Happy New Year

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and is having a great 2011. I'm going to start with the Christmas cards I made for family and some close friends, there were six different cards that Mike and I came up with this year. Previous years I attended a card class and made all of the cards in class but, the lady stopped having the class so I was on my own this year. Luckily I'm have enough supplies and tools to make my own cards. Mike was my critical eye, I ran all of my ideas by him, I wanted to make certain I wasn't over or under doing any of the cards. So here are the winners in no particular order.

Merry Christmas

O' Christmas Tree

Frosty the snowman

Baby its cold outside

Joy to the world

Seasons Greetings

The whole gang

If you want to know any of the supplies i used to make the cards just let me know. Hope you have a great start to your new year. The next post should be coming shortly, and will be some of the Christmas tags and gift cards holders I made this year.

The pillow case shirt

The pillow case shirt is similar to the pillow case dresses that you make for little girls. The process of how you make it is pretty much the same. Here is the shirt I made over the summer, its very light and airy and great for a Texas summer.


If you don't remember this is how the pillow case dress looks that I made for Mike's cousins


They are very simple to make and a great shirt for the summer. One thing you may want to invest in before you start making these shirts or dresses is a turning tool. Otherwise make the tie that goes through the top and connects the the shirt can be rather cumbersome. This will probably be my last post until after the holidays and then I will have lots of new crafty items to post. Hope you all have a safe and wonderful holiday season.

Better late than never

Our Halloween costumes wohoo, hopefully you are as excited to see them as we were wearing them. I know Halloween was last month but I am finally getting around to showing you how awesome Mike and I looked in our super hero duo costumes. Mike was The Flash and I was Super Women. Here we go, first up the pattern with how the costumes are suppose to look.



Here we are the super duo coming to a neighborhood near you, Mike the Flash and Super Terra

Up, Up and Away....




Other awesome costumes, Roller Derby Girl a.k.a Cassaundra Lala


The flapper and the SWAT officer a.k.a Lisa and Josh Parris



The nagging married couple, a.k.a Erin and Mike Watson


There were also some great costumes that I didn't get photos of, sorry everyone maybe next year. Hope you enjoyed our awesome costumes and are inspired to try making your own next year. If you have any questions on the costumes let me know.

Finally some new creations

I've finally got around to taking photos of some creations that I've made over the last few months, I'm sure the suspense has been nail biting so lets get to the fun stuff.

Here is my quilt, lets keep in mind this is my first quilt. In hindsight I probably should have started out with something a little simpler but I think it turned out okay thanks to the help of my mother law.

Lets not look at my hair and focus on the quilt, I'm not having the best hair day today. This is how it looks farther away, next I have some up close photos.

The last one is a photo of the back of the quilt, its quilted with a small a X pattern across the quilt, it is kind of hard to see that in these photos.

Quilt number one finished, whoop. I recommend something a little simpler for a first quilt although I am super happy with the end result. The pattern is called a stripes and corners quilt. If you have any questions or want a copy of the pattern to try yourself let me know. The next post will be the Halloween costumes I made for mike and I, and then there will be some surprises coming up. Have an awesome Tuesday and starting creating.

busy, busy, busy

I know, I know I keep saying I will make updates more frequently to my blog but, other stuff has
keeping me busy lately. I made Halloween costumes for Mike and I, I will post the finish product sometime next week, since I don't foresee me taking photos of us prior to the party we are going to on Saturday. We were in Colorado at the beginning of the month for a wedding so we made a vacation out of it, we stayed in Estes park for a couple of days before the wedding and did some hiking it was nice to be somewhere with mountains for a change. And I am already behind on making Christmas gifts I think I'm going to have to start in January next year so I don't feel so rushed. I also have birthdays and baby showers for friends coming up that I have to make/buy gifts for, so posting on the blog is falling to the bottom of the to do list. I'm hoping to start making regular posts someday:). I have no creative tales to post today since I haven't been taken many photos lately but next time I will hopefully have my first quilt and our halloween costume photos to share. Hope you all have a great halloween and stay safe.

Part two

Finally getting to part two of the fathers day album, I'm sure the suspense is killing you :). I've had a hectic week getting ready for our vacation to Colorado and with some of my friends getting laid off this week its been busy and emotional. Anyway without further adieu here is the rest of the album.



That is part two hope you enjoyed it. I will try to get a post in before we leave for Colorado on Tuesday, hope you all have a great weekend and get crafty.

Back again

Sorry for such a long delay in my posts I've been a little busy. Mom and I really enjoyed spark I will post some of the projects we made shortly. I also finished my quilt since my last post and will have some photos for you soon. Today's creative inspiration is a father's day gift that Mike and I made for his dad. Its a hybrid scrapbook, the kit I used is from house of three called the we love dad kit. I decided to post half of the photos today and the rest in my next post. So let's get started. Once you buy the kit from house of three you need to unzip it and then you can just pick the scrapbook papers you want to use on print out the pages. I decided to use a mix of scrapbook and transparency papers. The first page is a bazzil clear plastic page from scrapbook.com.

