procrastinator

Yep, that's me! I procrastinate. I try not to. But who am I kidding?! I think it is in my blood. It drives my parents crazy!!! But the truth is, they can't fault me. It bothers my mom but not nearly as much as it does my dad. My mom doesn't say much about it. My dad doesn't either really but you can tell it irks him. It's gotten to the point though where he just shakes his head and laughs. In fact, it is kind of a joke now. When I was a freshman in college, he even gave me a sign that read: "Don't rush me! I'm waiting for the last minute!"

It is SO me! Somehow that sign got lost between here and Ann Arbor and by my second week of school a new one arrived at my mailbox! I've never lost it since. It's hanging right where I can see it. I imagine one day this skill I have perfected will bite me in the butt. However, for now I seem to work better under pressure. Like tonight.

This month I am participating in The Creative Color Challenge over at my friend Louise's blog. I've been looking forward to this challenge, but this week just got away from me. Plus, it was another one of those, oh my everyone created such masterpiece's. And a while ago I kind of decided I didn't really want to "compete" and feel like my creations were inadequate. That wasn't doing much good for my soul. But this challenge just seemed fun, so it seemed okay that I took my time with it, and I hope the group will be okay that I am an hour or so late in posting. I had a hard time deciding what to do with the color given this week - sunflower yellow. You are only allowed to use that color, and then white or black. I am pretty pleased with my creation. I die cut flowers using all different shades of paint chips. Used some acrylic paint and gel, and a few beads, buttons, and ribbon, a little paper, stamps, and its all on canvas. Hope it makes you smile!

new necklace and fabric flowers

I did it. I finally sucked it up and gave it a whirl! I read blog post after blog on how to make fabric flowers. I filed them away. I reread them. I watched any tutorial I could find. I still never felt confident. But then I saw this necklace at Just Another Day in Paradise.

Isn't it beautiful? I fell in love. And then Larissa posted that tutorial. Well if you notice in her tutorial, she even says when she starts explaining how to do her flowers that this is the part that gets tricky to explain -- well leave it to me to have this be the method that worked the best for me! Go figure. I'm not even positive that I did it exactly the way she meant for us to, but I wound up with what looked the most like rosettes of any other way I have tried. I have since also tried it with grosgrain and satin ribbon and they also look AWESOME. 

I then did the big felt flower exactly how she said, well sort of. I used my Sizzix to cut the circles. So that went super fast and easy. But for the smaller flower I didn't have enough circles left, and I didn't have enough of the same color material left to make more circles. SO I used the circles I had to make a flower like this: 

If there was a tutorial out there on blogland let me know. I didn't use one though. I just glued and folded. I can make a tutorial if people want one. 

My whole necklace came out like this and I have gotten lots of compliments. 

Thanks again, Larissa for the inspiration! You can find her tutorial here and here.