My nephew is due to be born in 3 weeks.  The baby shower was today and I finished the quilt at 3 a.m this morning. Talk about cutting it close.  The theme of the baby room is space so I had a very difficult time finding fabric that wasn't a thousand dollars or too dark.  Finally, I found the fabrics I thought would work well together.  I used a pattern called Illinois Road. Oh, did I mention this was my first quilt ever?  Well, this was my first quilting experience and I feel like it was a success.  My grandma was impresses so that's always a win. 

Here is the top of the quilt:



and with a little of the back showing:



Closer up of the bottom:



Here is the swirl:



My little extra addition:

It's that oh-so patriotic time of year again and I got the itch to make a fitting dessert.  I love making strawberry pies...that's red(ish).  Hey...maybe I can dye the crust blue!  Well, here is the result.  I made the classic buttery crust and dripped in some blue food coloring.  Very messy at first. I saved a little bit of the crust to make some somewhat white stars.  The idea was definitely better than the result.  The crust started out well but in my demon of an oven it decided to fail.

A few of my friends are always using these memes so I did the Me Gusta face as a craft.  I had a bit of trouble mounting it so the edges are a little wonky. 


Me Gusta!





A closer up-

My boyfriend likes to draw so I decided to steal his art and redo his picture on to one of my shirts.  It was more of an act of celebratory recognition rather than robbery. 
Plus, with vday coming up it seemed very fitting to put this up.  I foolishly washed the shirt before putting up these pictures...oh well!



Extreme close up



The full view



The original

For Christmas I decided to be a touch thrifty and craft some of the gifts.  One of my friends just moved into a new place so I thought a perfect gift would be a picture to hang. 
I went to the Salvation Army and bought a frame and took out the picture.  I painted it with some acrylic paint and it dried very quickly.  The old picture was a good base for sticking the magazine pages down. It didn't matter what size each strip of magazine was, I eyeballed the size and taped each piece down. After I trimmed the edges I went to work on the stencil that would go over it.  Traced a picture onto white computer paper and cut it out, I had to use an exacto knife for the small parts. Stick it on top of the magazine strips and then- viola! Done and done.

close up on the image










 

I've been on a big cupcake kick recently.  More specifically, I've been really into making cupcakes and then inserting some deliciousness into the middle.  I want all the calories I can get without all the hassle of eating multiple things.  So, in celebration of fireworks and bbq I made some "somewhat" lighter cupcakes.

I bought 1 box of regular angel food cake, whipped that up and put it into a cupcake pan.  The batter went into my 12 cupcake pan twice and a shade more.  Cooked them till they were gold and beautiful on top then as soon as they cooled, which was almost instant, I dug out a little hole right in the center of the cupcake. 

For the filling, I went even easier.  I bought a squeezable strawberry jam and filled up the holes in the cupcakes. 
The icing was a buttercream recipe.  I used 4 cups of powdered sugar, a stick of room temp butter, a teeny tiny splash of vanilla, and some splashes of heavy whipping cream.  I sadly didn't have milk but somehow had whipping cream so that is why I used it.  I added a bit of water to it because I didn't want the icing to be face blasting rich.

So, there is the red-jam, the white- angle food, and now....the blue! Get yourself some blue sprinkles and go to town.

THESE ARE DELICIOUS!

Seriously, I was going to take a picture of it cut in half but I just started eating and could.not.stop.



Finished Cupcake



Cupcakes with the strawberry jam filling



I put my icing in a baggie and snipped off one corner



And ta-da!

My lovable boyfriend is into pretty much all things nerdy.  After he bought the newest Pokemon game, I decided to make him a little craft.  I found the "Not gonna 'Raichu' a love song" picture from a google image search and traced it off my computer screen.  From that I traced it on some fabric and started my very first needlework project.  It took me a decent amount of time to finish and lots of new calluses.

There is a really good cross-stitch of this done by tracethekat-
http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=344058.0 


The finished product! 






Traced on the fabric




Close up on Raichu




The original

This is my first attempt at a post but believe you me, I have silently creeped the halls of this site for some time.

For Christmas we did a Secret Santa exchange and after my other plan had fell through I decided to make a quilt.  Well, a quilt of sorts.  Basically the day before the party I went to the store and bought a fleece throw blanket and a gaggle of fabric.  Of course I could some how make my friend's face on a blanket....in a day.  I pieced together the face by tracing the picture I wanted, scanning it back into the computer, then printing it out like a big jigsaw puzzle.  After I sewed the whole face together I sewed it down to the blanket. 

The eyes are lacking in the detail department mainly to the fact that I had no time.

Hope you like :}














The original picture