The photo that you can see if from our trip to Kenya in January, it was taken when we stopped at the equator. The brown sign says reasons we love dad its just printed on brown cardstock and distressed with Tim Holtz distress tool and inks. If you don't know who Tim Holtz is he is an amazing guy who changed the scrapbook world with his great ideas and tools. If you want to learn more about him you can check out his blog here http://www.timholtz.typepad.com/. For all you HSN shoppers yes mom I am referring to you, he sells some of his products there.


The giant numbers were part of the kit from house of three and they are printed on cardstock. Hope you enjoy the album so far, I will post the last part of it in my next post. I made a similar scrapbook for my dad for father's day this year too, but I didn't take any photos before I mailed it off, but I used another house of three kit worlds greatest. The inspiration for both of these albums came from Heidi Swapp, you can see both of her albums on her blog here http://heidiswapp.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/here-is-a-whole-lotta-schtuff.html. Hope you enjoyed the post and start getting crafty, I am off to bed soon I had an early start this morning had to be at work at 5:00am, eww.

Sunny Sunday

I can't believe that this is the last weekend in August already, summer flew by. Pattie and I finished my first quilt over the weekend, photos will be posted shortly. It turned out beautiful, I am extremely pleased. I also finished making aprons for the retreat that mom and I are going to in a week and a half, I can't wait. For today's creativity I am going to show you all the stash and dash bags that I made for my cousins Kelly and Danielle for their graduations this year.

Up first is Kelly, who graduated from Nursing School.


Congrats Kelly, Here are the stash and dash bags I made for her using the Amy Butler pattern.

The blue fabric is by Moda and the brown by Joel Dewberry.

Danielle graduated with her BA in community studies from CBU

Congrats Danielle, Here are her stash and dash bags

The green fabric is by Heather Bailey and the blue polka dots by Amy Butler. I love making this bags, they are fast and easy, and you can use left over fabric from other projects so they are also relatively inexpensive. The best part is they make great gifts, I still want to make some of these for myself. If you're feeling adventurous today or soon, this is a relatively easy project to start with and whoever you give it to will love it, you may even just want to keep them for yourself. Hope you all have a great Sunday and start getting creative.

the master artists

Hope everyone had a great weekend, it was of course way too hot and humid here in Houston but I'm sure you already knew that. I am going back in time to Mike's birthday for today's creative tale. This year I decided it would be fun to test our skills as painters, and luckily there is a place downtown called Pinot's palette that let's you do just that. The idea behind it is you bring wine and snacks and learn how to paint a famous painting. The class that was offered on May 1st was the colorful muse, this is the painting by our teacher, which is similar to how ours turned out but not exactly the same.



Now for the fun stuff, here we are in the beginning mainly outlining the face and hair of the muse


you can already see the difference between mike's and mine. Mike's is the one with the hand in the photo. Now we have a little more of the painting complete and its time for some more wine and a break.



Unfortunately this is the last photo I have until the finished product so you'll just have to use your imaginations on how the rest of the painting process went. Without further adieu here are the finished products.

Not too shabby if I do say so myself, you know you'd buy them :). Yes my eyes are closed in the photo do you expect anything less from me, you'd think I spent most of my life with my eyes closed judging by my photos. If you're curious how the rest of the class turned out, because I know that's what you were thinking here you go. The other thing that might be on your mind is man those are some dirty aprons, we did not add all that paint to them ourselves the majority was already on them when they were given to us. We weren't quite that messy.



Here's the link to all the photos taken by the teachers http://picasaweb.google.com/pinotspalette.montrose/ColorfulMuse05#

For the finale of this post we hung our masterpieces side by side on our bedroom wall, so here they are adorning our home.


Hopefully you enjoyed following me on my journey to become a master painter, it was a lot of fun but I think I will stick with sewing and scrapbooking for now. Until the next creative tale, let your creativity take over and see where you end up, maybe you'll also be painting a masterpiece.

great weekend

Mike and I had a great weekend with his parents and brother. I am almost finished with my first quilt thanks to the help of Pattie (my mother-in-law), I have the front and the back finished now I just have to add batting, quilt them together and bind it. I'll be sure to post photos of the finish product I can't wait to finish. In the meantime I'll post one of my other fun projects, since we are not on the topic of shirts that I made I'll continue with another awesome shirt.



I am still learning how to properly do this self photography in the mirror thing so bare with me. This shirt pattern is the Amy Butler liverpool and the fabric is heather bailey peonies that's right I'm branching out, wohoo!! What until you see my quilt then you will know how much I am really branching out, their is not a shred of Amy Butler anywhere in my quilt, that's right not one piece of fabric or pattern by her. I was impressed when I realized this fact, go me. I hope you are having a great week and are being creative.