DIY: Lovebird Wreath

I decided to update my front door wreath for Valentine's Day. I wanted a simple, cute little wreath. I already had a gold wreath up I made for Christmas with two turtle doves. I purchased the wreath and the doves from the Dollar Tree.

2012 in Review: Part 2

1. Friendship Necklace 2. Berry Necklace 3. Felted Sandollar 4. Mushroom Rattles

5. Ceramic Wolf 6. Painted Beads Necklace 7. Bruttles 8. California Trip

9. Knitted Baby Hoodie 10. Galaxy Clutch 11. Felted Art 12. The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee Fundraiser 

Up tomorrow: July, August, September...

Make: Me Feel Like Fall

Rusty Foks by Celapiu

It's always a nice change of pace when one season starts to falter and let another in to give us some relief. I am so excited for autumn. It makes me think of bright red and yellow leaves, and the smell of dirt and earthen decay. I am ready. You can be too-- make sure you wear your scarf and put on some flannel, drop the temperature, bundle up, enter fall... 

Under the Sea. Up in the Air.

Okay, so Christine is a Master Felter, and being a sister, I get to benefit from her skills on birthdays and Christmas. She has made me a manta ray, colossal squid, and sperm whale; I decided to combine these marine-themed felted wonders and create a maritime mobile to brighten up my mornings.

I used an old embroidery hoop and wrapped fabric to create the mobile and made a couple additional sea accoutrements to round it out.

Pretty thrilled with how it turned out, and if you would like to check out any of the other amazing felted wonders on the blog just click on the word 'felted' in the tag line. There were really too many great ones to put all the links in the post, but I did have to add one special link to a felted Narwhal that Christine made for Catherine last year. This one made it to the post because, you know, it falls in with the theme. Best check it out.

Felted Narwhal

storage

Confession: I don't have a system in place to keep track of a good many of my craft supplies. A large chunk of this seemingly unorganizable stockpile is yarn and wool roving. I don't know if it's just that these items are the bulkiest and therefore take up the most space, or that I refuse to shove them into a  cupboard or drawer because I don't want them to end up smelling like pressboard or something. Anyway, a decent portion of my fiber supply has found a fairly permanent home in this bag from the now defunct Pacific Fabrics. Witness my shame below. 

Pacific Fabrics in Puyallup was bomb. Giant frown over the fact they no longer exist.

Normally, the bag is shut up tight because I don't want my crafting shit to get all dusty. 

Spokane is very dusty. Truth. 

I decided to combine my surplus fibers with my surplus collection of cleaned project-ready glass jars. Yes, like my grandmother (who was a consumate saver of plastic margarine tubs and Cool Whip containers), I also save jars and jugs. Sometimes I have a project in mind, and sometimes I'm just preparing for a disastrous future event. I imagine that old pickle jars will have great value in our apocalyptic future times. I mean, what future bandit wouldn't be thrilled to trade a clean pickle jar for a pint of petrol? Well, I suppose a bandit wouldn't trade--he would just take the pickle jar. Damn him. 

Please ignore all the wrinkles in my fabric. I honestly can't be bothered to iron a thing. Some homemaker I turned out to be. 

For a great tutorial--I mean, why should I make one when a perfectly practical tutorial already exists? Plus, it always seems to be night in Spokane, making workable pictures quite difficult. How is that possible?--grab some bits and pieces of paper and your trusty Modge Podge and visit the lovely and amazing ladies (and gents?) at Design Sponge. 

Here's a link to their super-easy tute: paper scrap recycling. Always make things beautiful all the time forever.

Create, my darlings, create!

It just felt so right.

So for a while now I have had a pretty little bowl filled with knitted wool balls sitting on my coffee table. I always mean well and yearn to finish the project for which they were intended, but that day never seems to come, and it never will. As time went by the project was upgraded to full-on felted wool balls, and boy are my fingertips sore.

Both frames have a little touch of color--it's not as aggressive as color blocking, but since I plan on

hanging them in the bedroom I figured I'd go neutral to sing me to sleep.

The final project, I'm in love!

Both frames were originally just plain gold frames from a thrift store, no glass and no backing. Which was

fine for me, and I do like gold, but for this project I decided to go cream with some light grey accents.

As I just mentioned, glass wasn't necessary, but for the backing I made a card board insert and
painted it a matching neutral tone, with a little bit of a kick.

Instead of using the knitted wool balls, I decided to take the yarn and felt the balls.
I used an undyed fisherman's wool so it felts nicely.

I rolled it in a loose ball, neatly so I could save the texture, and tightened it up with my coarse felting needle. 

It was much faster than knitting and gave me a cleaner finished product.

After the hot glue gun was all warmed up from gluing the backing to the frame,

I was ready to arrange my felted spheres.

Typically, I would have filled the entire frame space with balls, but since I added the accent color

 on the backing I wanted it to show through.

