Photo shoot & Product Shots!

Hello everyone! I'm really excited and happy to say that the majority of my product shots are completed! I do have a couple one of a kind items that have not been finished yet and they will be photographed next weekend.

So what does all this mean? I'm one step closer to opening my Etsy shop! A big part of my Sunday afternoon was spent writing shop policies, writing item descriptions, and setting product prices and shipping and handling. I was able to upload my pics to Etsy and create listings, but those listings are not live yet. The last steps in this process are my banner for my Etsy shop, blog and Facebook. It's in process, as I type and I hope it's done by tomorrow. (crossing fingers)

To tide you all over, I'm sharing a couple product shots from the photo shoot. First a big thanks to my husband, Tony, and his business ASHDR Photography for taking the photos! So without further ado....

Alameda Leather Earrings

Irvington Leather Earrings

The Alameda and Irvington Leather earrings are made of leather and suede scraps that were leftover from a local community art project. I was lucky enough to know the organizer of the project and she gave me the leftover scraps and cut outs. Each earring is comprised of hand punched leather and silver plate jump rings and earwires. There are a limited number of these earrings in a variety of different colors.

University Park Ombre Chevron Plastic Necklace

The University Park Ombre Chevron Plastic Necklace is made out of plastic samples from a sample book I acquired about 6-8 years ago. I was thrilled to have it but had no idea what to do with it so it has sat in my stash of odds and ends for all those years. Each necklace is made of three translucent pieces of plastic. I love all the colors. Since the cutting out and sanding of each piece is a little labor intensive, I have yet to finish assembling all the necklaces from the sample book. The blues and greens are still to come.

For this fall collection I decided to name the pieces of jewelry after neighborhoods in Portland. There's no real significance to the name they received except for I love Portland and I chose neighborhood names that I thought suited each piece.

As soon as the shop goes live I will be posting about it on Facebook and Twitter.

Craftily yours,

Camille

Etsy Shop Update

Whew! It's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm just getting back in the groove of crafting again... I'm not quite ready to post anything in my Etsy shop but I'm getting there. Product shots will be taken this weekend and hopefully I'll be posting items for sale sometime next week. In the meantime, I'm finishing up the rest of the jewelry to be photographed this weekend, getting some knitting and a little bit of quilting in.

Oh yeah, got to work on the blog because right now it's still a mess, might have to change to a different template.

Enjoy the rest of your day!

Camille

Pearl Charm Bracelet

Hello!

Done with the summer festival that I work for and back in town from a trip to San Diego!

It's time to get back to crafting and blogging about it.

The latest project I did took me all of an hour (including the trip to the craft store... I ran out of headpins!) and was inspired by Honestly... WTF's most recent DIY. Their goal was to teach people how to wire wrap to make the charms for the bracelet. The DIY is easy to follow and has good pictures.

Here's Honestly... WTF's how to:
DIY Charm Bracelet

And here's my version of their bracelet.

My bracelet uses glass pearls from my bead stash, brass bead caps, brass headpins, and brass chain. I love how it turned out!

Happy crafting!

Camille

Christmas in July

I've been steadily working on these Magazine Christmas Trees, originally seen on Martha Stewart. It's a great project to do while watching a movie or tv. I also glittered some vintage Santa images from The Graphics Fairy, a great resource for vintage images.

I'm at an impasse as to whether to leave the trees plain or sprinkle them with glitter like Martha did. Either way, I think they'll be a great addition to my mantle this year.

Thank you to my husband, Tony, for taking the pictures.

Camille

Absentee blogger

I've been absent from blog land for a while because I started a new part time job! I'm working for a non profit summer festival and it takes what I love, event planning, and incorporates it into a great job.

In craftland I'm already thinking towards summer - 4th of July, camping, and I'm even thinking Christmas. I know it's only May but I know myself and I know if I don't start planning on Christmas gifts, favors, and decorations that I will lose all track of time and not do a thing. So, I think sometime in July I will start posting some Christmas items.

In the meantime, I will post in the next week or so what my husband and I designed for my friend's baseball themed baby shower. Lots of fun paper crafts!

Toodles,

Camille

Vintage Easter Lambs

I am hosting Easter luncheon this year and it will be an intimate gathering of four so I decided I want to decorate the table and dress up the place settings. Usually I have too many people to do this or run out of time, so I'm really excited I'm already done with this and I'm looking for other crafts to add to the table. This brown paper bag basket is also calling my name. :D

I visit The Graphics Fairy blog everyday to check out what new clip art is posted. This lamb was too cute to pass up and I thought I'd finally use some of my Martha Stewart glitter to embellish the collar and bell.

