(Backup) More iron-on fun in the Schmidt Household

I’m having so much fun with my cricut that I think I will never buy anything other than plain shirts for Etta so I can design them! I showed how I got the galloping horse in a past post, but here is the shirt in action!

 I made another shirt using this image but in metallic gold and it’s tiny so as to fit on a tiny heart-shaped pocket. 

I’m so happy with all horsey shirts, I think one of my next projects should be either a dress or a pair of pants with horses all over it. Maybe multiple colored horses? I guess we’ll see! 

 My Pinterest inspiration!

Okay, here are two of my latest shirts, I’m pretty proud of them. The shirt on the left was a onesie Eric bought when Etta was an infant. It’s a size 12 mos old! Ha, what a joke! Any way, I cut off the bottom and served the edge to make it a shirt. I went to put it on her and she refused. I realized it’s because it needed a picture of Bucky Badger, otherwise she wouldn’t care about it. So, I made a Bucky head and she wore it immediately! As for the shirt on the right, that is glitter iron-on. That stuff is super hard to work with, but it looks amazing! Originally I was going to put the knockouts on the shirt, but it wasn’t easy keeping them in place so I decided to use the template instead. I really like it, though I know I would have liked it the other way, too. Oh well!

3 day Weekend = Craft Weekend!

I got so many projects done this weekend! It all started with my mom’s birthday on Saturday. I started editing pictures of our horses and making them into cuttable files. I made two shirts with our horse Fool’r on them and then one with Juliana. Here is the pic I used for each file:

               

I made a shirt for my mom with Fool’r in gold metallic vinyl and then a shirt for Etta with Fool’r made of red vinyl. They turned out beautifully. I then made my dad his father’s day present, which I also failed to take a picture of, but I am quite proud of the design and tag line on it. If I get a chance I will take a picture.

Next, I finally made the shirts for Sarah’s daughters. I failed to photograph them, too. But I made two zebras and two giraffes, one in white and the other in metallic rose gold. I was really impressed with how they turned out! 

Okay, now this next project I ended up getting a last minute picture from in the car! A former riding student of mine had a baby shower so I made a diaper cake for her. It is made up of dark brown burlap and two sheer peach colored ribbons. I like how it turned out, but of course it looks lopsided here due to the seat.

Lastly, tonight, I went back to the cricut machine and finished the labels on my bathroom organizer. I have three small plastic organizers with three drawers each that I have in the bathroom separating pain killers, prescription drugs, moisturizers, cold and flu, immunity supplements and digestive aids. I bought the first two organizers at the same time and labeled them immediately, so when I bought the third I wasn’t motivated enough to label them until today...so- CHECK that off the list!

And then finally, in the end, I cut the Juliana file in the rose gold metallic and put it on a nice, bold magenta short sleeved shirt. Here it is!

I love my Cricut!

So my newly-turned 3 year old has become obsessed with the characters from the movie Madagascar. Her Nana gave her some beanie babies that she takes everywhere, one is a zebra named Marty and the other is a lion named Alex. Then she found that we had a giraffe and a hippo around the house so they have joined the crew. Depending on the day it’s either Marty and Alex or Marty and Melman (the giraffe) that need to go everywhere we go. Lately it’s very Marty and Melman-centric so I decided to make some cool t-shirts.

Here is what she got...

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This week in craft-world...

I’ve been meaning to make a reiki shirt decal  with my new cricut machine, and I FINALLY got it finished! Seriously, I’m a house with a toddler it’s hard to find time to start AND finish a project. That means everything is done in stages. Oh well. I found the shirt at goodwill then bought sportflex iron on vinyl in gold.

I love it!

Next, Eric mentioned he was considering buying me an apron for Valentine’s Day but didn’t find “the one”. That inspired me to make one using the leftover fabric from the kitchen aid cozy. Isn’t it a cutie?!

Just Keepin' the Kitchen aid Away From Dust

For my 36th birthday I bought myself a kitchenaid mixer. For a long time I hesitated using it because it got dusty between uses because it sits on top of the fridge. So I finally bought the fabric and then I sat on it for awhile. When I got the desire to move on it I sewed it all together and took it upstairs only to find it was way too long. So I tailored it and left it for another day. A few weeks later, which was today, I finally finished it up. You can see where I shortened it, near the edge of the end seam. It looks okay. I struggled with how I was going to do it, and this is what i settled on. I'm happy with it, I guess.

