Crafting

It's amazing how much time there is in a day when you're only working part time from home. I am on the search for a job, and though I've had a couple of bites, nothing has turned up so far. So my day to day life has consisted of pretty much the same routine: search for a job in the morning when I'm feeling fresh and inspired, write a couple life stories, then spend my afternoon crafting crafting crafting. And fortunately, I now have a sweet little room to do my crafting in. It's a simple space, but it has a window where I can see the sun and a door so I can close out the mess of a project half finished when I'm done for the day. Here's some photos of my space:

This first one doesn't look like much, but it's actually spectacular. When we first moved in, the owners of the suite left a couple of pieces of furniture there--the beloved futon, a little stand for our monster tv, and a wardrobe. Yup, a wardrobe. When we first moved in and I saw it standing there proudly (yet largely) in our second bedroom, my first thought was hmmm.....can we get rid of this somehow? But then Jared did something spectacular--he put my scrapbook box in there and said, "Do you want to make this your craft closet?" And I said, "Yes please." And it is now one of my favorite features of our apartment, one that I will probably mourn leaving behind someday. It has little pull out shelves, so I have special spaces for my fabric, my paper, my paint and glues. Before, I was proud of my little blue plastic craft box, that each time I needed something I would dig through and mess up so that when I put it away the lid wouldn't quite close. But now, everything is handy and organized, and I can actually locate stuff quickly right when I want it. You know, the praise for this little unit wasn't supposed to be this lengthy...but I love it :)

We brought a drafting table with us from Kalamazoo, and it is awesome as a sewing table. For some reason, I like to be up high when I sew, and I like to stand when I cut things. The table can be lowered or raised, so it works perfect. And in the background of this picture, you can see my awesome black board. We bought some blackboard paint a while back, and I used it to convert the back of a white board into my own personal crafting plan area. So Jared uses the front for YL Club planning, I use the back for planning out pillows and valentines and other goodies :)

 

And this little beauty is my button box, a gift from my grandmother. It may not look that useful at first, but this little guy is just bursting with potential and creative inspiration. Every girl should own a button box. I think I'll make a point of collecting buttons from antique stores so that my nieces and someday daughters and granddaughters can have their own collection of cool buttons.

So that's my work space! And now I'll show you what I've actually been working on. 

In this first one, I'm proud to display the "fruits" of my labor. hehehehe. But really....

 

I found a pattern for these felt fruits at Bugga Bugs heart-felt fun shop on Etsy, and worked on making two sets of fruits for my nieces' Christmas gifts. It took me from October to December, but it was a really fun project, perfect for taking my mind off moving!  

The pattern is really cool, the apples and oranges both open up and have removable slices. 

 And for the basket, I scoured the $1 area at Target and found some cardboard Christmas baskets. After that I just used some glue and felt and ended up with a little fruit basket. Done!

This past week, I've been doing some home decorating, and sewed up some throw pillows for our living room. I wanted it to have a sort of pinwheel look, and but also be kind of free, so it took a bit of planning. Fortunately squares are easy to work with.

It took one night to come up with this pattern design

And another night to cut out all the little pieces. I hate cutting out fabric, it is by far my least favorite part of sewing, but fortunately I did all this cutting out on a Monday night when some of my favorite shows were on. It was still tedious, but at least I was well entertained.

 

And these are the final products!  

And Jared and I finally got around to printing out pictures for our living room walls. We painted up the frames and now they are up and finished.

And finally, possibly my favorite part of the week was Valentines making on Sunday!

While most of the world spent their Sunday evening watching the Superbowl, I spent mine surrounded by colorful paper, glue and doilies. It is a Scramlin Family tradition to make homemade Valentines every year, and this year was no exception for me.
Happy February everyone!