Ever since I was an awkward teen with no boyfriend possibilities in sight (see last picture) I have been a hater of Valentine's Day. I do like the crafty aspect of it. I also like letting my friends know how much I like them. Last year I had a mediocre attempt at graphic design, so this year I stayed away from the cards and went with some candy pouches. Who doesn't love candy right?
I had a few inspiration points that I mixed all together. One was this cute Heart Tote Bag by V&Co. The second was these adorable little Stenciled Valentine Bags. I've been waiting for an opportunity to try freezer paper stenciling. Now that I've done it I have no idea why I waited so long. It's so easy. Once I get some more fabric paint I'll be trying this again.
There are tons of tutorials out there about freezer paper stenciling. I used this video for the basics, but you can find tons of information on the process on google. I just cut out a bunch of hearts. Some small, some big. For a few of the bags I did just the outline of the heart, others I stenciled in the whole heart. I attempted to make a dot heart with progressively lighter colors like the tote bag above, however my patience got the best of me so instead I did an ombre effect for most of them. Others I just did one solid color.
After letting them dry I sewed them together on three sides, leaving the top open. Then fold the top over once to make a sleeve for the ribbon. Threaded the ribbon through an opening in the side seam, tied the ribbon and there you have it. Simple little pouches. The hardest part was filling them without eating all of the candy.
Here they are all ready to be sent. If I do this again I'll be sure to put the stencils lower down so that when the pouches are closed you can see more of the heart. I probably won't do this next year since I spent more than the pouches were worth on shipping. Forgot to factor that in. Oops. I hope everyone likes them, or at least likes the candy.
Do you like Valentine's Day?
Hope you can spend some time with people you love today!
No, not Jersey Shore, a jersey shirt. I used Simplicity 3692 for the pattern. It's a Built By Wendy pattern, and I love anything Built by Wendy. It's specifically for knits/jersey fabric. This fabric was bought from the red tag (sale) bin at Joann's several months ago.
It turned out pretty big. This goes back to my issues with patterns and how I always cut out a size 8 when I should be cutting a 6 or 4. At least I am not cutting out patterns as a size 12 anymore.
If only I could walk around all day with my hands in the back pulling the
excess fabric to the back to make me look slimmer.
My proudest moment came when I was cutting it out and had the insight to cut the main parts with the dots going horizontal, and the neck pieces going vertical. Thinking ahead really does pay off. I did recently read a scientific study however that says that horizontal stripes make you look fatter. It's science! I can't debate it! Drats, should have read that first!
Science smience, headless me looks good!
Does the belt make the shirt look better/ me skinner?
Signature slimming moves, turn sideways and put your hands on your hips.
Even I am not sure?
Perhaps it was my drab choice of pants? Does it look better with this skirt?
Please excuse the wrinkles.
The sleeves turned out to be rather large as well. I feel kind of like I have Oprah arms. That's a real saying apparently. Guess I didn't make it up.
Excuse the face, oy.
Whenever I think of Oprah I can't help but yell: "You're getting a Caaaaaaaaaar!"
And the audience goes wild!
I think it would have looked better as a dress, which is an option of the pattern, but was not an option for me. I did not have enough fabric to make it a dress, this is all I had left.
Merely scraps. Blurry scraps at that.
On the plus side the shirt is super comfortable if not super fashionable. It also gave me the opportunity to use my serger. I was super pumped when I did not screw anything up. Woot! I will use the pattern again to make a dress probably.
I think I might wear it on Friday to work with a nice pair of jeans. Friday is causal day, and also will be the end of my pink/red clothes wearing phase in honor of Valentine's Day.
The other day someone asked me about my tote bag. Admittedly it is a bit weird if you don't know me and my family. This lead me to think about all of my claims to "fame" if you will. *warning, this is a very random post* Here goes:
Self:
1. I drew a picture of the Statue of Liberty when I was five that was published in Highlights for Kids. I think my Mom has the copy. Even without the title you would still know it was the Statue Of Liberty.
2. I drew a picture about saving the rainforest with my friends in third grade and got to go meet the governor or something. My Dad made it seem like it was a big deal. All I remember is going to Toys R Us after and getting a new bike.
3. I wrote a story in 5th grade that got published in the newspaper. Looking back on it I want to smack myself for being so cliche because it was a scary Halloween story that ended with me waking up from a nightmare. Lame 5th grade Lauren! Lame!! It still makes me a published author.
4. Two poems I wrote were published in my high school literary magazine. I think I've written about five poems in my entire life. I wonder what that says about my poem writing abilities?
5. Once I had the highest GPA on the Swimming and Diving Team. I might have sucked at diving, but I did not suck at studying a ton. Go me.
Now, on to the more interesting part of this post, my famous relatives:
1. My uncle Doug, and his partner Bryan, own The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, as well as two Shops in New York City. He might own half of Manhattan but I still pretend to be unimpressed.
Circa 2006. P.S. I made the backback I have on my lap.
He gave me the unicorn bag which started off this random post. My little cousin and I bejeweled it. Flashy isn't it? If you so desire you can order one HERE. It's not bejeweled though.
Charlie and I went to the Truck a few summers ago, it was magical. When Charlie's cousin gets married this Spring in Brooklyn we'll be going again, hopefully more than once. I can't wait to eat tons of ice cream. I love soft serve and crazy toppings.
2. My Aunt Val is a famous author. She even has her own Amazon page. She's written tons of books, including some ghost writing gigs. For you non literary folks ghost writing means you write a book but get no credit because some famous person pretends they wrote it. Seems unfair in some respects, and very secretive. I'll spil the beans, are you ready? Joan Rivers, and Snooki are the ones I know of. There may be more. My two personal favorite books she's written as herself are:
Both books were hilarious and even though there are gross scenes about my Uncle I still 100 percent enjoyed both.
