Día de los Muertos Sugar Skull Boxes

These boxes are open at the top, sort of like miniature gift bags. The inner dimensions of the box part are 3 inches high, 2 inches wide and 1 inch deep. Sugar skulls! I hope you like it. It was a lot of fun to draw. The tabs are a little over a half inch wide, so it can be assembled using a runner or double sided tape. Click on the images for larger versions, print to fit page. 

If you like this, you'll LOVE Crafty Chica!

Quote art and the new FB layout

Lately, since the FB layout change, it seems like some people are posting photos a lot more. Things they find funny, quotes they find meaningful, but since my friends list has a lot of overlap, that means that I get the same photos on my newsfeed sometimes 3 or 4 times in a day.

So rather than reposting things that lots of people are posting, I decided to start making my own illustrated quotes and posting them to my wall. I'm making them all 4x6 inches and decent quality. So if you'd like to print them for mini-posters, locker posters or even postcards, you can.

Here are the quotes I have so far. Click on the images for larger versions.

"I'm not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I've always been a freak. So I've been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I'm one of those people."

-John Lennon

Public FB link if you want to share it on your wall is here.

"The trick is not how much pain you feel - but how much joy you feel. Any idiot can feel pain. Life is full of excuses to feel pain, excuses not to live, excuses, excuses, excuses."
-Erica Jong
Public FB link to share this on your own wall is here.

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years."
-Simone Signoret
Public FB link to share to your own wall here.

"The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce."
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Public FB link to share on your own wall is here.

I hope you enjoy these quotes as much as I do.

Happy Coffee Day - coffee themed mandala

Click on the image for a bigger version.

This site is coffee fueled. Check out these recipes for coffee creamer made with condensed milk from a while back. Coffee Creamer 1 Coffee Creamer 2

Western Shirt Box

Western style shirts, with pearl snaps and smile pockets are just full of awesome aren't they? There isn't a chance in heck that my darling husband will ever wear one, but they are wonderful. I hope you enjoy this box. 3x3x1, click on the image for the larger version. Cut, score, fold, glue!

A couple other western themed printables.

Amazon Kindle Fire! Want!

Okay, I'm in total gadget lust for the new Kindle Fire. Anyone who knows me knew that would be the tablet that evoked that feeling.

There are also new Kindles coming out. Just when I have to replace Michael's Kindle because he broke the display on it well after it's out of warranty. So I'm going to order him the shiny and new Kindle Touch 3g.

For people just wanting to get their first Kindles, there is a new 79 dollar wi-fi version, you can also add books to it using a USB port and your computer.

Kindles are what I was waiting for in the new millennium. The thing I wanted most when reading classic science fiction was the newspapers and books that were instantly available in one slim, lightweight device. Well, that and small electric cars of course. As much as I love older books, a lot of people thought I'd be hard to convert, but it's something that I wanted for so long, and Amazon's e-ink is so easy to read that conversion was easy. Add in how long a battery charge lasts and the convenience of the 3g models for being able to download a book almost anywhere? It's love. My eldest loves all the public domain books that are available for free. Even buying DTB copies at used book stores would cost more than his Kindle did. He's immersed himself in Shelley's Frankenstein, gone on adventures with Sherlock Holmes, he reads Wells, Shakespeare and poetry. Since we are on the same account, he also has access to my digital library.

Writing books for Kindle is easy too. A lot easier than many other formats because it's fairly simple HTML with a few specific tags. I wrote a tutorial with cut and paste code that's here. If you're writing a cookbook of your favorite recipes for friends or family, you could format it as a Kindle book and possibly make a few extra dollars doing so.  I have a bread making booklet and a beading booklet available. Just search for Shala Kerrigan. Planning to write one soon about planning out radially symmetrical designs, and I have a scarf alphabet that I'll be publishing in Kindle format soon for 99 cents.

So it's safe to say that I'm super excited.

The Kindle links are affiliate links.
But if anyone really really wants to buy me a new Kindle? My wishlist is here. *grins*

TG's Doctor Owl

Michaels had these wonderful vinyl owls to paint last time I went there. Unfortunately, they only had 2 at my local Michaels, so I bought one each for TG and William. This is the TG painted, a little 11th Doctor Owl. The background is my test print of a ditsy design for an upcoming Spoonflower contest.

