just helen

200 Years of Coats and Clark

When I was walking up and down the aisles at CHA last month, something non-scrapbooking/paper/ribbon/embellishment-related caught my eye...a beautiful, large wooden spool...with drawers!

What a wonderful piece!  I know, it looks precariously perched towards the back of the table.  The nice people in the booth were kind enough to move all their post-it notepads from the opened drawers so that I could see what it looked like closed...and then opened again! 

Then they proceeded to point out their cool display of memorabilia.   I love old "things".  Wandering down memory lane and one of those collectibles (that I can afford) are spools of thread.

Isn't the top one cute?  Just looking at the "anklet shades" of darning and mending thread makes me smile to imagine those colors of socks on little feet...I guess they could be big feet, too!

I have glass jars full of all sorts of different colors and types of threads, most of them purchased at thrift stores or estate sales.  They are really fun!  But back to the trade show and a few of their gems.

I love the color card binder.  It's fun to think that salesmen had all that those sorts of sample cards so many years ago!  It would be a fun addition to a scrapbook page or an album, but sad to take a page out of the book, for sure.  (I have been known to take books apart!)

This is a fabulous calendar, don't you think?

I wouldn't mind one of these to store spools of thread in...

I would love to find something like this!

How's this for zippers?

I already have a lot of these colors, on really old wooden spools...am I lucky woman or what?  

In commemoration of their 200th year, Coats and Clark re-printed some of their trade cards with a calendar on the back.  The Coats and Clark people very kindly gave me an extra set of these cards and I would like to share with you...it's just a little giveaway, but if anyone out there is interested, please leave me a comment.  I will randomly draw a name (out of the hat) Saturday, February 24, 2012, in the morning.  I think these would be great with vintage photos or as part of one of those cute little albums.  I am anxious to use mine!

If you are interested in more of the Coats and Clark history, please visit the Coats and Clark website here. It's all very interesting!  Happy crafting!

Dyeing Doilies

In my early introduction to Pinterest, I came across a picture of some really pretty doilies that had been pinned by my friend Stephanie.  She had gotten the idea from Charlotte's Fancy...who had gotten the idea from a Martha Stewart tutorial.  

(from Martha's website)
Aren't these pretty?  I had to try them for myself.  On Martha's website, she gives directions for using food coloring dye, but I have a bunch of bottles of Glimmer Mist - a spray dye in a bottle that has a touch of shimmer to the dye - why not try that first!

Since it is almost Valentine's Day, I decided to work with pink and red.  I love how they turned out!  I just sprayed them on my Ranger Non-stick Craft Sheet.  Some of the doilies absorbed the spray right up.  Others, I had to spray on both sides.  Super easy.  When spraying these, it was easy to let them dry on the sheet.  It may be a learning curve to work with doilies after they are completely dipped in dyed water, but it was super easy to work with them flat - they dried without needing to disturb them.

The doilies are a great accent touch for packaging or using as an element on a card.

I gave the heart a double dose of chunky glitter...looks like sugar, huh!

The intensity of the color works great with one of my favorites...brown paper bags.  Kind of makes me anxious for Easter colors!

Let me just say that I love the look of these doilies enough to give it a go with the dye next time.  I will just be making a whole bunch of each color at once.  Thanks for sharing the idea, Stephanie...isn't Pinterest a whole lot of fun?  Oh, and by the way, to all my local friends...if you want to get together and do this as a communal project, just let me know.  It would be a shame to let any of that dye get dumped down the drain! 

Our Little Love Shack

A funny thing happened on the way to the Love Shack... 

Okay...it's not horrible, but the combination of the bright colors and the pastels just wasn't doing anything for me...not to mention that the windows and door are just off enough to make it look like a crooked face. 

I liked the idea of the pink, red and white candy corn, but this pattern on the roof was not making me happy.

I even liked the marshmallow straw-like pieces, but I could not force myself to finish it.  I did, however, talk Megan into letting me decorate the second kit, but she told me this one had to be cute...or else!  Tell me what you think!

I separated the red and pink candies from all the other colors.  When I made the royal icing, I put a little more than half of the white into a bag, and tinted the rest with a red paste food coloring.

I piped some pink royal icing onto a sheet of parchment paper in the shape of a flower stem and leaves, added a large pink sugar confetti on top and then I let it dry overnight.  The flowers are delicate, but super cute.

