Happy Valentine's Day - Round Up

Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine's cards and magnets.

Chocolate box jewelry boxes.

Chocolate box shadow boxes.

Valentine's Cards

Love bugs & rings

Valentine's box and matchbook notebooks

Fabric postcards and crochet envelopes.

Candy cane wreath and plastic bag wreath.

Heart garland wreath

Plastic jug and felt heart ornaments and glue ornaments.

Make-up bags

Plastic ring ornaments

Medical alert bracelet & crochet pull tab bracelet

Crochet pull tab heart necklace

Egg carton ladybugs & pom pom creatures

Toilet paper tube garland

Crochet love puppy & knitted love ninja sackboy with pull tab heart

Be Mine dishcloths

Hot pad & dishcloths

Hot pad & small pillow

Hot pad

Heart ornaments

Fused plastic bag

Felt and quilted catnip bags.

Heart quilt block

Paper pieced hearts

Log cabin heart

Swap gifts to spookycuddles.

Swap gifts to delights.

Swap gifts from spookycuddles.

Swap package from delights.

Spinning card from minervas-hand.

Fabric postcard and door hanger from peace2knit.

Making Valentine's

Theres nothing like making last minute Valentine's.  O.K., so maybe not so last minute since all the materials used were already prepared.

Here are the outside of the cards that I made for my sons.  I used card stock, corrugated cardboard, chenille stem, recycled food boxes, stickers, and google eyes to make them.  Some of these materials were used on decorating the inside of the cards.

I've been decorating the heart toilet paper tube that spookycuddles sent me.  I also added a magnet to the back of it.  The starfish and the words came from a Valentine's Day card.  

This cute little heart is the back of a green tea box.  The center heart was made by my youngest son's fingerprints.

If you look at the first picture you will see a red wooden bird at the bottom.  I glued a magnet to the back of it.  I also cut out some foam circles and glued two egg carton ladybugs to them.  I plan on gluing a magnet to those as well.

Chocolate Box Upcycle

Friday was a big Valentine's card day for my mail box.  I received this fabric postcard and door hanger from Australia from peace2knit.  She embroidered on top of the card as well.

I also received this circular card from minervas-hand.  As you turn the card it spells out my name with a word that represents that letter and me.  

I also got this beautiful card from my mom.  Friday night I taped a new episode (episode 34) of my local access t.v. show "Its Easy Being Green."  On the show I made this jewelry box out of the card that my mom gave me and an empty box of chocolates.

I made sure to pick a box of chocolates that had a plastic separator inside of it.  This will allow me to keep my necklaces and earrings separate / untangled.

The one on the left is the one that I made last year.  You can see the tutorial on how to make it here.

Now I have one jewelry box for necklaces and one for earrings.

Also for the t.v. show I wanted to show one way that you can upcycle the heart shaped chocolate boxes.

Inside of the small one I cut out heart shapes from 2 pictures of my kids and glued them in.  I plan on glueing a picture hanger on the back of them.  They have become little shadow boxes.  The baby picture is from my 2nd son's birth announcement.  I also cut out a heart from the side with his name, date of birth, and weight.  With the next empty box I will glue that in and add a baby keepsake to it as well.  With the slightly larger box, I glued the front and inside of a card that one of my sons received from his grandparents on Friday.  I plan on keeping buttons inside of that box.  Since high school I have been using empty chocolate boxes for craft storage.

Pinwheel Blocks

I turned in my 3rd pinwheel block at my local quilt shop today.  You can see it on display in the above picture. It is the black, white, and green one that is in the 4th row, 2nd from the left.  I wanted to show the other pinwheel blocks that people had made as well.

When I got home, I made two more of the 3rd pinwheel block.  I want to make 5 of each block.  One will go into one quilt and the other 4 will go into another quilt.  I went ahead and pieced 4 of the 3rd block together.  You can see that a pinwheel forms in the center of the 4 joined blocks.

I also pieced together 4 of the first block.  It also has a pinwheel in the center of the 4 joined blocks.

I finished sewing 7 reverse applique blocks for a quilt for my quilt guild.  I also corrected 6 blocks that two other people had made.  I counted two of those blocks as 1 finished item (part of my 365 items in 2011 goal), even though I had worked on 80% of those blocks myself (cutting the fabric, making the template, and then correcting the sewing by sewing them again).

This has been a big quilt day for me.  All of my errands revolved around quilting, and I made a total of 9 quilt blocks, corrected 6 blocks, and pieced together 8 blocks.  I did not count the pieced together finished pinwheel blocks as part of my 365 goal.  I'll count the finished quilt top as 1 item.  It looks like I might reach that 365 item goal by April.  I will still keep track of how many items I make this year though.

I'm looking forward to making the 4th pinwheel blocks.  I already started cutting the fabric for them tonight.

January's Pinwheel Block

I just finished making 3 pinwheel blocks.  This is the 3rd pinwheel block in the pinwheel block of the month through my local quilt shop.  I am going to turn it in tomorrow and get the 4th block pattern.  I'll also pick up my 2nd block while I'm there.  The quilt shop has everybody's blocks on display so that we can see all the different color combinations that people used.  

Here is what two of the blocks would look like if they were sewn together.

What have I been up to:
- I went to the Historic District Commission meeting last night to get sign approval for the Earth Fair signs this year.
- I also went to a quilt guild board meeting last night.
- Last week was my town's Recycling Committee meeting.  I'm a board member, and I needed to give a progress report on the Earth Fair.
- I've also been dealing with putting the raffle quilt for my quilt guild together.  I am only making certain parts myself, and I have been delegating the other parts.  A good chunk of the next two days will be on buying and delivering different parts of the quilt to people.
- I also need to prepare for the taping of my t.v. show on Friday.
- Today I finally moved things around in my dinning room so that I have a permanent place for my sewing machine.
- As far as other projects go, I have been knitting a cabled cowl.  I'm a little burnt out on making a lot of quick projects, so it is really nice to be working on one project for a while.  Plus I just love working with the fisherman's wool.