Soft Mini Elephant

I wanted to make something small to add to a baby shower gift recently, and I thought about making a soft stuffed elephant. I ended up finding this Chinese pattern online, which has pieces for two different sizes - this is the larger one. I used Chrome to translate the page for me, but the pictures are much more helpful for figuring out what to do and in what order. There were a few tricky spots, but it was a relatively quick thing to make, and I think it's totally cute! I'm thinking of making a few more of these and stocking them in the shop. If nothing else, a few more people might be getting these as gifts!

Lime for scale

Thrift Share Monday

I'm just barely squeaking in for this to actually be Thrift Share Monday, but better late than never! I did a bit of thrifting this weekend. I specifically went out to find vintage wooden spools of thread (I feel like there should be a shorter way of saying that...) and picked up two other items as well.

The thread spools were made into ornaments:

I was excited about this idea when I first thought of it a few weeks ago, and I'm so glad it turned out the way I expected.

I also found two Christmas decorations that I'm leaving as is (for sale in my Etsy shop). I wasn't planning to buy anything else, but these were too fun to pass up and I've been thinking about adding some vintage items to my shop... this is kind of an itsy bitsy trial run, I guess. The first thing was this glass tree topper:

It's worn and speckled with silver showing through the pretty green, it's shiny, and it has glitter - win-win-win.

The other thing was this set of glass ornaments, unopened in the original packaging. I love seeing how different styles can be so reminiscent of different time periods. These ornaments are actually older than I am.

Well, that's it for me this week!

The Usefulness of a Tripod

I have things to share, but no pictures of most of them... I can't find the little thing that holds the camera onto the tripod, so it's kind of difficult to get decent pictures right now. It's getting too dark by the time I get home from work to have any sort of natural light anyways, but I can't even take pics in the morning. For example, I finished my pink jersey skirt and wore it the other day, but... no pictures. I also finished my crocheted neckwarmer, but no pictures... See the theme?

I also picked up a bunch of supplies for Etsy goods this weekend, which are in various states of being washed/dried/just waiting. I use quite a bit of reclaimed materials, such as the vintage (and non-vintage) handmade doilies, wool sweaters for felting, even fabric remnants. I think it's great to use second-hand materials when possible, but I only use things that I can clean and feel that the quality is like-new. I do use a lot of brand-new materials as well, and I like that mix of old and new.

And on a third unrelated note, we're working on our front yard. That is, it's sort of on pause right now, because I'm waiting on other people. But two weekends ago, I spent a good part of my Saturday hauling bags of leaves from a local school to my backyard. I'm planning to sheet mulch our front "lawn," which is basically layering organic materials over it to smother what's growing there now (mostly weeds) and provide a base for new plants above. The stuff we lay down will decompose, and on the very top will be wood chips to be a little more attractive and weigh everything down. So, right now my back yard has:

forty-three bags of leaves. All nicely bagged by volunteers at a school clean-up day. Win-win.

How to Make a Felt Heart Garland

Over the weekend, I got several items made or started for my Etsy shop. One of them was a felt heart garland. Now that it's officially February, I thought I'd share a tutorial for making one - a quick and fun way to decorate for Valentine's Day!

You can freehand cut each heart if you really want to, but I started by making a little template from thick scrapbooking paper (like cardstock) that I got from someone who doesn't scrapbook any more (I don't either, but it's great to have a nice stock of paper around!) You can see that the line I drew wasn't the line I cut... I decided that I wanted my hearts a little bigger than what I'd drawn. These ended up being about 2-3/4" at the widest point and about 2-1/4" high. You could make tall, skinny hearts, little bitty hearts, or giant fat hearts - whatever you want.

Next, you need your felt. I used a thrifted 100% wool scarf that I washed and felted (wash in hot water, dry with high heat). I like using this method for getting my felt because you can get patterned felt this way. It also tends to come out thicker than premade felt. You could also felt a wool sweater, buy wool felt, or use a synthetic felt. Again, it's up to you - this is a very customizable project. If you want a multi-colored garland, go with the felt sheets you get at a craft store, for example. They're cheap, easy to find, and come in lots of colors.

