Crafts and Beer

So it’s February. I haven’t posted one blog entry since my resolution to post more, the house is a disaster (due to the crafts I have been making and forgetting to post about), and I think I have actually gained weight. This is not my year for resolutions.

But this isn’t just a post about my resolution shortcomings, I actually made something and took a picture of it to post. I decided I needed to do something with the hundreds of yards of fabric I have, so ordered this adorable pattern on Etsy from Ali Foster and got crackin’. The pattern I bought was the pleated shoulder bag and the instructions were so easy to follow and easy to do. The most time consuming of the entire process was cutting out the fabric and fusing it to the interfacing. She has a great deals on her site for buying multiple patterns also. I was so excited after I made my first one that I had to make another. One of the lengths of fabric I had was from Ikea and it was a black and white fabric with the outlines of leaves. I thought this would be a beautiful purse but wanted it to have some color so I went and bought a pack of permanent markers at the store and started coloring away at the fabric. The coloring took forever, but the good thing was that left a lot of time for drinking some delicious craft beer.

One of the most recent releases from The Bruery is Oude Tart. If you haven’t been to the Bruery, it is a great little brewery in Placentia, CA. For being only 2 years old, they have one of the most impressive line ups of any brewery I have seen. And they are all very unique with a very belgian influence. The Oude Tart is no exception. It is a Flemish Red Ale that has been barrel aged in red wine barrels for 18 months. This gives the beer a great undertone of dark fruits, and the sourness is mouthwatering (in a good way). It has a beautiful brownish ruby color that looks like a cloudier version of an old fashioned cherry cola from the soda shop. At first pour, it has an off white head, which quickly dissipates and gives way to the delectable 7.5 % abv beer below. This was a limited release from the Bruery and was only available on location, but I do think that they will brew it again after the amazing reception it got. I highly recommend trying this beer if you like sour ales, or are curious about them. You can’t find it in the stores, but if you know craft beer people on the west coast, you can probably find someone with a few bottles of it.

Anyways, back to the purse. So I finally finished coloring in my fabric with permanent markers and got to work finishing sewing. Like I said, this is an amazingly easy pattern, so it is really good for even beginning sewers. It took me about 30-45 minutes to put it together once all of the pieces were cut out and fused. So without further adu, here is the final product…

The purse isn't this yellow, Its just a filter

hand colored purse

I hope you are all doing better with your resolutions than I am, but my husband and I have started doing the 200 sit up challenge so hopefully that gets me going on my weight loss goal a little better than the beer drinking was doing :)

Cheers and happy crafting!

Happy New Year to all my crafting compadres! It is a new year, new crafts and I think that the start of the new year should definitely start with beer! I’ve never been a big fan of New Years resolutions, only because I never follow through with them and I usually have a better success rate if I start in the middle of the year rather than the beginning. But I think part of my problem has been never telling anyone what my resolutions are, therefore, I’m not held accountable when I don’t succeed them. So instead of a craft for today, I’m going to tell all of you my resolutions so you can call me a fat ass when I don’t lose the 40lbs I’m hoping for by the end of the year. So here it goes, my list of things I don’t like about myself and want to change…

1. To lose 40lbs by the end of the year, and 20 by July. For some reason, lifting 22oz of beer and not working out, doesn’t equate to weight loss. Who knew? So this year, I’m going to hit the wii fit running (well not really running, I don’t want to break it).

2. To shop and eat more consciously. I know we all watched Food Inc. this year and read Omnivores Dilemma and it completely changed our lives for the first 2 weeks, but I really do see the importance of being a more socially conscious consumer and I really do want to make a difference. I got a start in December, we joined our local CSA (community supported agriculture) so we now are getting fresh, organic fruits and produce weekly, now I just need to actually use them.

3. Cook more meals at home. This goes along with number 2, and to an extent, number 1. This means not cooking the bag of Trader Joe’s orange chicken every time we can’t decide what to have. It means that Burger night at the bar in front of the house is going to have to be a monthly occurrence, not a weekly one.

4. Keep the house clean. I am not a neat freak, I never have and I know that I never will be. But I do love when my house is clean and I am so happy when I come home and don’t feel like I’m living in Tornado Alley. But I need to learn to pick up after myself. To much in 2009 did I use the excuse that I am going to come back to that craft and that if I leave everything out for it, I am more likely to. This is not true. The truth is, if I were going to finish that craft, I would have had the ambition at the time I sat down (and usually the caffeine) to finish it. The dishes need to get put in the dishwasher after each meal. The trail of clothing I leave on the floor when I come home from work on my way to putting on my pajamas will get picked up before bed. The laundry can not sit in the hamper and pile up for the entire week until I get around to doing it on the weekend. This also means that when the clothes are done in the dryer, I fold them right away, not let them stack up on the dresser until I start losing socks behind the dresser because the pile tipped over.

