A Week of Crafting in Review

Fruit Storage
I started asking around and perusing the net for a large fruit basket about a month ago. Preferably one with tiers for easy access and superior storage abilities. You can go through a good amount of fruit in a family with 4 kids. The only good choice that I felt was an option is a tiered hanging basket, but seeing that we are renting, and I know it would be a penalty to screw anything into my lovely kitchen cabinets, that will not work. A friend sent me to a blog featuring someone making a tired dessert tray with different sized plates and small candle holders. Turns out that is a large craze at the moment and there are many, many different takes on this idea in blogs everywhere.I adopted the idea to use long ceramic trays, and a package of cake stand columns, sealing the deal with e6000 glue. The top tray is just low enough below the counters that you can still easily get to bananas. The night I made this and took the picture, we were running low on fruit, but you can see how much potential space is available for your produce.

Up-cycling Jeans to Apron

The biggest downfall about the way we shop for my dear husbands clothes, can be a

great boon to available craft denim to me. You see, he doesn't like to go shopping. Who can blame him when we always drag along the kids? When we go to the store, we buy 3-4 pairs of jeans, and a

few new shirts, generally a pair of shoes. Since they were all bought at the same time, they all wear out about the same time as well. So in the past week or two I've accumulated some materials just waiting to be up-cycled. I stumbled across "A Girl and a Glue Gun" in a search for recycling denim projects and loved what she did! Her tutorial says to use the

same size jean for your apron that you'd normally wear. I think that using a slightly larger jean would be preferable because I like a bit more side coverage to my apron. Of course, since this isn't a

Maternity apron, I couldn't model it, so I just layed it out for a picture.

Crinkle Toy

We had some company in town over the weekend. We BBQ'd for lunch one day, and they bought a bag of Sun Chips in the crinkliest bag ever. Despite Micheal Pollan's warning that the more something crinkles, the less you should buy it, Sun Chips didn't listen. This is definitely the loudest chip bag ever, and its compost-able you know. Since I have been collected the plastic cereal liners to make reusable sandwich wrap-ups with, it was natural I would want to keep this bag to create a baby toy. I had seen an adorable 'how-to' done by "Andrea's Originals" in a previous craft search and had a link in an email! Horray! I love when I think ahead enough to mail myself craft projects. Otherwise, it was just a passing thought. I did some research on the bag itself to make sure it was safe to use for such a purpose and feel that it is. The bag cannot currently be recycled by most municipal recycling plants, and will only decompose in a proper composting unit. Unless the bag is surrounded by the key ingredients in a composting pile, I think it will work well for this project. Like most crafted things, I would machine wash, but hang to dry. While I was sewing Abi played with the pin cushion. It happens to be a turtle. I had my camera with me and managed to snap a picture before she sensed the cameras presence. She's also modeling the apron. After the other girls had tried it on, it was of course her turn, and she never wanted it taken off for the night. I wish I was as handy with the camcorder, because she says 'turtle' so well, its just adorable!!

Fitted Table Cloth

After all helping little hands went to bed, I started to work on this last project, a tutorial given on "Smashed Peas and Carrots". I had cut the proper dimensions out earlier in the day yet any time I started to work on the corners the entire table cloth got the wiggles. The table the girl covered on her blog, has exact square corners, making it an ideal candidate for the simple box corner treatment she whips together in minutes. I didn't realize up front that my table has large rounded corners. So while I wanted the same outcome, I had to change what I did. Instead of the simple box corner seam, I ended up gathering toward the center of the corner from each side, and then tucking material from each side behind the middle of the corner material. I then folded the excess up and under to ensure that the entire perimeter of the table had 4 inches hanging over. Perhaps all this has technical names that would be much easier to understand, but I don't know what they are, Sorry. Overall it's been a fun week!