beachwear and cupcats

Happy Saturday, friends!

Jordan and I were supposed to go tubing on the Delaware with my parents and some friends from church, but the weather forecast didn’t look so good so we had to postpone it. While that was a bummer, it did give us a weekend to relax, which is always appreciated!

As part of my relaxing day, I made this simple vest for when we head to the Cape. If you hadn’t noticed, I have skin paler than snow, so the beach is hard for me. =( But I’m coping with the sombrero-esque straw hat I bought the other day and now this nice vest to shield my shoulders and back!

First, I cut out my pattern pieces:

The front two pieces are longer than the back because I wanted them to taper down into two points, so that I could tie them together if I wanted.

Next, I hemmed all the edges that weren’t going to be sewn to something else, then I did french seams on the pieces that would be sewn to something else.

Then I pinned the shoulders together. You can see in the pattern pieces that the front shoulder is much wider than the back, which allowed me to pleat them a bit for some extra flowiness. (You know how I love flowy things!)

Finally, I cut and hemmed the bottom of the front pieces into two big triangles. Here’s the finished product, loose:

Tied:

And from the back:

And that’s that! Craft 36 of 52: Complete!

So now you’re probably wondering where the cupcats come in to all of this. Or what a cupcat is. Or maybe you didn’t read the title of my blog and weren’t thinking any of these things at all.

Well, allow me to enlighten you! J and I will be celebrating our 1-year anniversary next month and to celebrate, we commissioned a custom watercolor portrait by Jessie Oleson. She specializes in cupcake art and she is phenomenal. So, in our fab portrait, we are cupcakes, hanging out in a big ol’ library with our itty bitty cupcats. Are you intrigued? Well, get ready, because this morning Jessie sent over a picture of the almost-finished work! Drumroll, please….

It’s okay to be speechless; I was. Make sure you click on the picture to see it full-size so you can take in all the details (like the spines of the books!) I’m in love with it and cannot wait to frame it and hang it up!!

That’s all for now, but I hope everybody has a great weekend! (If you want you’re weekend to be really great, maybe you should get a cupcake portrait done.) =P

kitty

butterfly kisses after bedtime prayer

Happy Sunday!

Today is a big day for crafting! I’ve got two crafts AND a baking adventure to share with you! We’ll start with the baking! Midweek, Jordan requested that we make cupcakes because I was showing him some cupcake baking blogs and they just looked so good. So we did. =) Here are our delicious chocolate chip cupcakes with whipped vanilla frosting!

What a sweet treat!

Yay, cupcakes! Next up, I finished my butterfly skirt that I began right before my sewing machine broke. It wasn’t too hard since I’ve made skirts like this before, but I added a white underskirt layer to keep the skirt from being see-through in direct light and that was new for me! Here’s some pictures:

Shiny! Exciting!

And a close up:

I love the watercolor effect on the fabric!

Sorry there aren’t more pictures of the process but with the sewing machine gone and everything, I was all out of whack. =( I’ll get my act together in the future. For instance, with this next craft!

Like I mentioned before, Jordan and I went home to Jersey on Saturday to see my parents and hang out with Caity. She and I had some jewelry making to do! We decided to make Golden Snitch necklaces in recognition of our great love of Harry Potter. (I told you it would be magical!!) First, we went to JoAnn’s and Michael’s and got our supplies.

Pliers, lobster clasps, chains, beads…we’re all set!

I doubled my chain to give it a less-delicate look. Then, I attached the lobster clasp to one side and a jump ring to the other.

Nifty keen.

Next, I made my snitch, which ended up being silver and blue because Caity and I thought the colors were pretty. Also, it’s much harder than you’d think to find a plain, large gold bead.

Just as pretty as gold. =)

After this, I attached the newly-made pendant to the chain. Unfortunately, because I had to attach each side to two chains because of the doubling, I, of course, attached it to the wrong two and had to re-do it. Everyone take note of my Dad kneeling on the floor next to me, casually reading a book. We like to spend time with each other and he didn’t at all leap into the frame just as Caity took the picture. =P

Sadly, Dad is not reading Harry Potter.

After some last-minute tweaks, revisions, and repairo spells, here are the final products!

I’m so wearing this to Harry Potter world this summer.

Everyone should check out Caity’s nail polish. It’s “crackly.”

Tada! Crafts 6 and 7 of 52: Complete!