The next step is to cut out your hearts, as many as you want. I only cut from the ends of my scarf, because that's where the bands of plaid were. I ended up cutting out 25 hearts. To get a consistent shape, I just placed the template on top of the scarf, held it with my left hand, and cut with my right. Being right-handed, I found that the right side was a lot easier to cut, so on some of them, I cut out the right side first, then flipped the felt over, repositioned the template, and cut the right side again (which was the left when viewed from the other side).

After you have a nice little stack of hearts, it's time to sew them together. Just stick the first one under your needle (leave longish thread tails at the beginning), sew sew sew, and slip the next one in there to sit as close to the previous one as you can. The tricky part is keeping them lined up and not getting too much of a gap between them. Since the sides aren't straight, it takes a little extra attention and effort to place one heart next to another while getting them to feed through the machine. It's really not difficult though - go ahead, you can do it!

Once they're all sewn together, tie the ends off leaving little loops and hang above your bed, over your couch, around the door... the possibilities are endless (well, sort of). Let me know if you try this!

 And if you'd rather buy than make, my garland is for sale here. :) Handmade with love, of course! [UPDATE: The garland has been sold - but contact me if you'd like a similar one!]

12 Days of Christmas - Part 4

The final days of my Christmas treasuries:

by thetimeisnow

Tenth Day of Christmas:

Eleventh Day of Christmas:

Twelfth Day of Christmas:

12 Days of Christmas - Part 3

More Etsy treasuries!

by alyssaettinger

Seventh Day of Christmas:

Eighth Day of Christmas:

Ninth Day of Christmas:

12 Days of Christmas - Part 2

Here are the treasuries for the next three days of Christmas:

by SecretCharm

The Fourth Day of Christmas:

The Fifth Day of Christmas:

The Sixth Day of Christmas:

12 Days of Christmas - Part 1

I put together 12 treasuries on Etsy over the last couple weeks, each featuring one of the twelve days of Christmas. Here are the first 3:

by rawartletterpress

The First Day of Christmas:

The Second Day of Christmas:

The Third Day of Christmas:

You might notice at this point, some of the items are gone - hopefully they've all been sold!

SF Etsy Team - Nice to meet you, Katy!

I love where I live, and I'm fortunate to be able to live so close to the city. I recently joined the San Francisco Etsy team; there's an amazing group of artists and crafters in this area. I want to introduce a few of them over the next few weeks.

Photo by J. Astra Brinkmann

The first Etsy seller I'm featuring here is Katy Atchison. She sells adorable prints, paintings, cards, and hair accessories. She describes herself as "an illustrator, crafter & explorer." You can visit her Etsy shop at katyatchison.etsy.com. Here are a few of her items that I especially liked:

"Robots in Love" painting

"Eggplant n Carrot BFF of Flavor" original drawing

Bright Peacock Feather hair clip

Bee and Daisy greeting card

Black and White Ball Feather Hair Accessory with 1920s Vintage Button

Aren't they bright and fun? I think her illustrations would be fantastic in a nursery or kid's room, but they'd also brighten up any spot in your home. And I'm always looking for fun hair clips, especially around the holidays.

 Photo by J. Astra Brinkmann

http://www.flickr.com/photos/musicpurr

You can find out more about Katy through any of your preferred social media :)

Website/Blog: http://www.katyatchison.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/katyatch
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/katy.atchison
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katyatchisonillustration/

And I saw on her Facebook page that she's got a little giveaway going on! "Fan me and win a Katy Atchison original illustration or painting. Two drawings this month...the 15th and the 31st of December!"

Photo by J. Astra Brinkmann

Please visit her and add a little bit of sunshine to your day :)

Black Friday at Home

Well, this is what my black Friday is looking like so far:

Making things for the shop, watching Grey's Anatomy and Robin Hood, coffee, snacks... I had pumpkin pie for breakfast, shhh. It's grey and chilly outside, so I've got a cozy blanket and my slippers. My husband is busy working in the craziness that is a mall on Black Friday. The dog is snoring on his pillow. No way I'm going out shopping; I don't want to deal with the crowds today!

Speaking of Black Friday, I have a special going on at Etsy, now through Monday (Black Friday, Cyber Monday... don't you love all those titles? or not) - all items are marked down already, but if you enter the code BLACKFRIDAY2010 for my store at checkout, you'll get a grand total of 25% off all items and free shipping. Quite a few sellers are having sales; I love that you can buy handcrafted goodies without leaving the house. I'll be adding more items to my shop through the weekend. Which means I need to get back to making them!

