Cold November Morning- card

On Black Friday, as we were coming back from the mall at 9:30 am, which happens to be about sunrise right now in Anchorage, I snapped this picture for my beadwork newsletter subscribers.

That's taken fairly close to my house. When I took it, I remember thinking "I hope that pretty pink shows well." 

I also recently got a suite of applications that included one called Paint It (affiliate link). Fairly inexpensive as a standalone product, just over 20 dollars from Amazon. It is a program I thought my daughter would like. It only does one thing, but it does that one thing fairly well. It creates painting effects of your photos. Running this photo through the application turned out pretty, and also fairly well got rid of that street lamp in the background without me fussing with it. It has 10 different effects and I like all of them except the pen drawing. That one doesn't pick up enough detail. The first image below using the detailed watercolor effect, the second uses my favorite effect, illustration. 

I thought the first one looked like a pretty card image, so I put it on a card! 

300 ppi, click the images to download the full sized versions.

The card measures 3.5 wide by 5 inches tall. The envelope is just over 5 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall, which makes it an okay size for mailing.Print the envelope on paper, and the card on card stock. Here's the blank templates to design your own. Gif format, so you'll have to increase color depth, the envelope is horizontally oriented for designing, so print on landscape settings or rotate it 90 degrees to print. Pixel drawn, 300 ppi. 

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Snowflake Ornament Pattern- Beading

This is the ornament pattern that I've been using as my user pic on Facebook. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the images for the full sized versions. These are the patterns that inspired the snowflake set of printables a few days ago.  Don't forget that until Friday Dec. 3 you can use the coupon code Thanks2010 at my Etsy shop for 20% off. Earring patterns and blank box templates.

Christmas set and Black Friday coupon

These are all made from templates that I have available in my Etsy shop, most of them at 300 and 100 ppi. I hope you enjoy this set, and if you'd like to buy the blank templates to make your own, I'm offering this coupon code from now until Friday December 3,2010 for 20% off the cost of my templates or bead patterns.

Enter this code at check out for 20% off Thanks2010  EDIT: Coupon extended until Christmas. Happy Holidays!

Thank you, everyone who encouraged me and read this blog. You all make it a joy to come up with new designs.

These printables are in 100 ppi format, click on the images for the full sized versions. The slide box is sized to hold 4 miniature Hershey bars.

Book Review- Twinkie Chan's Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodies

Twinkie Chan's Crochet Goodies for Fashion Foodie: 20 Yummy Treats to Wear is one of those books that I was looking forward to getting as soon as I saw it. I love to crochet, I simply adore cute, and everybody loves food right?
Oh my goodness. Eat something before reading the patterns, or you might get inspired to eat and crochet at the same time and that never works out well.
Most of the book is the most adorable scarves you've ever seen. Made up of motifs that are stitched together to make long chains. Motifs like cookies, cupcakes, soft serve ice cream cones, textured with stitches, all sorts of desserts and sweets, changing colors and accents creates different flavors to make long colorful scarves. The only non-scarf items in this chapter are a cupcake hat and a lemon coconut cake tissue cozy accented with very sweet cherries.
The next chapter is fruits and veggies. This has a great pattern for strawberry themed fingerless gloves, a green salad scarf of lacy shell stitches in green accented with crocheted veggies, a pink grapefruit scarf that I just love for the bright happy colors and a few other great scarves.
Next up is savory stuff. My favorite, the sushi scarf. 5 kinds of sushi stitch together into a wonderful scarf. My other favorite is the popcorn scarf made up of motifs that look like boxes of movie theater popcorn. There are also pizza, bacon and eggs, and a buttered toast scarf in this chapter.
While most of the book is scarf patterns, tawashi stitchers will notice that a lot of the individual motifs could very easily be made up as tawashi. The motifs would also be good to stitch on to other things or to make out of thread. So they don't HAVE to be a long fun scarf. They could just as easily be added to other projects.
It's a very cute book. Recommended!
Andrews McMeel Publishing Patterns include:
Cupcake Scarf- Candy Button Scarf- Cookie Scarf- Gingerbread Man Scarf- Lemon Coconut Cake Tissue Cozy- Rocket Popsicle Scarf-Soft Serve Ice Cream Scarf-Chocolate Cupcake Hat with Blue Frosting
Green Salad Scarf- Pink Grapefruit Scarf-Baby Radish Lariat Scarf- Pear Scarf-Giant Carrot Scarf- Strawberry Fingerless Gloves
Bacon and Eggs Scarf- Buttered Toast Scarf-Sushi Scarf-Pepperoni Pizza Scarf-Popcorn Scarf-Spaghetti and Meatballs Scarf

Snowflake set of goodies

I graphed a snowflake in beads to use as my current user picture on Facebook, I liked that well enough that I decided to draw one as well. 

