Month: August 2012

oh glorious summer

Posted on by trish

The glo­ri­ous final weeks of sum­mer hol­i­day! Worked on a pile of projects :D 

Was vis­it­ing Kath­leen’s blog the oth­er day and found tons of cool stuff to make! Includ­ing this star-shaped blan­ket (fol­low­ing a pat­tern called Beth’s Lit­tle Star — I just had to make it!)… Â 

I called it the rain­bow road blan­ket, because the colours remind­ed me of the rain­bow road lev­el in Mario Kart. It’s for for my young niece (who is very cute and ami­able and reminds me a lot of Ponyo as she’s start­ing to talk and walk) and her soon-to-be-born sib­ling :D

Also inspired by Kath­leen’s blog is this book­worm book­mark! Her yarn­bomb­ing with book­worms is inge­nious and TOTALLY AWESOME! I would love to do that one day. So far I’ve made one for a book-lov­ing friend :D

I used an orange yarn because I kind of want­ed it to look like Slimey from the Muppets. 

This granny shrug has been on my to-cro­chet list for a long time. I made it with a light fuzzy yarn the colour of Prince Edward Island’s red soil. Not a style I usu­al­ly wear, and can’t see the granny square (actu­al­ly, it’s two hexa­gons stitched togeth­er) pat­tern very well, but it’s real­ly soft! Very com­fort­able for loung­ing in at home, I think.

Then I sewed a dress. With fab­ric I got from my mom’s col­lec­tion. It’s a very soft kind of fab­ric with love­ly pol­ka dots and I’ve been want­i­ng to make some­thing sum­mery with it for a long time. Was hav­ing a very moti­vat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with my friends about sewing dress­es, so I thought instead of mak­ing the square top that I make a lot of, I’d try to sew a dress!

It’s actu­al­ly still a square top with faux but­ton pan­els (which means that the but­tons are just sewed on, there are no but­ton holes), for which I got the idea from C&C’s tuto­r­i­al. The top was cut to a mid-waist length, then I sewed on a skirt made with two trape­zoid pieces of fab­ric. I found enough yel­low but­tons in my col­lec­tion that looked like lemon drops :D

And last but not least, shop update for the fall season!

The fall har­vest treat mag­net set! Here’s a close­up of the pump­kin pie, which I’m rather hap­py with…

I actu­al­ly made his cousin first, which has an upper crust, because I did­n’t know that pump­kin pies aren’t like apple or straw­ber­ry pies, they don’t have upper crusts! (prob­a­bly because I don’t bake very much, and did­n’t grow up in a coun­try where pump­kin pies were pop­u­lar) Mike remind­ed me of that and I remade the pie slice.

I also start­ed Christ­mas-elf­ing (i.e. mak­ing Christ­mas presents) and made 3 scarves, but of course I can’t show you those yet… ;)

Off to the Bruce Penin­su­la this long week­end! Will bring back lots of pictures!

Have a love­ly week­end, everyone!

 

 

 

 

fun foam stamping

Posted on by trish

It was one of those exper­i­ments that went very smooth­ly and turned out amaz­ing­ly well, which does­n’t hap­pen too often for me but when it does, it’s super exciting!

Print­ing fab­ric with stamp made from craft foam (or, as adver­tised on the pack­age, “fun foam”)!

It’s REALLY easy. Every­thing about this project is encap­su­lat­ed in this photo.

 

I used:

Craft foam (it looks like this) that I bought from the dol­lar store (12 sheets for $1)

A piece of foam core that I found at work (it had an event poster mount­ed on it and they were throw­ing it out. But I’ve also seen foam core at the dol­lar store)

Acrylic paint and paint brush (from the dol­lar store, of course)

Glue stick (I found this amaz­ing Elmer glue at the dol­lar store! A bit of a theme going on here…)

A piece of fab­ric that was the rem­nant of a cur­tain that I was sewing for a friend. It feels like linen. Fab­ric with smooth tex­ture works best.

What I did:

1. Cut design out of craft foam. Exac­to knife works extreme­ly well with this stuff.

2. With Exac­to knife, Cut out a piece of foam core the same shape as the craft foam design but about 1/4″ larg­er all around.

