Craftyminx

Hoping for a new niece

Sheldon's (and my soon to be) sister-in-law is 8 months pregnant and I've been holding off making her anything because they are waiting to be surprised with the sex of the baby. But I just had to make these...

I've been stitching bibs and onesies like crazy for the stores I sell at and knew these two leftover bibs needed to be stitched with these Kitschy Digitals super cute Kawaii fruit patterns. So now I'm hoping that her baby is a girl so it can wear these bibs.

I mean look at the cuteness of these cherries

And these are definitely not sour lemons.

If she doesn't have a girl, there might be a giveaway in the future.

A little sewing project

I've been needing a camera case for my new little point and shoot camera and knew this Keyka Lou pattern would be perfect! So last weekend I took a couple of hours and put it together. 

I knew I was saving this vintage bark cloth for a good reason. And I have enough left over to make a purse at some point. Perhaps something like this?

Wedding Wednesday - updates

Sheldon gets sad when I don't have a new Wedding Wednesday post so this is dedicated to him. :)

I have a few fun updates.

I fixed the dress from the last post and I think this is going to be perfect for our bridesmaids dresses. It will be easy to fit to both of the different body types.

Frames are a new Kitschy Digitals vintage frame kit!

I ordered fabric this weekend! Two shades of Amy Butler's Fresh Poppies print, Ivory and Green.

Pink for my side, teal for Sheldon's. I'm so excited to make these dresses!

I also ordered the fabric for my dress!  I ordered an ivory shantung/dupioni silk from mood fabrics.  It is going to be very lovely. I have to wait two weeks though, because they are out and had to order more.

Thanks to Danielle, I also mastered the art of making printed paper look like it has been embroidered so I can continue with our invitations. I really wanted to add the same embroidered effect that the save the date cards had. Now I'm thinking that I could have improved our save the date cards haha. oh well.

This means I get to order our invitation paper and envelopes! Something I've been holding off on until I was 100% certain I knew what I was doing.  These are the colors I'm ordering: Tiffany Blue, Lemon Yellow, Aqua Mod print. I'm also ordering white linen paper for all of the rest of the paper.

Last night, I met with our photographer. Wedding photography has been a major issue in our planning process. I LOVE wedding photography! Sheldon hates having his picture taken and didn't see the need for a photographer. If we had arguments, this would have caused one, just sayin.

Since I refused to not have a photographer and we are trying to do this wedding on a very small budget, I chose Robyn from juniper photography. Robyn is super nice and is very excited about our wedding. I know she will do an awesome job. We talked a ton about what kinds of shots were important to me, what the setting of the wedding is going to look like and everything. It is important to me that she have fun shooting our wedding too and I think she will. Oh and we discussed setting up a photobooth yay!

I think that is all my news. I'm in that stage of planning where I'm spending a lot of money. Sheldon walked into the studio when he woke up Saturday morning and I said "I already spent $200 this morning! "  I'm pretty sure he just wanted to walk back to bed after that. Welcome to the next three months...

Daydreaming of Austin

(oops! Wrote this on Tuesday and forgot to post it!)

It's hard to do anything the week before an anticipated getaway!

When I found out that Renegade would be coming to Austin this year, I immediately told Sheldon we had to go, no matter what! It is even better that it will be the week after I have finished grad school. A perfect celebration road trip and a much needed vacation.

I've been preparing my google map for the last couple of days and I am super excited about all the special restaurants and vintage stores we will be visiting.

I'm most excited about the following:

Staying in the Austin Motel

 source
 

Getting sweets from Hey Cupcake!

 source

Of course, going to Renegade and seeing some of my favorite crafters and meeting some friends (yay i get to meet Danielle!).

Chowing down on one of these from Round Rock Donuts:

 source
I keep joking about eating one of these 2lb donuts. It will all depend on how I feel the day we go :)

We leave tomorrow morning. I can't wait!

