More Handmade Note Cards with Glitter

I thought I'd share some more of  the handmade Blank Note Cards that mom and I made for our Boutique:

You won't find these at the WalMart!  They're one of a kind and made with vintage greeting cards and other papers!  And course, a lot of glitter!  Are you surprised?  LOL!!!  Yes, we do like our glitter!

I still have more to list in our Boutique but I can only do so much in one day.  I used to think I was Super Women but apparently, that kick in the butt I had a few years back proved me wrong!  LOL!

Anyway, I wasn't going to watch the Royal Wedding today but it looks like it's the only thing on television!  I haven't even seen the weather yet!  I confess, I do enjoy the Pomp & Circumstance of these events.  And I sure would love to have her dress to cut up for my crazy quilts!  I wonder if it's dyeable?

Handmade Greeting Cards with Glitter

I've been rather busy the last few days!  I'm getting ready to teach my Crazy Quilt class which is next Friday.  I have my workbooks together and just have to write a list of notes for myself and I should be good to go!  I'll be teaching my Elegant Crazy Quilt Seam Treatments technique to a group of 8 ladies up in Delafield, Wisconsin.

In other news, mom and I did a bit of shopping on Etsy the other day.  I realized that I was really missing Etsy so after talking about it with mom, we agreed that we would move our holiday items to our newly renamed, Holiday Boutique!  Everything else will remain in our Cottage Boutique.  I spent a good few hours yesterday working on that and it'll take me some time to get all of our holiday things over to Etsy but I think it'll be nice.  So Kitty & Me Designs is now at 2 locations!  Fun!!!

When I finished up the basics over at our Etsy shop, I added some new Handmade Glittered Greeting Cards to our Cottage Boutique:

I have a lot more cards to add to the shop.  Mom and I have been making these cards for a few weeks now.  These are blank note cards ready for personalizing.  We felt that since we have a gift shop, we should offer some pretty cards.  These are made with vintage greeting cards and lots of glitter!  I'll be adding a few more to the shop later today and I'll be moving a few more of our holiday items over to Etsy.

And The Winner Is..........

The winner of my little Crazy Quilt Cat Doll is:

Carol Delater of Beads And Birds blog!

Congratulations Carol!  Please email me with your street address and I'll send your kitty doll to you asap!

Happy Easter Sunday!

Good Morning Everyone and Happy Easter!

While looking for a pretty Victorian Easter image to use this morning, I came across an absolutely gorgeous blog called, Sugar Moon!  This image is courtesy of Jessica.  Please do hop over and see Jessica's blog.  Her photos are gorgeous!  If you love Shabby Chic, Vintage and Cottage, you will love meeting her!

I wish you all, my dear blog friends a very Happy Easter!  If you haven't entered my drawing yet, please see the post below this one.  You could win one of my Crazy Quilt Cat Dolls!

400 Followers Drawing!!!

I'm thrilled to announce that I now have 400 blog Followers!  Yay!  I hope everyone is enjoying my chatter on crazy quilting, crafting and baking and everything else I ramble on about!

As promised, to celebrate this milestone, I'm having a drawing for one of my Crazy Quilt Cat Dolls!

 To enter, just leave a comment on this blog post and I'll put your name in a basket.  The drawing will take place on Tuesday, April 26th!

Good luck everyone and feel free to mention this drawing on your own blogs if you like!

Shabby Lane Shops

If you've been following my blog for awhile now, you may know that Kitty & Me Designs is a member of Shabby Lane Shops Online Shopping Mall.  Not only does SLS offer wonderful benefits to their shop owners, but they offer an awesome service to shoppers as well!  Over 60 beautiful shops with gorgeous handmade products, vintage & antique finds, bridal and baby items, candles, soaps, cookbooks, home decor, gifts and more!  All in one convenient online shopping mall.

Recently, Catherine Monceaux, who operates the Shabby Lane Shops Mall, appeared on a local TV show in Tennessee.  Catherine talked about the Nashville Southern Women's Show, which took place this past week.

I will a link to Catherine's TV appearance as soon as it's available.

One of the fun things that Catherine offers at Shabby Lane Shops are Boutique Bags.  Boutique Bags are beautiful grab bags filled with a variety of items from many of the Shabby Lane Shops shop owners.  The Boutique Bags are a lovely way for customers to discover the beautiful shops at SLS.  The BB items are wonderful to use for little gifts when you just want to let someone know that you're thinking of them!

Mom and I have been contributing to the Boutique Bags since we joined Shabby Lane Shops.  Each month, we make a different item to send to Catherine for inclusion in the BB's.  Mom and I have done handmade greeting cards, sachets, magnets and more!  This month, mom made some beautiful Victorian style Gift Tags:

 Our gift tags are all packaged and boxed up and ready to send to Catherine this weekend!  I cannot tell you how much fun mom and I have with our Boutique Bag items!  It's fun to come up with a theme (June will be strawberries) and it's fun to decide on an item, to make that item and then to package them up!