Here is one of the finished products ready to grace the table. If you are interested in doing something similar, check out The Graphics Fairy's Easter section and Gold Shoe Girl to see how she embellished a couple different Easter graphics.

Happy Crafting!

Camille

Singer Sewing Manual 1949

According to the Singer Sewing Manual, I'd never sew.

Friendship Bracelets

As many of us did, I used to make friendship bracelets out of floss and during my hippie stage, hemp. Everyday I visit the blog Honestly WTF and check out if they have any new DIYs. They usually post at least one per week. Last summer they posted quite a few bracelet tutorials including making chevron friendship bracelets, which I have never done. I always did the plain jane versions with all the colors in a row.

Here's the link to the tutorial and my first attempt at a chevron style friendship bracelet. I was going for nautical but it looks more patriotic and I think I should have used more than 6 strands of floss.

-Camille

Cutting hi-jinks

I have been remiss in posting this past week. I've been busy cutting all of my fabrics for the Nature's Gift quilt. So many 2-7/8 squares for the pinwheels!

As a beginning quilter I also got a little overwhelmed and confused by how much yardage I was supposed to get. 2 out of the 16 fabrics I purchased were short. Needless to say I went back to the store to get more fabric. Lesson learned about being more organized next time, especially when a quilt contains so many fabrics.

Also, as a beginner/advanced beginner quilter I didn't have one of the rulers I need to finish cutting one fabric. I think my next investment will be a square ruler.

Until next time!
-Camille

Fabrics for Nature's Gift

Getting to work on my first quilt of the year, Nature's Gift. The quilt was originally done in holiday fabrics but I've decided on brighter colors.

Here are my fabric choices for the quilt. 

Now, let the cutting begin!

Camille

25 Clever Ideas to Make Life Easier

I came across this blog post on another blog I read on a regular basis. Most of the tips are very useful and I've heard of a couple before. My favorites are hulling strawberries & storing linens for a neat linen closet.

Thank you Proper Prim for posting these tips.

Camille

Quilt Projects 2012

Well, it's almost the end of February and I'm just now writing about what quilt projects I'm going to work on in 2012. Originally I committed myself to make 5 quilts this year, spacing out the cost and giving myself enough time to work on each, but I think I've committed myself to at least 2-3 more. However many I would like to make, I want to make at least the original 5. Any additional quilts made will just be a bonus.

I will try to blog about the fabric and steps of each quilt. I must confess that half the time I get excited and power through stuff without slowing down to take any pictures of what I'm doing.

Here is the list of the five projects I have planned for the year:

Quilt 1: A simple square & pinwheel design called Nature's Gift from Deb Strain for Moda. This quilt is for me and will be in bright, cheery fabrics (red, aqua, yellow, green, pink). Trying to brighten up my atmosphere during all the dreary Oregon rainy season.

Quilt 2: A wedding/anniversary quilt for friends. Have yet to pick the pattern but I'm loving Swoon here & here.

Quilt 3: A Triple Irish Chain bed quilt for my husband's paternal grandmother. It will be done in 30's reproduction fabric. I'm basing it off this Triple Irish Chain on the Moda Bake Shop blog. I'm still not sold on the red flower with yellow centers in the quilt but I have yet to come up with a different color combo.

Quilts 4 & 5: Throw quilts for my husband's maternal grandparents. I haven't picked a pattern or colors/fabrics for these yet.

Other quilts on my mind: A double wedding ring table runner (taking a class on the technique), a quick and easy quilt done in the local university's colors, and something for a 5 year old boy.

That's all for today!

-Camille

Do Over Challenge Reveal

After a bit of a delay, here's my Do Over of the beaded necklace and earrings sent to me:

Here's the full length view of the necklace, very long .

This is the close up of the two different configurations of beads I used  the length of the necklace.

I opted not to make a pair of earrings and just focus on a necklace. I really liked the orange-y colored beads and the smaller iridescent clear/gold beads. I left the clear beads out of my design. I really like tribal, ethnic designs so I chose some carved wood beads from my stash to complete the look. The design itself reminds me more of Native American designs in the overall shape of the necklace. Hopefully, I can find somewhere to wear it.