So first, a card and envelope set. The cards print 2 to a page, so you'll need to print 2 of the envelopes to go with them. They are 5 inches high x 3.5 inches wide which just reaches USPS letter size. To make the envelope, fold in the sides, then the bottom. Glue the bottom to the sides. Fold the top and seal with tape or with a pretty label. Print the envelope on paper, the card on card stock. The set is in 300 ppi. Click on the images for the larger versions. Inside of the card is blank for your sentiment. Back of the card has a quote I liked and my name as the artist.

And a full sized page to print out and use as art if you wish. Has the quote from the card on it.

300 ppi, click image for the larger version.

Not done yet! A coloring page, and embroidery patterns. These are in 100 ppi. Click on the images for the full sized version.

Tiger Gift Box

I think this would make a good box for a boy or young man who loves tigers. Maybe to hold a necklace made with tiger's eye stones?

This in 300 ppi, and I've also posted the photo and background that I used. For non-commercial use ONLY. These are photos that I took on Halloween while I was out with my family. Click on the imagse for the full sized versions, print on card stock. The tabs are big enough to use double stick tape with.

Photos at 50% and taken with my HS-10 from about 50 feet away.

This is an affiliate link, but the HS-10 is down to 359.99! I love my camera a lot. It's easy to use with a good amount of zoom. 

Calico Lace set- recipe cards and box

A small set, some note or recipe cards with a matching folder to keep them in, and a 3x3x1 box. All at 100 ppi. Click on the images for the full sized versions. The theme was inspired by A Prairie Girl's Guide to Life.

Book Review- Prairie Girl's Guide to Life

Prairie Girl's Guide to Life: How to Sew a Sampler Quilt & 49 Other Pioneer Projects for the Modern Girl is a lovely book by Jennifer Worick. It's charmingly illustrated and engagingly written.
There are a lot of guides to a back to basics type lifestyle. This is one I enjoyed an awful lot. It's fun to read. The author talks about how much she loved the Little House books, and about rediscovering handicrafts and cooking skills from the past.
Rather than going deeply in depth on any subject, it offers easy projects and recipes to inspire and get women started in a DIY lifestyle. Side notes include sayings and expressions with definitions and examples and are just one more bit of charm in this sweet book.
Quilting, embroidery, candle making,soap making and sewing are all included. As well as how to make the perfect cup of tea and how to cook a turkey or a wonderful rhubarb pie. There is even a brief section on how to flirt!
The book is hardbound and just a bit over pocket sized (meaning a bit bigger than a standard paperback) which makes it an ideal stocking stuffer for preteen to teen girls who are interested in handicrafts and who loved the Little House books, or as a small gift for adult women who just getting interested in that sort of thing.
Since we are getting close to the holidays, I'd like to start a small series of gift ideas, and this book would totally be on that list. It's a too basic for advanced crafters and cooks, but it's so pretty and so much fun to read that I did give it to my daughter.
You can get it from the publisher, Taunton Press

Christmas Tree box and coloring page

Recently I drew a Christmas tree for BellaOnline just for fun. It's a drag and drop to decorate for fun and you can find it here. I liked the shape enough that I used the same basic design for a 100 ppi coloring page and 300 ppi box. Click on the images for the larger versions.

As usual, feel free to use the coloring page as an embroidery pattern, wood burning pattern or other craft uses.

I posted a new bead project as well. Find instructions for these earrings at Beadwork at BellaOnline.

Uses for Juicer Pulp

Juiceman sent me the shiny new Juiceman All-in-one Juice Extractor, which you can find at your local Wal-mart for about 80.00, so it's an awesome deal. I'll be writing a real review of it probably on Monday after I finally try the citrus juicer attachment.

I've been using just the regular juicer part on all sorts of fruits and veggies. My teens love it in a really big kind of way. I think it would be great for people who have vegetable/fruit resistant kids. Getting to choose stuff to juice and watching it get pulverized to extract the juice could get kids drinking their veggies and fruits.

But there is always pulp left. I brainstormed with my husband and did some internet searches to figure out what to do with the pulp, all that fiber-y goodness.

1. Compost it. I wouldn't, because fiber is good. But it can be composted.
2. Make crackers with it
3. This is what I do with veggie pulp- use it as a filler. I thicken soups with it, or mix it into my meatloaf instead of bread crumbs. Works great!
4. Also on meat- fruit pulps make good beds for chicken breasts when roasting, I can flip the chicken easily and it imparts a faint fruity taste to the chicken.
5. Mix some into breads- when you're using a bright colored vegetable pulp, this looks gorgeous.

Things I still want to try out:
Making noodles with it. I think I can use at 1:1 ratio with flour to make noodles.
Trying to use apple pulp as a natural source of pectin in jams
Cakes and biscuits with it mixed in.

