Self-Fold Tote Pattern. Cheap, and Just MAAAYBE Free….

Hi all!

I am working on adding some more self-fold totes to my Etsy site (I went nuts a couple of weeks ago and just couldn’t resist new fabric). Until then – then being hopefully by next Tuesday the 21st – I still have 3 awesome fabric combos for sale: the Sweet Tweet, the Mushroom Morning and the Honeycomb Garden. If you buy one of these totes now, I will also include a FREE downloadable PDF copy of the pattern for the tote, which I am also selling for $5. Don’t worry if you don’t get to these totes in time; I will renew the offer every time I add new fabric combos. And of course the pattern is always available for sale on it’s own at any time. So… shop on, people!

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Presents for Peepers First Birthday (Thank You, Silhouette Cameo)

My adorable little niece Penelope (heretofore known as Peepers) turned 1 in July, and for some reason, I am just getting around to posting about her gifts. What does one get for a 1 year old? They really don’t understand opening presents just yet; they’re often more entertained by crinkling the wrapping… banging the empty boxes together… banging the empty boxes on the dog. They will quickly grow out of expensive (read: anything pricier than Target) clothing, toys are mostly only useful for a 3-month span until developmentally they are onto something else, and just money or a savings bond – while very smart and appreciated – seems so anticlimactic, even though, yes, the kid doesn’t really understand present opening.

On another note, I just got a new Silhouette Cameo machine. I am not being paid or anything to pimp out the Cameo. Just mentioning it because at the time I was trying to figure out what to do for Peepers, I had JUST gotten the Cameo, and I wanted to play. This thing will cut paper, interfaced fabric, heat transfer vinyl, paper, templates for screen printing-esque fabric paint templates and I am sure more. I got a starter kit for the fabric printing and happen to have a bin full of scrapbooking paper (though I don’t really know why as I am not a scrapbooker). Bingo! Let’s kill two birds with one stone and make Peepers some gifts, seen below.

 

Shadowbox name decoration for nursery/bedroom and “screen print” tee shirt.

I really wanted to try out the screen print fabric paint, since I have some other ideas to work on for the Jennysold Etsy shop that would benefit from such a small-run production option. Yes, I know I said clothes are grown out of too quickly, but this was handmade, and the shirt was from Target, so I think that gives it a pass. I haven’t played with/perfected the use of the process yet, so I don’t want to post on it until I do, but suffice it to say that it’s pretty easy. However, I think if you plan on doing multiple runs of a same design, you’ll want to make sure it’s on the simpler side, as the more intricate designs take a decent amount of time to transfer. As far as the design, the nesting doll and the flower came from the free $10 artwork purchase starter card that comes with the Cameo. They’re on average $1/personal use; some have staged pricing for commercial use, and some aren’t available for commercial use at all.

Luckily, with the Cameo, you can upgrade from the free software to the $50 Designer Edition, which allows you to use any artwork you’ve created in Illustrator saved as an SVG file. This, to be totally honest, is what sold me on the machine immediately. That and the fabric arts options. Anyway, I used Illustrator to create Peeps’ name for the shadowbox and save as outlines so that when I imported the artwork, it was good to go. I believe you can also use all your own fonts in the standard edition of the software as well, but since I am way more comfy rendering art in Illustrator, and I wanted to try that out, I went there. Like above with the fabric paint, I haven’t done tons of work in it thus far so I don’t want to write about the process, but will at some point later. All said and done, it was pretty easy; I just should have picked a slightly thicker paper as the one I used was a little thin for the delicacy of the letters. Regardless, the shadowbox turned out beautifully for as simple as the design is, and I think she will really like having something “hers” like this that her Aunt Jenny made for her when she was a wee one. At least I hope so :)

Costa Week

So… Costa Week.

How can I accurately explain it? Probably not nearly as well as my husband, who was born into it and has been doing it since he was a wee one. Me, I just married into it, so I may miss something in the translation here and there. To be brief, it’s a week long family-plus vacation in Sea Isle City, NJ. And family alone, minus the plus, this thing is huge. Three rented houses, one owned house, and one condo full of people. Not counting, I roughly would estimate the family-plus is about 40-plus, more or less depending on how far out you extend that “plus”. There is alot of drinking, pizza, noise and sand. I mean, there’s way more to it than that, yes, but neither of us has all day here, do we?

So let’s get to the important part: the t-shirts.

Now, I don’t know when it started or why, but “hey! matching t-shirts for everyone!” became a thing in recent years, a hot commodity of sorts among the pluses as well as the family. And the designs have been increasingly cool and thought out. But I have to say, I am not sure how someone is going to top this year’s set. Because, of course, I did them :).

When I said before that there is alot of drinking, I mean there is alot of drinking. If Costa Week had a sponsor, it would certainly be Coors Light. Not sure why; I personally would be happy with a bucket of margaritas or swimming in an Olympic-pool sized box of wine. But, majority rule, to each his own, so on and so forth. So, naturally, I thought it was a crime that there hasn’t been a Coors Light-style Costa Week tee. Also naturally, as soon as such genius occurred to me, Mr. Jennysold and I staked out the rights to this year’s t-shirt and made these:

 

Don’t worry – as you can see I made Coca-Cola style shirts with the young’ns in mind. I wasn’t going to plaster them in beer logos. Though my 36-week pregnant self DID go to the bar in one of the gray shirts. Soda, seltzer and socializing only – I promise. Though I won’t claim that the spiked lemonade wasn’t a real tease.

The family (minus the kids) got both shirts, the pluses and the kids got the Coke only. The design was fun to work on but definitely a bit of a challenge. I hand-drew the Coors Light one completely from scratch in Illustrator (starting with a bootleg EPS logo – blame the weird Russian copyright-infringing logo sites, not me), and altered a Coke font by hand for that one.

Pretty awesome, no? Why yes. Yes I am.