chance of (creative) flurries

on friday it snowed. and snowed. and snowed. it snowed literally all.day.long. i shoveled the driveway three times. the roads looked like this.



this was bad news primarily because i hate the snow. hate.the.snow. it was also bad news because getting in my car and driving south on the freeway seemed like a pretty bad idea, and that meant i missed laura's gingerbread house-making party.

a whole evening inside the house did mean plenty of time to work on my project for the art exchange, though, and that was super good news. i had been stressed out about the art exchange for the past week or so, worrying about what i would make and when i would find the time to make it. creativity has never really been my thing so i needed something simple, but still expressive and worth giving away.

that old friend, the interweb, solved my first problem when it blessed me with this adorable pattern for fabric birds. and that sneaky enemy, the blizzard, did me a favor for once by giving me the time to sew those little birds up.

the original idea is actually for a bird mobile, with a dozen birds and twigs and wire, but i didn't feel like i had the skill or the confidence to pull that off (and i had to use whatever leftover fabric there was in the house because, again, no driving in the snow) so i went with a scaled down version of just one string of birds.

and, wouldn't you know it, they actually came out pretty well. i can sew! who knew? janelle drew my name, and she promises that she really loves those birds and isn't just saying that to be nice. she even had the perfect little hook for them and they are hanging up happy as, well, little birds.

frances cake(plates)

one of my more recent friend crushes is emily, with whom i have been trying to schedule a frances cake date for what seems like ages. we seem to suffer from the same (spacey in my case) over-scheduling malady (nice to know there are others like you, no?) so we scheduled a bunch of cake dates that didn't work out and then she went on this cleanse with no sugar or dairy or, basically, food, and frances cake just does not work without those things. it seemed doomed.

but then, she invited me over to make cake plates! if there is a better substitute for making actual cake, i don't know what it is.

making cake plates is possibly the easiest craft in this history of craftiness (besides, i guess, buying crafts and pretending you made them). so simple, in fact, that even i could not mess it up. too badly.

first, you buy a plate. we all made some great finds at d.i., which is where i was faced with the first moral dilemma of the project. to break up a set of four plates by only buying one, or not? i did. judge me if you will.

next you find a base. bases can be anything with a bottom wider than the top, including candlesticks, vases or cups turned upside down. the only trick, i learned the hard way, is to make sure the side of the base you are attaching to the plate (i'll tell you how to do that in just a minute. patience!) is perfectly flat. one of my bases had a not-perfectly-flat edge and it never adhered properly. the good news was, there were lots of extra bases. the better news was, my replacement base was even cuter than the original.

so, once you have a plate and a (flat) base, you take some epoxy, spread it on the top of the base, stick the top of the base on the bottom of the plate and, well, actually, you're done! don't believe me? check out some photos of our crafty night here.

yep. that's it. my kind of craft, for sure. and maybe it should be yours, too. pretty much impossible to screw up (well, i guess you could glue yourself to something, but none of us did, so it seems like a small risk), and all you're out is $2 in thrift store dishes. in fact, these guys are so cheap and easy to make, we decided it would be cool to take people cakes and cookies and other treats on our little creations and then leave them the plates, you know, as a little gift. be super nice and maybe, just maybe, you'll get one soon.