Future Momo Jewelry

Gifty garlands

I recently made a couple of garlands for Sarabeth as a thank you to her, plus it was also her birthday right after mine (go pisces!).

Her new business is called Your Artful Life, so I made a pennant banner with the name.  The papers came from a paperstack and a lot of them had beautiful gold designs.

And I also made a paper garland of coffee filters, doilies, sheet music and a vintage gardening book

I kept it flat to make it easier to wrap up and give to her, but told her to fluff it all up when she hung it!

It was so much fun to make both of these garlands for her, especially the pennant one.  Great minds must think alike because she told me the original design of her website was going to use little pennants to spell out her business name!  I thought that was too funny.

It was great to actually make things again.  It's part of my goals for this year to get crafting again, but not out of obligation or guilt and just pure enjoyment.  It was good to get my hands dirty again.

I also gave her these cute kitchen towels since she has a bunny

 

February already?

Wow, I had such grand plans for this blog for 2013.  I got back on a mini roll at the end of 2012, but I was taken down right before New Year's with some serious chronic pain and am still recovering.  My plans were thwarted, but I'm trying to get back into the blogging habit now that things are calming down. It's probably far too late in the year to still be talking about goals for 2013, but it's still February, so there's still time, right??  At any rate, I have been working on the goals even if I'm super late posting them. 

I don't like making New Year's resolutions, but I did set a couple of broad goals for the year, under which many activities could count.  How many years can I possibly say "exercise more and eat better"?  Instead, I chose overall goals of health & wellness and creativity.  So far things are going pretty well (more to come on that later).

So many more activities could count under this category, but the ones I listed are some of my main focuses and hopes.  I've already been working hard on this area, treating myself to facials and pedicures, which I could never do before.  I've been trying to bring mindfulness into my life by attending a weekly mindfulness session at work (or at least some weeks...) plus a meditation app.  I'm planning a vacation for the summer, and I have been slowly trying to change my habits of trying to set lofty goals, getting overwhelmed and then procrastinating.

 

I chose my jellyfish photo for this post because they're so beautiful and inspirational to me. For creativity, I have also been doing really well.  I've already visited three new places in the Bay Area, and spent New Year's Day over in Marin.  It still amazes me that I haven't seen that much of the region I grew up in, but my excuse is that my friends have never cared about visiting other cities around here, so I never did either.  I'm working on creating a container garden of succulents (harder to kill!), and I have been taking a lot of architectural pictures lately.  In 2012, I don't think I made anything at all, so it was really a priority for me to start getting my hands dirty again.  Now that I'm in grad school, it's a lot harder to find the time, but it is important to me so I'm trying to prioritize it.  I've made a few projects so far and it has felt good to craft again.  Pictures coming soon!

Dresser and table redo

I have a small dresser and table in my office that I use to store craft supplies and display gifts and art that I have bought at various places.  For a long time, I've been wanting to change them from the pale pink they were painted to a teal/turquoisey color which better matches my house and is my favorite color. 

Before:

They were kind of beat of and scraped from several years of use...

(I forgot to take pics of the table!)

After:

I may need to get a new lampshade now....

Here's some of the things on the table.  The bottles on the left were gifts from Barbe a few years ago and the large brown bottle and and altered powder tin were purchases from Maija. 

I used Behr Carribbean Green and it's a beautiful deep teal color. 

I have these curtains from Pier 1 in the room (the curtains are actually much more green than blue in person) and it all matches beautifully.  Now if I could only clean up some of my craft supply clutter....

I love how both things turned out!  Just a simple, quick change and the room feels so much different.

A bit of fall decorating

I've been so busy with school, I haven't really had time to make any fall crafts or really decorate, so today I whipped out the spray paint cans and did a quick "redecorating" of some mini pumpkins that I bought for my mantel.

I love mini pumpkins!

I didn't go too crazy with the spray paint and only did five of the pumpkins

The round bronze ones look like onions to me, which is really funny

And this is with the yummy-smelling cinnamon broom I got at Trader Joe's

And now they're all lined up in a little row on the mantel!

Fabric hearts

I realized the other day that somehow, I've never really made any Valentine's Day crafts, so I decided to whip up a few little hearts out of scrap toile and burlap.

I'm not the best sewer, but these were super easy to pull together and gave me a great excuse to use up some fabric scraps.