The Everlasting Project- the Island

As seen in a previous post, I started making a replacement island for the house in July 2014. That's really hard for me to admit because it was officially finished in February 2017! I started it and then found out I was pregnant, so the project started taking a lot longer to make then. The idea was to make something that could hold small appliances as well as house a larger beer fridge for eric and the boys. I made all the cabinets from scratch and used 3/4" plywood so as to not make it too heavy. Then I found some nice wood drawers at the restore for $5 each for the cabinet part, and I bought used cabinet doors for it, too. What helped make this project take so long were the cabinet doors. I started off making them only to be very disappointed with them they were going to be shaker style and I worked really hard on them, but they were ugly and very imperfect. So, I resorted to buying them and sized them down to fit. My aunt had told me about wood polish which I used in lieu of polyurethane. I thought I might make the counter top but then decided against it and bought a pre-fab butcher block countertop from menards.

Here are mid-way pics which include the shaker styled doors that I scrapped.

And here is the finished product (as you can see, the rest of the house was in shambles because we just had the addition put on and we were going to install the new carpeting next).

Diaper cake- October 2017

A gal at work was pregnant with her first baby and it was a girl! I had bought a lot of diapers when they were on sale and kept them for baby shower gifts. I like these diapers SO much. They are super absorbent, don't leak, rarely have we had blow-outs or diaper rash AND they are compostable!!! (If you are looking for a super diaper you should buy these- they are called Naty Naturals and they are made in Sweden.)

Anyway, this cake used about 1.5 bags of diapers. I used a paper towel roll/dowel in the center and white ribbon to hold it all together before using the decorative stuff over the top.

Newest obsession- girths/cinches!

My trainer recently told me to get a mohair girth because the one I have is a mohair blend and it doesn't perform the same as a pure mohair girth would. So I started thinking cheaply and thought, I bet I could make one for less? Though that might be right after awhile, it cost me much more at first because I made the loom first.

All wood and loom supplies were bought at Menards and all the mohair was bought from u-braidit.com, as were the instructions on how to make the girth/cinch. I also was referred by a friend to watch some YouTube videos to help, too.

Here they are, in order of production.

Here you can see the loom and the first girth I made with Abiquiu blue and natural colored rope. It's 48" and it looks incredible on my grey Arabian mare, Juliana.

This next girth is 46" because I thought it might fit Juliana a bit better than the 48". I ended up removing the natural colored outline around the half diamonds and I like it a lot better. This is made of sandstone and natural colored yarn/rope and the brown is sport weight alpaca yarn that I bought from a friend who raises alpacas. When I took home the yarn I realized it was way too fine so I used 2 strands of the 2ply (to ultimately make it 4ply) and I feel better about it. I made sure not to use it in areas where it needed to provide structure or support and instead used it for decorative accents.

This last girth is made with natural, royal blue and ristra red. I made this for one of my trainers as a thank you present. It was made to match her Arabian mare's blue and red bosal/mecate. It's a 32" cinch with a roller buckle on one end.

Laundry Room Reno (from 2013/2014)

When looking through my blog it occurred to me that I never showed any of the Laundry Room renovation that we did starting the summer of 2013! I can't believe it- shame on me.

When we first moved in there was a top-loading washer and dryer set left for us in the laundry room. When they died we bought high efficiency front-loaders. As you can see in the BEFORE pictures, that left us with a little conundrum as the front loading dryer door was not able to open all the way due to the most awkwardly placed (and quite useless) sink. So for several years we put up with the small opening portal to our dryer.

Stupid shower!

We also hated the fact that there was a shower that never got used in the room. Why??? There aren't any bedrooms on the first floor, and unless you worked a job that you felt you needed to take a shower the second you walked through the door, there was no use for it. So we had better plans for that space.

And to top that off, the shelves above the machines were helpful, as they housed lots of things (cleaning products, etc), but they were unsightly and messy.

Where the sink was

Our hallway outside of the laundry room. CHAOS!

So, we knew we needed to make a change. And so I started on the hunt for nice tiling to be used in the room, and in the summer of 2013 I was ready to start the project.

The shower was in the left hand corner

Took out the shower, the wall that divided the shower from the machines, the stupid tiny sink, and then we tiled the floor. We hired a plumber to close off the plumbing to the sink and move all that plumbing over to where the shower was (which now has a big laundry sink). Then we patched up the walls where the sink was and the shower as well as the ceiling where the shower wall connected. We had to texturize those areas and then painted it all.

