I made a little booklet today…

Hi there,

One of my granddaughters is having a birthday rather soon - - she will be one year old. Her little cousin is almost three and they both live in the frozen north (Fort McMurray, Alberta). Since I’m making some peek a boo dolls, I decided to make a couple for the one year old for her birthday, but didn’t want to leave the three year old with nothing (since they’re often at my sons place together.)

(Peek a boo dolls. Some are available in my Etsy shop, carmensplace.)

So - - - 

I made a little book. 

This was made with one piece of 12 x 12 cardstock, and filled with various papers. I included a bunch of stickers I just bought online, and a few other things. 

That’s the front- kind of plain but it’s for a three year old so best not to 

put a bunch of stuff on there she could potentially choke on. 

The stickers went into a ziploc bag and into the front pocket. 

The digital image behind the paper can be traced onto the tracing paper. 

Then she can color the actual image if she wants to. 

So these two pages flip out. I used washi tape to do this. 

This is the same idea as the tracing paper, except now it’s texture I’m featuring. 

She can take a crayon and color over it to get the grid to show through. 

I didn’t photograph them all, but there are various stickers throughout the journal,

And I’ve included some other papers as well. Plus she can stick her other stickers into the booklet. 

This is the back pocket where I’ve just added a tag and some colored pages. 

It’s really just a little thing, but hopefully she likes it. It’s just so she gets something in the parcel too. 

I usually add a little snack too. 

I completely forgot to take a photo of the spine, but I got the idea from this YouTube video by Treasure Books. These are mostly journals for adults, but I downsized it for little hands. 

Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for the visit!

Blessings,

Carmen

“The blessing of the Lord enriches, and He adds no sorrow with it” Proverbs 10:22

Quick Cards and September Musings

Whenever I need some quick cards, AI art is my go to. It’s so quick and easy! But don’t worry, I still like to make up my own. 

This one I embellished with a few metal pieces out of my stash. See if you can find them.

As I mentioned before, August was a busy month, but we never did get a baby. He showed up 12 days later on September 5th. He’s a cute little guy and looks just like my son. My poor DIL went through the mill, but both mom and baby are fine. 

I made this card as well, but didn’t like it for the person I made it for, so it’s in my stash for now, it’s shinier than it looks…both of these are. 

Today I went to Fabricland to look for some backing fabric for my 50’s quilt and some binding fabric for a Sofa Station I want to make. I came out of there with both. I was very happy with my incredible deals. So now I can complete the quilt and start on the sofa station, since I’m doing so much hand sewing lately. 

The last set of cards. Not a great picture. I took it after the cards were put in to the plastic sleeves because I was in a hurry that day. I’m also showing you the inside of these. The nice thing about the AI images is that you can adjust the size. 

I have made a couple of other peek a boo dolls. I’m thinking of opening up my Etsy shop again to sell some felt projects. First I have to make them though. I have more blended wool felt on order. So I’ll be busy the next while and won’t be posting as much. 

Well, that’s it for today. I hope you’re having a good weekend. 

Blessings,

Carmen

Little Projects for Kids

Hello friends,

September is here and I’m starting to feel like sewing again. I know I’ve been quilting all year in the midst of card making, but I love me some small projects. Especially cute little things for kids. I love making these super cute felt dolls.

What I find so adorable about these little dolls is the removeable hats. 

Absolutely darling!

You can find these at Gingermelon on Etsy.

Another project I made was this little tiger pouch. 

This is another project I love too. I’ve made this one before, then altered it to make 

a unicorn pouch and a lamb pouch. I haven’t made the lamb pouch yet. Maybe soon. 

This one is from Stubbornly Crafty on Etsy. 

Next on my list is a Smart Sofa Station. It is made to drape over the arm of a couch. Everything you may need is handy, depending on what craft you’re doing. They have needle covers, pouches for patterns, scissors, thread or anything else you may want to keep with you. If you’re a crocheter, they can be made to hold crochet hooks. There’s also a magnetic pin holder and a little thread basket, if you want one. It’s an extremely versatile pattern from ArabesqueScissors on Etsy. 

But, you never know what I’ll do next. I’m eyeing up a few ideas. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week! 

Blessings,

Carmen

Birthday Celebrations with Mugs and Gemstones!

Good morning,

August was a busy time for us, and one event we celebrated was my husbands 65th birthday! Two of our boys are in town, so we all went out for dinner with them and their families. We had such a wonderful time. 

Two of our younger grandkids made us each a mug. I just love these - I’m pretty sure they make our coffee taste even better! 

I also made a birthday card for my husband. He’s a gemstone faceter now - a hobby he picked up before retirement, but that he’s perfected over the last three years. I’ll share some of his stones with you too. In addition, he’s become interested in old pocket watches. When his uncle was still alive, he gave him all his watch making tools. That was my reason for this particular card. 

To be fair, he looks much younger than this bearded fellow, but that’s the image I had. 

These are some stones he’s faceted. He goes by bcstonecutter on Instagram if you’d like to look at some of his other work. 

This owl design is named “Notolla” by Marco Voltolini

The stone is Titanium Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

The cut is a “Round Honeycomb” design by Michiko Huynh

The stone is a Lab Czochralski Pulled Pink Sapphire.

