Slight Change of Venue

Well, it seems the time has come for a change of venue for my selling platform.  I’m in the process of setting up my inventory in my new Bonanza Booth. http://www.bonanza.com/booths/lragan I appreciate your patience as I work to add my inventory to this new selling platform and apologize for any inconvenience the unexpected and sudden closure of my Etsy shop has caused - it was beyond my control and has caused a great deal of work to restore, rather recreate an online shop for my handmade items.

Feeling a little festive and fun

Inspired to work in ‘miniature’ the other day I started on a limited availability project – Christmas Elf accessories in the form of hand knit scarves and hand made tutu skirts that fit perfectly & are absolutely adorable on a certain popular Elf that often spends time sitting upon a shelf and sometimes being a little mischievous. These fun tiny scarves and tutu skirts are great to accessorize any Christmas Elf or even Fashion dolls. Now originally I posted photos of our family’s personal Elf that is a certain brand but have since changed them in this post after having some issues arise that required me to do so elsewhere. That said, my handmade little accessories for dolls, snowmen or Elves are currently available in my Etsy shop – Made to order tutu skirts in white and scarves in-stock and made to order (see shop listing for more info).  Now the fun part will be deciding when our Elf will come back to visit this year… a lot of people welcome their Elf back right around or after Thanksgiving.  We’ve been thinking December 1st more like December 5th in our house… though this year that will be much closer to Thanksgiving after all – so we shall see… I am starting to think going with a 12 days of Christmas visit would be fine at this point – less work and without going into the issues I’ve had on this project… I’m a little disenchanted with a particular Elf.

   

As shown below, Vintage Skipper Barbie models the white scarf – a great accessory for Barbie or other Fashion dolls.

BuzzNet Tags: Christmas Elf,Accessories for Elf on the Shelf Elves,Elf Clothes,Barbie Clothes,Barbie Accessories,Fashion Doll Clothes,Fashion Doll,Christmas Fun Accessories,Doll tutu skirt,Stocking Stuffers,Christmas Tradition

Quietly working…

I’ve been quiet here on the blog I know – it has been a learning curve of balancing managing a home, raising a very busy pre-school age child while keeping up on our family life & blog, my creative and crafty projects in addition to my home garden and its bounty  that kept me busy in the kitchen canning and preserving the harvests.  Blogging here continues to be a work in progress as I find my groove with it.  I have been working on stocking my Etsy shop with inventory including a couple new items not offered before as well as more wonderful scarves in time for the chilly Fall & Winter weather.  Alas so many projects and so little time holds quite true in our house this year with many home projects big and small, long hours for the Mister at work which means long days for this momma (translation: one tired momma both mentally and physically), and some personal craft projects (completed & new ones in the works), as well as some much needed family trips and travel early this year.

This year despite my efforts to take the easy way out for Halloween gently suggesting that perhaps my girl would like to be the cute Lady Bug she was last year in the super cool Old Navy Love Bug costume that still fits her – It became quite apparent that wasn’t working and she really wanted to be a Fairy with wings and a wand this year.  So,  after much thought of how I could come up with something we have already (tutu and pink butterfly wings)  I spent many hours on Pinterest looking at various ideas for fairy costumes and wands.  A couple weeks ago while thrifting , I looked at the Halloween costumes hoping to find something to work with what we had at home when I stumbled upon green fairy wings just the right size and had already found just the right green tank top super cheap (with next summer in mind actually).  A trip to Hobby Lobby for tutu supplies, a second trip to Joann’s for ribbon (to wrap the dowel I got at Fred Meyer while grocery shopping) and now my girl gets to be a Fairy like Tinkerbell.  I have to say it was fun & she’s going to be adorable & have a great dress up outfit to add to her very limited collection.  Oh, I also picked up tulle and a little something to make my own Fairy inspired festive costume (minus wings) to take her trick or treating.  Pictures below are of the fairy costume closer to finished (added little ‘flowery tulle accents on each shoulder), long sleeve white top that will go under the green tank top.

  

 

Fun part is we live in the Inland NW and while last year was actually kind of “warm” for Halloween this year will not be quite as “warm” but won’t be freezing – so last year would have been a better year for Fairy wings & those things and this year cozy Love Bug would be perfect!  Oh Well! So we may end up with a little Tinkerbell inspired Fairy  who loves Hello Kitty being bundled up in her warm HK coat. I will get a picture of the whole costume later & update this post.  Below is my ‘cosutme’ – easy peasy over a black skirt & tights with black top & perhaps my cozy lime green vest – we shall see.  I was going for coordinating a little with my girl & ability to repurpose into different costume(s) without spending a whole lot.

 

Technorati Tags: Halloween Costume,Tinkerbell Fairy Costume,Tulle Tutu,Fairy Tutu,Scrapbook Collage,Scrapbook Page Shadow Box

 

Kid’s “Silverware” Storage made fun

Since our girl is at the age of doing lots of things herself, but we have a relatively small kitchen with limited storage (translation not enough storage for this creative food loving/cooking momma with a slew of kitchen “essentials”) I’ve not been able to put in place some of the neat storage ideas for kids dinnerware & utensils I see on Pinterest. 

So limited storage, small kitchen, lots of kitchen stuff combined with old cabinets and difficult/”tired” drawers does not allow for a dedicated drawer or cabinet for the kid stuff (plates/cups/utensils).   We've kept the kid utensils in our “junk drawer”  which is not really a drawer to have accessible to our busy 3-1/2 year old.  So today inspiration kicked in and I came up with an idea I had to try out since a kitchen update is not the budget anytime soon.

