Art Show

The Creative Catalyst Productions winter art show closes this Friday (February 29th). The theme is Treasures and here are some examples of the cool pieces people have submitted.




The above are:
"Crows" by Rosa Vera
"Howell's Babies" by Donna Morrison
"Magnolias Blooming" by Jean Corbett
"Shop Talking" by Nancy Standlee

Check out the other wonderful entries and then join yourself. It's fun and there are some nice prizes, which is also not a bad motivation!

Well Hello There Anaheim (CHA Day 1)

It's only just past 8. I think I've been conscious for some 17 hours and it seems that at some point caffeine just stops being relevant and you need to succumb to sleep. We got to Southern California with all our bags and did some major trekking through the CHA compound attempting to find our spot in the newbies section. More doors here are locked than unlocked and it means you do a LOT of traveling. This would be awesome accept for the fact we're hauling boxes and suitcases full of merchandise.


But so far it's been a lot of fun. I think the people in the booths around us are really nice and the booth just across from us has some fun stamps that I will be eyeing for three days. Sherrill Kahn brought her husband Joel down to visit us and it was so great o meet him! We're yet to run into Claudine Hellmuth or Traci Bautista or Sherri Haab but hopefully I'll be able to track some of them down tomorrow...although I'm sure they are ALL incredibly busy with demonstrations.

The only really funny thing was how the cashier at Target seemed confused when we didn't want bags for every small thing. We were buying a plastic garbage can and I told her to just throw all our stuff in there. She looked at me like I was crazy. I wanted to put my hand on her arm and say, "I know. I'm from Oregon." That point would have been doubly clear 5 minutes later when Dad and I absolutely and completely lost our rental car in the parking lot. Ten points for wandering tourists!

Tomorrow we will probably be at our booth by 7:30 am so...To sleep!

PS- The second image down is a map of the entire layout of CHA. OK that's a lie because it excludes our section of New Members. (Glorious)

Valentine's Flowers

Ingredients:
Felt-various colors
Fabric-various colors
Netting
Heavy duty florist wire
Scissors
Needle
Thread-various colors

Recipe:
1. Cut out flowers
A. I find that just plain circles of various sizes can be really cute. If you want to get a little more fancy you can put some petals but make sure you leave enough room in the base to push in a wire. The layer on the left is how you want to cut your flower. The flower on the right won't leave any room for the wire.


B. When you have your layers cut, arrange them in stacks.

I just mixed and matched. The flower on the left has (top to bottom) brown fabric, netting and then felt. The flower on the right has felt, brown fabric and finally felt.



C. Take the bottom flower and cut a slit in it just big enough for your wire.

D. Sandwich all your layers and sew them together. (Look at the final flowers for reference)

2. Put in the Wire
A. Take a long piece of wire and carefully put through the back slit. Push it in far enough so that it almost touches the thread at the edge of the flower.

B. Bend wire back on itself twice so that you have a wire "z" pushing against the back flower.
C. Bend once more- but at a 90 degree angle- to create a stem.

Valentines Cards

I love fabric. I absolutely love the texture it gives to cards, but bobbin problems usually kill all desire to work with the medium. My answer? Fusible webbing. Here are some valentines day card ideas where the only sewing necessary is some time with a needle and thread. No machine required.

Card 1: I drew my design on with fabric chalk so I could have a line to follow. I used pink and white thread with a little netting over the heart. If you flipped the fabric over, you'd see that I'd taped down the beginning and end of my thread so that it wouldn't slip out. No fancy knots. I finished hand stitching the design and then ironed double sided fusible webbing to my material and then ironed everything to my cardstock.

Card 2. I simply cut out a rectangle of fabric and fused it to cardstock. I cut out a fabric heart and adhered it to the fabric with fabric glue.



Card 3. The flower fabric is an old curtain I bought at Goodwill. I fused it to double sided webbing and then drew and cut out the design. I then fused the individual pieces to the brown fabric before fusing the whole thing to cardstock.

Card 4. I used a bunch of tiny scraps to create flower circles, a vase and a leaf. I adhered the flowers with fabric glue and used webbing for the vase. The back side of the card has a piece of polkadot fabric on it. (Same fabric as in one of the flowers).

ChaChaCha

It's the big CHA countdown. I am making myself leave for an hour one day this week and finding appropriate footwear. At some point I let my tennis shoes go too long without a replacement and I've been paying for it since. Rule to live by: Don't mess with your feet!

Also, we get back *on* Valentine's Day...which means friends and family will be getting Valentine's Day cards probably still in June.

So worth it!