EDIT: Ditsy Print Now Voting @Spoonflower

Just had to show it off. She'll post it to her Cut Out and Keep account later too.

Gear and cogs mandala

Sorry for the hiccup people, but I'm back!
I hope you enjoy this mandala that I drew yesterday. I'll put it on a printable box later and was thinking about putting it on a Zazzle or CafePress shirt. It's one of the first ones I've drawn that works for my son. Since he's working on designing a steampunk themed game, I thought he might like a steampunk inspired clock gears and cogs mandala. He did.

Click on the image for a bigger version!

A shout out to Liberty, for her constant support and enthusiasm. Thank you! Comments like yours make my day.

Edited to add- Just posted the design on Zazzle as a teeshirt and as stickers.
Edited again- Ditsy Print Contest voting at Spoonflower! My entry is a tiny ditsy print of gears, cogs, watch hands and numbers.

Batty Calling Cards

Batty printable calling cards! Like the last set I posted, these are meant to be cut apart using a craft knife, the PDF has fill in fields and can be saved. The font that I used for it was Slyph, which you can download for free here. (Yes, another Paul Lloyd font. I love his fonts.) The problem with Slyph is that it doesn't have an @ symbol, instead it does the word at. I decided just use my url instead of my email address but it could have just said shala at donteatthepaste.com 

Download the pdf HERE. 

You can use it with Acrobat Reader which is free and available here.

Check out How About Orange, where I got the idea for the calling cards. She has wonderful design ideas on her blog.

Birch Leaves Mandala

Happy Fall! Here's a coloring page mandala of birch leaves. I hope you enjoy it. Click on the image for a larger version.

Dots and Circles calling cards and coloring page

Last year How About Orange posted these wonderful calling cards, and I loved them. The hand cut with an craft knife does turn out so much nicer than perforated business card stock.

Since I've been playing so much with using images with Adobe Acrobat X Standard, I decided to make a set. There are crop marks on the sides, and you cut them apart with a craft knife and a ruler or even scissors. It's set up for Chocolate Box by Paul Lloyd, which you can download here.

The way the PDF is set up, when you fill in one card, they all fill in, and saving is allowed on it. You can download Acrobat Reader for free here. Just print on standard card stock, and cut apart the cards using the crop marks.

Calling Card PDF download

I liked the simple ornament enough that I also set it up as a coloring page.

Check out this recipe for Gingery Pickled Greens. Planning to try it, but really reduced and using dandelion greens. I'll let you all know how it turns out.

Jehanna's Birthday Knot

Today is my friend Jehanna's birthday. Since I know she likes knots for embroidery, I thought that I would try drawing her one. Click on the images for larger versions to be used for coloring, embroidery, and hopefully making my friend smile on her birthday. One with a border, one without.

Jehanna has an Etsy shop, specializing in jewelry. It's called Avalon Dreaming.

Giveaway Winner and Free Template

And the giveaway winner of "At Home With Handmade Books" is Rachel, who had the ninth comment. Rachel, I sent you an email. Thank you Shambhala Publications for sponsoring this fun giveaway!

Thank you all for participating. I hope that you enjoy this template as a consolation. It's a pillow box made to fit Tazo teabags. Yum yum Tazo tea. I'm fond of the Passion, TG and my husband love the Wild Sweet Orange. Click the image for a larger version. 

Zig Zag Recipe cards and a few other things

Hi Everyone!

In the last few days a lot of people using Blogger have noticed that they are using a new code for images. This code was implemented without a good way to turn it off and causes images to show up in something called Lightbox. I used the code snippet from HERE to revert DETP. The people at Blogger do realize that a lot of their users really dislike the new feature, and hopefully will offer an easy way to opt out soon. 

Recipe Cards! 

The last couple of days, I've been playing with some PDF recipe cards. I'm still not completely happy with the results, but this is what I have so far. You should be able to type recipes directly into them using Acrobat Reader, and save the PDF to your hard drive with your recipes filled in and print them out. These are 4x6 inch cards formatted for US letter size paper or card stock.

