Self Portraits & Sassy Gloves.

I had THE most fabulously relaxing holiday weekend EVERS. Totally lazy. Totally chillin'. Totally awesome. Dude.

And that sweet mellowness seems to be following me into the week. How simply lovely.

Today the girls found my old trumpet. We had some fun with it. I'm sure the neighbors were having fun too.

My 4 year old blew so hard on the trumpet that not only did her face turn red & her eyes got all watery, but out popped the cutest little snot bubble from her left nostril. Good times.

I finally got pics of the handmade goodies I gave this Christmas. Just the girlies of my family got them. I learned to make these gloves from THIS TUTE on Little Birdie Secrets blog, by way of One Pretty Thing. I changed mine up a little bit from what the instructions said. They came out really cool & I am now in LOVE with oilcloth. It is so fun to work with! I plan on making some more oilcloth-y things in the future.

I took snapshots of the pairs I made for my mom & grandmother. All the ladies LOVED them! Now I just need to make myself a pair.

My shipping station turned 'holiday gift wrapping central' is now back to a shipping station, ready for orders to start rolling in when the shop opens up again on January 2nd. It's stocked with all the handy mailing supplies & I don't know why I didn't set something like this up sooner. I can actually have everything out & LEAVE it out instead of hauling tape out of the closet, boxes from the basement, scissors from who-knows-where, tissue paper from my art studio, etc. & then put it all back again to only start over the next week. I've set a little crafty ambiance with some miniature Chinese lantern globes & my vintage light-up globe. I'll fill in the blank spots on the wall later with more of my favorite things & inspirational images. It all might not LOOK pretty, but it functions BEAUTIFULLY!Would you like to have a little peek of the Valentine owlie??? Tune in tomorrow!

Rockin' it Crafty-Style for Pops!

I recently realized that I didn't get pictures of all the Christmas goodies I made for the holidays. I was SO down to the last crafty seconds makin' stuff. Literally. I finished up the last gift an hour before our family gift exchange. There was no time for photos.

So, THIS go-around I wanted to show off what I got my dad for Christmas. My pop works at the family auto mechanic shop as the service writer. I visited him yesterday for a mini photo shoot. He wanted some fingerless gloves to work in. (Little did he know they are SO in!) I got the gloves at Home Depot. They're just the cheapo pack of 6 brown pairs of jersey gloves. I knew he'd be gettting them thrashed & dirty & that's why I went that route. He got the pirate skullie pair & the hammer pair for X-mas. For his birthday at the beginning of February, I made him this nuclear pair. It's sort of cool AND a joke at the same time since our back yard is pretty much the Hanford Site. (Plutonium manufactured at the site was used in the first atom bomb. Oh, & another jolly historical fact: 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste remain at this site--the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States.) Doesn't that just make ya chuckle?

The gloves are made the same way I make my cupcake aprons, using iron-on fusible sheets & stitching around the edges.

So, that's my show-n-tell for today.

REMEMBER: Today at 3pm I'll unveil (even though you've seen 'em) 2 cupcake prints in the shop! UPDATE! The prints are in the shop now, in a new "Cupcake Prints" section in the shop!

P.S. I'm out the rest of the day to work on learning how to make a zipper pouch for my February goal. I indeed have all the supplies--even a zipper foot already hidden in my stash at home. At least that's what the man at the fabric store told me I had. In his "yes" reply, he didn't even look up from what he was doing, so I'm a little nervous...