Happy December! Golly, I look forward to this time all year. There are so many things that I love to do- baking tons of cookies, gingerbread houses, drives (or bikes rides) to look at the holiday lights, shopping, sipping hot cocoa, cuddling in cozy blankets with people I love and watching my favorite holiday movies, and about a gazillion other things. I love counting down the days until Christmas and last year I finally made an advent calendar for the month of December. My plan was to offer this rad tutorial for all ya’ll so that you could make your own but folks, I was lucky to get a shower yesterday and this mama likes to overextend herself so there’s no way I’ll be getting to it in the next week. I thought that I would just share the photos and my process and since you are amazingly smart and creative you can work it out without step-by-step photos.

Materials that I used: 24 sheets of 8 x 8 inch card stock (I had one of those pads of coordinating linen-feel papers), thread, staples, tape, ornament hooks, and felt stickers.
Equipment that I used: Martha Stewart’s punch around the page, sewing machine, stapler.

Things that I did: I used white thread to freehand machine embroider the dates (one through twentyfour) onto each piece of paper, right near one of the corners. I then used my really awesome punch set to create those little loops around that corner. I think those two steps were the hardest part because then I just rolled them into cones, secured then with a piece of tape inside and a staple. Then I used the felt sticker to cover the staple on the outside and used to ornament hook to hang it from a wire in our play room (so situated for just this sort of thing). And then, the best part is filling them- I chose our favorite not-for-everyday candies and put enough for all candy-eating memebers of the household to enjoy one everyday. I also included a note with an activity to do that day. These ranged from the Pensacola Christmas parade to cookie baking to movie watching. It may seem kinda crazy to pre-plan watching a holiday movie, but I wanted to make sure that we paced ourselves and watched all of our favorites and didn’t miss any of the great events happening around our town.

I think that I was really inspired by this tutorial when I was making this last year. It is lovely.

I’m off to get oursout and up before the boys come home!

xo
elle

Have all ya’ll heard about swap-bot? I found it last week a few clicks away from one of my favorite crafty blogs. It’s the modern crafty version of pen pals- sort of. There are currently about 500 swaps going on- ranging from e-mails sharing your favorite craft links to handmade aprons. I chose to sign up for a stationary swap, an Easter goodie swap, and a journal swap. I love love love sending out awesome little packages (and my excess cool junk goes to someone who wants it!), but I haven’t been that impressed with what other people have been sending me (I didn’t even have the heart to post pictures-shoot, I didn’t even take pictures.) It’s still fun to get packages in the mail though. =) So, swap-bot gets a thumbs-up and two sprinkles of glitter from me.

later crafty mavens,
elle

For my now completed stop motion teeny tiny film I had to make a whole host of teeny tiny props. It took just about the same amount of time to make everything as it did to photograph the stop motion! I was so inspired by the movie Coraline. Everything in that movie was handmade- the flowers, the clothing, the food- and it was all done on a tiny scale. The sweaters were knit with tiny needles by artist Althea Crome and the hands were molded in miniature molds. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s out on DVD now and it’s stupendous!

I made a dress from vintage fabric and liquid stitch. The sleeves were the hardest part! And, I heart pleats and darts.

I also made a banner with my name, which I later animated with paper bluebirds.

This tiny tv dropped from the sky and played a video that I’d previously made from photographs (mad thanks to garth for printing & cutting out all of those tiny pictures!)

Mr. Cockroach traveled all over this pull-down map of the US that I made, complete with knoted pull cord.

I needed a teeny tiny cake and used some bottle caps covered in marshmallow fondant. The dots are paper punched holes and the candles are wires and string with a piece of masking tape that was colored with a marker.

Tiny books and photographs.

And, a teeny tiny painting.

I spent a grand total of $.50 and the better part of three days making this film. It’ll be posted Monday along with the big-ultra-exciting-announcement.

Stay true, friends. =)

elle

I’m going to show you how it’s done, but let me warn you- while this rug was super inexpensive to make with the resource of money- it was very costly in the resource of time. I have easily 60 hours invested into this rug, and many many more hours donated by family and friends. I love that I started it while I was pregnant and worked on it while Jack was a teeny tiny newborn. I love that my Mom and I sat with it on our lap, each hooking from one side to the other, meeting each other in the middle, while my overdue belly hindered my progress.

