You might be a crafter...

...if you have more tools than your husband.

...if your hands look like a Jackson Pollock painting.

...if your philosophy on most things is to try to make it first, then buy it if it doesn't work out. (How hard can it be to build a pallet chair?!) 

...if your local junk shop knows you by name and saves things for you. 

...if you know exactly when the craft store  marks their Christmas items to half price and plan accordingly. 

...if your husband has stopped buying you "expensive" jewelry because you never wear it. (Who wants diamonds when you can wear handmade rolled paper beads?) 

...if you have a room of shelves filled with material 

...if you get excited going to the home Improvement store.

...if you have more scars than fingernails on your hands. 

...if people give you bags of "stuff you might use". 

...if you don't think 3 rooms of supplies is too much. 

...if you sell your work so that you have room to make more.  

...if your glue gun has a caddy.

...if you have had a bag of beads/material for more years than you've had your family pet. 

...if you get the urge to cover things in crochet or knit. 

...if your child doesn't want to throw away a cardboard tube. 

...if you have more plastic tubs/drawers than actual dressers in your house. 

...if you own more than one sewing machine. 

...if you plan Christmas presents at least 3 months early. 

...if you have ever uttered the phrase "I can make one really quick."

...if you actually post photos of your work on Pinterest. 

...if you made all your own wedding decorations. 

...if your friends send people to you because you "might have one" of what they are looking for. 

...if you own a Dremel tool. 

...if you have photos of Martha Stewart projects taped to your bathroom mirror. 

...if you have ever taught someone else how to knit/crochet/bead, etc. 

...if Girl Scout and Boy Scout leaders invite you to a meeting even if you don't actually have a child in the group. 

...if you get volunteered to do VBS crafts consistently every year. 

What would you add? 

You might be a crafter.....

ACV FTW!

I have always heard that ACV (apple cider vinegar) is THE household jack of all trades. After some months of testing it, I have come to thoroughly agree. 

At the first sign of a cold or sore throat, I sip a little. It is awesome at breaking up mucus and clearing out minor infections before they become major ones. It can cut days off a cold. 

But my most surprising use came last night when I got fed up with the fruit flies whizzing around my head while we ate dinner. I had heard that you can put a couple of drops of dish soap in an open container with some ACV and the fruit flies would run to it like a herd of spooked cattle over a cliff. Well, most things you hear about work okay and something's not at all, so I was a little skeptical. I put my little dish out and set it by my sink. Immediately a handful of fruit flies flew over to investigate. 

Within a few minutes one sank to its doom. I left it over night to find 4 more joining their comrade in the morning. 

I posted about it on my Facebook page and not two hours later 6 more had been sucked under. 

An hour after that I counted a total of 18 drowned little bodies at the bottom of the  ACV pool. 

I am now a true believer in the powers of ACV! 

If you want to try this at home just get a bowl, jar or other container and fill the bottom with about 1/4"-1/2" of ACV (just deep enough to be too deep for a fruit fly is all you need!). Add a couple drops of liquid soap. Sit back and watch the fruit flies come and get it! 

That's a wrap!

This clever bangle bracelet is made from things that would have gone straight in the trash bin. After I finished off my roll of packing tape, I had a great heavy duty cardboard tube. I had some old trim from the edge of a curtain I recycled to make a dress. It was simple to just wrap the entire tube in fabric. I secured it with straight pins so I could change it out if I want.
This would work great with ribbon too!
You can either glue the ribbon or fabric for a permanent hold or use a straight pin or two to hold the edges like I did so it can be changed. This will work with any sort of heavy duty cardboard tube that will fit over your hand.
Happy Crafting!

Wool soap saver

I am sure you have one of these problems if you use bar soap:
1. The bar of soap slips all over the tub or shower and won't stay in the soap dish.
2. The bar of soap gets all mushy and makes a slime on your soap dish.
3. You have little slivers of soap that end up either dissolving in the soap dish as slime or getting thrown away.
4. Your wash cloth starts to stink like mildew if you try to reuse it a day or two.

I have most of these problems. But one day I discovered that wool is fairly mildew and bacteria resistant and makes a great skin exfoliator.
I decided to make some soap savers from an old felted sweater I had lying around. The wool helped with all the problems I had before. The soap wasn't slippery anymore. It didn't leave a slime everywhere. The slivers stayed put and the wool didn't start to get gross and stinky like a wash cloth.

