the buttercup bag

i followed the pattern and instructions found on made by rae for what she calls "the buttercup bag". the two fat quarters i used were a little thinner fabric than i think was intended, and instead of heavyweight interfacing i used batting and witchery stitchery, but i still think the final result is really cute and the bag is fully capable of holding plenty of shit, so i'm not too worried.

i love these buttons!

lining and inside pocket...oooh!

a random necklace

there's not really much to say about this other than i had some beads i liked and a large, curious, pendant-ish thing that i was trying to figure out a use for. i dunno if i really like the way i incorporated that pendant, but i don't really know how else would have worked. got any ideas? leave a comment. i'm not adverse to taking it apart and making something better.

a little boxy pouch with matching owl pin

the next person i decided to fulfill my promise to was my friend/cousin-in-law jenny (who happened to be the one i got the meme from). i decided to work with what i know which is that she likes vintage prints and birds. the result was a little boxy pouch made with a fabric i feel has a decent enough vintage feel going on with the print:

and an owl pin i made using the same fabric as the pouch and some felt:

they went together adorably:

two down, three to go.

green tea cupcakes

i made these green tea cupcakes:

with white betty crocker cake mix an frosting plus this:

from left to right that is green tea flavored mochi filled with azuki bean, sweetened green tea powder, and azuki bean paste. i put about two and a half tablespoons of the green tea powder in the cake mix and the rest in the frosting. before baking i placed a dalop of the azuki paste in each cup. after baking i cooled the cupcakes on racks. once cooled, i applied the green tea frosting to the cupcakes using wilton tip #1M before topping with a mochi.

observe the anatomy:

by far my favorite cupcakes ever. and applepiejen wouldn't even try them.

a hobo lunchbag for applepiejen

applepiejen was the first person i felt like fulfilling my promise to. knowing her love for pink, pirates, and my hobo lunchbag, she got this:

one down, four to go.

cupcake pops

my friend jenny and i decided to tackle cupcake pops using the method described by bakerella. the cake centers were french vanilla betty crocker cake and white frosting. we used a combination of chocolate and butterscotch chips for the bottoms. for the tops we used vanilla melts with food coloring and various sprinkles. instead of legit small plastic treat bags, we used sandwich bags trimmed to the right size. the results were fucking adorable (and delicious!):

blue with shimmer and white pearl non periels

green with pastel flower sprinkles

pink with multi-colored non periels

lavender with multi-colored non periels

promises

a friend of mine posted a meme in her blog that read:

Here's the deal:

The first 5 people to respond to this post will get something made by me.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

- I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.
- What I create will be just for you.
- It'll be done this year (2009).
- You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a mixed CD. It may be a poem. I may draw or paint something. I might bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? (I sure don't.)
- I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

And in return, all you need to do is post this text into a note of your own and make something for 5 others.

so here we are. it is that meme right there that gave me the idea to start this blog. i ended up being the first person to respond and, after posting the note on my facebook, i now have five promises to fulfill. with this blog i wanted a means by which to document my crafts and show them off to people other than the recipients. since this blog has yet to fulfill it's purpose i figured it was time to start. expect these projects to start popping up.

a little boxy pouch - finally!

third time's a charm! here's my first successful little boxy pouch. i'm giving it to my mother-in-law.

sooooo much improvement over the initial attempt.

lemon raspberry cupcakes

here's what i did:

• made a box of lemon cake mix following directions on the box for making 24 cupcakes.
• let the cupcakes cool on racks.
• blended raspberry preserves and some fresh raspberries for filling.
• once the cupcakes were cool i filled them with the raspberry filling using a #230 wilton tip.
• i whipped vanilla buttercream with the rest of the raspberry preserves and piped it on the cupcakes using a #12 wilton tip.
• topped with lemon zest and a fresh raspberry.

they turned out to be very sweet and refreshing.

a pretty coin purse with lining

i set out to retry the little boxy pouch and got to about step 5 when i made a new mistake: i forgot to, "rearrange the tube so that the bottom seam sits on top of the zip." i ended up with something that looked like this:


not wanting to waste, i found some brocade i had and sewed a liner making a pretty cute coin purse.

not giving up on that little boxy pouch, though.

peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes

these are simple, super rich cupcakes. i took a triple chocolate fudge betty crocker cake mix and prepared as directed. then i took mini reese's peanut butter cups and place one in each of the cupcake cups after i'd evenly distributed the batter into 24 standard-sized cups. i baked at the recommended temp for 22 minutes and allowed them to cool for about a half hour.


for the frosting i mixed betty crocker whipped cream cheese frosting with a few tablespoons of peanut butter. after frosting the cupcakes i drizzled chocolate syrup over each of them and stuck one third of a regular-sized reese's peanut butter cup. even with all the reese's, i must say these actually taste more like little debbie nutter butters. that's not a bad thing.

a crooked little boxy pouch

today i decided to make this. it turned out alright, but it's not perfect. let's examine what went wrong.

let me be honest, this is where i failed: at the very beginning. how? i picked the wrong effing fabric. it was chosen because i have an ass-load of it, but it's a jersey knit. terrible for this project. i would recommend a quilter's quarter or some linen or whatever else other that jersey knit.



welcome to the next moment of failure: i didn't line up the two pieces of fabric evenly when i attached the zipper. oops.

i also didn't do a very good job of sewing the two pieces of fabric together at the bottom. in fact, it is here that you can clearly see that the bag is going to turn out crooked.

