My First Stitch n'Bitch - March 15, 2011

I joined a Stitch n'Bitch a few months back. Then winter came and then all this snow kept falling, preventing me from joining in the fun. Finally I got lucky and the weather here, in Wisconsin, was sunny, the day became a warm 50 degrees with no jacket required for this weeks Stitch n'Bitch!


I thought I'd get my butt on the road to meet up with my car pool about a half hour early. It actually took me an hour to get to the meeting place! I felt really bad about that. I hope that Angi will be willing to meet and carpool with me again!  


We drove together and had pleasant conversation on our way to meet up with her friends at a cafe. When we got there Deb was already knitting away. Angi and I said hello then put our stuff down and went up for coffee. When we went to order we met up with two group members, Jenny and Marty, who were getting their food and drink. I ordered a falafel and a soy chai, yum! 


Over food we had a great chat about what we all were up to then we settled into our different projects: knitting, reading, computing. I had packed my picnic basket of crafts with some books to share so some were looking at those. I also packed a hand sewing project. I was experimenting with some folded shapes, out of pieces of yellow felt. I finished it pretty quickly, about an hour or so, and in the end it didn't really impress me, so I gave it Blue, my dog, to play with. He likes it and is napping with it right now. We are calling it 'cheese' since it's yellow and sort of textured because of the layers. It was never meant to be cheese though, ha ha ha.


I'm very happy that I got to go! Everyone was really nice, the environment was wonderful and it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to join in with this great group of ladies again sometime. 


Hope you enjoyed catching up with me and my adventures of my first Stitch n'Bitch!


xoxo, 
Stephie

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SHOP ATTACK - round 36

Greetings and welcome to the I Love Blueberry Blonde Blog!




I am starting a new weekly post theme for The Blueberry Blonde blog called "SHOP ATTACK" in collaboration with the Attack of the Craft forum. The aim is to feature a variety of artists from (AotC) Attack of the Craft share their Etsy shops, support their art and give them some exposure.




Did you know that the AotC forum is also called "The Island of Misfit Crafters". This forum brings people together in the spirit of sharing, promoting and celebrating DIY. Everyone is welcome! Whatever level you are at with your creative skills please feel welcome to join us! If aren't into creating and you are a patron of handmade you are also welcome join us and begin discovering all that AotC has to offer.




For more awesome handmade goodness, search the tag "attackofthecraft" on Etsy!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This weeks Shop Attacks has three stores for you to discover.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Poppy
Stop over to see some of Poppy's one of a kind and limited edition custom made fashions like this WOW shirt!

Platipuses
Visit Plats to see some very stylish hand made clothes for curvy women! This awesome rib cage shirt even glows in the dark! 

Working Class Punx
At this shop you can tell this lady is has a good eye for what is cool! There are some very great punk themed bags like this messenger bag!

I hope you enjoyed visiting the I Love Blueberry Blonde blog and exploring this weeks Shop Attack talent!
That's all for now! Happy Surfing!




xoxo,
Bluberry Blonde

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Blueberry Blonde Creations

SHOP ATTACK - round 35

Greetings and welcome to the I Love Blueberry Blonde Blog!


I am starting a new weekly post theme for The Blueberry Blonde blog called "SHOP  ATTACK" in collaboration with the Attack of the Craft forum. The aim is to feature a variety of artists from (AotC) Attack of the Craft share their Etsy shops, support their art and give them some exposure.


Did you know that the AotC forum is also called "The Island of Misfit Crafters". This forum brings people together in the spirit of sharing, promoting and celebrating DIY. Everyone is welcome! Whatever level you are at with your creative skills please feel welcome to join us! If aren't into creating and you are a patron of handmade you are also welcome join us and begin discovering all that AotC has to offer.


For more awesome handmade goodness, search the tag "attackofthecraft" on Etsy!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This weeks Shop Attacks has three stores for you to discover.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Smarmy Clothes
Must see and own creations by Lex. A wide variety of one of a kind hand made wares including tops, pants, dresses, hoodies, undies, gloves and a whole lot more! This talented lady has it all! She'll even do custom orders. Just look at this fabulous plaid school girl jumper I would love to wear this out for meeting friends and going gallery hopping!

Hardware Honey Jewelry
Drawing on elements of her personality to create handmade and altered pieces of jewelry Hardware Honey has some sweet industrial glam! This piece, the  lock washer set, caught my eye right away. I think it would be fun to wear out with friends for drinks and dancing!

