sparkly bits

Sunday night and much of Monday were spent preparing more things for the Annual. Do you ever find the longer you delay doing a task, the bigger and more complicated it becomes in your mind? This happens quite a bit to me when I procrastinate (which means it's been happening a lot lately! ;-) )

For the last few months, I've had this idea of putting together bags of sparkly bits for hooking. I don't know about you, but when I've needed a little bit of glitz to add to a rug I have trouble finding just the right stuff. As a result, I've slowly been assembling a little stash of metallics. This little stash has grown to be more than I will realistically use....and it was time to share.


But before I could share, I needed to prepare. Many different fabrics needed to be tested, cut and packaged...


Once again, I grossly underestimated the time it would take to assemble my baggies - and when cut into strips, the materials seemed to condense quite a bit. I'll only be bringing a dozen of these guys to the Annual....but I'll have some other uncut sparkly pieces, as well.

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I've also been working away on my wristlet pin cushions. The idea came from a craft book - but it was for making a cute quilted flower bobble bracelet pin cushion. When I'm sewing, I don't really like to use a traditional pin cushion - it takes too much time to poke the pins in, one at a time. Instead I use a magnetic pin cushion, which grabs all of the pins at a lightening-fast pace.

I've had a bag of chocolate moulds hanging around for a few years now, and it didn't take me too long to put two and two together. It did take me a while to figure out the perfect combination of magnets, though. My final prototype had a great test run this weekend, and production is in full swing now...


I'm hoping to get the last few of these finished up tonight. It's a lot easier with the new glue gun I bought on Sunday. [I must admit that I'm feeling a little late to the party, though - so if you also have a 10 year old glue gun and you're tired of always burning yourself, you should know that they now sell dual-temperature ones. The low setting is great for fabric - and fingers!]

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Life is still quite hectic, and I'm looking forward to a time when I can get back to regular posting. I think it's still a couple of weeks away, but I'll be back whenever I can until then....