Pretty Things

A random assortment of pretty things I like:

Birds Bees Flowers Silver and Glass  Rings at Calliope Boutique

Giraffe Wooden Pull Toy by CookieDough

Soft Stacker at Land of Nod

Botanica Rug by Selina Rose

Isak Posters for the Nursery

I finally decided to buy a set of posters I’ve been eyeing for months. If we’d had a boy, I would have totally done his room up using these colors as inspiration. However, they’ll still look great in Chloe’s room.

I first saw one of Sandra Isaksson’s 123 posters in an issue of LMNOP (a fun quarterly kids pdf magazine) and was drawn to it instantly. Then I looked up her other work and now she is one of my favorite designers. And check out this sweet “All About Baby” book! Is it silly to have two baby books?

Baby Craft Tutorial Roundup

A while back I started a page devoted completely to cool baby craft tutorials. There is a tab below the blog header that links to it. It contains a mix of my own tutorials and other people’s projects. So far there are tutorials for baby hair clips, appliqued onesies, felt baby shoes, burp cloths, kimono wrap, diaper and wipes pouch (poopy clutch), knit hat with earflaps, LED baby booties, diaper cake and embellishing baby tees. I hope to add more as I come across them on the net, so check back if you’re interested, or let me know what some of your favorite ones are and I’ll add them to the list.

Cool Online Game

gettheglass.com

If you haven’t already, check out this creative online game. I can’t believe how well it was designed, with gorgeous graphics and advanced interactive details. It sort of reminds me of Myst. Very impressive for a milk campaign. We came in at about 9400 out of 41,000. How well can you do?

Handmade Valentine Cards (a personal swap)

This year for Valentine’s Day I asked David for just one thing, a handmade (by him) Valentine’s card. No chocolates, or flowers, or store-bought card. Just a little of his personal time and effort. And I promised not to judge him. That whatever he chose to make would be just fine. I really meant that. And in return, I would make him a handmade card, too.

Look at this beauty. I would never have expected this in a million years. It looks like a rolled up piece of paper in the photo, but it is actually a little cylindrical box made of heavy paper, secured by a red thread around two eyelets. About 4 inches across.

This is what it looks like inside – surprise! Filled with little strips of pink paper, each with a word on one side and the matching design from the container on the other. Words like love, forever, we, you, mine, desire, romantic, emily, david, always. I could re-arrange the little strips into many different combinations. Pretty and clever. I’m clearly blown away.

This is the card that I made for David. He really loves to flyfish. On our drive back from the coast on my birthday, we stopped at a tiny scrapbooking shop in the seaside town of Gearhart, where I picked up my first collection of brads. That’s right. Before making this card I was a Brad Virgin. I don’t know why I waited – they’re so fun! Such a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. I purchased these little fish, the dragonfly, and the heart paperclips, chosen individually out of tiny drawers. They worked perfectly for this card. The writing on top says “Fishin’ for your love.” The little fish hooks are made of staples I bent with needle-nosed pliers. The inside reads “…and now I’m hooked on you! Happy Valentine’s Day!” embellished with two red heart eyelets.

I’m so proud of us.

Crafty Giveaway

I’ve been having fun designing and making plastic pendants lately. I love combining colors and shapes and patterns into these little (mostly) 1″x 1″ works. You can kind of see what’s been on my mind lately – birds, patchwork, snowflakes, leaves and flowers. I don’t tend to wear much jewelry myself, but I like how necklaces can provide just the right amount of polish and character every now and then. Anyway, I hope you guys like them. To celebrate recently reaching my 250th post and to thank everyone who stops by my little blog, I’m holding my first crafty giveaway!

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. That’s it! On Friday I’ll announce a winner by having David draw a name. The winner will get to chose a pendant from the selection shown above, and I’ll attach it to a leather cord for wearing. Be sure to leave a valid email address so I can contact the winner for a shipping address. Thanks for visiting and good luck!

Zhena’s Gypsy Tea

Yesterday when we were at the grocery store I asked David to pick me up another box of green tea. I stayed in the car talking on the phone to my Dad. And just look at the pretty tin he came back with. I’ve never heard of Zhena’s Gypsy Tea, but the artwork and packaging is adorable. Fair trade and organic. My honey, he knows how I’m such a sucker for pretty packaging. And the tea is good, too!

So, I did a little online research and found Zhena’s story on greenmoneyjournal.com, which I found very interesting, real, and inspiring. Read her story here.

Patchwork shoes

I’ve really been loving all things patchwork lately, which is why I couldn’t pass up a sale on these patchwork shoes. Who thought to mix asian-style embroidered satin with the plaid wool and brown leather? They’re even quiet (no tapping sounds with each step like hard soles). Now I finally have a slightly more lady-like third pair of comfortable shoes to rotate between my everyday not-so-good-looking but very serviceable brown and black Dankos.