 

Wedding Wednesday - bridesmaid's dresses

I decided to spend some of my newly done-with-grad-school time on sewing. Since I love the Anna tunic pattern so much (see the previous post), I decided to do a practice dress for myself to see how long it would take me to make, how hard it would be to fit, etc. First of all let me say this, I am not a seamstress. If you've spent any time reading earlier posts, you will know that I only sew if I am overly motivated by the finished product. I CAN do it, I just don't LIKE to do it. I also have very little training where sewing is concerned. Everything I know, I learned from helping my mother for many years.

With that said here's the dress...

Frames are from the kitschy digitals fabric covered button kit.

OMG look at it! It's so cute!

 And the back! Swoon.

I love these vintage buttons I've been holding on to for the perfect project.

Now let's take a look at it on....

Frumpville! Ok it's not really that bad. It just needs to be hemmed and paired with cute shoes and the tie belt that I haven't made yet.

But it gets worse from there...

Damn you yoke!!! look that that gap between the dress and my back (ignoring the fact that this picture is awful). Totally not cute. I haven't a clue on how to fix it and I really don't want to take the whole thing apart. Thankfully I just used a sheet to make it. I'm going to attempt a couple of darts and see if I can make an easy fix, even though I know this probably isn't going to work. I feel like the whole thing needs to be redone.  Normally I would just put a cardigan on over it, but the back of this dress Makes the dress.

Besides the yoke killing my dreams of a cute dress, the process was fun. The directions were somewhat easy to understand, it didn't take too long and I even took my time so I had a fairly quality finished product. I'm wondering if the two bridesmaids will have the same issue with this dress? Or is this a Dana is weird problem? HELP!

p.s. this isnt' just wedding wednesday. It is also one buck wednesday over at Jessica Sprague. You can get my favorite kitschy digitals kit for a buck!  These stacked flowers are sooo pretty and I'm hoping to use them in some way with our invitations.

Treasures

 I've been shopping a lot lately. It's the only thing that can calm my stress of school. Some of these were found in thrift stores around town and others were bought on vacation in Louisiana. I'm almost done with school! I have one assignment left :)
 
1. Vintage Sheets, 2. cute vintage fabric, 3. Embroidered Pillow Cases, 4. Table Runner close up, 5. Mod Cocktail Tray, 6. Owl Necklace, 7. Vintage thermos trio, 8. some vintage patterns, 9. Doll case

Wedding Wednesday - and we're back!

My previous post explains my absence.  I am one project and one final away from getting my masters degree so things are super crazy in the soon to be Beach household. But don't you worry, with all of the academic work my brain has been doing, I have also been having some super great creativity bursts that I've been focusing solely on wedding planning.

Some ideas I've been having:

Fabric flowers made out of my vintage sheet and button stash.  - I'm not sure if I want the whole bouquets to be fabric or a mixture of fabric and fresh daisies, probably a mix. I just love daisies too much not to incorporate them. And speaking of daisies, I'm totally buying them in bulk from Sam's. I love that they have that option. It makes me feel so much better about having fresh flowers. I can't fathom spending thousands of dollars on flowers and then letting them die.

We're also trying to be conscious of waste at the wedding. We can't make the whole thing green, but every little bit helps, so I plan on making a bunch of napkins from my vintage sheets as well. Sheldon will be soo excited to see that I will actually be using all of the sheets I have been hoarding for the last year!

Oh and I believe the bridesmaid/groomsmaid dress predicament has been solved. My mom and I will be making dresses from the Anna Tunic Amy Butler pattern.

I love the idea of having patterned dresses. I haven't completely settled on a fabric yet. Who knows, maybe we'll make those out of sheets too!? These are the commercial prints that I'm mulling over right now. I think they're all Amy Butler as well.

Like the sewing elements I've used? You'll probably be seeing a lot of them on here because I love love love them! They are from Danielle's Kitschy Digitals Granny's Sewing Basket digital kit. And speaking of Danielle's Kits. I used some more of them for this super cute digital scrap-booking page (click on the picture to see which elements I used for this page):

These pictures are all the outtakes from when we were trying to get the perfect picture for our silhouette.

Ok that's enough of my blabbing. I'm just so happy to be back!!!