She’s finished! And I will be shipping her off soon.
I’m super in love with how it turned out and you will eventually see a large version of her. I was torn on hand stitching antennae on her, but ultimately decided to leave them off.
She measures 18″ x 18″. And I hope she is well loved!
Today I ask that you take a moment and Thank a Veteran for their service and sacrifice for our country (if you do not live in the United States, take a moment to thank a veteran from your country – the sacrifice is the same regardless of the nation). To write a blank check to your country is the biggest act of service, commitment and the epitome of volunteerism.
Anne and I will be thanking our veteran. We will also be thanking many of our wonderful friends and family who have written the same blank check.
Melissa has gone missing…she can be found in the Sewing Sanctuary. Be back tomorrow with the January finishes link up party!
Last month Kristin from Modjeska Designs released her 2013-2014 Blog Planner. I have to admit, I was intrigued by this notion of planning your blog. It just seemed so foreign to me because I am a fly by the seat of my pants type of blogger. In all honesty throughout this entire year only the posts related to A Lovely Year of Finishes have been planned. I like the idea of being organized so when payday rolled around I bought her Blog Planner.
What I love most about this planner is that it is a way to keep track of practically EVERYTHING! There is a month by month calendar where you can write in your individual posts. I have already started filling in dates for A Lovely Year of Finishes posts.
I clearly need to get some more ideas in store for my January planning, but I think 3 posts is a good start. There is also a section with all of the holidays listed. What is nice about this is that holidays are a great opportunity for special sewing projects and with them listed all in one place I can easily see what is coming up and decide if I want to do a project around a holiday theme.
Some of the sections include:
This might be my favorite part of the planner, a section of Idea Sketches. I am a bit of a doodler (not a very good drawer, but great doodler) so this section is perfect for me to collect my ideas for a quilt design and write out my supplies list. I know I will refer back to these sheets when writing my tutorials and it will be so wonderful to have them all in one place.
The entire Blog Planner is 67 Full Color pages and you have so much flexibility. I didn’t print every section, just the ones that make the most sense for me right now. You could easily print this at home or take the instant download PDF file to your local print store and run off a copy of the file. I also like that I can go back and make as many copies as I want of specific pages – ie. the Idea Sketches.
This is a very complete planner, after spending several days picking out which pages I wanted to print, there really wasn’t anything else I could think of to include. Kristin really did think of it all. The only thing I added really, was my super pretty binder that I bought at Target. I thought that the outside of my planner needed to be as pretty as the inside.
It is a 2″ thick binder, though now I am only using about 1/8 of the space. I have a feeling I will be reprinting the Idea Sketches and Supply List pages of the planner over and over again and will easily fill this binder. If I do…that will mean that I had a successful year of actually planning ahead of my blogging!
So if you are in the market for a little organization for your blog, I highly recommend the 2013-2014 Blog Planner by Modjeska Designs. It is only $20.00 and well worth every penny! (Oh yes! She has one for food bloggers too!)
I hope everyone has a great weekend!
Last week I was visiting Deb from asimplelife Quilts and saw her awesome new design wall that she made back in July. I commented on how great I thought it was and she sent me over to Oh Fransson to this fabulous tutorial to build an inexpensive design wall.
Well I did my own take. I went with 1″ thick foam insulation like Deb did, but unlike Deb and Elizabeth, I decided to forget the staple gun (mainly because we didn’t have the right staples). I improvised with some of the worst pins I’ve ever purchased in my life. I threw away at least 4 from the pack because they wouldn’t even pierce the batting! I bought a 4′ by 8′ piece of foam and had the store cut 2′ off the top, making it 4′ by 6′ – good thing too or it wouldn’t have fit in our car!
My plan when the desk to the left is gone is to buy a second one to double the size of my design wall. Don’t worry! I didn’t throw away the left over foam, I improvised again! I decided I needed a table top design wall too! It is perfect for my cutting wall to just throw things up as I cut. Plus, Anne likes it when I put it on the floor for her to “design” with!
I am loving having a place for 2 active projects – I’m hoping this will lead to extra productivity, we shall see!
Don’t forget to link up your finishes to the August Finishes Party for A Lovely Year of Finishes.
