Pine Garland

My life as usual has been extremely busy lately. I had decided that I need some side project arts and crafts time, and had found an idea of making garland with those cinnamon scented pine cones. I switched some things up with my garland and think it turned out pretty nice. He's the skinny on how to do it.

I went to Lowes and bought some scented pine cones, screw eyelet hook things, and a can of brown spray paint. At this point in the project I wasn't sure what I was going to attach my pine cones to to make the garland. The tutorial I had originally seen hooked the pine cones onto a ribbon, by punching holes in the ribbon.

Being my mother's daughter I knew I had a huge collection of ribbon at home and if I decided to go that route I was set.


Next step in the project I took all of the screw eyelet things out of their bags and spray painted them brown. Just a tip to keep in mind spray paint and cold weather do not work together. I cleared some space in my garage and spray painted in there with the help of a little space heater blowing on my workspace.



Once your screws are dry you need to screw them into the tops of your pine cones. By this point in the project it was several days later and I had found a premade jingle bell garland I decided to embellish with my pine cones. To make sure that my pine cones were going to stay on the garland I left a small opening big enough to slide the garland's wire into and then closed the gap with another twist of the screw into the pine cone.


I think the garland turned out pretty nice. And there is a faint smell of cinnamon in the air.

Valentine Craftiness

I may not be posting on my own blog, but I am still reading blogs pretty much every day. I came across this Valentine Day craft project and thought it was cute.

It was originally posted here on Design Sponge.

Fabulous Family

I have some super creative and savvy relatives and I thought I would give a shot out to them and what they are doing. Also, their blogs should be checked out.

First my cousin Jeri. Jeri lives in Arizona, but has a blog Budget Menus for the week. On her blog she goes through the ads for the local stores, tells you what is one sale, and gives you a menu of these sale items for the whole week. This past week her menu totaled $70.85. Amazing! Although she is in another state, some of the items might be comparable here.

Next is my cousin Kim. Kim has begun selling adorable petticoats, pettislips and tutus. Barefoot Creations is her blog for ordering and viewing these fantastic items.

Another cousin Lisa, make adorable necklaces and bracelets. Unfortunately, she doesn't have a blog where she highlights and sells these, but she should. ;) Her jewelry is beautiful and handmade.

Cleanse & misc. housekeeping updates

I know I was going to post this on Saturday, but between everything going on at Craft Lake City and then leaving the next day for the saltflats it got looked over. Finally tally after 28 days is a weight loss of 10 pounds. Woo hoo!

I am going back to the wellness center in a little over a week and will see what will be the next step.

In other news.. thank you to everyone who came out to Craft Lake City and stopped by my booth and said hi. My apologies to those of you who came early while I was still having a minor stress out. Thanks to the fam who ran and got me a plug adapter. I never ended up getting the laptop hooked up to the wireless, but at least I am now set with an adapter if I ever need it again. Also, thanks to my mom and Chicka & hubby. Without them I never would have been set up in time.

I hope everyone had a good time and picked up some fabulous things from the vendors. I know I did!

Busy Bee

The last little while I have been prepping for Craft Lake City. I have even put Jon to work asking for his assistance with painting. For my display I found some nice tables, but of course I had to make things difficult and insist that they be painted the colors I wanted.

I've been a mess the last few days trying to get everything accomplished that I want to. Here's a shot of my the current state of my craft room.

Part of my stress is due in part to the fact that I have to do a mock set up tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn for the Channel 2 News with Casey Scott. If you are up that early tune in and you might get to see a sneak peek of my both and maybe yours truely!

Mark your Calendars...

Two weeks to go!

I'll be there with a booth for my vinyl chalkboards and whiteboards.
Come check out the crafts!

Craft Lake City

I found out this weekend that I was one of the artists picked to be in the first annual Craft Lake City Festival. Yay! I will be there selling my chalkboards and new whiteboard items. The festival is on Saturday August 8, 2009 from 2 p.m. - 10 p.m. at the The Gallivan Center in downtown Salt Lake City.

You can check out more info at their website.

Need Your Help

I am in search of an old wooden ladder and am having a super hard time finding what I am looking for. Does anyone have or know where I can get a beat up wooden ladder?

Silk-Tie Easter Eggs

Every year my family gets together for Easter and has what we call an Egg Fight. It sounds messy but really isn't. Basically everyone picks an egg (hardboiled) then the first two people team up. They hits the ends of their eggs together until one end on one of the eggs breaks. The person with the broken end turns their egg around and uses the good end. This continues until there is a winner (an egg with at least one end not broken). The winner then continues on to fight another person their egg. We keep track of how many wins an egg gets and then chear for the winner.

