Friday, October 31, 2014

Pumpkin Carving

As you'll remember, The Fiance and I bought a couple giant pumpkins a few weeks ago to decorate the house for Halloween.  We held off carving them so they wouldn't be all molded by Halloween.  This week, we made a trip to the Halloween store to grab some carving tools and set out to get them done!

We started by picking our designs.  A friend of mine had sent me a really cool  picture of a Tinker Bell pumpkin design. Since Tinker Bell is my favorite, I decided to do my best to replicate the carving.  The Fiance has not yet unpacked his printer, so I had to improvise.  We pulled up the design on the screen and I traced it directly off the monitor.



After that, we covered our outdoor table with a layer of garbage bags and started hollowing out our pumpkins.




Now, neither of us had carved pumpkins in a really long time, so this was quite the adventure for us!  Once our ginormous pumpkins were sufficiently empty, we drew on our designs.  I used my handmade stencil to trace on my image.



The Fiance's pumpkin was super huge and he thought all of the patterns were too small for his, so he decided to freehand his design.  He chose a somewhat classic jack-o-lantern face and added some flames on the sides to make use of the space.



These pumpkins were not only HUGE but they were thick inside also! So, it took us a little while to cut through them. 




Once our designs were cleaned up, we decided that mine needed a little something extra. The picture my friend sent me, the Tinker Bell pumpkin also had pixie dust. So, The Fiance busted out his drill and we used a couple different bit sizes to put  a trail of pixie dust flowing behind Tinker Bell!




I drew an outline of where I wanted the trail to go and The Fiance did a super awesome job at placing all the pixie dust.

He then took a quick trip to Target to grab some electric candles for inside our pumpkins.  We moved the pumpkins back to the front porch and lit them up.....



Don't they look awesome? We were pretty impressed with ourselves, especially after being out of the game for so long. HAHA!

We put up spider webs around the bushes in the front yard right after we lit the pumpkins and four or five people walked by and stopped to admire them.  I got a text from The Fiance the next night while I was at work.  Apparently when he came home, there were five or six kids standing in front of the house admiring the pumpkins and begging him to turn the lights on inside them so they could see them glowing. They were quite impressed! I guess we did good. :)

Friday, October 24, 2014

The Proposal

Well, its official! The Boyfriend has been officially promoted to The Fiance! It has been a bit of a whirlwind of a week, but we are very excited!  We spent most of our days off on the phone notifying various relatives and friends of our good news. (Whew! There is a LOT of family!) So, since there wasn't any time for projects , I decided to use this week to share our proposal story.

This past Saturday, I had done a shift trade for a co-worker who got stuck working on her birthday.  That meant that though I had to work the graveyard shift I got to spend all day with The Boyfriend before work.  He was off work for the day and decided to cook me breakfast for lunch.  He asked if that sounded OK to me.  I said "Of course!" Due to my work schedule, I'm rarely awake during "breakfast hours" and therefore, rarely get to enjoy breakfast foods.  With no furniture in the house, and the floors generally wet from drying layers of finish, the kitchen has sort of become the multi-purpose room.  Right now, we have a couple TV trays, camping chairs and the TV in there.  So, while The Boyfriend cooked, I relaxed and watched TV.  The Boyfriend, as I've mentioned, loves to cook, so making me a big breakfast did not seem out of the ordinary. 

As he was getting his ingredients prepped, he told me that he got something for me.  He reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of Donal Duck orange juice.  A few months back, we had been gathering groceries for a dinner and when we passed the orange juice section,I mentioned that I had always wanted to try Donald Duck orange juice as a kid but my Mom never bought it. So, of course months later when he remembered that, I thought it was so sweet! (No pun intended haha) He said, "Well, I figure we're both adults, if we want Donald Duck orange juice, we should have Donald Duck orange juice." And so we did! Along with French toast, bacon, sausage and eggs. YUM!


