Button and Buckle Score

Pink, cream and orange buttons

This week, before all four of us fell ill to the stomach flu (I'll spare you the details but I have have been mostly on the sofa for 2~3 days), my Mom and I went to a small town full of antiques. It's also where there's a really nice fabric shop.

I love the white ones with the lacy edges

Anyway, have I ever mentioned that I have been looking for vintage buckles-even new ones- for, ever? I have checked the usual: Joann's, quilt shops, knitting shops, craft shops, even my faithful scrapbook boutique. But no.
I have been meaning to make knit hats, bags, and so forth, all with buckles. So many ideas-so, no many buckles.
Well that all changed the other day.



We found shop after shop full of buckles! And really good prices too. Most of these are Bakelite and they're all vintage. How neat is that?! I was so happy I bought the whole card and most of another one. And some in other stores too!

I have so many now I'm contemplating putting some up for sale in the shop-but not sure yet. Maybe if there's an interest, and I don't use them all, lol.
Does anyone else love these kinds of things?

We Also found many many vintage buttons. I love the old packaging cards they're on. Some of these are in really good shape.


I love the little red one with the flowers cut out towards the upper left.

Have you found any good supplies lately?

Some new things and something I won

I'll start by showing you the print I won from Heather at Audrey eclectic, this past week. I've been pretty lucky with giveaways this year!
I love her artwork-you can visit her lovely blog here. And if you'd like to see her shop it's right here : )
Now I just have to get it framed!


I've not met my self imposed 10 item creation quota for the week~however I did make a few new things...

1) The Alice pouch here
2) The tea cozy here
3) This little pouch:



I just love the little girl jumping rope but want to use my youngish looking fabrics for adults ~ what a challenge. I have lots of children's prints that I find hard to resist buying in quilt shops, but I don't make things for children in my shop. So fabric collage work it is.
It's all zigzag stitched on in the usual "scrappy collage" way. The background fabric is Denyse Schmidt upholstery weight. The interior is by Urban Chik's.
I think I'll list this one today : )


3) And finally the "Seamstress Cozy".
I really liked making this one. I think it would be a fun gift for anyone who loves to sew.
I triple (I think it's called?) stitched around the 'tape measures', added some matching dark
teal buttons stitched on with pink embroidery floss, and cut a little bit of tape measure trim
and added it on too. The inside is teal with white polka dots.


I'll try and list it today too~you can see more photos in the shop : )

So I challenged myself to ten and came up with a little less but will try and get at least that many done this week too (phew).
When I moved downstairs to my new studio space I realized just how many supplies I have and that I need to use them ( so I have an excuse to buy more, lol! )

Do you give yourself a weekly quota/challenge?

Afternoon Tea

This is my latest coffee/tea cozy.



I really enjoyed making this one-I just love the colors. Somewhat muted, toast, dusty pink, soft yellows.

with my "white buttons"

I also changed the design from the previous sleeves I've made. This one has a 'straight edge'~instead of the usual rounded end I usually do.
The yellow fabric has a faint lace print on it.

The inside is a grey~blue, olive, and a beigy color floral motif and it has a velcro closure.

inside

I really enjoyed laying out the little applique pieces, choosing which ones I want to use, where to place them,the buttons, the ribbon...it seems so simple yet there is a lot of decision making -lol.

Anyway-this one is hard to part with, but I'll try ; )

picnik collage

The lighting was pretty good today so I took lots of photos.

Looks like I will not make my self imposed 10 things this week quota by Monday. More like 2, unless I get to work very early tomorrow!

Let your Art Guide you -Alice in Wonderland Pouch

Last week Emily from Art-n-sewl, invited me to participate in her weekly challenge.
I thought it would be a great motivator for me to get things finished and accomplished as I've been a little sluggish in making things for the shop lately.



1st up, another zippered "Scrappy Collage Pouch" featuring Alice in Wonderland and the Cheshire Cat.


This pouch was a lot of fun to make. I knew I wanted to use Alice and the Cat, but had a hard time looking for a good tree from my collection.



This one came from a 3 bears storybook themed print and I thought it did the job pretty well.

I love the polka dot background, it's a Japanese linen if I'm not mistaken -it's got a woven texture but is very soft. The pouch is nice and squishy from the batting and is quilted around the appliques.
This pouch is big enough to put lots of goodies in.
I stitched on a woven "wonder"tag, some black crocheted lace, and a few buttons-including a red heart on the back, from the Queen perhaps?