Here's how I made mine:
I cut a rectangle of an old felted wool sweater, folded the ends up so there is an overlap.
Then I sewed the sides up and turned it.
All I have to do to change or add more soap is fold one side over, drop in the soap and fold it back.

Super simple and easy to do!
Try it!

Tee for two and two for tees

For our September challenge in the Upcyclers Team on Etsy we were asked to make something with tee shirts.  Since my daughter is a skinny little thing that grows out of her tee shirts vertically quicker than anything, I decided to take her old shirts and make her a "new" dress. It was very simple. 

I had two shirts that were the same width. I cut both the shirts into strips horizontally, then using the cutest top and sleeves sewed alternate pieces of the tees around the bottom of each next strip until I got to a length I liked. I didn't hide the seams. I sewed these strips one over the other because I like the rolled edge of the jersey showing. 

I added a swath of thrifted fabric from an old sheet and got an (almost) instant dress for summer or anytime of year.

This is an easy (and free!) project you can try at home with your own (or your kids) old tee shirts, a great use for tees with a small permanent stain. Just cut around the stain. 

Have a blast creating your own "new" summer dress that is easy to wear, easy to wash , and super cute!

It Just Felt Right

  I’m new to Alpacas. I’m not sure I have ever met one outside a petting zoo, but when I met Cindi Webber of Airborne Alpacas at the Clarksville Downtown Market selling gorgeous natural colored yarn in a rainbow of soft browns and creams I was intrigued.  I had been playing with felting wool for a couple months and when I asked Cindi how well Alpaca fibers felted, she felt confident they would felt well. (say that 5 times fast!).  I’m an artist and crafter that loves working in salvaged and “leftover” materials and when Cindi mentioned she had bags of fiber too short for spinning my heart fluttered.  She brought me a couple bags of this “leftover” leg and neck fiber to work with the next week.  I was amazed at how soft the fibers were and how easily they felted. 

  After the tedious process of skirting, washing, then carding the fibers, it was pretty straight forward to wet felt balls from the fiber using plain soap and hot water.  And once felted, these balls are tough.  I sell them as dryer balls as an alternative to chemical laden dryer sheets.  A few balls to a load are perfect for softening and helping to reduce static with no harmful chemicals or scents. They are great for people with allergies to dyes, chemicals, artificial scents or just for people looking for a more natural way to soften their clothes. And for those that just have to have good smelling laundry you can add a few drops of essential oils like lavender or rosemary and the balls will deliver the scent easily as they tumble.  And as anyone who has ever used Alpaca fibers knows, with use they will last years (maybe longer than your dryer itself!).  

  These felted Alpaca balls also make a great natural alternative to rubber and plastic balls for kids and dogs.  If it gets nasty and dirty from fetch out in the mud, just throw it in the wash with the rest of the laundry.  They won’t pop like a tennis ball and they casually brush a dog’s teeth as they bite down on the ball. With studies being done every day on how chemicals in our everyday lives can affect us negatively, it makes me proud to state exactly what goes into my felted balls. The list for the ingredients is short and sweet: 100% alpaca fibers. 

  Currently I am only selling my felted alpaca balls at the Clarksville Downtown Market because I don’t have many leftover to sell anywhere else!

Another snake in the skimmer

Today I went down to check the skimmer on the pool and found two frogs, a dead lizard, and a tiny newborn black king snake. The little king snake was curled up in the recesses of the skimmer out of the water. It startled me at first. But after a quick rundown (no yellow tail like a moccasin, no rattle, and no copperhead, skinny body and head not triangle shape) I settled down and got to observe him. He sat like a ribbon that had been dropped on the ground. My dog came over to investigate and the tiny thing reared up and shook his skinny little tail and even snapped forward to try to scare Quincey. Of course Quincey just sniffed and wandered somewhere else. I took a couple pictures and let him slither off, whispering my mantra that I say to all rat and king snakes in my yard, "go kill the poisonous snakes!"
I still get a little skin crawl looking at a snake, but if it's not poisonous, I don't kill it. I would rather have a hundred king snakes in my yard than one rattler or copperhead! It hasn't made my city friends very happy because they think the only good snake is a dead snake. Se la vi. I have come to love the wildlife in my yard and if they don't want to share it with me that's their problem!