If you’ve ever had a Senior…

Or really just a kid in school you know how crazy May is!

There is something going on every day! Yesterday Abby participated in her last (as a Ranger) Special Olympics! She ran a 100 meter dash, was in a 400 meter relay, and the softball throw. Boy does she get excited!!! It’s great to see these kids compete – they are just as excited for each other as they are for themselves. They will run their fastest for their race and then turn around and cheer on the kids behind them and high-five the ones who finished before them. It’s awesome! My mom and dad and sister and her son came to watch too. My husband and I also pulled our boys from school for the day so they could watch also. It was a great day!

In crafty news…there is no news. When I have the “want to” I don’t have the time…and when I have the time I don’t have the “want to”! gah!

Happy Crafting!!!!

A no picture post…

I haven’t gotten lost…I just know I won’t post until Thursday … over the weekend we set up for a garage sale for the Ironton Fire Department Auxiliary and had the garage sale on Saturday. Church on Sunday. Sunday afternoon was for napping and reading. Monday was spent cleaning. Today was running errands in Brainerd and more cleaning. Tomorrow is Special Olympics. I think Thursday is a quiet day…I’m not sure…I’m kind of scared to look at the calendar these days…

Happy Crafting!!

Deer before and after…

I got this out of a free box last summer.

Before:

And after:

I have it hanging here…by these two mirrors I’m still working on. This is such a dark little hallway in my house I’m hoping the mirrors and white paint will brighten things up. I’ll add a pop of color when I figure out what that will be. lol!

Can you believe I started spray painting this last summer…almost a year ago! But while spray painting I noticed the antlers were loose and almost falling off. So I brought it into the house to get fixed…and there it sat… until I got out my E6000 glue and a stick pin and dabbed glue into the crack. Phew! I can’t believe it didn’t get broken before I could get to it…

Happy Crafting!

PS: And when I say “get to it” I mean remember that it isn’t done…sometimes I have projects that sit around so long I don’t see them anymore! Anyone else have that problem?

A fresh start…

I have decided to move my blog! My new blog is called Kim’s Craft Diary, and I think it’s finally ready. I’m moving because I really have mucked this blog up enough…I hope you find my new blog cleaner and easier to navigate. Check it out! www.kimscraftdiary.blogspot.com – I wish I could import my followers…but I can’t so please come over and join me…I’ve also figured out how to blog from my phone, which means more “in progress” posting on crafts. It’s so easy now!

Happy Crafting!

Paper Birthday Banner…

I had a surprise birthday party for my hubbie this weekend…we had a blast! In the end there were about ten of us who stayed up and danced…in our garage (where the birthday party was held) all night long. We did the two-step, the three-step, the swing, the electric slide…and good old fashioned rock-n-roll dancing. Fun, fun, FUN! I forgot to take any pictures of the garage…and the after pictures aren’t anything special…but here is an idea of my decorating…

Black, white, and green balloons blown up and hung in clusters of about five on the ceiling and from corners of shelves…

I covered the shelves with drop cloths…I pounded grommets into the top of the drop cloths and tied them to the tops of the shelves. Then used this bead garland to hang my banner…

This darn banner took me five hours to make…FIVE HOURS! I cut everything out by hand. After the first hour I thought “Boy, this is taking a while.” After the third hour I thought “I have too much time invested in this and I’m not gonna stop now” After the fifth hour I thought “I’m never going to do this again!” . (But I probably will…it really looked neat.)

Now, I’m going to clean, clean, clean…spring is almost here…we are going to have some nice weather this week (not freezing anyways)! Have you started your spring cleaning yet?

Happy Crafting!!

Fits and starts on my bowl…and St. Patrick’s Day crafts…

I got my camera batteries charged up and can show you more bowl pictures…

Look! This bowl has little feet and sits so cute…notice the awful orange shellac….

I just had to see what was underneath and so I sanded and sanded and sanded…and finally some lovely wood grain has started to show through!!!

Then I decided I wanted to incorporate a dragonfly…which turned into a butterfly…which got sanded off when it just looked wrong…

And this is where the bowl is headed now. Funny how projects start getting away from a person…I start with a vision (usually) and then end up heading in a different direction (usually)…

I got to babysit again this week and we crafted at the kitchen table. While my little girl painted and cut, I drew and cut out all these shamrocks…then decided they needed a little glitter…then decided they needed contrast with the dark brown circles. I printed the saying out, slapped it all in the frame, and boom! Done!

I also printed out this subway art from Eighteen 25 and framed it…

Gathered up a few green bottles from my bottle collection…

Badda bing badda boom…we’re ready for St. Patrick’s Day! (Which also happens to be my hubbie’s birthday…more on that next week!)

