3D snowflakes

I designed these today for the Silhouette online store, and am way excited about them. I want to make tons of them to hang in my front room all through the holidays. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Bag Tutorial Roundup

I have been bookmarking tons of different bag tutorials as I run across them on the web for weeks now. I thought I would share some of my favorites!



1. The One Hour Bag from Skip To My Lou
2. Little Boxy Pouch Tutorial by three bears
3. Free Diaper Bag Tutorial by makebabystuff.com
4. the basic messenger bag by mmmcrafts
5. For Pleat's Sake tote by U-hangblog
6. Pleated Pouch by Skip To My Lou

This is me embracing AZ

I set aside a Saturday a few weeks ago and put up two dozen jars of prickly pear jelly. Why do they call it "putting it up," by the way?

I used this recipe from homegrown evolution.

I do have a few different pointers about how to harvest your prickly pear fruit. I called up a friend of mine who has been canning prickly pear jelly for over 30 years. Here are a few of her pointers: don't bother burning off the spines. just harvest your fruit (with big metal tongs, like the bbq grilling tool ones), rinse it off, and then stick it in the freezer overnight. Pull it out, let it thaw, and then mash it with a potato masher. Strain the pulp twice, once with an old (but clean of course) pillow case, and the second time with a strainer and cheese cloth. Then your juice is ready! Also, it can be used for more than jelly. You can also make syrup, use it with lemonade as a drink, or marinate meat with it.

I'm so glad I called her! Not only did her pointers help out a ton, but she also had a great anecdote about not washing the pillowcase with your underwear after you are done using the case to strain out the pulp and pricklies... I will let you imagine the rest... :)

Hey Interweb Friends!

If you hop on over to Freckled Nest right now, Leigh-Ann is doing a big giveaway that includes one of my airplane mobiles and a lot of other awesome handmade items.



Just thought I would give you a heads up ;)

Kitchen Watercolors and free download

Last week I got together with a group of my friends and we had a "craft day" which was a blast! I decided that I had to craft something just for me and not to be sold in my shop! I feel like I craft a lot, but my home doesn't usually reap the benefits (though sometimes I do decorate my own home with things and then just take them down if and when it sales. Is that weird?).

I decided to make these silhouetted images of food and kitchen items to hang in a row in my kitchen. The way I made them was, I cut watercolor paper into 5x7 pieces. Then, I cut out all of the images I wanted out of regular white cardstock, in the middle of a 5x7 rectangle. I took each image and lightly spray glued it to the water color paper, and used the cardstock as a kind of mask. The watercolor did blled into the cardstock in a few places, but mostly i was just careful not to not paint up to the VERY edge.

After it had dried for a few minutes, I peeled off the cardstock mask and voila! nice silhouetted images!

I am offering the whisk as a free download!



Click here to download a zipped file with a .svg file and .gsd cutting file of the whisk image.

3D Bat!

So. This will be in the Silhouette online store later this week (hopefully later today!) Here are the instructions of how to put it together!

Here are all the pieces. There are two different little shapes (bottom right corner) and you will end up using one or the other. The rounded one is for if you are hanging it with string or fishing line, and the rectangle one is if you are hanging it with a ribbon.



1. Connect the wing shapes.


2. Slide the body shape over the intersection of the wings.


3. Take the little circle with the legs and fold the legs so that they point down.


4. Take the leg circle and slide it over the bottom part of the bat's body. You will need to bend the bat's body, as shown.


5. spread out the wings and body pieces as shown.


6. Take the hanging piece, fold along the perforation, and put a dot of glue on the side without the hole cut into it.


7. Slide the hanging piece onto the back of the bat, so that it glues onto the underside of one of the wings.


8. Attach ribbon and hang!

Monarch Butterfly Mobile

I have made a played with a few different versions of butterflies over the last few weeks. Last night I finally decided on one that I like for my shop. Look for it later today!