Crochet Owls

I've been spending a lot of time playing around with crocheting little owls :)

I still don't know how to follow a pattern... but I'm OK with that, because then everything I make tends to have it's own personality!

I started out making the owls by sewing on fabric wings and eyes and beaks.

 Now I've begun just crocheting all the little bits and pieces to them :)

 I make them in all shapes and sizes :)  Since I don't follow a pattern I make up the size of the owls in relation to other random objects.

• Extra Small = A quarter
• Small = A cupcake
• Medium = A large Cup-O-Joe
• Large = A loaf of bread

Valentines Day Decorating

Valentines day is rapidly approaching  so I decided it was time to put craft some loving around the house! As you can see we love movies... a little bit too much... and I've been pining over all the cute word art on Pinterest lately.  So I took two of my favorite romantic movies/books (The Princess Bride - Pride & Prejudice) and made word art out of the quotes that make my heart flutter every time Westley and Mr. Darcy utter them <3 

I downloaded some pretty fonts from dafont.com, printed and framed them!  

It's super easy and super adorable :)

I've been oogling at all the cute garlands on Pinterest so when I ran across Cornflower Blue's adorable blog I made some tiny crochet hearts for my very own!  Cornflower Blue's blog shows and explains every step with a picture!  Click on the picture below to learn how to make a crochet heart for someone this Valentines day!

This furry guy has a slice of my heart :)

  but then he unraveled the crochet heart I gave him... 

As cute as they are I wouldn't suggest giving them to your pets...
Namaste and Happy Valentines day friends!

Branch Coat Hanger

Howdy folks!  It's been too long since I've last posted so here it goes!


The cold weather has brought out some of my favorite things to wear: Scarves, hats, mittens, coats, boots, and anything else that makes you warm and cozy!  However, that also means I need a place to put all of it... Which means it normally ends up strung over a chair or on the ground (becoming Gingi cat's new bed...). This brought on my desire to have a coat hanger so I rummaged through my apartment until I found some things I figured would attribute to my coat hanger needs.  

Here's what I came up with: Scissors, vice grips, coffee (always a necessity for any type of crafting experience), wire (you could also use twine or yarn if you didn't have wire on hand), wire cutters, something to bend the wire around (I chose a baby screwdriver for that), nails, hooks, and sandpaper.

I had spray painted a stick originally for another craft that I did but I got tired of it so it was now the main part for my coat hanger. :)

Here is a step-by-step of what I did:

• I used the scissors to cut off a nice piece of sandpaper to rough up the gold spray paint on the stick. I wanted the stick to have a worn look to it.
• I screwed the hooks into the stick and the vice grips helped me out when it became hard to twist the hooks.
• I drank some coffee.
• I wrapped the wire around the nails and and used the vice grips again to hold the nail in place while I wrapped very tightly (I also used pliers to wrap the wire around even more tight, but they're not in my picture... sorry!).  I left about a foot of wire hanging off of the nail so that I could wrap it around the stick later.
• I drank some coffee and knocked over a cute seal in the process (He premieres in  another post!).
• I tapped on the wall for about 30 minutes trying to find a stud in the wall so that the weight of the coats and scarves wouldn't pull out the nails. I made many wrong attempts and needed spackling paste to cover up the holes in the wall :-/  woops! 
• I used the hammer to put the wire wrapped nails carefully into the wall.
• Then I wrapped the wire around the stick very tightly and wah lah! A coat hanger!

 I probably did a lot of things incorrectly.... But it works!  Let's just not tell my landlord and fiancee about all those extra special holes in the wall :)  

 My giant, thumb-paw cat says Namaste my friends :)

Wonky Crocheted Seal

Let me preface this by saying I never understood crocheting...  but I always attempted to make a scarf when the winter season started rolling in because who doesn't want a homemade scarf to add a little pizzazz to an outfit?  I always thought making a scarf would be sooooo easy since it's just a long rectangular shape, but no... You have to count your rows and make sure you have the same amount of stitches, and my stitches would always be too tight and then too loose, and there are numbers and patterns you have to follow to get something cute and my scattered brain doesn't do well with that... By the end of it my scarves always ended up looking like a long, stretched out piece of pizza.... And not the good kind that you'd see on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I don't know, maybe I should have stuck with it and created a new type of scarf trend.  Maybe call it the Epic Fail Scarf or the Wonky Scarf or the I Don't Know What the Heck I'm Doing Scarf.  To my dismay my attempts always ended in me pulling out all of the rows until it was a long, and somewhat wonky-looking string again.  Then I would sadly roll the string back into a ball until next year when the winter season came upon us again and I'd try my hand at creating a cute scarf to warm my little neck. As if a year of not crocheting at all would make me a better crocheter?  And then failure would inevitably occur...

I had all but given up hope until I met a new friend who crochets adorable squishy animals. When I asked her how she created these darling creatures the words out of her mouth were pure magic, "I just make it up :)".

You can do that?!  Oh my I must try!  So she showed me a few tricks and broke down the process into thinking about shapes.  So she taught me how to make a cylinder and then how to make a sphere, and mantra the entire time we were working she kept repeating, "It doesn't have to be perfect."  Boy did that ring a bell.  That's how I taught art to my little kiddo's during student teaching (or my friends who have crafted with me :-P).  

So I decided to make my favorite animal, a seal :)

He's not perfect, but it was my first attempt and a little wonkiness tends to make things more adorable (at least for me they do!).

Of course whenever I get out my camera Gingi decides he wants to be in on the action so he plopped his plopper right on down beside my crocheted creation for some pictures.  This one reminds me of those hilarious photobombing pictures.

Much like these only slightly less terrifying hahaha!

 

Every time my friend saw the seal she would say, "He's so fluffy!" -Despicable Me quote :)

Pumpkin Painting

Holy pumpkin Batman!  It's pumpkin time people!    

I drove by a store with pumpkins and my foot was on the brake immediately!  I bought some tiny pumpkins (adorbs) and two white pumpkins (so classy).  

Since it's a little too early in the season to carve them (I don't want moldy, wilty, pumpkins when Halloween rolls around) I decided I should paint this first round of pumpkins.  I say first round because Lord knows I'll be buying more :/

add some POLKA DOTS

You can never go wrong with polka dots.  So I painted my little orange pumpkins with little white polka dots beside my little spray painted pine cones.

add some PATTERNS & SILHOUETTES 

For the two white pumpkins I chose to paint on a pretty patterns and then add a silhouette on top!   

I thought they looked pretty fun but I wanted more so I asked my fiancee his opinion and he oh-so-nonchalantly said, "Add some dinosaurs."  Of course!  Why didn't I think of that?  He's brilliant.  So for my spiraly pumpkin I wanted to add a few of our favorite dinosaurs.

To help me out....
 

And here is how my spiraly pumpkin turned out! :)

And lastly but not leastly I had to add little Gingi cat onto the polka dotted pumpkin! 

Meowwwwwww ;)