This photo shares some of the little cuties I have colored with little girls (or their Moms) in mind. The little ballerina is a free image from Elizabeth O. Dulemba. (check her site at: http://dulemba.com).
She does a free coloring page each week and her art has just that little touch of fancy that is so fun to work with.
This stamp was a delight to work with. It is a digital stamp from Dustin Pike. I love his stamps, each has character and whimsy and are lovely to color. What makes this cutie so wonderful is that sweet little expression. For the first card, the papers and embellishments are from my stash. The kites are stamped, colored and added with dimensional tabs. I use Memento Ink with my copics as it does not blur or run. This was stamped on Neenan papers which are nice to work with.
The second card is the same stamp with a little different twist in colors.
My daughters are now in their late twenties. Many of their friends are having children. Again, we are making the most of the embroidery/sewing/craft room to create some unique gifts. This is a Boppy pillow case we made. Using our boppy pillow for the pattern (don’t forget to add seam allowance) we created a unique and personalized pillow case as a gift. This is a really quick project and the embroidery was customized from the basic floral options in our software. The only trick was the zipper, I found doing the zipper before we assembled the case make it pretty easy.
One of the most enjoyable things I have ever done is purchase my embroidery machine. I purchased a Husqvarna/Viking and chose the Topaz 30 model. My previous sewing machine had been a Viking and after nearly 30 years of wonderful service from this machine, I ended up with a Viking again. Did my research though: Bernina, Pfaff, Brother, etc. All are wonderful and depending on what you want to spend you can get anything or any feature imaginable.
This machine was a splurge, however, it has been wonderful for me and for my daughters. I have now become a source of hand made gifts for my daughter’s friends and for the family. Everything from embroidered napkins, placemats, tablecloths, bibs. baby clothes, you name it. What a wonderful and personal way to make your gifts unique. Here are some we did on purchased bibs. They are appliqued and embroidered. It is such a fun way to use the littlest scraps and the bright colors were a delight to work with. What do you think?
I thought I would show you some of the Christmas Cards I made last year. Since Christmas is one of the only times we correspond with people by mail (versus email and phone and texting) I wanted to make each card unique. For some of our family a religious card worked best, others something fun, and for others I went with their favorite Christmas theme. I got to either watercolor or use my copic markers on Snowmen, Snow families, moose, reindeer, angels and of course Santa Claus! I swore I was going to do 2 or 3 cards each month this year so I was not overwhelmed, but… Oh well, I have about 8 completed and will just have to up my monthly goal to5 or 6! As I blog more I am already learning so much. For example, do close up photos. Bear with me, I will get better at this!
One of the many great things about having grand daughters is the opportunity to make little girl clothes. I really enjoy making children’s clothes and there are so many beautiful fabrics and colors available and cutesy works on little girls! Here are a couple of little outfits I made and wanted to share. All cotton fabrics work so well and I love to work with knits as well. It is hard to find as many choices in the knits so I focus on cottons. Thought I’d share!
I used seersucker for the green and the bright pink outfits.
We have had such a busy summer! Seems like it has just flown by and now it is September…
Thought I would post a couple of things I worked on earlier this year. For me, sharing some of my projects is one of the biggest motivations in starting a blog.
This is a little quilt I made for my two year old grand daughter. She loves purple and pink and I had acute little set of fat quarters that I wanted to coordinate with these bright solids. The solids were a nice “hand dyed” line and it turned out so cute. I used my embroidery machine to personalize the quilt with the date and a gift tag. It was machine quilted with a a low loft batting and I used every inch of my scraps in the binding. Simple, bright and perfect for a drag around quilt.
Now I need to make another for grand daughter number two!
As I start this blog I am wondering how to fit more of my crafting and card making into such a busy life. Temporary though! My youngest Dr. Freeman! starts her new job tomorrow. After 10 years of grad school I think it is an exciting and maybe a little scary adventure for her!
My other daughter and family are busy trying to get moved to North Carolina as my son-in-law begins his new job, also starting tomorrow. We have the pleasure of babysitting the 2 year only perfect granddaughter for Mom and Dad to make house hunting trip with perfect granddaughter number two. Since they did find a home, submitted and offer and will be in escrow tomorrow-things are going to get really busy! Looks like an end of August closing and the ladies will need to make a move to join Daddy. Again, Mimi will get a chance to assist by flying to NC and keeping those sweet little girls from under foot while the truck is unloaded and house put together.
May be September before I get this blog really up and running! Since I want to customize the banner and look of the blog I may need every minute until September to get it just right.
Happy crafting to all of you!
JoAnne
A wonderful new adventure begins: Mimi’s This and That blog.
An adventure in sharing my love of crafts, scrapbooking, copic coloring, quilting and sewing. My whole life crafting and sewing has been the way I have expressed my creativity and love of texture, color and fabrics. My very earliest memories are of my Mom and I and her sewing machine. Sitting in her lap at her old brown singer sewing machine, my little hands under hers as we “steered” string quilt squares (strips of fabric onto newspaper squares) through the machine together. I remember vividly a strip on top that was cut from my old pajamas! Fond memories of my first adventures with a sewing machine at four years old. Gotta love it!
Both my lovely daughters caught various crafting bugs through the years and I hope they pass this along to my granddaughters as well. As I build this new blog, learn to post my craft room fun look for: hand made cards, scrapbooking, my copic escapades, sewing projects, crafty goodies of various kinds, some tutorials, some photo journeys through my craft haven and a touch of family info once in awhile. I hope to share with other like minded crafters that have the bug too!
Mimi's This and That 