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fabric scrap flowers – and why my body will be eaten by moths.


I’ve recently been inventing all sorts of little projects to use up my fabric scraps (so that I’ll be allowed to acquire more fabric scraps, of course). I get the feeling that this is a pursuit I’m going to have all the rest of my days, unless I suddenly stop sewing. Y’know, if Hell freezes over. Which is what I once said it would take to get me to start sewing, so I guess you just never know. Or maybe Hell has frequent thermostat problems and has frozen over on multiple occasions in the last few years. Could explain a lot.

Regardless, I’ve come to realize that I will probably be surrounded by an abundance of fabric scraps for the rest of my days. In fact, if I’m one of those weird old ladies who dies in her own apartment, that’s probably how they’ll find me – buried under an avalanche of fabric scraps, brought down on my head when I was innocently reaching for the glue gun. Tragic. Bridget Jones thinks she’ll be eaten by Alsations, pretty sure The Bloggess mentions being consumed by cats (I just finished her book, which you should totally read – it’s wonderfully, horrifically funny, and often surreal in the extreme), but I will be suffocated by cotton prints and polyester blends. If there are any members of the animal kingdom to blame, it’ll have to be moths. They’ll surely find some wool scraps or something to munch on in my funereal fabric pile, and probably take a bite out of me accidentally just because. If it’s possible to be eaten by moths, I’m sure it’ll happen to me.

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by on April 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Flowers, Jewelry & accessories, Scraps, Sewing, Wearable
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Posted by Tally on April 23, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/04/fabric-scrap-flowers-and-why-my-body-will-be-eaten-by-moths/

cherry blossom thank you cards

I’ve been trying for ages to craft a decent representation of cherry blossoms, since they’re one of my very favourite things. The felt ones I did way back near the beginning of this blog were alright, but I never really managed to put a decent looking cherry blossom tree on a card. Until now.

Cherry blossoms are what we on the West Coast shovel off our sidewalks in April instead of the snow that the rest of the country is still mucking about in. The city of Victoria even publishes an annual flower count; this is where Victoria counts up all the flowers that are in bloom in the city in early spring, and publishes that number as, so far as I can tell, a giant “F*** you” to the rest of the snow-laden country. And then we all sit back, delighting in our daffodils, tossing our hair about in the light spring breeze and wondering why the folks out east hate us. Victoria has apparently never heard of Wheaton’s Law.

I don’t think the cherry blossoms actually factor in to the flower count, but still. They’re the best flowers of all, as far as I’m concerned, and when I feel like making people in other provinces grind their teeth, my preferred method is to talk about all the beautiful blossoming cherry trees.

So, this card. It’s full of cherry blossoms, which are super pretty, and have magical powers of making you feel like you’re in the best place on earth (even if that’s categorically untrue), and making everyone else hate you. But if you give them a pretty cherry blossom card, maybe they’ll decide to like you again, at least for a little while.

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by on April 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Cards, Holiday/seasonal, Paper Goods
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Posted by Tally on April 13, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/04/cherry-blossom-thank-you-cards/

pooping paper bunny basket

Easter. Bunnies. Chocolate. Somehow in the very weird evolution of all things holiday, these three things came together.

Ok, so the Easter Bunny delivers countless chocolate eggs to little boys and girls, but what’s a rabbit doing with eggs? Where’d he get them? I’ve spent the past several years studying and then working at a university campus riddled with rabbits – they were everywhere, charming everyone except the gardeners, who finally won the battle to get rid of all the bunnies by shipping them off to Texas to a “rabbit haven” or some such thing, where they’d be safe and all the foaming-at-the-mouth animal rights people could reassure themselves that the rabbit problem had been humanely dealt with. All the animal rights people who have clearly never been to Texas. Where, yeah. I’m sure all the bunnies are leading happy, hopping lives.

I had rabbit stew once. It was pretty yummy.