After breakfast, I ran to grab a baking pan from my house that The Boyfriend wanted and to run a couple quick errands while he put another coat of finish on the floors.  By the time I got back, I was pretty tired.  Since he knew that I would be working the overnight shift, The Boyfriend suggested I go take a quick nap.  He didn't have to twist my arm! Haha! Just shy of an hour into my nap, the doorbell rang. (The Fiance later told me that it was some of the neighbor kids getting permission to climb into his truck bed to retrieve their basketball that they accidentally threw in there, so I can't be too mad at them for being politer. In fact, I applaud that) I tried to go back to sleep for the last 15 minutes of my nap, but it was no use, so I got up.

I found The Boyfriend back in the "multi-purpose room".  He asked how my nap was and we both sat down and were watching TV.  He asked me (for like the 4th time that day) what time I had to leave for work.  I told him and then he asked if I liked the breakfast.  I told him I loved it.  He then got up and went back to his bedroom and came back with a stick blender/emulsion blender broken down inside a large Tupperware container.  In his other hand was the food processor attachment piece. Again, suspecting nothing, I said "Oh, you found some more kitchen stuff?" He said yes and sat back down next to me.  After a little while he said, "Well, the floors should be done in the next week I'd say."  I said "Yeah? That's good, they are looking really nice!" He said "After that, I can start moving stuff in." I said "That's exciting!" He said "It's really starting to feel like a home."  I was about to respond and he stood up and opened the lid to the food processor and pulled out a ring box!  I of course gasped and he got down on one knee right in the middle of the "multi-purpose room" and  asked me to marry him! I, of course, cried and little and said YES immediately!! He said "You don't even want to see the ring first?"  I laughed and said "Nope!" and continued hugging him.  Of course, I did eventually look at the ring and OH MY GOSH!!


Did he do a good job or what? I absolutely LOVE it! It's just perfect! (By the way, we never talked about what kind of ring I wanted.  He picked this all by himself!) The details are just so awesome and exactly what I wanted. Enjoy some more angles.




We quickly drove the 7 minutes to his parent's house to tell his Mom and show he the ring before I had to rush off to work.  She was very excited! We called his Dad, who was at a get together with some of our friends.

The next day, after getting some sleep following  my graveyard shift, I headed over to the house and The Fiance (teehee) and I started calling my family. It was so hard waiting excitedly all night at work to be able to tell my family! They all live out of state and it was way too late to call before work.  We had to sort of rush through because we had a celebratory dinner planned with his parents shortly after I woke up.  Once the notifications were made, we rushed off to dinner at El Torito with The Fiance's family, my Grandparents and a couple close friends. We had a great time and the staff even came by with fried ice cream and wished us "Happy engagement!"


(OK, is it just me, or does it look like I am the one with the mustache in this kissing picture? LOL awkward!)
 

 
We had a very nice time! The following evening, The Fiance and I went to the bookstore and picked out a wedding planner!
 


 
Let the fun begin! We are so very excited and look forward to our lives together!




Friday, October 17, 2014

House Progress Update #5

Another couple of busy weeks have gone by and we have been continuing along on house updates.  As we get closer to the finish line, progress has slowed a bit.  Its getting really exciting though! Its really starting to look and feel like a house, albeit an empty one. Hahaha

Floors:
The Boyfriend has completed staining all the hardwood, except for the hallway, where you can see an obvious change in floor color. (We needed some way to get around the house a bit.)


He has been putting layers of finish on the office, sewing room and living room floors.  Apparently, (because I have never finished a hardwood floor before) he's supposed to do a super light sanding with super fine sandpaper and then a couple more layers of finish before completion. They are looking so fantastic!

*The office* 
 
*The sewing room*
 
He plans to get the hallway stained this week and get started on the finish there. Its almost time to start moving in furniture!
 
Closets:
I had the wonderful joy of painting the closets in the office and sewing room this week. Oh my goodness it was incredibly hot in those closets! They should put windows or fans in closets! I jest, but it was seriously hot!  The Boyfriend chose Behr "Polar bear" for the closets. (Sorry no paint sample for ya because its, well....white) The heat was bad enough, but I hate painting things white! Hahaha! I don't hate things that are painted white, I just hate the actual act of painting things white.  It really just feels like so much work for exactly what you had when it was just primered. It actually DOES look better and much more finished, but its just SUPER boring to paint.  None the less, they are done! The closets are good to go! YAY!
 
