There's probably about a 5 gallon bucket full of dog poop under that pretty white snow...

...so no matter how much it looks like a delicious piece of fabric pie DON'T LICK IT!!

Today is Capital Letter Day in My World.

I will now be Selling Stuff.

In an effort to avoid getting a real job and having to *GASP* wear actual clothes every day (like SOCKS and Not-Pajama-Pants) I have decided to start making things to sell. This will obviously not take any Effort or Time at all and will enable me to very quickly move to wherever it is the Rich People go and start living In Style with leather furniture and big screen t.v.s and tiny purse dogs and all that. And an Escalade. It'll be great. You can all come and visit me. I'll have a guest house.

In all seriousness, a friend and I have decided to sign up for a craft show in April to try our luck at selling our "arts" and "crafts". Jenn and I will be sharing a booth and our theme for this show will be "Kid's Stuff". (Original, aren't we?) We are going to coordinate our items and try to have a lot of fun. We plan to have Colored Lights and Alcoholic Party Drinks in our booth so of course we will be massively popular and we will sell everything we put a price tag on. 

(I am just kidding. We don't have a liquor license so we won't actually be selling pina colodas in our Child Themed Booth.)

Since I am making things to sell, I might as well list them on Etsy, right? So here THAT is:

My Etsy Store Which is Named After My Blog

And here are some pictures of the things I have been making:

Regular Crayon Totes

Regular Crayon Totes

DEEEluxe Crayon Totes With Jumbo Crayons

These are the Jumbo Crayons that come in the above tote.

Awesome crayon puzzle

Jungle Animal Crayons

Ladybug Crayons

Butterfly Crayons

The crayon sets will come packed in these adorable COLORFUL HAPPY FUN boxes!

 So lately, when I wasn't Ruining Gorgeous Fabric by trying to make An Incredibly Difficult Designer Tote Bag, I have been peeling crayons and making crayon totes. Good times, people!

I want to cry.

This does not look like the one in the book.

It might look okay if you were driving past really fast... in a snowstorm... at night.

But get a little closer...

I don't have it in me to take it apart to try to fix it. At least not right now.

This bag was actually physically PAINFUL to make. It hurt my hands and shoulders to shove all the layers through my machine. 

And then I flipped it right side out thinking, "It's all going to be worth it!"

And it wasn't.

Amanda's Mandala Tree Day 6- Done!

Amanda's Mandala Tree 

Day 6- Done!

Now I just have to make it into something! 

This was TOTALLY fun- I will definitely be making more Mandala Trees.

Amanda's Mandala Tree Day 5- almost done

Amanda's Mandala Tree

Day 5

Skipped a day there- yesterday I got to work inventory at the LQS. They pay in FABRIC. 

*giant grin*

Amanda's Mandala Tree Day 4

Amanda's Mandala Tree

Day 4

Amanda's Mandala Tree

 "Mandala Tree"

Day 3

These really aren't true mandalas but since they also don't really grow on trees I guess I can fudge it a bit. 

(It's called "artistic license".)

A makeover and a WIP

Don't fall over! I am working on a tote WIP today! But it's a new project so I can't really count it toward my PhD. I do have a good excuse for starting something new, though. Notice the cute new logo? Well, I have been wanting a cat-on-a-sewing-machine logo for a while now and finally conned someone into an art trade. 

 

My shirt-tail cousin/friend, Amanda (who incidentally has a new blog and a new Etsy store), designed this for me. Amanda is an amazing artist and also an elementary art teacher. So she is getting a special teacher tote and I got a supercute logo. 

 

This is a panel that will be worked into her tote bag. I thread painted the tree trunk, raw edge appliqued the circles and now am embellishing by hand embroidering. Eventually there will be leaves- I am thinking paisleys for leaves, but I'm a fly by the seat of my pants kinda gal so we'll see what happens after I put green thread in my needle. Always an adventure here.

 some closeups

 This was my first attempt at thread painting and I liked it. And it looks ok! I can definitely see myself doing this again.