Moonshine Cake

Ahhh, titles can be deceiving! Moonshine is the most amazing dog owned by my friend Aaron, who this past weekend had a milestone birthday. This was my second attempt at a 3-D cake, and I was pretty happy with it. It was pretty fun to do. I used Smitten Kitchen's Red Velvet Cake recipe and cream cheese icing. Two recipes of the cake and three of the icing. The recipe used 3 9" round pans, which I substituted 3 8" square pans. It was just easier to figure out the layout using square. In my head at least. :) It is hard to see in the pictures, but she has a pink collar with metal spikes - metal icing tips worked perfect!

Filling the Frames

The wood frames are almost complete. This past week I reinforced them with nails (first time using a nail gun with a compressor!), and now all they need is a coat or two of polyurethane to protect them. This week I started laying them out how they will go on the wall, and plan for what will go in them. In the midst of that I'm working on a project involving forks, wood, and chalkboard paint. :) Oh, and the second half of the garden may get planted soon as well. Woo hoo!

Signs of Life

We've had a LOT of rain recently, good because it has brought us almost up to normal. But it has made for some chilly, dreary days! So I finally made it out to the garden today to do a little weeding and check on the progress. The sugar snaps, onions and sunflowers have started sprouting, and with Monday's scheduled sun and warmth, it should start taking off soon. Yay garden!

Garden 2011

Garden planting has begun! A couple weeks ago we tilled the garden and today I planted potatoes (Yukon Gold and Blue Adirondack), carrots (purple and orange), yellow onions, sugar snaps, and sunflowers. Someone gave me a few of their strawberry plants, and they seem to be doing nicely thus far, hopefully I will get a handful out of them this summer. So nice to be back playing in the dirt, despite the large number of grubs we've all seen thus far. Gross. If I had any plans to go fishing, they would be perfect. I probably squished 20 today. Anyways, loving getting things started, can't wait until they start growing!

Reclaimed Barn Wood

The beginning of the year I started to think through a project that sounded interesting ... more on that later when it comes to fruition! Anyways... to frame this particular project, I wanted to use old wood, reclaimed barn wood sounded so fabulous and MUCH more interesting than fresh cut. So I started asking around and found a place north of town where I could buy boards of all sizes, shapes, and type. I definitely felt out of my league staring at it all and just started picking out random boards that seemed like they might have extra character. Most were weathered completely gray, and just laying about all over a field. I loaded up my stash of wood, and brought it back to Charlotte.

It spent a while on my porch waiting for me to do something with it. ;) Finally, after letting it dry out completely, I took it to a friend's to plane it. And that's when all the cool colors and knots came out - that was SO fun! And just recently I marked the boards for the sizes I wanted, and we cut the boards down with a table saw, and mitered the corners. I was so excited that night I stayed up late gluing and clamping all the frames. :) They just need to be reinforced with nails. I love how they turned out!

Wine Box Bookshelves

I've been needing some change lately. Partly due to re-signing my apartment lease for the FOURTH time. We can't paint the walls either, so I have to find other creative means. I was also in need of cleaning out some things, making it less cluttered. So one project included the living room... there is a weird two foot corner by the window, where it juts out. In my excitement at getting started, I neglected to take a decent "before" picture, and had to dig through the archives to find this one. But you get the point. Weird corner. Bookshelf angled in corner.

That's not the only place I have books in the room either, so I needed some variety. I moved the books and bookshelf, and went to my local wine store, where I picked up a variety of sizes of wooden wine boxes. Total Wine was great - theirs were only $5. Dean and Deluca were more, but had a better variety (including a Dominus box that I had to get in honor of my dad).

I then laid stacked them up the wall to get an idea of what I wanted. Then took them down and painted the outside a watered down white and the inside a pea green. For the bottom box I needed something a bit bigger than the rest, in part to be a good base, and in part to hold my oversized books. So Aaron helped me out there...

We (he) built a plywood box that is fabulous and fits the corner perfectly. We cut my Christmas tree up in pieces ... yes ... I saved the trunk of my Christmas tree this year. :) Took all the limbs off, bark off the trunk, and sanded it down. I knew it would come in handy. We attached 4" Christmas tree "legs" onto the bottom of the box so that it will clear the molding and lay flush against the wall.

It is a very cute box. Seriously. Painted it to match the others, stacked and anchored to the wall. This part was not easy because 1. my stud finder is faulty, and 2. I'm pretty sure there is a severe lack of studs in my walls. So I resorted to using wall anchors and drilled holes through my boxes to attach them to the wall. I had seen on a design blog where someone organized their books by color, so I tried that which helps bring color to that part of the room. New curtains from IKEA, a pillow for my rocking chair, a little cleaning up, and it is a lot more open and bright now. Still a couple more touches to do, but I love it!

I have great friends

I was driving home last weekend when I passed a recently cut down tree. It was very large. All the limbs had been cut off and I thought briefly - I want some of that wood! Then laughed at myself. And texted my friend whose response was ... why don't you go ask them if you can have some? That's a good friend. Not just because he didn't think my initial response was strange, but because he knew that for me to get some of that wood would require the use of him and his chainsaw. And so I did stop the next day, and the couple told me to take all that I wanted.

