A Whole New Year!

May the new year bring

The warmth of home and hearth to you,

The cheer and goodwill of friends to you,

The delight of a childlike heart to you.

Happy New Year!

Small Surprises

A little bit of Carty goodness is hiding on this page in Small Magazine's Winter issue!

Painting and painting away today. And slowly putting Christmas away until next year. And looking forward to finishing what's on my table so I can play with the new designs I made on Monday. I see lots of pink and red in my near future. 

Itty Bittys

Last month, while picking up College Girl in Walla Walla, Dylan found a big old jar chock full of mystery itty bitty goodness in a little antique store. Knowing how much I love the little things in life, he bought it and managed to keep it hidden until Christmas. On Christmas morning, we had great fun dumping out the contents and searching for hidden treasures!

There were lots and lots of old Cracker Jacks prizes (remember those?), and tons of cupcake toppers. Googly eyes, Santas, a green fish. Cars, trucks, rockets, and boats. Tiny deer! And a cowboy too!

Spacemen, gnomes, a yellow dog, stripey cats, a tiny cow. . .

Rugby players, and footballers too. A little ring boy, an alligator, green chickens, an alien or two. . .

And a couple of clowns. They will have to go.

Clowns kinda creep me out.

A Ghost of Christmas Past

I hope you're all having a very happy Christmas, or whatever else you might celebrate! Here's what  my now-grown kid was up to 12 years ago on Christmas Eve, when Santa was still alive and well, and footy pajamas were the fashion of choice. She was 6 years old - 

Here's her note to Santa, left out with the cookies and milk-

"To Santa we're being great kids this year. Well just a little bit bad. Because Jimmy is makeing me sad and when I get sad I get mad. I been so good I do not know what to write. I been good at a manatee place. I been good at the stor. I even been good on picnicks. And I love you."

Busy-like

We did it! As of this afternoon, the last of this year's goods are in the mail. And we are officially taking a break. Wheeee! It has been a whirlwind of order fulfillment around here for the past few weeks. Now our Etsy shop and website are in vacation mode until after Christmas. A big fat THANK YOU to all of you who have made this our best December yet!

Here are some little gifty tags for you-

Making Christmas

When our sweet little nieces were here over the Summer we made flowers out of fabric scraps, ModPodge, and glitter. First the girls picked out their favorite fabrics, then I cut a whole bunch of them into petal shapes. Using just plain ole computer paper, the girls traced a circle for the center and colored it in. Then they glued whichever petals they wanted around the circle and covered the whole thing with ModPodge. SO fun! After it was dry, we busted out the glitter. Depsite our best efforts to keep the sparkley stuff contained (and outside even), I'm still finding silver flakes here and there in the studio. After the glitter was dry, Aunt Joee cut them out all pretty-like. The girls were so pleased with their creations!

And I was just as pleased that they left them here as they've been gracing the walls of my studio ever since, but I thought Christmas was as good a time as any to return them to their proper owners. So I framed them up all nice and professional-looking using these gorgeous (and inexpensive woohoo!) Ikea shadowbox frames. I just glued fabric to the back of the already-included matte, and hot glued little stacks of cardboard squares to the backs of the flowers to make them stand off the background about an inch or so. Then I labeled them with their names. I think they turned out really sweet.

I'm working on more handmade-esque Christmas stuff (in between working on LOTS of orders yay!) but I can't show you pictures of some of them cuz the receivers might peek.

Back to the studio for me!

More Merriment

This week really got away from me! Mostly I've been hiding in the studio, working away. But I was able to take enough time to finish making the homestead look merry and bright. Now our living room smells like a  fairy tale forest. Tuzy (aka Tuesday the Wonder Fluff aka Mr. Fluffernuts) approves.

AND I managed to finish the triangles! Here's what I was making-

I love them! I made the green and red strands separately so I could use them for future decorating frivolities. That is, if I can ever bring myself to take them down.

If you look to the right of that bottom picture you can see a peek of one of my darling little sis-in-law's prints. I have several of them and they are wonderful.

OK, back to the studio for me.

Hope you're all feeling

the spirit of the season.

Happy December!

I'm up to my eyeballs in triangles!

I was thinking I'd make some sort of garland type thing to spruce up the rather un-Christmassy-looking upper half of my walls, and I think maybe I got a little carried away.

It started innocently enough, raiding the scrap bins for likely red and green triangle candidates. I accumulated a pile of them really quick-like, then I stitched them all face down on scraps of white. It was somewhere into hour two of tangled bobbins, broken threads, and cussing at the sewing machine that I thought maybe some sort of triangle estimate wouldn't have been such a terrible idea.

Dylan helped with the cutting-out part. Ok, so we raced. He won.

Then I turned all the pointy bastards inside out and ironed them flat.

It looks like a much more reasonable pile now.

I'll show you what I end up making with them when I figure out the next step.

In the meantime,

I hope you're all having a lovely December day,

void of tangled bobbins.