Knotty gloves, civil war, origami

I have been working on alterations for costumes for a local theater company Hale Center Theater for Les Misérables.  Having fun and learning lots the best of all things.  So I do not have much to show for that.Sorry but alterations never look like much even though they are a needed thing.

But I been making a civil war dress that I might put up for sale in my etsy shop so watch for that.    If has over 25 yards of fringe on it already and may get up to about 30 yards and over 7 yards of upholstery fabric and a few yards of yellow satin liner and contrast.  Hard to tell in the photo but it is a pretty dress.  It is obviously only half done.  I plan on making lots of costumes in the near future for sale.

I also frogged a raspberry colored sweater I was given by my mother-in-law.  It is a cotton rayon blend this is nothing but a bunch of yarn balls now waiting to be used.  This photo was taken during the process of dismantling.  There wear some mighty big snaps on that sweater.  It was a style of sweater I would not use but the yarn I liked.

 

My oldest daughter started a pair of gloves recently using Patons Kroy black sock yarn.  She raided my yarn stash with out asking.  But I guess that is ok since she is making the gloves for me and I have wanted to make these for a few years.  So now I get them and all I had to do was have the yarn.  she is leaving the tips off of the fingers so I can still use my phone.

My youngest daughter as always is playing with origami.

So this is my families last week in a nutshell although we did have ball room performances too. The girls,  my oldest two, also went to an 80's dance.

Shannon Hale an amazing person

Had a guest speaker at my children's school today Shannon Hale authoress.  She is my middle daughters favorite writer.

It was nice hearing her talk about how she struggled and then became an author.  She has spunk and personality.  It would be nice to get to know her in real life not just as a guess speaker.  From one of yesterdays posts I talked about how my daughter went to a costume dance she was dressed up like one of her characters from one of her books.

She had the children laughing shouting for joy.  She recalled growing up in the 80's big hair and all and just life in general just a good natured person.

The long piece of paper is just some of her rejection notes from publishers before she got her first book deal.

My oldest daughter is all in black with her tech crew utilities belt on.  She helped set up and run the show.  She is her schools crew chief.   She wants to be in technical theater when she is an adult..

 Sure a beautiful person and was an amazing speaker to the youth.

It is a good photo of the girls at the book signing after Shannon's talk. Somehow I always manage to look odd in photos thus the reason you do not see many photos of me ( the one with her eyes closed) Taken by a friend of mine. But I am always happy to be with my girls.

white homecoming dress

Sorry I forgot to take before pictures.  This was a dress my middle daughter got the summer of 2013.  It was donated to a church close swap.  What is a clothes swap you ask.  It is where you take your gently used clothes that you have out grown and trade with other people for sizes you fit into anything left over is donated to local thrift stores.  This dress was there ( actually is is a skirt and corset).  I took the embellishments off of it which had been six red roses and a few (about 30) red seed beads.  Thus leaving the dress almost totally white except for the red tie on the back.  I then repaired the damage to the dress and started to sew on white roses with green accent leaves and silver roses I also sewed on white sequin snowflakes. So the dress cost nothing except thread, flowers and sequins. It still retains the original red tie on the back may change that to white not sure as it does not bother me.

on a side note we also just used this dress in the play the wizard of Oz as the snow that fell on the poppies.  We had a ballerina dance across the stage with white disco lights going to represent snow.

We were given a wedding slip the summer of 2014 which happens to work well with this outfit length wise.  It too needed to be repaired where it had separated from its elastic.  So yet another part I did not have to pay for except for thread.

The head piece I made about a year ago just never posted on my blog.  when I got finished with the dress my daughter ran to my room to grab it from my dresser.  She was excited to add all the pieces together.  She also added the white shirt for modesty purposes.

Her hair  will be fancier for the dance but it is still a few weeks away so this was just her trying it on to see how it fit.

The Glass tour (Holdman Studios)

I didn't take as many photos as I wanted to because this is a working studio and some projects are hush hush until they are mounted in place in their prospective buildings.  But it was so neat to see stain glass windows that will placed in LDS temples and other buildings too before they get placed there.  So lovely and so many pieces they are amazing works of art all of them.

Mummy Egyptian Mask

 

My middle daughter has been studying Egypt in school and they are supposed to make a death mask.  Well that was supposed to happen this morning but with a fever 101+ yeah umm she didn't go to school.  So I went to school for about an hour so I could see how it was done and came home and did this with her.
This is how I was taught to do this...

Back to school...

We had our first day of school this week.  That is why you have not see me in a little bit.  Trying to get all the last detail things done and soccer also started.  Which keeps us a little busy as well with three daughters on three different teams and coaching them and the games.  There are other things that have pulled me away from the blog for a little bit too maybe I will explain at a later date on that.  Bear with me I will be back at this soon.  Thanks for your patients and understanding I have a few more heirloom tutorials photographed and just need to prepare the text part of the post hopefully soon.

How to:Lilac Gift Tag

Playing with the kids coming up with holiday ideas for their Valentine's Day Parties at school, that of course are not on Valentine's Day because it lands on Sunday. I decided to make gift tags to add to the teachers gifts. Looking around the house this is what I found. These would be cute for Mother's day, or Easter too.

Supplies

• glue ( I had YES paste (17 years old and still works amazing) and Elmer's glue kicking around use what ever you like or have)
• toothpicks to use with white glue
• corner punches
• flower punch
• shipping tags
• decorative string or yarn (not pictured)
  
• construction paper in colors desired 3 to 5 colors (we used3: solid lavender, variegated pink, variegated red)
  

1. Punch tons of flowers out of construction paper we placed them in a zip lock bag and shook to mix them
   
2. Remove string from tag ( you can replace it later with same string or decorative yarn, string)
   
3. add decorative punches to the corners of tag (our tags had been notched already I wish they had not been would have been prettier)
4. add glue to tag in a paisley or tear drop like shape
5. add flat flowers to tag
6. bend petals of flowers up and place a drop of glue on back of center of flower and place in desired location on tag continue to do this till as full as you like (the photos are showing one with them added and one that doesn't have bent flowers yet)(the very first one only shows one bent flower on the right picture)
7. replace string or add new one
8. write in space left on tag your desired message

Part 4 Moon Festival...and the beat goes on

While at the moon festival there was this drum show. I only recorded a small portion of it. I loved the rhythms and the beats and the way the musicians inter-played with each other while still keeping the beat.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Part 3 Moon Festival...in the news

While at the moon festival we watched the lion dancers from cal poly but the show announcer called these dragons . So now I don't now what these are lions or dragons. I think lions but still not real sure if someone knows please let me know. We sat and stood right in the spot where they spat out the cabbage so we are supposed to have wealth and good luck in the coming year.

I have a video but blogger isn't letting me post it for some reason it is having issues loading. OK since when do you have to have a YouTube account to post a video on blogger.

IN THE NEWS

This is the front page of the Hanford Sentinel From Oct 5, 2009 if you look close you can see my kids are on the cover page watching the Cal Poly Lion dancers. If you look close at this page you will also notice the Renaissance fair that we went to later in the day.