July 19th, 2011 -- Posted in friends, knitty/stitchy, pics |
Earlier this spring, there was a bit of a baby boom in my group of friends! My high school friends are all having little ones and it seems now there is constantly at least one or two friends who are new moms or expecting. Now that I’ve been knitting a while, it was a great transition to start to learn to knit cute little baby items!
It’s been a tradition of mine for a while to do baby birth samplers (in cross-stitch) for each new baby. If I wasn’t able to have it ready as a “new baby” gift, I’d often give it at the baby’s first birthday. This is something I may or may not continue, but I find cross-stitch is getting a little trickier for me these days. Knitting is more comfortable for me and less straining and tiring. And the results and still just as a personal, yet are practical and enjoyed more on a day-to-day basis!
When I decided to start learning, I jumped in head-first! I bought one booklet with many baby patterns and several balls of coordinating yarn in blues. I had 2 close friends in mind for the first projects, whom I had known since grade 7 and grade 10, and whose little boys would be cousins! I admit now I probably *should* have started off with something simple, like a cap or a pair of booties. But no, I really fell in love with this little sweater pattern and had to start that right away!
The details were adorable: little stripey hoodie, nifty pattern along the v-neck collar…
It was a very challenging project and I plodded along pretty slowly! Lots of pieces and steps. I put to use all 3 stitch-holders that my son had bought me for Christmas (well, with strong encouragement from Daddy!). But finally, it was complete!
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May 28th, 2011 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
One of these was created for my… well, I guess she might end of being my sister-in-law if all goes well? 
But for now officially she is “only” my younger brother’s girlfriend. Anyways, this was a card created for my mother to give to her for her birthday…
My mother was stopping by and mentioning she didn’t yet have a card so I was like “Um… do you want me to bring my card store to the front door!?”. Oh yeeeaah. People tend to forget I make cards! Even if it’s one of the few things I can actually do these days besides a very small amount of housekeeping and child-raising tasks…
So I’d totally been on a card roll anyways during that time and was able to create and extra couple of cards without too much extra difficulty…
As much as I cringe and complain about not having a “real” dinning room, it is really handy to be able to have a scrapbooking area where I can leave my stuff lying around without having to worry about tidying it all up and leaving things looking neat and tidy like I might feel more pressured too if we had an actual dinning set there.
I really went all out for these ones with all sorts of great papers, colours and embellishments… lots of brads, rhinestone stickers, stamped images (butterflies, flowers), punched borders, two-step stamping techniques, paper-piercing technique, little flowers, etc! My “SIL” hasn’t really seen a lot of my work, so might as well make a great first impression, right? I hear it really did wow her and got passed around the table with similar reactions as well so for me that’s the best reward for the creative work that I do. The best part of a hand-made card is just that extra punch of glitz and shine. And since you’ve already heard my “why give something store-bought when you can get (or make!) a card that carries so much more depth and warmth to it?” spiel, I’ll just remind you where my online card store is and mention that the 2nd card in this set is up for sale!
Happy Stamping! ♥
April 7th, 2011 -- Posted in scrappy / stampy |
These were a really fun project to do…
For my first card order of the year, a friend commissioned a birthday card in blues, browns and greens. Suitable for a male in his 20s… oh a by the way, it’s being sent to a celebrity rock star, no pressure.
She only needed one card but I ended up making two (I often do make more than one at a time, often in pairs since that’s the way an 8 & 1/2 x 11″ page of cardstock evenly divides!). Then she had the choice of which one to opt for. She ended up choosing the guitar, so the star card will be added to my KStar Card Store…
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