Peacock Love Forver!

This week's outfit submitted for Effortless Anthropologie.......

The Anthropologie piece here is the peacock feather skirt by Rutzou. As you can probably imagine, I have a lot of peacock clothes. So, things really need to make an impression now for me to buy them. The colors in this skirt are what did it for me. Such a departure from the usual teals, blues, green, and purples. The bright chartreuse, paired with dark grey, deep plums and a touch of pink - so pretty! A simple eggplant shell, grey cardigan, grey tights and boots (not shown). And I'll let ya in on a little secret..... the tights and cardigan are maternity! Since finding maternity tights, I will never wear regular tights again. They stay up, create a smooth silhouette, and are super comfy. I find myself wearing a lot more skirts and dresses now that I have them.

This week's Anthro outfit: keys in fashion & home decor

Here's the outfit I submitted for the week at Effortless Anthropologie. The skirt is an older Anthro piece - an eBay find - Secret Key by the brand Odille. The necklace I am wearing (pictured below) is called Love Story by Fossil. It was another eBay find, and yes, I could make something similar myself but since I got it for a fraction of the price it was worth it to purchase it completed.

I went back in my blog history, because I knew that I have posted about keys several times before. I just think it's so cool to see them showing up in fashion, jewelry, and home decor over the past several years. You can see my posts here, here and here.

So this past week, I also did a little home decor project too. I've been obsessed with these artist printer trays from 7 gypsies. I have several stocked up, and do plan to use them for a traditional paper/mixed media/photo display. But this idea came to mind, so I jumped on it. A while back, I saw these vintage keys in the Pottery Barn catalog. When I saw similar keys in the dollar bin at Michael's, I bought them up. I painted my tray a cream color, and then distressed the edges with sandpaper. I drilled holes on each side of the key, up by their heads (not sure what the proper term is for the bigger end of a key), so that I could feed wire through in order to attach them. And viola! A very cool collection to display.

Once I made this tray, other ideas came to mind, so stayed tuned for another blog post to show the others I made to complete the series for my wall.

A day to myself.....

I work for a company that is nice enough to give us MLK day off. I look forward to it every year. It's a nice little mid-January break.... you know, after being back at work for a few weeks after the holidays and you're kinda down because winter sucks and all that jazz. My husband has never had it off, so it truly is a day to myself. Not that I don't love him dearly, but everyone needs time to themselves. To refer to an episode of Sex and the City, you need time for your SSB (secret single behavior). Carrie liked to come home and eat saltine crackers with grape jelly on them while looking at Vogue without anyone bitchin' at her. I can totally relate! And I know that many of my other artist friends can too. I've been reading many a blog with this same theme, or talking to my fellow creators.

These moments to myself are even rarer now that I am a Mom. But they are so, so important! After the crazy, busy holidays and knowing that I was going into our busiest time at work (year end close on top of upgrading our entire company's main computer program) I looked forward to this day for weeks! What was I going to do? I had to plan it carefully so that I would get as much out of it as possible. It ended up being a wonderful mix of relaxing and creating. I watched the movie "I Don't Know How She Does It" because I knew Jon wouldn't want to see it. It was cute - I just love Sarah Jessica Parker - and the theme certainly fit my new life! The creating part was not only jewelry, but a few little home decor projects (which I will show soon) and some preparation for a baby shower that is being thrown for a friend this coming Sunday.

The jewelry I made is shown below, and will be listed soon in my Etsy shop. As always, it's a mix of doing all of the things I love: some metalwork and some basic curating of elements that I feel go together. And, at the end of the day, I couldn't wait to see Richard. I was refreshed and renewed. His smile, his laugh, his little arms reaching for me...... it's everything I had hoped for and more. Thank you Dr. King..... freedom comes in many forms!

Through the Anthropologie wormhole.

I have loved Anthropologie for as long as I can remember. Over the years, I would treat myself from time to time on one of their beautiful pieces of clothing. This is after I would see it in the catalog or online and think about it for a very long time to make sure I really wanted to spend the money on it. Since there are no stores close to me (although they just opened one about an hour away from me in November - yeah!) I would stalk the website daily to make sure my size was still available, and to pour over the reviews. Other times, I would try to snag a good deal on eBay.

This past holiday season, however, I became a bit of an addict. You see, Anthro had a huge sale with an additional 50% off their super marked down clearance. I hit up the newly opened Grand Rapids, Michigan store and then the Milwaukee, Wisconsin store when we were with family for Christmas. My closet is as full of Anthro as it's ever been! Skirts and dresses for $30 or $40 each? Can't pass that up. And ever since I've had the best time mixing together outfits and accessories. And of course, continue to haunt eBay for some items I am looking for.

