rainy saturday craft

today is a lousy, dark, windy, rainy mess of a day. i took a shower, but i will not put on a bra! i've spent the day inside, crafting and listening to music and feeding my cats treats.  best use of a saturday, really.  i made a thing that is cute though, so i'm going to show you what it is and how to do it yourself!

Birdie Bunting

(or any kind of pretty paper bunting)

what you will need: paper, scissors, thread, tape, tiny hole punch (or awl or sharp needle).  i used a bird-a-day calendar the girlchild got me last year for xmas. it was just too pretty to toss!  i also used a teeny hole punch rather than an awl to punch holes in the paper, and perle cotton thread and a needle for stringing. 

i have a punch that cuts out 1 and a quarter inch circles that came with my button maker. i love this thing. it's heavy duty and works like a charm. if you do not have one of these, no biggie! pick something circular to use as your template, and just trace around the images you want and cut out with scissors. they also make large circular paper punchers for scrapbooking that you could use. OR you could use some other cute shape. i used circles because i could. 

if you are lucky enough to have a kitten helper, then you are awesome. i put the circles i punched out in a crock that was nearby, and tali had a good time sorting through them. 

 

i tried a few different way of stringing the circles on some scrap paper.  there are probably a bunch of ways to do it, but i liked the string through the back, on the top of the picture. 

to hold the circles where i wanted them, i used a teensy bit of washi tape. you can use any tape or glue you want! did i need to use washi tape? no. you aren't really supposed to see the back, after all. i used it because it was cute, dammit.  i like cute. 

after i strung up all my sweet birdies, i hung is like this! (the picture above is a great print of a watercolor painting of my hometown's main street {coupeville represent!} that my aunt got me for my wedding anniversary.  she's the best.)

and a close up of the birdie faces.  this isn't even a whole month's worth of birds cut out, so i have a feeling i will be making more of these.  i'll probably send some to friends, and then festoon my house with cheerful bird friends. 

broken record

i spent NINE HOURS yesterday working on my wedding invitations.  NINE HOURS.  if they had super-cap-locks, you can bet i'd be using it right now.  most of that time was spent trying to make my mother's printer cooperate, adjusting it, calibrating it, filling it with new ink and arguing with it.  it was frustrating to not only have to re-write, type and set my invites, but having to deal with that old printer was like salting the wound.  i thought that going over there to work on the invites would be kind of relaxing; i could work and drink coffee out of her awesome keurig, play with maggie and may while things were printing, and visit with mom.  none of that happened but the coffee drinking.  the printer was also quite possibly the SLOWEST PRINTER ON EARTH, and for all those hours working, i didn't even get it all done!  the RSVP cards still need to be finished; her printer did not like the small paper size and basically just sprayed toner at random or just spit out blank sheets until i decided to call it a night.

it was draining work, even thought it was really just me doing nerdy stuff and formatting things.  i came home, watched SNL with the girlchild (miley fucking cyrus was actually pretty fucking funny, much to my chagrin), went to bed at about 2 and woke up this morning with D at 8.  i got up for a few hours and then decided it was cold and i wanted to go back to bed, and the next thing i knew it was 2 in the afternoon!  my mother likes to call me "mattress ass" and honestly, you can see why.  i can't believe the morning got so far away from me!  i'm glad that a big chunk of the printing is done; i can spend some time tonight and tomorrow cutting and putting things together, and hopefully this week i can get to a printer that will accept and work with my small RSVP cards.  it cheers me up to know that the end result of all this work are cute invitations, but days like yesterday made me wish i'd just bought a box of them at the craft store.  (which we all know i could have never done! that would have felt like cheating!)      

hey look!

i made a calendar for next year!  it took way too long to make (something like five hours) but i think that's partly because i was just winging it.  if i make another it shouldn't take as long.  D got me the lovely Italian paper the squirrel is cut out of, and this morning i was looking at wall calendars on etsy, and thought, "oh, i should try to make one."  in supplies it cost less (i had everything but the rubber cement), but in time it cost more, that's for sure.  i didn't make too giant a mess either, which makes me happy.  in the end, i think it turned out cute.