The Happiest Place on Earth

I'm so looking forward to Friday. Ryan and I are celebrating his birthday early by hitting up Tokyo Disney! We're going to wake up at the crack of dawn, take the almost 2 hour train ride there and then spend all day enjoying the wonder that is Tokyo Disneyland. I can't wait! Either can Ryan for that matter, as many of you may already know - he is a HUGE Disney fan. Happy early birthday, Ryan!!

Birthdays and bow ties

Someone I know has a big birthday coming up! That's right, Ryan's birthday is right around the corner and I am busy putting together a variety of fun little trinkets for his big day. Trinket number 1: old tie transformed into new bow tie. The tutorial over at Make It and Love It was great!

Ok, by "old tie" I really meant $1 tie from the dollar store. Because this is a surprise for Ryan, I chose to buy a tie (for $1 yeah!) instead of taking one from his closet and chopping it up. I thought he might get suspsicious. But if you have old ties laying around, they would be perfect for this project.

It was a quick project and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I won't be able to give my full opinion until I see how it looks on him, but I think he'll like it!

And...I've finally started a cross stitch piece! I like cross stitch better than embroidery, maybe. I sometimes like the look of embroidery better on things, but cross stitching is way easier. Still a slow-moving project though. I'm using a pattern from my new cross stitch book, Revival Designs. Hopefully I'll finish before the summer's over.

Foldover tote...and near craft fail

I finally got around to finishing this foldover tote! I'd been wanting a new tote for stashing all my knitting supplies because they end up all over my apartment. This bag is great because it's tall enough to fit knitting needles and still foldover to close at the top.

I used embroidery patterns from the new book I got a couple weeks ago. I can't say I'm in love with embroidery. I'm a quick-crafter and like to get projects done fast. Embroidery involves a lot of time and patience. Don't get me wrong, I still like embroidery, but just don't think I will be adding embroidery to every single thing I do.

The tutorial is over at Noodlehead and is a pretty quick project. The tutorial uses bias tape for the edges but I really liked the design of my lining, so I just folded that over and used that instead. I wasn't going to use grommets either, but after this near craft fail I had to:

Yes, that is a giant hole in my bag if you're wondering. I bought these really cute brass button-fasteners that I was going to use in place of the grommets. Then spent over an hour trying to figure out how to use them. The instructions were in Japanese (again, which I do not speak) and after multiple attempts at using them, I decided to just buy the grommets.

Craft fail adverted, for now. It's done, hooray!