Month: February 2013

About two weeks ago, we had a special family movie night and watched “E.T.” It was Parker’s first time seeing it, and my first time since I saw it in a movie theater when I was nine years old. It was just as good as I remembered, if not better. But unlike when I was a kid, this time, I cried and cried … and cried …. at the end! Parker was not so emotional, but he did really enjoy it, so I decided to make him a shirt similar to the E.T. movie poster.

In keeping with my “use it or lose it” resolution, I used a black t-shirt I picked up at Michael’s when it was on sale for $2.50 and some textile paints I purchased a while back but had yet to try out. I also used some adhesive vinyl to make a stencil using my Silhouette machine. (Had I known it would come out so well, I would’ve taken step-by-step photos!)

Making the stencil was easy: I found a picture of the E.T. poster online, copied it into  Photoshop and enlarged it to the size I wanted. I then used the “magic wand” selection tool to select just the silhouette of Elliott and E.T., smoothed the edges a bit and filled it in with black. This step makes it easier to trace in the Silhouette software.

So what I ended up with was a vinyl stencil, with a big circle cut out for the moon and the letters “E.T.” cut out underneath, and a little “sticker” in the shape of Elliott and E.T. Once I had it stuck to the shirt, it took less than five minutes to paint. Really, all I did was dab white paint on the shirt, almost randomly, with a few dabs of blue added at the end. The way the black shirt shows through really made it look like the surface of the moon! It was so easy I’m tempted to make another one for myself.

And here’s a silly picture of our cat Marmalade. The morning after we watched the movie, I happened to throw all of Parker’s stuffed animals on his bed so I could vacuum, and Marmalade jumped up in the middle. It reminded me a bit of the scene from the movie when E.T. is hiding among all the toys and stuffed animals!

Not that we ever go crazy, but my husband and I decided not to spend money on Valentine’s Day this year because we are taking a few extra days of vacation later this month when we go to Miami for the annual Wine & Food Festival he covers every year. But I did make him a card featuring the lyrics to the song we danced to at our wedding. (“Somebody” by Depeche Mode, though the version we used was an a cappella song recorded by the UNC Clef Hangers). I rearranged the lines so that I could highlight letters spelling out “I LOVE YOU.” Obviously this wouldn’t work for every song, but I actually found I had several options for spelling it out. It’s kind of hard to see, but I used a “chalkboard” background and a font that looks a bit like it is sketched on.

For the “Valen-slimes” for Parker’s classmates, I found some little plastic cups (sorry, I don’t know where they were purchased. My husband had them leftover from a photo shoot for his next cookbook), so I tweaked the card a bit, punched holes in them, and stuck the mini cups of “slime” in. The hole punch made a hole just big enough to hold the cups pretty securely.

After all the snow we got last weekend, I’ll be glad to head south next week! We ended up with 24 inches of snow here. It was not a huge deal here, we are used to snow. Though now that I have to shoot video as well as write for my AP job, it meant I had to go out in the storm … that wasn’t fun! I actually couldn’t open my front door, luckily we have a back porch door that opens inward.

Here a few pictures from Saturday, once it died down a bit!

This is a bit late for a New Year’s resolution, so let’s call it a Ground Hog Day resolution? I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed by how much crafting STUFF I have … so many bits and pieces of things I save because I know they’ll be good for SOMETHING. So I’m trying to challenge myself to use what I have instead of buying new materials for new crafts.  I have also been thinking of challenging myself to make at least one thing from each of the many, many sewing and crafting books I have (many of which were kindly sent to me by publishers through my AP craft writing work). Or at least making the things I pin on Pinterest before adding more and more…. you get the idea.

My first project as part of this plan is a Postage Stamp quilt, using this tutorial at Red Pepper Quilts. I spent a few evenings going through my scraps (I have a set of small shallow drawers where I store leftover fabric, mostly scraps and pieces less than a quarter yard, divided by color) and cutting them into 2X7″ strips. It soon became apparent that I have mostly bright colors, and a lot of polka dots and small scale floral prints. I didn’t cut up any multi-color fabric, though I don’t tend to have a lot of that anyway. The tutorial calls for 432 strips. I ended up cutting about 675, or roughly 75 each for each color group (I lumped brown/black/gray into one color however since I didn’t have many scraps of those colors), and  I’m going to use 50 of each color for this quilt, and the rest for something else. I pretty much wanted to use up as much of each little scrap I had rather than save tiny bits.

As I was cutting, I recognized some of the fabric from baby quilts I made for children who are now in double digits, so I think it’s about time I used up the rest!

I knew it was going to be hard for me to not over-think this quilt, so to make it truly random, I dumped all the strips into a box and mixed them all up. I then grabbed two strips, and as long as they weren’t the same color, I put them right sides together and started a pile that I could then take over to the sewing machine and strip piece. I finished that step today, so now I have 216 strips to sew together into sets of four.