non-sequitur: the picture above looks very similar to kleenex carrying cases i've had from japan.

i did clip the "ears" off, but i didn't use the correct scissors (i.e., the ones that are zig-zagged) because i don't own a pair. we'll see how that goes over time.

and here is my completed project; a wonky little boxy pouch. i'm gonna try again and i'll let you know how that goes.

banana nut muffins

i had some bananas that had seen better days so i figured it best to make some muffins rather than waste. i googled recipes and settled on one by tyler florence that seemed easy enough. also, this project gave me an excuse to use my heart-shaped cupcake/muffin pan for the first time.

mashing the bananas was my favorite part, but it made me think of the wiggles.

so, you may have noticed if you checked out the recipe that it was meant to make 12 jumbo muffins rather than twelve cupcake-sized muffins. after filling up my muffin pan i had enough batter left over to fill a mini loaf pan...unfortunately i don't own any of those so i made due with a mini heart-shaped springform pan.

the results were mixed. while the regular muffins were really yummy and cute and stuff, the giant muffin in the springform pan took forever to bake and rose too much and made a fat mess in my oven.

my old man got a bit zealous and took a muffin before i could take a picture of my completed product.

you could only tell they were heart-shaped if you looked at the bottom. oops.

there is a pan under all that mess.

overall i was satisfied with what i made and recommend the tyler florence recipe to y'all. it was delicious and ridiculously easy. just make sure you have the proper pans.

the hobo lunchbag

i saw this pattern on sewing notions a thought that it seemed easy enough to be worth trying. for my pattern paper i cut and taped a paper grocery bag and for the fabric i used four quilter's quarters. otherwise, i followed the pattern exactly as she made it without any of the options that weren't a part of her tutorial's example.


it did end up being really cute and it seems very practical. my final product seems a bit larger than the one in the tutorial, though i suppose it may be i'm using a smaller container. still, it would seem then that mine would have room for a drink and utensils, right? i'm thinking of making more of these for friends and throwing in the plastic container, too, as an excuse to bake something sweet to go inside as an additional treat. nice of me, eh?

a gray and pink bead necklace

i found a beautiful rose quartz pendant at the turlock, ca rock and gem show that, along with a string of matching round beads, were begging me to turn them into a necklace. to avoid making a totally monochrome bauble, i decided to throw in some gray squared beads that i happened to already have from a previous visit to a local bead shop.

i didn't follow any design or gain inspiration from anything other than the pendant. i'm pretty happy with the final product, though i wish i had made it, maybe, an inch longer. oh well, it should look great with something that has a deeply cut neckline.

a baby "quilt"

when my son was born, i decided i'd make him a quilt. (for the sake of this project, i'm using the term "quilt" pretty loosely. it's more so a blankie with quilt-like properties.) i'm not much of a quilter, but the final product was actually pretty nice. four years later, he still carries the thing around. his older sister liked it too, so i made her one as well. since i'm having another girl here very soon (uh, like, tomorrow) i figured i'd be a pretty crappy mom if i didn't make her a quilt too.

the latest quilt was made in the same way as the previous two and it's super, super easy. i started out with 7 eighths that i cut into eight rectangles a piece. jo-ann fabrics will sometimes carry "fat eighths" which is exactly the right amount. this go around they didn't have any in the purple color-scheme i was looking for so i bought quarters and cut them in half.

here are my rectangles all cut and ready to be sewn together. (the blue underneath is my older daughter's quilt that i used as a template to make sure i didn't have two of the same print right next to each other.) i find that the 7x8 arrangement makes a nice-sized rectangular blankie.

where i feel my blankie isn't really a quilt is that instead of painstakingly taking the time to sew each rectangle to the set, i sew up the rows of seven so i have eight strips, then i sew the eight strips together to form one large piece of fabric. ta-da!:

for the batting, i used jo-ann fabrics brand traditional batting. i layed the batting out flat, put my rectangle patch on top, and cut the batting to size leaving a bit of a border so that i'd have a nice trim when i attached the backing fabric.

i pinned the rectangle patch to the batting to give myself better control as i layed out the two on top of the backing fabric. (for the backing fabric i used one yard of standard quilting material and just folded up the extra length into the trim.) i then flattened everything out as best as possible and pinned everything together to prepare for the batting stitch.

flipping over the pinned-up blakie, i drew a heart with some plain white bar soap and used that as the pattern for the batting stitch. once there was an actual stitch holding all the pieces together, i was able to fold up the edges of the backing fabric and pin them to form the trim:

after that, it was just a matter of sewing up around the trim to complete the quilt. i used two hems around the edge for security. here are pics of the completed blankie, front and back:

all that's left to do is wash 'er up in some dreft and she'll be ready for my baby girl. seriously, super, super, easy.

st. patrick's day cupcakes

i felt like making cupcakes for tomorrow.

i didn't give the leprechauns arms cos those buggers can get punchy after too much green beer.

i used betty crocker white cake mix with a pack of jell-o instant pistachio pudding thrown in for the color and flavor. no adjustments were made to baking time or temp. the filling is jell-o instant vanilla pudding. the frosting is betty crocker whipped cream cheese.


i made the decorations out of marshmallow fondant using this recipe. piece o' cuppycake.

this leprechaun dude unintenionally looked like mr. bill so i said, "forget it," to goatees.