Posts by author: Devona

After our Book Swap on Saturday, my family went to Art on the Square with Colleen and her family. There were quite a few craft vendors there, some food vendors (we had yummy wasabi sliders from somewhere, but I forgot the name. Sorry!) and live music on mulitple stages.

We were walking down the street, enjoying the weather, when I saw one of my favorite local Makers: Toony Jewelry. I keep running into Barbara and her wares ever since my first time vending at Oddmall where she was my booth neighbor. I have picked up, put down, and picked up and put down, etc. her jewelry a thousand times but had never been able to make a choice. But this time I was looking out for something craft-related and that made it so much simpler to decide. This necklace came home with me, and I must say, it love it.

As hard as it is for a former English Major to part with books, I’ve managed to gather some up for the Book Swap.It’s so much more managable to say good bye when I know I can bring home some new books, and eat some tasty goodies, and hang out with my friends and meet new ones.

It’s true. I love swapping.

Here’s the info! See you all tomorrow at the Fabulous Craft Akron!

Here’s one of my i-can’t-type-well posts. I found the pattern for this jacket in a bag of handed down linens. It was cut out of a grocery bag and only had the words “5/8 inch seam all around” written on it.

After a little puzzling it out and I came up with this jacket in a 3-6 month size. I graded it to a 12-18 month and made one for my sweet Cressida.

It’s because I broke my collar bone playing soccer last Saturday.

For the sake of keeping blogging short (I have trouble blogging left handed) I will be mostly sharing links and photos until I get my right hand back. In the meantime I’ll be sporting this fashionable sling I altered by hand sewing a panel of upholstery fabric to the blue hospital sling. Yes, I used my left hand for this, and no, I don’t plan to do any more sewing until I can use my right hand again.

It’s tomato time! I grew “lemon boy” and “ruffled yellow” tomatoes this year to change up my usual early girl, cherry tomatoes and romas. The harvest has been quite prolific, actually quite a bit more than I can use in just salads and sandwiches. Rather than freezing them, I decided to try to use them fresh as often as possible, and that’s how I started making my Simple Salsa.

It’s very mild, since I am always sharing it with the girls, but you can easily add a jalepeno or other hot pepper variety if you like some fire in your salsa.

The recipe is as follows:

Simple Salsa

about 6 tomatoes diced

2 small red onions diced very small

2 green peppers diced

1 clove garlic minced

1 T sugar

2 tsp salt

1 tsp cumin

black pepper to taste

Stir all ingredients together, let it set a bit for the flavors to blend together. I’ve had it 5 minutes after making it and it is great. It is even better if you can manage to wait until the next day. We can rarely wait that long!

We were attending a wedding last weekend and I really wanted to dress up my outfit since it was  a friday evening wedding. I thought about a necklace, but my blue dress had a ruffled neckline so that seemed a bit too much. Then I thought I should wear a slight veiled pillbox hat, but I don’t have one! So since I know how to make fascinators, and I had some blue crinoline in my stash I went to work on this beauty.

To make it was a piece of cake. I cut a 10 inch circle of crinoline and folded it in half so that the edges did not quite match up. Then I fanned the folded side about 4 times to give it dimension, leaving the ends straight. I stitched through the fan folds and used the stitching to attach the crinoline to a head band.

Then I decided it needed more drama, so I used acrylic paint to tint the edges navy blue, and used a vintage broach as a focal point. The bonus was that the broach covered my stitches that held it onto my headband.

Apart from drying time, this really only took me 15 minutes. And I let the paint dry while I got dressed and did my makeup. It was a really fast way to dress up a simple dress, and make a subdued statement. I can’t wait until I can wear it again!

We are a couple of weeks away from Kindergarten here at our house. And the rest of the country is getting all of their ducks in a row to waddle back to the big pond of school. We have a bunch of  school supplies to purchase, like crayons and stuff like that, but there are also items we need that can be bought handmade or second hand. I’ve been looking around the interwebs and wanted to share some of my findings with you!

