Oh the Cuteness!

There's a ton of new cute items up for sale in my Etsy shop this week! These herb and spice filled trivets, which I talked about making for a craft fair , are finally listed in the shop! As are these wonderful vintage button art pieces I made. I've been collecting vintage buttons my entire life and I'm so happy to have these special ones out of the jars and on display! The one in the top middle is sold, and the center one is mine, but the rest are in the shop waiting for new homes! I've also listed a framing option for them if you want yours to arrive nicely framed! And lastly, I've created a new version of my Yarn Bombing Kit that comes without a knitted piece included , for those of you who want to make your own and ship it off to a friend! Happy shopping! ^_^

There's some exciting new products up for sale in my Etsy shop! Firstly, there's my Yarn Bombing Kits, pictured above! They've been in the works for quite some time, and I'm super excited to finally release them! They come with everything you need to install a unique yarn bomb and it all comes shipped in a drawstring bag. How fun would it be to get one of these in the mail?! Just in time for Mother's Day I've listed my pom pom flowers: beautiful handmade wool pompoms in specially chosen colors on white twig stems . They're only $3 a blossom so you can select colors and sizes from a drop-down menu and build your own bouquets! Also up for sale are some beautiful jumbo paper flower surprise balls! Filled with 9 vintage and vintage-inspired prizes, they are made from over 70 feet of hand-cut multicolored crepe paper streamers and recycled tissue paper. Each one is unique, and has a stem which also contains a prize so they're fun to gi...

Last month I posted about making felt bead necklaces with Johnny's nieces. I also mentioned that they picked out pieces from my stash of vintage goodies (shown above) so I could make fascinators for them, and I thought I'd show off their designs!  This one is for the youngest sister. She knew for sure she had to have the hat and the sparkly ball piece, but she left the other options pretty open for me by choosing lots of little charms and feathers. That little top hat was an interesting thing to try to attach to a feather pad and headband so it would be sturdy enough for a kid to wear, but I did it! It involved sewing through the hat and feathers, under the headband, and around the brim. I'm quite pleased!  And this one's for the older sister. She had some very specific pieces and I had to work some artistic license into this one. But it came out great!  They both liked them so much that they tried to kidnap me after lunch! But that kinda alwa...

If you remember in my big craft room reveal post I mentioned that there was one piece of furniture missing. It's finally here and all set up, and I've used it quite a bit. It's an antique jeweler's bench that my dad had in his office for his watch repair business. He's been able to retire from that recently and I snatched it up! It's got amazing storage capacity and is so awesome. I'd like to clean it up and paint it one of these days, and possibly put a new top on it, but for now it's working just fine. Check it out: Plenty of storage, and the pad that pulls out is to catch things when you drop them! Changed my life.  Oodles of graduated drawers on the side keep all my jewelry and steampunk supplies in order. One of my favorite features is that not only does it have a few shelves inside the leg for more storage, but it has this built in outlet at the front. This makes it so much easier for me to work with my hot glue gun, dremel, or s...

During Johnny's first camping trip we stopped in old town Cayucos to browse some of the great antique shops. I was drawn into one that had gobs of Jadeite displayed by the front door, and wound up purchasing this little beauty from a dear old man who said it belonged to his late wife: Oh the cuteness! It's my favorite color and it really works ! Yup, it sews, and it's only about 6 inches long. I was so happy to have this to display in my craft room, but I secretly wished I had the instructions for it. But, as fate would have it, during the last couple days of the same trip we went to the antique shops in Paso and Johnny spotted this on the bottom shelf of a display case: And lo and behold, it was in its original box with the accessories and instructions! Look at how stinkin' cute that box is! It's the metal details that get me. And as an added bonus, the little girl who previously owned this kit sewed one of the tops together and it...

In the first part of this post I told you all about the good times and creepy fun I had exploring the abandoned amusement park next door to our campground. Little did I know that when I returned to the campground Vanessa would have yet another surprise for me. She said there was a neighborhood of abandoned houses just outside the campground, and we should go check it out. *Swoon* I couldn't get out there fast enough! And they literally were right next door. We had to climb over a tiny fence to get into the neighborhood, and I couldn't believe what I saw. About a dozen houses, all in various states of decay. Their styles and colors and the objects strewn about placed them as being built in the 1960's. Some were nearly perfectly intact on the outside, while others were flattened. It almost looked like the whole group had slid down the hill in a weather-related catastrophe, and that's the only theory we have going because I couldn't seem to find any information on t...

My mom gave me a bag of antique quilt pieces a very long time ago. They were so lovely, but obviously cut from a quilt that was in very, very poor condition. These flowery applique pieces are so pretty, and since there were 4 of them I decided to sew them face-to-face and add a little loop of twill tape to make myself some new potholders! Whoever cut the quilt apart cut pretty close to the edges so some of the edges are a little obscured, but hey, they're potholders . And since some of the fabrics are very tattered at least my heart won't be broken when Dennis accidentally lights them on fire (okay he's never actually lit anything on fire, but he worries me in the kitchen so I know it will happen some day). It makes me feel good to know that someone worked really hard on this quilt (it's all made from 1930's flour sack fabrics too), and then someone loved it so much that it was used to death, and even at the end of its usable life it can still be used and...