The Quilted Fish

What? December is over? How did that happen?

Are you feeling the same way?  I feel like this entire month was packed with hustle and bustle.  I barely finished my decorations and it was time to open presents.  Someone said that the older you get the faster time goes.  I guess I am getting a lot older!

We had a lovely Christmas here.

Full of surprises and joy.  My favorite part was that Christmas was on a Sunday so we had church.  What a lovely way to remember what Christmas is all about.  I am grateful for the little baby that was born on that special day.  That is the greatest gift of all!

Even though the Christmas season is packed with activities and to do lists, I still had to get some work done!  I have a major deadline for my next line of fabric.  January 15th!  Knowing now how fast time flies, I didn’t take much time off.  I think I am close, though, and nearly ready to reveal the name.  I am excited to finish it up and get ready for the new year.  I don’t believe in resolutions, but I do have a couple of things I do.  One is that I pick “One little word”.  (Just a brief little side note… I LOVE Ali Edwards.  She is amazing.  And HUMBLE. How refreshing.)  My word for this year was fearless.  It made a HUGE difference for me and resulted in some amazing changes for me.  Having one word to focus on was very powerful for me.  I haven’t settled on a word for this year, but I do have some thoughts.  Self-control?  Dream?  Focus?  Change?  So many words.  I will have to narrow it down.  The other thing that I do is really take stock in myself.  What do I want to change?  How am I going to do that?  What is it that makes me do the things that I don’t like?  Then I make the change.  I guess that could be considered a resolution, but I don’t like to call them that because resolutions never last.  Don’t you think? 

I have some really big goals for this year and some super big and scary dreams.  What will this year hold for The Quilted Fish?  We will just have to see!  What about you?  What do you plan to change?

Let's wrap it up, people!

So are you wrapping up your Christmas (or other holiday) gifts?  Have you been looking for a fun way to wrap them?  Something cute and unique?  Maybe even handmade?  Well, Alicia has made another wonderful tutorial for you!

Look at this fun project!  

 

What a fun way to wrap up your Christmas.  You can download the tutorials below.  Thanks to Alicia for her hard work and creative ideas!

Download All wrapped up gift box tutorial

Download Paper Bow Tutorial (2)

Christmas Blocks

Hello, and happy December!  I am finally starting to get in the spirit of the Christmas season.  How about you??  So I thought I would share a cute Christmas craft made by my Myra from Michigan.  That has a ring to it, doesn't it??  Myra from Michigan! She has made a darling little project to show you....

I hope you are having a wonderful time decorating!!  Have a great week and I will see you soon!

Studio tour

Hey there!  I would like to invite you to join me at Ambers (Gigi’s Thimble) blog today!  I give a little tour of my studio.  Amber’s blog is fantastic, too.  You will love her blog!

Sharing some love from my friends!

My amazing friends at Lizzie B Cre8ive have released their holiday issue of their emag Dream Laugh Create!  I am so excited for them.  They are amazingly talented and the nicest darn people you'll ever meet.  Not to mention they are hilarious.  You may notice a couple of projects in here from team members, too!  Enjoy!

Open publication - Free publishing - More craft

Audrey is back!

Audrey here again with my last post sharing all the things I created with the beautiful Divinely Sweet and Holiday Style collections. I don't know about you, but I am already starting to get into the holiday spirit!!  I never got around to doing much with last year's Christmas photos, so I decided to use the Holiday Style papers to make a little mini album! This album is a mixed album which includes pages that are chipboard, cardboard, canvas, and acrylic.  I took the pages apart and added some 4x6 cards from the Lickity Slips papers and punched them with my Bind It All to slip in between some of the pages.

I plan to do my journaling on the front and cak covers and on some of the 4x6 cards.

On this cardboard page, I tore away some of the top layers of the cardboard to expose the corrugated lines and painted them red.

Back of the cardboard page, and front of the felt tag.  I machine stitched around the large felt tag and created a pocket with patterned paper and ribbons.  The pockets hold a lot of the larger photos that I didn't put onto the pages.

Back of the felt piece and another 4x6 card.

