Stroller blankets and frozen yogurt dates!

Stroller Blankets
This past Saturday, one of my best friend's was in town for her baby shower.  She and her husband are expecting their first child, a boy in September.  I decided I wanted to do something a little different for her baby gift.  I knew that her in-laws' had given her the diaper bag that she wanted for her birthday and I wanted to seize the opportunity to roll out some new product!

During one of my "sewing lessons" (as we affectionately call them) with The boyfriend's Mom a while back, she showed me how to make strolled blankets.  They are flannel, self binding blankets which are square and are supposed to be less likely to dangle into your stroller wheels. They also make great "tummy time" throws or even a little blanket for small dogs.  We had a few hiccups when trying to make them the first time and I was busy trying to roll out the tote bags at the time, so I put them on the back burner for another time.

When I got my baby shower invite I scheduled another "lesson" to perfect the craft! :)  My friend's husband is half Japanese and they have started calling the baby their Little Ninja. I had some ninja flannel that just happened to match their invites, and a couple other prints that I thought would work well.

 

My second lesson went MUCH smoother and I went home and made two more, plus a few burp rags.

She LOVED them! The ninja blanket in particular. She could not wait to show them to her husband when she got back to Arizona! He loved the ninja one as well.  I got so excited making these! They turn out so cute and are pretty quick to put together. What's not to love? I am working on more now and am hoping to have them up in the shop later this month!

Frozen yogurt date
Monday, my eldest niece came with me to "Girl's day" while my friend was still in town.  She had a play date with one of my other girlfriend's daughter. They had a lot of fun together! My niece was so proud of this block tower that she built that was taller than she was!

She also got to feel my friend's baby kick! She thought it was pretty cool and said it felt like a heartbeat.

On the way home, we stopped and had a frozen yogurt date. My niece got plain flavor with lots of gummies and mochi on top, yum!

 She told me that I just HAD to try the mochi, or "little white things" as she likes to call them. I said OK, so she picked one off her yogurt and proceeded to suck the yogurt off of it and then hand it to me! I was laughing so hard! She wanted to make sure I got a true taste of mochi, completely untainted by her plain yogurt. SO considerate hahaha! We decided to get her sister some chocolate frozen yogurt to go. (Pinkberry will put little baggies of ice in with any to-go items so they don't melt on the way home.)

Her little sister was SO excited to get her chocolate yogurt! She loves food, and particularly chocolate food.

She started dripping it all over her dress, so Auntie made a command decision....we ditched the dress.

She could then FULLY enjoy her yogurt! It also left her free to paint her nails, along with her sister and I.

Her nail painting skills have improved quite a bit! It was a great day with the girls, both adult and child. :)

The rest of my days off were quite busy. I took The boyfriend and my visiting pregnant friend out to dinner to get to know one another.  That was a lot of fun! It was a nice weekend, but so busy that there was not much time for relaxing at home. I am looking forward to my next set of days off so I can squeeze in some R&R between finishing up some orders from the shop. Have a great week everyone!

Etsy Craft Party- Details!

 

I'm so excited to finally share the details of the Etsy party I hosted a few weeks ago! I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but there is just SO MUCH to share and I can't leave anything out.  It ended up being a bit of a smaller crowd than we originally thought, but it was a great group and turned out to be better for the space we had. I keep hearing what a great time everyone had and how they can't wait to see what next years' party has in store!

This was my first year participating in Etsy's global craft day.  Every year, Etsy promotes a global craft party to encourage creativity and crafting.  Various Etsy members and/or shop owners sign up to host parties around the globe, in their areas, on a certain day.  Etsy gives a suggested craft and each host can do that or any number of craft options of their choosing. This years theme was Recapture:bringing new life to your photographs.  Since this was my first year participating, I decided to keep it pretty simple and do the suggested craft. This years craft was embroidering onto your photographs to turn them into even brighter keepsakes or turning them into fun postcards.

I was super excited to take advantage of my local JoAnn's craft room for our venue. JoAnn's offers the use of their craft room, inside the store, for free when there are no classes going. Lucky for me, their was a mid day window available, and after checking out the space, I jumped on the opportunity!

In preparation for the party, I made a few decorations to make the room a bit more Etsy themed.  I used my Cricut paper cutting machine to cut out a couple of banners.

I also made some little tags that I hung from some white bins I found in the Target dollar bins.  I filled each one with the crafting supplies.

 

My final piece of preparation was to make a few samples of the craft to use for reference.  I embroidered a few of my own photos and made some into postcards and tossed a couple others into frames.  I created a nice little display at the front of the classroom and passed some of the samples around during the party for people to get ideas from.

 

 

Once the guests arrived, I gave a quick intro and we got started. I asked the guests to bring a photo or two to use for the project.  For those who didn't bring photos ,or could not decide which to use, I had a stack of vintage post cards for people to add embroidery to. 

 

 

To begin with, I had everyone flip their photos face down and we applied strips of blue painter's tape to the back of the picture.

 

 

This helps give some added stability, which is necessary when you start embroidering through paper. I had my guests tape right onto the table until the back was covered, then pull the whole thing off the table and trim the overhang to make it pretty.

 

 

Next, we taped a single sheet of tracing paper over the front side of the picture (just enough tape to hold it in place) and then I had my guests trace the image or words they wanted to embroider.

 

 

                                                                                  

                                                                   
Then, we put a piece of cardboard under our photos and used embroidery needles to poke holes into our design. (about one hole every 4-5 mm of image) I found that the best method to get a good grip on your needle while poking the holes is to push your needle into the eraser of your pencil and then use the pencil for gripping.

Once all the holes were poked, we gently removed our tracing paper and got to work on embroidering on our designs.

We had so much fun! I'm glad I decided not to more than the one craft, as some of the ladies ended up taking theirs home to finish.  Even my niece joined in on the fun!  She had a good time and was actually really good at embroidering. She spent most of the party hanging out near my boyfriend because she said he would need her help. Hahaha

Before we wrapped up the party, I had everyone drop their name tags into a bin and we did a drawing for our door prizes.  Two lucky winners were drawn and they got to choose between a mini tote bag from my Etsy shop or one of the 3-packs of my mesh zipper bags. Here are the happy winners!

 

As a special thank you to all of my guests, I had made up some little favor bags.  I took some fabric from my "Signature" line and made little fabric envelopes.

 



I ordered some buttons with my shop logo on them and used those to close up the envelopes.



I made mini sewing kits from matchboxes, which I painted and added my logo stickers to.  I also tossed in some chocolates (because why not??) and a business card with a special coupon code for those in attendance.

 

 

I think my niece REALLY liked the chocolates!

 



 

I want to thank everyone who came to the party and for those who purchased tickets but were not able to attend! You guys are so awesome and thank you for your endless support! We had so much fun and I look forward to making this an annual event! We are donating the extra ticket money ,that was not used for supplies, to The boyfriend's mother's non-profit quilting group.  They make gorgeous quilts for deserving veterans. I was so glad to have met a few of her fellow quilters from the group at the party. 

 

 

I would also like to thank my adorable nieces for being so wonderfully well behaved and for bringing some added entertainment to the party.

 

 

And finally, I would like to than The Boyfriend, for not only spending his day off with a bunch of crafting ladies, but also for making a craft of his own and taking all of these awesome pictures so that I could focus on helping the guests. He was so helpful and without him I would have nothing to share with you all other than my story of the party.