Farm House Style: Chickens and Ball Jars

I have been so busy here at the homestead! I have already started making teacher's gifts. I like to give gifts to the staff and elementary teachers at Little m's (D#2) school. She goes to a small school and the staff and teachers are so involved. Over the past 4 years we have gotten to know everyone. They are so sweet and special. I decided to fire up the kiln and melt some glass. I recently found those adorable Ball jars, you know the green, blue and purple jars. I thought that they would make a perfect spoon rest gift. I have been meaning to slump (melt) some wine bottles that my father in law gave me years ago and just haven't gotten around to it yet. Dear Hubby had a week off last week and what better time to fire up the kiln! It would have taken me forever to fire 16 wine bottles so I tried to figure out what else could I use. I had a few food jars to recycle and they would have worked great but they were plain and I only had a few. As I looked around to use something else I spied my green ball jars on the kitchen table full of daisies. So a huntin' I went. Walmart, Target and grocery store had very few. I guess they are popular. I managed to scrape together about 20 jars. Slumping them is so easy it's almost a crime! The hardest part was waiting until morning to open the kiln.

My sweet little kiln!

The beautiful jars.

Tada! 

Such a pretty vintage color. I stood this one upright so you could see the sunlight shinning through it.

Placed the spoon on it to show what it can be used for. You could also use it for a soap dish in the kitchen. Little side note: I thought that I was creating something new and original. The only jars that I had ever seen slumped were clear jars. I thought "what a perfect thing to put on Etsy!", until I looked on Etsy. Lol, let's just say "great minds think alike".

I am also crocheting these sweet little Henrietta potholders. 10 down and 6 more to go. I am getting really fast after making 10! I can now make one in about 2 1/2 hours! The first couple of nights my arm hurt like crazy. I also purchased little berry baskets to place the jars and chickens in. I will tie it all up in cellophane and use a gingham ribbon. Fun!!

Back to School = Fun Crafty Stuff!!!!

Wednesday was sweet little D#2's first day of big school. She is now an official kindergartner. She has the most wonderful teachers! We are so excited. Every week they will have to learn a Bible verse and recite it from memory on Friday. In the mornings during general assembly they recite the pledge to the American Flag, to the Bible and to the Christian Flag. This is all stuff that we use to do at church when I was little. They don't really do that in churches now, including ours.
So, of course first day of school = fun crafty things for the teachers. I just love doing this kind of stuff.

Above: Red basket with card, notepad, pin and apple dish scrubby.

Above: Stamped this cute image and colored it with my copic markers.

Above: The apple dish scrubby is crocheted. It was so fun! I haven't crocheted in months. I must start this again. The pattern is from Lion Brand Yarn. They have a lot of free cute patterns.

Above: Made this one with cotton red yarn.

Above: Here they are all wrapped up.

D#2 was so excited today. She said "We have just finished our first week of school! WOOOHOOOO!!!" I believe she likes school.

Have an awesome night and tomorrow we are going to be super busy moving D#1 into her dorm!!

Keep those crafty little fingers busy and out of trouble :)

Holly

Polymer Clay Sewing Pins

I am late posting this because I had some errands to run this morning and wasn't able to post until now.

Made some sewing pins today. They are made out of polymer clay. Here's some of the tools that I use to make the polymer clay sculptures:

Above: Paint brush, colored polymer clay, paint, white polymer clay and.....

Above: fingers (.... that is paint on my thumb, not peeling skin). These 10 little fingers are probably the most important tools you can have. It is so much fun to sculpt polymer clay. I use the kind that you bake. It doesn't seem to crack as bad as the air dry stuff and plus it holds paint real well. The only real painting that I do is for the faces. Mainly cheeks, eyes and mouth. I feel you can be more precise this way or at least I am. If I use black polymer clay for eyes and mouth they always seem to end up wonky.

Above left to right clockwise: little donut (on throat of sewing machine),  large cupcake, large cherry with cheeks, smaller cupcake, smaller cherry with donuts pinned on pin cushion (I just forgot to unpin them before I took the picture, this is how I keep up with them).

Above: Close up of small cupcake, large cherry and tiny cherry with donut under it. None of these have glitter, gloss or faces on them yet.

Above: Still no faces :( just a closer up.