Blueberry Blonde
Oh my, that's me! What fun to be in this weeks SHOP ATTACK! I love making whimsical pieces of art. In my shop you'll find lots of one of a kind hand made work including hats, purses, stationary, dolls and more. While it is easy to pick my favorite from someone else's shop it's difficult to pick just one of my own... This is the very lovely Paris Cocktail Hat. When I create a hat I think about the woman who might wear it and where she may wear it to. For this hat I was thought of a woman walking to a cafe to meet friends for coffee in the afternoon one August day. It is fun, flirty and feminine -- she's bound to turn some heads.

I hope you enjoyed visiting the I Love Blueberry Blonde blog and exploring this weeks Shop Attack talent!
That's all for now! Happy Surfing!




xoxo,
Bluberry Blonde

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Blueberry Blonde's first giveaway is now CLOSED

      March 2, 2011 - March 9, 2011

       ~ ~ ~ ~ ~   Blueberry Blonde's first giveaway   ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Enter to win two dolls! 

Kitty Girl Doll & Puppy Girl Doll
$50.00 value
both are 14.5" long

Hand made - one of a kind plushies!
Hand and machine stitched.
There will never be another set made!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~  Please leave a separate comment for each entry  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Tell me what item you like from my Etsy shop

Follow my blog

Like Blueberry Blonde FB fan page

Blog about this giveaway - leave link

 Tweet about this giveaway - leave link

~ ~ ~ ~ ~  Contest will be open for one week  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Winner will be chosen with a random number generator 
and announced next Thursday 

Good luck!

xoxo, 

Stephie 

SHOP ATTACK - Round 34

Greetings and welcome to the I Love Blueberry Blonde Blog! 


I am starting a new weekly post theme for The Blueberry Blonde blog called "SHOP  ATTACK" in collaboration with the Attack of the Craft forum. The aim is to feature a variety of artists from (AotC) Attack of the Craft share their Etsy shops, support their art and give them some exposure.  


Did you know that the AotC forum is also called "The Island of Misfit Crafters". This forum brings people together in the spirit of sharing, promoting and celebrating DIY. Everyone is welcome! Whatever level you are at with your creative skills please feel welcome to join us! If aren't into creating and you are a patron of handmade you are also welcome join us and begin discovering all that AotC has to offer.

For more awesome handmade goodness, search the tag "attackofthecraft" on Etsy!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This weeks Shop Attacks has three stores for you to discover.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~


Warning Label Creations
Cute hand made bags and this pretty camera strap can be found at Warning Label Creations.

Chyld's Play
Check out Chyld's Play for a unique variety of hand made accessories! Like this cute Punk Blue and Plaid Bag!

The Concertina Shop
Look to The Concertina Shop for a wide variety of wonderful Amigurumi dolls including this cute Cthulu!

I hope you enjoyed visiting I Love Blueberry Blonde blog and exploring new talent! 

That's all for now! Happy Surfing!

xoxo, 

Bluberry Blonde

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Little Dresses for Africa

Hello I'm excited to share with you all what I've been spending some of my time, energy on this past month.

I've been making pillowcase dresses with some dear friends to send to Africa. There are several groups of sewers participating. The dresses are going to an orphanage in Guinea Bissau. The goal is to send 75 dresses to girls ranging in age from 18 months to 15 years.

Much of the material, adorable embellishments, threads and creative vision have been donated to us to make it all come together. I hope you can spare a few minutes to look at the photos here. It has been a very fun and practical way to give back to a community in need.

Please visit Devon's blog to see more about this project as she is the coordinator.

There is talk of getting together to make more soon!

Thanks for stopping by!

Stephie of Blueberry Blonde

SUKIE IRON-ONS 30 sheets of fabric transfers

Hello 2011 and hello to you!

For my first post of the new year I really wanted to do a review of a book that I recently purchased -- SUKIE - IRON ONS. As cute and interesting as the designs are I am sad to tell you I was sorely disappointed with this book. 

The overall book design is very cute with its self closure and the the mention of using environmentally responsible paper is a draw. Most of the characters and images are pretty wonderful however there are a sprinkling of a few images which are disturbing and don't fit in with the overall 'cute-sey-ness'. 

The image transfers in SUKIE are not your typical plastic coated designs. Instead they are more like ink transfers -- or stains -- which the book never mentions or distinguishes, although they do have 3 pages of 'how to'. What seems to be missing from the how to section is care for the fabric prior to ironing-on images and how to care for the fabric once the image has been ironed on. 

I read some reviews for SUKIE on Amazon and noticed how many mentioned that the images washed right off or faded considerably. At this time I have not yet washed my items so, I will have to comment later on how well the image holds up to regular washing/washing with oxyclean and drying...   

Here is what I did do with SUKIE thus far: I started with light colored a shirt that was washed/dried WITHOUT softeners to improve image transfer and I put cardboard between the layers of fabric, as the ink soaks right through and could damage the back of the garment.