Zig Zag Recipe Cards

This was my first version. I accidentally missed putting in some of the cutting guide lines. This is filled out using a couple of my grandmother's recipes. One for bourbon balls, the other for pecan balls.

Ball Cookie Zig Zag Recipe Cards

Thunderbird Falls with photos

Thunderbird Falls is a 200 high foot fall that's a fairly easy 1 mile trail hike (one direction) in Chugach State Park.
Most photos at 50%. I resized the ones of my family a bit smaller. Click on the images for the larger versions. Yes. It really is that pretty. I took about 80 photos total, these are some of my favorites.
At the head of the trail was some bear sign. I did NOT take a photo of that, although Michael spent a minute looking at it to make sure it wasn't fresh.
Fairly soon in. We saw this sign. We saw lots of these signs on the trail.

The trail is pretty wide, no need to be nervous. 

T.G. and William- for scale, William is 6'1". TG is 5'3".

That's a birch forest by the way. Birch grows really well here. We use birch frequently in our grilling because Michael prefers wood to commercial charcoal which contains coal. We also buy birch syrup*  for pancakes and to use in homemade cream soda. Birch bark is used in many crafts up here, and my indispensable wooden spoons are made of birch. I love birch. 

Another photo of the trail

The trail rolls, with most of the steeper parts being in the direction of the falls viewing area. So it was nice knowing that it was going to be easier coming back out.

Fern!

I love ferns for their fractal nature. 

Gorge

About halfway up the trail is a viewing area to see the gorge. That's a photo taken of the creek at the bottom of the gorge. While we were standing there, open mouthed because of the beauty, a bug flew in my mouth. I spit it out. Ick. 

Thunderbird Falls

The falls were beautiful. In the winter, they sometimes freeze up completely and are just a shimmering ice sculpture. Michael suggested coming back in the winter to see the trees covered in hoarfrost and the falls all frozen. BRR! I said that I wasn't sure the beauty would be worth freezing or walking an icy trail. So we will see.

Closer view

Even closer

Michael took the even closer photo. He was carrying my Kodak, and I had my Fuji. He loves zooming in close. 

T.G. in a scarf she knitted herself without a pattern.

William

My darling husband, preparing to pretend to be a waterfall.

I posted some of these pics on my FB page, and a friend of ours saw them and said "That picture of Michael just really is perfect. It catches his personality." Yes. That's my husband who makes me laugh regularly. He had just taken a big mouthful of water and was getting ready to spit it out in his impersonation of a waterfall.

It was a lovely day. 

*not affiliated, just love their products.

A Pirate Compass Rose to Color

It's TLAP again. I hope you enjoy this compass rose to color, embroider or use for pyrography! Click on the image for a larger version.

Another chevron zig zag box

It's been an amazing week. More on that in a minute. First the box!

This box was based off a palette created from a photo I took today just for the colors. I picked the colors manually and loaded the palette on ColourLovers, along with a palette that I generated using their software from the second photo.

So my amazing week started normally enough. Books, beads and crafts. Not sure when I realized it was a very good week. It just kept building up steam. All sorts of things lining up well and working out well. Today was just the icing on the cake. Michael isn't normally a very spontaneous person. He tries though because he knows that I am and today he decided it was time to go to Thunderbird Falls, and I'll be posting photos of that later. That was *after* he dropped Turnip Girl and I at Salvation Army while he got a hair cut. Then after the hiking, we hit my favorite coffee roastery for a few lbs of my favorite coffee. If you like dark roasts, you might want to try the Arctic Wolf.  It's a deep, rich, fruity roast. Dark and oily and my favorite coffee. If you prefer lighter roasts, the Pioneer blend is one of my dad's favorites. One of my plans soon is to make an appointment with Ron to work on a special Don't Eat the Paste coffee. 

Check out this How-Tuesday about weaving Ojo de Dios (God's Eyes)

Chevron boxes and a chevron chain

Chevron 2x2 printable gift boxes in 4 colorways. I hope you like them. Click on the images for larger versions. Print on card stock, cut, score, fold, glue!