3. With glue stick, apply a lib­er­al amount of glue on the foam core. Press craft foam design firm­ly onto where the glue is applied. Stamp is made! :D

Here’s a close­up of my leaf stamp, after it’s made a few prints…

4. Set stamp aside for a minute or two for the glue to dry. In the mean­while, mix a fun colour with acrylic paint, set out some scrap paper (paint will seep through fab­ric onto your work sur­face), and lay fab­ric on it.

5. Apply a thin lay­er of paint onto foam stamp with paint brush (not too much paint, but the stamp has to be wet). Test print on scrap paper.

6. Stamp away! The great thing about apply­ing paint with a brush is that you can have streaks of dif­fer­ent colours in one print! :D

7. If the fin­er details of the stamp starts to get gunked up with paint, use the cor­ner of the brush bris­tles to clean it out before mak­ing the next print.

8. Set fab­ric aside for a cou­ple of hours to dry. Place a tow­el on it, then iron at low heat to fix the colour.

 

And now we have a love­ly piece of print­ed fab­ric to do what­ev­er our hearts desire :D I sewed mine into a sim­ple draw­string bag. (there are lots of nice draw­string bag tuto­ri­als out there, like these ones, so I won’t repeat what I did here)

 

Place­mats, shirts, skirts, eye­glass­es case… the pos­si­bil­i­ties are endless! 

Have a great start to the week, everyone!

 

 

mystery project revealed!

Posted on by trish

Won­ton noo­dle soup!! :D

 

But wait, here’s the trick…

 

Look, ma! No hand!

 

It’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion — my friend Jenn came up with the idea, and I made it with yarn :D It’s for a com­mu­ni­ty yarn bomb­ing project orga­nized by Wise Daugh­ters Craft Mar­ket. The exhi­bi­tion will then move to Har­bourfront in Octo­ber! :D

Here are bet­ter pic­tures of the noo­dle bowl…

 

The chop­sticks are actu­al chop­sticks wrapped in yarn. I glued about 1/4 of a skein of yel­low acrylic yarn to the bowl with hot glue. Also put a few rocks at the bot­tom so it does­n’t get blown away. The orga­niz­er said that the exhib­it will be in a cov­ered but out­door area, hence the drain holes I men­tioned ear­li­er, in case of heavy rain (it was Mike’s idea :D).

Here I am with the dis­play at Wise Daughters!

 

The rest of the scene looked fab­u­lous! (I espe­cial­ly love the win­dow, and the dog on the rug is also made with yarn!)

 

The Junc­tion Design Crawl was hap­pen­ing at the same time in the neigh­bour­hood, so we vis­it­ed oth­er fun exhi­bi­tions and activ­i­ties. At the Tele­phone Booth Gallery we vis­it­ed the Carl Wagan Book­mo­bile (an awe­some inven­tion!) and earned badges mak­ing s’mores… (I could­n’t get the lighter to work… got some help from the ranger, who hap­pened to be one of my for­mer print­mak­ing teach­ers from art col­lege! :D)

 

Make also learned to make a book (inside the wag­on!) and earned a book­bind­ing badge!

We both made friend­ship pins and earned friend­ship badges (you can see me wear­ing them in the very first pho­to with the noo­dle bowl).

Down the road we found an instal­la­tion made of (lots and lots of) paper cups by Mason Design.

 

A fun-filled night!

Thank you for all the great guess­es for the mys­tery project, every­one! They make awe­some project ideas! In fact I think I might take the planter idea and make it into a prop for my shop-in-a-cub­by for the upcom­ing hol­i­day season…

Wish­ing you an awe­some week­end! :D

 

 

 

 

 

last clues! :D

Posted on by trish

These clues may be more fun to look at :D

There’s a bok choy to be added…

 

… and wrap­ping a few yarn won­tons to add to the mix!

 

By the way, have you seen these fas­ci­nat­ing cro­chet veg­eta­bles by Japan­ese artist Jung Jung? My mind is blown!