*Before-sewing room closet (notice the "polar bear" colored cutting in around the edges)*
 

 
*After*


*Office closet-After*
 
Halloween Decor:
The neighborhood has exploded with Halloween spirit! There are houses with orange lights, pumpkins all over and fake spider webs for days! The Boyfriend and I went to Home Depot to grab more paint tray liners, when he mentioned that we should sneak a peak at their Halloween decor.  Apparently, the next door neighbor boys had been giving him a hard time for not having any Halloween decor up. He decided that we should see what they had.  Well, we did not find much left. There were, however, some really plastic window covers.  They are basically plastic sheets that you hang inside your windows. They cover the window but when back lit by your interior lights, they light up an image outside the home. Since we already have wrapping paper temporarily covering the windows, we thought this might be a cool alternative for a bit! (Also might help the neighbors not think we plan to have wrapping paper up in the windows forever....we don't want to be THOSE neighbors hahaha)  We got a big green eyed cat for the center big window.  We left the window with the AC unit alone and got some cool giant spider ones for the other two windows. The spider ones are cool and look like giant spiders are crawling around in and on the blinds!
 
 
I thought they were SO cool! We also made a trip by Sam's Club and grabbed 2 GIANT (probably 30-40 pound) pumpkins for only 10 bucks each! BARGAIN!
 

Those are also currently on the porch. We went to the local Halloween store too. The Boyfriend got himself an animatronic pumpkin scarecrow that hangs from a swing and talks. Its motion activated, I assume to scare trick or treaters. Scaring people is SO NOT my thing! But, he thought it was really cool and they had one marked 50% off due to its eyes not lighting up. So, we took advantage of the bargain and when he gets a chance to fix the wiring in the eyes, he will hang that as well.  Its not much, but hopefully it will be enough to satisfy the neighbor kids. HAHA!

Weekend wrap-up dinner:
As we finished up our week of work, The Boyfriend decided he would cook for us.  We made a trip to Sprouts for supplies and he got to work. He made us an absolutely DELICIOUS dinner!!


He made fillet Mignon with homemade herb butter on top, mashed potatoes, steamed artichokes, brazed spinach topped with scallops! It was SO GOOD! He is just a fantastic cook! He spoils me. ;) We enjoyed our dinner on TV trays in the kitchen watching the TV that we set up on the counter. HAHA!  You make do I guess when you don't have access to the other rooms while floor finish dries. Stay tuned for more updates! 


Monday, October 6, 2014

Sew it Seams meets Spoonflower

I am super excited to announce the latest addition to the Sew it Seams family! Sew it Seams is now officially on Spoonflower!  For those of you who are new to Spoonflower, or perhaps have never heard of it before, Spoonflower is a venue for creating your own fabrics, wallpapers and wrapping papers.  The company uses industrial sized fabric printers to then print your designs into whatever yardage you desire onto a multitude of fabric options.  They have everything from Kona cotton to faux suede and just about everything in between. This includes wrapping paper, both satin and matte finish, and wallpaper in two different types. I have known about Spoonflower for some time now, but it wasn't until a dear friend of mine recently had me order her some fabric from them that I really started taking an interest.

She had her eye on one of the mini tote bags from my shop to use as a new church bag. She sent me a link to the fabric she wanted and I was so impressed with the design of a fabric so unique and specific to her religion.  It was just so cute!  I was even more impressed with the quality of both the image and the fabric once it arrived.

 
I got to work right away and her bag turned out so good!  And, when i delivered it, she loved it!
 


When I saw how cool and unique the fabric was, I started doing a little more browsing around and was blown away by the amazing volume of cool and unique fabrics that were available on their site.  I got SUPER excited when I discovered their weekly design contest! Every week, Spoonflower has a theme and you can enter a design that goes along with the theme. Spoonflower account holders get to vote for their favorite designs and the winning designs get featured on their web page and blog. How cool right?

So, of course, I got to work!  I am no great artist of realism, so I decided to try my hand at some whimsical fabric designs. I jotted down the next three weeks of contest themes and started brainstorming.  I started with this week's current theme "Ballet".   I decided to draw myself a rough ballet slipper element. I drew it with pencil and then colored it in with markers.

