The Power Went Out So I Went on Vacation

Dear Loyal Followers, I am sorry for this pitiful start to Craft Month. It seems something has come up at every turn! We got our power back on Monday night so we were able to sleep in our own (rock hard) Tempurpedic bed. And then on Tuesday we started our drive down to Asheville.

The way this was going to work out in my head was that I'd make all the crafts on the weekend, and then share them with you during the week. And then I couldn't make the crafts because my fingers were blue. But I want to do Craft Month. And since this is my Craft Month project, I decided I'd do 31 crafts and I'd show them to you when I could. So I went to Asheville and had a good-ish time (complicated story but a four day vacation where you spend three days driving is no sort of vacation at all). When we got back, it was to the realization that our power might be back but our internet was still out. And my Google phone doesn't play well with the Blogger app. Go figure.

So let me quit bitching and tell you about the four crafts I have for you today.

What's a birthday without a birthday card? I used my all-time favorite Stampin' Up! set, Flower Shop, with the matching punch. I paired it with a DSP I don't remember the name of (oops). Not sure if you can tell, but the green top is embossed with small dots.

For Day 3 of Birthday Week, I made a matching gift bag. I gave this to my sister for her (belated) birthday when I saw her Saturday. She liked the bag, but was a little disappointed she couldn't throw it out. (We were going to see the Peking Acrobats right after I gave this to her.) I love making gift bags.

Continuing with papercrafts, I made this cake topper. I had thought about adding "birthday" but  with a word so long, I wasn't sure I'd be able to do the engineering to get the "happy" to hang nicely. While photographing it, I did think that one could make each letter of birthday a separate pick (using toothpicks) and you could have those letters closer to the cake. You could then also use this for an anniversary cake or any other happy occasion!

The good part of taking a vacation where you drive three out four days is that you can get some stitching done! (When you're the passenger.) I was trying to come up with another craft for birthdays, and remembered this freebie from Erica Michaels for Rainbow Gallery threads. The pattern is 14 years old (and considering how little I remember these days, the fact I remembered a 14 year old pattern festering in my freebies file is a miracle. Although they do say you lose short term memory first!) but is also still on the web. You can find it here (see June).

I didn't use Rainbow Gallery threads for this; I used DMC. Here's my conversion:

• Flame: 3078
• Candles: 3042
• Chocolate: 840
• Bottom layer of cake: 316
• Top layer: 778
• Bottom icing swirl: white
• Top icing swirl: 316
• Stand: 3042 for one symbol and silver cable for the other
• beads: 00123 and one I stole from a Mill Hill Celtic Santa kit (watch me be nine beads short)

Okay two more Birthday Week crafts to photograph and tell you about. Then I'll turn to Valentine's Day. I hope to be caught up by the weekend, but that's all up to Verizon. And Skylar*.



*They say this isn't hitting Philly. But with my track record you can't be too sure!