So while doing all of this, I got to wondering..... I was sure that there were other gals out there, just like me, who had a love of Anthro and had the best fun putting their outfits together. Or even who were in the market to buy, sell or trade. Sure enough, I found Effortless Anthropologie, a wonderful blog that had everything I was looking for! Roxy, the blog host, has weekly posts for members to post items for sale/trade or items they are looking for. There are also reviews on products, eye candy pics from different stores, and reader's outfits. On a more serious note, she also posts the company's quarterly earnings, and news such as the recent CEO resigning.

I just became a part of the weekly reader outfits with my look above. That there is the "Funneled Folds" sweater that I bought a few years ago - it has peacock feathers of course! It's layered with a shirt, belt and pants from the likes of Kohl's and Target. I plan to submit a pic every week, for as long as I can, and will share them here with you too. Even if I can't make jewelry everyday right now, I still have to get dressed everyday, right? And, my style is all a part of what inspires my jewelry anyway. I really enjoyed documenting my pregnancy style by taking pics of myself, so this is a good way to have a purpose to continue that.

Many of the readers who share have their own Anthro dedicated blogs too! And that my friends, is how you get sucked into the Anthro wormhole!

More handmade gifting - totally upcycling!

I can't wait until Richard is old enough to craft and give his own handmade gifts! But until then, Mama will help him out! Now that we are into eating solid foods, I started saving the little jars because I know there are tons of cute ideas of things to do with them. For Christmas, I decided to make little snow globes.

I started to get even more excited about this idea when I realized that I probably had all of the materials necessary in my basement - a totally upcycled project! I had several bags of tiny trees from some scenery/mountains I had bought about 10 years ago for my Halloween village. I spray painted them purple and black, but of course never used the tree because they obviously didn't fit that holiday.

Then, I remembered that someone gave me a bag of fake snow several years ago for my Snowtown, but I never used it because I feared the mess it would make. I had silver glitter. I mean, what kind of crafty gal doesn't have tons of glitter??? Here is where I started to lay everything out. Mocha was very intrigued.
I washed all of the jars, and used Goo Gone to get the glue from the labels off. I have a love/hate relationship with Goo Gone. I cut circles from some sparkly while felt I had (again for my Snowtown) and adhered it to the inside of the caps. Then I glued a tree in the center of each one.

I mixed a nice bowl of snow and glitter up, praying that I would not spill it all over the place so that we'd be finding glitter until the year 2025. A spoonful or so in each jar, and secure the lids on.

Now I had to come up with how I was going to finish them off. A piece of ribbon tied around the base is the best idea, but have you ever tried to tie a tiny piece of ribbon around the rim of a slippery cap? That is something that I do not have the patience for. So I ran my silver ribbon through my Zyron machine (which puts adhesive on it) and affixed it round and round. I had some circle labels where I could put the "to" and "from" on the bottom and that's it!

Here are some pics with the flash on, and the flash off. I did have one larger mason jar from a candle that I burned down where I was able to add a snowman. I did not use water/glycerin in them because then there is the worry about them leaking over time. I modeled mine after the ones that were for sale at Anthropologie, which aren't on their website anymore for you to refer to. Very elegant and pretty, but for $38, this crafty gal is gonna DIY!

I hope the receivers will enjoy this memory of Richard's first Christmas!

More handmade gifting - Peas!

My sister-in-law, and nephew, love peas!

Heck, I like peas and so does baby Richard.

She also has a fondness for Green Girl Studios. So what's more perfect than making her a necklace with their pewter pea pod charm! I wanted it to be very simple and delicate so it's on a string of random pearls and seed beads - all in pea green colors of course! I am also gifting her with one of my tin cuffs!

Handmade Gifting

Now that I am starting to send some of my handmade gifts out into the world, I can blog about them! I do apologize though for the bad lighting. Since evenings are the only time I have to create, and we are in the dark days of midwest winter, pictures aren't so great.

First up, I gave my good friend Kristen one of these tin bracelets. These bezel bracelets are so fun to experiment with! She and I have both made button bracelets with them. And now I've finally gotten around the making some tin ones. The trick to them is getting the right size circle because when you dome the metal, it gets smaller. Now that I've got my sizes figured out, for both the small and large versions, I plan to make more of these in the future. I wanted to make each size and then decide which on to give her. I gave her the smaller one which features more variety. I selected tins that had background to them - such as the yellow one she gave me. The strawberries to remember our strawberry picking outing a few years ago. And of course I had to throw in a peacock feather! I am so glad that she likes it!!!

She gifted me with even more pretty tins, and I can't wait to work with them soon!