In other news I am still struggling with stamping into metal. Grrrrr….. This craft will not defeat me!!! (I hope) Luckily I have plenty of pieces like this to practice on…like around a hundred…I picked up some belts at a local thrift store and this is one of the links on the belt…I’ve gotta be able to get at least one good impression before they are all gone!

Have a great weekend and Happy Crafting!!

More dots and some link love…

Well, my camera batteries are dead so I can’t show you the “before” pictures…and since this project isn’t done I can’t show you the “after” pictures…but I can show you the “in progress” pictures…

I’m working on another bowl. I just can’t decide if I love this or not. I’m going to keep playing with it but if the “after” pictures look like a completely different bowl don’t be surprised! And, yes, that is a crack in the bowl…I have grand plans for that crack! :)

Since I don’t have much in the way of crafts, I thought I’d share some of my favorite sites for inspiration with you. Enjoy!

If It’s Hip It’s Here! Often strange but always interesting!

Craftgawker Always tons of inspiration, and I loooooove how this site is layed out. Very simple…if you want more info just click the picture. Not many words to wade through…just lovely pictures.

All Things Paper Ann always culls the greatest paper art. I am constantly amazed and inspired by what I see here.

Really, that is enough for now. If you just go to these three sites I promise you’ll be inspired to try something new!

Happy Crafting!!!!

Quilled Lamp, Painted Bowl & a dotty story…

I tried quilling a little lamp the other day. It is difficult!! Mine turned out a little wonky and I will have to try and try again. This project caused a few swear words to run though my head…if you coil too tightly you won’t be able to pull the coils into the shapes…yet if you coil too loosely you run the risk of having everything fall apart…I wouldn’t exactly call this a relaxing craft!

 

(Picture of bowl taken in a box awaiting spray sealer, I spray then hurry up and close the box, less noxious fumes this way) I was so inspired by the bowls being sold at The Bocket Store on Etsy that I had to give this a try. I loooove the bowls they are offering and knew I had a couple wooden bowls in my hoard stash. I would love to purchase one of their bowls but I’m too thrifty cheap…

Which leads us to the dotty story…I’ve been crafting for years and years. About eight years ago I tried decorative painting. What I painted was a little wooden tray and I covered it with dots. I proudly showed it to a friend of mine who was a pretty neat painter and here is what she said “Cute, I started out with dots too.” Now this was said in a condescending voice. To my shame I let her influence me! Shame on me!!! I thought the tray was cute (sadly no pictures were taken, this was waaaay back before digital cameras and blogs were in my life) but forever after when I would look at that tray I would be a bit embarrassed because it was such a “beginner” project. Well friend look at what they are doing with dots now! And since I’m a bit on the defensive I have a little something to say to those of you who might look at this bowl and think “She has way too much time on her hands…” This project has been taking up a little corner of my kitchen table for the past few days. I’ve worked on it here and there. When I’ve worked on it the most is while I’ve been cooking dinner, last night I made a double batch of homemade bagel brats…there are three minute intervals while they are boiling. And I work on crafts like this when my house has been invaded by teenagers. (EIGHT in my living room yesterday afternoon.) Crafting at the kitchen table is the perfect thing to do when you want to keep an eye on things but “look” busy. I’ve also found that when I have a craft such as this going on, at the kitchen table, my kids are more apt to sit with me and chat. I love that. (Just DON’T wiggle the table!) So no, I don’t spend my days on my hiney making crafts. I’ll usually have something like this craft always on the back burner to do in bits here and there and then I join my hubbie in the living room in the evenings and do a handcraft. (Like needle felting, or embroidery, or even quilling…but that does take up more space than just my lap…) Moral of the story, don’t let others influence you in a negative way. If you like it great! If you love it keep going with it and see what can develop! I sure wish that I had done that…

Happy Crafting!!!

Needle felted moose, Girl Scout Garage Sale…

I think this is the only craft I’ve completed in a while! We had a Girl Scout garage sale this weekend and if you’ve ever had a garage sale you know that the house comes completely undone!! Here are just some of the things I brought…

 

Mind you, this is in two different areas of my house…and just the tip of the iceberg…the truck was packed!! The good news is that the garage sale forced me to go through a lot of stuff and purge. The bad news is that I had to bring most of it back home again. We just didn’t get very many shoppers. The good news is that I packed everything back up and will have a garage sale this summer. sigh. I want to thank Shanna, Julie, Molly and my mom especially for all their donations!!! I think that what you gave me to sell was what actually sold. We are raising money to go to Houston for the National Convention. It will cost $2,000.00 for Abby and I to go. That is a lot of money!!! We have several fundraisers planned and I hope they will offset the cost A LOT! I’ll keep you updated.

