NEW TEA COZIES!!

Having the day to myself (Nigel and Isabel are diving all weekend), I decided to get my act together and make some more tea cozies.  And here they are:

I usually only make one of a kind, sometimes two, but I fell in love with this bee/crown/wreath motif and decided to do four of them! I even had enough left over to do some small tea towels to go with them!

Tea's on!

I also fell in love with this rooster so I made two cozies of him!

Nothing like waking up to a great cup of tea in the morning. Or taking an afternoon break with a cup of tea. Or.....oh well, you get the picture!!

I love the bead work on this rooster.  Just couldn't pass him up!

Well, that's it for now. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Take care and may God bless!  Jan

A Sampler Project!

Hi Everyone!

Just completed another project! This one is a sampler of sorts.  I love small detailed work, so I decided to put together a bunch of "smalls" and see what I came up with!  And here are the results!

I fastened all the little smalls on an old (but clean!) placemat I've had for ages. I LOVE it when I can use something that I've had for awhile!  The next thing is to decide if I want to hang it from a ribbon just as is, or if I want to frame it.  I'll probably go with framing because it keeps the dust off, etc., and preserves it.  

Now I have to get started on decorating the house for Halloween!!  When I was going through some of the decorations, I pulled out this little gem:

I made this little Trick or Treat bag for Isabel when she was just a little tyke; she just had her 15th birthday this week if that tells you anything!  She was dressed up as a black cat, so naturally I had to come up with an appropriate bag for her to carry! I got the idea from a magazine; can't remember which one now.  It's all done in different colors of felt; just cut out shapes stitched onto a black piece of felt in the shape of a cat's head. And the nice thing about it is that the stitches are large and should be easily seen, as opposed to tiny and hidden!  Much easier to work with!!

Every time I look at it, I'm reminded of how sweet she looked - a little, red haired black cat!!  I've thought over the years I might do more of these, in the shape of pumpkins, mummies, ghosts, and perhaps other types of animal heads, and sell them in my online shop.  Not sure if I'll ever do it, but it's fun to dream!!

Hope everyone is having a lovely day!  May God Bless!

Jan

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!! BOO!!!

Hi Everyone!

I know it's been over a year since I've posted; 19 months to be exact, but who's counting?!  But I got the urge to do "something on the blog" and I love to teach, so here I am.......getting ready for Halloween!! 

I'm having a Ladies Halloween Lunch in a couple of weeks. I already had some fantastic Halloween party invitations that I'd found in a thrift shop a couple of years ago.  Here they are below:

Fantastic deal! Yes, that price is what I paid for them - 

Eight Martha Stewart cards for .50 cents!!!  

I knew I'd use them "some day" and that day finally got here!

Unfortunately, I didn't have enough cards.  Hmmm.....what to do? I couldn't find anything already made that I was satisfied with.  What to do? What to do? I know...make my own!!

 And here they are:

Not quite as fancy, but I LOVE them! Here's how I made them:  Found myself at Michael's (how sad) and I just started looking at everything Halloween related (since they didn't have any Halloween party invitations).  I came across quite a lot of "stuff".  I thought about stickers and smaller items, but I knew I'd have to buy a lot of them to make enough to fit on blank cards, and that would be too expensive!  The people at Michael's probably thought I was crazy, because I kept going back and forth and comparing this and that, etc.  And finally I found this:  

It's a banner of cats that had battery operated lights that would make the cats' eyes glow.  It was on sale (YEA!!!), which was great because the original cost was $20.00.  To make sure the cats weren't too big for the envelopes I'd chosen, I carefully took them out of the package and compared their size.  It just fit!  (Another YEA!!)  So here's what I did:

This is what the cats looked like, joined at the head with little punch out tabs for their eyes.  So I carefully cut them apart and punched out the eyes and this is what I came up with:

Aren't they cute?

Here's what was left of the package, which I've just put aside for "another project"!

I found blank cards and envelopes that had an insert, which is where I'll put the party information on, and I'll just paste the cat in place!    Ta Da!!!

The thing to remember here is to "look outside the box" and also compare, compare, compare!  The size is extremely important because you don't want to spend too much on stickers and stuff. And the difficulty with stickers is that you need a certain "theme".  That's why I kept going back to these cats! And I also had to make sure I could separate the cats, which was easy since they were made out of paper. But these are things you need to consider on your search!

So....there you have it!  Halloween cards with character!!

Happy Halloween!!  BOO!!!!