Next year I might make some more and decorate the hearts with buttons and some blingy bits.  Or maybe use some plain muslin and stamp some designs.

Ghostie stamp

I'm trying to keep my little crafty momentum going, at least for the next few days.  I realized I hadn't made a rubber stamp in a long time, so I made a little ghostie stamp today.

It's a little bit bigger than I originally intended, so I had a bit of a hard time inking it, but I still think it's cute!

This one is inked better, but a bit messier!  I thinked I inked it a bit too well....

Boo!

Well it looks like I took another blog break, this time due to my new job.  It's great, but it has me exhausted at the end of the day.  I'm not sure if it's because I was just out of work for awhile or if it's the job or if it is because I have been dealing all year with the unfortunate growing apart with some long time friends and it's taking its toll on me. 

Anyway, I managed to pull it together just in time for Halloween!  I whipped up a simple banner with some bits of Halloween materials that I had. 

I wasn't sure if I would make anything anytime soon, so I haven't been craft shopping for a long time, but luckily I have a huge stash of craft goodies so I pulled a few things together.

It felt good to be making something again. I need to keep reminding myself that even if I am exhausted, I need to try to make a little something more often! 

I do miss making things and I really do have a ridiculous amount of craft supplies so I need to get my focus back!

Preserving time

I love peaches and since it's so hard to find good organic peaches year round, I wanted to can some this weekend.  I went over to the local farmer's market and found some great peaches and also decided to do some nectarines and blackberries as well.  Last year I attempted to can nectarines and it turned into a slippery, mushy mess so I wanted to give it another try.  But, it was another slippery, mushy mess, so I think that ends the experiement with canning nectarines.  I managed to can them, but they were just a lot messier than the peaches.

Luckily, everything else came out great.  

I'm so excited about the peaches!
 
I went with a blackberries in framboise recipe for the blackberries.

Cooking away...

I either miscalculated how much I needed, or the recipe was off, because it was supposed to yield 6 cup jars and I only came out with two and a jar of the extra syrup.

The syrup tastes great in tea as a sweetener instead of honey.  I bet it would also be good on ice cream even though it's not as thick as a traditional sauce.

Canning is fun and for just plain fruits, it's a pretty easy process.  I'd like to try to branch out with some fancier recipes like butters and conserves and sauces, but I think I'll have to give out a bunch of the jars as gifts because I don't know how much conserves I can reasonably eat on my own!   Making pickles and things would be fun too, but I'm still a bit scared of the low-acid canning at the moment. 

 

Fabric wreath

After looking at all those pretty bunting photos the other day and all my fabric pieces,  I actually decided to go with making a fabric wreath.  I am a horrible cutter, so projects where the pieces don't have to be exact are perfect for me right now!

I gathered up a lot of fabrics that I had remnants of.

And then I made about 80 pieces about 8x2".

In the end, I didn't use any of the green fabric I had originally pulled out because it looked a bit too Christmasy. 

And then I just tied them around some wire with a little bow on top!

I love it!  I have it hanging next to my computer now.

This was a fun project to make and it went way fast than I thought it would.  I think I might make another fabric garland next.  I'm supposed to be meeting with my friend soon to finally go over some packaging for some new bath and body things I want to make.  It's taking forever, so hopefully I can get that done soon and start making more things than soap!  I've been super exhausted lately and I think my body is still fighting off the viral bronchitis I got a few weeks ago.  Hopefully soon I'll feel better and can get cracking on some more things.

Chair redo

I've had a chair leftover from my college days that I've been wanting to redo for some time now. It's been in the basement of my parents' house for years and I decided it was finally time to do something with it.  It was supposed to be an easy weekend project, but I got taken down by bronchitis for the past couple of weeks, so it turned out to be more like a week project. 

The chair:

Yeah, I know.  It's a long story how it got this way, but let's just say it was college.

 

The seat has a very hard to see quote from Harold and Maude- "I think that most of the world's sorrow comes from people who are 'this', yet allow themselves to be treated as 'that'."

A little semi-gloss white paint and some pretty new fabric later....

And it's a whole new chair.  Still not so great at tucking the corners, but I still really like how this came out.  Love this fabric!

It's a bit hard to tell in the pic, but it's a chocolate brown with an ivoryish pattern.  I have some fabric left over, so I may make a small throw pillow to match for the couch.