The girls got together and we made a bunch of little notebooks to sell. I used this stamp for the message on the back cover. I just thought I’d give you a quick tip if you’ve never used one of these before. It’s tricky because you have to put the letters in backwards! So I write my message on a piece of paper that is on top of a piece of carbon paper. Carbon side up.(Top picture) Then when you look at the back side of your paper you get the proper lay-out of your letters. (Bottom picture)

 

My hubbie and I also went to the Turkey Hunter’s banquet on Friday evening and came home with lots of prizes! We won two of the above end tables. The top is glass so whatever you put in the drawer will show. I think I’ll put my agates in one and let Grant have at the other.

We also won this!!! Wowza! I do think we need some more chairs for it though. I would like to find some adjustable bar stools so the kiddies have a place to join us. The checker/chess board lifts off in the middle and there is storage for game pieces. Also if you flip the board over it is felt for dice games. We loooove Yahtzee! There is more to this story that I will have to tell you later. I have some serious rearranging to do in the living room to make room for all this loot.

Happy Crafting!!!

Some flannel hankies…and needle felting…

I want to keep my embroidery skilz sharp…so I worked on these soft flannel hankies. Do you remember anyone in your life using a hankie? I do, why don’t people do that anymore?! I’m always too cheap thrifty to actually purchase tissues, so I always end up using toilet paper or paper towels. Can you imagine what my nose looks like after a day of that?! Well, these aren’t for me…me, I’ll probably just rip up flannel sheets and stuff them in a box and use them as throw-a-ways. I have some sheets that are so fragile they wouldn’t be good for anything else. These will go into the box I’m compiling for the bazaar. I hope to have several sets done. Which at 40 minutes per hankie for the running stitch…and don’t ask me how long that blanket stitch took…it’s a good thing I’m getting an early start. But, these will be just the thing for little delicate nosies. And I get to practice my hand stitching.

Thank you, Lisa, for the donated flannel!!! How to make hankie: cut two pieces of flannel 10” square. I used a pinking blade on my rotary cutter to help stop future fraying. Put right sides together, sew all four sides with a 1/2” seam allowance, leaving a three inch opening to turn right-side-out. Turn right-side-out. Press with iron. Topstitch however you want. Topstitching will also close the little opening you left. See, now I’m practicing my tutorial skillz!

On the turtle family front we now have four turtles. They represent my hubbie and three kids. I still have to make myself. I’ve told my youngest son he gets to put the spots on the shells. That’s him, the oddball on the right. hee hee!

And I gave this guy a “brow”. It really changes the look!

Well, that was it for the weekend! Today I’m going to help the Girl Scouts make some little notebooks. And when I say “some” I mean A LOT of notebooks. It should be interesting!!

Happy Crafting!

Kid crafts, Needle Felting, My library mug…

What a week, anybody else thinking TGIF? I got my library mug this week! Our library has a program called “Hot Reads For Cold Nights” every winter and if you sign up and read 20 books you get a mug. This is the sixth year and I’ve gotten a mug every year. It was harder for me this year to read 20 books than it’s ever been before. I don’t know why cause I love a good romance novel! Here is the newest mug and all the previous mugs…

My Valentine came home with this for me on Monday…he knows I love frogs and things that make me smile, and flowers…he knows me so well!

I made this little turtle for my youngest son…the blue roving was dyed with blue Kool Aid and the green was dyed with green Kool Aid. (And I’m finally learning not to dye yards and yards at a time…but I have enough to make him some babies…lots of babies…sigh.) He’s such a cute kid, he came to me on Valentine's morning and wrapped his arms around me and said “Happy Valentine’s Day mom, I love you” and when I gave him a box of candy hearts he said “Oh mom, you’re something else, you’re just so special, and such a nice mom!” Good grief, can a mom ask for any more!

Then I babysat the little girl I sometimes get to watch, who’s two years old, for a couple days. We made play dough the first day and the second day we went to the library with Julie and her daycare kids and back to my house for a play date and lunch. We also did a little “sewing”. As I was heading to my craft stash for plastic canvas and a big blunt needle I saw this piece of plastic. It is the insert that holds up .22 bullets in the little box they come in. It is perfect for little fingers to sew with! No needle needed, only masking tape because the holes are so much bigger! I have a nice little stash thanks to my shooting sessions with hubbie and Julie has brought over several, knowing I’d use them for something, sometimes it pays to hoard a little. (The key is to have an organized hoard!)

Have a great weekend! Happy Crafting!!!

Organizing, Needlefelting, and an App…

First of all – how creepy is this plant! It’s called “Living Stones” and I can’t stop looking at it and being grossed out. Of course I bought it – it gives me the shivers!

 

Simple organizing…I took two mushroom cans, cleaned them, covered them with double-stick tape and some scrapbooking paper. They rest nicely in my medicine cabinet…all clean and cheerful in the mornings!

A started snowman. I was going to make something else but when it didn’t turn out a snowman was born. I think it’s funny that the first snowman I made took hours and this much bigger snowman takes me a fraction of the time. Practice, practice, practice!