3. My cousin is a beautiful singer and has about 1 million followers on Youtube. She and her friend record songs which give me goosebumps whenever I listen to them. This one is my favorite.
4. My uncle Steve is an actor for Gilbert and Sullivan's in New York. He also has a blog, which I see he hasn't updated since someone in a bug eating contest died. He doesn't actually look like this, at least not most of the time.
Charlie says that my post just proves that if you live in, or around New York City you must be famous.
5. My Dad is the Fire Chief of the town I grew up in. This has gotten me out of a speeding ticket, and gotten me two jobs. It has taught me nothing about fire safety. He also has a blog.
That's all I can think of. If you are related to me and feel that you have been slighted in this post please let me know so I can right my wrong as quickly as possible.
4. Hope: Charlie and I don't have channels on our TV so we have to watch everything the day after it airs. This includes Downton Abbey, my favorite show ever. While perusing the internet on Monday I found Downton Abbey Bingo. For the prompt I said I hope I would win. It was pretty fun. I cannot watch a TV show without doing some sort of activity (cross stitch, embroider, knit, hand sew, blog) so this kept me busy. I also paid way more attention than I usually do. I did end up winning. The board is pretty general, so I think we'll use it for the upcoming episode as well.
5. Something You Smelled: I accidentally spent $15 at the new dollar store on candy. More on that later. Let's just say smelling this candy and not eating it was torture.
6. Soft: Penny is the epitome of soft. Her ears especially. When I come home from work on days that she's not at Doggy Day Camp she is almost always sleeping on our bed. In the morning when I leave she's usually on the bed too. It makes leaving a soft dog and a soft bed very difficult.
7. Your Name: Using some stamps. I have a bunch of "L" stamps, this one is my favorite for using to label packages with my return address. Just need a "T" one now.
8. Something Orange: We had a snow day this day and the only color we saw for most of the day was white. I did make pumpkin muffins for breakfast, and Charlie had OJ, so I counted that, and then we went skiing and saw nothing by white all day.
9: Guilty Pleasure: I've mentioned it before, but my guilty pleasure is to watch Gossip Girl. On Saturday I watched the last 4 episodes of the series. Now I need to find another mindless show to watch while I sew or cross stitch.
10: 3 O'Clock: I ran errands and went for a long snowshoe walk today with Penny and tried my hardest to put off my 6 mile run. At 3:30 I finally just accepted that I needed to do it and I did. I am loving that it looks like winter out and that we had a snow day, but I am not loving that my average mile was 11 minutes due to all of the snow and ice on the roads. Oh well. Got it done, didn't die. That's all that really matters. Running home into the sunsetting over the white sparkly hills was not too bad either I suppose.
This week I did kind of a crappy job at the challenges. I promise to try harder to be more creative next week.
1. Fork: I convinced Charlie to come with me to UNH for a diving meet. My brother met us there and then we went out to eat with our friends Cait and Brian. We went to one of my most favorite restaurants from when I was in grad school. La Festa. Delicious pizza. I could never be a food blogger because 1. I hate cooking and 2. I always eat my food before I remember to take a picture. Once everyone had finished their meal I remembered the prompt. Oops. In the picture if you look closely you can see that there is in fact a fork leaning on an empty beer glass in the middle of the table.
2. Pattern: I finally got the right color thread to finish my cross stitch. We went to a deliberative session meeting on Saturday. I knew it would be boring, just the name sounds boring, so I brought my cross stitch to work on. It turned out to be slightly boring, slightly funny, and slightly irritating. I was very glad I had something to keep my hands busy otherwise I would have gone crazy. I did stand up to say something, if I hadn't had this to work on who knows how many times I would have gone to the mic. Cross stitch patterns kind of make me want to gouge my eyes out. Once you're working on one it's not that bad, but I am sure most of you are thinking "How on earth does she make sense of that?!?!" Truth is, most of the time I just fudge it.
3. Something Beginning with "E": Express lift. Charlie and I went skiing Sunday. I took a few pictures for this prompt. One of the "Easy way" trail sign , and one of my favorite trail "Exhibition". I figured this one was best though because I am trying to work on taking more pictures of people. Charlie says I am a good skiing partner now because I am not slow anymore.
This was a short week for the photos. At the end of this week I am hoping to have an iphone. Hurray.
I may have mentioned this cross stitch a few hundred times, here goes 101. The kit did not come with enough of one color. Over Christmas I went to Joann's to see if I could match the color from the number listed on the pattern, no luck there. I called the company, 15 days later I got a package with the thread in it in the mail. It was the wrong color. I fumed about it, then called again. 15 days later another package arrives. Wrong color again! I mentioned it here, those are my P.O.ed eyes. Finally, I called again, trying not to sound annoyed. The woman who answered listened to my story, then asked if I'd like to wait 15 days for the thread to come or if I wanted the DMC number so I could go to Michael's and buy it myself. Seriously? Why did the other two people not suggest that? Did they think I would want to spend 39 cents on thread and they would save me the agony? Needless to say I was annoyed. On a recent trip through Concord I forced Charlie to stop so I could buy the thread. It took me about 48 seconds to find the right color and it cost me 39 cents. Now I am working on the cross stitch and watching "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" (I just spelled Philadelphia correctly on the first try, go me!)
This is a mirror image because I am lazy and took the picture with my computer. It doesn't look like I've made a lot of progress, but I swear I have.
I don't know what the moral of this story is, maybe it's that if you want something done right you should just ask for the DMC number so you don't have to waste 2 months of your life waiting for the right thread color.
Hope you're having a good Sunday.We are not watching the Super Bowl.
Do you care who wins?
Feelings on "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia"? (drats, spelled it wrong that time.)
