Wedding Backstory Part 1

Joey and I got married on August 15 2009. It was an amazing, laid-back and beautiful wedding. Here is the back story,

Part 1: Silhouettes

I wanted an old-timey style wedding- anything that felt like it could have found in the 1800's-1950's. I drew most of my ideas from 1930's era photographs of outdoor events like picnics. I saw a lot of beautiful silhouettes and cameo style paper crafts. I knew that I had to incorporate our faces into our save the dates and invitations somehow:
Our Save the Dates.
Made on photoshop, sent into wonderful and affordable zazzle to print:

These show our actual silhouettes. Making your own silhouette by digital camera and photoshop is easy. I tired doing it the old fashion way with paper and a candle.... but it was a failure.
There are all kinds of crafts that you can do with your own personal silhouettes. I am meaning to try one of these. Follow that link and you can see Jill's process. I do mine on photoshop:
STEP 1: Take picture


STEP 2:
I use the magnetic lasso photoshop tool to highlight my outline and erase all else:


Step 3:
Color overlay, print out, cut out:


For our wedding invites I bought a blank set of invitations from Walmart, printed the outline of our faces on the front, cut them out with a razor blade and glued on a piece of paper behind them:


More later on the bouquets, dresses, table favors and stage building!

Happy November

Halloween is over. I cut out bats all night Friday and baked a cake then cooked up a storm Saturday after work, iced a cake and hung bats. So here are the results:


Marinara dip with Meatballs is in the chicken with a witch hat:

Home made meatballs. Served with garlic bread sticks. Joey didn't like these because of the bay leaf and basil BUT OTHER people said they were good:
1 lb ground beef
1/2 lb Italian sausage
Bread crumbs
egg
Parmesan cheese
Salt, pepper, bay leaf, whatever else
Cover cookie sheet with foil and lightly grease it. Broil for 10 minutes, flip them over, broil for 10 more.
Simmer in tomato sauce for however long you have.

Next up, the Cake:

Honestly, it's a cake box. I wish I had the time for a cake from scratch because I love to bake, but it was just fun assembling this.
Chocolate cake box makes 2 circular cakes. Bake and let completely cool. Ice in between the layers.
Melt squares of semi-sweet bakers chocolate with some candy wax stuff and poor over cake. Hang bats is a tangley mess.

The Delicious Swiss Fondue is in the awesome orange cast iron pot, I wish I took a picture of inside:

Swiss Fondue, from Martin's dad:
Emmental cheese
Gruyere or white cheddar
Dry white wine
Garlic
Bread (I like Germany ones- pumpernickel, rye)

Rub down pot with garlic cloves as you would buttering a pan. Leave in chunks of garlic. Chop up the cheese, equal amounts of each. Melt slowly over the stove, move to fondue stand. Lightly toast bread chunks. ENJOY Don't forget to stir it and scrape up the bottom of it occasionally or you'll scorch it over the Sterno.)

Mexican-ish. . . . More like Taco Bell-style. . . Mexican Dip:
Heck of a lot of white american cut into chunks
Lots of red pepper flakes
Green onions chopped up
Paprika
Fill up the pot with water to the top of the ingredients.
Melt slowly.

With all cheesey fondues you have to heat them slowly over low heat. In my experience, the longer the take to melt all together, the longer they have to infuse all those flavors (like the dry wine and garlic or green onions) Stir occasionally while still in watery/chunky phase, then stir vigorously when everything is starting to melt to get it a good consistency.

Enjoy.

Pumpkin Carving

Here's my pumpkin. Excited for Joey's to be carved soon. It was hard, but I did it with utility knife blades and a small knife. I got the template from Cindy's site.

