The week so far...

Right this second, I'm super nervous. With the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select which indie authors can enroll in, you have the option to put up your book for free as a promotion for a limited number of days. You won't get paid royalties for it, but it's a way to generate attention. It's something that I dithered nervously about, then took the plunge and posted my bread baking e-book for free.

Why? Hopefully people will like it, and leave good reviews which will encourage other people to spend the 99¢ it costs normally. Why nervous? What if people hate it? What if they leave really awful reviews?

Truth is though, I felt that way when I started Don't Eat the Paste as a creative outlet, and that's been just wonderful. People like Liberty and Sally and lots of others leave comments that are so sweet. So I'll just cross my fingers and wait out the two days. (Of course, I keep checking how many people have bought it and that's not helping my nerves at all)

But this week started out great. Sunday morning I woke to find that I had won a pair of shoes from soleRebels. They do a giveaway on Twitter, follow them, and look at their webpage to find shoes you like, hit the tweet button. They are a super green, ethical fair trade company in Ethiopia. After wearing the shoes for a bit, expect a review!

Preciosa Ornela is giving away free samples of their brand new Twins beads on their FB page. Mine arrived Monday. They are seed beads with 2 holes drilled in them.

My husband is still looking for a job, but he's optimistic and it's been very nice having him home lately. Later today we are going to a thrift store, and he's going to build me a peg knitter based off a design I saw in a Japanese catalog.

Easy to Sew Flower Project

If you follow me on Pinterest, you've noticed that I've been posting a lot of Japanese and Chinese links, including a bunch for sewn flower projects. This hair comb is inspired by those projects. I first saw the technique on a sunflower.
Since I couldn't get to my large fabric stash, I had to work with what I had on hand, which was some jelly roll strip that were on my desk, so that limited the size. This is a largish flower sewn to a side comb.

You will need:

• 3 colors of woven fabric
• a scrap of felt
• stuffing
• needle
• thread
• scissors
• hair comb or pin back
• chopstick or knitting needle to turn

Because it takes only a small amount of fabric, charms and jelly roll strips work great,  or scraps from sewing projects or salvaged scraps from old clothes.

All the pieces are built off of circles. Because the width of the jelly roll is 2.5 inches, that was the radius of my semi-circle for the petals and leaves. If you're using wider fabric, you'll cut 3 5 inch circles, and cut them each in half for the petals. For the leaves, you only need 1 half circle. The center is 2 inch diameter circle. The piece of felt to sew all the pieces to is 1 inch diameter.

Fold the petals in half, right sides facing each other, and stitch the straight edge. Knot off. Turn right side out using the chopstick to get the corner out completely. Do a running stitch along the rounded open edge, and pull tightly to gather. Repeat with the other 4 petal pieces.

Now stitch the 5 petals together into a circle, pull tight! Tie a knot.

Next you'll do the leaves. Cut the half circle for the leaves in half to make a quarter circle, fold right sides together, and stitch down the straight edge. Knot off, turn right side out, and stitch and gather the round bottom edge.

Now to do the center. It's just a little puff in the middle. Do a running stitch around the center circle, pull to gather just a bit, put in a small amount of stuffing, then pull it tighter. Knot off and stitch the center on top of the flower petals. Try to enclose the raw edges of the flower center, and cover the raw edges of the petals.

Flip it over, and stitch on the leaves.

Then you'll sew on the felt circle on the back to cover all the raw edges. Attach to a hair comb, pin back or barrette!

Looks like spring if you're as a eager as I am to start seedlings for summer gardens. We've been getting so much snow that my husband doesn't understand why I'm looking at seed catalogs and sighing happily!

Heart Mandala and new heart bead project

This is a very simple mandala that reminds me of a flower. I hope you enjoy it! 

Click on the image for a larger version to color!

These are super easy to make. Free project instructions here-> Felt Hearts with 3 Bead Picot Edging

Sort of like an optical illusion

Have you seen that thing going around Facebook that says "I CAN'T SLEEP"?

I love the effect, and kept meaning to do something with it. Yesterday I did, and it got addictive. The method used was to make the base graphic in small pixels, then resize the pixel images to use kind of like a stencil for the two diagonal stripe fills I made.

Then experimented with a different kind of fill.

Sometimes, I'm entirely too easily amused.
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