Presents for the Boyfriend

Today is my One year anniversary with my boyfriend!

I decided he deserved a really good present, for being such a good boyfriend :P, so I made him some crafty items.
Dan is starting his own T-shirt company. He's recently bought himself a screen printing machine and has started drawing designs and printing some shirts. The present I made him was to help him really get into the business, and also for some inspiration!
This idea was somewhat like the Recipe Binder but instead of Recipe template pages each page would have a blank t-shirt for him to draw his ideas onto.

He would circle the "Front" or "Back" depending which it was, draw his design in, and write in what colours the t-shirt is as well as the print. Good idea? 

I padded a binder from the dollar store and went to Fabricland to get man-ly type fabric. I found this stretch corduroy that looks like a mix between animal print and woodgrain. Pretty cool in my opinion and it feels VERY nice!

Outer Binder

I went out to Michael's craft store to get some felt for the innards. I found this dark brown snakeskin type felt that looked pretty manly-esque. This covered up all the rough edges from the fabric.

The binder all put together.

As well as the binder, I got him two shirts to print on, and a few arty items from Mixed Media on James St. N in Hamilton, ON. He loves that store and I figured it would help make the ultimate present for him!

I picked out a Hemp sketchbook (so he could draw up his pre-sketches for designs) a Juxtapoz art magazine for inspiration and finally a neat little notebook that says "Business" on it. (Dan has a print he's drawn with a cowboy-styled gun, I thought this would be appropriate.)

And that's it for today everyone! Keep checking for new updates, as I'm working on new projects all the time.

Comments are always welcome.

-Heather

Recipe Binder and New Project!

So I've been failing a little on getting my friend's Christmas present done and to her.. but I've finally finished it tonight and decided to show it off!
( I told her not to look at my blog :P )
I was working on a recipe binder for her. I know she really likes girly stuff and cupcakes so I made her the cutest binder I possibly could.

The recipe binder front. A light pink sparkly fabric, I got this at a thrift store for 3 dollars and I still have some left! Awesome!

The binder all put together, pink sparkly felt for the inside.

And finally a close up of it (just couldn't resist taking a picture of the sparkles)

In addition to that, I'm starting my newest project and THIS is what it involves!

That's right! A wedding dress! I won't tell anymore for now but let's just say I'm going to be making it into something else. Exciting.

Comments always welcome.

-Heather

Recipe Template Page 2

Hi again!

As I mentioned before, for Christmas, my boyfriend Dan and I made a recipe binder for his mom! I unfortunately didn't get a picture of it yet but I do have the recipe template page that I created for it so I thought I would show that to you for now.
The idea was for Dan to draw up some artwork for the templates and then me to put that in and create the page layout.

This is what we came up with.

Dan drew up the flower in black ink and then we scanned it in and played with the whole thing in Photoshop. A while ago I had made the watercolour background for fun so I place that in, added some shading and highlights and it was ready to go. We went for a brown and blue theme, and the binder had some lace inside it so I also added that to the template. 

And that's all I've got for today! You can check out more of Dan Auld's work HERE.

Comments welcome!

-Heather

New Crafts

Hi everyone!
Been a while since I posted, I've been so busy with Christmas, working and starting up my new business that I haven't had time to go on the internet much!
But, the good thing about not posting in a while is that I've got a lot of new crafts to show you :)
For Christmas, I made some crafty presents for a lot of people.. as well as a birthday present for my mom.. here they are!

First off I made some recipe binders, one of them I gave to my boyfriend's mom (unfortunately before I took a picture of it! but I will hopefully be able to get a pic in the near future) and one of them I gave to my friend Chelsea. Here it is

The front of the binder. I bought a binder, padded it with cotton batting then covered it in a purple animal print fabric. The inside covers I used a purple felt to cover up the rough edges and empty areas.

This is the inside of the binder. I made the recipe template as well using Photoshop 

Hopefully she gets good use out of her recipe binder!

Another present I made was one for my mom. She had mentioned she wanted some padded hangers for Christmas... turns out padded hangers are extremely hard to find :S, so I made some for her! 

This is the complete set. I took plain wire hangers.. bent the bottom part up to the top part (with the help of my boyfriend), wrapped them in cotton batting, covered them in fabric and sewed them up.

A close up of one of the hangers.

Action shot of the hangers!

As much as I like how the hangers turned out.. and as much as my mom liked them, I probably will not be making these again! They were really tough.

Mom's birthday comes soon after Christmas so I needed to think of another present to get for her. I had this chair sitting in my room for a long time waiting to be recovered and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity!

Before of the chair. Rusted Green-tone paint with grubby fake orange fur.

Redone chair. I chose the same fabric as I used for the hangers, as she's probably going to use the chair inside her walk-in closet. I repainted the chair a creamy white colour and the circular ends I dry-brushed them with a golden colour. 

I really love how this chair turned out, as did she which makes me happy :)

Let me know if you have any comments about any of my projects! I love comments

More projects coming soon.

-Heather

Invitations and Blogs

Hello again everyone!

I haven't posted in a while but I've been working a lot on some graphics for Christy and I thought I'd share them with you guys!
Christy ( the chocolate maker - check out her website here ) had the great idea of having kids' parties now that she has a big kitchen to work in! She has four different party packages: Wacky cake and cookie decorating, pizza cookie fun, digging in the dirt brownie adventure, and dippity do chocolate I love you. For her website she was thinking of having some fake polaroid graphics that you could click on for each of the four birthday packages. Here's what I came up with for her.
So far it is just a google image in there, not one of Christy's but you get the idea.

Looks great doesn't it?! 

Another thing I've been working on is the invitations for her birthday parties. The idea behind this is that the mom's would go on her website, print out these invitations for the kids to bring to school and hand out to their friends. Here's what I came up with for the older female group.

This is the front of the invitation

And this is the inside of the invitation

The back of the invitation would have her company address as well as the map to the shop. My next steps will be to make a boy version of the invitation, as well as an invitation for younger girls.

I've also been working on Christy's new blog! Hasn't been ready for action at all yet, no blog posts, but I'm working on the design and the separate pages. 

One of Christy's pages is a recipe page. Her idea was that for each recipe she posts, she will create a recipe card. Her "Recipe" page would have several different images of recipe cards posted to it, so everything will be right there and easy to find. Here's what I created for the recipe card.

I love how it turned out, it looks so cute!

That's all I've been working on as of lately.. I will have some more graphics coming up, and I may have a post of "fall finds" clothes, keep checking!

Comments welcome

-Heather

Recipe Template Page

Hello again everyone!

So my latest project has been a collaboration with my sister, Jess. She's made recipe binders in the past that have turned out really nicely so I asked her to make one for me. We picked out fabric together which she will cover a binder in and pad it as well as embroider a felt piece with the word "Recipes". So far it is turning out really nicely.

I wanted to add some of my own flair to this project so I decided I would make the graphics for the inside. I would make one template that could be printed up several times and put between dividers to organize all the recipes.

This is the fabric and felt colour that we chose for the binder.

And here is the recipe template I made for the inside of the binder. Changes are still optional as my sister hasn't finished the binder yet so there may be some slight differences to the final product. The white square at the left hand corner with the line is for your recipe name :) The little circle thing is an Ernst Haeckel design ( I LOVE ERNST HAECKEL ) that I thought looked somewhat like a dandelion, which matched with the front fabric.

I'm thinking I might need some little something near that top left-hand white rectangle. Not sure what it needs yet. Opinions anyone? 

-Heather