Painted and finished...

I won't discuss how many hours went into accenting all of these buttons, and this isn't even all of them.  I hope people love them on Saturday!

Buttons

Oh, yeah, and here's 52 (or 53?) sets of buttons for my show on Saturday.  These haven't been painted or finished yet at all, but they're made and baked.  I'll have a finishing frenzy later this week.  ^_~

I'm excited!  The show will be awesome!

New Shawl Pins for Mother's Day show!

Here's a quick picture post of the newest shawl pins I've made for my Mother's Day show this Saturday at Tempe Yarn and Fiber:

The sand in the hourglass actually moves. 

And... the lock and key one is my favorite all time EVER.  I might be lying about putting it in the show.

Mother's Day Show Promo

Come out on Saturday, May 4th, from 12-5pm to shop my show at Tempe Yarn and Fiber!

My show this year will really be fun!  I'm bringing buttons and shawl pins.

I've taken some of my jewelry in a new direction, too, which I think will be fun to see.  It's a little bit eclectic...

A lot beautiful...

And everything truly stunning...

Just like Mom!

Storage for Tsukineko DewDrop Inks

My mother-in-law always comes bearing gifts.  To her, many times, I know they're just castoffs (like 28 practically brand new Tsukineko Dew Drop inks), but there's a lot of new stuff in there, too.  I got a stamp set from the most recent Sale-a-Bration through Stampin' Up! because she always orders a lot and then sometimes doesn't want any of the free stuff, so I get the free stuff.  It's so awesome!

I'm pretty sure most people know how to make these little boxes, but just in case, I'll give a brief explanation.  If you need a ton of details, look around online at how to make cardstock boxes, but chances are you can figure it out just from written directions.

Each of these boxes will hold 24 Tsukineko Dew Drop Inks.  These are not the sturdiest boxes, but I will say that the first one I made several years ago is still practically perfect even though I repeatedly dragged it with me to classes in tote bags (laying flat, of course, not on its side) over the course of about 3 years.  For the purposes of neatly storing your inks, they work perfectly.

The inks fit into the boxes as shown below... one pointed up, one pointed down, six of them across the slightly longer side, and four down the slightly shorter side.  I use regular cardstock to make these and, as always, my favorite glue is Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive.  It dries hard and makes the finished boxes feel more sturdy.

The box size is 7.5" by 7.75", with one inch sides.

To make the bottom, cut a solid piece at 9.5" by 9.75".

To make the lid, cut one piece at 9 5/8" by 9 7/8".

Score both pieces one inch in from each edge.

When you've scored the papers, you'll notice little squares at each corner.  Cut into ONE of the sides of each square, creating little flaps.

Fold all of the scored lines in.  At this point, you should be able to visualize how this is going to turn into a box.

Glue the square flaps to the OUTSIDE of the sides of the box.  No matter how you cut them, you'll end up with four squares glued along the edges, creating the sides of your box.  Complete this process on both the bottom and the lid, gluing the flaps along the outside.

At this point, I like to make a mosaic of favorite scraps along the top of the lid.  This is for decoration as well as strength.  The first box I made a few years ago is on the right, the most recent one is on the left.  Basically, glue pieces down, and when you get an odd hole, measure it with your ruler, cut a piece that fits, and stick it in there.  Because the lid is actually 7 5/8" by 7 7/8", you will end up with some pieces needing to have an extra 1/8".  Go until your entire top is covered.

Glue one inch strips along the outside edges of both the lid and the box bottom.  I basically just cut a bunch of one inch strips and start wrapping all around, not cutting at the corners.  Gluing these strips makes the box sturdier and hides the square flaps you folded and glued to create the box shapes.

Arrange the inks inside according to color.  I go pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, neutrals.  It creates a nice little rainbow look that is really pretty!

I also take the time to stamp with each pad.  This makes sure that the inks are still good, but also, since I store the inks upside down, it helps me identify what color I'm looking at.  The tiny strip on the bottom of the ink is not enough for me to see very well.  I use a roughly 1/2" stamp (a wood mounted rubber stamp, ideally, because of how often you'll be cleaning it, but another stamp will still technically work) and a 1/2" circle punch.  Punch each stamped image and glue it towards the top point of the back of the ink so that you can see the color itself in the stamp and the name of the color just over the bar code at the bottom.

