SINGER 7256 Fashion Mate

I bought a new sewing machine!

Actually, I didn't buy it. My parents gave it to me as an early birthday present. Thanks parents!

It's pretty sweet. Not only does it have a whole lot of computerized stitches, but it also as an automatic needle threader, a bunch of extra bobbins, needles, feet, buttonhole accessories, etc. And it fits great on my new sewing table in my new office. Yay new things!

I've turned it on, threaded it, used the bobbin winder, and generally fussed around with it. However, it has yet to see true needle to fabric action. I planned on using it this past weekend for just that but I got a head cold and my entire life got relegated to the couch, or the bed, or anywhere else I could close my eyes. I did manage to get to JP Knit and Stitch which was having a big fabric sale. I found this beautiful yellow and white fabric.

I'm not sure what I'll use it for, but I'm sure it will be something fabulous. Unfortunately, I bought this along with a yellow rotary cutter in a yellow box while wearing my neon yellow hoodie - everyone in the store had a big laugh at that. Normally I would have laughed along with them but it took everything I need not to sneeze on every single piece of cloth in that store.

I also made a quick trip to Winmil Fabrics in downtown Boston to buy some cheap organza for a test run of a secret wedding craft.

Flowers!

Simon has been telling me to explore new hobbies for years. I've just never really been a "hobby" person. Growing up I spent all my time singing and acting, so much so that I never really found a need to kill time. When I moved to Boston I found myself no longer performing and a little lost. I tend to justify my wasting hours away in front of the TV as "relaxing" when I am, in fact, just wasting hours in front of the TV. I have spurts of diversions like when I ran the half-marathon or when I get caught up reading for hours on end, but nothing that I would consider a "hobby" that I could just come home to and pick up if I so desired. That is, until I started experimented with making book-page flowers for the wedding...

I spent Saturday making flowers.

And by Saturday, I mean ALL DAY Saturday. The whole day. Coffee to Sleepytime tea. Here is what I have to show for it:

I was completely content keeping my hands busy, having the TV off and good music on, drinking tea and trying not to burn myself with a hot glue gun. I found following origami directions calming and zen-like. I think I have a hobby : )

Some of these tutorials I found on Pinterest, some on other websites, but I'll link to each one below the picture.

Kusudama Flowers

3D Star (the actual tutorial is in some language I don't know...but the pictures are easy to follow)

Easy Paper Flower

Rolled Flower

Large Paper Flower

Storybook Rose (this one is my favorite - also the most time consuming)

not-so-good boutineers

My mom got me the book "Handmade Weddings" for Christmas and it has some beautiful crafts and photos.

One of the projects that caught my eye were these beautiful felt boutineers: 

They looked pretty simple and I couldn't see any reason not to try it with book pages. Making the buds went pretty well with some practice. I couldn't get the tight spiral since unlike felt, paper creases. The biggest difficulty occurred when I attempted to put the buds together using floral wire and floral tape. Can I just say that floral tape is really, REALLY frustrating. It's more tacky than sticky and only wants to adhere to itself. The tape kept sliding off the paper leaving the whole project looking pretty messy.

I don't think I'll be making these for the wedding. So it goes though, right? I am going to attempt to make this boutineer next, which I found on Style Me Pretty:

I will use the directions found here. Wish me luck!

Offbeat Derivations

While scavenging the wedding blogosphere, I came across a wonderful post on Offbeat Bride. A contributor had gathered love quotes - which didn't induce eye-rolling - for her wedding and she chose her favorite 52 to put on the site. Her juxtaposition of time-honored literary sources, cult classic films, and popular media struck a cord with me.

Here are a few of my favorites:

"True love is the greatest thing, in the world-except for a nice MLT — mutton, lettuce and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean and the tomato is ripe." -The Princess Bride

"As You Wish." -The Princess Bride

 "'cause I know there is strength
in the differences between us
and I know there is comfort
where we overlap"
-Ani Difranco's Overlap

"Who, being loved, is poor?" -Oscar Wilde

"I love you. You annoy me more than I ever thought possible, but… I want to spend every irritating minute with you." -Scrubs

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.'" -Shall We Dance?

