Guess who got a new camera

The Dear Sweet Husband came home with a brand new digital SLR camera the other day - our first proper, grown up camera. Normally, I'd be a wee bit miffed that he spent that much coin without properly discussing it with me (and by "properly discussing" I mean, labouring over the options for at least six weeks). However, I simply can't complain about having this wonderful new toy to play with. I've been snap happy all weekend taking pics of TDSH, Abner and our lovely garden. I've had blog and shop projects piling up to photograph for weeks, now I'm glad I waited. Everything looks so much better with this camera!

Also, for those of you who are digging out from their first snowfalls back in Canada, these pictures are payback for all the taunting I got back in May when it snowed here in Dunedin.

Fun new toy: Palette builder

I have yet to figure out exactly how this fun new toy will be of use to my life, but, honestly, how cool is the palette builder tool from Play Crafts?

Simply upload a picture, click a button and almost instantly, you have a selection of colours pulled out to match the image. Not enough colours? Click another button to add a few more. Not happy with the pixels being sampled for the palette? Just click your mouse and move them to a more pleasing colour.

I suppose it might be really handy if you were looking to make a quilt to match a picture. Just use the tool, print out the palette and take it along to the fabric store with you. Or, combine the palette builder with the Quilt Assistant from Cosman to make your picture into an actual quilt. Yeah, Quilt Assistant is another online tool I stumbled upon recently (when I should have been applying for jobs, ahem). Download the program, upload your picture and BAM...you've got yourself a block designed on your image. You just have to print out the templates and get cutting. How awesome is that?!

Alas, I am not into paper piecing (yet) and I have no need to match my fabrics to my artwork, so the palette builder will remain just a fun little toy for me for now. I've been wasting plenty of time playing around with some of my favourite pictures from the past while. Here are a couple of my faves:

Finger knitting

What's a crafty mama to do when she finds her child home from school with no activities planned (Like I did during last week's snow day)?! Teach your kid to finger knit, of course!

We found this great tutorial over at Lines Across and it had Abner busy for at least an hour. I'd never done finger knitting myself, but the tutorial was really easy to follow. Nothing like learning a new skills about 30 seconds before teaching it to your kid.

Of course, she also played in the snow plenty. Our backyard had its own little snowman family by the end of the day. Such fun but I'm sure glad the snow didn't stick around!

Strangest thing in the sewing room: Knee pads

I actually asked for a pair for Christmas last year and love, love, love having them. A few weeks ago I sandwiched three quilts in a day and these were a real lifesaver after a few hours of crawling around on my aunt's hardwood floors. So, tell me, am I the only quilter who does this?

Problem solved

We have a huge problem at my office - there is a distinct lack of forks and spoons in the lunchroom*. No one knows where they all go. Extras have been purchased on many occasion with great hope that they will stick around and be of some use to hungry workers looking to sit and enjoy a mid-day meal, but sadly, they've all gone missing in due time.

The obvious solution is to bring your own cutlery from home (and never let it out of your sight!) But, being the crafty girl that I am, I had to take it one step further and make this cute little cutlery pouch to keep my new office-only silverware in. The cutlery set is from MEC and the fabric was from my scrap pile. A little craftiness really can solve the world's problems!

*Strangely, we seem to have plenty of knives.

Baking soda facial scrub

 

The other night I was struck with the idea to use baking soda as a facial scrub. Don't know where the idea came from, but I tried it and it was incredible - my skin was so smooth and wonderfully clean feeling!

To try it yourself, simply mix 1-2 tbsp baking soda with a bit of warm water in the palm of your hand. Gently scrub your face in a circular motion and rinse thoroughly.

I tend to have sensitive skin, so to me, this felt like a pretty deep clean. I don't want to over do it, so I think I'll only do a full scrub once a week or so. For more frequent cleaning, I'm going to try adding just a small amount (less than a teaspoon) to my regular cleanser for just a slight bit of exfoliation on a daily basis.

Pixelated

I recently finished my first pixel quilt. It's killing me not to include a picture of it here, but you'll just have to wait until mid-April after my nephew's birthday to see the finished piece. 

