Eleven

So as you know Doctor Who is one of my favorite shows on tv. And on my long list of 'crafts to make' is to indulge in a little geekery and make myself a black apple doll version of my favorite, the eleventh doctor. (he's called that because he reincarnates instead of dying and this is his eleventh reincarnation)

Matt Smith as the eleventh doctor :)

My new eleven plushie! Complete with his red bowtie (because bowties are cool) and who can forget the fez?

Martha Stewart's black apple doll tutorial is pretty easy to follow.. I just had problems with the arms and legs being too small (so cut them bigger if you plan on making one too) And his jacket! Good grief I figured I could just cut and sew without a pattern but it took two attempts before I could get anything resembling a sports jacket. Who knew making a doll's jacket could be so difficult? Anyhow I love him! and now have a companion to eat fish fingers and custard with! Maybe.. a Sherlock black apple doll for the upcoming third season? haha

Cake Decorating!

Did you know that when I was younger my dream job was to bake and decorate wedding cakes? True story. I also wanted to be a marine biologist and save all the marine animals. Those are probably my two dream careers. Not that being a nurse doesn't have its perks but eh. Life happens. Culinary school was too expensive and I was realistic about the outcomes of me pursuing a major in marine biology. Anyway the point of this is that I haven't forgotten how much I loved baking as a kid and when I have the occasion (and time) I do like to try a hand at some of the stuff I've picked up. I'm going to put some of them together in one post for you :) My favorite by far is the rose cake that I found from one of my favorite blogs.. iambaker

Here's my first try.. I made this cake for my friends' birthday. Let me tell you it was a disaster. It was hot and my homemade buttercream roses melted all off. I went to the store and bought some frosting which kind of saved the cake. If someone would please give me some tips to keep the frosting from melting I'd be greatly appreciated :)

Here is my attempt at her neapolitan rose cake. These roses came out much much better. Still need some work but eh..

Aannnd here it is cut. As you can see, the cake layers are a little uneven. My baking skills apparently aren't up to par either. Good thing I don't do this for a living ;)

For my sister's birthday last year, I didn't bake a whole cake because  there was no way that we could finish it between the both of us. So I saw this idea floating around the internet somewhere for 'mini-cakes'. I baked them in ombre colors, stacked them up and piped a rose on top.

Super cute and super quick. 

More recently, the other day my friend Paulyne was throwing a house warming party and I baked her a cake to 1. Congratulate her on her new home and new degree and 2. To practice a bit more on the rose piping. 

My ombre purple rose cake.

I did it in a rush.. but it still came out pretty decent. I can safely say that I am now comfortable in rose piping. What's next!? Maybe a petal cake or a ribbon cake? The last ribbon cake I attempted unfortunately did not fare very well so we will see :) 

Baby Quilt #2

This is my second attempt on this style of quilt since Nolan's quilt last year and it's still just as fun :) The theme for Mike's shower is 'safari' with pink, brown, and green colors. It was a little hard finding safari fabric that I liked but I finally settled on cute pink pachyderms that fit the shower theme perfectly! I hope I didn't overkill with all the pink.. but I had a lot of extra pink on hand from my pink puppy rag quilt 

My sister commented that it was toooooo pink. But I think it came out okay. 

Close up of the name appliqué and the cute elephant fabric :)

Congrats guys! Also.. of course what would a shower be without a diaper bike! Hehe

With of course.. a crocheted monkey :)

Silhouette and screen printing

Continuing on with baby shower gifts for Mike and Tricia.. I made quite a few things and didn't want to overwhelm everyone all in one post haha. I saw this circulating around pinterest and decided it would be funny to make it for Mike!

I don't make shirts enough to have a screenprinter at home, although that would be something awesome to have.. like a quilting machine too. Anyhow so I just put my trusty Silhouette machine to work. Love love that machine. Okay quick tutorial again! 

1. Take freezer paper and cut it accordingly to fit on the Silhouette mat (Or in my case Cricut haha) Make sure to place it waxy side down! Run it through the Silhouette. 

 2. After its cut iron it onto the shirt.

 3. Use fabric paint (I used the ridiculously expensive Martha Stewart paints) and paint in the letters. I let it dry overnight just in case... peel the paper off and voila! 

*If you don't have a silhouette you can just print out the image or text that you want and place the freezer paper (waxy side down) over the print out and trace it and cut it out. Easy peasy!

Stay tuned.. one more gift to come :)

EDIT: Here's the happy couple with one of the gifts.. pre baby haha. Glad it fits Mike! :)

Pink Puppy Rag Quilt :)

I love rag quilting probably more than I love quilting itself because...

1. It's so much easier (takes only about a day and a half to make) and you don't have to worry about matching up the lines exactly...there is a lot of room for error. 

2. I love the Simplicity pattern for the rag quilt shapes. It's the perfect size for a toddler or adult lap blanket hehe (I have yet to make the turtle) 

3. It's just so cute! Also lots of room for changing it up and making say.. a hello kitty rag quilt :)

So when I heard there was a little girl turning three who loved puppies a pink puppy blanket sounded like the perfect gift. 