"When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." -When Harry Met Sally

"I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone." -Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring

"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love." -Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace

"We loved with a love that was more than love." -Edgar Allan Poe's Annabell Lee

"He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began." -Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

"You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams." -Dr. Seuss

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." -Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

"Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold." -Zelda Fitzgerald

"Gravitation can not be held responsible for people falling in love." -Albert Einstein

ok...so maybe some of them make you want to roll your eyes... : )

Paper Flowers: la segunda parte

I haven't been terribly crafty recently. I keep falling victim to the TV or to reading the incredibly long, and incredibly addictive, George R. R. Martin Game of Thrones series. I have managed to make some more paper flower prototypes...and this time...they're yellow!

 

Not too long ago, my newly appointed maid-of-honor, the lovely Lauren C., came over to our place to help us experiment with making churros (post to come later this week). While she was here, the three of us brainstormed the best way to color book pages: paint? spraypaint? if so, how? before shaping the flowers? after construction?

Lauren then came up with the obvious answer: use the RIT dye I bought to dye buttons! I already have the leftover dye and I know that I like the shade of yellow it produces. <- this is why she's my MOH.

Total success. It almost became a disaster when I forgot about the fact that PAPER flowers dunked in to LIQUID dye must DISSOLVE. In my blissful ignorance I attempted to get a stronger yellow color by submerging the flowers for far too long - resulting in some frantic separating, reshaping, and flattening of the petals. I think a quick dunk would have done the trick. Or maybe numerous dunks over a longer time period with the flowers drying between treatments. 

  

 

The color difference is phenomenal. I did have to use a more white book page for the yellow dye to take; but I'm super happy with the results.  

 

Paper Flowers

While searching the blogs I've come across a number of beautiful paper flowers, particularly ones made out of book pages. Using these tutorials, I've made some prototypes with various kinds of glue (Elmer's and hot glue) to see what holds best. I think hot glue is winning...also, hot glue is super fun to play with; and don't we want to have fun while crafting?


I won't say what these will eventually be used for, but I'm pretty sure people can guess which future event they'll be used for.


They are really simply to make. The rose is merely cutting a spiral and rolling it up. At first it looks totally wrong but if you plop it down on a table and let it settle into itself, it really becomes a beautiful bloom.


These ones are more time consuming. Each petal is an individual sheet out paper which are ultimately glued together. I really think the final product is beautiful and worth the effort.

Paper Hearts

As the post below states, Simon and I are engaged! yay!! He proposed on our 5 year anniversary and the ring could not be more beautiful. I am happy beyond belief : )

We're going to do a long engagement, hopefully getting married sometime in Spring 2013 - which is great, because I would love the wedding to be mostly DIY; and two years gives me plenty of time to try out some crafts.

Mostly, I'd like to tie in some vintage books in to the overall decor of the wedding. One idea I've had is to punch out paper hearts and scatter them around whatever we end up using as centerpieces. And what luck! Martha Stewart makes a heart-shaped paper punch!

Super easy and surprisingly entertaining to use. The little heart shaped punch comes in two pieces, a base and a punch, in between which you place the paper. Each piece has magnets which attract each other to prevent the paper from slipping or moving during the punching process.


The intended purpose of the punch is to make a negative design on the paper to be used - which is why it comes with a small border of dots. I, however, am just saving the would-be trash...and vacuuming up all the little dots.


See! beautiful! I have the amount of about 1/3 of a sandwich bag right now. I love the way they look, and it makes for a pleasant craft while watching TV. I hope to fill the sandwich bag and use them in the wedding in one way or another.


* I am using an old copy of my favorite text - Jane Eyre - of which I have numerous editions. It's sort of a twisted and dark love story, so the text on the hearts is certainly not gushymushysquishyloveydovey text.

We're Engaged!