Home Sweet Home Featured!

I'm very excited today to tell you that my Home Sweet Home project is being featured by Allison at Little Lovelies today!  I've never spoken with her, just a few emails last night when I found out, but I have followed her blog for a while now and I can tell by her writing and just looking at her picture that she is the sweetest thing!  I'm so honored to be a part of her Five Things on Friday Link Party Features.  Go check out Little Lovelies and see the other four cards chosen....wow!  Thanks so much Allison, for including me in this!

A Tutorial.......the Saga

Oh my goodness......I can't believe I'm finally posting this tutorial!  After a week of frustration trying to get this done, my camera not working for the pictures for said tutorial, and knowing we were going out of town over the weekend had me in fits by the end of last week!  B U T......after taking a deep breath and my sweet J buying me a new camera (!), I finally finished pictures this afternoon and am ready to post.  So I apologize for some of the pictures - those are the one's that were taken pre-new camera.  My flash just stopped working and the lighting was not good.  I did the best I could using my editing, but my editing skills could use some work too! 

I created this project using the Book Bag and Bookworm digi stamps from JW Illustrations.  These are such sweet images - I love them!  I made a card with a little pocket that hold the little Bookworm Bookmark.  Here's the finished project:

I started out choosing 3 colors of card stock and printing the Book Bag image on all 3 pieces.

Next, I cut the images apart picking and choosing which pieces I wanted in the different colors.  This part was fun!

As you can see in the above picture, I took the brown pieces and the red pieces and ran them through my Big Shot using some texture plates.  Here's a closer look:

I attached all the pieces on the brown Book Bag image and used a blade to cut along the top of the pocket on the front of the backpack to make the opening for the Bookmark.  Then I used a white piece of card stock as my base and started piecing the pieces together using adhesive.  On the brown Book Bag image, I was careful to use the adhesive only around the edges to leave the middle part open to allow the bookmark to slide in and out.  So for this, you need a nice sturdy adhesive -- I love the red line tape.  It works awesome on projects like this and especially for boxes and 3D items - it really stays together!

Now this is where I'm missing a few photos because of my camera going and dying on me (sniff, sniff).

I printed out the Bookworm image and used the watercolor technique to color it in.  Then I cut a strip of the yellow card stock, after measuring how long the Bookmark needed to be so it could slide in the pocket appropriately.  I used adhesive to attach the Bookworm to the yellow strip and then trimmed around the Bookworm.  It added another layer to the Bookworm image to give it a little thickness.  Then I personalized it with some adhesive chipboard alphabet from K & Company and Making Memories.  I love these - they are so easy to use - just peel them and stick them!

Here's a few shots of the Bookmark in action:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and I hope you visit JW Illustrations and add your link using the Book Bag image.  We can't wait to see what you come up with!

I am linking my project to these link parties......come link yours up too!

Until next time........have a great week!

Bye Bye Summer :(

This week school has started, the weather out has finally started to cool down a little, which means, in a sense, summer is officially over :(    Our summer kids have all gone back home to start school and that has left our house very quiet all of a sudden!  That means it's time to start filling my time with my blogging, crafting, etc. to occupy myself.  I have been promising that I'm opening my Etsy shop, posting more tutorials, more giveaways and I have been horrible about following through with that since the summer started!  I apologize for that, I had good intentions that I would keep up while all the kids were here, and as you can see, that didn't happen so much!  We had a great time and we are looking forward to their first break from school so they can come back, but until then, it's time to go to work!  Starting today.....I'm working on some new projects, I have my camera all set up for some tutorials, and I'm brainstorming some new ideas!  Here we go!

Lingerie Bag Tutorial

Hello everyone!  I finally finished my tutorial that I've been working on this week for you guys!  I'm so excited about how it turned out!  I've had a few comments and emails from people not knowing how to use digital stamps.  They are so fun and versatile to work with....you are only limited by your imagination really.  Today, I wanted to introduce you to a really fun way to use them.....that's a little different than the norm!  I have a really cute digital stamp image of a lingerie set from JW Illustrations and I immediately thought of this project!  Here's what I started with:

Cute right?!  So my idea was to use this as a template and create my own little mini lingerie out of fabric to sew on the front of a lingerie laundry bag.  This is the final product:

I'm really pleased how it turned out and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be.  The hardes part was having to hand sew everything!  It took much longer that way, but it was nice to sit and stitch in front of the tv for a change.  Now, this would not HAVE to be done by hand, but I am without a sewing machine at the moment.......soon to change, I hope!

This type of project using digital stamps to create something with fabric is much easier when using an image that has larger scaled pieces.  Does that make sense?!  It would be harder to use an image with a lot of small detail, because you would have to cut and piece much smaller pieces of fabric together.  Now, it would be totally do-able, just more tedious.

Supplies needed:
lingerie laundry bag  (I bought my little lingerie laundry bag at the dollar store, so very reasonable)
digital stamp image
scrap pieces of fabric used for lingerie
old tshirt used for backing
sewing supplies (thread, straight pins)
ribbon, lace and cording used for detail on lingerie

So I started out with my lingerie laundry bag

I printed out 2 of the Amber Lingerie Digital Stamp from JW Illustrations.  One on regular printer paper (used for the tshirt pattern) and one on card stock (used for the fabric pattern)

Take your image printed on printer paper and cut it out leaving a small border around it.  Doesn't have to be precise - this border ends up getting trimmed off later.

I took one of J's old tshirts and cut out a piece large enough for the images, pinned my pattern on with straight pins and trimmed around my pattern leaving a little bit of a border around.  This border is not really needed and get trimmed off later, but it does make it easier to work with having a little extra there when stitching.

Now take your image printed out on card stock and cut out the part of the image that will be your fabric.

Now lay your fabric with the printed side down - so you're marking on the backside of it.  Put a temporary adhesive on the front of your cardstock pieces - I just used pieces of rolled scotch tape - to hold your pattern in place while tracing around it.  Since your fabric is face down, you also want to be sure to lay your pattern face down also.  Use a light pen and trace around your pattern and cut it out.  If you're really good and have a good adhesive, you can just cut around the pattern and cut out the tracing.....but I'm not that good!

Now pin your fabric to your tshirt.

Now start stitching!  After you have your fabric all stitched to your tshirt, you can start having fun with the lace, ribbon and cording to add details to your lingerie!  I used a satin ribbon for the straps, the organza lace with sequins on the edges as shown on the original stamp image, organza ribbon for the bows and some black cording across the bottom of the bust line.  On the bottoms, I used the black cording for the string part and the organza ribbon for the bows.  You could really go crazy and use your imagination with this part, but I tried to stick to the original image as I could for this one.  When you're finished with fixin' it up, you can trim off the extra tshirt.  You still wanna leave a little edge so it's easier to stitch onto the laundry bag.

Now just stitch it to your lingerie laundry bag!  That's it!  Pretty simple!  I think this would be a cute bridal shower gift with a Victoria's Secret gift card inside.

Now if you have a sewing machine and/or a better seamstress than I, you could cut out a few of these steps and do all the stitching at one time, instead of one thing at a time, like I did!  Again, I'm just not that good yet!

Here are a few closer shots of the details:

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, and if you still have questions, please email or leave them in the comments section.  I will be happy to answer any you may have.  I would also love to see any of your lingerie bags that you make using this tutorial!  Please send me a link or leave the link in the comments section.  So head on over to JW Illustrations to get your image and get started!

I am linking this project to these link parties - you can link yours too!

Have a great week!