To personalize it a bit I appliqued her name in the corner. 

I remember when I was a kid I wrote my name on everything. Or maybe it was just weirdly possessive and unfriendly me as kid making sure none of my siblings took my stuff HAHA. 

Silhouette and appliquéd onesies

So my other friends Mike and Tricia are going to have a baby girl! So I kind of went all out and made a variety of things for them. More appliqued onesies like the previous post..

Tutorial for the necklace onesie found here. 

Another home state onesie.. with a heart on LA <3

Okay.. I am pretty upset that this came out pretty bad. Sorry Mike and Tricia!!! I should have made it a solid color like Grayson's onesie and top-stitched instead of zig-zag stitched. It was way too small and my sewing skills could not keep up :(

But on another note this is the first time using my Silhouette machine to cut fabric. It is seriously amazing. That's how I got the state of California so perfect. I don't know why I didn't try doing it before.  Let me try to explain it in three pictures ... 

1. I found an image online and just used that on my Silhouette software 

2. Take the Heat N Bond and 

3. Iron it to the back of the piece of fabric that you want to use

4. And just feed it through the Silhouette! I ran it through twice just in case it didn't cut the fabric all the way the first time. 

*For those of you without a Silhouette machine.. Just print the image, cut it out, and trace it to Heat N' Bond. Iron it onto the fabric and then cut that out. 

Amazing. And then ironed that to the onesie and appliqué away! 

And yes.. that is a Cricut mat. My Silhouette mat sadly was put to rest.. and (quick tip!) found the Cricut one at Michael's using my 50% off coupon of course. Works with my Silhouette fine. 

It's monochromatic!

A while ago I made a gray chevron quilt (and a bunch of other gray chevron things) for my good friend Kris and her kiddie Grayson. Well, it's been awhile since I've seen them and thought that our next time together I would make some new things I've been seeing around pinterest. Like these super cute appliqued onesies!

So more gray chevron can't hurt haha. I appliqued an chevron elephant.. 

Our lovely home state of California with a little star at San Francisco.. since she's originally from San Fran ;)

The first syllable of his name bc to be honest his whole name would have been too hard.. haha

So this onesie isn't part of the monochromatic sceme. I made the San Fran onesie first and thought the chevron looked a little funny so I used this smaller chevron pattern for  San Diego (since she's also from SD) But after making it and comparing them the gray chevron one did look better :/

I also made some matching cloth baby shoes. Let me tell you, this is my second attempt making the shoes. The first attempt was from a Japanese cloth shoe book.. that was all in Japanese.  So I tried to just go by the pictures and the results were pretty tragic. 

Really. To say that I was devastated is an understatement. 

It actually was like four attempts. The shoe to the left was subjected to repeated assaults by my seam ripper as evidenced by the torn fabric.. until I gave up and tried to do it again with the shoe to the right. But that failed too! 

Luckily! I was on pinterest and came across a tutorial to make it. Unfortunately I can't find the link anymore but if I come across it again I'll put it up. The first shoe actually is slightly larger than the second shoe but I am so excited it came out so cute! I love it! It's a pretty good feeling to fail and something only to succeed later :)

Yay! 

Hehe. Sorry had to add this. LOVE FRIENDS <3

Some LA love :)

So I've mentioned before that I am going to school and working and unfortunately have not had much leisure time to make things anymore :( Unless of course it's a request or a baby shower (ugh because I am totally getting to that age where every other weekend is a bridal or baby shower) Life so far consists of school, work, catching up on my tv shows and fitting in exercise when I'm not being lazy.  However! I did make time for two awesome events in Los Angeles that I found out about this year.. (thanks Emi!) Challenge Nation and CicLAvia. For those of you living in the LA area these are a great way to explore this wonderful city especially if you're like me and lived here for about twenty years and rarely venture out of suburbia haha.

Challenge Nation is basically The Amazing Race. It's a scavenger hunt in downtown LA. You get a group of people and are given a list of twelve clues and sent on your way. It's mostly picture taking..

Like above.. we were given clues that led us to Grand Park.. and the instructions were to start hula hooping and take a picture in front of city hall :)  It said that it should be about a 3 mile walk.. but that's if you figure out the clue right and you don't have to back track. 

CicLAvia is a cycling event which they close down the streets in LA to bike on to promote a healthier form of transportation ..  and apparently this year is the first year the route went from downtown to Venice beach, about fifteen miles I think. Riders of all ages with many different bikes going a plethora of different speeds. It was so cute to see the little kids on their little bikes! There were a few runners along the route too. Crazy. It was also tons of fun and a great change of pace from just running around the block on Sundays :) 

Venice Beach! And yes, we biked back to where we parked. There's the option of taking the metro but we decided not to. 

On another note, I am happy to say that I FINALLY figured out how to braid my own hair.. ala Katniss style. Yes, young adult literature is my secret guilty-pleasure. I mean have any of you picked up John Green's The Fault In Our Stars or Looking for Alaska? I love his writing and also follow him religiously via tumblr and on his vlog :)

Yup. Only took several hours in front of the mirror and now I will wear this hair style everyday hahaha