What Have I Been Up To?

Necklaces! I love making long necklaces. They're just so easy to put together. I personally use medium weight fishing line from the sporting goods store for my string which is basically the same thing as the expensive monofilament that you can get in any crafting or beading store. Yes, the fishing line may cost you more up front, but it lasts for practically forever. I bought mine about 5 years ago, and I have yet to even get close to running out of it. As far as beads go, I tend to start with lots of cheap black beads, and then I just add something a little more special to it. This keeps my cost way down, and usually it means that I can wear more than one necklace at a time if I'm in the mood to mix and match colors. For the necklace pictured below, my "special" beads are the big black ones. They cost me around $4.00. When I do a color, I usually like to use large crystals. They're a little expensive, but with lots of black beads in between the crystals, I just need a few of them. Sorry that there aren't any pictures of the more colorful necklaces. My camera decided to die.

Tutorial: Clutch

Have you ever found that perfect tutorial? You know the one that is cute, well written, and most importantly the one that you absolutely have to use right away. Well, that's exactly what I had to do with the tutorial that I'm linking you up with today. The design is so unique, yet really quite simple. I am absolutely in love with it! So without further ado, I'm going to highly encourage that you go check out the Gathered Clutch Tutorial over at Noodlehead. While you're over there though, you'll probably want to check out the rest of her blog to. I know that I did.

Lifesize Board Games

So, I'm teaching a group of kindergartners on Sunday mornings at church right now, and I needed a new idea for group time. I'm sure that this is not an original idea or anything, but my kids loved it sooo very much that I thought that it was worthy of mentioning. We played a life sized board game with review questions. This would be a great activity for birthday parties, Sunday school classes, and even school teachers.

All you have to do is laminate either card stock or construction paper. Then, lay them out so that they resemble a game such as candy land. So that there was no confusion, I did print start on one piece of paper and you win on another, but depending on what you're using this for and what age your using it for, you wouldn't really even have to do that. In my version of the game, there was a boys team and a girls team that alternated turns. When it was a team's turn, they would first have to answer a review question. If they answered the question correctly, they got to role the dice to see how many spaces they would get to move. You can use generic dice or you can get the large foam dice that some companies such as Oriental Trading carry. At the beginning of the game, each team chose one person to be the "playing piece" for their team. Be careful when allowing children to walk directly on the laminated pieces though. Laminating can be quite slippery especially when placed on flooring such as carpet. Another option is to hang the board game around the room using cutouts for the playing pieces. Either way, my group of kids seem to love it! I just wish that I had, had a camera with me for pictures.

Handbag Tutorials

Although my sewing machine has been in storage for a couple of months now, that hasn’t stopped me from finding projects that I want to do later on. Instead of keeping the ever growing list of handbag tutorials to myself, I thought that I would go ahead and post it for all to enjoy.

The Phoebe Bag
Bias Tape Tote
Anna's Diaper Bag
Tote Bag
The Keisha Bag

Aren't there are some amazing tutorials out there? Let me know what some of your favorites are!

Free Patterns: 18” Doll Clothes (American Girl)

Have you seen the free clothes patterns at American Girl Playthings? These patterns were originally published by American Girl for their 18” dolls, but now they are available online for free!! I used to dream that my grandmother would buy these very pattern sets and sew my doll up an entire wardrobe of fun things. Some of the patterns are a little dated which is great if you want historically accurate clothes. However, there is also at least one piece in each set that can be passed off as a modern day piece with the right material and possibly a little tweaking. Check them out here, and have fun!

Felt Food

I obviously didn’t get another tutorial posted before the end of the year. I would apologize yet again, but I'm sure y'all are tired of all that. I did get moved, but I have yet to find a decent place to set up my sewing machine so as of late I have had to resort to hand sewing. One of my new favorite hand sewing projects has been felt food. Don’t ask me why though because I have no idea what I’m actually going to do with this stuff once I get it made, but it sure is a lot of fun to make. If you want to make your own felt food, there’s been a Felt-Food Cook Along going on over at Helping Little Hands for a couple of weeks now. I can’t say that I’ve really used any of the tutorials, but I’ve looked at all of them. They seem to be accurate and very easy to follow. Alas, I started making felt food before the cook along ever started so I’ve just kind of learned how to do things as I went along (aka the hard way). Trust me there has been plenty of trial and error going on at my house. I wish there had been something like this when I first started making felt food a couple of months ago!

Just an Update

I feel so bad. I promise that I haven't forgotten about ya'll or this blog of mine. School has been keeping me so busy this semester that I just haven't had a spare minute to sew much less make a decent tutorial. On top of that, I just found out that I'm going to be moving in about 6 weeks so life is just a little crazy. It's a good thing that God is in charge right now and not me because otherwise I would be going crazy. My goal is to post a new tutorial sometime this week, and hopefully do one post a week after that. I really need to start sewing again. It is seriously like therapy for me. Can anyone relate or am I just crazy? lol