Custom banner design

I was contacted via Etsy by the talented Sarah Gilreath back in November about doing a custom banner for her blog Sarah’s Studio. Lucky for me she is an incredibly patient person, because it took a while to complete due to the mad holiday rush. I recently sent her three versions, of which she chose this one. Then, because she liked one of the alternates as well, she decided to purchase a second along with an avatar for her Etsy shop, LadyGil Designs. Be sure to check out her adorable 2008 mini coaster calendar, too!

Free gift to you (or someone else!)

Download and print these free notecards! (see below)

Okay, I know this post was supposed to fall on Christmas Eve, but Christmas Day will have to do. I’m working on a borrowed laptop (thank you, Andrew), because the operating system and software on our old laptop was more versions back than we thought. Oops.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to all of you out there in blog land. It is snowing here in Colorado where I am visiting with my husband’s family for the holidays. My first white Christmas in a long time. It is warm and cozy in the house though, with a fire going in the wood stove. We went to Christmas mass this morning and sang many traditional songs, which was fun. Now we’re waiting for David’s brother Eric, and his wife, Liza, and son, Paolo, to arrive. Their United flight was cancelled because the crew “just didn’t show up.” Can you believe that? Luckily United placed them on a similar flight through Continental, even though they had to layover. What’s worse, when they arrived at the airport they found that their bag with all the Christmas gifts had gotten lost. Sad. But the important thing is that they arrived safetly and are on their way.

Today marks the final day of my free weekly holiday posts. Thanks to everyone who left nice comments. I am so glad to hear that each pdf was so well received. As a final gift, today’s free download-and-print pdf is for a set of 3 Little Bird Notecards. One each of “Thank You,” “Happy Birthday,” and “Hello.” These are notecards that can be used throughout the year, not just during the holidays. Also, for those of you who are scrambling to come up with a last minute stocking stuffer, these could be great! Just print out a couple sets on cardstock, trim and wrap with ribbon and you are all set!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Free Holiday Cheer Board Game

Holiday Cheer Board Game – download free pdf here

A couple of weeks ago while I was shopping at Michael’s I made several spur of the moment holiday purchases, including 2 foamy-style rubber-stamp blocks and 3 packages of epoxy stickers. I have no idea what made me pick these items up because I don’t stamp, or use stickers (much). There was just something pretty and tactile about them that made reach out and place them on the check stand. (Actually, I was just going to buy one stamp, but it didn’t have a sku tag, so the checkout girl asked if I could grab another. Then I heard myself saying “I’ll just take that one, too”). Thank goodness they didn’t cost much!

So I’ve had these foamy stamp blocks on my desk for a while now. David asked me why I bought them and I guiltily mumbled something about probably returning them, or using them for… something. Later, I found myself tossing one around and noticing how it bounced merrily before settling. Then I thought Eureka! I could design a holiday game for my nephew with it! (Okay, so I didn’t say Eureka!, but that word perfectly described how I felt. As in: Whew! If I can make something useful/fun, then I can be excused for making an impulse buy. After all, it must have been fate at work that day, right?).

This picture is misleading. These are the two stamps I bought, but only one is used for the game.

How to Play: Here was my thought process. The foamy stamp block would work like a die that you roll (there is a snowman side, a snowflake side, a kid’s face, the words “Let it Snow,” and two blank sides). Whatever lands face up is the icon that you’d move your game piece forward to on the board. Sounds pretty easy right? The only kicker is that when you roll a blank side you lose that turn and don’t get to move forward. I designed the whole game board with this idea in mind.

I should mention here that I don’t know anything about three and a half year old boys, or any kids at all for that matter (although two of my good friends are now expecting!). Paolo, our nephew, lives in Austin and we rarely see him. I could be totally wrong about skills at that age or his interest in something like this. However, the other night when I explained this game to Marcy, she said it sounded like Candyland, which I looked up and is rated for ages 3+, which is perfect.

To make a long story short, you can download my Holiday Cheer Game here. It’s pretty large, with a full size of 17 x 22″ so it has to be printed out (or tiled) in four sections if you’re printing it out on regular letter-sized paper, like I did. Then I pasted the sheets to a larger piece of thin cardstock for durability/foldability.

Playing Cards: Unless you happen to find the same stamp block at Michael’s, the best way to play is to print out a second set of pages and cut out the squares from the game board to use as cards. Instead of rolling a die, you would set the stack of “cards” face down and each player would draw a card and then move his or her game piece forward to the nearest icon indicated. You would also have to cut out some “blank” cards to use as “lose a turn.”

These are the simple plastic playing pieces I made . I would have preferred something more 3D, but they seem to work okay.

Game Pieces: I made game pieces out of Shrinky Dinks plastic (I am having such fun with that stuff!), but any small objects will do. Playing pieces from another game, a set of erasers, coins, bottle caps or anything that will fit on the squares should work.

Advanced Play: Depending on the level of the players, you can make the game harder by adding additional rules. For example, instead of two players sharing a square, maybe the original player gets kicked off his space and moved backward to the nearest same icon. Or maybe he moves all the way back to start! It’s up to you.

Have fun!

Free Holiday Gift Tags

Sorry, this post has moved. Download the gift tags here.