 
I scanned the image into my computer, then uploaded it onto the Spoonflower site and used their editing software to turn my simple design into a (well, what I think is pretty adorable) fabric design.
 

I uploaded this design officially to the contest which opened earlier this week. If you get a chance, take a quick minute to start up your own Spoonflower account and vote for your favorite designs! They may have just been flattering me, but when I logged into my account to vote, they had my design as one of the random samples featured.  That was kinda neat!


This design has already been favorited by a few people and its just so exciting! Favorites are different than votes in the contest, which I don't get to see totals of until the contest ends. I got a special email from Spoonflower also this week telling me that my design was featured on their "Recent trends" shopping page. (excuse my ridiculous screen shot pictures, I was excited!)


I have already finished the next two weeks of designs and am getting started on the next two weeks after that. I am really having so much fun with this!  Here is my fabric design for next week's "Umbrella" contest.
 

 
And my submission for the "Clocks and Timepieces" contest the following week.
 

 
 
 To add to the fun, all of my designs so far are available for purchase. Which means....You can order any of my bags as a custom order in a fabric designed special by me!  OR you can order my fabrics for your very own sewing projects. This week, I received sample swatches of my fabrics. It was so exciting seeing something that I designed printed on real fabric!
 


 
As a Spoonflower designer, I do earn "Spoondollars" as a commission of sorts for any purchases of my designs. Even if you don't have a need for fabric,wallpaper or wrapping paper, I hope that you will help support Sew it Seams latest adventure and vote for my designs (as well as any of the other very deserving designs) in the weekly contests. Voting ends Wednesday (so still plenty of time to get those votes in this week!) and the new contests start Thursdays. Spoonflower also has a weekly contest on their blog, which is usually for some really cool crafty or sewing books and often times free yardage of fabric or wrapping paper. Its also super quick and easy to enter, just need an email address. I am super excited for this new adventure! I have also created a new link to my Spoonflower shop on the right hand side of the blog for quick access to my shop. Thank you all for everything you do! Keep on crafting!


Friday, October 31, 2014

Pumpkin Carving

As you'll remember, The Fiance and I bought a couple giant pumpkins a few weeks ago to decorate the house for Halloween.  We held off carving them so they wouldn't be all molded by Halloween.  This week, we made a trip to the Halloween store to grab some carving tools and set out to get them done!

We started by picking our designs.  A friend of mine had sent me a really cool  picture of a Tinker Bell pumpkin design. Since Tinker Bell is my favorite, I decided to do my best to replicate the carving.  The Fiance has not yet unpacked his printer, so I had to improvise.  We pulled up the design on the screen and I traced it directly off the monitor.



After that, we covered our outdoor table with a layer of garbage bags and started hollowing out our pumpkins.




Now, neither of us had carved pumpkins in a really long time, so this was quite the adventure for us!  Once our ginormous pumpkins were sufficiently empty, we drew on our designs.  I used my handmade stencil to trace on my image.



The Fiance's pumpkin was super huge and he thought all of the patterns were too small for his, so he decided to freehand his design.  He chose a somewhat classic jack-o-lantern face and added some flames on the sides to make use of the space.



These pumpkins were not only HUGE but they were thick inside also! So, it took us a little while to cut through them. 




Once our designs were cleaned up, we decided that mine needed a little something extra. The picture my friend sent me, the Tinker Bell pumpkin also had pixie dust. So, The Fiance busted out his drill and we used a couple different bit sizes to put  a trail of pixie dust flowing behind Tinker Bell!




I drew an outline of where I wanted the trail to go and The Fiance did a super awesome job at placing all the pixie dust.

He then took a quick trip to Target to grab some electric candles for inside our pumpkins.  We moved the pumpkins back to the front porch and lit them up.....



Don't they look awesome? We were pretty impressed with ourselves, especially after being out of the game for so long. HAHA!

