My friends can now commence procreating...

I finished my first quilt, and because I am now capable of creating a gift that can be cherished a lifetime, my friends are now allowed to begin having kids.

Anyway, I found a very easy pattern for a "Rail Fence" quilt, which is a nice beginner's quilt. I used beautiful fabrics from Anna Maria Horner, who is my favorite fabric designer and just so happens to live in Nashville. In the end, the fabric choices may have produced a quilt that is a bit loud. I might try to tone down the next one. All in all, it took me about a month. All machine sewing...no hand sewing except for the binding. I may have broken my back in the process. Our 600 square foot condo is just not a an ideal workspace. The quilt takes up the entirety of our free floor space, and my sewing machine is propped up on a stack of law books on the coffee table. It's still too short, and I'm forced to bend over quite a bit when I sew. One day I will have the craft room of my dreams, but until then, I will make do.

Condo Before & Afters

Not only am I crafty, I am also quite handy. Growing up, my parents had quite a few rental properties, on which my dad did all of the handy work--painting, flooring, plumbing, electrical...everything! I spent a lot of summers watching him do this stuff, so I like to think I picked up a lot from these experiences. Or at least a healthy belief than most things can be done yourself. I also watch a ridiculous amount of HGTV. Seriously. I'm watching it right now.

So when Michael and I started looking at condos, I was really able to see that most things could be improved with not all that much work and money. We got our condo in September of 2007. We had to give our apartment 2 months notice before moving out, so nearly every night for 2 months, I would come to the new place to improve all that was in my power to improve.

Living Room - BEFORE & AFTER

Bedroom - BEFORE & AFTER

Kitchen - BEFORE & AFTER

There's so much more I'd like to do. For example, the kitchen really doesn't photograph well. I blame it on the flourescent lights, which I'd like to replace with track lighting, and the oven-stovetop-dishwasher combo monstrosity, which must be replaced. Finally, cream countertops clearly do not go with white cabinets. Changes have also been made to the bathroom, but I recently repainted it and haven't photographed those changes. Unfortunately, Michael's tolerance for a constantly evolving home is pretty low, but usually I can convince him.

I'd also like to note that most people might not be comfortable with the level of color that we live in, but I like it.

Pop Pet Paintings

This Christmas, I relied heavily on my crafting skills for gifts, especially for my brother Heath and his wife Cholle because I knew they would appreciate my creativity more than anyone else. Heath & Cholle recently bought their first home, and I really wanted to create something as kind of a housewarming-type gift. Cholle works at an animal shelter and is in love with all little furry creatures, and both of them love, love, love their pets. Cholle takes beautiful pictures and has many great ones of their 2 cats and 2 dogs, so I thought maybe I could take those and turn them into something of my own.

At first, I intended to make silhouette paintings of each pet mostly because I knew it would be simple but pretty cool at the same time. Unfortunately, these pets are squirmers and taking profile pictures of them proved to be pretty impossible for Cholle. So I proceeded with photos that Cholle already had posted on MySpace:

Phinneous

Pidgin

Asa

Tiberius

I saved the photos to my computer, opened them in Paint, and began painting over the picture with appropriate colors. It was really time consuming, and I'm sure there are fancy programs out there that would do this for you automatically. Unfortunately, I do not have these programs, so I have to do old school. After that was complete, I printed them off. In transferring the picture to the canvases, I shaded a piece of paper with pencil to make my own graphite transfer paper (again, this can be bought, but I am old school) and traced my printed off pictures using my transfer paper. With that, all that was left to do was essentially a paint by number. Easy, right?

I can't say I'm completely pleased with Phinneous. In fact, I painted him twice using two different pictures, but I blame it on Phinneous. He's just not a photogenic cat. Cholle's favorite was Tiberius.

Wall Mural

Crafting these days has really slowed down as my job has picked up and I spend 6 days a week training for a 10-mile run. Consequently, I'm going to start this craft blogging venture off with covering some of my completed projects beginning with my wall mural, which I completed last summer.

We have a pretty large, awkward wall that just didn't seem to look right no matter what I hung on it. I saw an episode of "Rate My Space" on HGTV where they'd painted this large mural on a massive wall over which they hung lots of different artwork. They explained that the large mural unified the artwork that otherwise might look jumbled together. So I figured maybe I could replicate this on our wall. In the end, we've just ended up with the mural because Michael thinks it will look too busy with anything else on there, and I think I agree.

Anyway, I just Google Image-searched "swirls" which generated quite a few usable swirl patterns from Photoshop (which is well beyond my means). I printed one off that I liked and sketched out a draft using my print-out as an example. From there, I wanted to ensure that I was actually capable of painting something so detailed, so I bought a small canvas, sketched it out, and painted it. It turned out well, and I proceeded by sketching it out on the wall. I really should have gridded it out first, because all the proportions from the small sketch weren't exactly replicated on the wall but not really a big deal in the end. So I painted a different color each night after work:

Day 1: Yellow

Day 2: Blue

Day 3: Green

Day 4: Red

Finished

I'm really satisfied with the way it ended up. Clearly, it's not everyone's style, but I think it adds a little something beyond just hanging another picture.

Let's Try This Out

I think that I'm going to use this to post/discuss my ongoing art, craft, and home decor projects. I doubt anyone else will be reading this, but that's okay. It can just be for me.