It was a different experience for me. I consider myself an advanced beginner when it comes to beading and I tried to stretch myself to do something different than I would normally make and I hope I achieved that.

Thanks to Jeannie for organizing this. Check out Jeannie's Blog so you can check out the rest of the participants Do Overs.

Camille

Do Over Challenge 2

I am participating in the Do Over Challenge 2 created by Jeannie, a jewelry designer and here's the link to the challenge posted on her blog, http://site.jkdjewelry.com/blog/2011/09/19/do-over-challenge2/. And here's an explanation of the challenge:

"The jewelry sent out for this challenge are designs I made when I was new to jewelry-making and did not know any better.  These are designs I won’t sell.  I can’t guarantee what you get or that you will even like it.  Just have fun and keep within the spirit of what this challenge is about; DO OVER! Take a “before” and “after” picture.  Try to use at the very least 50% of the do over piece.  You can add beads from your own stash."


These are my "before" pictures of the earrings and necklace I received. The photos aren't great, I still need to work on my photography.

Come back later for the "after" photos to see what I came up with!


Camille

Back from vacation...

Here's a couple of pictures from my recent trip to Southern California. My husband is the photographer in our family. When he gets all the photos processed & edited, I will post a link to his site. Here's the link to some of my husband's photos from our trip. Most of them are of animals from the zoo and he's not done editing all of them so there will be more trickling onto the site as time goes by. http://www.flickr.com/ashdr

Enjoy!

Camille

Crooked picture of the beach

Tony taking pictures on the harbor cruise

Sunset from the airplane ride home. I used the Hipstamatic app on my phone.

Etsy: Handmade Portraits

This week's Handmade Portraits series on Etsy is showcasing Mabel Pike, a Tlingit Native beader/bead artist. She truly found her love of beading at an early age and I admire her dedication to her craft for the last 85 years.

This video makes me long for the hand beaded barrettes gifted to my sister and me by friends of my grandparents. They did quite a bit of traveling in the Southwest and brought us each a set of barrettes on several occasions. Between the two of us, I acquired the bulk of the barrettes but over several moves the last 8-10 years, I only have one barrette left out of 6-8 sets we originally had. Maybe this will inspire me to attempt hand beading my own barrettes. Hmm.

An Artist's Process

Family Craft Day

Last Saturday, my mom, sister and I gathered at my sister's house for what is to become our monthly craft day. Whoever is hosting the craft day chooses the craft and picks a lunch recipe. My sister chose to make decorative pillow cases for throw pillows.

Since this was our first craft day, things didn't go as planned but we still managed to have fun, eat fondue and chocolate, and work on at least one decorative pillow cover.

I also forgot to take pictures of what we did throughout the day. My goal for next month's craft day will be to take more pictures and possibly post instructions on what we did.

Below is the pillow I made on the craft day. I didn't follow the instructions and flew by the seat of my pants so there was no way my pillow case was going to fit a 20x20 inch pillow form. I adjusted it with a tuck in the middle and the flange around the outside, so the 12x16 pillow form fit inside the case. My pillow was made out of two matching cloth napkins I purchased from a home, bed and bath store.

My sister, Bernadette, sought help from my mom and there was a little more planning involved for her pillowcase than I did so hers turned out beautifully and fit the form. The morning of our craft day we all went to a fabric/craft store to check out fabric and my sister found her fabric in the clearance section and it was an additional 50% off. We also found fabric that would make a great liner for a purse and have hopes of making purses on a future craft day.

My mom worked on shortening some king size pillowcases to fit her standard sized pillows for her bed. When she was done with that she lent moral and sewing support and made the Jarlsberg and Gruyère fondue.

Welcome to craft-a-mamie

Welcome to craft-a-mamie, a craft blog, where I explore and post my projects and also other inspirational projects from other sources. In 2011, I am trying to do more things that make me happy and feel fulfilled and one of those things is creating and crafting.

The name of this blog will hopefully encompass the wide variety of crafts that interest me from sewing, quilting, paper crafts (including quilling, kirigami, and origami), jewelry making/beading, kids' crafts and home decorating projects, etc.

I will highlight the other crafty people in my life and their chosen fields of interest.

To kick this blog off I will be posting a piece of origami a day from the daily calendar I gifted myself at the after Christmas sales.

Hope you find the crafts, inspiration, and ideas you're looking for!

Camille