New jewelry, new name, and a Mother's Day sale!

So I changed the name of my etsy shop (a few weeks ago...you might have spotted it on my sidebar). I never actually loved the name Desert Rain Designs. Back almost five years ago when I opened shop, finding a name on etsy that wasn't taken yet was next to impossible. My first five choices were all taken, and so I was just typing in other random stuff. Desert Rain Designs happened to be available, so that's what it assigned me--there was no going back. At the time, you couldn't change your shop name at all. Then they decided you could change it once. So I've been mulling it over for about a year. Really! I hope Brighton Jewelry Co. will be good.

Anyway, I still have to have new business cards made, etc. but in the meantime, I made a big new batch of jewelry back in February. It took me another month to get it listed, and now here I am finally telling you about it. It's very time consuming, okay????? I don't have time to do direct links for all the jewelry--you'll just have to go to my shop's main page.

Aren't these fabulous bracelets? I made them to keep for myself. Sometimes I do that. I really love the emerald one. Pantone color of the year, you know.

 I sent this picture to my sister Maria and told her I was like Mr. T, and she said, "Who's that?" .................................................what?!

These ones are for sale, though.

As are all these new baby bracelets!

I made a couple of Oriental pendants, too.

And a whole bunch of earrings!

Mother's Day is in three weeks (May 12th). I decided to have a Mother's Day coupon for my readers. Enter "MOM2013" at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase! Pick up something for your mom or something for yourself. (You can pretend that it's from your kids if that makes you feel better.) I accept credit cards, etsy gift cards--there's another great gift idea--and I ship things quickly.

Happy shopping! :)

Baby blankets du jour

I just finished sewing a few blankets for my friend Lauren, my cousin Rachel and my sister Maria.

Oh, and I bought a light box.

You know, to help get diffused lighting for still photography.

Not to be used as a private movie tent or anything.

Look how pretty! I'm nerding out over the lighting. This is a car seat canopy I made for Lauren's baby Charlotte. I got the chevron fabric at Ace Hardware. They seriously have a gorgeous fabric selection.

This is a blanket I made for Rachel's baby Charles. This adorable pirate material was designed by Sarah Jane for Michael Miller Fabrics and I got it here on etsy. I hurried and made these two blankets and shoved them into the mail right before I left for my SLC trip. I'd been putting them off for ages. It helps me to create arbitrary deadlines like road trips.

Then, last Friday, after hearing that my sister Maria is going to have her baby any day now (even though she's not due for two more weeks). I decided to make her some last minute gauze swaddling blankets. I had been meaning to do those for a while, too, but hadn't bought any fabric yet. So I went to Jo-Ann and got a few yards of printed gauze, some plain off-white gauze and then some pink dye to dip-dye a piece of it.

If you want a tutorial on how to make gauze [muslin] blankets--although they are SUPER simple--you just turn the edges under and stitch, look here. Dana always has the best tutorials and pictures. Love her blog.

I didn't follow any sort of tutorial to make my dip-dyed blanket--I just sort of winged it. I didn't start the process till 9:00pm, that's why the lighting is bad. I did hem the blanket before I dyed it, that's the only sort of advice I would give.

I used Dylon Flamingo Pink dye. It said that total soaking time was 50-60 minutes. So I decided to dip 1/5th of the blanket (which was folded into fourths) into the dye, wait 10 minutes and then slide in another 1/5th until the whole blanket was done.The directions say for you to stand and stir it for 15 minutes initially, but since the gauze is so thin (and I was busy finishing the other blankets), I just made sure it was getting through all the layers and then let it sit. This is the lazy way of dip dyeing.

Finally, all the sections were dyed. The last section only sat in there for 10 minutes while the first section had been in for about an hour.

It took about 10 minutes of rinsing in cold water before most of the excess dye was out--and then I threw it in the wash (by itself).

Love!!!!! Love the ombre, love the shades of pink, love the scalloping. It's almost as if I planned it that way, haha.

 I just think it will look really pretty with a little baby swaddled up in it for a photo shoot. HINT HINT, MARIA.........

Here's the other blankets I made her that night.

Commercially bought gauze blankets are ridiculously expensive. I made these for half the cost! The dark pink one with the flower print is an oversized one that is a square 1 1/4 yards. That's the size of most that are sold online. The rest that I made were smaller.

 The gray and pink striped blanket is a yard of knit from Jo-Ann. I just squared it up, rounded off the edges and did a stay stitch 1/2 inch from the edge (although that probably wasn't necessary). Maria really wanted lightweight, breathable blankets because she lives in St. George, where it will soon be boiling hot.

So I rolled them all up and took them to her on Saturday. She was so excited!

Oh, and I also made her this car seat canopy. I am sort of amazed at myself at being able to finish six blankets in one night...and if I remember correctly, that was the same night that Mark was out back, stargazing, and between dip dyeing and sewing, I ran out and saw Jupiter--it's my favorite planet--and the Orion nebula, the Pleiades, and Taurus, and Betelgeuse. We saw the stripes on Jupiter, people. And three of its Gallilean moons.  Having a telescope is awesome. Mark took some pictures of the moon, too. They're on film, though. Nothing to show you yet.