This is a cupcake pincushion. The above pin are going on this pincushion. Right now is in the process of being glued to her base. This will take overnight to dry. She turned out ok. Remember in the previous post I had all that trouble with her base. Well....this time I tried to write down the "recipe" so that I can use her again.

Above: Here is some more stuff that I am working on. Little zipper bags with polymer clay charms.

Above: just some doodling for charms.

Above: Here's the doodling for the sewing pins as you can see I didn't make the peppermint, I thought it looked a little too much like Christmas. I will have to make some for Christmas. The donut didn't get made into pins, they are going to be used for a Sweet Shop Clothespin Doll.

Above: Here's how I am packaging the little sewing pins. I think this will keep them from moving around during shipping to minimize damage.

Thanks for reading and remember to craft something at least once a day, whether it is something as simple as making a sandwich to something as hard as knitting a body suit, anyway keep those hands busy!

happy crafting,

Holly

Round and Round: the amigurumi way

Today I am going to show you how I come up with patterns for things that I like to crochet. It is more trial and error than anything. In amigurumi you crochet in the round, which means just what it says-you crochet round and round. I have recently learned how to add some lacy edging to stuff and am having a lot of fun using this technique. For lacy edging you *skip one crochet, double crochet 4 or 5 in next crochet hole, then slip stitch in next crochet hole, this is where you start over: skip one, double crochet 4, slip stitch, then back to beginning *. For such a simple technique, it sure does have a beautiful effect.

Above: On the note pad I have scribbled a cupcake bottom "recipe". I know that you need to start with a foundation of 6 stitches in the round. So I go from there and just add rows, increasing each row with an extra single crochet until I have the bottom of the cupcake as big as I think it should be. I kind of came up with my own short hand for crocheting. I use "o" to stand for a single crochet and "oo" kind of intertwined to stand for two single crochets in the same hole.  Sound confusing? Probably is, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Above: Sketch of finished cupcake. Not sure if I am going to put the face on the icing or the cake part. I do like it on the icing.

Above: Progressing, notice the paper clip. I use that little handy thing for a row marker. It works like a charm. I always have 100s of these around the house so finding one when I need it is not a problem.

Above: Another shot of paperclip. See the sketched donut and peppermint. These are going to be sewing pin toppers for the cupcake. The mushroom may be a little crochet guy or made out of fabric. Not sure yet. He will be a pincushion.

Above: Finished bottom and icing top, but oh no....where's the bottom?

Above: Failure, it was right under the icing. This photo makes the icing and cake very proportional looking, but looks can be deceiving.

Above: Icing swallows the cake, must go back and redesign bottom. I think that I will add 2 or 3 more rows to bottom before I start the turning stitch for the sides.

Above: Poor little gal, she sure looks "sweet". So there you have it. This is sort of how I do most of my patterns. Sometimes I do draw out patterns, kind of like the Japanese crochet books do. It looks like a bunch of circles connected with sticks and "v"s. There are plenty of great books on amigurumi out there, I just like trying to make up my own. Sometimes they are an epic failure, but I just rip out stitches and reuse yarn. No harm done. So I challenge you to:  pick up those needles & some yarn and get to crocheting.

Crochet needles = super fun!

Stay warm and get crafty,

Holly

Few things to share....

Not much exciting happening around here. We ate supper over at the sweet neighbors. She is so kind and invited the whole family over for ribs! They were awesome. We invited them over next Sunday for our Sunday School Super Bowl Party. We will be having ribs.
Just a few pictures for your enjoyment:

Above: another Tooth Fairy Keepsake Doll, this time with blond hair.

Above: Just a little doll who likes her cup of coffee in the mornings....

Above: w/ cream of course!

Above: don't forget the little spoon. The cup, saucer, coffee and spoon are hand sculpted polymer clay.

Above: hysterical little tooth. Handsculpted and painted by me :) He is only about 1" long.

Above: little pirate bear. Was a gift for the neighbor. Pirate bear was an experiment, thankfully it went ok. I made his pattern up all by myself, in case I wanted to sell some later on. Really simple crochet-big ball for head, 1/2 ball for body and really looonnngg balls for arms & legs and some half circles for ears and circle for muzzle. Easy peasy. Of course I had to change yarn every row for shirt. Wasn't hard.

Above: cutie pie cupcake. Don't like this one as well as the one that I designed in previous post. Maybe biased, but I do get to sell the one I patterned, if only I could remember how I did it......

Good night and happy crafting,

Holly