Hey there all you rudolphs and assorted other deerlike creatures! How’ve you been? Me? I’ve been BUSY!! Stupid handmade gifts. Stupid good intentions.
I’ll tell all you all this – all I want to be doing is making short wool skirts that will look cute with brightly colored tights and boots, but instead I’ve been working (for pay. at my REAL job.), ‘crafting’ presents and deleting notifications on my iPhone that I’ve gotten yet ANOTHER SPAM COMMENT. Holy CATS, people. What does one do with blog-spam? Help!
I thought I’d share pictures of at least one gift project I’ve been working on. Sewing kits. These were super fun to make – I just made simple zippered pouches (here’s a tutorial I did earlier this year) and then filled up with sewing supplies geared towards non-sewers. Here they are – I made two for two different people…
Yay! They look a bit rumpled in these pictures, don’t they? Of course I used contrasting fabric for the lining. Orange gingham for the blue bag and purple checks for the hot pink bag.
Filling up the bags was fun. I love kits and things like that. Here’s the goods.
From twelve o’clock I included…
-One roll of iron on hem tape
-A variety of small spools of thread… dollar store special
-Fun buttons and some snaps
-A bit of vintage trim wrapped around a clothespin
-Iron on patches – from Joann’s, I split up one package between the two kits
-A PINK TAPE MEASURE!! The other kit has an ORANGE ONE!! They were only $.99 at Joann’s!
-Little tins of straight pins, safety pins and buttons. The little tins are meant for wedding favors – you know, candies?
-Scissors
-And dead center a quickie needle book that could double as a pin holder. Hot pink felt, yall!
I cut out two squares of felt with my pinking shears then stitched with a decorative stitch to make into a ‘folder.’
I’d bought a sheet of needles at the dollar store – this is 1/4 of the sheet. I just cut up and stitched to one side of the felt. I like it!
The other part that tickled my fancy with the kits are my homemade button and snap cards. I have a somewhat specialized tool for this – a teeny-tiny hole punch that’s meant to make holes for teeny tiny little grommets for the making of cards. They’re in the scrapbook section of craft shops – and they make the PERFECT sized hole to stick snaps through!
I also used the tool to punch a bunch of holes in another card, then I strung buttons from the back of the card. The card backings are just kraft cardstock cut with pinking shears.
How about all you Dasher and Dancers? Are you done making your gifts? How about cookies? Are you already back home for the holidays or are you hosting this year?
Love the sewing kits! I’m madly trying to knock off more projects than I should even be thinking about. Aaargh!
Can’t you turn off the notification for spam? I only get email notification for comments that need approving… And I’m seriously considering turning even that off since I check the wordpress app on my phone more often than my email anyway. (ok, I might be a bit of a comment whore.)
I know. I STILL have a scarf and an apron to make. by 11 tomorrow. Sigh.
My problem is that the spam isn’t getting caught – it’s getting through the filters so I have to reject a whole bunch of stuff. One of my posts was stumbled, so my traffic was super high for a while and it seemed to have brought out the spammers – you know “what a great post i read that is so funny. I like beds” stuff like that.
I didn’t even REALIZE that there was a comment section on my wordpress app! Right now I get all my comments in my email, but it’s annoying at work because some days my phone vibrates a lot (and some days it’s heartbreakingly silent, I, too am a comment whore š – it’s WAY easier to mark comments as spam in the app versus on my laptop! Yay!
Cute kits! I should make a few ‘manly’ ones for my husband and brother. They seem to need me to take care of mending that they could just do themselves.
The husband won’t even put my big pressie under the tree. He knows I’ll take it. So you’re doing much better than I would under the circumstance.
That would be a really good man-present. When Mr. Bug and I moved in together he had one of those button-attachers that has little plastic tag-like things. You could include one of those for the super-sewing inept!
OMG – How do you resist the temptation to pry open a corner and peek? Or shake the box a little?
What a great gift idea! I love how you pulled the sewing kits together. I haven’t done any sewing of gifts for others. But I spent all day on Monday making sweets.
I PROMISED I wouldn’t. Also, I think he’s hidden/wrapped the stuff inside the box…
mmmmmm….. sweets. I made crackers last weekend for a party. It was messy but fun!
Perfect timing! I bought my daughter a sewing machine for Christmas in hopes of turning a non-sewer into a sewer, and this might be a great first project for her! I have 3 days with her to teach her everything I know, lol! And I love the felt needle cases, too!
Yay!! those bags are easy and fun!
No help on the spam – I’m on WordPress and they seem to take care of it for me?
LOVE the little sewing kits, so cute! You are doing great by getting even some homemade gifts done. I have trouble getting any sewing to happen AT ALL right now.
I’m on wordpress too and it HAS been fine, but one of my posts was ‘stumbled’ so my traffic seems to have gone up, bringing with it some crazy spam-time!
I’m totally kicking myself for deciding to make gifts. But bought ones are so… bought. Next year, everyone gets a subscription to people or newsweek. I’ll give ’em a choice…
Hey Patty! About the spam – try adding the ‘akismet’ plugin. in the last year I’ve gotten 30,000 spam comments (yikes!) and it’s captured them all so I don’t get emails. I’d go crazy if I got spam-comment emails! It keeps the comments in the ‘spam’ folder and you won’t get emails, just check the spam folder now and then for real comments. If people include lots of links, sometimes it will get sent to spam, so check and empty regularly! Hope this helps š and have a wonderful Christmas!!
here’s the link – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/akismet/
the funny part is that spam that isn’t spam and actually a real comment, is called ham. I thought that was hilarious! Ham and spam. Anyways – hope that helps with the spam overload!
Nice sharing your very clean and neat in your stuff..I like also to do my stuff like this..Thanks for inspiring me..
Great post! I think cleanliness of an individual will notice on her way of living or a stuff at home.