made another photo pendant for Starr’s birthday, as I mentioned here. This is only the 2nd time I did a double pendant. I hope she will wear it and help test it out for me! I’m still not completely satisfied with the whole thing (process/outcome) but just have to keep at it in order to find a solution.

And here are some swaps. The Zakka Cherry Blossom swap was actually last month or so. I had such trouble with it! Turns out lots of people did and my partner enlarged her pattern! Wish I thought to do that! Mine came out bad and I was too frustrated with it to try again so I  felt bad for my partner and I included lots of other goodies for her. She has yet to rate me on this but I’m not pushing her since I know it was so bad!

Here it is shown closed and the inset photo shows the bottom. And here is what I received!

So much nicer!
Here’s another sewing swap for an Origami bag. While this came out better than the Zakka Cherry Blossom bag, I still wasn’t super happy with it! My partner likes mermaids.

I also made her a business card holder in matching fabric (which I want to make for myself as well but in different fabric!)

She gave me a heart and said she loved them! Whew! Here’s the one I received! Pretty cute!

And I hosted a crochet/knit potholder swap and this is what I sent to my partner. (I should be receiving mine soon!) My partner likes cats. I also included a dark green heart potholder that I did not take a photo of. Her fave color is dark green.

One of the bookmarks I made for a bookmark swap. This one is using crochet thread (you do not even want to see what I got in return! I swear, looks like it took her less than 5 minutes to do! So disappointing! UGH!)

And here are a couple of things I made for the Unbirthday swap #5. (Remember the stuff I got here?) My partner likes knights, Superman and Greenman.

And remember the owl stuffie I spoke about in exchange for doing the carved Geill stamps? Here it is! I am so in awe of these stuffies and have not ventured into doing one yet…

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Just when I was moaning about disappointing swaps on my blog the other day, in comes some real gems in the mail! Woohooo!! If you haven’t figured out already, I LOVE GETTING MAIL (minus bills and junk mail of course)! Sometimes I wonder if I border on being obsessed with mail! When I was in grade school and even high school, I was always sending away for free stuff and writing for pen pals. I even had a book with offers to send away for! (This was pre-internet after all!) Some was junk ( I distinctively remember sending away for a portable little popcorn maker- it was a plastic ball that you put the kernals in and you’re supposed to shake it and I guess that was supposed to pop the popcorn! Needless to say, it didn’t work. I believe it was offered by Jiffy Pop or Orville too) and some was fun stuff like stickers. Then I got into rubber stamping and did a lot of mail art exchanges. And now there is swap-bot!

Anyway, back to my happy mail! First I received my Etsy order from Golden Supply co. They said not to expect orders to ship out until 7-10 days AFTER payment and since I just placed the order on the 20th, wasn’t expecting it so that was a nice surprise. I didn’t take a photo of the order since it’s supplies to make stuff (I’m sure you’ll see it in future posts).

Also in the same mail day, I received my partner’s eraser carving swap! Remember, this was what I sent to my partner! She packaged it so nicely and included some pretty papers and a retro fortune fish. She did a great job carving a monkey with a banana background and she also carved the heart. She read my profile!

And there’s more! In the same batch of mail I also got my swap for the High Stakes Etsy Favorites.  For this swap, you buy something from your partner’s Etsy favorites (mine is here) and my partner picked out the bunny embroidered stuff that was on mine. So cute! It’s a water bottle cozy (I guess I should have taken this off as I don’t even use water bottles anymore but it can fit on my Sigg bottle) and this super cute patch!

And then the ultimate package came on Saturday! A complete surprise and I actually thought it was a different swap than what it was. It turned out to be for the Unbirthday swap #5 from my partner thriftymermaid! Deadline to mail for that is March 17th so it was super early! What a fabulous swapper she is! (She also made me feel a lot better about sending out so many things for my partner in the Unbirthday swap #4). Look at all these goodies!

Let’s see…there are 2 kinds of fabrics, 2 balls each of 2 different cotton yarn, 2 crochet hooks, zippers, 2 different kinds of marking pens for sewing, calligraphy markers, a monkey pencil, 2 pocket size hand moisturizers, handmade earrings and all individually wrapped inside an awesome, colorful, bright quilted bag!!
Here’s a bit of a close up of the earrings but really, this photo doesn’t do it justice!

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