Did you notice something missing?  It's the windows and door.  That pattern imprinted in the gingerbread was not making me happy, so I took the pieces and put them together...inside out!  I kind of like the linear pattern better on the wrong side.

Royal icing piped onto the base adds texture - little mini hearts were sprinkled onto the pink icing.  I loved the pale pink sugar pearls...did you catch the not-so-hidden Minnie?

I know there's a lot of red, pink and white, but I do like this better than the first attempt.  My suggestion?  Don't try this when you're tired.  It's much more fun after a good night's sleep!

 

Look What Just Came in the Mail!!!

 
I am so excited!  Why, you ask, would I be so excited about 3 spools of white seam binding?  It isn't so much what it is, but rather what it represents. To me, it is three HUNDRED yards of raw material that will be my blank canvas, that when combined with my newly added to stash of this...

 
...Glimmer Mist, in no time it will be magically transformed into this!

 
Isn't it a beautiful sight? 

I have dyed ribbon before.  When I first started using Glimmer Mist on my paper art flowers, there was a lot of over-spray. I couldn't stand the thought of just wiping it up with a paper towel and then throwing it away.  So I took a white, cream or light color ribbon and absorbed the color.  It really gives it a wonderful hand-dyed look.  But I had never used seam binding before.  One day I found some beautifully colored seam binding at a little shop and loved the colors, but didn't really love the price.  Then one day I saw some pretty bundles on a website, that linked to an etsy shop, that had a bunch of beautiful piles of something that looked just like the loose weave of the seam binding, and being the resourceful person that I am, I went on a hunt to find it in bulk...and I found it...and that's why I'm so excited...I get to make my own! 

I found a couple of different tutorials on how to make it.  Google "how to crinkle ribbon" or hand-dyed wrinkled ribbon if you think you want to try your hand at it.  But if you think you can do it from written directions, here you go...

Cut a length of white ribbon.  If you plan on wrinkling it (not just dying it, which is also very pretty) and need a certain length, you will want to add a little more because the wrinkling will shorten the yardage.  I measure out 4 yards and it ended up about 3 yards, 12 inches.

 
I like to work on my Ranger non-stick craft sheet.  It protects your surface and wipes up easily.

Lightly spray the ribbon with a little water (I rinsed out an empty Glimmer Mist bottle - reduce, reuse, recycle...re-purpose!)...

 
...just enough to lightly dampen it, tossing it as you go.  Next, choose your colors.  For the first batch I picked Hydrangea, Purple Pansy and Fully Purple.  Start off with the lightest color, Hydrangea.

 
The seam binding tends to dry lighter than it looks when wet.  I moved to the next color, Purple Pansy.

 
You can see where the color is building.  Don't forget to use the over-spray - it would be a shame to waste such lovely droplets! 

 
 
I sprayed the darkest color directly onto the craft mat so that I could selectively apply the color to the binding and not get a big glob of it where the spray hits.

 
Now that is pretty...but not quite done.  Take a paper towel and towel dry the binding.  This helps to speed up the drying process.

 
If you don't want wrinkled seam binding, you can just let this dry.  But wrinkling it adds a nice vintage, weathered look. 

Wrinkling can be done a number of different ways, which is what I discovered when I went jumping around the Internet.  This is what worked best for me.

After you paper towel dry the seam binding, take it and cram it into a little baggie and force it into one corner.

 
Next, twist it snugly into place.  You can put a rubber band around the top to hold it in tightly in place, or just bring the top over it.

 
Now set it aside, generally overnight.  I did a few more colors, just for fun!

 
In the morning, take the binding out of the baggie and lightly fluff it up; then leave it to finish air drying.  If you get impatient, you can use your hair dryer on low to speed it up, but it might relax the wrinkle a bit.  Sorry...I didn't take a picture of the fluffing step, but you can figure it out.  The end result?

 
Love the colors!  Looks like a rainbow, don't you think?  Wouldn't you like some of this?  Of course you would.  And I would love to share.  Here's how this can find it's way to your house. 

At the top of the page, click on "follow" and sign-up...that's how you get your first chance.  Then leave me  comment after this post for a second chance.  I will leave this opportunity open until 12:00pm (Pacific Standard Time) on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 when a winner will be chosen and posted that afternoon.  This is open to anyone EXCEPT my immediate family (husband and children - they can get it from my office:)  I haven't figured out the random counter yet, so names will go into a hat, one of my kids will pick it and then I will post the winner.  I'm small stuff, its a small prize, so please...no sour grapes if you don't win!  This is just for fun and because I really like to share.  Here is what you'll get! 

