Flower Embellsihed T-Shirt

This is a recent birthday gift I made for one of the family members. Most of the fabric I used for the flowers were remnants from the 1970's hence the psychedelic, hippie look of the top. A few of my vintage buttons are in there too.

Cupcake Birthday Cakes

 
Our family has grown so big that it's now beginning to be almost impossible to get everyone together on one date for birthday parties. We end up postponing over & over...

This weekend, we finally did catch-up and combined 4 birthday's into one party. Didn't want to bake 4 individual cakes (would have been too many leftovers) so I looked for ideas for arranging cupcakes and made cakes for 2 of the celebrants out of one cake mix. 

 

 



 My husband then made a rum cake for his dad & a vegan key lime pie for his vegan sister. We sang "Happy Birthday" and blew out candles four times in a row.

Hoop Earrings in Silver Copper and Khaki Metallic

My husband asked me to make a pair of earrings for his friend's birthday. She lives very far away from us in Russia, they became friends on flickr; both admiring each others great photography.

He knew from her photostream that she wore hoop earrings. It just so happened that we came across a pair of hoops a few weeks later. The hoops were silver with a ball chain wrapped around them. They had many little silver drops dangling between the balls which I removed. I tried a few combinations of dangles from my existing beads, but Bob wasn't really happy with them, so I took him shopping and he picked out a great match (doesn't he have good taste). After they were finished, it took a few weeks for them to arrive, we were anxious to hear what she thought. Here's a lovely photo she posted on flickr of her wearing her new present.

Mini Purse Earrings

My latest creation, a birthday gift for a great friend. Took some small scraps of ultra suede and made tiny pouches, gathered the top & crimped on a ribbon end. Then attached some recycle bits of chain for handles. I originally picked out a lighter beige faceted bead for the top, but the shape was too flat, didn’t like it. I needed a more oblong bead. Spent forever trying to locate 2 matching beads the right shape & color, the hazards of working with recycled materials - and of course, I just have tooo much crap!


Possibly planning another pair in blue silk with chains that have some crystal beads on them, they’ll be a bit more dressy.


Just a small sampling of my hordes to sort through



Handmade Wallet

Handmade Wallet, a photo by b-a-boop on Flickr.

Bob asked me to make him something for his birthday with less than a week to go. I wasn’t sure what I could whip up, but then I spotted his worn old wallet & remembered that I had bought him a new one over a year ago which he didn’t like, so I had returned it. I took his old one, snapped a few photos to refer back to, measured it & sketched it up. The next day I went looking through my fabrics to find something useful. I ended up eliminating everything but my denim scraps. After looking through my collection of bindings, I settled on a striped vintage bias binding that I believe came from my grandma and a remnant of some brush denim from what I think I made a pair of pants from in high school…does anyone else out there even remember brush denim? He was very pleased with it & especially liked how soft the denim was. I hope it last as long as the last one, but if not, I now have a pattern.

Photography Related Upcycled Giftwrap

Today is my husbands birthday & in honor of his great talent in photography, I wrapped his presents in that theme. I created a gift bag by recycling two pages from an old Ansel Adams wall calendar. Inside I added two pillow boxes recycled from pages in a photography book. I think he was wishing each of those antique cameras were in the bag.

Handmade Earrings for Mom

I made these sweet little copper and beaded earrings for my mom for her birthday. She wore them right away & they looked great on her. I’ll try and make a pair for the shop soon, think they are a nice simple design.

Earring Tree

Well no wonder I’m behind on Christmas shopping, I’m still making birthday gifts. Here’s an earring tree I made for my big sis. I used odds and ends from my stash to embellish a picture frame and then added a piece of plastic needlepoint canvas covered with some lace to the center. It can either be hung on the wall or stood in an easel.

Latest Purse

Wow, this was more of a challenge than expected. The beige fabric on the upper part of the purse started unraveling before I finished sewing it together.  I had to hand weave it back together as it was all of the fabric that I had. Then once I finished the purse, the old recycled zipper I used got stuck and when I tried to close it, the cloth part ripped. I didn’t think I’d be able to get a new zipper in without taking the purse apart (couldn’t do that after fixing that fraying fabric). So I ended up hand sewing some Velcro in instead. Came out pretty lovely in the end & my sister-in-law really appreciated her birthday gift.

Butterfly Birthday Cake

Well I usually don’t blog much about cooking because it’s more of a chore to me than a pleasure. I really have to be in the mood (thank goodness my hubby LOVES cooking and is GREAT at it). But I do enjoy sculpting cakes now and then & over the weekend I created a butterfly cake for our great niece’s birthday. She said it was “awesome”. It took me hours to do, I wondered how I get these crazy ideas into my head & think they will be so simple to do.

I mostly scoured the internet for ideas on how to cut the shape and for designs on the wings. I cut out a few circles the size of the cake pan & experimented first to see which shape I liked best.  I recommend freezing the cake layers before cutting & frosting, it helps the icing spread on the cut edges. I used food coloring to make a few colors & free formed the pattern, clipping an edge off a ziplock bag & piping on the frosting. I also ended up adding a piece of cardboard for the tail because the cake was too thin to stand up & frost.

Earrings Upcycled into Pendants

I turned some old earrings into pendants. My friend gave me a big bag full of old jewelry she no longer wanted & I was inspired to turn some post earrings into pendants. I made the 1st one for her for her birthday, also incorporating some beads from other earrings in the bag. Then I made a second for my shop. The other 2 are still to come, don’t have enough of all the beads to repeat these two.

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.