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by on April 7, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Holiday/seasonal, Paper Goods, Wrappings & containers
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Posted by Tally on April 7, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/04/pooping-paper-bunny-basket/

PAX Enforcer shirt mod

My friend Angela recently asked me to help her mod a long sleeve t-shirt. Angela is a PAX Enforcer, and thus has a “uniform” to wear during the twice-annual, three day convention. That uniform is a long-sleeved t-shirt, like the one seen above (which is last year’s iteration). It varies in colour and brand, but the general shirt is always the same.

Enforcers spend a lot of time running around at PAX, working very hard and getting pretty sweaty. Regular PAX attendees, think about how much you sweat at PAX, and then multiply that by… a lot. And as for you Enforcers reading this, well I’m preaching to the choir, aren’t I?

Happily for those who enjoy modding, and for those who want to get a little more airflow than a long-sleeved t-shirt allows, Enforcers are allowed to mess with their shirts, so long as the text on the back and front of the shirt is unaltered and still in its place, and is clearly visible.

Angela wanted to alter the shirt to make it more flattering, and to make it cooler and more comfortable to wear. (Did I mention how much sweating Enforcers do?) In her words:

“Most of my Comfortable tops are open neck lines, so wearing a tshirt that feels constrictive for three days in a row is a little difficult. My goal for the mod was to open up the sleeves and neck line so that the shirt would not only be more flattering but more comfortable.”

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by on April 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by Tally on April 2, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/04/pax-enforcer-shirt-mod/

Easter bunny napkin rings

Given that I do a craft tutorial every week, I frequently come up against the need to get rid of the things I make. There’s only so much room in our apartment, after all. Some items are sold, some are given away, some are enjoyed for a season and then thrown out or recycled.

I also have a habit of showing up at family dinners with the products of crafting projects – paper flowers, table place cards, random seasonal decorations, hair accessories, bookmarks – to be “gifted” to various relatives. I suppose it speaks highly of our families’ love for us (and their patience) that they keep inviting us back to these things.

This Easter, some lucky relative will have paper bunny napkin rings all over their table. They’re a cute holiday adornment, simple and quick to make, easy to recycle after dinner. And a reminder (via thoughts of the Easter bunny) of all the chocolate consumption we have to look forward to in the coming days. Yummmmmm.

9 Comments
by on March 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by Tally on March 30, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/03/easter-bunny-napkin-rings/

Easter eggs with googly eyes

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I enjoy going in to my professional office job looking like a 5-year old coming home from art class. So far I’ve found that paint, markers of any kind and food colouring help me accomplish this nicely. No matter how careful I think I’m being, I cannot use any of these things without getting them all over my hands.

The cheerful bonus of unprofessionally multi-hued hands is not actually why I chose the project I did this week. I was thinking about Easter eggs a few weeks ago, and thinking about new and different ways to decorate them. I was messing about with googly eyes at the time, and those combined with eggs in my mind and this project is what happened.

Eggs in general are far more exciting when you imagine what might be stirring about inside them, ready to break open the shell and nom the first bug or unsuspecting finger it sees. And in addition to all the wee monsters your imagination can come up with, you can fill these eggs with chocolates and other treats to give them some weight and, well, deliciousness. Read the full post »

39 Comments
by on March 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Children, Edibles, Holiday/seasonal, Wrappings & containers
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Posted by Tally on March 23, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/03/easter-eggs-with-googly-eyes/

Assassin’s Creed 3 hood – bonus post

[EDIT: You can now find the full tutorial and pattern for this project here.]

Now and then I’ve mentioned how my ties with LoadingReadyRun can lead to abrupt and somewhat random crafting requests. A couple weeks ago I was in the middle of vital and uninteresting work stuff, when my phone dinged with a message from Graham that read: “How much time would you need to make an Assassin’s Creed 3 hoodie?”

It’s these moments in life that make it easier to bear the other moments in life, the ones where you’re not getting to make cool stuff or disembowel Bugbears with your D&D party. Read the full post »

26 Comments
by on March 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Bonus updates
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Posted by Tally on March 20, 2012

http://tallystreasury.com/2012/03/assassins-creed-3-hood-bonus-post/

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