Plans and Slow Progress

I sewed until my eyes crossed last night but I still didn't complete my daily craft- a shirt for a friend's 29th birthday. I made a felt art picture for Sherri's nursery 2 days ago but am not happy with the way the framing turned out. Man I guess that I've hit a funk- I have nothing to show for my past three days of crafting effort. So instead I'll picture some plans:
Here's the image that the birthday shirt is based on:

Everything made from felt-cuts sewn to a ringer-T I got at Goodwill yesterday. The text will be "Eatin your food leavin' dishes" which are lyrics from a song on the new Jay-Z album which Joey hasn't taken out of his CD player since he got it.

Afer that, I'm entering into a hand sewn scarf contest offered by Craftzine:

The scarf has to "represent you" and has to be sewn, not knitted. Which is excellent because I can't knit AT ALL. It blows my mind. I can eat sushi with the sticks though. I'm planning 2 entries. One a felt-art of Gorey's Gashleycrumb Tinies' O is for Olive drawing. The second a quilt-like scraf made up of 10 squares with my favorite West Virginia scenes depicted: Arden, field of flowers, apple tress, our woodstove, sled riding, bare feet in grass, the cemetary, etc etc.

Next up:

Bird Mobile for Sherri. I saw this craft on Jill's site. I have all the cloth I need to make it, I just need some sticks! There are no trees around my house. How does a girl from WV end up lacking twigs? I step on 500 daily in dad's yard.
Any how.
And my pumpkin's getting carved tonight. Excited to post pictures of that. Hopefully it'll turn out. I have big plans, as usual, for that 30 pounder.

Halloween is upon us and I'm hosting a small fondue get-together on Saturday. I'm planning to make this cake which I found on UCreate's site who in turn found it on Martha Stewart's site:


So that's a little taste as to what's to come.
Cheers!

Light Table

Lots in process, lots. And Halloween's coming up, so pumpkins and costumes soon too.

On a side note, I finally made that light table. I had an old medicine cabinet in the garage so I unscrewed the mirror, drilled a hole and threaded some lights through it and put a spare pane of glass over the top. Voila! No more tracing against a window.

Yes I am tracing a TI85 scientific calculator circa late 90's early 2000's. It's for a T-shirt for my Math Field Day geek of a husband. He claims he won;t wear it, but we'll see.

A Sweater for Emmalee

Ahahaha, payback. My former room mate and I had this little game- we would hide this creepy vogue model for each other around the house. It started innocently enough, EmmaLee stated that she hated the model so I, ever the little sister, laid it open to that page on her pillow one day. She retaliated. It escalated. It ended up being a full-out war. I mailed the page to her with a return address as her Grandmother's. "Oh! A note from my grandmother!" she exclaimed as she opened it. I scanned it in and put it up as her Facebook profile picture. She'd hide it in my closet, taped to hanger so I would discover is as I browsed my clothes. She hid it in the sole of a shoe before gifting them to me.
So it's my turn, and I had to give it back. I had this grand scheme to put it in a parking ticket envelope (In Morgantown, parking tickets come in little blaze-orange envelopes, unmistakable) and put it on her car... But she moved to New Orleans before I could :(
So here it is:


My process:
Trace the image by holding it against a window (instant light table! I love this trick. I will be constructing myself a light table soon)


Cut out the pieces just as you would a dress pattern. Pin the felt pieces together on interfacing or paper, whatever:



Stitch!


Viola:

Nursery Art

Sherri's nursery has no art! Problem solved. I spent literally one evening putting this together and one evening framing. This is such a rudimentary craft that you need no artistic training.

I found these totally wonderful frames at Goodwill. Heh. Now a craft for paint-by- number Jesuses, hmmmmm.




I used the untrained, untamed, rough caveman stitch for everything. Very Sally from Nightmare before Christmas.


The objects in white are actually painted over paper cuts from the templates by the amazing Cindy . Everything else is left over felt from the babyshower and left over fabric from apron-makin'. So project cost total? $10. (I know, those Jesus frames were steep at $5/pc at Goodwill- seriosly. Nothing sells for $5 a pc at WV Goodwills)