We put up spider webs around the bushes in the front yard right after we lit the pumpkins and four or five people walked by and stopped to admire them.  I got a text from The Fiance the next night while I was at work.  Apparently when he came home, there were five or six kids standing in front of the house admiring the pumpkins and begging him to turn the lights on inside them so they could see them glowing. They were quite impressed! I guess we did good. :)

Friday, October 24, 2014

The Proposal

Well, its official! The Boyfriend has been officially promoted to The Fiance! It has been a bit of a whirlwind of a week, but we are very excited!  We spent most of our days off on the phone notifying various relatives and friends of our good news. (Whew! There is a LOT of family!) So, since there wasn't any time for projects , I decided to use this week to share our proposal story.

This past Saturday, I had done a shift trade for a co-worker who got stuck working on her birthday.  That meant that though I had to work the graveyard shift I got to spend all day with The Boyfriend before work.  He was off work for the day and decided to cook me breakfast for lunch.  He asked if that sounded OK to me.  I said "Of course!" Due to my work schedule, I'm rarely awake during "breakfast hours" and therefore, rarely get to enjoy breakfast foods.  With no furniture in the house, and the floors generally wet from drying layers of finish, the kitchen has sort of become the multi-purpose room.  Right now, we have a couple TV trays, camping chairs and the TV in there.  So, while The Boyfriend cooked, I relaxed and watched TV.  The Boyfriend, as I've mentioned, loves to cook, so making me a big breakfast did not seem out of the ordinary. 

As he was getting his ingredients prepped, he told me that he got something for me.  He reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of Donal Duck orange juice.  A few months back, we had been gathering groceries for a dinner and when we passed the orange juice section,I mentioned that I had always wanted to try Donald Duck orange juice as a kid but my Mom never bought it. So, of course months later when he remembered that, I thought it was so sweet! (No pun intended haha) He said, "Well, I figure we're both adults, if we want Donald Duck orange juice, we should have Donald Duck orange juice." And so we did! Along with French toast, bacon, sausage and eggs. YUM!


After breakfast, I ran to grab a baking pan from my house that The Boyfriend wanted and to run a couple quick errands while he put another coat of finish on the floors.  By the time I got back, I was pretty tired.  Since he knew that I would be working the overnight shift, The Boyfriend suggested I go take a quick nap.  He didn't have to twist my arm! Haha! Just shy of an hour into my nap, the doorbell rang. (The Fiance later told me that it was some of the neighbor kids getting permission to climb into his truck bed to retrieve their basketball that they accidentally threw in there, so I can't be too mad at them for being politer. In fact, I applaud that) I tried to go back to sleep for the last 15 minutes of my nap, but it was no use, so I got up.

I found The Boyfriend back in the "multi-purpose room".  He asked how my nap was and we both sat down and were watching TV.  He asked me (for like the 4th time that day) what time I had to leave for work.  I told him and then he asked if I liked the breakfast.  I told him I loved it.  He then got up and went back to his bedroom and came back with a stick blender/emulsion blender broken down inside a large Tupperware container.  In his other hand was the food processor attachment piece. Again, suspecting nothing, I said "Oh, you found some more kitchen stuff?" He said yes and sat back down next to me.  After a little while he said, "Well, the floors should be done in the next week I'd say."  I said "Yeah? That's good, they are looking really nice!" He said "After that, I can start moving stuff in." I said "That's exciting!" He said "It's really starting to feel like a home."  I was about to respond and he stood up and opened the lid to the food processor and pulled out a ring box!  I of course gasped and he got down on one knee right in the middle of the "multi-purpose room" and  asked me to marry him! I, of course, cried and little and said YES immediately!! He said "You don't even want to see the ring first?"  I laughed and said "Nope!" and continued hugging him.  Of course, I did eventually look at the ring and OH MY GOSH!!


Did he do a good job or what? I absolutely LOVE it! It's just perfect! (By the way, we never talked about what kind of ring I wanted.  He picked this all by himself!) The details are just so awesome and exactly what I wanted. Enjoy some more angles.




We quickly drove the 7 minutes to his parent's house to tell his Mom and show he the ring before I had to rush off to work.  She was very excited! We called his Dad, who was at a get together with some of our friends.

