Craft or Die!

As previously mentioned, I'm slightly addicted to Bust Magazine. While browsing the ads, I came across two awesome pattern shops. I just purchased the pattern for these little guys from Dangercrafts. I absolutely love destash projects! Destash projects are those small projects that take just those little scraps of fabric or random skeins of yarn you have lying around your workspace. They are de-stashing your overwhelming supplies!



So I hope to get started on this project as soon as Rebecca Danger sends me the PDF pattern! They are just too cute for words and I think my mom would love them for X-mas. (two birds with one stone, people! Two birds with one stone!)

Speaking of two birds, I also checked out UrbanThreads Now this is the smartest embroidery website I think I've ever seen. They sell PDF's of simple line drawings to transfer as embroidery patterns. They don't suggest the stitches, the colors, nothing. Just simple black line drawings. They are only a buck each, and I completely fell for it and bought this one! I think it would be fun to embroider and frame over one of my sewing tables. I need crafting projects I can work on during my commute to work. My commute's only 30 mins/each way, but I used to get SO MUCH knitting done in that time!



Well, I'm off to water my plants and get sewing! Later gators!

<3 Always,
--Taina

March Madness!

...but not in the basketball sense...in my handmade life!

I've sold 9 items in the last week, 7 in 24 hrs, and 2 last night. I'm THRILLED that sales have picked up, and can only hope to keep the momentum going.



A coworker in another dept. in the Museum saw my shop on my Facebook profile and bought a couple items from me for his sister's 25th birthday. He's from Texas and mentioned that they both have a thing for sugar skulls. After selling him the two things he was interested in, I went home and checked out how much fabric I had left in the two sugar skull colorways I use and made more things for my shop. It felt like the minute I listed them, they sold! Such a great feeling! So I made more and listed them!


(click photos for more info!)

A few years ago, I started the tradition of making a birthday gift by hand for my Aunt Gailey. She's my knitting and sewing aunt, and we have a really great relationship. Her birthday was 03/08, and I knew what I wanted to make her.

My grandmother Esther (father's mother) passed away from Emphysema many many years ago. I was a wee child, the age of 7 when she died. Esther was a depression-era lady. She took buttons off of shirts that were too worn to wear so she could put them on other things. She canned, she sewed, she darned socks. She was a crafty lady, in all sense of the word.

When my grandfather Steve died in 2000, all of the grandparents' items were divided up over the 5 children and their grandchildren. I asked for this poster that used to be in Grandma Esther's little room that said "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits." I absolutely love it because it's so odd but so great!

Well, I thought how perfect it would be to cross-stitch my own version of this poster for my Aunt Gailey's birthday this year. So I did! I hadn't embroidered anything in soooo long. It took me weeks, but this was the final product, framed:



Well, in the time it took to write this post, I sold my 300th item!!! Yayyy! I did a happy dance to Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out" and now it's time to get back to work!

<3 Always,
--Taina