Please visit the Shabby Lanes Shops website and all of the beautiful shops there!

Stitched, Beaded, Embellished! Enjoy!

Questions And Answers

I've been sitting here, with my printer running for quite awhile now so to keep myself from falling asleep, or going insane, I've been bouncing around all over the place reading blogs, looking at photos, Facebooking, Tweeting and anything else I can find to do to keep myself busy!

It occurred to me to ask if anyone has any questions for me?  You can ask me anything you want.  If anyone has questions about needlework, crazy quilting, crafts, how to keep your cat out of your craft supplies (LOL), even depression or anxiety, please feel free to ask!  How about baking questions?  or ADD questions?  Ya'll know I'm an expert on that one!  Anything at all!

I would like to have some more interaction with my readers here.  I have quite a few followers and not too many comments so I'm trying to encourage ya'll to talk to me.  Honestly, sometimes I feel like I'm writing to the monitor but I know there's great people out there who like what I do and what I have to say so please everyone, ask me questions!  It'll be fun!  When I have a few questions come in, I'll do one blog post and answer them all!  That should be interesting!!!

Feel free to download this pretty Fractal Art Wallpaper image for your desktop!  That's another thing I was doing while the printer was running, playing with my graphic software!  You're also welcome to post this on your blog to share with your readers!  Please leave my web address on there and link back to my blog or my website.

I'm looking forward to hearing from everyone!

Tutorial - How To Make Button Clusters

Now that you've all seen my Crazy Button Quilt:

I thought I would share a tutorial on how to create Button Clusters.

Button Clusters are not only for Crazy Quilting.  They can be added to fabric bracelets, art quilts, art dolls, really anything that buttons can be sewn onto!

Step 1:  Gather some buttons!

I store my buttons in old mason jars.  They're separated by color and the jars look so pretty on a shelf in my craft storage room!

Step 2:  Determine where you want your button cluster on your piece.  In this case, I want my buttons to cascade down from the dark green patch on this Cat Doll:

Step 3:  Choose some buttons:

I like to start with a few larger buttons and buttons that are "interesting" to look at.  They will be the "focal point" buttons.

Step 4:  After choosing those "focal point" buttons, sew them down with bead thread or dental floss.  I use dental floss to attach all of my beads, buttons, charms and vintage jewelry pieces.

Once those focal point buttons are attached, start adding smaller buttons.  Overlap the buttons and be sure to use a variety of color shades.  If all the buttons are dark pink, it'll just look like a dark pink blob.  By varying the shades of pink, the buttons look more like a little flower garden.

 Step 5:  Once the buttons are attached, I like to add seed beads to cover up the threads in buttons:

3, 4 or 5 seed beads in the center of each button will add sparkle, dimension, interest and it'll cover up the thread holding the buttons on.

For the flower petals on the big purple 4 hole button, I picked up 12 seed beads for each hole and brought the thread back down in the same hole.  I added a large pink bead to the center.

Step 6:  Once you have all the buttons attached and the seed beads in the center, you can add a few little do-dads here and there like leaf charms, crystals, large beads and so on.

There's no rules here!  Just a few basics to add interest to your stitching!

You can see more of my Crazy Quilt pieces at my Boutique!

And be sure to check out my other tutorials!

The Crazy Button Quilt

25 6-inch Crazy Quilt blocks featuring the embroidery from my E-Book Elegant Crazy Quilt Seam Treatments and my vast collection of new and vintage sewing buttons.  Enjoy!

If you would like to post this video on your blog, website or Facebook page, please feel free to do so.  Please include a link back here to my Kitty & Me Designs blog or a link to my Kitty & Me Designs Boutique.

Sunday Treasures from the Flea Market

Sunday was such a beautiful day here in Northern Illinois!  Sunny and warm. The perfect day for a flea market!

Scott and I picked mom up and drove out to Grayslake Fair Grounds in Lake County for the monthly Flea Market & Antique Show.  Wow!  The theme for this show was "vintage" which is right up my alley!

Mom & I found all sorts of neat little goodies!  These are the "treasures" that I found:

These old hats are covered with vintage millinery flowers!  I love to pick them up and take the flowers off for my crazy quilts and other crafts.  I sat here last night while watching Dancing With The Stars and took them apart.  The cranberry colored hat was commercially made but the pink one and the lavender one were handmade.  You can tell the difference with how the flowers are attached.  With commercial hats, the flowers are glued on.  With handmade hats, the flowers are hand sewn on.  The lavender hat took quite awhile to take apart.  But it was so worth it as all of the little flowers are velvet!