The shower was in the left hand corner

The tile flooring!

What the bottom cabinet doors looked like before

Next, we moved the washer and dryer back in. I measured the area that was to the left of the machines and built a cabinet out of birch veneered 3/4 inch plywood. Eric painted the insides of the home-made cabinet and the insides of the pre-bought cabinets that hang above the sink. We first started painting these cabinets a firey orange, which would have worked out okay, but it was latex and peeled off (STUPID US!) So we bought this nice powder colored blue spray paint that sticks super well. We bought the cabinets from the Habitat Restore. We used the uppers as-is and the bottom cabinets we only used the doors. Those doors used to be much bigger so we table-sawed them down to fit as they do. I think they look SO nice.

Cabinet install

Once the bottom cabinet was finished we put the doors on. I thought it would be great if we used some of the legs I had sitting around from a previous restoration project so I cut all 4 down to make sure the cabinet was at the same height as the washer and dryer. Once that was done I checked with Pinterest for an idea on how to make a countertop. I first thought a butcher-block top would be great, but then I saw that you can use wood planked flooring. So I cut and glued wood flooring to a thin sheet of plywood, then I stained the wood, and then caulked between the planks. Once that was done a painter that we met at Menards told us about a product called Ceramathane, which is kind of like shellac and kind of like polyurithane. We picked up a medium sized can of that and put one several layers over the caulk. Then I bought the sink at the Restore and we cut the hole for the sink, and plumbed it in. All along I had been making a taller shelving unit that I ended up attaching to the countertop so we can put our laundry baskets there. Lastly, we put up a dowel between the upper cabinets and the shelving unit, so we can hang items that need to be ironed. Oh, and somewhere in there we bought, stained and installed new trim around the flooring/walls.

FINISHED PRODUCT!

FINISHED PRODUCT

In the end, I'm SO impressed with our work. I'd never built a cabinet before, nor had I tiled, or even patched large chunks of dry wall! But we did it, and I have no regrets. This project has given me so much inspiration and confidence to move on to any room I choose and make a big positive change. I'm not planning on moving fast, but I feel good about whatever might be ahead of me!

The Start of an Alpaca Fleece/Wool Yarn Rug

I found a rug on Pinterest that I thought was super cool. It's made of chunky fiber and it was simply knitted with big honkin' needles.

Pinterest Inspriation from http://www.scandinaviandeko.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/DIY_7_97_12_2_nettiin.jpg

The roving

I didn't know where to start as I've never seen fiber made into yarn of this large gauge, but I thought I'd ask around. One of the firefighters I work with is an Alpaca enthusiast, and she's also a knitter. She said she could sell me some of her lower-grade fleece for a nice price, which I instantly took her up on (I mean, really, I don't need super soft/perfect quality fleece for a rug!) Of course what she sold me was a little dirty so I had to go through it and pick out all the pieces of hay, etc, but otherwise, it's the softest most beautiful fiber EVER! 

The wool yarn

The start of the project!

I sent it on to get processed into roving (per her suggestion). Unfortunately it took the fiber mill almost 4 months to get it washed and processed, but I've now got it back. So last weekend I bought size 25 cable knitting needles and last night I got started. I'm using 2 strands of chunkier cream-colored soft wool yarn and a strand of the roving. I wasn't sure how many stitches I should first cast on so I started with 22. We'll see if that's enough. If not, I can make two rugs and then just join them together. Regardless, the rug is looking incredible, though it is probably more suited for something like a blanket! It's SO soft. But anyway, it will be perfect for a rug, too. I plan to put it in the baby's room to help muffle some of the sound we have in there now that we don't have carpet in the room. I know I'll need to put one of those sticky mats underneath it or else we'll be surfing on it. But other than that,  think it will work beautifully. I guess I am still curious how I will make it so that it doesn't "shed" the fleece, since it's not woven or spun, it's just simply roving. I wonder if walking on it a lot will eventually matte it down. I will have to ask my firefighter friend to see if she has any suggestions. Also, I might need to figure it out sooner than later because my little kitty took a liking to the material and she started licking it last night! So, instead of clogging her guts with this expensive fiber I'd rather it stay in rug-form and serve an actual purpose!

Stay tuned, there's more to come!