The next day, after getting some sleep following  my graveyard shift, I headed over to the house and The Fiance (teehee) and I started calling my family. It was so hard waiting excitedly all night at work to be able to tell my family! They all live out of state and it was way too late to call before work.  We had to sort of rush through because we had a celebratory dinner planned with his parents shortly after I woke up.  Once the notifications were made, we rushed off to dinner at El Torito with The Fiance's family, my Grandparents and a couple close friends. We had a great time and the staff even came by with fried ice cream and wished us "Happy engagement!"


(OK, is it just me, or does it look like I am the one with the mustache in this kissing picture? LOL awkward!)
 

 
We had a very nice time! The following evening, The Fiance and I went to the bookstore and picked out a wedding planner!
 


 
Let the fun begin! We are so very excited and look forward to our lives together!




Friday, October 17, 2014

House Progress Update #5

Another couple of busy weeks have gone by and we have been continuing along on house updates.  As we get closer to the finish line, progress has slowed a bit.  Its getting really exciting though! Its really starting to look and feel like a house, albeit an empty one. Hahaha

Floors:
The Boyfriend has completed staining all the hardwood, except for the hallway, where you can see an obvious change in floor color. (We needed some way to get around the house a bit.)


He has been putting layers of finish on the office, sewing room and living room floors.  Apparently, (because I have never finished a hardwood floor before) he's supposed to do a super light sanding with super fine sandpaper and then a couple more layers of finish before completion. They are looking so fantastic!

*The office* 
 
*The sewing room*
 
He plans to get the hallway stained this week and get started on the finish there. Its almost time to start moving in furniture!
 
Closets:
I had the wonderful joy of painting the closets in the office and sewing room this week. Oh my goodness it was incredibly hot in those closets! They should put windows or fans in closets! I jest, but it was seriously hot!  The Boyfriend chose Behr "Polar bear" for the closets. (Sorry no paint sample for ya because its, well....white) The heat was bad enough, but I hate painting things white! Hahaha! I don't hate things that are painted white, I just hate the actual act of painting things white.  It really just feels like so much work for exactly what you had when it was just primered. It actually DOES look better and much more finished, but its just SUPER boring to paint.  None the less, they are done! The closets are good to go! YAY!
 
*Before-sewing room closet (notice the "polar bear" colored cutting in around the edges)*
 

 
*After*


*Office closet-After*
 
Halloween Decor:
The neighborhood has exploded with Halloween spirit! There are houses with orange lights, pumpkins all over and fake spider webs for days! The Boyfriend and I went to Home Depot to grab more paint tray liners, when he mentioned that we should sneak a peak at their Halloween decor.  Apparently, the next door neighbor boys had been giving him a hard time for not having any Halloween decor up. He decided that we should see what they had.  Well, we did not find much left. There were, however, some really plastic window covers.  They are basically plastic sheets that you hang inside your windows. They cover the window but when back lit by your interior lights, they light up an image outside the home. Since we already have wrapping paper temporarily covering the windows, we thought this might be a cool alternative for a bit! (Also might help the neighbors not think we plan to have wrapping paper up in the windows forever....we don't want to be THOSE neighbors hahaha)  We got a big green eyed cat for the center big window.  We left the window with the AC unit alone and got some cool giant spider ones for the other two windows. The spider ones are cool and look like giant spiders are crawling around in and on the blinds!
 
 
I thought they were SO cool! We also made a trip by Sam's Club and grabbed 2 GIANT (probably 30-40 pound) pumpkins for only 10 bucks each! BARGAIN!
 

Those are also currently on the porch. We went to the local Halloween store too. The Boyfriend got himself an animatronic pumpkin scarecrow that hangs from a swing and talks. Its motion activated, I assume to scare trick or treaters. Scaring people is SO NOT my thing! But, he thought it was really cool and they had one marked 50% off due to its eyes not lighting up. So, we took advantage of the bargain and when he gets a chance to fix the wiring in the eyes, he will hang that as well.  Its not much, but hopefully it will be enough to satisfy the neighbor kids. HAHA!

Weekend wrap-up dinner:
As we finished up our week of work, The Boyfriend decided he would cook for us.  We made a trip to Sprouts for supplies and he got to work. He made us an absolutely DELICIOUS dinner!!