And now, this is how to make your very own latch hook rug.

Supplies:
Latch hook canvas
latch hook tool
old t-shirts
scissors or rotary cutting tool/mat
seam binding
masking tape
dye (optional)

All of these things should be available at your local craft store, with the exception of the old t-shirts. I found thrift stores that were doing bag sales and loaded my bags up with white t-shirts. I also asked my local freecyclers if they had any white t-shirts to spare. I was able to purchase all of the supplies, including shirts, for under $25.

On to the making! The first thing that you want to do is plan. Decide how large you would like your rug to be and what colors/designs you would like. I chose to just make it one all one color, battleship gray (much to the chagrin of my submariner husband!). Estimate how many shirts you’ll need because if you’re dyeing them, as I did, you’ll want to dye them all in one batch to get consistant color. I found that I needed 70 strips to fill one square (latch hook canvas is pre-printed with a grid), and that I could get approximately 250 strips for the average men’s t-shirt. Thus, I would need 2 shirts for every 7 squares. These numbers are a good starting point, but may need to be adjusted according to your design needs.
note: I chose to make this rug very thick. The 2 shirts for every 7 squares number is based on a very tight and very high piled rug. Super results can be achieved with less. I reccomend using half of this number if you’re making a larger rug, to save on time, and to reduce the bullk of the finished rug.

Once you’ve gathered all of your shirts, use a rotary cutting tool and mat (you can certainly use scissors but the results are less precise) to cut the shirts into 1 inch strips. It was easiest for me to fold the shirt in half, shoulder to shoulder and cut strips from the trunk of the shirt, up to the collar. It is important to make sure that the shirt is smooth and flat when cutting, or you’ll end up with uneven or jagged strips. All of these strips should then be cut into 4 inch segments. This cutting phase easily took me 20 hours (I was cutting up 51 shirts!).

Once you have all of the strips cut, it’s time to dye them if you’d like. I used Rit dye and just dumped them all into the washing machine.

Once your strips are all ready to go, tape the edges of the latch hook canvas with the masking tape so that they won’t pull apart while your latching.

Now you’re ready to hook! From the front of your rug, isolate a strand of the canvas with the latch hook tool. Make a loop with the t-shirt strip and place it on the end of the tool. Pull the latch hook tool down, through the canvas, pulling the t-shirt strip with it, leaving the strip halfway through the canvas. Slide the tool up to the remaining ends of the t-shirt strip and catch them. Pull them through the loop made by the t-shirt strip below the canvas.

I chose to do this with every other available space on my latch hook canvas, and it made a very lush, very high pile rug. You may want to space it out differently for a larger rug, or for a rug with less bulk.

Continue until you run out of strips, or complete the size that you’d like!

When you’re done, bind the edges by hand using seam binding.

Here’s my completed rug, you can see that it gets Jack’s approval!

good luck and happy hooking!

29 july 2010 edit: Thanks for all of your enthusiasm about this project! Please read the comments below as well as they contain some extra tips from people who have conquered this project! Carry on.

xo
elle

Signed, this 7th day of May in the year 2009, with Mr Jack danger as my witness,

elle

This quilt was made for my most super dearest friend, Anna, to give to her sister for the birth of her daughter, Maci Noel. I used remnants of lots of projects for the blocks on front and some uber cute crab fabric that I picked up at JoAnn’s long ago. The binding is extra large bias tape that I made from vintage sheets. I machine quilted it in these traced squares- the whole quilt is (or could have been I suppose, since I ran off the edges a few times) quilted with a single line that snakes upon itself over and over. Lots of turning on the old sewing machine! I really adore how it turned out though…I’ll have to do one like this for me. It’s on it’s way to SoCal, where I wish I was breathing…

More pics are over at my flickr account!

xo
elle

From our wedding planning book. We started daydreaming/planning in it when we got engaged, and used it our entire engagement to manage guest lists, plan reception menus, design wedding attire, organize calendars and family phone numbers, and just basically keep everything in one place. It’s now this beautiful record of the planning of our wedding, including the ideas that we didn’t use!