5. Work on my stress and anger issues. I’m not a mean person, I’m really not. I just have to learn that there are people who were put on this world for the sole purpose of pissing me off. I need to learn that breathing is the best way to relieve stress, not grinding my teeth and clinching my fists. I am going to work on making myself a more mentally healthy person.

6. Craft more. I love crafting, why do I not do it every waking moment of the day? Well because I have a full time job, but besides that, I’m just not motivated to do anything but eat crackers and sit on the couch when I come home from work. So this year, I am going to make it a point to not turn the tv on as soon as I walk in the door, avoid the snack drawer at all costs, and sit down at my desk to work on a craft. Even if I sit there and don’t get anything done, at least I tried.

7. Blog more. I apologize profusely to the few people that follow my blog. I know that this year has not seen very many posts from Crafts and Beer, but I have a bunch of great projects planned and a LOT of beer to drink for 2010. Stick with me, there are going to be lots of great things in the year to come!

So thats it, thats my list of things I am going to do this year to make myself a better person. So thank you for reading through this post, and like I said, I am doing this for accountability. So I know that you don’t know if I actually cooked dinner for myself last night (unless my husband is reading this and commenting), but if I’m not posting, if I’m not crafting and letting you know about it, please, PLEASE, send me a message, comment on my posts and tell me to get my fat ass in gear!

I hope you all have a wonderful 2010, I have high hopes for this one.

Cheers!

Okay, so I love etsy. It is a great, inexpensive marketplace to sell and buy your handmade goods. Love it. I recently (recently meaning about 2 months ago) got an order for a tree skirt and 5 christmas stockings. Awesome! This is going to be a HUGE sale for me and I have most of the material, so it will be cheap to make, right? WRONG! The tree skirt is an enormous 80″ in diameter which consists of 3 – 4 layers of fabric. I am so lucky to live in the house I do, or I have no idea where I would have been able to make this thing. It took me forever, first to realize that I didn’t have enough of the felt that I needed, then to realize what type of interfacing I needed. Then, in the middle of it, there was a white ball fringe famine in the greater San Diego area. Not even kidding. I called at least 20 Joann fabrics, 10 walmarts and like 5 independent fabric shops. It was ridiculous, it was nowhere to be found. I ended up finding a person on Etsy who had a bunch of it and was able to send it to me quickly. After that, I realized that I needed to get the buttons. Which were no easy task to find either, they were 2 1/2″ cover your own buttons. I ended up having to order them online and waiting for them to come in the mail a week and a half later. They came in the mail yesterday, I covered them and sewed them on last night and I AM FINALLY DONE! I had made the stockings before hand because I had made them before and knew what I was getting myself into, but I procrastinated on the tree skirt because I was dreading the inevitable. But they are all done and ready to mail and, today was a holiday, so I have to wait till tomorrow.

I will post pictures as soon as I take them, but for now, it is off to enjoy more San Diego Beer Week. We are heading down to Downtown Johnny Browns to partake in their barrel aged beer night.

Tree Skirt and 5 Stockings

So here was a card that I made for a craft night card swap. We aimed at making a birthday card for the men in our lives (so not quite so many flowers and glitter). We all made 5 of each card so that we could swap with all the other girls and we each got 5 different cards. This card uses A LOT of techniques, all VERY simple. The first thing I did was cut the card to the size I needed for my envelopes. In this case, they are 3.5 x 5″. Then I just cut a line across the front so that my sentiment on the inside shows through from the front. On another variation of this, I used a scalloped border punch along this end, but like I said, these cards were for the guys, so no scalloped edge :( Then, on my computer, I printed off a punch of pieces that would be cut out and placed on the inside of the card with the sentiment of my choice (this one is happy birthday, the other one I did was Happy Spring). This piece was printed to be about 3 x 4.5″. Around the outside edge of this paper, I used the zig zag stitch on my sewing machine and just went around the entire outside edge. Then, with a stamp set I had, I stamped the birthday cake on the inside (the spring one is a bird and a tree). On the front of the card, I chose two coordinating papers, one patterned, one plain and adhered them together placing a length of ribbon across the seam. Then, I did the same zig zag stitch across the ribbon and paper as I did on the inside of the card. Before attaching this piece to the front of the card, I used a versa mark stamp pad to make a watermark sort of pattern on the front of the card with another stamp set. Then, attach the paper to the front of the card slightly above the cut on the cover. Also, attach the inside piece on the inside of the card. As you probably realized, this project required a good amount of beer. I believe I was drinking a Ballast Point Sculpin IPA while working on this particular project. It is an amazing beer, tons of piney tastes with a great crisp finish of grapefruit. It has a kind of cult following here in San Diego and is only released occasionally throughout the year. You can find it at some really good brew pubs in the are on the off chance you are there when they are tapping a barrel of it, but it goes quick. Enjoy!

Guys Birthday Card

Happy Spring Card