Original Valentines

I don't know about you, but I find the store bought commercial Valentines to be tacky. It's always whatever the popular thing is...Transformers for boys and Disney Princess for girls. It's the same problem you find with commercialism in general...marketing geniuses who make way too much money convincing your children they need things that they don't. So...why not make your own Valentines with your little cutie center stage?

I started this project last year and ended up with a beautifully printed (modern printers amaze me) 4 x 4 custom personalized valentine. This was around the time I was starting up my Candid Memory cards, so it was good practice. I started last years with a painted caricature of my daughter which I then scanned in and photoshopped into a card.

This year I changed it up a little and used an illustration instead. I had moved more towards the illustrations and away from the paintings toward the end, in part because I preferred the look. But I think also because the original black and white illustrations are more digitally customizable then the paintings. (take a look back at this previous post for directions on creating your own original illustration of your kids http://maggiebluedesigns.blogspot.com/2009/05/make-your-kid-into-cartoon.html).

So this years (which I won't unveil just yet) will be an illustrated version, and per Laurel's request will have her holding a chocolate heart (a real one of course).

Things Floating Around in My Head

Whipped honey, alpacas, homeschool, spending more time with my kids, having more time for anything, beautiful fabrics, brightly colored children's clothes, fresh herbs, camping, the smell of the top of my kids heads when we're cuddling.

Building a Foundation and Laying a Foundation

Despite the fact that I haven't posted in forever, I actually have been writing quite a bit. I have four posts ready to go, other than they are waiting on pictures. My camera has been down, and I hate to post a project without pictures. But the four upcoming are; fabric flowers, baby quilt, mini-quilt and bookshelf. Updates:

House Renovation- Still waiting on our architect to finish the plans. (he says Monday...I hope that's true because I'm dying to get started)

School- We actually started building (and tearing down) the beginnings of a building. We framed out the footer and foundation wall. We bent and tied rebar, used a transit to measure, nailed, sawed and squared everything off. Then we tore it all down. For the first time I'm beginning to see that I will actually be able to build things on my own soon! I've already had a request for my first assignment, a pump house for the well at the new house.

Family- Awesome. What more can I say? Jon got back in town this morning and the kids were so excited to see him. We started out by grinding some wheat and making pancakes. After that we have NOTHING planned (in a good way), this week was rush rush rush...now it's time not to. (Plus the weather stinks) The lack of a plan is...library, store, bake cookies, make some fabric flowers, movie night...that's pretty much the entire agenda.

Lately I haven't been doing as much crafting overall, but I have been laying the foundation for what's next. I've had so many books on my Amazon wishlist to read, and today I finally put them all into my hold-list at the library. So hopefully over the next 2 months they will trickle in and I'll get to read them. They include all the ones I've been meaning to read...Amy Butler, Anna Maria Horner, Amy Karol, Barbara Kingsolver, Amanda Blake Soule, etc. Most of them are about crafting, the rest are about slow living, active parenting, creativity, etc. I can't wait to see them all. I was also finally able to put on hold Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking which I've been unable to do for the last year or so. After years of following her blog I will actually get to see her cookbook. I also reserved Japanese Hot Pots which I saw on an episode of Martha Stewart in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. The food looked so good and healthy, I couldn't resist.

Out with the old, in with the new!

Last week I was reminiscing about old things; old designs, old orders. This week is all about NEW things. I had a wonderfully domesticated weekend (I'm not sure that came out right), I mean to say I got to try some new domestic-type tasks that I haven't done before. They came out well for the most part, and I'm really having a blast with some of me new found abilities.
1) Wood Working:
Of course I'm still in carpentry school, and while I felt like we weren't progressing at all for while...it's finally starting to come together. Thursday night we made a picnic table. It was the most beautiful picnic table ever. (Not really, but in the same sense that a marathoner drinks water at the end of the race and thinks it's the best water they've ever had) I wish I had brought a camera...but I guess you've seen one picnic table you've seen them all...so just close your eyes and imagine. It was fun being expected to jump right in and just use tools I've never used before. For this project it was a circular saw, electric drill, electric screw driver and of course the requisite hand tools. (I have my own bag of tools bought lovingly by my hubby...my own saw, my own hammer, my own toolbelt...) It was fun being able to jump into a project and accomplish it.
2) Quilting:
I have never made a real quilt before. I've done smaller quilt like projects, but this weekend I designed and made a baby quilt. When it's finished (and given to it's recipient) I'll post the pictures. I'm so excited with how it came out! I like the colors, the design, and I like the fact that I could do it! It opens up the world of new projects I can do!
3) Bread Making:
We've had the grain and grain mill for a little less then a year, and while I use it a lot I've not gotten into a regular pattern of bread making. And when I do, I typically make the dough in the breadmaker first and then shape it and bake it. (I hate the shape of the bread-maker loaf with the big hole in the bottom from the kneading-paddle) Yesterday I decided I was going to try my hand (ha ha) at hand kneading the dough. So the bread started with fresh milled hard white wheat, I mixed, kneaded, rose, kneaded, rose, shaped, rose and baked. Jon and I stayed up watching last week's Community on the lap top and waited to try one of the first loaves. From the outset I didn't know what to expect...but after the first rise I felt more confident. It was HUGE! I didn't expect that much of a rise with a coarse-grind whole wheat bread. We ate some right out of the oven last night with butter dripping off...then again this morning sliced and toasted. Good tast, texture, etc. It was a success...and really not nearly as hard or tricky as I thought it would be. I downloaded the NY Times well known No-Knead recipe thinking I might need it in case I couldn't knead well...and while I still may try it...I can knead. It's actually very easy. Besides a little elbow grease, it helps to have an excited little girl. Laurel helped me with my projects all weekend.
The projects started because she wanted to make an apple pie, which we did on Saturday morning. We've been having so much fun making our homemade pies with our homemade crust (typically a mixture of soft white wheat and oat groat flours) that we made a sweet potato pie yesterday. This recipe included apple sauce (of which we really don't eat or keep on hand) so I actually stopped and made some with some apples we had on hand. I'm not joking...this was an all out Little House on the Prairie kind of weekend. We stopped just short of churning our own butter. I'm loving it. But next time I'll remember to take some pictures...I've been neglecting the camera lately. I forgot to take pictures of the purse I made for my sister's birthday, the pies, the bread, the table, etc. It seems I can't only remember so many things at one time before my brain fries. Ah well...2 loaves of bread, 2 pies and one quilt is good enough for me.

