A Pocketful of Licorice

February...

the February gallery is up at Cocoa Daisy and the kit goes on sale tomorrow. Our guest designer this month was Vee Jennings and her gallery is beautiful!
Here's what I did...
There's a little more over at the site, but those are my favorites. It's a really pretty kit - check it out!

music recommendations and a cocoa daisy sneak peek

I've been listening to some lovely music lately and enjoying scrapping with CD's February kit. It's full of beautiful oranges and yellows and blues and silvers. I love eMusic and Pandora. I can thank those two sources for introducing me to more artists that I am now in love with than I can even count. Here are a few of them. And a CD sneak peek for Feb...

Work Room Tour

Today I cleaned my work room. It's a second bedroom, actually, but I use it as an office of sorts. I scrap, sew and make stuff in there, and also do work for school on occasion.
The reason I cleaned is because Cocoa Daisy is doing design team studio tours this month. When I was asked for the pictures, I was reluctant. My apartment doesn't look the way I want it to look. It isn't done. It isn't nice enough. I get embarrassed sometimes about how much I still have to do and how I still don't have any proper grown up furniture, but you wouldn't be in a hurry to invest in anything nice if your cats were as naughty as mine are. The work room doesn't even have curtains yet. Because I want to make them and I have a very specific vision in mind for the fabric. And the only fabric I've ever found online that even remotely resembles the dream fabric is over $100 a yard. So that's not happening anytime soon either, since I'm pretty sure curtains for the two windows in this room will require at least 8-10 yards of fabric. I'm looking for a white field/green print floral chintz. I saw what I want in Domino once. I painted the room pale gray just like in the picture. I need the curtains now. But currently, the windows are bare. So that's kind of ugly.
So as I mentioned, I was reluctant to share pictures. Feeling not quite good enough is an issue of mine, though, and one that I really need to get over. So eff it. Here are some pictures of my work room. Apologies for the naked windows.
Vintage card catalog file cabinet - it's perfect for 12x12 paper - I have it organized by manufacturer. Baskets and a fabric cube I made from Anna Maria Horner's new book for storing tools, fabric scraps, adhesive, etc. And my (newly established) wall of magazine clippings, starring Jenny Lewis and favorites from Anthro catalogs. I kind of have a girl-crush on Jenny Lewis for her incredible sense of style and mad songwriting skills. Anyway, moving on...
This is where I put my sewing machine. On what is technically a breakfast bar from Target. Like I said, no nice furniture. It works, though. An antique dressmaker's dummy my landlady gave me. She gives me cool stuff all the time.
Desk and bureaus. It's little girl bedroom furniture. But it's handy to have all those drawers, because...
I have a ton of fabric. I already had too much, and I bought enough fabric for an entire spring wardrobe yesterday. I'm not the biggest fan of JoAnn but when they have a sale, they really have a sale. The clearance section was an additional 50% off and if you look carefully enough they've got a pretty fabric here and there. Granted, the pretty ones are buried under two tons of ugly bullshit. But I wasn't in a hurry. I need to get to work, though, because I really intend for these fabrics to actually BE my spring wardrobe.
I believe this piece is by Martha Stewart for Kmart. This part of the room really needs some work. But for now, it's got a bunch of storage containers, labeled so the stuff is easy to find, and most of my albums. Which makes me think it's a good thing I'm scrapping less and sewing more, because album storage is clearly becoming an issue.
This is a very ugly part of the room, but luckily it's in the closet and I can close the door. Lots of storage containers - again labeled so I can find stuff quickly. I have a love/hate relationship with those 12x12 plastic drawer units. On the one hand, they are ugly. I know, I'm using that word a lot, but what else can you call them. On the other hand...
look how easy-peasy it is to pull out a bin when you need letter stickers or a die-cut or what have you. And then you just toss them back in the closet.
You can see a little of my work table under the bins in that picture. It has seen better days, but honestly, even its best days weren't that great because all it has ever been is a piece of heavy plywood from IKEA, sitting on top of a couple of supports.
And the stuff I use frequently is sitting on the table right in front of me. Baskets and cans and jars and a fishbowl from Goodwill. I kind of put stuff in whatever random junk I can find. I'm recycling.
One of those containers might be a one of a kind Anja Wade ceramic original, Providence College circa 1996. And that's priceless, folks.
And I did buy that Amy Butler tote, but you don't know how cheap it was and it's just right for my paints, mod podge, glimmer mist, etc.
So that's about it. A complete 360 around my workroom. And now I've got to go because my dumb cat knocked the waste basket over. She eats adhesive. It's messed up.

Snow Day

big pillow (Amy Butler In Stitches), originally uploaded by missquiss.

We had no school again today. Right now, we're up to 4 snow days. It's going to be a long June. I'm a little stressed because I need to finish up a chapter with my chem kids by Friday and we've missed so much time that I'm afraid I won't make it. Mid-terms are next week. But some things can't be changed. And when things can't be changed - the weather, for example - you just have to embrace what you're given and make the most of it. So today I made this. It's a really big cushion from Amy Butler's book (In Stitches). It's supposed to be a floor cushion but right now I've got it on the bed until I find a better home for it. It's kind of the perfect size for my bed, so it might stay there. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and I think I've mastered the slip stitch. I made the smaller version of this pillow last night, but instead of finishing up the pillow by hand, I got lazy and tried to machine-stitch it shut. That was a mistake. My sewing machine was angry with me. From now on I will listen when the directions say to slip stitch. I think very soon I'm going to try to sew something that can be worn out in public. That will be a big step for me. Up until now, I've only made home goods and pajamas. I'm excited. I'm thinking maybe a skirt.

Goals '09

I said I might not get around to making any resolutions, but I was only kidding myself. I stayed up New Year's night making an entire book full of them. It's made of some scraps of corrugated cardboard I had, plus silver and teal Duck brand duct tape. I love that duct tape comes in like 15 colors these days. For the pages I used a Hambly wood grain overlay, a couple sheets of Basic Grey from the Stella Ruby collection (still one of my all-time favorites of theirs), Making Memories Noteworthy, and Sassafras Lass (I don't remember - the one with the deer).

As for the construction of it - I'd seen books made like this before so I decided to figure out how to do it. Once I started putting it together, it just sort of worked itself out. I think next time I'll make five holes on the binding to weave the thread through. The pages are a little wobbly. But besides that, it turned out ok. And I finally used that 7 gypsies knob I've had lying around. So I think this is another bookbinding technique I will use in the future. All of my book binding techniques involve duct tape. I love that stuff.

I'm trying to post pictures of it but TypePad is being an a-hole again, messing everything up, putting red x's instead of pictures, effing around with the spacing, etc. Sometimes TypePad is very hurtful. 

Here's the cover - the rest is at Flickr.