Thursday, September 26, 2013

A few things

This little fellow hung out for hours yesterday, I couldn't stop watching him.


I got 2 more Christmas decorations finished, they were harder to finish even though I thought they'd be so easy but honestly, they were boring to do.  Brown perforated paper and white floss.  BORING!


There's nothing like doing the stitching and then having to cut all around it.  Scary!  Could do all that work and with one snip, end up throwing it away because you cut something you shouldn't have!


This idea looked much better in my head!  LOL!


Either this is so lame it's cute or it's just plain ugly, I haven't decided yet.


After my little break from stitching, I'm going right back to it tonight!

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Christmas decorations

It's that time of the year!  Time to start thinking ahead to Christmas.

I started working on my decorations and so far, am very happy with them!  Now, I need to figure out how I'm going to display them.  I'm giving some thought to hanging them from vintage knitting needles or vintage rulers or twigs from trees.  I've ordered one of those wooden display trees but really haven't decided how I'm going to do it yet.

Let's look at the ornaments.


This one was done on antique brown perforated paper.  I finished the whole thing and then added the buttons, put another piece of brown perforated paper on the back and added the whipstitch around the outer border to hold the two pieces together.  Then used matching floss for the hangers.


This one is done on brown plastic canvas.  SO simple but SO love it!  Both of these work up so quickly.


I added the hangers but can easily remove them and add something else, depending on how I finally decide to hang them.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Check this out!

I always look at those professional photographs and wish I could get even a bit close to them!  I love some of the backdrops used, so I did some research.

I didn't want anything huge, just small backdrops to take my Etsy photos.  Something inexpensive but fun.  I learned I was always stopping on backdrops that looked like wood.  LOL!  

Finally, I found something I liked, still expensive but the place sold vinyl pieces in 2 foot square pieces and put together assorted bundles.  I found a bundle I liked with two wood, a grass and a polka dot vinyl.  This is what I wanted but without the polka dots.  I saved and saved until I could get them without using a credit card, had a great sale in my shop, so now is the time!  I convo'd the seller and asked if I could take out the polka dot one and put another wood one in its place and they said yes!  They were quick with answers, quickly got my listing up and it was purchased.  Here are some sample photos, I'm still working on bettering things so hang in there but even the first photos I took, I liked!


I'm going to use the same item in all the photos to show you how things can change by simply changing the background.  In the photo above, I'm using leftover floor planks from our bedroom project on the base.

After I got the backdrops, I wanted something to off set the two items (backdrop and floor planks), so I set out in search of baseboard pieces.  First stop was Lowe's.  Unfortunately, they don't cut large baseboard pieces down.  I did find an interesting item though, it's this gray rubbery baseboard that I did buy, it was under $3.00 for a 12 foot piece that I can easily cut down to size.  That's at a later date!  

Anyway, our next stop was Home Depot.  My hubby swore they had a pieces bin you can pick up pieces of wood that were cut down from larger pieces.  No way.  We get there and he couldn't find the bin and started doubting himself!  Then, there it was.  A marvelous bin filled with pieces of wood!  I picked up a piece and he took it over and cut it down to size for me.  We weren't sure how to price it, thought we had to find the large piece and just cut the price down to match our size.  In the meantime, I found another piece, so now it's time to figure out prices.  This salesman comes down the aisle and says, you found our piece bin!  Yep, how do we price it?  He says, just take it.  What?  Yep, just take it, here, I'll write you a note to get through the checkout with them!  Oh, Brian, I am in love with you!  

Now, let's take a look at the same photo above with the primed baseboards I found.


This one is a taller piece of baseboard.


Same backdrop with the shorter piece of baseboard.  This is the one I like the most with smaller items.

Now, let's change up the backdrops!


Chippy blue!  One of my favorite ones.


Rustic wood.  And don't forget, you can turn these so the wood grain goes in the other direction!

Last one is with grass as the bottom.  I need to figure out why it gets such a glare on it and get rid of that glare.


Almost makes you want to take photos, doesn't it!  I think it's best with these to take photos that aren't so close up, I'll play around with it all but just had to share!