What’s in store for the New Year

What do I look forward/hope to accomplish this year?

Well item number one on my agenda is to renovate my kitchen. It’s needed it since we got this house, but we put it off to work on other rooms first. But the oven & dishwasher both croaked so now it needs to be done. Problem is I want the greenest items I can get and most of what I want isn’t easy to get locally in south Florida. I’m leery of ordering cabinets & countertops online without seeing them first. I’ve been researching and drawing layouts for months already, now I really need to move forward and start buying the stuff. I’m also having a tough time deciding on the flooring. The rest of the house has beautiful oak floors; right now the kitchen has horrid vinyl. I don’t want tile (too hard & cold) & laminate will just look cheap next to solid oak. Thought about bamboo, but I read that it dents easily, so not a good idea for our kitchen. Right now I’m leaning toward real linoleum, but again need to see real samples, so I can think up a pattern we’d like, we’d probably combine at least 2 colors. Major project that I’m already behind on….and after that I really need to find a real paying job, crafting & Etsy keep me out of trouble, but don’t really put food on the table. It’s already over 2 years since I had a full time job, need to start bring home some real bacon again. So where are all those green jobs I want?

Nico Designs - Blogger of the Month

Lets celebrate one of our wonderful EtsyBloggers Team members. Our January Blogger of the month is Erika of Nico Designs. She makes wonderful bags, accessories and baby stuff. She’s eco-friendly, using all cotton fabric and repurposed materials. And her blog is chock full of nice tutorials and recipes and all kinds of other great stuff. Show her your support, because she volunteers for the Team and supports all of us.
http://www.etsy.com/shop/NicoDesigns
http://designsbynico.blogspot.com/

Savy’s Room Keep Out

I made this adorable little sign for my great niece. I was told she handmade a paper ‘keep out’ sign for her room, so I made a nice reversible sign for her door. It was quite easy to piece together as the craft store had the bag of pastel letters, the castle, stars & frame were on clearance and the unicorn & coach were sold with markers to color them. I did have to cut the letter Q to make an extra O since there weren’t enough in the package, but that gave me my apostrophe. All I had to do was paint the plaque purple, arrange the layout, glue it together and add the ribbon to hang it with. I found a great picture of her with a perfect face for the “Keep Out” side.

More Neckties and Bags – gifts cont.

The laptop bag was a b’day gift for my nephew, this time I upcycled a button down shirt and two neckties.



This purse was my sister’s b’day gift, she requested a purse & sent me some pics of bags she liked. This was by far my most time consuming project because I mixed so many small remnants (sorting thru my stash takes forever) & then I hand sewed the yarn borders and beads on & hand sewed fabric over a black plasticbuckle on the strap because the black was all I could find in a 2” buckle (recycled from an old camera bag).

And this cute little purse was a xmas gift for my best shopping girlfriend. I found the pin in a thrift store awhile back & bought it for her. I then needed to decide what to attach it to. At the last minute I came up with the idea of a small purse and threw it together that night. I may have to create a few more like this, but I only had the one pin.

More Birthday Gifts

This is a scarf I made for my niece out of a necktie. I added a ruffle & lace to it and then hand knotted all the fringe around the ends.

Birthday & Xmas Gifts 2

Here are some photos of jewelry & accessories I crafted, a bracelet & button earrings for my sister-in-law, a bracelet for my niece and a ponytail holder for my sister.

Been Too Busy to Blog

Well I haven’t been blogging since thanksgiving, haven’t even kept up with the few blogs I follow. The last months of the year are a very hectic time for my family. Not only do we have the holidays with big family meals and xmas presents to make or shop for, but we also have 7 birthdays between the end of Nov. & the beginning of Jan. (including my own). Since I’ve gotten back into sewing and crafting, this year took a real toll on my time. I was totally wrapped up in crafting gifts, xmas shopping & shipping presents out of state. I neglecting my Etsy shop, my blog, and my xmas tree – it had lights on it for almost 2 weeks, finally got ornaments on Christmas eve. Just got the last birthday gifts off in the mail today, so things should slow down again. Now I’ll be posting a few pics of the gifts I made.
These 1st pictures are of sets of coasters I made mostly from my husbands photos, but a few photos are mine too. I found boxes of 6 coasters at the dollar store that had tacky touristy maps on them. I then had to crop all my photos to the right dimensions, print them, laminate them & glue them over the maps. I also glued a thin sheet of cork on the back of each one. I made 3 different sets, one for my brother, one for my brother-in-law & one for my niece’s husband.