Belladonna Scarf

I finally finished my first HPKCHC project, Belladonna Scarf, which was crafted for my Herbology class. The professor asked that our projects be plant themed, crafted in 50% or more plant based fiber (I used Sugar and Cream 100% cotton yarn), and a little evil. I think this project covers all of the bases!

"Belladonna" will also be available for sale in my shop this weekend, as soon as I take a few more pictures. I took this one last night, so it's not that bright, plus I missed one of the poisonous berries that is on the bottom of the scarf.

I'm also fooling around with some different types of frames for my post pictures. What do you think of this one? I love the colors and space for text. I do think the text is a little hard to read, but I wanted to pick something Halloween-ish!

Oktoberfest on Etsy

My plush felt pretzel has been nominated in Etsy's latest voting category, Oktoberfest. I had no idea about the voting page on Etsy until last week. It is a really cool idea. The winner gets their item and shop featured on Etsy's blog and in the Members' Choice Gift Guides for Oktoberfest. Yippee!

If you feel inclined to do so, please head over to the voting page to cast your vote. So far, I've only got 3 votes, and one of those is from me! But that's okay. At least people will get to know my crafts and shop. :)

Welcome Fall

I have "fall"en in love with this cape from Ann Taylor Loft. It reminds me of something Nancy Drew or Sherlock Holmes would wear! 

One new "idea" that I have for sprucing up my blog is to add more photo compilations, my little (and I stress little) brain is spinning with ideas. This compilation came about while I was practicing using the site, Polyvore. In the future, I am going to try to learn to use Photo Shop Pro for my compilations, but for now this site is great. 

I was so busy choosing fall like fashion that I wasn't paying attention to the prices of items. One of my items costs $14,634!!! Can you guess which one?

Blogging with Bliss

On my recent trip to Barnes and Noble I picked up the new Country Living magazine (which has an amazing Shepherds Pie recipe in it) and the book, Blogging for Bliss.

What an amazing little book this is. It offers tips for bloggers new and old from some of the best arts and craft bloggers. That is right! It is all about arts and craft bloggers. Yippee! I have already read the book twice and am now working on my third go around. 

I am currently putting some of the wonderfully talented bloggers' expert advice to work on my own blog. Not only will the look be different, but hopefully the tone will change slightly as well. This will be a work in progress for the next few weeks, but my hope is that, when it is all said and done, my blog will look better than ever.

If you have wanted to start a blog or are looking for ways to improve your own blog, I highly recommend picking up this book. It will inspire you!

Teeth are fun!

Most of the afternoon yesterday was spent in the dentist's office. I don't dread the dentist like so many do, but it still was not fun. 

What is fun, is a bunch of tooth related crafts!

The Purl Bee's Tooth Fairy Bags.

Photo courtesy of CraftStylish.

Mmmcrafts' Felt Tooth Fairy Pillow.

Photo courtesy of Craft Gossip.

Urban Thread's Smile Embroidery Pattern and Project.

Photo courtesy of Urban Threads.

Patchwork's Tooth Fairy Pillow. 

Photo courtesy of Patchwork.

Crafty Carnival's Easy Tooth Fairy Pillow. I made mine these last year, and it turned out really cute.

Photo courtesy of me!

Maybe I'll take one of these projects with me to my next dentist appointment in March. 

NFL Pincushion Tutorial

Show your team pride with your very own NFL pincushion.

I will be using the Pittsburgh Steelers for this tutorial, but have also included the logos for the New Orleans Saints and Chicago Bears. You can substitute any team's logo.

Materials

felt remnants in your team's colors

embroidery thread in matching colors

polyfil

embroidery needle

PDF template

Instructions

1. Download the PDF template and cut out two circles, a long rectangle, and the NFL logo of your choice. (I apologize for my elementary art skills. I tried!)
2. Using the templates you just cut, cut the long rectangle and two circles out of felt. (I used black for the Steelers.)

3. Using the NFL logo as a guide, cut felt pieces out of your team's colors. If you are using the Steelers, I'd also cut out a slightly smaller white circle for the background of the logo. This needs to be attached to the top of one of the black circles. I used a running stitch along the edges.

4. Stitch logo design onto one circle. Set aside.

5. Using the other circle, whipstitch the circle to the bottom of the long rectangle (side). This will make the bottom and side of the pincushion. Whipstitch the sides closed.
6. Stuff the inside of the pincushion with polyfil.

7. Attach circle with logo to the top of the pincushion and whipstitch closed.

Now you're ready to stitch your way through the season!

Want to use your pincushion to keep track of your team's wins and losses? Just whip up a few football shaped pins.

Instructions
1. Using the little football template on the PDF, cut footballs out of felt for every team on your schedule. Some teams will need two footballs as your team will play them more than once during the season. If you need to find out who your team plays, check out the NFL schedules, here. Many teams share the same colors, so you will need to be creative!

2. Add the football stitching to the center of each football with embroidery thread.

3. Attach each football to a pin using a little dab of glue.

4. You now have your very own football countdown!

Be sure to save some felt and pins for the playoffs and the Super Bowl. We can all be optimistic, right?!

All original crafts, images, and content © 2007–2009 Missie Zee. All rights reserved.
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Feel free to make items for your own enjoyment, but please remember patterns, graphs, and tutorials are NOT to be used for commercial purposes.