The experience of creating a pixel quilt was pretty awesome and quite a test of my creative abilities. You see, I had to create the pattern for my nephew's quilt using nothing more than a tiny little picture on the internet and some graph paper. I sat for an hour staring at the picture letting my eyes blur so that I could recreate it in pixel form on my graph paper...one square on the graph paper equalling one 2.5" square on the quilt top. The result was a surprisingly good reproduction of the character I was trying to recreate...and it only took 500 squares (!).

As much as I enjoyed the design process (and I really did), I knew there had to be an easier way to create these patterns.

Enter MyPhotoStitch.com. The site is intended to create cross stitch patterns from photos, but the concept can easily be applied to pixelated quilt patterns. Simply upload your photo and it spits out a pattern complete with DMC thread recommendations and everything!

Here is the second page of the pattern that was created when I uploaded a photo of a felt brooch. When uploading, you get to select how large the pattern will be, whether you want symbols shown, as well as how many thread colours will be used. More threads and larger size equal more detailed pattern.

It would take some tinkering, but I'm thinking it would be pretty easy to get the basics of a pixel quilt pattern going from these patterns. Instead of the DMC thread colours, I would look to Kona solids (or similar) to match my colours.

I certainly have enough projects on the go at the moment (and more waiting to get started), but once I have some free time on my hands, I'm definitely going to be playing around with this fun new tool.

Pinwheels

Cute, aren't they? I made up these little pins as a last-minute little gift just before we headed out to a party on Christmas eve. One for me, one for Abner and one for a new little friend of ours. So easy to make and a great way to use up scrap fabrics.

The pattern is not my own I'm afraid. It was created by the folks over at Spool of Thread. They shared it with the crafting community at Got Craft? a few years ago, and the project sort of stuck in my head. These easy peasy projects are so handy to pull out at the eleventh hour!

Little purple riding hood

After watching a video much like this one a few years ago, we stopped putting Abner into her car seat with her coat on. I figured she was better off a little chilly than being strapped so loosely into her seat. It wasn't such a big deal when we were living on the West Coast. But now that we're here on the prairies, there's no way she can go without something on in the car.

For the first few weeks of winter we've been shuttling her out to the car in her coat, quickly taking it off to strap her in and then covering her up with her coat draped across her lap. Not surprisingly, she's not thrilled with having to take her coat off in the freezing cold. What's a crafty mom to do?

Enter the car cape.

It's actually the Little Red Riding Hood pattern from Oliver + S: Little Things to Sew. Can you tell how much I'm enjoying that book? I think I've sewn more patterns from it than any other book on my shelf. It's a brilliant pattern for our purposes. Abner can use the side slits to get her hands out while still keeping herself mostly covered and warm.

Snug as a bug tucked into her car seat.

I went way off pattern and used a fluffy purple fleece for the main fabric. It was a pain to sew and holy moly there was a tonne of purple fluff floating around the house afterward. But, it is definitely cozy. I lined it with a basic polka dot flannel to keep it nice and soft.

Look - the straps are done up and everything!

It was a chilly day when we took these photos and Abner got quite warm in the short time we were outside. I think that bodes well for her staying warm in this thing even on the coldest of days. It also looks pretty cute, don't you think?

Free printable: Advent activity cards

You'll recall, last year I whipped up a last-minute advent calendar for Abner. She absolutely loved it and I've been looking forward to using it again this year!

With the start of advent just around the corner, I've been racking my brain trying to come up with ideas for activities to put in the bags this year. It seems to me that it would be nice to have a set of printed cards I could bring out year after year instead of brainstorming new ideas each year. [Does that make me sound lazy, or what?!]

To help my fellow last-minute mamas and papas out there, I've done up an advent activity printable that includes 30 activity cards and six blank cards.

Just print out the two-page PDF (be sure to print single-sided!) and cut out the 24 cards that work best for your family. I opted to print ours on a light-weight cardstock so that the cards will last for more than one season. You can use the blanks to write in your own special ideas too! I'll probably slip a few treats and stickers in with the activities too.

•  Print the advent activity cards

 Enjoy!

UPDATE: I've changed the hosting service for the PDF file to Google Docs. Sorry to anyone who was annoyed at having to sign up for that other service! I wouldn't have uploaded it there if I'd known about that.

Take note...