Anyhoo, I really lucked out finding this Dwell Studio material (albiet it was twill, not my preferred quilting cotton) on clearance for $5 a yard at Jo-Ann. I don't remember ever seeing Dwell Studio stuff there before?! This could be a good omen.

Perhaps if I announce this, it will help kick my rear into gear....I am opening a second etsy shop to sell my baby blankets! It is nowhere near being ready, but I have been working on it for a lonnnngg time. Hopefully things will be up and running this summer. Stay tuned!! :D

The Happy Factory

Last Wednesday, the ladies in our Relief Society got to go help out at The Happy Factory. It's something I'd always wanted to do, so I juggled all our different schedules to be able to make it work. I don't know if any of you remember the show Three Wishes that aired in 2005, but The Happy Factory was featured on it. They received new equipment, a new car and a trip to deliver some of their toys to South America in person.

Donna Cooley lives right down the road from me and has had this charity going on for years. She and her husband Charlie started building little wooden cars and trucks out of donated scrap wood and sending them to impoverished children all around the world. The whole thing is run with grants and donations, 100% of which go straight to the production of the toys.

 

That's Donna in the plaid shirt. She is the sweetest lady. Her husband actually passed away a couple of years ago, but she has kept things running at full pace.

 Here's a list of the countries Happy Factory toys have gone to, as of November 2012.

 There's pictures and letters everywhere. Serious warm fuzzy stuff.

 

These are the cars we were finishing by painting them with mineral oil. They are so simple, but inspire imaginative play, and for most of the recipients, this is the only real toy they'll ever have!

They make some awesome steam shovel sand diggers, too. I wish I could buy one.

 

I saw a glass box in Donna's office displaying their one millionth toy. (wow) "To date, over 1,140,000 Happy Factory toys have been given to more than 600 different organizations, groups and people in 180 countries. No Happy Factory worker makes a dime and the gifting is still gathering momentum" (from their website)

 At the end, Donna got up and said how much she loves our ward, and thanked us for coming. She then gave each of us one of these precious elephants with leather ears to take home. They were made by her late husband and they are some of the last things they worked on together. I almost started crying...

I'm glad I got to go volunteer, and hope we'll get to go back soon. It's nice to know there are still such amazing, positive people out there who are making a real difference.

Our spiffy new computer table (that Mark built)

 Hang time in the shed (that Mark also built) loft

Dear Husband had been itching to build something for a while. We'd been kicking around the idea of him using the legs from our old, pitiful kitchen table to build us a new one. But then we bought a really nice new table instead. So the building project turned into a computer table. We'd had our second computer on the kitchen counter for months, and it was not an ideal arrangement. *ahem*

(We used to have a laptop, and when it went kaput we got a second desktop computer instead, which took up a lot more room...)

I'd pinned this image on Pinterest, and it's been floating around for a while. I know a lot of my friends have been lusting after this table. The blog it's on has a tutorial, which claims that it was easy and cheap to build. So Mark changed the dimensions and gave it a go.

I think the old table top is in the landfill now. There was nothing else we could do with it.

 

 Just realizing how small and pitiful it really was...

I have no idea how he actually built this. When it comes to construction stuff, I just let him do his thing. He did reference the online tutorial, but the lady who did it had a wimpy way of attaching the apron and legs, so Mark did it differently.

 There's the old table legs! He had to sand off all the varnish (and scratches, and petrified baby food) from them, which was a pain, but it saved a lot of $$ to reuse them.

Then he took it all apart again to stain the top and paint the apron and legs. 

*note* The lady in the online tutorial says she used Minwax Special Walnut stain, but from the Minwax pamphlet, that color did not look anything like the finished tabletop. We went with Jacobean instead. It went on really dark, but when Mark wiped off the excess and sanded each board for a distressed look, it looked like this:

He used finishing paste wax on it once the stain had cured.

Next, he spray painted the apron and legs with Rust-o-leum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover (sticks to everything, including plastic) in white semi gloss.

He also built these little stands for the computers--forgot to mention.

Goodbye, old desk!

Ahhh! What a beaut!

Pretty impressive, no?

He even made it so there's no visible screws on top.

Finished table is 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. It cost about $40 in materials. (It would be about twice that if you had to buy the legs.) I think he used Douglas fir boards.

Never mind Naked Bum there in the background. We're potty training, what can I say.

I wish we had somewhere else to put the paper shredder and file cabinet, but oh well. We have a small house and this spot is the only place for any "office" stuff.

I need to get new flowers and artwork for the wall above next.

And some matching chairs, since this is how it actually looks....a trip to IKEA might be in order.

Anyway, a huge THANKS to handy husband Mark, I love our new table!!