April Day 08

Our little carpenter hard at work. I love getting these candid shots with my telephoto lens.

April Day 07: Pooh's Birthday card

I am day behind on posting this. I made this card for my dad's birthday yesterday, took the photo, and then forgot to actually post it. There is a bit of a story behind the tree. This particular tree that I used on the card is traced from a tree that decorates my dad's chimney. When my dad was building his log cabin, he decided  to have the stone mason incorporate an image into the stonework of the chimney. I traced it in Illustrator and cut it out using my Silhouette Cameo. (Have I mentioned how much I love that machine?)  When I first saw it I said, "I just drew a very similar tree at work for a logo I designed." (If I can find that tree I will post it later) Great minds think alike I guess.

April Day 6: Rabbit Boy

First off let me say Lacy hasn't posted because she has been kinda busy having a baby and stuff. So I guess we'll let that slide. She actually did do a post for day 5 but didn't get to publish it yet.

Today I stuffed and put together a rabbit boy while waiting at the Dr.s' office and doing my glucose testing. He still needs stitching shut and needs a mouth and nose. I bought some more socks at Target today too and I am hoping to get a special rabbit made in time for my niece's birthday.

April Day 5: Photo Book

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Lacy Day 5: Souvenir Penny Charm Necklace

So, as you can tell from my first few projects, I like jewelry.  I have tons of jewelry-making supplies from projects I've done in the past  (including making a couple of tiaras for weddings) but I never use it anymore.  I don't have a ton of beads or anything and I'm not one of those people crazy for beading, so I rarely ever make jewelry unless I can't find exactly what I want to buy.  Recently, I bought an orange dress to wear to my baby shower and couldn't find the perfect turquoise earrings and necklace set for a reasonable price, so I bought the materials and made them myself.  

I pinned this little gem of a charm bracelet forever ago with the thought that I could go find all of my old souvenir pennies and finally find a use for them.  So I raided my old jewelry box at my mom's house and scraped together some older ones from places I visited in college and started collecting more on my recent travels.  Now, everywhere I go, I have to squish a penny if I see a machine!  And I usually try to find the oldest penny in my purse because, as you can see, the older, all copper pennies turn out better than the newer ones made mostly out of zinc. 

So, as my penny collection has been growing, I've had this project in mind for over a year, but haven't ever gotten the energy to do it.  So the other night I was ordering chain for the shrinky dink necklaces I'm going to make of the baby's footprints and I decided to go ahead and order some copper chain and findings as well.  The chain came in the mail today, so I sat down this afternoon with the drill and it took no time at all to punch holes in all of my pennies.  I didn't try to face the right-side up or anything because sometimes there is more empty space on one side or the other, I just did my best to not drill through any of the artwork impression.  It also didn't take long to string them onto the chain I bought with the jump rings.  Most of the time I spent on this project was in ordering the right parts.  Once I had all the materials I needed in hand, it only took about a half an hour to put it all together.  

April Day 4: Crochet basic training

I have decided to try my hand at crochet. I did a little bit in high school and made some hacky sacks but that was about it. Since that was 10 plus years ago (egad!) I am pretty much starting from scratch. The first few rows I did were rough and one of them was hooked into the wrong chain and I didn't bother to count my stitches. However I am starting to figure it out again. Just need to learn my basic stitches and practice practice practice. Oh and maybe get a bigger hook. I hear "H" size is good for beginners since it makes bigger loops.

Lacy Day 4: Family Portrait

I was transferring some family photos onto a new digital picture frame and found some family pictures that my sister- and brother-in-law took on their way to church on Easter of 2005.  They didn't have a self-timer on their camera, so they never did get a pic with the entire family in it.  I thought they might appreciate having one of everyone together, so I added my sis-in-law into the mix, corrected red eye, and cropped it down to an 8" x 10".  I'd like to do some color correction on it, but the resolution is fairly minimal and every time I tried to make an adjustment I just made the artifacting worse, so I decided to let it be.