The lining is another two toned blue woven cotton. It's up for grabs in the shop ; )

Scrapbook Pretties

Another visit to the scrapbook store. I realize a lot of what I'm looking for there is... color inspiration.
I used to be a 'paperholic'-I love to draw and paint and used to make all my greeting cards-I guess I still am a paperholic-anything to do with arts and crafts for me. But I now have less time to do it all.
These pretty papers and flowers inspire me to make something with these colors-perhaps in a fabric collage? Sorbety citrus colors- not too sour-I don't like sour. I like saturated. I saw these colors in clothing at the mall the other day too. Deep saturated aqua.Teal? Shoes-Pretty.
What I call 'one off ' colors.
I can't get enough of the color palette in Presencia threads. I'd love to have one of their thread display racks : )
Just thought I'd share a pretty picture. (Above).

(Below)~not such a pretty picture...



The studio is a work in progress-It's wall to wall stuff. I've already re~arranged it a bunch of times.
See those two big units in the back ?I have one at least that big full of stuff that I'm not sure will actually make it downstairs intact.
The cutting mat/table in the foreground? It's been a dream of mine forever to have a large cutting/drawing/whatever surface with shelves below. It almost cost me some stitches this weekend. We went to Home Depot to have the board cut. I picked it up wrong and sliced my finger quite badly. Man is that 5ft melamine board heavy!! Apparently no stitches but wow it was looking like it at first.
Anyway every wall you can't see is covered in stuff to the point I'm not sure how it's all getting down here. Plus my daughter wants to put her (huge) beading table in here. Hmm...

Now that I see how much I reeaally have -I need to use it or purge it. Don't be surprised if you see some destash in the shop soon ~lol, or maybe not so lol ; )
I think I'll just go get to work instead of trying to put it all away at once or I'll never get it all done. I'm setting myself a goal of ten pouches (or something else?) to make and list this week!
Do you have a space just to create? Do you have too many arts and crafts supplies?

P.S~thanks for telling me how you pronounce 'andrea' in my last post. It's so interesting to hear how a name can change in pronounciation....I'm still thinking of putting a list of crafty andreas together someday, so if you share my name and would like to be included, go ahead and leave me a comment here : )
Happy crafting!

How do you say Andrea?

Studio coming along. Carpet? Check.
Nothing to do with post, lol

My name is Andrea.

I was named after my Dad who, because he grew up and lived in many different countries, had many different versions of his name. Andres, Andrew, Andre.
We knew him as Andy.
I didn't always like my first name. Growing up I thought it didn't go well with my last name.

The way my name is pronounced changes everywhere I go, but I have learned to accept any pronunciation to make life easy.

In California I was "On~dray~uh".
In places where one must give their name, like Starbucks, I would say it that way.

Here, in Ohio, I noticed if I give my name as "On~dray~uh", they often make me repeat it 'til I give up and try "Ann~dree~uh" . They seem to recognize that version better here. The pronunciation that bothers my Mom the most.

In France, I was : " ondray~ah", emphasis on the last syllable.

To my Italian family~ I have a man's name, and they say : On~dray-ya. Emphasis on the middle syllable. When I go to Italy, it's fun to see the look on their faces when they're told my name.: "But she's not a man?!"

So how do I say it?
In my head it's pronounced: on ~dree~ uh.

But if I have to repeat it a bunch of times for that Tall Latte- it quickly becomes "Bob". No joke.

For fun, I've been thinking for awhile now to collect names of crafty bloggers who are named 'Andrea', and compiling a list to post....

Is your name Andrea? How do you pronounce it?

Artificial Flowers

I had this flower idea in my head since yesterday and just had to make it today.

I wanted to use some of my Dupioni silk collection and a contrasting colored flower stamen.

I haven't really made (m)any flowers like this before so I think it turned out not too bad for a first time.

As you can see, I've been playing with the editing again...and I couldn't choose which of these photos to post. So I put them all!

I basted one long edge and pulled the threads to gather. I cheated and glued the stamens in place as you can see by the pin above.

I have quite a few of those stamens too. Most of these are vintage. I am now far away from the place where I used to get them but a quick search online revealed a place I have shopped with before and they have quite the collection as well : )
(Click the link and scroll through their catalog for all kinds of inspiration).

Vintage artificial flower stamens