A started bird…the reddish color on both of these is made from Kool-Aide. I can’t even remember all the colors I used. I went into a dyeing frenzy last week and dyed a good half pound of roving. And I’m not thrilled with the results but am determined to use it up anyways! I have to say the color is starting to grow on me and was one of the better results…

OK now for the app. I spent HOURS on this last week. Having a child with special needs is time consuming. Not in a bad way. The time consuming aspect came into play for me when I wanted an app to use on her iPod Touch that would break down tasks and keep Abby on track while working. For instance if I tell Abby to clean the front entry I never know what to expect. To Abby that is a huge job! There’s shoes, coats and mittens everywhere! Seems simple to me because I know what to do…Abby just sees a big mess and where to start? Then what’s next?

There are many fabulous apps out there for kids with special needs, especially for kids on the autistic spectrum. But they can cost big bucks and there is no guarantee that they will even work for your child. Every child is so different! What works beautifully for one may not for another. So after cruising the autistic websites for a few hours I had a good idea of what I wanted. And I think I found it in this app – Note It Do It

This is a free app kinda like Evernote or OneNote.  After installing this app I very quickly cleaned the front entry and took pictures of the entire process so I could record the steps. Please excuse my pictures…geez this is almost embarrassing…but this is what I ended up with- and what it looks like on the iPod touch screen -

 

 

Part of the beauty of this app is that I can email the list to Abby. Abby has a tendency to mess around with her iPod. Her fingers get busy! She can delete things almost faster than I can enter them. Well, she can delete this list all she wants, cause I can keep sending it to her! lol! And, I can install this on her touch and I believe I can password protect it. I can’t remember exactly right now, I looked at so many different apps…I still want to try OneNote…it seems pretty awesome but to be able to share the notes you have to be able to get into “the cloud” and I have an earlier version of Windows Live Essentials installed on my computer. Have to uninstall and reinstall. And that kind of stuff scares me. Why in the heck they can’t just offer an “upgrade” I don’t know…or maybe they do and I haven’t found it yet. Sometimes all this stuff makes me feel stupid. But there are some wonderful tools out there that as a parent of a special needs child I need to take the time to figure out!

Happy Crafting!!

Needle felting and a trip to Bemiji Woolen Mills…

Carmen and I took a road trip to Bemiji Woolen Mills on Saturday! This has been a long awaited trip…weather and funds kept us from going any other time…I really don’t know how long it took us to get there because we were gabbing the whole way…but it was a nice day out of the house! If you want to buy roving for a good price this is the way to go. Their natural roving (a cream color) is only $8.50 a pound and colors (beautiful colors) are $19.00 a pound! Their needles are priced about the same as you’d find anywhere else. If anyone knows where I can order roving even cheaper I’d love to check it out!

Then on Monday I drove a friend to the twin cities. That was another trip that went fast because we were gabbing the whole way. And soon I will have to drive to St. Cloud…another longish trip. I must say-my “cabin fever” has been cured! I have to apologize for the crappy pictures posted today, I’m too lazy to get out my good camera and instead took these with my phone. The lighting today isn’t good at all…light box, light box, light box…gotta make a light box!

Today I am researching some sort of visual scheduler for Abby’s iPod Touch…any info you guys have would be great! I’m looking for an app that allows me to load my own pictures and is inexpensive…

Happy Crafting!!!

Paper cutting, Needle Felting, and Modge Podge

I love my local library…when we first moved here it was the first place I sought out and visited. Over the years I’ve grown to love and appreciate what a fine library we have! When I saw the book Creative Paper Cutting blogged about I really wanted the book…and sent a link to our awesome librarian, Peggy, and she ordered it!! Woo-hoo!!! So the first things I’ve cut are projects that I will be bringing to the library later today to say thank you…

Aren’t they cute! There are several other projects I have bookmarked and will cut asap!

The other night I sat down and needlefelted another chair…there is just something about chairs…I sketched this chair based on a chair I saw on chairblog …there are blogs about everything out there! One reason I like sketching chairs is because you learn a lot about perspective, and perspective is something I need to practice!

So then I loosely needlefelted this chair…holy demon dog batman!

Oh, and by the way “Hello-my name is Kim and I am a recovering hoarder”…I came to this conclusion after cleaning my office again, cause I had piles of stuff in my way again, and I ended up throwing away a lot of  junk again, I even gave a few things away…again…how and why does this seem to happen over and over again!!

In using what I have I took a plain old box and mod podge’d pattern pieces all over it. The end result is a very sturdy box to hold my (what I’ve gathered together so far…there’s more) notebook collection hoard.

Have a great weekend and Happy Crafting!!!

PS: If you want to leave a comment click on the time stamp at the bottom of this post…weird…I know!