allsorts

My creative space - a peek into my drawers

Well, not my drawers, just one drawer, the shallow one in my fabric buffet (I have taken a shine to calling it that). Sorry about the blah photo, I'm not sure what the problem is, but I can't take a photo worth beans lately.  Well, you get the general idea.  The drawer is just deep enough for my art bin o' floss and a pink plastic divided thingie that once held my grandmother's costume jewelry and now holds sewing whatnots.

On top are some fq's that I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the Dallas quilt show, and Romsdol, an adorable folkster doll I snagged from the weewonderfuls etsy shop!  She's such a charmer!

So, that's my Creative Space peek for this week!  See more creative spaces here.

Cheers!

Jenny

Lula... the fashionable paper bunny

So, you have probably been wondered if I'd fallen off the planet. Nope, I've been playing with paper dolls!  I'm very pleased to introduce my first paper doll, Miss Lula Bunny.She was inspired by the dress-up activity on my web site, and has evolved from digital to a fabric design, to paper, to magnetic and back again to paper. I suppose you'd say I've been working on this one way or the other for years. So I am pretty excited to put this out there.

Miss Lula is four years old, four inches high, and has a very full schedule of social activities. She comes with four outfits that you can mix and match for a multitude of looks: party princess, play date, dance recital and swim time.

I used 60 lb. premium glossy photo paper, and archival inks, which gives a very colorful and vivid result. Also, I wanted to solve the issue paper dolls typically have with being floppy and not standing up properly. So I put on my engineering hat and designed a nifty card stock brace that allows her to stand up straight and not droop. Here is the complete set...

... which is now available in my etsy shop!  I really hope you like it, because I loved creating this and wouldn't mind designing a few more!

Cheers,

Jenny

Bounding Bunnypins - a Freebie for Friday!

Happy Friday! Wow, you guys outdid yourselves on the comments about my cleaned-up studio! I don't think I've ever had that many comments on one post before. Thanks!!! All those warm fuzzies made the effort seem a lot more worthwhile.

So here is a little something in return! I made up this little "bunnypin" and thought it would make a nice freebie pattern to share. It is really teensy, less than 3" across, but it looks very cute pinned to a sweater or a lapel.

They stitch up really quickly, so you could end up with a whole herd (flock?) of bunnies bounding across your Easter outfit. Or maybe tuck one into an Easter basket, very sweet.

Click here to download the Bounding Bunnypin pdf pattern*.

How to make your Bunnypin: (sorry about the wordiness, I'm not great at this part)

Out of felt, cut two of the bunny shape and one of the flower. With matching thread, whip stitch the edges of the bunny pieces together, starting where the front leg meets the head. Stitch around the front legs, then stop and push a tiny bit if polyfluff into each leg with a skewer. Then continue around the back legs and then stuff those and also the body. Then stitch around the ears, stuff those, and then finally around the nose, adding fluff before tying off where you started. Don't overstuff, just enough to be slightly poofy. Tie some thin ribbon around the bunny's neck, knotting at the back. Then using embroidery floss, bring your needle from the back of the bunny, coming up through the ribbon and the center of the flower, keeping a couple of inches of floss hanging out the back. Loop the floss around the needle and poke it back into the flower at the same spot, making a french knot. Draw the needle out the back, tie the ends of the floss together, pulling tight, and snip the excess. If you like, you can add a pin-back, but its really not necessary since you can just safety-pin it easily fom the back of whatever you are going to pin it to.

Enjoy making your bunnypins!

Cheers,

Jenny

*note - I am doing something a little different this time. Because I'm seeing more examples of people lifting and adapting copyrighted images, this is a password-protected file. So it can be opened and printed only with Adobe Reader or Acrobat, it cannot be opened with a graphics program like Photoshop. If you don't have Reader you can download it for free here.