vote for me!

After voting for someone else's project, I figured what the heck, right?  I have a few holiday projects under my belt, after all.  So I submitted my Mother's Cookies Holiday Circus Animal ornaments to the Michael's Handmade Holidays contest.

You can rate all the projects that have been submitted to the site (click here to rate mine!). Up for grabs are Michael's gift cards each week and a grand prize that involves a trip to New York City to see the Martha Stewart show (including an unofficial detour to the Doughnut Plant...yum).

So you should vote for me...I don't get out much (evidenced by the fact that I make animal cookies out of felt).

orange is the new red & green

Thanks to regular reader and "Fiskateer" Kimberlee, aka Java Diva, one of the lead Fiskateers, Angela, contacted me a few days ago about being a guest blogger on their site. I was honored to have been asked and got to work right away on this candied orange slice ornament (orange is their thing, you know, as in the orange handles on Fiskars products, and I've been wanting to do a candied orange slice project with the French embroidered knots I've been obsessed with lately, and the project seemed timely, what with the whole citrus at Christmas tradition...). You can read more here.

I'm not giving this one away, or putting it up for sale in my Etsy shop. Nope, I think I'll add it to my own tree that we plan to get and decorate next weekend (which means Christmas is less than three weeks away...WHAT?!).

Now back to the online Christmas shopping and making cards...

fresh from the Makery: Mothers Cookies Holiday Circus Animals Ornaments

I know I wrote in the last Makery post that I wouldn't have another project to share until next Monday, but here I am, trying something different for a change and posting early instead of late. Don't get used to it, dear readers.

I started my holiday shopping list this weekend, browsing Etsy and other sites (yes, I aim to do as much of my shopping online as possible), and as usual, in addition to getting just a few ideas for the folks on my list, I came up with far more in the way of things I want for myself and project ideas, including Christmas-y stuff. In addition, during my latest trip to Target I spied the holiday edition Mothers Cookies frosted circus animals! They're different than what I remember - all white with red and green sprinkles, instead of a mix of red, green, and white frosted cookies - but even so gave me the idea for this week's project, a set of three felt cookie ornaments to add a little sugar to your tree.

Nom nom nom.  You can get a set for yourself for just twelve bucks!  In addition, I'll be offering the two winners of the cookie giveaway (winners to be announced by Wednesday this week) their choice of the pink and white cookie cards, as originally promised, or two of these ornaments.  I can also make these holiday edition "cookies" into greeting cards.  And there's still time to enter the giveaway - leave a comment on this post if you're interested.

It's felt-only cookies for me from now on, my friends. I'm vowing to get back to my diet 100% between now and Thanksgiving, when let's just say I won't be counting points...

fresh from the Makery: Mother's Cookies Scavenger Hunt

This week's "project" is actually a giveaway of a previous Makery project timed in conjunction with the Mother's Cookies Comeback Celebration. If you're a regular reader you know from the many posts inspired by the company's products in one way or another that I'm a fan. So of course I agreed to participate when contacted about the virtual celebration and related "scavenger hunt", especially when I learned it would involve receiving four free bags of cookies, two to keep, and two to giveaway (and seeing as how I joined Weight Watchers just a few weeks ago, I definitely can't keep all four bags myself!).  Between October 27th (that's today!) and November 10th, frosted circus animal junkies like myself will be featuring banners like the one you see to the right that you can click on to go to a cookie collection page where you can see how many cookies you've found and how many more you need to collect in order to receive a coupon for your next bag of Mother's cookies. Sweet!

To help get the party started, I'll be giving away two bags of cookies to two lucky readers (one each). Each bag will arrive with a free set of two of my 'homage to Mother's Cookies' notecards (one with pink "frosting", one with white, similar to the cards in the image above). If you'd like to participate, just leave me a comment to that effect on this post as well as your email address, if it's not included in your profile, so that I can contact you if your name is one of two I'll randomly select on Wednesday, November 11th.

The Makery will return to its regularly scheduled programming on Monday, November 16th.

Google Android Phone Case Version 2.0

To date, I've sold four of the Android phone cases I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. How cool is that?! Two of my recent sales were actually for version 2.0, so to speak, which I "mocked up" after a prospective customer "convo"-ed me about adding a few more features, namely a second, interior accessory pocket, a top tab velcro closure, and a metal D-hook attached to the side for car keys or a swivel hook/strap combo of some sort.

There's only so much you can do with felt and blanket stitch and the fact that these are completely handmade (I do have a sewing machine but I haven't used it regularly for almost 20 years), but I'm pretty happy with the revised version.  Ironically that customer has yet to buy one but two other customers seemed equally fond of the added features.  So it's all good.

The original phone case is still available, of course (just packaged the custom green and magenta case pictured above), and received a little love from this blog and this one ("an Android for grandma"!) a couple of days after I originally listed it, probably thanks to Neal tweeting about it and one of his followers re-tweeting it.  Not exactly going viral or anything, but I'm glad my little Android dude is getting some love.

By the way, the Makery will be a day late again this week, but this time it's not my fault. The "event" this week's "project" coincides with doesn't start until the 27th. Check back then for a true giveaway, times 2!

fresh from the Makery: mmm, cookies

Sadly, folks, I got nothin'. Last week was the week of inquiries into both Etsy shops (and I sold a cozy!) and I'm still catching my breath. Which makes it sound more impressive than it is. When most of your day is occupied by feeding, entertaining, and wiping the bottom of a cranky toddler, it doesn't take much to disrupt what you've learned to accept as normalcy over the past 16 months. Getting only six or seven hours of sleep each night catches up with you real quick. But I promise I'll make it up to you with next week's post, which will involve a partly edible giveaway for not one, but TWO lucky readers to enjoy.

Stay tuned!

fresh from the Makery: because Androids need cozies, too!

I'm a day late, but (not to toot my own horn or anything) I'm pretty pleased with this week's project - a phone case for all the other mobile device users out there (yep, that's right folks...there are gadgets made by companies other than Apple).

It was Neal's idea to make a phone cozy for his T-Mobile G1 (a bit longer and significantly chunkier than the iPhone), complete with a little green felt Android Robot stitched onto an accessory pocket on the front.  The example shown here and listed in my shop is actually the second version I made, not totally satisfied with the original prototype, which is now in the care of a certain 15 month old.

I used embroidered French knots for the eyes, of course, and learned the lovely blanket stitch for the edge.

Here's a shot of the cozy, in action:

Why is making cute (and occasinally, though not in this case, edible) stuff with felt and thread so satisfying?  It's a mystery I continue to try to unravel...