Art, Craft and Needlework, August, 2013

[Harriet]

Cupcakes.JPG

Here are some cupcake photos. Each one was baked in a white paper and then, for the table, placed in separate decorative paper (blue ticking stripe) to look festive. I think you can see the two papers in the photo. Each cupcake has two blossoms, and more blossoms were strewn around. The blue flower garland looked better in person... ... hmmm... ...
So tempting to include the photo of baby niece (now 4) looking at the cupcake stand, so happy to choose one. But I guess I won't put it in the public part of our site.
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CupcakesStand.JPG

[Ivy]

Harriet, Everything looks so beautiful! You do wonderful meticulous work. Even the table bow was so nice. I loved seeing the cupcakes all tiered, too. It really set them off. I bet they were/are delicious, too. Thanks for sharing!

I worked on my scrapbook, but only glued one see-through page down, onto the scrapbook page. It kept curling on the edges, so I added more glue, put heavy things on it, so it'll dry flat. The color is pastel green and I found 2 different shades of green punch-out papers for flowers and things, to add to the page. I found my paper doilies, too, and more photos. I may run out of room for this scrapbook, as it's a kit of 2, 1 medium, 1 small, from Costco. If the photo-story works out, I may save late teenage years, meeting DH and our bridal photos for the smaller of the scrapbooks. Once I'm done with all of my childhood photos, I have no "clue" where to go from here. I was thinking about making DH a childhood/life scrapbook from his photos, then with us and our children together, to sort of tell our story. It would take a lot of time, I'd need to work in secret, so he wouldn't catch on to his surprise, too. I'll mull it over, as I have 3 toddler Christmas afghans to do, too.

[Norma]

They are just gorgeous! It made me so hungry for cupcakes, but I can't do that because my weight is going down, down, down. This morning the scale showed I had lost 25.5 lbs. since we returned home in April. I can't turn back now!

[Lilac]

Harriet and dd, everything looked wonderful. Great ideas that I hope I can remember.

[Nancy]

Lovely!

[Ivy]

I found a quilt here, folded underneath some fleece throws, which we use on a floor pillow and we call it "the throne" for a kitty cat. The quilt is nice, I'll wash it up and I'm considering making yo-yo flowers for a couple of corners on it. I have oodles of scraps. It's merely taking time to pick the right colors and start in.

[Ivy]

I couldn't crochet today because a cut I've been having vertical out of the top middle thumb nail part, on my skin, was almost healed up last night. Then, this a.m., while washing my face and getting underwear on, the dickens all broke out! It started bleeding, hurt, and I put Neosporin on it with a latex-free band-aid and a thumb protector. I tried to crochet, but the hook gets caught under the thumb protector and the thread, as I hold it in my left hand and hook on the right hand is awkward.

So no crochet or scrapbooking for me today.

[Nancy]

Finished the walking stick yea!

[Ivy]

WTG, Nancy!

I just wanted to tell you that I was at Ravelry and found some awfully cute crocheted pin cushion patterns. They'd make unique gifts for a b-day or the holidays. I printed up one, which has British Terms, but on the last page, they list American Terms and which British Terms they'd be if you were crocheting in British. Does that make sense? Better put, it has both English and American Terms.

[Harriet]

Here's a craft I come upon and want to document, though I may not get to it for a while.

This is the BEST how-to article I've ever seen on making pressed-flower bookmarks. When you click on a photo, it enlarges and has all the other photos beneath it so that you can look through them easily, enlarged. Notice she suggests that other tiny items like confetti could be added. Why not tiny copies of photographs, maybe just 1/2-inch, to really personalize? They would be as thin and flat as the sheet of paper they were copied onto. Someone's grandchild, puppy, church, etc., framed with some petals - it really gets me thinking. What about some exterior view of a school or school sign for a teacher gift? With some of the petals coming from plants around the school... ....like the crepe myrtles right now in our area. Okay, you can see I need to just get this posted and stop brain-storming!

I would have no problem with the cutting apart. It's the laminating that I might go to the office supply store for, as she suggests. If they could do a better job, and do 6 at a time, it might be worth it.

Here's the link:

"Pressed flower art bookmarks" How-To

And here's a good overview of flower pressing.

Pressing Flowers