Faceted by Graham Gamble

Design is “Heart and Soul” by Michael Edgett

Titanium Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

Design is “Radiant Eye of Zul” by Arya Ahkavan

Bicolor teal and purple Flame Fusion Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

A modified rendering of “Spellbound”

Lab Flame Fusion green Sapphire

Faceted by Graham Gamble

He cuts both man-made and real gems. If you’re interested, please check out his Instagram listed above.

I was going to share same smaller cards I made recently, but I’ll leave those for another post. 

Thanks for visiting,

Carmen

Birdy Anniversary, AI

Good morning,

Just a couple of quick shares. You are probably aware that I’ve been using AI images for my notecards. They’re so quick and easy that I feel like I’m cheating a little bit. They’re great for quick cards and the images are so nice. I can’t help myself. 

So these first two are similar. I have just sent the first one off as an anniversary card. I love the saying because it’s fairly versatile and will work for different types of cards.

This last one is a nice masculine card for almost any reason. Just because, graduation, birthdays, Father’s Day…

I think the biggest struggle with the AI images is that most of them are square, but cards are usually rectangular. I kind of struggled with this card because of that, but it’s ok.

So that’s it for today. When I print these off I use standard paper on high quality, but I put cardstock in the printer. That seems to work best for me. If I use glossy or photo paper, the print doesn’t show up as well. Idk if that’s just my printer, but that’s what I have to do to get a good quality printout. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Carmen

Tweet as Honey Completed

Good day!

I mentioned in one of my last posts that my youngest son got married recently. We decided that in addition to money, we would gift them one of the quilts I was working on. It was near completion and took a year. Mostly because the patterns came out one per month. I had made most of the blocks but had to put the backing on and free motion quilt it. They’re applique quilts and I’ve realized I love applique, so these were fun to do. 

I’ve already shared a few of the blocks on this blog,  so I’ll just link them here. 

Tweet as Honey

Tweet as Honey 2

Tweet as Honey 3

I never did post the last set and side panels, but you’ll see them all here.

This is them laid out on the floor before stitching them together, and before the binding, backing and quilting. 

These were the side panels. All I had done here was cut them out and pressed them onto the panels. Yes, there are three irons in that picture. Yes, I need them all! 😉😉

Here’s my super adorable little iron close up. Isn’t it cute? It’s great for small pieces. I intend on trying some collage work soon so this will really come in handy. 

In addition to applique, this quilt also had quite a bit of embroidery work. I love doing embroidery and took up Brazilian embroidery some years ago which certainly gave me an advantage. I’ve included a few samples below. 

Finally,  here is the finished quilt with the backing, binding, and free motion quilting. You may have to zoom in for the quilting. 

To finish it off I added some information on the back of the quilt. It actually can be machine washed, but since it’s raw-edge applique, I thought hand washing would be better. 

Thanks for stopping by,

Blessings, 

Carmen

Wedding Tags, Favors and Bridal Dolls

Good day! 

It’s been a busy month with a celebration of life, an upcoming wedding, a 65th birthday and a new baby due, with a few other birthdays sprinkled in here and there. 

I was asked to make the tags up for the wedding favors for my youngest son’s wedding. Their theme is flowers, so I used a flower printable. They asked me to make them like some of my cards. Something like this card.

The tags were too small to add brads or gemstones, but the front is raised onto cardstock, and that was the main thing, I think. 

The white cardstock tags were cut on a silhouette by a friend. I did the flowered main piece with the writing on it in Inkscape, but you could easily use Word. I had irridescent cardstock for a backing on the flowered main piece. I taped these with dbl sided tape then put foam tape on the backside as shown. These were then centered on the blank tags. 

I was requested to put the ingredients of the cookies on the back of the tag. I typed these up in Inkscape and ran them off on sticker paper. This was the easiest way to do it. 

I wanted to cover the tag hole so I punched out some hearts to cover it using the irridescent cardstock. 

At first I attached the hearts with the embellishment tape, but realized it was making them too thick, so I used dbl sided tape instead. Prior to placing the hearts, I ran some cord through the hole so I could slip the twist ties through the cord (you’ll notice two knots about a 1/2” apart).

I made the bows with the instructions from a YouTube video using just your fingers. It was actually fairly quick. Unfortunately the bows did not want to stick. I used embellishment tape, and they’re sticking but they’re a bit fragile and can come off. I’m hoping they’ll stick well enough.  

I was going to use three colors of ribbon, but my third color never came, so we stuck with two colors and luckily I had enough ribbon in the two colors.

I had a hard time finding gussetted bags with a square bottom, but eventually I did find some in the right size. They’ll stand up on their own and that’s perfect! So here is a photo of the completed favors.

These cookies are gluten and dairy free and they’re truly delicious! The mother of the bride (Pam) baked up 460 of these right before the wedding. Then bagged them all into 2” gusseted bags. A true feat! They turned out super cute! 

In addition, Pam, who is a fairly new crocheter, also did up these adorable bridal dolls that look exactly like the bride and groom. Aren’t they incredible? I’m thoroughly impressed and they looked so good. Here’s a couple of pictures ~~

With a close up….

Thanks for popping by! I hope your weekend was as amazing as ours was!!

Carmen