 
If you can think of a friend that might be interested, pass the word along.  Good luck, everyone!

Don't Be Disappointed

I'm back!  I am so out of the habit of posting!  It has been over a week and I rarely go that long without a post.  I went off to CHA (in Los Angeles) without so much as a second glance back...well, I did make sure there was plenty of food in the house for the boys.  There always is, but if it isn't prepared, the menfolk would claim that there wasn't anything to eat!  Oh yes, and the laundry was done so they would have clean clothes to wear.  It is amazing how leaving the house for a few days can get you out of those daily routines that become such a part of life, like cooking, doing dishes, the laundry...and blogging!  Megan got some time off work and came along for the adventure.  It's always more fun when you're sharing the experience - safer, too.

Since we had different places that we wanted to go while in LA, we borrowed Tom's TomTom (it was a gift for him from Megan for Christmas) and actually plugged in the address to the hotel.  We didn't really need to, since we knew how to get onto the I-805, which merges into the I-5, which splits into the I-405, which is where the hotel was off of.  Originally we had planned on leaving by 2pm, but we were about an hour late, which is normal for us.  It's what almost always happens when we leave for a trip, especially if we don't have a firm arrival time, but it did mean weekend traffic.  We were happily chatting, driving along in the carpool lane until we were about to come to the split when the TomTom was telling us to take the I-4 west 5 to the right - this was not the first confusing element of the directions given, but we had just laughed at the navigational equipment's pronunciations before.  Anyway, it ended taking about 3 hours to get there - at least an hour longer than necessary and the sad thing was that we didn't even get to enjoy the scenery, if there was scenery to be seen, because the traffic was heavy and it got dark and we weren't sure which direction we were headed and that can be dangerous wherever one travels. 

Dang...all that typing and we just got to the hotel!  I'd better speed things up.  I have to admit that our eating out was on the "no-so-memorable" list...you can always count on Carl's Jr. for a quick drive-thru breakfast...every morning -I know but hey, it's all we had time for!  We skipped lunch, unless you count the cupcakes at Cricut and the little candies that companies had sitting around.  For dinner we did Polly's Pies the first night (really good - gave Megan an idea for mixing up the grilled cheese sandwiches at home); Subway (good, but nothing fancy:), PeiWei (always hits the spot); Subway (again...I know, but it was across the street); then Taco Bell for dinner on our way home.  We girls really know how to "fine dine" while traveling, don't you think?

There you have it...the sum of our adventure.  Oh wait...there was the show!  Dang - not many pictures.  I did take a picture of the three little pincushions that I made for Cosmo Cricket...um, in the hotel, not their booth. (The lighting is really bad...sunrise coming in the window.)

 
They were really cute in the booth on their make-and-take table.  But alas, I was a slacker.  I was just having too much fun!  Plus, there's that loud-speaker that comes on, saying about taking photos without the express permission of the companies is forbidden, ya-da, ya-da, ya-da...so I kind of put it out of my mind.  However, I couldn't resist taking a picture of this:

 
 
This was at the EK Success booth and should have come with this warning:  Mamas, don't let your daughters grow up to be blingers!!!  I know, things are always exaggerated at trade shows and it was so pretty and sparkly that I couldn't resist snapping a shot of this, but it is not an endorsement for appropriate attire!   I must say that they had a great variety of make-and-takes that covered the broad spectrum of all their new kits and they were very generous and fun to make...will show more later.

While in the Graphics 45 booth (which was, by the way PHENOMENAL!) one of the booth ladies said to "Take all the pictures you want"...sounds like express permission!  Here are a few!

 
Love this...and that knob is part of the product line! 

 
 
 
 
I love the pull toy!  Not for pulling, though! 
 
Oh, and by the way, I get to work with this fabulous product for a kit for Pinecone for next month!

I can't even decide which of the product I am most excited about - I will link to the lines I didn't take pictures of.  I have been busy since I've been home working on projects for Pinecone Press.  Here are some of the remnants...will show projects later!

 
The TomTom kept trying to get us lost on the way home from the show, but we just turned him (or her) off and navigated as usual.  We found our way back to the Pinecone warehouse, where I picked up some of the Graphic 45 Le Cirque collection to take home to play with.  I love to get away, but I'm glad to be home.  I'm cooking up a storm and I'm ready to share...and blog...again!