As I am writing this out it doesn't sound so exciting, but it is pretty entertaining when you are involved in the actual game.

Rather than having plan 'ol dyed eggs this year this looks fabulous.


Leave it to Martha to share with us how to use old ties to create unique Easter eggs. Go on a hunt for those old silk ties the men in our lives have been holding onto for way too long, put them to good use and create some beautiful eggs!

Real Simple

I don't know how many of you read the magazine Real Simple, but I absolutely love it. Not only do they have some good recipes, but they provide tips for the organization and upkeep of your home. I was recently reading through the latest Real Simple and thought I would blog about how impressed I am with the paper construction section headers they make. They are constructed out of paper to look real. Absolutely fascinating! If you haven't seen them you are missing out. I have included a few I found on the Real Simple site below.

(Images from Real Simple)

Gift Tags

This year for Christmas I decided that I would make my own gift tags. Every year I feel like I go to the store and I can never find gift tags in a design that I really like. One year I even forfeited gift tags and just wrote people's names on the bottom of their gifts.

To start this project I found a paper punch in the shape of a tag and various printed papers as well as cardstock in solid colors.


Once I had a bunch of little tags punched out I decided which solids to match up with prints. I then glued a solid and print together. By doing this it provided the tag with a little weight, since the printed paper was kind of light. I then used a hole punch to punch holes at the top of the tags. I had decided that I wanted to use various ribbons and ric rac to hang the tags from. You could skip the holes at the top and just tape the tags on if you want.


Once all of this is done you can design and address the tags however you want.

Here is an example of a wrapped present with a completed tag. I used stamps for the lettering.

Martha Stewart Crafts

EVERYTHING is on sale at Martha Stewart Crafts! Who knows when you might need embellishments and such. I love sales!

Stationary

Another of my loves is stationary. I have numerous different styles of cards at my house and have to resist purchasing more when I find more that I love at the store. Well a week or so ago I lucked out and won this adorable set of notecards from a blog that I read.

Photo courtesy of Chris

The blog is You Can Call Me Chris. She hand makes tons of wonderful papercrafts. Right now she has adorable Christmas tags in her etsy store. I highly suggest checking out her store!

Locco for Gocco

Without any children to post pictures of or humorous stories about their antics - I am once again subjecting all of you loyal blog readers to another one of my craft related posts. This post will be about my new Gocco machine that arrived in the mail from Japan. It was a long flight, and boy are it's wings tired. *badum-CHING*


I am sure some of you are wondering what's a Gocco? Well it's basically a small, self contained screen printer. I bought it in the hopes of being able to screen print designs on some of my future aprons. Of course I am going to have to learn how to use it, and find a manual in English since all of the instructions are in Japanese.



Stay tuned to see what crazy things I can design with this new toy of mine.

Nails on chalkboards...

have got to be the worst sound ever! Thankfully such a sound will not be made on my chalkboard.


Currently I am in the process of re-organizing my craft room. Once that is done I will find the perfect spot to hang my chalkboard on the wall.

Craft Time!

The other day my friend Stephanie was admiring the felt case I made for my ipod. She had mentioned that her hand knitted case for her camera had stretched and her camera no longer stayed inside. I decided to surprise her with a new felt case. Here is how it turned out.

Halloween is just around the corner..

I have posted a few Halloween decorations for sale on my Etsy.com account, NeedlePinProductions.etsy.com.

Go check them out! You don't have to buy from Etsy, you can order directly through me. Just email me what you would like.

Felt-tastic!

Recently while perplexed that I did not have what I felt was an appropriate case for my ipod, Jon suggested that I make one. Mind you I had spent several hours searching the ipod aisles at the local target, other gadget stores, the apple store, and even eBay ( shocking, huh?). I found these sock things that you are supposed to put your ipod in. They were ok, and being able to purchase them at the apple knock-off price of $5.00 I thought they would work. Well there was a delay in shipping.. blah blah.

So be it my luck that the day I go to Joann's tired of waiting for these sock things - they show up in the mail. Despite this I still decided to make my own case. This is the 2nd one I made. The first was more of a prototype.

Spell It Out Vinyl - Project

New project posted on the Spell It Out Vinyl blog. Check it out!

Spring Vinyl Special

I was asked the other day if I could make another board like the one I made for Lissa and Travis. I decided that I would run a Spring special and offer everyone the chance to get a board if they wanted for the low price of $15.00. $15.00 is the price for a completed board - all put together!

I have several different colors of vinyl as well as paints. So, most likely I can do whatever your vision is.

Email me at SIOdesigns@gmail.com or call me if you have my number.


The board in the picture is aprox. 23"x6".

Check out the Spell It Out blog for more vinyl projects and specials I will be posting in the future.