Fantastical, my new buzz word. I saw something similar on-line and knew I had to try it. It’s the closest thing to fantastical come-to-life as I’ll probably ever get. (The butterflies are a bit hokey, but I needed something to cover the wire of the lights wrapped around the curtain rod. I’ll have to work on that little detail, I’m sure I can make it better.)




If you'd like to see it in action, here is a very short video of my bedroom window, lights turning on and off by remote control. (I know, right?!) It is such a beautiful, peaceful image to behold just before I close my eyes for the night. Click.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/iamdawt/5270198087/

I honestly didn't think my sewing machine cover was Craftster-worthy, but my crafty friend, Jinjeet Phoenix, told me that this is the sort of thing that helps encourage other crafters, especially novices like me, to share their own creations, so here goes...

My daughters bought me this Singer sewing machine for my birthday last month (I know, huh?!). It's perfectly simple, just what I imagined getting for myself, but it still has quite a few 'fancy' stitches to choose from.




I cut up the box it came in and used the pieces as a template. I have trouble grasping abstract concepts, so even though it may look like a simple box, believe me, it wasn't simple for me.




I managed to insert some rick-rack along the top and in each of the top seems. Since I'm out of practice I didn't quite capture all of it as I was sewing so some of the rick-rack doesn't come through. It was the first time I ever attempted to do anything like that, so I'm okay with it. Lesson learned.




I lined it with white felt to give it some structure but it still droops a bit because I made it a bit too big for its britches.




Here's a close-up of the fabric. The butterflies are outlined with gold but I couldn't quite capture the sheen. The colors are sort of Moroccan, so scrumptious!



I made it in one sitting, probably would have done a better job if I had taken more time, but I was too excited about making it to stop before it was completed. Next on the agenda are new curtains (the 1970s gold just doesn't cut it) to go with some valances I already have.

Thanks for looking!

This is just too weird. I uploaded some photos of a swap I'm in and it worked just fine. But when I clicked on one of the pics in order to copy the URL, I noticed photos from a user named "kartiana," baby pics and others I don't recognize, and it even had her name instead of mine!

Here's a screen shot of the one that has kartiana's name at the top. The last two items on the right are NOT mine, and if I go further to the right I see baby pics and other stuff that's not mine, so weird:




Now here's one with my user name:




When I first go into "my picture hosting," it looks like everything is fine, but only if I view them by page number. When I click on an individual photo, other people's photos start appearing and are mixed in with mine! Kartiana's isn't the only name and pics that appear, there are others.

What the heck?!

I've been admiring my daughter's resin pieces and all of the other resin work here on Craftster, so I finally took the plunge and gave it a go. Here is my first-time feeble attempt at resin:

I pressed a few of tiny flowers from my front yard a while back and used one of them. I glued the egg-shaped bauble to the clear photo cover that came with an itty-bitty frame. It's sort of difficult to see it, but anyway. A few pieces of glitter accidentally made their way into the resin, so I had to throw on some more so it wouldn't look like so much of an accident. I like how the whole thing looks as though it's floating in air.





I didn't intentionally set out to make a pig, it just sort of evolved. I used a couple of googly eyes and a button. The ears are made from a cloth tab, I bought a box of 'em at Office Depot the other just because they were cheap, so glad I did. It's now a pin.


This was difficult to capture, but it's a silver chain. I glued it onto a metal backing with a hole for a necklace.


A few more I haven't done anything with yet:


The funny thing about these is that they were actually a failure of sorts. I picked up a few sugar and butter molds at the thrift shop for a song and thought I'd see what would happen. They turned out okay, but they wouldn't come out of the mold. Sooooooo, I just cut around those suckers, sanded the edges and wha-la! If I didn't know there was clear plastic over them I wouldn't be able to tell.

I was wondering if anyone could steer me in the direction for a pattern to make this cutie-patooty crocheted elephant purse? It doesn't have to be exact, anything similar would be great!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_1&listing_id=9399234

Modified: I took the picture off so I wouldn't break any copyright laws or whatever, and I replaced it with a link to the seller of this darling creation. (Many thanks to KimberlyPye for finding the link!)

I took a ceramics class at our local junior college because I missed putting my hands in clay. This is one of my favorite things I've ever made, a coil pot I worked on for several weeks.








I found the process quite relaxing, especially applying the rolled coils to the layer beneath it, smoothing out the lumps and bumps, trying to make it look as though it was thrown on the wheel (although a little haphazardly, I admit). Since there were hundreds of items being fired at the school, it was a bit of a circus act to get this pot fired without losing any of the butterflies but it came through just fine. While it was drying, though, someone bumped their piece up against mine and one of the wings broke off. The instructor suggested I use vinegar to repair it and it worked beautifully, even I can't tell which one it is.

I also made 3 itty-bitty slab pots that were fired in a trash can overnight. They were burnished, not glazed, but the burnishing process gave them a shine so they didn't need it. When they came out of the fire they were the neatest 'color' of black and natural clay. I loved, loved, loved the burnishing process, it was calming and didn't take any real thought. I would like to pursue this at home and learn to fire them in the same way. Maybe I'll take pictures of the 2 I have left (I gave one to one of my brothers) and post them as well.

Thanks for looking!