Fun with my Silhouette- Back to Craftiness!

Wow, it's been a long time since I have posted here.  Things have been a little bit busy since Christmas, especially with the Disney Princess Half-marathon (Read more here!), but now that things are starting to calm down, I've been able to get back into my craftiness.  To say I've missed crafting would be an understatement - I'm just happier when I have time to craft.

Well with Easter this past weekend, I was tasked with coloring the family eggs.  Now this is a perfect opportunity to get crafty, I mean you can go pretty basic with eggs or you can get involved!  I had an idea to use my Silhouette digital die-cutter to make stickers to use as a dye-resist, kind of like what you do with a white crayon.  I figured this would ensure a pretty crisp image and I was right.  The hardest part? Deciding what designs to use and how big to cut them (just for reference a large grade egg has about a 5.5 inch circumference at it's widest).  I cut more designs than I needed, just in case something didn't work too well.

I used Wilton icing dyes (it was all I has on hand) and they worked extremely well and dyed the eggs quickly.  I hate when you have to leave eggs in the dye for what feels like forever to just get a slight hue.  Here are just a few of the eggs I made that came out just as I imagined.

And here's a close-up of my Brody egg.  I have a 6 month old mutt puppy and this design looked so much like him that I couldn't help myself but make a egg for him.


After the eggs were such a hit, I was on a roll with my Silhouette and decided to finish a project that's been in the works for the better part of 3-4 months.  I bought 4 canvases a while ago with the intent of making some art to hang above our fireplace.  Several designs later, this is what I finally decided on...

  
I painted the canvases navy blue and then used a few different designs from the Silhouette studio to cut these branches, leaves, and the bird from white vinyl.   Why vinyl for the design rather than painting it?  Well, painting takes forever and I'm too much of a perfectionist, plus if I get tired of the design I can simply peel it off and make something new.  I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.  Now I just need to finish the rest of the decor for the house!

Post-crafting Hiatus- I made pants!

So, I've pretty much been MIA for the last 3 months it seems.  While I've still been crafting, I haven't done nearly as much as I would have liked.  So, what have I been doing instead?  Well, we have a new furry addition in our home!

Meet Brody!  He was six weeks old when we got him in November, still quite the baby. His mom was a corgi/lab mix and they assumed his dad was a dachshund and chihuahua mix, so that makes him a Corgidor Chiweenie if you want to paste a designer tag on him.  We have absolutely no idea how big he will get, we're hoping in the 20-30 lb range and no more.  He's currently 13 weeks old and 10 lbs of seemingly never-ending energy. 

Now that he's pretty settled and the holidays are over, life is starting to calm down at the townhouse.  Thank goodness!  I'm excited to finally get back to crafting, as my to-do list is miles long and growing every day!  One project I did manage to knock off my list, mostly because it was time-bound, was my Christmas pj pants. As I mentioned before, I have this self-imposed tradition of having a brand new pair of pj pants to wear Christmas Eve into the morning and while opening gifts.  Well, I typically buy a pair every year, but for some insane reason I thought, oh gee, making them can't be that hard.  Again, this was a pre-puppy idea.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, yeah I kid you not here, I sat down and got to work.  I had no backup plan, so if I failed, I would be forever ending my tradition, so I soldiered on determined to make the pants work.  Well, either my brain was fried, or the pattern was poorly written, because I seam-ripped the pants not once, not twice, but three times until I got the construction done appropriately.  This was supposed to be a simple pattern using 4 pieces of fabric....

Finally, once the pants looked like, well, pants, I went ahead and tried them on to fit the elastic in the waist.  Oh my goodness, who designed this pattern?  The legs in the size small pants were like tree trunks.  Apparently this was a unisex pattern, despite the fact that all of the models on the packaging are female.  So, I went ahead and used an old pair of pj pants to mark off a more feminine shape and back to the sewing machine I went.

And, to add insult to injury, I decide to go beyond the pattern and add trim and cuffs to the legs, yeah won't be doing that again anytime soon!

All in all, I'm glad they are done and I really see why a $10 pair at the store are worth it. I will say that I still love the fabric, which was pretty much the reason I decided to torture myself with making them.

Anyway, drum roll please... here's the finish product.