Heart in Hand & Circuit Board Valentines

Despite being happily multicraftual, and owning a fancy cutting machine, and having a bunch of scrapbooking paper in my stash, I never make Valentines or other cards.  It just seems like such a big hassle for something that is so each to pick up at the store.

But, as part of my effort to be more thrifty, work through my stash, and try new things, I decided to try making a few Valentines with my Silhouette this year.  It might help that I only needed to make 3 for the Harry Potter Craftalong card exchange, since not many folks signed up this year.  I did a quick search on the Silhouette Store, and found a few card designs I liked.  So I spent about $2.20 on cutting files, and dug all the paper out of my stash. 

The hearts in hands were actually harder than they looked, and I made a mistake in my paper choices.  The hands are cardstock from the Happily Ever After line, while the red hearts are a printer weight paper.  You're supposed to weave the two layers back into one another, so there should be small red squares inside the tan squares in the center of the hearts. Unfortunately the two different weight papers didn't want to work together, so rather than mangling them, I gave up the second step of the weaving.  Instead I took the heart offcuts from the wrist band, and glued them into the spaces.  So three pretty cards for $.70 cents!

Then of course I had to make a card for my actual Valentine, my husband Jim.  He works as a programmer/software engineer, so I had to go with this adorable circuit board card I found.  When I found the piece of deep teal-green paper, I knew it had to be my circuit board.  (The example used red paper.  That would not do.  Circuit boards are NOT red!) The design also called for the little flash drive to be attached to the outside of the card, with a rivet or brad, and I didn't have any, plus I didn't really like how it looked.  And it had the circuit board as a cut out piece laid on top of a blank card base, which I didn't have a good color cardstock for.  So I played around with the file in the design software, and manipulated things until I was happy with them.

Plus it gave me something cute for the inside of the card.  I tucked it into Jim's Star Trek lunchbox for work yesterday, along with a peanut butter heart.  He found it when he sat down with all his coworkers. 

Agate Slice Necklace & Earrings with Sari Silk

A piece I've been working on over the last week.  The front portion of the necklace is beaded onto jewelry wire, and the back is braided strips of sari silk.  It was made from a kit from Candie Cooper.  I love a good kit once in awhile to get you working with colors or supplies you might not choose on your own.

The earrings feature Czech glass flowers.

Scrappy Virus Afghan

This afghan has been over 2 years in the making!  I started it in September 2017, as a way to stash bust.  I had 6 skeins of Red Heart Boutique Unforgettable in Dragonfly and thought I might be able to make a nice little thrown with it.  I had already made a Virus Shawl, and had seen a few patterns floating around for the Virus Blanket version.  The woman who wrote the blanket pattern also has a video of how to make it on Youtube, so I just worked from that rather than buy the PDF. 

I started with the Dragonfly, planning to do the whole throw with it, but after 4 rounds of the 4 row pattern, I felt it was a bit dull, so I dug through my stash and found I had 1 full and 1 partial skein of Petunia, so I threw in a row of that.  Here it is laid out on a queen sized bed. 

This was one of those projects that got picked up and put down often, when other things came up.  So it was well over a year and a half into making it that I bumped into a skein of Gossamer on clearance at Joann's, and threw that into the mix too. 

In the end, I think it took either 5 or 6 skeins of Dragonfly (the main blue-green), 1.5 skeins of Petunia (pink-purple-burgundy), and 1 of Gossamer (the more rainbow band in the middle, that contains blue, green, purple, pink, gold and lime).  I haven't decided exactly what to do with it yet, but it might go to a friend in Japan who was recently married. 

Miniature Swarovski Necklace & Jewelry Display Stand

The very lovely MissingWillow on Lettuce Craft came up with the most awesome idea for our Craft Stars Garage Sale Fundraiser.  She created a tiny curio cabinet, featuring the animal friends from Lettuce Craft, and asked the other moderators to create tiny versions of their favorite crafts to fill the cabinet with.  I made a teeny tiny necklace out of a Vintaj brass connector component, 2mm Swarovski crystal beads, a 5mm Swarovski butterfly, some tiny chain and the thinnest headpin I could find!  I used the headpin for the butterfly, then used the wire I cut off of it to make the two double ended eye pins for the tiny beads. 

The necklace stand is a few layers of cardstock glued together before being cut to shape.

I actually made a few other pieces of jewelry first, but wasn't very happy with them.  I sent them off to MissingWillow, so she could use them if she wanted, or she could put them into her stash for some future miniature she might make, or she could toss them.  I was honestly surprised they ended up in the finished Curio Cabinet!
 
Turquoise seed and Czech glass beads, and a tiny heart charm.

Glass seed beads and a green Swarovski crystal drop.

Ring made from a red glass seed bead and a single jump ring.

Ring next to the necklaces for scale. 

Here's the finished curio cabinet, featuring miniatures by many of my favorite Craftsters/Lettuce Crafters.  (Photos ruthlessly stolen from MissingWillow's awesome post on Lettuce Craft.)  I also crocheted the granny square rug underneath it.  My butterfly necklace is on the top shelf, along with a shrine by MissingWillow and a Mothman by PerfectlyBohemian.

The second shelf features a fairy shrine, steampunk assemblage and photo of MissingWillow's lambs, circus shrine & scrabble tile painting from racky, and Up embroidery by sweets4ever.

The third shelf holds some micro knitting by loves2esperiment, and Easter display by pottermouth, more of my jewelry bits, and a miniature folio by kittykill.  MissingWillow did the chunky house, pottery bowl, Harry Potter book, and mini LC cookies.

The site mascot, Chaircat Mao is featured prominently in a hat crocheted by her fur-mom, pottermouth.  She sits on a cross stitch pillow by kittykill, atop my crocheted rug.