Back of a 4x6 card and front of a chipboard piece with 4 photos.

Chipboard page with a banner that I cut from patterned paper and the facing page is actually acrylic, but it is a bit hard to see from this view

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Banner detail.

 Acrylic detail. I stamped the acrylic with Stazon ink with some Christmas trees and stars.  Then I painted the backsides so that you could still see the ink patterns.  I splattered some blue paint as well.

Back of the acrylic page and another 4x6 card.

back of 4x6 card and front of canvas.  I misted the front size of the canvas with green mist and a mask and stitched around the outside with black thread.

On the back of the canvas, I misted some red stars and handstiched around them with green thread.

Details on the misting and stitching.

This is the back cover where I will finish my journaling!  :)

I just love this album and wish you could see it in real life! And lastly, since I had a few scraps left over, I did a few quick cards!

I want to sincerely thank Amanda for having me as a guest designer and perhaps you will see more from me in the future!!!!  THANKS!!!

Delighted! Magazine No. 1

I am doing a little dance as I type this post.  I am so glad to finally have the first magazine ready to show you.  I have learned a lot as I have put this publication together.  It has been stressful and fun.  And now, it is done.  I am so happy!  All of this happiness isn't just because I finally figured out how to do what I wanted to, but also because my team has put together some AWESOME projects to show you.  Well, not the whole team.  I divided the team into thirds this round, so this is the first group.  That means that there will be 3 (YES, 3!!) magazines about Delighted!.  And if you like the new way we are going to present this, you may see even more in the future.  So without futher ado....

May I present...

Delighted! Inspiration for your Kitchen

 

Open publication - Free publishing - More crafting

Happy looking!!!

Download Delighted Potholder

Download Delighted Mug Rugs

Download Delighted tabletopper

Download Ruffle Apron Tutorial

Download Delighted Oven Mitt Tutorial

Download Scalloped Delighted Apron

Vegetarian Veterans

My son’s school is doing a program for Veterans today. My sweet and amazing husband is a veteran (something I am VERY proud of).  So this morning my son was talking about how excited he is that it is vegetarian’s day.  I had to smile.  And chuckle!  So cute!  SO if you are a vegetarian veteran, today is YOUR day!  LOL!

Here is a picture of Mr. Fish when he joined the military.  Isn’t he SOOOO cute? 

And here is a picture of him shortly before he got out. He served on the honor guard for the Air Force. 

I sure did love it when he would go do honor guard things.  He looked SO good in this uniform!

To all of you veterans, a special thank you.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Paper gift boxes

I am excited to introduce you to another one of my paper team members.  Alicia will share a little about herself, but first I want to show you the darling project she made with Holiday Style, one of my paper lines with Bazzill Basics Paper.  

So now that you have seen her project...meet Alicia!

Hello! My name is Alicia Hedrick, and I am very excited to have the opportunity to finally guest post for the Quilted Fish. I first met Amanda 2 years ago at the Long Beach Quilt Show, and instantly fell in love with her and her unique style. I honestly stood in her booth talking her ear off for almost an hour, just oogling over everything she had in her booth. Her style was something I rarely saw at the quilt shows, but one that was very similar to my own. With that said... let me tell you a little about myself.

I am 24 years old, live in Southern California, I am married to a wonderful man who comes from a long line of quilters, and have a beautiful 4 year old daughter, a bun in the oven, and 2 wild and crazy boxers. My life is a bit crazy, often bordering on chaos, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. In regards to my crafting skill, I am a self professed hobby horse to the fullest extent of the term. I crochet, knit, quilt, sew (as in clothing), paper craft, and am a pretty fabulous cook, who has a love affair with baking! If there is a craft out there, I will learn and conquer it, if I happen to see something of that craft that strikes my fancy. My personal style runs very girly, lots of pinks, greens, creams, as well as very romantic and shabby chic. I live for embellishments! I do not believe in doing anything simple, plain jane, or ordinary. I believe in mixing mediums, using crochet with my quilting, and quilting with my scrapbooking. I love buttons, and bows, and ribbons, and lace. (Have you figured out why I fell in love with Amanda yet??) For the most part, I just love to live outside of the box.