Terre Mum has lots of eco-friendly items in her shop, mostly food related. But if you’ve got to pack a lunch this year, absolutely stop by her shop for one of these great snack bags. I especially like that they are just linen lined with cotton, which doesn’t help keep pretzels from going stale, but will keep chemicals from leeching onto your Kiddo’s snack. I am definitely buying a few of these.

Made By Rae has a great pattern for a Toddler Backpack on her site which I would love to try  to make. For the seamstresses out there, this would be a great way to help your Kindergartener feel personally invested in her first day of school. Picking out the fabric for your own backpack is one step above picking out the first day of school outfit.

Olivia has to wear a uniform to her school so I have been looking for cute belts and socks to give her some freedom of expression. That’s how I stumbled upon Ivan and Mary and this Alligator Belt in her shop. I love the little alligator and how it reminds me of the preppy school polo shirts. What a perfect belt!

And since lunch seems to be the one thing I am most obsessed about (I’m so worried about my child eating her food at school!) lets look at lunch bags. Deerpath Designs‘ Personalized Lunch Bags look adorable. And, the one I’ve featured here already has my daughter’s name on it! Taking into account the prices for bags I saw at Target today, $21.99 is very reasonable for a handmade bag.

I hope everyone’s transition into the school year goes great, no matter what grade your kids (or you!) are entering. And if you have, or you’ve seen, an awesome handmade item that’s great for back to school you’d love to share, please leave a link in the comments.

Being in the “business” of repurposing things means that I get a lot of bags of things destined for the landfill or Goodwill. My friends, family and acquaintances will drop stuff off here before they donate or pitch it. I love this. I rummage through the goods and take what I want and then drive the rest off to a Goodwill donation center.

In my most recent bag-of-stuff acquisition I found, among other things, these cool vintage flour sack tea towels with calendars printed on them. There’s no wondering what year they were made, as it is stamped right on there. I kept them even though they don’t match my decor at all. They just seemed so unique and quaint. Now I am wondering what to do with them. I don’t want to put them into my regular rags, since they get used for things like wiping up grape juice, but I can’t think of a good place to display them.

Should I just let them make their way to the thrift store, or should I keep them around for some project later on?

Have you heard of it? Groupon* is a lot of fun, and it’s a great way to get coupons that are specific to your town. When you sign up you will receive a coupon deal emailed to you each morning, and if enough people buy into the coupon (usually around 20 people) then you get the deal.

For example, last week I bought into the Shabby Apple’s coupon- buy $100 worth of merchandise for $40- and redeemed it on the website. That is a spectacular deal. I got this dress:

and this dress:

There are also more local offers, like the groupon that offered a family membership to the Akron Art Museum for $35 dollars. I bought that groupon, too. I have to be careful that I don’t spend more money than I should just because it’s a good deal!

* Disclosure, if you click the link provided and purchase a Groupon through my referral I get $10 in my Groupon account.

I have always thought it would be fun to have a Photo Gallery of post-craft hand pictures. Like the time I was using a knife to carve into wax and cut into my thumb but there was a bunch of wax in the cut so it didn’t bleed (OK maybe not that one). Or after making my magazine coasters how I had a ton of dried glue all over me. It’s sort of like the hand picture could be a project in itself.

Well, these hands are dyed with fabric dye. Really really badly. This summer’s craft at Vacation Bible School (which I did not pick but was left in charge of executing) was to tie dye 50 kids’ shirts in five 20 minute long groups. Let’s just say that after changing my gloves 15 times only to find a new hole in all of the available pairs I gave up on the gloves and went for the bare-hand approach.  The only way to recover from hands this blackened is to go swimming in a chlorinated pool, by the way.

So, if you have some crazy hands after a project consider taking a picture. And if you do, let us know you did it by posting the pictures in our Flickr pool.