In just a few weeks I am participating in my very first craft sale! Yippee! If you're in the Regina area, here are the details:

True Knit 3: The Craftermath

November 5
10 am - 5 pm

University of Regina 
Ridell Centre
Multi Purpose Room
 


I have absolutely no idea what to expect. Not only have I never sold my own stuff at a craft show, but I've never even been to any of the previous True Knit shows. I'm flying blind here! I have my fingers crossed that my stuff will fit in with the vibe of the show and that folks will actually want to buy my creations (wouldn't that be nice?)

Thankfully, I've done enough craft shows with Hudsonny to know that I can't just fill my table with large (i.e. pricey) items. So, I've been scratching my head trying to think of ideas for small, quick items I can whip up to add to my table.Here is what I came up with: matchbook notepads. Cute, aren't they?

Each pad is about 2" x 2" and has 20 sheets of paper (which is apparently the absolute max my stapler can handle). They will be available as sets of three (one of each design).

I love these little guys and the fact that they tie in with my new greeting cards as well! I hope others will like them too!

If you happen to be able to make it to True Knit, be sure to stop by and say "hi!"

Trying my hand at something new

One day soon I will be opening an Etsy shop. When I do, these cards will be for sale there. I hope you like them as much as I enjoy making them! 

I've never considered myself very artistic (at least when it comes to drawing) so to spare myself having to actually draw and recipients having to look at something I've drawn, each card instead features my fingerprints ('cause you can't really mess that up).

I'm thinking of calling the line ONE OAK because each card is one of a kind...get it? They're fingerprints...fingerprints are unique...they're one of a kind...see what I did there? Yeah, I'm clever like that.

At the moment, I have 11 different fingerprint designs including birthday, thank you, miss you, get well soon, Halloween and Christmas cards.

If you would like to order a set of holiday cards (or any of the other designs) even before I get my act together with the Etsy shop, please drop me a line at heymilkybeer [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll send you the details.

DIY: No-sew fabric art project

In all the years TDSH and I have lived together, we've never had any artwork to hang above our bed. Since we're renters, that means we've been living with a blank off-white wall above our bed for the past decade or so. Yawn. So why haven't we ever done anything about it? Well, reasons range from not having enough money to buy something nice to simply not being able to agree on what we both want.

Thanks to a genius idea provided by Gail over at Astrin's Attic Quilting, we now have this lovely piece of art hanging in its new home above our bed.

If you would like to make your own, here's a handy little tutorial. It's actually so easy, I don't think a tutorial is required per se, but it's handy nonetheless.

Materials:

• artists' canvases
• fabric
• staple gun (light-weight will do)
• picture hanging tools

Step 1: Cut your fabric slightly larger than the size of your canvas. It doesn't need to be that much bigger - less than an inch is fine.

Step 2: Lay your canvas upside down on top of the cut fabric and fold the fabric over the edge of one side of the frame like so:

Step 3: Use your staple gun to secure the fabric in just one spot along the first side, then do the same thing along the opposite side. Keep your fingers out of the way!

Step 4: Continue stapling along these two sides until they are secure and then do the same along the other two sides of the canvas. I found that staples placed about 2 inches apart worked well for making sure the fabric didn't sag in certain spots.

After stapling along all four sides, you'll be left with corners that look like this:

Step 5: Tuck and fold the fabric at the corners until you get a nice crisp corner (or until it looks good enough and you're tired of trying to get it just perfect). Use one or two staples to secure the folded corners. If you're decent at doing hospital corners on a bed, you'll have no trouble with this step.

Once all four corners are secured, you'll have a lovely little piece of art to hang wherever you may like!

What I love about this project is that it is affordable, quick, easy and if we get tired of this fabric, we can easily swap it out down the road. I'll even be able to use this fabric in another project since it will be undamaged from this project.

If you make your own fabric art, please link to your pics in the comments. I'd love to see what readers are doing!

Party favour pouches

Saw a cute little tutorial to make little treat bags on Prudent Mama a while back and filed it away to try out for Abner's birthday. I can't tell you how wrong it felt to sew paper on my sewing machine! But, the results are so adorable!

I filled each pouch with a small handful of Mike & Ikes (and then proceeded to eat the remaining enormous bag I'd bought all by myself!). If you're planning to try this out yourself, be forewarned that you don't need much to fill each pouch! These were great for the little kids because they can easily open the pouches by themselves and you can use any paper that tickles your fancy!