My newest grand niece was born in October, and will be baptized this month. She is a beautiful dark haired beauty with big, beautiful eyes and a cute little button nose!
I already made her a rocking chair for the baby shower to match her room theme of little grey elephants, so I looked for some inspiration to make her something special for her christening, which, unfortunately, I will be unable to attend.
I dug through my storage bins filled with fabric and patterns accumulated over the years from fabric stores, flea markets, and rummage sales. I love making dolls and get the strong urge every now and then to make one. Now was one of those times. I know that this choice of gift isn't religious in nature, but it's a cute little set nonetheless, and something that comes from my heart, so I went ahead with the project. I didn't have a photo, just a pattern, and although I thought I hadn't used the pattern before, I actually had, which I discovered, the further into the project I got.
I love this little Annie with her striped legs and fuzzy yarn hair. I also made a matching Annie faced onesie and matching bag for little Libby, my sweet little grand niece. Happy Christening Day, little one!
Today is a school holiday. Yesterday, my husband and I were ice-bound and unable to set foot out of our house because of terrible icing conditions. It was a Sunday, so most people on the top of our hill had no particular place to go anyway. Today is sort of a thawing out day, so I opted to stay put, let things outside get back to normal, and get some things done inside.
One thing my husband had on his Christmas list this year was a new ironing board cover for our wooden ironing board that also folds up into a seat. We keep the ironing board open in our bedroom all the time, so the seat pad is never used and is in mint condition, while our ironing board cover has been replaced several times. We used to order our covers from a place in North Carolina which has since closed, and I have discovered that there are very few places who make these covers for what I consider a reasonable price.
I figured I had enough sewing experience to easily create my own, since it's an odd size and can't be purchased at stores which carry ironing board covers. I searched around and found this tutorial which actually uses the casing portion of the old ironing board cover. So I gave it a whirl this morning. It took me a little over and hour and I used fabric and batting from my stash, so it virtually cost me nothing but my time! I am pleased with the way it turned out and pretty proud of myself to boot! It's only noon and there is plenty of time left in the day to accomplish lots more!
I haven't written in quite a while! Making my way through the busy first 4 months of the school year with back to school nights, open houses, parent conferences, special events and holiday activities left me little time to sit down and write about the fun things I was doing. I did manage to do a few creative things in and amongst all the job related extras. Lucky for me I'm an art teacher, so creativity is just part of the job!
Our latest planned creative venture at my high school will come at the end of April during our week long art show and on the Saturday before the music department presents their Spring Concert! We are calling the event "Arts Alive" and it will feature workshops in music, both choral and instrumental, a poetry workshop, and last but not least, a mixed media art workshop! The workshops will be offered to middle school students.
I, for one, am pretty excited about it. After meeting with the other member of my department, we decided to offer a mixed media workshop where the participants will create a collage using a variety of media including painting, collage, and printmaking. They will begin with a watercolor background accented with papers, puffy paints, watercolors, tempera paints and colored pencils. Then they will create a fish in paint, using a block print to make the scales, attach it to the background and add some finishing touches!
We created some examples, which both of us had great fun putting together. Hopefully, the participants in our "Arts Alive" Workshop will enjoy creating their sea life collage just as much!
