Baby Craftiness

As promised, photos of the bibs on which I was working.

I did a Google image search for mom heart tattoo and browsed a whole bunch of them before finding one I liked that was simple enough to use as a pattern. I simply cut and pasted the image into Photoshop, made it the dimensions I wanted it to be on the bib, printed it as a draft, and went over the lines I wanted in black Sharpie. Then I busted out the lightbox (I used to use that thing ALL THE TIME, but lately, not so much) and laid my printout on it, then the bib on top, and traced it in pencil. That was tricky, but it worked. You can still see some of the pencil lines on the last "m" here, but they came right out in the wash.

This one is a pattern from Sublime Stitching. The original was too small, so I scanned it and used the above procedure to get it onto the bib. I think it came out super cute! I made the label on the cassette tape says "Bubba Rocks". I love that the little openings on the tape even have the sprockets.

The other thing that I did this week was make a Valentine's Day mini book with a few baby pictures. I totally ganked the idea from Ali Edward's blog. She used white Creative Cafe overlays, but since I couldn't find any of those, I substituted these Hambly ones. I also used some OLD ASS Rusty Pickle paper I found in my stash.

Cover. I cut out all the circles out with my Creative Memories circle cutter, including the thin chipboard for the covers. The patterned paper I used for the backside of the cover was cardstock weight, so it gave it a little extra added heft. The circles for the title were made in Photoshop and punched out with my 1.5" Fiskars circle punch.

First page. Each page is made from a clear Hambly overlay and has a red scallopped circle punched with a 3" EK Success punch from red dot swiss Bazzill. I resized my photos to 2.75" in Photoshop and made them all sepia toned. I put two photos on a 4" x 6" canvas and then sent them all to Walgreens for printing. I'm sure they hate me there, because almost all my photo orders are small things like that. When I picked them up, all I had to do was use the CM circle cutter to cut them into 2.5" circles and stick them to the pages.

Stupid Blogger turning my pictures sideways!!!

This one's blurry - sorry. Each set of pages has a circle with a phrase on one side and a photo on the other. The circles say "I love you", "baby love", "sweetheart", "be mine", and "2009".

The photos are in date order, but undated. This way I could choose my favorites, and they would show how he's grown in the last 3 1/2 months.

I left the last one in color, since he didn't have any clothes on to clash with colors and the background was brown anyway. I had to use my clone stamp to add a little extra background to this photo because after I resized it I had blank space at the top and bottom.

Grr. Blogger. Last page.

Now I'm working on learning to knit again. All it took was three short videos on YouTube to refamiliarize myself with the technique and I was back in business. It's like riding a bike! Easier, actually, now that I think about it. I bought some cotton yarn at Michael's the other day and I'm practicing by making little cloths to use for washing dishes. Everyone knows sponges are nothing but giant germ farms, and the cellulose can't be good for the landfill, so I'm making little cloths that can be tossed into the wash after using. All the nooks and crannies look like they'll be better for scrubbing without scratching anyway.