Valentine Crafting and a Giveaway / Brico de St-Valentin et un prix à gagner

Wow, I can't believe that it has been a complete month since I last posted here.  For a long time after Christmas, I stayed away from my studio, not because I did not have any projects in the making, but the truth is, we bought an iPad during the holidays, and I spent much more time slumped on the couch browsing Pinterest and making boards of crafting ideas than doing any actual crafting.

Wow, je ne peux pas croire qu'il y a déjà plus d'un mois que je n'ai écrit quelques mots.  Pour un long moment après Noël, je suis restée loin de mon studio, et ce n'est pas parce que je n'avais aucun projet en route.  En vérité, nous avons acheté un iPad pendant le congé des fêtes, et j'ai passé beaucoup plus de temps confortablement installée sur le sofa à parcourir Pinterest et à me construire des tableaux d'idées de bricolage que je n'en ai passé à bricoler moi-même.

Until one day I fell in love with the sock monkey and just had to try making one.  The pattern I found seemed easy enough to understand, and I wanted to give it a try, so I bought a really cheap pair of socks at the dollar store and made my first attempt.  Even though I was a little careless with the details, like the embroidery, I kind of like the end result.  I will definitely make another one with better socks and more attention to details.

Jusqu'à ce qu'un jour je tombe en amour avec le "sock monkey" (un singe fabriqué à partir d'une paire de bas) et que je ne puisse m'empêcher d'en faire un.  Le patron que j'ai trouvé me paraissait assez simple à comprendre, et je voulais vraiment l'essayer, alors je me suis acheté une paire de bas bon marché au magasin à escompte et j'ai tenté mon premier essai.  Et malgré le fait que j'ai un peu bâclé les détails, comme la broderie du visage, je suis assez contente du résultat final.  Je vais définitivement en faire un deuxième avec une meilleure paire de bas et en accordant un peu plus d'attention aux détails.

Pinterest is full of crafting ideas for Valentine's day, and after pinning a few in my crafts board, I decided to actually make some of them, and since they were quick enough to make in a few days, I had the idea to prepare a little giveaway with what I had made, a kind of Valentines gift for one of you.

Pinterest regorge d'idées de bricolage pour la St-Valentin, et après en avoir inclus quelques-unes dans mon tableau de bricolage, j'ai décidé d'en fabriquer certains d'entre eux.  Ce sont des petits bricolages rapides que je pouvais faire en quelques jours, alors j'ai décidé de les regrouper et de les offrir en prix à gagner, un petit cadeau de St-Valentin pour l'une d'entre vous.

The following pictures show you what will be included in the giveaway:

Les photos suivantes vous montre ce qui sera inclut dans le prix à gagner:

A small fel heart cusion that can be used either
as a pincushion or just for display.
Un petit coussin en forme de coeur qui peut être utilisé
comme pique -épingle ou comme simple décoration

A heart-shaped bookmark made of felt.
Un signet en forme de coeur fait de feutrine .

A bookmark made out of a paint color card.
Un signet fait à partir d'une carte de couleurs de peinture.

A tag made of a clothes tag and mini pearls.
Une étiquette faite à partir d'une étiquette de vêtement et de mini perles.

Also included with these four items will be a cardboard envelope that you can see in the first picture of the giveaway.  It is large enough to wrap a gift card , some small treats or even money.  To participate, simply leave me a message in the comments, and feel free to include a link to your favorite Valentines craft, although it is not a requisite to be entered in the giveaway.  The rules are simple: one entry per person please, open internationaly, giveaway will close on Friday, February 8, 2013, and the winner will be announced sometime in the weekend.

Aussi incluse avec ces quatre items, une enveloppe en carton que vous pouvez voir dans la première photo du prix à gagner.  Elle est assez grande pour y emballer une carte-cadeau, des petites gâteries ou encore de l'argent.  Pour une chance de gagner le prix, il suffit de me laisser un message dans les commentaires.  J'aimerais bien que vous partagiez avec moi un lien vers votre bricolage de St-Valentin préféré, mais ce n'est pas requis pour être inscrite au tirage.  Les règles sont très simples:  une entrée par personne, ouvert à l'internationnal, le concours se terminera vendredi le 8 février 2013 et la gagnante sera annoncé pendant le week-end.

Goodies in the mail

See how happy they all look?  But not as happy as I was when I opened the package from Blushful.  A few weeks ago, tired of fighting with my tangled embroidery threads, I went on a search on Etsy to find some cute thread cards, and came across these.

They were by far the cutest I'd ever seen, and I ordered a pack of 20.  Now, they look even better in real, and I've had fun selecting one mushroom for each color thread.  But where it gets really cool is that because I was her first Etsy customer ever, Annie was overly generous and sent along some more gorgeous handmade goodies:

A cute little pink haired girl, made out of a wooden spool and dressed in pompom trim.

 And this felt beauty, hiding decorative pins in her hair.

I feel very lucky to have received all these nice gifts.  Hop on over to Blushful if you want to see more of Annie's work, she's got the cutest pincushions!

What the hoot's got into me?

It looks like I have lost interest in my blog lately, and truly I've had other concerns on my mind. My boyfriend lost his job a couple of months ago, which has brought a few dark hours at home. Now that he has decided to go back to school after the holidays, we have decided to redo our basement, which we had left intact since we bought the house last year. The colours were horrid, so a few coats of paint will be more than welcome. My craft room is almost finished, but all my stuff is still packed up in a corner.

So, I haven't done that much crafting lately, if you count out painting walls. I did start to work on Christmas gifts, but somehow I got diverted by a few swaps I had signed up for. I sat with craft felt, embroidery floss, buttons and sequins, and got completely lost in making tree ornaments. One of the swaps called for owls, so I used the Holiday Hoot Pattern from Anna Maria Horner and changed it slightly to make it smaller and with less details.

I also worked on my own designs, but since those swaps have not been received yet, I would not want to spoil the surprise by showing them already.

I will soon be resuming my work on Christmas gifts, but here is a peek at what I made for my boyfriend's mother, who is an avid knitter.


It is a needle case, as instructed by Alexandra in her tutorial. I found it was very quick and easy to make, and working with such bright colours was a nice change from my usual darker palette.

I should be coming back soon, watch out for Giveaway Day!

Sylvie

Going Small

Lately I've been trying different craft projects, on the smaller scale. I like collage and scrapbooking and I am used to making 12" x 12" pages. I've read about ATCs many times and thought it might be fun to try collage on this smaller format of 2.5" x 3.5". It was fun, plus I got to use some paper and photo scraps that have accumulated over the years. I guess I'll be making more of these and swap them with others on Swap-bot.


I've also been busy creating mini felt softies. All of them are 2" or smaller. The little mouse is actually only one inch, not including the tail. These are really fun to make and I still have more ideas of animals and objects that I could turn into small felt items.

Talking about small things, small prices are always welcome in my house. I got the lot of fabric below for just 6$ this morning at Fabricville. The colours aren't too good in the picture, but that is the best I could do with no natural light, as it has been raining for days and everything around me is resolutely gray.

Off to do some more crafting now, so I don't feel like I am waisting my vacation entirely. I'll be checking the forecast later and see if we could get two days of nice weather so we can go out of town. Charlevoix has been on our minds lately and I would love to have a chance to go visit all the craft shops and art galleries in Baie St-Paul. Keeping my fingers crossed...

Sylvie