What I've been doing is juicing vegetables and fruits separately. First the fruit, scrap the pulp into a container, then the veggies. So I have my pulps separated for what I'm using it for. There is some sweetness to the fruit pulps which I think works very well in some recipes, less well in others.

So why the Juicer and uses for the pulp instead of just eating the fruit/veggies raw?
Well, my kids and husband all like the juice mixes, so I know they are getting their vitamins. My husband says it's easier to drink the juice and eat the pulp in my tasty recipes than to eat all those recommended servings of fruits and vegetables every day. So they have some of their servings in juice, with the fiber added to something else, and some in vegetables with meals.
It's less wasteful. It really really is. A lot of fruits, like apples, you throw away a lot of the fruit. The core, sometimes the skin. As long as you are actually cooking with the pulp, you're not throwing away any of the fruit. Vegetables, same thing.

Wire hanger crafts from the past

For most of the day, I've been kind of caught up in old issues of Popular Science, Popular Mechanics and Boy's Life.
When I was a kid, my mom had an old set of the Book of Knowledge for children. I loved that encyclopedia. Instead of being the big boring books of facts that I had to use for reports, these books were full of stories, crafts and lots of interesting things. I loved the crafts. Ottomans made from old coffee cans and all sorts of handy things.
Now I collect vintage craft books. Still love them. The crafts and ideas are frequently filled with measurements you need to take, and usually are made from reclaimed things. Crafts in the past were frequently made with stuff you might have around rather than stuff you had to make a special trip to a craft store for.
So.. now there is Google Books. Full of lots of old magazines. You can also specify a time frame. So after running across some cute wire bookends in an old issue of Popular Science, I did a search on wire coat hangers, specifying the time frame 1910-1950.

This clever flowerpot holder comes from the September 1934 issue of Popular Science.There are also projects for a telephone book holder, newspaper rack and a sock stretcher.

The August 1945 issue of Boy's Life says that blanket pins are very handy to have, but hard to find for sale anymore. If they were hard to find in 1945, I imagine they are nearly impossible to find now. The pin, made of hard wire, would be gorgeous accented with beads and used as a shawl pin now.

Also instructions for a double toaster or hand grill, an egg whip and a couple other cooking outdoors sorts of tools.

These are the bookends that sparked the search. You can find them, along with a very nifty clothes dryer in the December 1939 issue of Popular Science.

An extra that's not from the time range I specified. 

This cute mobile comes from the March 1963 issue of Boy's Life.

Review-Page Maps 2 and a printable Christmas Card

Page Maps 2 by Becky Fleck is a scrapbooking book full of ideas for mapping out scrapbook pages and cards. 

It starts with traditional layouts and shows a couple examples of the layouts done completely differently so you can see how adaptable they are, how easy they are to customize by changing the shapes a bit, changing the colors and the themes. The next chapter is my favorite, cards! I like cards a lot, but I tend to think in terms of one main image, background, frame. The scrapbook inspired card layouts help me think in terms of layers of elements to create a card that more dynamic, has more going on, without being too busy or too much.

Chapter 3 is over the top layouts, busy exciting scrapbook pages with room for journaling.

Chapter 4, Beyond the page, has a bunch of great ideas and layouts for round pages, for art created to hang in your house including a calendar idea that is just wonderful. Clipboards, clocks and other artistic pieces using your scrapbooking skills to create gifts that take a lot less time than making a full album. 

The last chapter, near and dear to my heart, is about digital scrapping. Layouts combined with the credits under the photos telling where the elements come from make it very inspiring for people who would rather have an undo button and the ability to get just the right color element. 

At the end of the book are perforated cards that have a hole in the corner so you can put them on a book ring and have mobility with these ideas. You can keep the sketched layouts on hand for a night of scrapping with friends or just on your work table without it taking up much space at all. The cards are glossy, with the sketch on one side and a full color photo of an example layout on the other side. (Amazon link is an affiliate link)

Using one of the layouts in this book, I created this Christmas card. It's 300 ppi, click on the images for the full sized version. In the book, the original layout was to fit a 3.5 x 8 inch card. Because I wanted to make mine digitally with a matching envelope, I changed the size to 3.5x7 inch. This is a mailable size, within USPS limits for letters. I always recommend sealing printables with an acrylic spray, but if it's going through the mail, it's a really good idea just in case it's anywhere moisture can cause ink bleed.

New box style!

This shape came to me while I was getting ready for sleep last night. I call it twist because it seems like a twisted regular box to me.

If you want to stand up on one end like my top picture, I recommend taping the bottom end shut. The snack size Kit Kats are there for scale. The ends are 1x3 inches, and it stands 4 inches tall. 

Click on the image for the full size 100 ppi versions. Print on cardstock, score all folds. The tab is big enough to use double sided tape to assemble.