chimesblog

Fiiirst of all, I’d like to say happy 25th birthday to my friend, Steph.  If you have a chance, head over to her blog and leave her some love. Or hit her up on twitter.

I finally finished my yellow dinnerware set. I’ve had it since my friend Molly picked it up for me in May.  The yellow fake-estaware dish set.  There were a LOT of pieces to work with. But, I made a 19-piece set and lots of other random items out of it.

Yayy! Another one I can mark off my list …

And in other exciting news, I have a project to add to my WIP list … oops.

I received my sketchbook yesterday for The Sketchbook Project 2011. My theme is “It’ll be fun, I swear”. I think I’ll start with talking about how I thought this project will be fun …I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Welcome to my much-needed new feature … FO Friday.  FO stands for finished object (as opposed to UFO — un-finished object).

To recap my embarrassingly long list of UFOs:

1. Mug for a friend’s birthday present (2 weeks ago)
2. Tattoo Dish Set (July 2009)
3. mom’s pleather jacket restyle (September 2009)
4. quilt for my mom (March 2009) — in my defense, I just haven’t had the extra $75 around to get it professionally quilted.
5. coin stack quilt (March 2009)
6. Thea’s Puzzle Quilt (April 2010)
7. Roseanne Afghan (November 2007) — this project is to work on when I don’t have any other projects to work on
8. fabric scrap greeting cards (May 2010) — I have 45 blank cards left to create
9. camera cases (July 2010) —  I have 10 cases left to sew — just need to buy buttons and elastic to get them done
10. fabric scrap flowers (July 2010)
11. jeans into summer pants/shorts (July 2010)
12. Map of the states quilt (April 2010)
13. Yellow fake-esta ware dishes (July 2010)
14. Nerdy cross stitch (April 2010)
15. cookbook (December 2009)
16. Portfolio/website/resume revamp (May 2010) — don’t worry — just time for a refresh.
17. Wonky Log Cabin Quilt #1 (February 2010)
18. Wonky Log Cabin Quilt #2 (February 2010)
19. Workout/Recipe/Craft project binders (February 2010)
20. Family recipe book (January 2008)
21. ironic greeting cards (May 2009)
22. T-shirt quilt for my cousin (August 2009)
23. Fabric Frame (June 2010)
24. touch up painting my kitchen (May 2010)
25. recycled t-shirt rug (September 2009)
26. Black and white quilt (March 2009)

Today’s FO is #1 — Mug for a friend’s b-day present.

My new coworker and friend asked me to create a mug for his girlfriend for her birthday, which was August 3. Don’t worry. I had this finished beforehand. I just wanted to save the blog post for Friday so I can have a Friday feature (and more importantly have to have some FO to share with you every week from here on out).

Also, I may have lied when I said I wasn’t going to add anything to the list … if I do this Friday feature I’m going to run out of things to blog about rather quickly. Some of the things on the list aren’t going to be able to be finished in a super timely fashion because they’re either too expensive to finish or too time-consuming to finish in my spare time that quickly. So, I’m going to probably add some projects to the list. BUT instead of including the list on my blog post every week, I’ve created a page where it can live.  There’s a link on my sidebar to it as well.

I’m going to do a Market Day recap … but I scheduled this post earlier to show you what I’ve got that’s new this month. I have quite a few things!

New ceramics (posted a while back) and these guys:

Wish me luck! I’m sure it will be fun.

You know it’s going to be a fabulous day when you wake up, check your e-mail and see that somebody nice and talented has included you in her etsy treasury.

MimiBird included me on her Birdies Tweet Tweet treasury today.

Check out the adorable things she picked out. Mine is definitely not the cutest.

Happy Monday! In honor of yesterday’s holiday, I didn’t have to work today. However, I have a whole bunch of crafting to do, so I used today to catch up.

I’ve had some lovely vintage ceramics sitting around the house and I finally had a chance to play with them today.  I had a lot of fun with the salt and pepper shakers and the vintage pitcher.

salt and pepper shakers

Floral Party pitcher

Birdies and Coffee Sugar Dish

Birdies and Coffee Creamer

Birdies and Coffee Mug

I was perusing craftster.org and I came across an image that looked pretty familiar …

Except the totally cute spoon … so cute!

Somebody on craftster.org saw my work and was inspired to create a few cups of her own. So exciting!

A fellow craftster just blogged about my gorgeous yellow water pitcher and some of my other ceramics in the craftster.org blog.  I’m really flattered. You should check it out!

It’s not often that I get press, so I’m pretty excited about this.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve painted dishes.  I quit for a while a few months back because I have a pretty large inventory and it was taking up most of my kitchen. However, a few of my girls and I were antiquing one day and I found some really great dishes that I just had to snatch up.

Needless to say … whoops!  Especially since I’m moving in less than a week … but, oh well. I’ve got more cute dishes!

I found a pretty complete set of pyrex grey dishes, so I’m working on making 4 place-settings with a dinner plate, salad plate, saucer and teacup.  I just received some teacups that I ordered off ebay — so I’ll be painting those soon.  I have about 12 additional plates to the ones that will make up the 4 place-settings.

My little birdies pattern looks really cute on this set of dishes. It’s simple and not over-powering.  It’s also something that can be easily replicated on several pieces so it looks pretty consistent across the board.

I toyed with the idea of making each dish have a different pattern, but I think that idea’s going to go on the backburner and I’m going to try working with a cohesive set first.  I also thought about adding a small quote on the pieces, but people are so subjective about text that I thought it best to just stick to a pattern for now.

Check out my Cyber Monday sales on Etsy:

Birdies and Coffee Cup

Flower Fiesta Bowl (Gold)

Butterflies in Wonderland Baby or Lap Quilt

OBEY Andre the Giant Men’s Winter Set

Mention the code mrfidgets and receive FREE SHIPPING on any order until December 15.

Everything is fair game this month.

Both my stores, chimes design and toDIYfor, are having a 20% off special this month.  To participate, convo me on etsy with the item you’d like to apply the sale to and I’ll adjust the price and reserve it for you.

An extra 5% off if you blog or tweet about my sale and include the link to your blog post/tweet in your convo.

Easy peasy.

As per usual, I’m offering free shipping to Des Moines and Ames as long as we can arrange a drop off/pick up.