Happy Anniversary!

I just realized that this past weekend was the first anniversary of my business. It was the weekend of my first craft fair, and last week would have been one year since my first ETSY sale. I wouldn't trade any of it, despite the long exhausting hours. And this is why...below is a sketch done on the night I started designing my product ideas. This was something I sketched that I felt I couldn't make without a lot of lessons...in fact I think I even blogged about it back then. Today I can honestly say I could make that without a problem, and I could probably do it in less than an hour with fabric I have on hand. Pretty awesome considering I thought I'd have to take hours and hours of classes to be able to do something like that, and in the end it just took trial and error.

In honor of a year of designs I thought I'd post some of my favorites. The design at the top of the blog was my first original design, and very first finished Maggie Blue product. It sold at my very first show. I'm proud to say that all designs were my own, I didn't use patterns for anything. Of course that made for a lot of mistakes, but also a lot of fun.

The Mermaid Costume

This was a fun one to make. My daughter wanted to be a mermaid for Halloween, and thankfully, being only 4 years old she didn't have a huge opinion on how it needed to look. I hate the standard 2-piece Disney mermaid fare...and the idea of a 4 year old wearing a seashell bikini just seems tacky to me. So I knew I wanted something that covered, and secondly I wanted her to be able to walk around easily. I decided early on to make a simple pillowcase style top, and then have the dress come to a point where I would put the fins coming down to the ground. I had to play around with it a little to get the fins to look like fins. In the end I got close...I think it could potentially use some more tweaking, but I actually liked the simple home-made quality of it. Plus I love the Amy Butler green polka dot fabric, I'm making my way through the last yard or so I have since it's been discontinued. I didn't want to buy more fabric, since I have plenty. So I opted for some subtle flannels I had lying about. I didn't have enough of any one color to make the front and the back the same...so I call it "reversible." If she wants to be blue, she can...if she feels like being green, just flip it around!

The pillowcase top is pretty basic, once it was made I tried it on her and eyeballed where I wanted the point to be...then I cut it. From there I measured the sides of dress to the point to figure out the dimensions of the fins, and measured how long the fins needed to be so that they weren't dragging on the floor. (In reality I laid it out on the floor on top of a roll of paper and traced what I wanted the fin to look like)

The other thing I wanted to make sure of was that the fin retained a fin-like shape. In order to do this I put a piece of fleece in between the layers of cotton. This way once the fins were sewn the fleece would pop out and keep the shape, this seemed to work well. Plus the detailing on the fin really popped because of the added dimension from the fleece.

I did have to go back and tack the front and back fins together a little bit, without it the dress opened up too much and didn't look like fins anymore.

Class has Finally Started!!

Class finally started Tuesday night. For those of you who don't already know, I've enrolled in an 18 month residential carpentry (construction) program. We get to jump into tools and safety tonight and I'm hoping by next week we'll be producing some saw dust!! As expected the class was mostly men. But there was one other woman...and this was the craziest part...she's a chemist too! Seriously. When does that happen? Out of the professional setting I have never met another chemist, let alone a female one...and we're both in the same construction program?!?!

I made a yoga bag for my sister this week, for her birthday. This is the first non-ETSY project I've done in a while. It felt good to get back into sewing after a little break. Here are some pictures of the drawstring style yoga bag. Once again I stand on the basic bag design that I use for everything. It's fully lined which gives it more strength and it has no unfinished edges, which is nice. I made the drawstring by ironing a strip of fabric into a double-fold bias tape. The strap needs to be about 6 inches longer then the drawstring tunnel. That way when it's pulled shut it's long enough to fit over your shoulder, when the bag is opened the strap pretty much disappears.

I love this simplicity of this bag, and plan to use it as a gift bag for the holidays. A smaller version can be a wine-bottle gift bag, a larger version can hang on the back of a seat as a junk bag for kids toys, etc in the car. Especially when you have stores of fabric with no direct purpose...these make great stuff bags, gift bags, tote bags, etc etc etc.