The finished project. <satisfied sigh>

For the second frame I decided to mix it up again. I felted a couple small balls and a little woolen ornament.

I used the entire frame space on this one, something about how they all fit together really sits well with me.

This one reminds me of holly, but not in a Christmas-y sort of way.

Even though I didn't use my original knitted balls, I feel very accomplished to have finally gotten this

 project out of my head space. Here's to Sunday projects gone right!!

Dollar-dollar skills, ya'll.

I had a last minute house/cat-sitting gig this weekend, which means I ended up with a bunch of idle time. I spent that time re-watching a few episodes of The Walking Dead--I'm trying to decide if I hate it...I still don't have a clue--reading Catching Fire (which, of course, I love), and thinking someone was going to murder me. Pretty standard fare for all my house-sitting adventures...

mushaboom

Amanita muscaria

Amanita pantherina

Well, I've reached the end of the custom mushroom rattle project for Gretchen. It's been fun, and I like to think I've learned a little something about various forest floor dwellers. According to my trusty Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, early spring is the perfect time of year to find the Amanita pantherina. Featuring "conspicuous whitish warts and patches on the cap"(Um, gross. It looks cute, but never has anyone read the words "conspicuous whitish warts" with pleasure.), this Amanita is yet another non-consumable mushroom. POISONOUS. I mean, you can consume Amanita pantherina if, for instance, you're interested in its psychoactive properties; however, in no way am I suggesting that you do so. Please believe that I do not want you to experiment with mushrooms...unless that experiment involves a really tremendous wild mushroom soup and you absolutely know what you're doing. 

Four down...and project complete! 

Interested in the other felted mushroom rattles?

Agaricus augustus
Coprinellus micaceus
Amanita muscaria
the original Amanita

Agaricus augustus

Meet Agaricus augustus, aka The Prince. Mine is a juvenile, so the cap is rather small compared to that of the adult Agaricus, which has a nice wide umbrella shape. But this is only a baby, so it has a squat baby cap, as it should. According to my Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest guide, Agaricus augustus can be found all along the Pacific Coast and it smells like almonds. Almonds, people, almonds. And guess what? This is yet another edible mushroom! Children everywhere can gnaw on this mushroom specimen (rattle or real) with no fears of psychoactive effects. Yea!

Three down, one to go!

Interested in the other felted mushroom rattles?

Coprinellus micaceus
Amanita muscaria

the original Amanita

Coprinellus micaceus

This is the second in my series of four rattles for Gretchen. I'm steering away from poisonous this time around.

Yes, this is actually an edible mushroom: Coprinellus micaceus. According to Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest,

the Coprinellus "grows in large groups and clusters on hardwood stumps, buried roots, and other organic debris."

Hmm, sounds pretty findable, right? And Mushrooms of the PNW calls it a "good edible species."

Hopefully, it doesn't look strikingly similar to some deadly mushroom. Beware, amateur mycologists!

Two down, two to go!

Amanita muscaria

I'm working on another felted mushroom rattle project for my friend Gretchen. She's commissioned four rattles and given me free rein on mushroom decisions. That means whatever mushrooms intrigue me, be they edible or  be they highly poisonous, are up for grabs. Oh, please let them be highly poisonous! So, I visited my local library for some mushroom guidebooks. I came home with Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest and The Mushroom Book: How to identify, gather, and cook wild mushrooms and other fungi. It's good to embark on a little research, right? 

Now, as I've mentioned before, I think mushrooms are both amazing and terrifying. Quote: "I'm all for good bacteria keeping my gut organs in order, but I don't want anything bursting (a word, which in the context of fungus, cannot be beneficial for anything but the fungus) from my body and fruiting (which is what a fungus likes to do before it pops its spore top)." Yeah, I'm looking at you, Cordyceps--not my favorite fungus in the universe. TRUTH. But the Amanita muscaria is one of my favorites. It's probably one of the most recognizable mushrooms, with its red cap and white spots, which is a good thing because the Amanita is poisonous. So, here's A. muscaria, of the orange-capped variety.

According to Mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest, the orange-capped variety of

A. muscaria is typically found in the leaf litter around spruce and pine trees. Noted.

I still need to fill in the gills a bit because some orange has poked through, but otherwise, it's basically finished. 

One down, three to go!

Turkey & Peanut

My cat Penelope (Peanut) doesn't really know how to sit like a cat. Instead, she resembles a butchered turkey. 

Her little legs don't quite get tucked under so they look like turkey wings sticking out from her body.

Plus she's on the toilet in this one...

 She sort of did this as a kitten, but as she grew older, her "wings" definitely became more pronounced.

Because this brings me such enjoyment, I decided to felt a mini Peanut-Turkey in her honor.

Peanut loves her look-a-like.

Capturing a photo of Peanut in turkey-mode has become something that Nicholas and I try to achieve
each and every time. She's a quick one that Peanut, so we fail more than we succeed.