I chose a mauve hedge hog to experiment with, as it was small and cute. I followed the directions SUKIE suggested for a quality image transfer, very high heat, pressing hard and making small circles with the iron... Alas, I was not happy when I removed the paper and peeked at the image. 

Why did I put it on the front of my shirt?! 


It looked more like a jam splotch than a spiky outline of a hedgehog... I guess the small circular motion of the iron cause the image to become blurred and the tiny dot of an eye was lost entirely. I don't have a photo of it because I ended up covering it with white acrylic paint and a stencil of a dragon from a different book called Stencil Me In by Marthe Le Van... 

So, after a night of sleep I decided to write this review and take photo documents....

Good thing I slept on it because then I got to wondering how to get the transfer to adhere cleanly and more permanently? I had to take control! If I wanted "iron-ons" it looked like I was going to have to make them...

My solution: I have a stash of 'dark t-shirt transfer paper' which I usually run through my printer to ink it up... maybe its similar to SUKIE ink?! Brain storm! I decided to experiment with a new beige colored hedgehog and iron that image to the dark transfer paper! I had to slowly peel the image away from transfer paper it looked like the ink was absorbed right into the plastic so that was promising. Taking the new version I cut around the image; peeled backing away; applied it to the fabric - now it can go on light & dark fabrics! Iron in place & I WIN!  As you can see in this image at the top it works! 

The two squirrels in the above image are my two attempts at using light t-shirt image transfer paper. I realize that the way light t-shirt transfer paper works is very different to the dark t-shirt transfer paper but I had to try. Looking at the top squirrel you can see how it became adhered to the paper and became torn when I tried peeling it way. The brown smudge is evidence of how it transfers = not very well. The bottom squirrel seemed a much better transfer to the light transfer paper as the ink is well absorbed into the plastic and to the left you can see it did not transfer very well at all as the in transfered over but not the plastic coating...  

I decided to try another image on the dark transfer paper and got very good results! On the left is the SUKIE ink image and on the right is how the ink transfered to the dark iron-on transfer paper! Not too shabby! Simply cut the SUKIE image out and cut out a similar size of the dark transfer paper. Place face to face and press (NO swirling of the iron) for a few seconds with a hot iron (cotton setting) wait for it to cool then gently peel apart.

I cut around the image... If you try this don't forget to remove the paper backing from the image after trimming. I like to use a pin to help separate the two layers without damaging it. This next image shows the backing on the left, and the image on the right which is under the 'special paper' that comes with dark transfer paper kit, you are meant to cover the image with it in order to iron it -- I've tried other papers and none work... so don't loose yours ;) 

Here is the final product! A bit of white is showing and evident fading at the top but all in all I'm very pleased!

Well, that is all for now. I hope that if you have purchased SUKIE that this post can help you salvage it. Feel free to share your thoughts, opinions, constructive criticisms or ideas with me on this topic. I'd love to hear from you about your experience with SUKIE or iron-on's.

Best wishes for a happy and safe 2011,
Effy of Blueberry Blonde

Happy Java

The last time I embroidered was at least a decade ago... using a combination of the cutesy iron on patterns and my own designs. As I moved around a lot those days my embroidery supplies were packed and forgotten.

I've been keeping busy since the online art journal class with Red Velvet Art has ended. One neat thing I tried this summer was entering three pieces of my original works in the Stevens Point, WI Riverfront Art Center 2010 Visions show. They chose my Sushi Hat for the show, which was very cool and I was so happy I was bouncing off the walls for several days.The place was so packed I couldn't get a photo of opening night, but it was fun. It was a milestone for me as it was the first time I've ever shown my work! I was very nervous but I got lots of positive feedback. 

One item I tried entering in the show was Happy Java, an embroidered piece. Even though it was not accepted to the show I wanted to share it with you all here, because I am rather fond of it. This embroidery was the first I've created in over a decade! When dreaming it up I knew I wanted to create something that was a familiar topic for the medium but simple enough so I could reacquaint myself with the skill. After looking over an embroidery stitch book I felt I could master the simple stitches required for my simple design.

First I chose this lovely fabric which reminds me of blue sky days. (I also made a cloud pillow, for my niece, from the same fabric.) I knew I wanted to have a rainbow but rather than having the rainbow over a landscape I chose to anchor the image with one of my favorite things: coffee, complete with a marbled fabric cuff. I balanced the design out at the last minute with a cute cloud.... what do you think?

Rediscovering embroidery has been fun and I do think I may need to make many more... I must say there is something very captivating about creating something stitch by stitch. Maybe it's the infinite possibility of design and color combinations, maybe it's the taught fabric between two circular hoops or perhaps it is the meditative quality of embroidery itself... whatever it is I hope to develop it further to see where I can take it.

xoxo,
Blueberry Blonde