The boxes stack really nicely in my second desk drawer, towards the back.  The footprint of these boxes is somewhat large, but they stack nicely and as you can see, I have nice, deep desk drawers and I stack almost everything in layers to fit more in.

Hopefully this was helpful to anyone!  I'd love to see the box you made to hold your little inks.  They're so handy and so cute and I love having that many colors at my fingertips in a relatively small space.

C is for cookie, H is for hat...

My husband has a thing for Cookie Monster.  Ever since he was a little kid, he always thought Cookie Monster was the funniest thing on Sesame Street.  It's become kind of a joke to our family, and we get Adam little Cookie Monster things every now and then and he thinks it's cool.

On Monday, we were in Safeway and I saw a man walking around in a Cookie Monster beanie.  I told my husband about it, but he never managed to see the guy.  He said, out loud, "I want one!"  And I said, "Reeeeaaaallllllyyyy?"  And he said, "Yes.  I love the idea of a Cookie Monster hat!"

(This, by the way, proves Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's hat chapter from "Knitting Rules!" entirely correct.  She said, under the "Who Wears a Hat: Hat Rules" section, "Most men will wear a fairly wide assortment of hats.  I find this somewhat surprising, as these same men are inflexible in all other aspects of their wardrobe.  It's a happy little quirk that men who look at you like you're trying to get them killed if you suggest a nice green shirt will become attached to odd, distinctive, or unusual hats.  This tendency has not been sufficiently studied by anthropologists."  Get the book.  It rules!  ^_~)

Yesterday was his first day at a brand new job and we're really excited about it.  I wanted to give him something special as a congratulatory present, so I spent all day long yesterday knitting on a hat for him.  I just so happened to have the perfect shade of blue leftover from making Elliott's neckwarmer.  I used my gauge free top-down hat method and made the plain hat, then embellished it with crocheted googly eyes.

I crocheted little white circles and little black ones, Googled their correct position (yes, his eyes are crossed ever so precisely and correctly), and sewed them onto the hat before washing it and drying it and presenting it to him last night as his present.

I had informed him when he showed up at home unexpectedly early that I made him a present and it was done, but not ready (it was in the dryer at the time).  Later, I asked him if he wanted me to put it in a gift bag and make a big presentation and he said no, so he closed his eyes when I brought it out, and when I put it in his hands, he unfolded it, saw the eyes and started laughing.  He said, and I quote, "It's my Cookie Monster hat!  I was hoping that's what it was!"

Magnificent man I have.

Later, on a completely different and somewhat gross note, I rather violently tossed a bunch of fresh guacamole and delicious little chips that I had eaten earlier that afternoon.  He came into the bathroom, holding my hair out of my face like a sweetheart.  Again, he's magnificent.

Later, we were sitting on the couch and he was looking at his hat and suddenly looked over at me and said, "You knit an entire hat in a day?  No wonder you threw up."

Here I was thinking to be more careful in the near future with fresh lime juice, cilantro, avocado, and tomatoes.  But maybe it was the knitting.

Kitchen love...

Well, I've finally done it.  After months of laying around doing practically nothing around this house, I finally have finished my kitchen.

I cleaned it in stages.  The best news is that I don't feel completely wiped out from this exercise.  I feel pretty tired, but nothing like I used to be.  So I'm definitely getting better, and that's enough to make me dance around (inside my head, of course)!  I need to really reign it in, though, and not suddenly go on a mad cleaning spree.  Stages is the name of the game right now.  Baby steps.  I figure that if I do a little bit here, a little bit there, I'll slowly regain my house AND my strength.

I never, in a million years, thought that I would ever actually feel blessed to clean my house.  I've been faking it a long time, motivating myself, thanking God that I have a house to clean, etc., but it had never gotten into my heart like it has now.  I am SO thankful to be physically able to do this cleaning.  I'm praying now that I never, ever lose that feeling (or the ability!) again.