Our wedding card album. I got this fabulous handmade album from flyleafbooks, intending to use it as a wedding album…but it’s perfect for this. All of our well-wishes together!

My bachelorette party scrapbook! I created this one using the wrapping and boxes from the presents I received. The cover is from a Victoria’s Secret box (from my sister, she’s the best!). I used my binding machine at home to keep it all together.

Pages from our honeymoon scrapbook. This one took me two full nights of scrapbooking- probably a total of 15 hours. Yikes!

And a scrapbook from a trip to Orlando we took last May.

SO nice to have these done! The nursery isn’t done…but I know that Jack won’t need it for a while anyways- he’ll be hanging out in the parents room all night. =)

Here’s the rest of the list:
make planet mobile
pack for the hospital (almost done!)
buy: rug, lanterns, camcorder, changing pad, diapers, wipes
paint crib
clean and stock baby room
make Jack Danger painting
honeymoon photo album
wedding photo books
choose photo sorting program
fix back seat
clean new toys (half done)
install carseat
compile phone lists/groups on phone
freeze a week of meals (we’ve got two days done!)
make Sam/Jack/Maci quilts
get bassinet ready
lots of bow ties ready to list
clean chair
write in Jack’s book
houseguest cleaning
organize baby stuff in garage (thanks Garth!)
crib bedding

So what should I work on tonight? =) I’ll keep all ya’ll updated as the big day draws near.

xo
soon-to-be-mama elle

I recently purchased some new toys for making: a stack cutter and a wire binding machine.  They are amazing and wonderful and it’s amazing how much time I can spend cutting things and then putting them back together with wire.  This weekend I made several little notebooks out of vintage playing cards, and a handful of lovey photo album/scrapbooks for Valentine’s Day.  The notebooks are in the shop now, and are so gosh darn cute that I want to use them myself. Later this week the Valentine’s Day books will be added to the shop, along with a handful of bow ties. 

It’s been nice keeping my hands busy while my mind has been flooded with design and presentation issues for my shop and my items.  I am endlessly focused on branding and efficiency and orginality- and it can distract me from actually making things.  Business cards, thanks you’s, shipping items, and the like are monumental in my mind.  I know what it is that I want to convey but it’s hard to put that into a logo, or channel it into a color.  I think being an artist makes design tasks less intimidating, but more insurmountable.  Options…there are endless options.  =)

xoxox
elle

Happy birthday Kaitlyn Grace! Your present is in the mail. Leave it to your Auntie Laura to think that your birthday was still several days away, only to recall that it’s today!!! I wish that I could make a pair of wings and fly myself to your birthday party so that I could get one of those amazing hugs that you give. I hope you have the bestest funnest most amazingest birthday yet!

Remember last year? We had pink cupcakes and pizza at Chuck E. Cheese, and you and Sammy got it all over your faces? Then you opened lots of really cool presents from your Mom and Dad, and Grandpas and Grandmas, and Aunts and Uncles (my goodness lots of people love you!). Then we played lots and lots of games, and got lots of tickets, and everyone gave all of their tickets to you, and you got a prize- a pink glittery makeup kit.

I hope to see you soon…
lots of hugs and kisses till then (and some for sissy!)

xoxoxoooooooxooooo
Auntie Laura

p.s. Here’s a little sneak peek at your birthday present since you’ll have to wait a few days to get it:

I’ve been wanting an alternative to the everyday tee- something comfy and fitting, without a crew neck (I don’t like how constricting it feels!), and slightly dressier than the standby. I also hate it when I’m feeling a little chubby and the shirt I’m wearing has no give. This is my solution. The pattern still needs a little tweeking (the edging and the sleeves!) but I’m pretty happy with the pattern that I’ve created, and will be making a bunch of these for my etsy shop when it opens in the nearish future. (mini update: I’ve chosen a name and registered a domain, but am keeping the specifics on the dl for now!)

The one featured above is my third attempt and was made from a byu rotc shirt thrifted from the amvets thrift store in San Diego. I love it. =)

I love you guys too.
bye bye for now.

xo elle