Guest Writing

My first guest contribution to another site was posted today! Crafty Daisies posted my Papermaking Tutorial….please check it out (and comment, comment, comment!!)

Weekend at the Beach

I got to spend a weekend at the beach with my closest girlfriends. We rented a little cottage a block from the water in Colonial Beach, VA. Even having just taken a week off from work I still relished the time away. We happened to catch the Potomac River Festival so there was plenty to entertain us in the tiny golf cart community that Colonial Beach turned out to be. There were parades, an arts & craft show, a carnival and fireworks.

I’m the only Fall birthday in the bunch. Everyone else celebrates in the Spring and Summer so I saved my presents for this trip knowing full well that I would never be able to wait for the rest once one had been given away. So the May birthdays were a little late, the June were right on time and July was a little early! I had the idea to make fairy charms with the fairy representing a fun take on what each of them means to me. I used a photo of a group of girls on a beach trip in 1956 so it just naturally fit with the project! I do need to say, ladies, you should really know how much you mean to me because I used the original photo for these! Here’s how they turned out……

Maria is my Imagination Fairy because she’s always there with a creative story about Milo. He has the most incredible adventures when Maria’s telling the story.

Leslee is my Giggle Fairy because she is absolutely hysterical but only because she practices every morning in the mirror while she’s getting ready.

Kim is my Internet Fairy because she can look up anything faster than anyone I know. She spares me a lot of aimless wandering about in the Magical Internet World.

Sarah is my Periodical Fairy because she gets the most amazing selection of magazines and catalogs at her house. There’s always something new to browse, shop or read.

Christy is my Absentee Fairy because she not only moved away but couldn’t come on the trip. She loves elephants and I miss her.

In Christy’s absence, a new friend Wendy got to come on the beach trip. Wendy is great fun and I know I loved having her join us! A wide variety of pictures from the weekend are posted in my flickr…please enjoy!

The finished product

I am taking part in my first craft swap with the oh so talented group over at Crafty Daisies. It’s a tea towel swap. You are supposed to decorate a tea towel in the craft style of your choosing and then send it to the person you’ve been assigned to. Now, the talent behind Crafty Daisies lies in the sew-knit-crochet-fabric craft arena that I hardly frequent so I was a little intimidated going in. After much discussion and rumination on exactly what a tea towel is, I picked up a lovely tan number at Target. I had wanted to screen print the towel itself but terry cloth doesn’t work so well for that. I’ve found Print Gocco screen printing works best on the smoothest fabric possible. I had picked up some flour sack towels but decided against them thinking they probably weren’t actually tea towels. I had been given a bunch of fabric samples books by my good friend, Sarah, so I screen printed a few pieces from one of the books and sewed them together with some plain pieces to the edge of the towel.  

I think it turned out great. I’m still learning the ropes when it comes to sewing so I hope it holds up to actual use. The fabrics were all cotton so it’s definitely washable but I didn’t have any fusible web to iron it onto the towel so it’s just stitched on with a single zig-zag stitch. Which, I have to say, I’m quite proud of myself for figuring out where that was on the sewing machine!