A few days later and we were out there to get some cross sections. The tree turned out to be red oak and had pretty cool ring patterns. The base of the stump must have been 5 feet. It was HUGE. Pretty cool ring patterns, I can't wait to see what they look like after the pieces are cleaned up. I cut a couple of the smaller ones myself. We carried the pieces up to my apartment where they are currently drying out. I have some ideas for them, but that will have to wait for summer, when they've cured. And many thanks to a friend covered in sawdust. :)

Snowflake Photo Shoot

I. love. snow. AND. snowflakes. Snowed in for two days and I loved it. Day two was actually ice, but the beginning of day one was the most amazing, perfect snowflakes. I had fun using my new micro lens to get these shots. After the storm a tripod was purchased, which should help with future snowflake-photo shoots. :)

Sketching with Fabric

I've thought through a number of options for my sketchbook and started a number of things, but have finally settled on a direction. Fabric. It is going to be a fabric sketchbook. :) Tonight I took out the pages (I'll need to use the original cover), and cut pieces of muslin to use as pages. I can sew on them, hand stitch, paint, draw, whatever. Looking forward to starting!

Engraving

I distinctly remember 6th grade art class... we did a project which required engraving in linoleum. And I loved it. I've done a couple small engravings and number of years ago, but thought it would be a fun way to start my sketchbook, with an entire scene. And so I've been playing with it the past couple days. It's been fun pulling out my tools and messing around with it.

The Sketchbook Project

Recently I discovered a pretty cool art initiative called the Sketchbook Project. It is an artist's cooperative from professional to just kids having fun from all over the world. You can go to the website to sign-up, where they send participants a Moleskin notebook. That is your parameter. Fill it however you are inspired, and send it back by mid January of 2011. All the sketchbooks then go on tour across the US, ending in the Brooklyn Art Museum.

All books have a barcode on the back, so people visiting the tour can "check out" sketchbooks. As a participating artist, I will get updates on where my book is and who has checked it out. Pretty fun!

My sketchbook arrived this past week and I am excited to get started! The hardest part is the beginning, making the first mark. But I need to get going, only 2.5 months to finish! This will be a fun challenge. :)

Spoon Shelves and Emma

I had some extra spoons left over from the garden markers I made, so I had the idea to make them into little shelves I could use in my kitchen. Aaron helped me (a lot) and we bent the spoons, drilled holes in them and screwed them into a little wood board. I love them! :)


This is Emma. My first try at making a doll. I saw this Poppy Doll pattern by Hop, Skip, Jump and thought it was super cute. There's a giraffe by the same person that I want to try too. I found doll clothes to be fun and quick due to the size, but a bit tedious to stitch little bitty hems! And in retrospect I should have put a little more stuffing in the neck, but this was good practice since my sister is having a GIRL! I may try a little minature quilt next.

Spoons

Soooo... it's been a while. After an insanely busy spring, life has finally begun to slow down. YAY! I've had time to play in the garden, try new recipes, and get excited about some art projects. :) This particular one I stumbled upon on THIS BLOG. It took me a while to get the spoons... they had to wait for a trip to Boone, which has a fabulous antique store - everything you can think of.

So I picked up a handful of old spoons, brought them home, and smashed the mess out of them with my mattock. :) Very therapeutic. Once flat, I took these metal stamping tools and stamped the words of herbs I have growing. This was tricky. You have to hit it with enough force to imprint the spoon, but if you hit too hard, it bounces and leaves extra marks. Oops! The softer the metal the better. Cover the imprinted area with permanent marker, then steel wool the excess ink away... and voila... garden herb markers! Super fun. And I have some extra spoons which are about to be used in ANOTHER project...!

Quilt DONE!

After a week of quilting, it is finished! Fun to see it from start to finish. I really like the design, and learned a lot about sewing on curves. Yay!

Power Tools

Power tools. I love them! And any excuse to use them... fabulous. So when a garden email went out "suggesting" we add name signs to our plots, and me not being one to rock the boat, it became an excuse to play with power tools. Thanks to the generosity of a friend, I was able to use a dremel to carve my name in some wood, then a woodburning tool, table saw, and router. Loved it! While I did that, he made a trellis for my sugar snaps. :)

The Quilt Continues... Finally

In the midst of everything else, the quilt has sat, in all its pieces, on my kitchen table, waiting for me to work on it. And this weekend I FINALLY went to work on it! Each square is composted of three main sections, so Thursday night I sewed two of those together - on a curve. A lot of pinning and lining up. It took more time to pin than it did to sew and iron. And Friday night I added on the third main section, also sewing on a curve. I've discovered that time disappears when sewing. I'll just be absorbed into the project, sewing "just one more" piece, and I look up and 4 or 5 hours have passed. It's like a time warp. This was the case both nights. Saturday I was pretty excited to sew all the squares together and finish the top. This is when my machine decided to revolt. Bad timing. A couple hours on the road, no solution and some frustrated moments and I barely managed to get the top done. But it is. *WHEW* I even fused the batting onto the top and bottom layers and am ready to start quilting! :)