Peguy's Maternity Photos

Peguy loved my maternity photos, but my photographer isn't here any more (We miss you Leslie!!) and she couldn't find anyone local who would do it at a reasonable price.  So, I offered to give it a try.  I figured it would be good practice for me, and it would save her some major mulah.  She agreed with me.  Here is a sampling of the results.

I had a lot of fun doing these, and it was a definite learning experience.   And, she is so happy with them that she wants me to do her infant photos when we get to Virginia!  I will have to explore this further...

Peguy and Neil, that you for being my guinea pigs!  I'm looking forward to Round 2 with baby Tyler.  :)

Jessica's Necklace

I finally got the supplies for Jessica's necklace and got it put together.

It can be worn like this

or twisted, like this.

This is the back detail.

Isn't the clasp she picked out great?

Thank you again, Jessica, for my fantastic logo!  It's been a pleasure working with you.  ^_^

New Creations

We still haven't been able to make it back outside to play.  The good news is that it's given me an opportunity to vent my worry over my grandmother through a creative outlet.  Why is it that the negative emotions give rise to such inspiration?  Maybe it's just my way of processing and handling things.  

Anyway, I got a bee in my bonnet and decided to do a bit of painting.  I started this earlier in the week, and I've been working on it a bit every day ever since.  This is the name plaque I made for Elora:

I got the paint, wood letters and wood plaque from the shop, but the wood heart was something that I already had, left over from some other project.  I'm making several of these, but since the rest are gifts, I can't post them until the intended recipients have, well, received them.   Elora's is the only one with the heart, though.

Saturday night, I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up until about 2:30 doing jewelry.  I haven't made any new jewelry in a long time, but I've made quite a bit in the past few days.  Here are the highlights:
 

See the little hand in the bottom left?  Elora didn't want to be left out when we were doing these pictures.

More to come.

Business Cards

I've been playing with my business card design, and I'm pretty sure I have my layout.  Now, I'm trying to decide what shade of green I want to use: a spring green, or sage green?  Here are the options, what do you think?

Spring Green

Sage Green

The difference isn't so drastic when they're printed.  I favor the brighter green, but Brandon likes the sage.  I want to be consistent in my colors, so whatever I use here will also be used in my Etsy shop, price tags, mailing labels, everything.  Decisions, decisions.

New Logo

The lovely and talented Jessica graciously agreed to work with me to create a custom logo for my Etsy shop,  tags, business cards, etc.  She was infinitely patient with me through the design process, especially since I wasn't really sure what I wanted.   I only had a vague idea that it should include some sort of Celtic knot, which turned out to be appropriate since I settled on the name All Wound Up and Celtic knots are all wound up.  I also knew that I wanted something that would be uniquely mine, but that is frustratingly vague.  We kicked around several designs, and in the end, she presented me with this bit of genius:

Is it not just perfect?  It is, I promise you.   I'm in love with it.  Does the pendant in the middle look familiar?  It should.  She pulled it from this:

Such a clever idea, and it turned out so cool.  Thank you, Jessica.  ^_^

 I've already started playing with the design for my Etsy header, and business cards and such.  Here's a mock-up of what I have so far, for the header:

I will definitely be adding color, I just haven't decided how yet.  That was basically just the product of a brainstorming session for Jessica, and I just went back and added the finished logo. 

Fantastic Friends, Fantastic Bags

This is the purse and wallet set I commissioned from Lizy and Katelyn, respectively.  I chose the fabric, and they did all the work.  Don't I have incredible friends??  Seriously, you guys are awesome.
  As a bonus, we got some awesome little charms in at the shop, and one of them just happened to match my new set perfectly.  So I brought one home and promptly made it into a zipper pull.

Perfect, right?  Man, I love it when that happens.  Double yay!!  More of the zipity-do-da-ness.

 This is the bag that I made yesterday.  The design was totally inspired by Lizy's cute little tote.  In fact, she gave me the measurements that she used when she made hers, but I tweaked it a bit to make it my own.  I'm really, really pleased with the way it turned out.  Between Lizy's tip on how to make the bag squared at the bottom, and Deanna's tip about using spray starch when ironing to help make my fabric behave, it went very smoothly and I got great results.  Now, what to do with it?  Keep it?  Or sell it?

inside pocket

I did another bag too, one like Lizy's pink and brown one.  It's similar to this green and brown one as well, but it'll be less tote-y and more purse-y.  This is what I got done on Monday:

And this is the finished product:

Inside pocket detail:

Strap detail:

As a side note, this is what happens when you forget to adjust the white balance setting on your camera:

And this is what happens when you correct it:

More on Elora's Quilt

I finally got my quilting frame, so I was finally able to get started on quilting Elora's blanket.  This is what I had done as of yesterday afternoon:

I've been using the Grabaroo craft gloves that we have in the shop to keep the quilt clean as I work on it.  They work pretty well, but I keep catching the tips of the fingers with the needle and I never realize it until I try to pull my hand away.  It's kind of funny, actually.  We'll see how long it takes before I don't think it's funny anymore.