Supplies: a clean salsa jar (like pictured or something similar with a wide mouth and not too tall) , washi tape, scissors, ribbon.  Mason jars would be fun too in the right size.

 

I wanted to make it cute and use what I have on hand which happens also happens to be the only roll of Washi tape I have (new to Washi tape but I know there will be more in my crafty obsessed future).  So, pink & white it is – works for us since we have one kiddo & she loves pink. One jar is enough for us in this case as well. 

This is what I ended up with first, though felt it wasn’t ready yet.

I decided to cut a piece of Washi tape in half so I would end up with thinner bands of it around the top and bottom part of the jar. I wanted to keep it so the spoons and forks could still be visible for the selection process at meal times. Selecting the utensils and dinnerware is a pretty big thing in our house right now.  I just secured the ribbon around the mouth of the jar by tying a bow – opting not to hot glue it since I thought I might like to “wash” it  once in awhile.

Here’s the finished product in its place where it can come down to the counter for meal times, and maybe some more will be made for a certain little girl’s birthday party.

Technorati Tags: toddler silverware storage,kids utensil storage

Wall Collage Update

In January I posted about my big wall collage project being 99.9% complete with a little spot  waiting on just the perfect thing…well, finally earlier this month I found the .1% perfect thing for that little spot and I LOVE it!  Sure I love being all creative and making things, but sometimes a crafty gal just loves to buy (Gasp!) them too… especially when they are the perfect little thing to complete the vision of a project.  Honestly, since that little spot stared back at me from the wall begging for something to balance and complete the collage, I had in mind a little decorative cross just the right size though I wasn’t sure I’d find the right color/size/look – it stayed with me.  So, with a little minor modification the lovely little cross you see below completes my big wall collage. The cross had a thick jute twine loop to hang it – I removed it, hubby adjusted the hanging hardware and put it in place.

The view of the 100% complete big wall collage project.

I have a cozy chair set up where I can soak in the memories captured and displayed on my collage wall…Love, Love, Love it!

A lot of organizing and a little sewing has been going on in my creative space

After a spring cleaning and organizing binge this week (mostly weekend), I’ve reclaimed some flat surface area and streamlined my craft organization a little more to inspire creativity and More Importantly get things cleaned up/organized. Again this sort of spawned off of Pinterest after seeing many “pins” by others for a 30 day house cleaning challenge AND of course a crafty little idea I found on Pinterest that I’ve been wanting to do and started a few weeks ago. 

 

I received some great bar mop towels for Christmas, but since they’re a bit smaller than a regular kitchen towel they didn’t want to stay on the fridge handle where our towels usually end up as they typically end up floor if they’re on the oven handle (either they slip off or a certain cute little 3 year old pulls them off). Only one towel left to go and I will have four cool little stay-put kitchen towels.  The tutorial I used can be found here.  

As for the organizing and cleaned up flat surfaces in my creative space….it is not quite finished yet, so when I’m done and happy with it I may add a little snapshot of it later.

My big wall collage project

Almost a year ago I started working on my idea of a wall collage on a blank wall in our living room, I had the vision and some of the pieces but needed more. The past few days we have completed the project – well 99.9% complete as the arrangement has left a little spot for me to get creative & find or make just the perfect thing to fill the spot.

So for a little over two years this wall has been void of anything and the only thing that changed on it from when we moved in the house was the light switch (oh and the safety gate at the top of the stairs which we all know does not count as decor). We have “decorated” other walls but we didn’t really have anything that suited the space on this wall other than my vision & idea of doing one of those cool collages of pictures.

 

My inspiration began with this collection.

 

That lead to this collection.

Which evolved to this collection.

 

Resulting in this beautiful wall that is no longer void but full of memories with a little room to grow.

 

It’s pretty close to what we arranged on the floor to get a good visual. My wonderful husband put all the frame details into Google SketchUp so we could get a visual on the 3D model of the wall. It was a little tedious but worth it because it helped having a reference printout of our layout as we worked on hanging all 24 items over two evenings. We stayed with our “original” arrangement shown on the wood floor above with just a couple minor changes.

So there’s my pretty new wall and a glimpse of another favorite spot on the adjacent wall.  :-)  And with this project pretty much complete and officially checked off the list we’ve added “new lighting” to the list for this spot – something like the track lighting we put in the kitchen in the house we built in Arizona perhaps. 

  

At least my other wall collage projects are a smaller scale and hopefully will be a little easier once I have the groupings and pictures I want for my “vision” of them.  Just breathing a sigh of relief that the big one is “done”.

Into the New Year of 2013

A new year brings new inspiration or something like that…  I’ve been thinking for sometime about changing things up a bit on this blog. Primarily I’ve been sharing projects either completed or in the works and not very frequently as I’ve been working on projects slowly while working at home with my very busy toddler and enjoying life. 

That said the past week of this new year has me a little inspired for change.  Besides sharing my completed projects as they are stocked in my Etsy shop, I’d like to write about “all things craft” so-to-speak with perhaps some “off-topic” stuff that may find a thread back to one of my crafty obsessions.  Some examples of '”off-topic” would be organization, DIY topics and some of the homemaking woes of a craft obsessed momma.  So I hope this change is a welcome change for readers and newcomers to my blog.

Now I have some new scarves completed that I desperately need to take photos of to post and add to my shop.  I’m still in the process of re-organizing and making my creative space  an organized creative space that functions well. A few things occurred last year that put that task on hold – visitors early Fall, a three year old in the house and the Holidays.   

So please stay tuned, bear with me and share the love of Crafty Obsessions.