EKO's Crafty Life

Well December and the first half of January has gone by in a whirlwind of activity, family, and a few small bouts of the flu around here, now that life is a little back to normal I will take some time updating you on projects I completed during this time and things I am currently working on. I did complete a second family frame for my husbands mother and it turned out very well, She loved it, in fact she actually cried when she saw it she liked it so much. I also finished the Christmas stockings for my second daughter (born 2 weeks before Christmas last year) and my mother in law that spends every other Christmas with us, I had been putting it off for too long! The stockings are the perfect place to hide the battery packs for the garland. about 4 years ago when I made my husband and my stockings I sewed about 8 feet of the striped Christmas material that way as people join our family I will be able to crate a new stocking for ...

I finished another Christmas gift last night for my grandma, a scrap book page family tree with pictures of all of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A family tree - the colours show up more in real light I found this idea on the Crafting a Green World Blog  I had been wanting to make one of these for a little while but it was not until I found some frames at my local dollar store that I finally got my act together to do this. To show how inexpensive this was here is a breakdown. Frame : 2 $ Scape paper : 2$ Circle cutter : already owned Leaf shapes : 3$ from ebay  (cheaper than buying a punch and I have tones left I could more than I would ever want with all the leaves I got) Photos : I printed from my own printer it only took 3 4x6 sheets and since my ink is inexpensive ( under 30 for colour and black) the total cost is probably way under 2$ my total out of pocket cost was 7$  and for 2$ each I could ma...

Yesterday the little one and I made nearly 100 apple cinnamon ornaments and 8 jars of S'mores in a jar as gifts. Once they have tags and ribbons I will post each individually with more info.

A little while back I was in need of a gift for my husband from the the girls so after a quick trip to the dollar store, and then with a few supplies from home we made dad a gift that he is proudly displaying on his desk at work. We picked up a simple wooden frame and then my daughter went to work painting the frame with her favorite colours. the little artist at work. After the paint was dry I took a sharpie added a caption to the bottom of the frame,  and then sprayed a coat of clear spray paint on top of the paint job and then printed a picture of the two girls. Here is the frame on display in Dads office (I forgot to take an after pic)

A few weeks ago was my moms Birthday and I wanted to make an extra something for her so I whipped up this lunch bag in about an hour, It is based on this tutorial over at ohfransson . I made it form some heavy material from Ikea instead of vinyl and a pillow case,  I also made a few changes with how the top is attached, along with adding grommets to the top but over all I am very happy with how it turned out and intend on making more perhaps for Christmas presents if anyone would like an explanation of the changes I made to the pattern please ask and I will be happy to document them in my own tutorial.  I also included a few matching cloth napkins to go with the bag, as an added something extra. Thanks for reading, if you like what you see please leave me a comment or better yet become a follower so you don't miss any of my posts and as always please take min to visit one of my sponsors.

Little Gifts for a One Year Old On The long weekend I had a 1st Birthday to go to and while I had bought a gift already I wanted to add a little something to go with it so I pulled out some flannel (receiving blankets that were no longer needed) and some too small baby bath towels from my sewing stash and made a few little gifts to go with it.  and finally since I keep all of my daughters paintings to re-use, That is what we warped the gift up in. A Crayon Roll ( this actually contains some really chunky Preschool Crayons Crayon rolled all rolled up Large Bibs I made this pattern for my oldest daughter and make them any time i have scraps that are large enough  All Wrapped up