Posted by SewPixie on April 13th, 2008 in Baking, Daily Life, Sewing, Sewing Room
So the house is a mess…again. You would think after thirty *mumble* years I would be able to keep a house picked up. This weekend I managed to get the kitchen and the dining room cleaned up. The living room isn’t terrible so I will get to that this week.
The sewing room however….was terrible. I couldn’t work anymore in there without a cleanup. Now I have to admit, normally that is stuffing things into boxes ‘to go through later’. But no, today I did a real cleaning. Which meant folding up a truckload of fabric.
I really have a problem! Sheesh I have a lot of fabric. I did pick up some new baskets to hold some of it so I hope that helps with tidiness. Of course I could always stop buying more fabric at a faster rate than I use it. Naw…that would make sense.
I also manged to get some more bags into the shop. I am happy to report that they all sold! The domestic items I will ship out tomorrow and I will send the International either on Saturday or during the week if I can get to the post. Also on the finished pile is a custom doll bag that I made for the Blythe Rescue Mission. It is a collaborative piece that will be belong to a custom Blythe doll. I’m psyched!
As you can see, Napoleon was no help with any of of crafting or cleaning activities. KoKo and Pixel generally spent the weekend lounging around also. Must be nice to not have to lift a paw yet get fed and have a nice place to sleep.
To wind up the weekend I baked some strawberry cupcakes for work. I was going to do a cake but saw some regular size muffin cups at the store today that you don’t have to use a pan for. The only pan I have is for mini cupcakes and I didn’t want to ice a billion little cupcakes. This of course reminds me that I have to go to work tomorrow. Yuck. It isn’t so much that I hate work and fear it is stealing my soul, it is just that I hate how busy I am. I have a ton of things I need to do and problems that need fixed. That just gets me all flustered as I don’t have time to do them all and wind up in a funk where I barely get anything done at all. What needs to be done is I need to get back into the habit of using 7-habits type planning and get those big rocks the hell outta the way.
Posted by SewPixie on January 21st, 2008 in Blythe, Daily Life, Sewing, Sewing Room
I have today off of work. Horray! So far this has been a pretty busy weekend.
Saturday Candace and I had a mini-meet with Sylvia over at her house. Her little girls are just so cute and full of energy. And Sylvia’s work is just wonderful as are her lovely dolls. It was a fun time. After that we hit up Zoe’s Trunk for what else…more fabric. I picked up some prints for Valentines and St. Patrick’s Day dresses.
I’ve also been hard at work on more dolly body bags. I received a large order that I am super excited about so I need to get planning on those and choosing which prints to submit for it. I am just about out of the little tags I made so I ordered some custom printed ribbon instead. I am thinking if I do a loop for the tag then people could use that loop and the one at the top that hook on a strap as suggest by Eddo.
Oh yes! And on Friday we hit up Ikea at lunch so I could look at some shelves in person to help me decide on a bookcase for the ‘doll house’. Well, as I mentioned in my comments, they had a Bonde bookcase on clearance that was the perfect width and depth. We went ahead and picked that up and Candace helped me out by toting me home. I put that together Friday night and used two shelves for the dolls and the rest for me. I plan on decorating it after the miniatures show in February. Mr. B and I were always going to do a train track layout and I looked forward to the miniatures so now I have a shot at it.
So today is going to be filled with cleaning, laundry, sewing, and cutting out bags. Whew! Then on Friday is my and Candace’s yearly trek to the Sewing & Quilt Festival. Yay! And I almost forgot…a big thank you to Candace and Tina for coming across some cool quilted fabric prints on their trip to the JoAnn’s in SanTan yesterday!
Posted by SewPixie on January 11th, 2008 in Blythe, Sewing Room
Okay so…currently my Blythe girls have a very message ‘room’ inside the wardrobe in my sewing room. I have been planning on doing something a little better for them but now that i have four (more on that later).
Here is my problem, I can’t decide what I want to use for their ‘house’. I don’t HAVE to have them in sewing room but since it is my crafty place I want them in there. Here are what I think are my requirements:
- Doors so the cats/ferret can’t get at the dolls
- Room for all four of them with a bedroom or two, living room, kitchen and study/craft room
- Ability to light well for photos
This is where I could use some help! I have 3 ideas for what to do.What do you think?
Smallest Traby shelf in the wardrobe. This would be four rooms inside the warbrode. Pros: Doesn’t take up much room, should be enough room next to it to put plastic drawers for storage. Cons: Too small maybe, the dark warbrode is a lighting challenge.
Bigger Narrow Billy Bookcase. To the right of my closet Ihave my jewelry armoire there now. This idea is to put that back into my room and put a tall narrow Billy bookcase there with a glass door. Pros: Lots of room, should be good light, safe from kitties, can use the wardrobe for craft storage (ols sewing machine for example). Cons: Pixel may be sad that he can’t site on the armoire in the sewing room, will the room look crazy busy/cluttered?