This is a garland in the making, by the way. I have plans to make some of my own decorations, today, too - like a tree skirt. Let's see how much I can actually get done!

Weekend Update

Well, I wasn't feeling great over the weekend; I think I'm fighting with a little cold. It was a moderately productive weekend, though.

Last week I actually made a lightbox, seen here:

It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. At least, it's sort of helpful. I don't have a good light to use with it, and as you can see, it's rather flimsy. But overall, it's better than what I was getting with poor lighting and a lightweight camera. Makes things easier.

I worked on this little guy (Etsy shop preview!); hand-stitched while watching Coraline. Which was interesting. I know I'm a little late to this, but hey, I'm not exactly a "cutting-edge" person. I liked it as a movie; the characters were fun and interesting. The whole stop-motion, crafty, handmade aspect amazes me.

I also made one of the autumn potholders.

It's super-thick and I love the stitched "veins." I felted two sweaters for this; the grey one was thrifted and the red one is an old one of mine (I'm too lazy to care for wool sweaters properly, so it had become too small). First time felting wool myself, and it was so fun! With the thrifted one, I turned a loose-fitting women's medium into a child-sized sweater about an inch thick. Not really an inch, but that grey wool is actually a good 3/8" thick now.

I'm planning to bring it to my mom's for Thanksgiving dinner. That bowl needs some food in it. So excited for the holidays to begin!

Adding & Connecting

I now have a link to the Etsy shop here on the blog, along with a link to the brand-new Facebook page - both are over there --> on the sidebar.

I have also somehow connected Facebook to Etsy, and there are links to Twitter and this here blog on Etsy... It all feels very circular and makes my brain spin a little. We were watching The Office tonight and I felt like I needed a weird version of WUPHF.

Craftiness to happen tomorrow. Hopefully I can make time for some Christmas goodies, because I want to decorate the weekend after Thanksgiving - and that's next week! It doesn't quite seem like November to me yet, but maybe a nice, rainy weekend will help.

Etsy

Etsy Treasuries

Well, I may have found a new addiction. I made my first treasury today:

And I am also IN my first treasury!

It's so fun to dig around, figure out a theme, find items that go together... It takes some time, though!

Etsy shop - now open!

I have officially listed my first item in the Smith & Daphne Etsy shop. I'll be adding new items throughout the week, so although it looks a little bare right now, I do indeed have more items! I just need to get pictures taken and descriptions written for everything - luckily my mom is going to help out with the pics.

Now I'm off to do some more sewing!

Aviary & Phoenix

I was searching for a good way to make an Etsy banner/blog header that DIDN'T involve Photoshop, (since I don't have or want to buy Photoshop), and I found this. It's a nice, simple tutorial for a banner using a web application called Phoenix. I'd never heard of Aviary or Phoenix (or any of the other programs) but I'm now a big fan! I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I got 5 decent looking banners in one evening. And it's free!

I've tried using GIMP for photo editing, etc. but never got the hang of it. I think some of the problems were from trying to run it on my Mac, who knows. Phoenix runs right in Firefox and doesn't do too many weird things. I did have some issues resizing the text, but I just kept working with it and got it to do what I wanted. There were also times when I had to click things more than once (like "Export image" - never worked the first time I clicked it). But really, nothing big.

I'm waiting for official permission to use one of my mom's images for the header that I picked, but here are some of the other versions (one of which I like and may use in the future).

First try

Version 2

Version 3

Hopefully I'll have a new (real) blog header tomorrow!

***Update - It's up!***

Starting Up

I have a new Etsy account, a new blog, and a Twitter account now! I'm (slowly) working on getting everything set up and still making things to put in the shop. The Etsy store isn't open yet, but it's getting closer! I finally picked a name:

Smith & Daphne

You can find me here:

Etsy: SmithAndDaphne (nothing to see, YET)

Twitter: @SmithAndDaphne (again, nothing there yet)

New blog! smithanddaphne.blogspot.com - I will be using the new blog soon. I'll update when I've officially switched.