Recently someone left a comment that they weren't able to print out my boxes anymore since I started increasing the DPI on them. If you're printing from a browser with these style boxes, you'll want to set your printer settings to Fit to Page. Most of my single page boxes are set up on an 8x10 page so fit to page will be just right. With the 2 page boxes, it's very important to print both pages at the same DPI, so if it downloads for you at 200 dpi, print both pages at that setting.
I really recommend for printing from a browser, switching to Chrome browser. It's print preview gives you a look at exactly how it's going to print and it's "smart" enough to handle higher DPI settings.

Instructions for this chevron chain are HERE. It's made fairly quickly in one of my favorite bead stitch techniques.

Crochet Cuff Pattern

Don't forget to enter my giveaway for At Home With Handmade Books!

6 chances to win! Entries will be closed on September 22, 2011. Good luck!

This crochet cuff works up very quickly and uses single crochets, chains and double crochets. The same stitch can be used for a scarf. The base is a multiple of 6+1, although it can be modified for a multiple of 3+1 by changing the end of the rows.

American terminology used throughout.
ch= chain stitch
dc= double crochet
sc= single crochet
st or sts= stitch or stitches
You will need:
Size D hook (3.25 mm)
Size 3 Cotton thread or equivalent- for my friends not in the US, size 3 cotton is pretty close in thickness to a light DK or Aus 5 ply.  Wool will be stretchier, but it should work.
3 size 30 or 3/4 inch buttons (about 20 mm)
tapestry needle
embroidery floss for sewing on the buttons

The buttons used in my example are vintage buttons from my button box. Otherwise, I think Dritz size 30 fabric covered button kits would have been very cute!

These have quite a bit of stretch, but I made mine a bit loose so it wouldn't distort. Your mileage may vary, so check it as you make it.

Chain 13
Row 1: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in 2nd chain from hook, sc in each chain across (13 sc)
Row 2: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in each sc.
Row 3: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) , sc in first sc, ch 3, skip 3 sts, sc in next sc, ch 3, skip 3 sts, sc in next sc, ch 3, skip 3 sts, sc in last stitch (3 button holes)
Row 4: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in first sc, 3 sc in ch 3, sc in next sc, 3 sc in ch 3, sc in next sc, 3 sc in ch 3, sc in last st (13 sc)

Row 5: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch), sc in first sc, ch 3, skip 2 sts, sc in next st, ch 3, skip 2 sts, sc in next st, ch 3, skip 2 sts, sc in next st, ch 3, skip 2 sts, sc in last stitch (4 loops)
Row 6: ch 5, sc in first loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3 sc in next loop, ch 3, dc in last st from previous row. (5 loops)
Row 7: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in first chain, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3, sc in 3rd ch in the ch 5 loop.(4 loops)
Row 8:ch 5, sc in first loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3, sc in next loop, ch 3 sc in next loop, ch 3, dc in last st from previous row.(5 loops)
Row 9: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in first ch, ch 2, sc in next loop, ch 2, sc in next loop, ch 2, sc in next loop, ch 2, sc in 3rd ch of ch 5 loop. (4 ch 2 spaces)
Row 10: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in sc, 2 sc in ch 2, sc in sc, 2 sc in ch 2, sc in sc,  2 sc in ch 2, sc in sc, 2 sc in ch 2, sc in sc (13 sc)
Row 11: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in each sc.
Row 12: ch 1 (does not count as first stitch) sc in each sc.

Repeat Rows 5-12 3 more times for a total of 4 mesh areas. Check cuff on wrist. If you need to add a couple more rows of single crochet, do that. Break off thread and weave in ends then stitch the 3 buttons into place on that side. I do my knots between the button and the crochet so I don't have ends showing on the back of the bracelet.

If you have very small wrists, or prefer the bracelet stretched, you can either switch to a smaller hook size or remove one row of sc from the sc sections so it's only 2 rows instead of 3.
Click on the chart for a larger version if you prefer charted patterns. If you don't know how to read international crochet notation, but would like to try it and feel confident with the written pattern, in international  crochet, a 0 is a chain, X is a single crochet, and the crossed T is a double crochet. With other patterns, the T will have the number of crosses that you work off the stitch, so a T with no cross is what Americans call a "half double crochet". One with 2 crosses would be what we call a treble or triple and so forth.