Christmas Countdown, and A Holiday Gift

Ive got several little things to cover today.
First of all I placed 22nd in the Spoonflower Advent calendar contest. You can see the final rankings at the Spoonflower Blog. I'm actually quite thrilled with my ranking considering I felt like this project was seriously rushed and I had difficulty making my theme (Sew Your Way To Christmas) consistent. The competition was feirce too. Some really fabulous calendars won the coveted top 10 slots.
Ive also uploaded a revision of my layout to Spoonflower and ordered a full yard to proof the images on the fabric and sew my own calendar. My mother really wants to see it put together. The revision is pictured below.

 As a side I also entered the kite contest. I fear I won't do so well in it because I chose to go anti-cute for this one. I knew there would be plenty of competing cute images so I went geometric instead. It won't win but it's different and I think it's unique enough to stand out.

Aside from my advent calendar, which I hope will be proofed and posted for sale before everyone starts counting down to Christmas, I have a new t-shirt for sale on Society 6.
Having many geeks in my family I had to come up with something they would actually wear for the holidays.
I came up with a Circuit Board Snowflake. I used Make-A-Flake again to get a good snowflake to manipulate. Its not a new concept. I did a little searching after making and posting my own and found several older images with the same concept, some of them quite good. You can do your own search and be the judge on which ones are the best. Mine is pictured below. The text on it reads 'JOY CAPACITOR', 'HOLIDAY RESET', and '9V BATT'.

 

Lastly in my Etsy and Melyah clipart shops I have Reindeer, Vintage style Christmas frames, and Snowflake frames. Use the frames for Christmas photos, ornaments, or gift tags. All are on sale for under 2.00 to celebrate the holidays. They use the Spoonflower color palette too. So long as you change them up some for your creative uses I have no problem with you using them on Spoonflower. Just read the attached Permissions and Content file that comes with the files for the copyright details.

 

Lastly, in the spirit of the Holidays I have some great floral images I'm going to share with you till Christmas.

My mother found a wonderful book copyrighted in 1890 called the Golden Flower Chrysanthemum. As you may, or may not know, anything published before 1923 in the US is public domain. I will share 16 of the fabulous floral book plates with you (roughly 2-3 a week) until December 24th. Once the new year begins they will disappear. So keep your eyes open and your computer ready to copy and save. The first bookplate is below along with a bonus page giving the details of the book and illustrations. Larger images are available from my Flicker set 'Golden Flower'.

Free printable Cut and Paste Santa Ornament

This little Santa ornament was inspired by cut and paste ornaments from the 50's and 60's. The above image shows some of the prototypes I made while trying to get the design right.
Click the image to get the full view than right click it to copy. From there you can paste into Word or image editing software. Print him on card stock if you want him to last past Christmas. You can decorate him further with glitter and silver paint to make him even more glamorus.

Look Mom! I'm posting to Etsy!

We all know mothers know best and mine is no exception. My mother has taken notice that my Etsy shop for vintage items and art has been neglected lately. I help my friend Jo photograph and post her items to Wonder-filled once a week I slipped a few of the things my mother gave me for my shop. Hopefully this will satisfy her for a little bit. BTW mom I hope your listening....I'm going to add more to my shop as I work with Jo. This will occur once a week as Jo comes over every Friday so we can work.

So without further delay here is a peek at what I'll be posting. The tackle box, shown below, was my grandmothers (we lovingly called her MawMaw; that's her in the first image). She had many wonderful sewing sundries tucked away and hidden about her house. We only discovered them after she passed away. Some of these items are beautiful, and lacy. The butterflies are labeled ''Forster Willi', 'Made in Switzerland'.
My mother has added some other pieces of beautiful trim to the box that she found while antique and thrift shopping. All together it now contains pieces ranging from the 1950's to the 1980's.

Also don't forget to visit Wonder-Filled and Jo's new items as well! She listed a bunch of old postcards, a few valentines, and some cute photographs of children today. She's also installed the new shop banner that I made for her this morning (pictured below). Go have a look at her Wonder-Filled store!

The banner background (gnome and animals) came from  The Graphics Fairy and I added some clip-art of my own making (cracked paint in the banner and the cat label) along with a nice font that I manipulated a little.

Roman arthurien

I'm working on a pattern of knights battling each other. I wanted them to look medieval so I did a little research. I found a wonderful illuminated manuscript from 1201-1300 on Gallica; The Roman arthurien.
It has loads of medieval bats, rabbits, and grotesque figuers, as well as knights.
Curious thing about all the knights;  they are usually huddled up in gangs like any thug you would find out on the streets today.

  I love the horses too. They have such cute and beleaguered expressions!

Lastly, here is one knight that I have partially done. Hopefully, I will finish it in the next few days, depending on how much time the kids, husband, and pets give me. XD

One warning about leafing through this massive text; it's over 800 pages and contains a LOT of text. It's a good thing to look at while waiting at the Dr's office or airport. So maybe save it for a long holiday Layover in Chicago or some similar incident.

Spoonflower Advent Calendar Contest

I've entered the Spoonflower Advent Calendar Contest!
I worked on it up until the entry deadline. I wish I could have done more for the presentation layout but I did not have time. Last weekend was entirely consumed with Lily's school project, Her school's Family fun Day at Great Wolf Lodge, Her Birthday Party at Speed Zone, and then another child's birthday party we had to attend. With all the events I lost 4 whole days of work on my entry.

I wish the Spoonflower  website showed better images of my advent pockets. You can't zoom in on any of it or provide thumbnail details. So I'm providing some detail images here and leaving a link on my Spoonflower description for people to follow from there.

I had a hard time coming up with a consistent idea to begin with. I wanted a Quilter's Advent that featured fat quarters or cheater quilt squares but the size constraint (42"x36") was very limiting. So I decided to make pockets shaped like sewing tools. Except sewing tools are not easy to hem unless you put an uninteresting square border around them. I went ahead and made 12 thread spools with Christmas themed colors and decorations and decided to come up with something to accompany them as I worked on them.

 

 Then I decided to use Illustrations from 'Easy Steps In Sewing For Big And Little Girls'. My original idea was to make 12 trade cards ore needle books featuring the cute little characters from the book. The book was published in 1902 and is written by Jane Eayre Fryerand illustrated by Jane Allen Boyer. The book is loaded with sweet little illustrations on every page. Unfortunately, the scans I took from my copy are very dirty and neede lots of cleaning in order to be usable. Cleaning and coloring one image takes me roughly 2 to 3 hours (with occasional interruption of children and husband). Despite this I managed to get 6 images cleaned and embellished for my needle books. Here they are in detail:

The borders also took a lot of time to create. I couldn't find any copyright free borders so I ended up making my own based upon the borders of Christmas themed vintage and antique linens. The holly border is my favorit. I's actually a bracelet design from the early 1900's.

To fill in the extra spots in my advent calendar I made 6 snowflakes at Make-A-Flake. With practice you can get some really fantastic results from Make-A-Flake! 

I'm sure the competition for the contest is just as good as the last contest! The contest starts later this week. So go have a look at the wonderful work done by the other Spoonflower designers and vote for your favorite!