Biggest Large Billy Bookcase. This idea is to replace the short and wide Billy bookcase with a tall one with doors. Half the space for the dolls and the rest for the books and such I have in the bookcase in there now. The old bookcase I could put in my room or somewhere. Pros: Tons of room, okay light. Cons: may be a pain with the doors to get at books and such with the bookcase in the corner.
I am leaning toward the middle option. Hmm….
The furniture layout is wrong (except for the armoire and the small book shelf in the top/left corner) but this is the space I am in Sewing Room Take Two
Posted by SewPixie on August 19th, 2007 in Sewing Room
So this bulletin board has been through several phases. First it was a regular bulletin board with black cork and a faux wood frame. Then I put purple fabric on it and painted the frame in white crackle with a blank undercoat. Then I didn’t like that so I painted the frame dark purple and put white ribbon around the edge of the fabric.
That brings us to this weekend. The dark purple was covered over with a mixture of coats of white, light green, and pink. I was going to crackle again this time with two light colors but I think I gave away my crackle paint. I took off the purple fabric, put on bedsheet fabric instead (tucked into the frame this time rather than glued). Then to secure the ribbon I covered thumbtacks with buttons using hot glue. I had just enough thumbtacks a junk drawer for it too. I say ‘a’ junk drawer rather than ‘the’ junk drawer as I have many junk drawers, bags, piles, and boxes. *sigh* I am currently on a quest to rid myself of all of these junk areas and in the process…the junk.
>
Posted by SewPixie on August 3rd, 2007 in Home Sweet Home, Sewing Room
…please note that this does not say that the closet in the sewing room is clean as well. 
Yesterday the sewing room got cleaned up. This is a part of Operation Clean Up Vacation. The closet still needs to the gone through but this is a really good start. Under the table are just some empty boxes and a plastic drawer set (I threw a white sheet over the table to cover that up). Sometime soon that folding table will be replaced with a white table from Ikea and another green chair will join the existing one. There are still some crafty things in other parts of the house that need put away but we will get to that over time.
I also added a little bit to the Bella Dia inspired fabric wall. Meh, I don’t love mine near as much as hers. Her scale and layout is so nice. I have a hard time parting with fabric so I didn’t want to give up very large pieces. Perhaps I will remake them soon. I just taped the fabric on rather than use double-stick tape so I will do that when I do them again. And, I kept them all the same exact dimensions in the columns and it looks like she changed hers up a bit.
…see all the images on Flicker.
Posted by SewPixie on January 2nd, 2007 in Sewing Room
What on Earth possessed me to strip the paint off of the purple table before redoing it? Why? Why did this sounds like a good idea? I am up to my elbows in organ glop paint remover. And I think the pink laminate underneath is going to look too scratches so I’m going to have to repaint it anyways. I SHOULD have just painted over the purple but noooooo. I didn’t want to many paint layers on it. I thought that it should be stripped down first. Hopefully the problem is that I am using a metal spatula and not a real paint scraper. Going to try and pick one up this evening and have another go.
Ugh.
Posted by SewPixie on December 11th, 2006 in Sewing Room
Ok so my plan so far is to get an Ikea Muddus table for a cutting table. It is a drop leaf table of sorts so I can store it in the corner when not needed then open it up and drag it to the middle of the room when I want to. The only issue with this is where to store the mat. Well, since the one I have is a little worse for wear I am thinking of replacing it with 2 18″ x 24″ mats. I can then afix one mat to each of the two table sections. So I will have a small cutting table for small projects then just expand the table to double the size. wooo!
Now to just figure out the best way to adhere the mats to the table.
Posted by SewPixie on December 11th, 2006 in Sewing Room
So I am thinking green again. I found a good green that is a lighter version of the chair color. Problem is, when I look at it on the American Traditions site the color is very different than the paint chip I have sitting here. Hmm. I may have to just get the little sample size and paint up a few boards and see how it really looks. Very confusing.
Other than that I did some checking at Ikea for the items I want for the room. No progress yet on when the switch will happen. I have a few projects to get through first before I can get to cleaning up.
Posted by SewPixie on December 4th, 2006 in Sewing Room
Here are two color ideas using the Behr website. The photo is one of their stock photos. The brown isn’t dead on for the floor color or armoire but eh close enough.
So here is one of the greens I picked out at the store (well picked out the paint chip card). The green is a much lighter version of the the olive on the chair. Pros: light, fairly neutral, matches chair Cons: perhaps a bit too bright i have a hard time seeing it with say and orange.
Here is another sample, this time a pale butter yellow. Pros: light, neutral, matches chair and countless other colors Cons: We have a lot of yellow in the house
I think I am leaning towards the yellow. I was all set on a green, but I dunno. I do still want to maybe do our bedroom in green so I can still have it there.
Posted by SewPixie on December 1st, 2006 in Sewing Room
Here is my layout idea for the new room.
So far all I need are two of the narrow Billy bookcases from Ikea and one of the Vika Amon table tops. The cabinets I found in the garage and the purple table (who is pepto pink underneath the paint but that is all scrathcy now since I sanded it to paint) will be painted.
Oh and I got some paint chips for wall ideas that I will post later.