When Amanda first got in touch with me and said that she would like for me to be a part of her scrapbooking team, I was ecstatic! I had the wonderful opportunity of working with her at the beginning of the year, using her Sweet Divinity fabric line, and had the time of my life. I was able to create a darling patchwork dress, and then to top it all off, had the pleasure of posting that tutorial onto Riley Blake’s “Cutting Corners” blog.  Now, with her cardstock line, Amanda uses the same prints from her Sweet Divinity fabric line, so I was very excited to get my hands on it, and work it using this new medium. I immediately started thinking about all the “non-conventional” things I could make with her paper. My idea of paper crafting is boxes, and bows, mobiles, and lamps, wreaths, pocket books, etc. Basically, I like to take something ordinary, and turn it into the extraordinary.

In light of upcoming Holiday season, which seems to be approaching insanely fast this year, I thought it would be fun to create some cute holiday gift boxes to get you all ready for your holiday shopping. The first gift box is small, just to introduce everyone to the basics, and is accompanied by a gift tag, which I designed to compliment Amanda’s “Holiday Style” paper. The box is very simple and easy to create, and is a darling way to package up your gifts this holiday season.  I hope you all enjoy this first taste of what I have to offer, and I look forward to posting my next project soon! In the mean time, you can visit me at my blog www.kayliescloset.blogspot.com, or check out my other crafts at www.kayliescloset.etsy.com. Till next time… Happy Crafting!

If you would like to make the gift box you can download the pattern here:  Download Mini Christmas Gift Box (1) (file updated on 11/13)

More fun with paper AND Fabric!

Audrey here again with you to share a tutorial and a layout today! Before I share, I just want to state that I am an amateur at sewing at best, so when all you seamstresses see my sewing skills (or lack thereof), please don’t cringe!  Amanda had visited my blog and made a comment about some luggage tags that I had made, so I decided to revisit these with her line of papers and fabric Divinely Sweet. So here is a quick tutorial! I started by making some 4x6 cards that are going to be the actual tags. The front I decorated with flowers and such, and the back sides I used some lined prints to write my address and other info you might need on a luggage tag. I purposely didn’t use any bulky embellishments because although I want them to be pretty, they have to be somewhat practical, too.

Next, to protect the cards, I simply used a refill e protector from a 8x8” scrapbook. Fold the page protector in half vertically and crease. Machine stitch just to the left and right of the crease and then cut along the crease to create 2 pockets.

You may need to trim your cards a little bit to fit inside the pockets. Next, trim off some of the top of the pockets so they measure about 4” x 7”, leaving about an inch of page protector at the top.

On this excess edge of page protector, you are going to cut the back side off just to the top of the card. In this photo, you can see that the back of my card is showing on top, and I have trimmed the excess page protector at the top, but left the front piece on…this is so you can take the card in and out.

Next I cut about a 3” x 4” piece of fabric, folded it in half lengthwise, and freehand cut some scallops on the long edges. Open it back up and stitch this to the front of the page protector close to the card. See how the pocket still opens to take the card out?

Now fold the fabric and do a stitch along the top edge. Add a button hole so that you can hang it with ribbon.

On the bottom edges, take two, 7” pieced of fabric, baste and pull to make ruffles. REMOVE THE CARD and stitch each ruffle to the bottom edge on each side! Add some pretty ribbon and you’re done!

Now for another project that is more my style! A scrapbook page!  I don’t do double pagers that often, but I really need to start doing more because I have a ton of photos!!

When I saw the Holiday Style papers, I thought of these photos of my daughter with that hat on immediately, and did a page about our adventures in the snow that day! The cardstock is glazed cardstock by Bazzill that has glazed snowflakes on it. This is a pretty simple design, but I try to keep it more simple where there are a lot of colors and patterns involved. The snowflake transparencies are from Maya Road.

Thanks for joining me this week and I will be back next week to share my last project using more of the Holiday Style collection!! Be sure to stop by my blog to say Hi and see what else I have going on!