Thursday, August 21, 2008

I'm so tired...but I'm finally finished!





I'm leaving very early in the morning for a flight to see my family - I'm so excited for my first vacation of the year and I've been scrambling to get all my handmade gifts finished. (Please forgive the poor photo quality - the lighting in my house at this hour leaves much to be desired!) My brother just moved into a new apartment, the first one he's never shared with anyone. I offered to help with his decor and his only requests were, "only black, white, and red...and no flowers or polka dots". I hope he approves of the prints I picked! I also made him a multi-media collage using my favorite photo of us from way back in the day. I enlarged it and converted it to black and white and used the same fabrics I used for the pillows. He may only hang it in his bedroom but I think he'll appreciate it :) Since my nephew is just a baby I know he's stocked up on clothing and toys so I made a canvas set for his wall. I had just a little of the vintage nautical-themed fabric and I amped up the muted (and extremely dated) colors by layering primary colors and prints on top. My niece is only 3 1/2 but she loves books so I made a quickie book bag for her from fabric in my stash. I also included a copy of 'Olivia' by Ian Falconer, one of my favorite children's books. I'm so pleased to be finished with all my gifts...now I can pack and shower and possibly take a nap before we have to leave at 3:30 am (ohmygod!)
Signing off until September 2nd...hurray for vacations!

-M

Thursday, August 7, 2008

New multi-media collage, "Sisters"





My family and friends are often my guinea pigs when it comes to new projects. My sisters in particular seem to love my handcrafted presents, which of course makes it totally worth it to make things for them! I wanted to somehow use an old photo I found for my sister Kellie's birthday present. I had some copies made of the photo and I played around with some ideas for a few days until I came up with this. I was happy to find colors and prints in my fabric stash similar to what we're wearing in the photo. I hand embroidered 'sisters' onto muslin and then machine stitched the photo to the rest of the material (I totally didn't think that was going to work, how great that you can sew through just about anything!)
I'm really pleased with how it turned out and Kellie left me the loveliest message after she opened her package, she didn't remember the photo so it was an even better surprise than I expected! I definitely want to try this again and think I'll be offering this type of collage as an option on my etsy page soon.

-M