 

Lamp­shade, planter and Christ­mas tree are awe­some guess­es! :D (Actu­al­ly, Mike was say­ing that it was start­ing to look like Char­lie Brown’s Christ­mas tree)

Mys­tery project to be revealed tomorrow!

 

 

mystery project week!

Posted on by trish

I was just going to post some process pic­tures and the fin­ished project, but when I was tak­ing process pho­tos I thought they looked very abstract, and pos­si­bly no one would be able to guess what I’m mak­ing just look­ing at the pho­tos (ooooh, but maybe you can!), so I thought it would be fun to make it a mys­tery project week! Where I post one or two pic­tures a day for a few days (not exact­ly a week), and on the week­end the fin­ished project will be revealed!

The only thing I can say is that it has to do with crochet.

Okay. First two clues.

Wire, braid­ed.

 

Pud­dle of hot glue to set­tle it. Plus holes for drain­ing and sewing.

 

It’s a rid­dle! :D 

More pho­tos com­ing tomor­row! :D

 

Have a hap­py Tuesday!

 

 

 

drum roll please…

Posted on by trish

A huge thank-you to every­one who have entered the give­away! I was real­ly quite ner­vous when I hit the “draw” but­ton… The first ever gen­uine mud­pie give­away win­ners are:

 

Con­grat­u­la­tions!!! :D :D :D

 

Day at the Farm goes to Alma.

 

Origa­mi goes to Kate.

 

Curi­ous Nat­u­ral­ist goes to Natalie.

 

And Abstrac­tion­ist goes to shestitch!

 

Awe­some­ness! I will con­tact you by email short­ly for your mail­ing address­es. I do ship inter­na­tion­al­ly :D

 

AND to thank every­one for your support…

Shrim­panzee wall papers! :D

“RAWR!”

 Dif­fer­ent screen sizes:

1280 x 1024
1920 x 1200
iphone

 

Shrim­panzee is one of my favourite squares, and from the com­ments I see that he’s a read­ers’ favourite too! So I asked Mike to help me make wall­pa­pers to share (yay Mike!).

For the rest of the squares, I’ve giv­en some away as gifts, and I think I’m fram­ing the rest of them, togeth­er in a large frame :D

I will cer­tain­ly have more give­aways in the future!

 

Have a bright new fab­u­lous week, everyone! 

 

 

 

creatures great and small

Posted on by trish

We’d love to vaca­tion some­where out of town, but haven’t been able to because of work and school sched­ules. But there are lots to do in the city dur­ing the sum­mer months! We’ve been vis­it­ing local parks and gar­dens, like Riverdale Farm (a get­away from the city with­in the city) and Allan Gar­dens (a mag­i­cal greenhouse!). 

Here we meet a cow at the farm, enjoy­ing lunch.

 

And a horse rolling in the dirt…

 

And a but­ter­fly, stay­ing quite still for quite a while for a photo.

 

At the gar­dens, some koi fish and turtles!

 

On a slight­ly dif­fer­ent note, it’s just 24hrs from the give­away draw! :D And I real­ized that I for­got to clar­i­fy one thing: the ran­dom­ize draw mech­a­nism will draw four names, the first name being drawn will receive Day at the Farm, the sec­ond name will receive Origa­mi, the third name will receive Curi­ous Nat­u­ral­ist, and the fourth name will receive Abstractionist. Basi­cal­ly, the order that the names are drawn will coin­cide with the order that the paint­ing sets are list­ed. Sor­ry that I for­got to make that clear ear­li­er! I’ve updat­ed the give­away post as well.

There will be a small sur­prise for every­one in the works… which I hope you will like… I’m excit­ed! :D

Have a great Sun­day, everyone! 

 

 

 

 

shop update :D

Posted on by trish

Har­vest time mag­net set! :D

So named because a friend saw them and said they remind­ed her of the game.

 

Also added the shrimp duo (but they’re to be sold indi­vid­u­al­ly) — shrimp tem­pu­ra and shrimp sushi, because the maki and dumpling have gone to good homes.

 

I found a jar lid that fits all of the veg­eta­bles per­fect­ly :D

 

Have a hap­py Thurs­day! (and 3 more sleeps till the give­away draw! :D)

 

 

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