Are you ready for some football?!!!

Tonight not only starts the 2009 football season, but it also starts my very first year of fantasy football. Yay! It should be a lot of fun. I started a family/friend league with my sister, best friend, and her sister. It's only the four of us, so we won't feel too weird when if we get totally confused!

I can already tell my team might not be up to par. I chose my favorite players instead of the best players. Oh well, that's okay. I'll still be rooting for my guys even if they aren't the absolute best.

Go #39!!!

So, in preparation for the season, I made each of my league mates a little football goodie bag.

Sorry for the terrible picture. It was 9:30 at night. I got the idea for the bag, here. I know it looks nothing like my bag, but that is what inspired it. I just tweaked it a lot to fit in with the whole football theme!

Each goodie bag included a football shaped cookie and some other chocolaty goodness. Just a little something to snack on this weekend while we're all glued to the tube.

Don't you just love the cookies? I have the recipe on Adventures in Baking if you want to make some for yourself. They are super easy and look so cute.

And this weekend, DirectTV will be offering their Sunday Ticket free this Sunday. Woo Hoo! That means I can watch all of the football games for free. I know what I'll be doing this Sunday. :)

Lastly, my football pincushion tutorial is just about complete. Please check back tomorrow for the tute!

Oh, I forgot. One more thing. . . Go Steelers!

Oh Martha! Your crafts inspire me so.

Martha Stewart.com has started posting this year's Halloween ideas and decorations. Yay! I can't wait to see what Halloween theme Martha has chosen. It looks like this year might be witches, but we'll have to wait and see when the October Martha Stewart Living is released.

Martha has so many cute ideas, decorations, crafts, and recipes that I find myself oohing and ahhing over all of them. I've added several to my to-do list including:

Bat Lampshade courtesy of Marthastewart.com.

Spooky Porches: Spiders courtesy of Marthastewart.com.

Halloween Tablecloth courtesy of Marthastewart.com.

The site has also set up some fun Halloween quizzes. I took the one, "Which Halloween Character Are You?" I ended up as a. . .

Very true! I guess I know what my Halloween costume is going to be this year. :)

And, if you really want to get into the Halloween mood, you can sign up for the Halloween Workshop email updates. They are bound to be a scream!

I need another day off

Why do the long weekends always go by so fast, yet the weeks go by so slow? I think I need a few more days off to relax. :)

I had big plans for this past weekend. I was going to craft all weekend and really make a dent in my fall projects, but that didn't happen Nope, we didn't accomplish much. We just read some magazines (Martha Stewart's Halloween magazine is now out!). . .

and took some naps in the sun.

That's about it! I guess I'll be working hard this week to play catch up on everything I was supposed to do over the weekend. 

I did get a nice surprise this morning when I found my poison cupcake toppers in an Etsy Halloween treasury. 

What a nice way to start the day!

Been Gone Too Long

It is good to be back. I have to admit, it was nice to take a month away from blogging. I might make that a habit every couple of months. I think we bloggers can get burned out by too much blogging. I know I can!

I can tell you that I was anything but bored last month. The first thing I did was clean my house, top to bottom. It is nice to look around and have everything exactly in its place. 

During that time, I also put away my summer decorations and started to put up my fall ones. I still haven't put up my Halloween stuff yet, pretty much because I haven't finished all of my projects, but I did take a peek in the boxes to see what I need to pick up at the stores. 

I love this time of the year, when all of the fall/Halloween decorations are brand new in the stores. I really have to walk with my hands in my pockets so I don't grab everything in sight!

I also accomplished quite a bit of crafting while I was away. I'll be sharing some of those finished projects with you in the coming weeks. I'll also be posting the football pincushion tutorial sometime next week.

My new Harry Potter CAL/KAL finally started too, and boy am I excited. It was exciting to get sorted and placed into the "evil" house, Slytherin. I would classify myself more of a Gryffindor, but I've always loved the bad guys, so Slytherin is great! I'll be posting my projects as they get approved and completed.

One last thing I did was start a new blog. I know I just got burned out from blogging and I go ahead and start another one. What a nut!

I have been really wanting to try my hand at homemade baking. I am pretty good baking out of a box or package, but not great when it comes to making food from scratch. So, I figured with Halloween, Thanksgiving, and, of course, Christmas just around the corner, what better time to start baking.

The blog is called, Adventures in Baking - Musings from a baking newbie. I chose the name because it reminded me of one of my favorite '80s movies, Adventures in Babysitting, plus I feel this baking experience will truly prove to be an adventure. 

I am really happy with the look of the blog, especially the cherries. I found all of them for $1.00 on Digiscrap Kits.  The cherry divider was a first for me. Now that I know how to do it, I might be adding dividers everywhere. I also love the baking girl. Notice the flames coming out of the oven behind her? Yep, that's me!

I figure I will only be posting weekly, since I am best at baking on the weekends. I'm also going to repost my previous baking projects, so new posts won't start until next month when Halloween is front and center.

That is about it! Oh, you've probably noticed I did a little revamping of my header too. I finally got around to adding Daphne. She needed to be present, along with Drusilla. I just finished making a Halloween header too, which is pretty funny. Stay tuned for that.

I hope everyone has a nice weekend, and for those of us in the U.S. a very happy Labor Day!