Happy Fat Tuesday

Pin It Now!

Hello fellow crafters and crafistas!

You may not know this about me, but I am one of 50 some vendors at House of Vintage on Hawthorne in good ole' Portland, Oregon.  I have been there for nearly a year and I love it.  I have a great love for going to estate sales and flea markets and whatnot because there is just so much interesting stuff that has accumulated on this beautiful planet.  It's really unbelievable.  The most unbelievable thing to me is that we are still making more and people are still buying new items.  Oh, well.  At any rate I just love digging through it all.

This Saturday I came upon an interesting couple of items of which I am sure some of you are familiar with:  the infamous 1970s era crocheted beer can hat.  Now, I find this to be such an interesting craft project because of the juxtaposition of tasks and items.  I am sure that for the most part in the 1970s it was the women who were doing the crocheting, however, I am not sure if they were in large part drinking the canned beers.  Perhaps they were and this craft was just a sign that the times were a changing.  Who knows, maybe women were buying 12 packs of some cheap beer and getting together and crocheting whilst drinking it.  I am sure that would have been a sight to see.

I thought this would be the perfect item for the upcoming Mardi Gras festivities even though I am not sure that Portland is a huge Mardi Gras town.  I am sure these hats will appeal to somebody.  I know that I love them enough that I wanted to document the find and share it withe the world :)

Enjoy ~

P.S. - If you want to check out my store in House of Vintage, my store name is Fascinate Me and my number is 14.

Get Ready for Valentine's Day

Pin It Now! So I espied this flyer on Portland State University's bulletin board one morning and I couldn't resist taking a photo and then sharing it with the craft world.  If you happen to be a PSU student, you should stop by and check the valentine card making out.  I bet it's pretty fun.  Anyway, here you go:

Annaboo's house: Cashmere upcycled or An apology to the Mister

Pin It Now! These are really sweet reclaimed sweater spats or leg warmers. Check it out:
Annaboo's house: Cashmere upcycled or An apology to the Mister

2012 New Year Collages

Pin It Now! Happy New Year!
I'm not one to do a New Year's resolution, but my friend just recently told me about New Year's collages and I thought it sounded like fun.  I invited a few awesome ladies over and we made our own.

I'm the only one that made a traditional New Year collage.  A couple of the ladies decorated journals for the new year and my friend Meghan's collage is representing that 2012 is her year to fully celebrate Portland.  

Portland, City of Roses

And rain.

Cory added some images to her journal to make it more personal.

I made a 2012 collage with all my hopes and dreams for the new year.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and craftastic 2012!!!

DIY Area Rug (on the cheap)

Pin It Now!

Hello.
Here is a super easy project that anyone can do that is pretty amazing if you find yourself needing an area rug, instead of spending $50 to $100 or perhaps more.  Head down to SCRAP (if you live in Portland) and dig through their rug samples to create your own rug.  The samples vary from day to day and you may not always find enough rug samples that are the same size, which is key, but if you are patient and keep checking, I guarantee everything will work out for you one fateful day. 

You first need to pick out however many squares of rug samples you will need.  For this particular project I needed six.  I actually could have done it with four, but six looks nice to me.  I made one of these rugs a few years ago and I still use it to this day in my living room.  For that particular rug I used 12 samples because the samples were smaller.

Now that you have your samples, take them home and lay them out how you want them.  You will then flip them over to the backside and duct tape them together like so:

After you tape them together, you will want to make a giant X through the whole backside with the tape to stabilize the pieces when you flip it over to the right side.  I actually didn't do that on this one because there were only six pieces and these rugs have a rubber backing so they are not going to slide around.

You then flip your rug over.  You may need some help if it's a big rug because you don't want the pieces to come undone.  And just like that you are finished:

Finished product in the light of day.

Now you can enjoy your one-of-a-kind rug that you created and it didn't cost you an arm and a leg.  This particular rug cost around $12, pretty sweet.

Happy New Year!!!

Candle Jars

Pin It Now!

Okay.  So a few posts ago I put up the link to Stitch Therapy's candle jars.  I tried my hand at a couple and are giving them out as gifts for X-mas this year.
I really love projects that use old lace and I think I am going to try making some more textile oriented projects.

Crafty Ornament Making

Pin It Now!

So I got the idea for this ornament from Crafty Chica, who posted a video about a week ago.  Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfiX93bTmxY

I had a couple ladies over yesterday to make these fine ornaments.  I did SCRAPify them a bit, however.  We used reused images, cardboard tubes or mason jar sealing rings and reclaimed tinsel from Goodwill.
Here are the outcomes:

Mine are made with vintage card images and lots of jewels!

Donna made hers with things she had just received from her Grandmother who passed away.  She is going to give them to her mother.  What a great way to share a memory.

Jane ended up making shrinky dink ornaments for the kids that she is a nanny to.  Here are here delightful outcomes:

Adorable.

 Here are a few action shots and closeups.

Jane being silly.

Jane hard at work.

Donna's first ornament.

Donna's awesome ornament!