I saw this porcupine crewel kit that blempgorf got for 30 cents thrifting and fell in love. I commented asking if she’d like to swap, and amazingly enough, she was willing to part with it! I sent her a vintage bag kit I’d gotten at a church sale, among other things. I’ve been sick the last few days and it’s been the perfect sick-on-the-couch craft. The pattern has a little flower top right (you can see it in the picture blempgorf posted), but I have left it off for now. I might go back and add it.

Kit is 2017 “Prickly Porcupine” from Paragon Needlecraft, designed by Barbara Sparre.

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My sister got me casting resin for Christmas, and boy did we have a fun time with it. Look at all this stuff we made. I’ve been wanting to try resin for a while (ye olde craftlog archives say since 2004!), and it is as fun and cool as I’d hoped. Comment with any favorite/inspirational resin links because I’m definitely hooked.

We tried all sorts of stuff for molds, and shockingly everything worked except for a tiny petri dish (I have a feeling a larger petri dish might still work because it’s more flexible), a very rigid contact lens case, and a thin plastic candy mold (which sort of worked except that I had to destroy the mold to get the thing out, see below). No mold release for anything, though 15 minutes in the freezer helped considerably for some of them.

My favorite one, a piece of Japanese fabric in a ~1.5×2 inch mold. Kind of Amy Ruppel-ish, no?

My favorite one that Ariel made, a zombie in a ~.5x.75 inch dollar store pill box mold with fabric background and a vintage model railroad figurine.

The pill boxes were really good molds. This one has a piece of washi paper embedded.

And these ones are buttons. Ariel is going to make a bracelet from them.

Another good mold idea I got from Crafters Coast to Coast is a plastic paint palette. The embeds are a carefully cut out fabric flower and a 1 inch punch from my 2007 Snow and Graham calendar. I am in love with the fabric flower.

plastic flowers

A candy mold with a plastic flower embed. The resin kind of melted or reacted or who knows what with the mold and I had to cut it off. Because of this, the surface is not as smooth as the others, but I think it’ll look great after some sanding.

My mom also got me a box of chalk pastels to use for coloring. They seemed to work, though I have to pay better attention to adding only really fine dust. There are a few clumps or bigger pieces in them. The cubes have one layer clear, one layer colored, but it’s hard to see. I think if I pour them deeper next time they’ll look super cool, kind of like plastic versions of P1 Unless Otherwise Noted’s awesome glass jewelry. The upper left one was molded in a contact lens case and you can see the starburst pattern in it. It looks like a piece of candy.

Now to drill holes in them all. :)

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Last year’s tree topper got crushed in storage, so I whipped up this new one with my sister. It’s 2 sheets of felt that I sewed together in a freehand star shape. The concentric sewing makes it less floppy. For the very inside star, I put another sheet of felt on the front and sewed it from the back so I could follow the last round of stitching. Then I used embroidery scissors to cut close to the stitching. The tiny star is only sewed down on 3 points to make a pocket that goes over the top of the tree. I really like how it turned out, and this one definitely won’t get crushed!

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The Apple store at the mall has a garland in the window made of big white pompoms of all different sizes. I’ve been going to Michael’s every time I pass one anyway, looking for the elusive Martha Stewart Winter Village kit (still no luck. They’re even sold out at her website, though I did find the little house favor boxes), and picked up 3 bags of 100 pompoms each in different sizes. I just strung them on button thread spaced about an inch apart. Great craft for watching a few more episodes of Twin Peaks.

I like how it looks around the tree, with the small pompoms at the top and the big ones at the bottom.

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Becket got me the Softies book for my birthday, so it seemed only fair to make her daughter a toy from it for Christmas. I couldn’t decide between the funny whale and the treeling, so I had Mark break the tie. The pattern is by the great littleoddforest, and you can also get it for free from the Craft podcast. I think it turned out great, and it was fun to make. Pulling all the leaf topthreads through to the back and tying them in knots took a while, but I was watching my early present from Mark, the Twin Peaks Gold Box, anyway and needed something to justify watching one… more… episode.

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My sister got me a spirograph for my birthday. :) Should I be worried that I got the same present for my 30th birthday as I did for my 10th? Anyway, I filled a few pages of cardstock with spiros, cut them out, and strung them on cord for a sort of wintry decoration. It was kind of better in my head, but they’re still ok.

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