He made fillet Mignon with homemade herb butter on top, mashed potatoes, steamed artichokes, brazed spinach topped with scallops! It was SO GOOD! He is just a fantastic cook! He spoils me. ;) We enjoyed our dinner on TV trays in the kitchen watching the TV that we set up on the counter. HAHA!  You make do I guess when you don't have access to the other rooms while floor finish dries. Stay tuned for more updates! 


Monday, October 6, 2014

Sew it Seams meets Spoonflower

I am super excited to announce the latest addition to the Sew it Seams family! Sew it Seams is now officially on Spoonflower!  For those of you who are new to Spoonflower, or perhaps have never heard of it before, Spoonflower is a venue for creating your own fabrics, wallpapers and wrapping papers.  The company uses industrial sized fabric printers to then print your designs into whatever yardage you desire onto a multitude of fabric options.  They have everything from Kona cotton to faux suede and just about everything in between. This includes wrapping paper, both satin and matte finish, and wallpaper in two different types. I have known about Spoonflower for some time now, but it wasn't until a dear friend of mine recently had me order her some fabric from them that I really started taking an interest.

She had her eye on one of the mini tote bags from my shop to use as a new church bag. She sent me a link to the fabric she wanted and I was so impressed with the design of a fabric so unique and specific to her religion.  It was just so cute!  I was even more impressed with the quality of both the image and the fabric once it arrived.

 
I got to work right away and her bag turned out so good!  And, when i delivered it, she loved it!
 


When I saw how cool and unique the fabric was, I started doing a little more browsing around and was blown away by the amazing volume of cool and unique fabrics that were available on their site.  I got SUPER excited when I discovered their weekly design contest! Every week, Spoonflower has a theme and you can enter a design that goes along with the theme. Spoonflower account holders get to vote for their favorite designs and the winning designs get featured on their web page and blog. How cool right?

So, of course, I got to work!  I am no great artist of realism, so I decided to try my hand at some whimsical fabric designs. I jotted down the next three weeks of contest themes and started brainstorming.  I started with this week's current theme "Ballet".   I decided to draw myself a rough ballet slipper element. I drew it with pencil and then colored it in with markers.

 
I scanned the image into my computer, then uploaded it onto the Spoonflower site and used their editing software to turn my simple design into a (well, what I think is pretty adorable) fabric design.
 

I uploaded this design officially to the contest which opened earlier this week. If you get a chance, take a quick minute to start up your own Spoonflower account and vote for your favorite designs! They may have just been flattering me, but when I logged into my account to vote, they had my design as one of the random samples featured.  That was kinda neat!


This design has already been favorited by a few people and its just so exciting! Favorites are different than votes in the contest, which I don't get to see totals of until the contest ends. I got a special email from Spoonflower also this week telling me that my design was featured on their "Recent trends" shopping page. (excuse my ridiculous screen shot pictures, I was excited!)


I have already finished the next two weeks of designs and am getting started on the next two weeks after that. I am really having so much fun with this!  Here is my fabric design for next week's "Umbrella" contest.
 

 
And my submission for the "Clocks and Timepieces" contest the following week.
 

 
 
 To add to the fun, all of my designs so far are available for purchase. Which means....You can order any of my bags as a custom order in a fabric designed special by me!  OR you can order my fabrics for your very own sewing projects. This week, I received sample swatches of my fabrics. It was so exciting seeing something that I designed printed on real fabric!
 


 
As a Spoonflower designer, I do earn "Spoondollars" as a commission of sorts for any purchases of my designs. Even if you don't have a need for fabric,wallpaper or wrapping paper, I hope that you will help support Sew it Seams latest adventure and vote for my designs (as well as any of the other very deserving designs) in the weekly contests. Voting ends Wednesday (so still plenty of time to get those votes in this week!) and the new contests start Thursdays. Spoonflower also has a weekly contest on their blog, which is usually for some really cool crafty or sewing books and often times free yardage of fabric or wrapping paper. Its also super quick and easy to enter, just need an email address. I am super excited for this new adventure! I have also created a new link to my Spoonflower shop on the right hand side of the blog for quick access to my shop. Thank you all for everything you do! Keep on crafting!