Where I've Been!

Alright, it's been TWO MONTHS!! since I've posted anything at all.  Usually a break like this means 2 things for a blogger:

1) You're taking time off to write a book

OR

2) You're having a baby (like the lovely Kimberly at Bugaboo, Mini, Mr. & Me!)

Well, I'm doing neither! HA!

In the last few months I become a single entity again (sometimes things just don't quite work out), AND the really big news......

I BOUGHT A CONDO!!

Yup! a place of my very own!  And now for the fun part! Over the next while you all get to join me on my journey and adventure as I transform and create my own space!

I have a lot of fun projects in the works and I'm really excited to get back to here and share them with you!  I have a few other things up my sleeve, but I'll wait to announce those when I know they're going to happen! :)

For now, I leave you with a pic of my place on my possession date - my shiny new kitchen to create lots of yummy things in!  It doesn't look quite this clean anymore! :P

Also coming up soon - I'm joining in Kimberly's "Gift It Good!" series!! I'll be sure to update you on that too!

Sharpie Mugs

For Christmas I wanted to give the two girls in the accounting/admin department a little something because I really like them, and the three of us are the only females in the office.  I decided to make them custom monogram mugs filled with loose tea from Bulk Barn (quite possibly my favorite place on the planet!)

Now I know there are a lot of tutorials for this all over the internet.  I used this one: http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/06/his-her-sharpie-mug-diy.html 

I decided to do each of their first initials.  I decided to make Gwen's Irish-esque and Monique's French-ish.

Here was my first attempt at Gwen's:

I really didn't like how it was turning out, so here's a trick you might not have known: rubbing alcohol takes permanent marker off of hard surfaces!

Here I just put some on a cotton ball and wiped off the whole design and started over again!

Same thing happened with Monique's mug! lol  Another tip is that you can put rubbing alcohol on a q-tip and use it to clean up parts of your design!

Finished:

 

     

Yarntastic February (held over) Baby Blanket!

Alright, so I did do a lot of yarn-y things in February, I just didn't get them done quite early enough to blog about them.  Life has been crazy, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of it slowing down.  This month I teach 14 Zumba classes (including a Zumbathon that I'm planning), 3 muscle sculpt classes, I get to go to Vancouver for my birthday for 5 days to see my sister! AND I cheerleading provincials takes over my life for one weekend (I'm on the provincial board's executive committee).  So that's my excuse for being a terrible blogger!

So here we go with projects!

I made another cro-hooked baby blanket for another co-worker.  (check out the first ones I made here)

I'm not sure how I feel about the colors.  I don't LOVE it, but it's nice enough.

What do you think?  Would you want this for your little baby boy?

Pinterest Project#3 - Photo Board

Here's another Pinterest project!

This one is by Jamielyn from I {heart} Nap Time and shown off at Infarrantly Creative.

I made 2 of these, one for each of my grandparents for Christmas.  

Again because this is a Stashbusting project, I used acrylics I had on hand.

I painted the boards as well as the clothes pins, cut out vinyl with my Silhouette, and glued on the clothes pins with Gorilla Glue.

Voila!

For my grandma

For my grandpa

I put the same picture hangers on these that I did on my other letter sign.






Again, another almost free project - I had to buy the clothes pins ($1 for a bunch) and the picture hangers, the boards, paint, and vinyl were all on hand!

More funny vinyl "families"

This one was a present for my boss's 30th birthday.  He's the one who I made this for (for his girlfriend for Christmas)

The tall guy on the left is meant to be my boss, I'm the girl, and the guy next to me is a co-worker who works closely with us, but is technically supervised by someone else.  

Now before you go thinking my boss is a big jerk, let me explain.  I'm an electrical engineer, and so a large part of my job is creating drawings for my designs in AutoCad (I'm sounding really cool now, huh?)  As part of the drawing control procedure, someone else has to officially check the drawing (my boss).  Last summer, my boss was out of the office, and I was going through my drawings that he'd checked and on one of them I missed something really obvious and written on the page in big red letters was "DO BETTER!"  I BURST OUT LAUGHING.  I also realized that that's kinda my boss's catch phrase.  So "Do better" has kinda become a joke around the office.  

One of the best things about this - it cost me nothing.


I figure this probably isn't going to be the last twisted vinyl family I make.  And yes, I would take orders.  

     http://www.creatingreallyawesomefreethings.com/

Pinterest Project #2: Word Canvas

This Christmas I was trying to make some Stashbusting Christmas gifts and combining that with my desire to make some of the things that I've pinned (Things to make some day)

I've seen signs like this all over, and I really like them.

(source)

This one costs about $550 USD! Are you kidding?!

I wanted to make this with just stuff that I had on hand, which didn't include small wooden letters.  

So instead I used chipboard glitter letters I had on hand as a stencil & plain chipboard. 

I cut them out with scissors

I then glued them onto scrap wood that I had.  I used Gorilla Glue because I didn't want them going anywhere, but the glue expanded (as it tends to do) and that was a problem.

So I took my craft knife and carefully trimmed the glue off.  It worked really well.

Much better!

Then I took some cream acrylic paint I already had and painted the whole thing.  This would have been much easier and quicker with spray paint, but I didn't want to have to buy anything.

Second coat:

I felt like the letters didn't stick out quite enough because they're just chipboard, so I decided to dry brush some brown around the letters.

But it looks a bit too dark, so I painted some cream overtop to soften it a bit

Look at the difference between "rest" and "relax"

When it was all done like that...



I didn't like it.  lol


So I painted all over the brown, and returned it to it's original cream.

I put picture hangers on the back that I picked up at the dollar store.



  Unfortunately, even the shortest nails were still too long, so I accidently put one through the board. Whoops!





I fixed it by using a couple pieces of balsa wood that I had lying around to make some space behind the hangers.





Much better!



Total spent on this sign:
$1 (for the hangers)
Wood, chipboard, paint and gorilla glue was all on hand.  




I know it wouldn't have cost much more to go buy wooden letters, but I was really challenging myself to use what I have!


    

Silhouette Vinyl Family

This was a special project I was commissioned to make by my boss for his girlfriend for Christmas.

(in the end it was in a black frame, but I liked the red better, and it's my blog, so that's what I'm posting!)

Most of us at work think these families on cars are pretty ridiculous, so the original idea was just the thought bubble on the right.  But then my boss decided that if he went with that, he might be single.  :P  So then the idea was to do all 3 scenarios, but we ran into "logistical" problems when trying to figure out how to frame it.  I did have some 12x12 scrapbook frames kicking around, so I suggested the thought bubbles, which he really liked, and voila!  


His girlfriend loved it...word has it she cried!