My next treasures are these beautiful vintage lace collars:

 

I don't see pink vintage collars too often.  I only paid $2.00 for each of these!  I love old lace and will cut these up for my crazy quilts.

I also found a couple of beautiful vintage hankies with gorgeous lace on them:

It a little challenging to get a decent photo of these but the lace is gorgeous!  I like these because the lace is on all 4 corners so I get a lot for my money.  I paid only $2 each for these!

My next treasures are some lace pieces:

 

Again, it was a little hard to get a good photo of these but the laces are gorgeous!  And a little goes a long way with crazy quilting!

Finally, I found a couple pieces of pretty vintage jewelry:

To use the rose earrings, I will cut the clips off the back with wire cutters and then glue a pre-threaded button to the back with E6000 Jewelry Glue. Then they can easily be sewn onto my project.

So those are my treasures from this past weekend!  I love Flea Market season!  I love the thrill of the hunt!

Be sure to see my article on How To Take Apart An Old Hat!  You can find them at flea markets and antique shops for just a few dollars and you'll get loads of vintage millinery flowers off them!

Needle Felted Easter Bunnies

I've been wanting to share with you, a photo of these precious Needle Felted Bunnies that my sister Kathi made:

Aren't these sweet?!!!!  These are entirely needle felted.  There's no sewing here.  Kathi is amazing when it comes to 3 dimensional felt work.  The carrots are felted too!  Like me, Kathi doesn't use patterns.  She just makes it up as she goes along!

I'll be back later with photos of my treasures collected at a Flea Market yesterday.  For now, don't forget that I will be having a drawing for this Crazy Quilt Cat Doll when I reach 400 Followers:

Please spread the word!!!

Celebrate Spring!

Checking In

Hello everyone!  I haven't been feeling well for a few days so I haven't been online much.  It's just a combination of side effects of the medication I'm on and withdrawals from dropping the dosage again and of course, some stress.  The economic state that our country is in is completely ridiculous!  And the state of Illinois where I live is just as bad if not worse!  I really think it's time to start electing real people who know how to live on a budget and stick with it.  But I'm trying to focus on my upcoming Crazy Quilt class rather than focus on things I can't do anything about.

I did manage to finish the assembly on my Crazy Button Quilt.  I will have photos of that soon.  I've been stitching on some small things and again, will have photos soon.  Please hang in here with me.

This is a photo of my friend Allie taken last year.  I adore this photo of her holding a precious Robin bird who got trapped in her shed.  If you haven't been to Allie's blog lately, please visit!  She does the most beautiful crazy quilting with loads and loads of flowers!

Crazy Button Quilt Progress

My Button Quilt is all sewn together now.  I spent yesterday afternoon at my sewing machine.  The quilt came out good and straight and square:

Now if only I could have gotten my photo straight!  LOL!!!  Anyway, I had planned on putting a light blue border around it but I'm reconsidering that.  It's 30 inches square and at this point, I'm not even sure where to hang it as my empty wall space is limited.  I don't have to decide on that right now.  My immediate goal is to get it assembled so I can take it with me for examples when I teach my CQ class in May.

The quilt is quite heavy too!  It has to weigh at least 8 pounds at this point!  Once I get the back on and add the "support buttons" to the back, that will add a little more weight to it.

The blocks are first sewn in vertical strips.  Then I sewed the strips together horizontally onto a heavy muslin foundation.  This will help to support the weight.  I use Allie Aller's "False Back" technque. You can find Allies technique in her new book called, "Allie Aller's Crazy Quilting" available at Amazon.com.

Do visit Allie's blog!  You'll love seeing her work!

I'll post another update on the Button Quilt when I get the back on.

For now, I thought you'd like to see the cat doll that I'll be giving away when I reach 400 followers:

I'm pretty close to 400 so please spread the word!

Easter At Our Cottage Boutique

Mom & I have finished up our Easter projects for our Boutique so I thought for today, I would share photos with you.

This little Spring Bunny Centerpiece is sitting in a glass bowl covered in Mosaic Mother Of Pearl tiles.  It's one of my creations and it's one of a kind!  Perfect for a side table or coffee table!

Mom made this sweet little Easter Bunny Wreath to hang on a hook or window latch!

Nothing says Spring more than Baby Chicks!  This fuzzy little Spring Chick Centerpiece would again, be perfect for a little side table!  It's one of my creations.  The little chick sits in a Mint Green glass pot and is surrounded with silk Spring flowers, pink cattails and of course, some glitter!

Finally, my Easter Bunny Table Centerpiece!  I love this!!

And here's a great way to display him:

Use a vintage mirrored dresser tray, add some shiny Easter Grass, sit the centerpiece in the middle and add some colored, decorated Easter Eggs!  Voila!!!  A beautiful Easter centerpiece that easy to move and the decorated eggs can be used as Easter Favors!

And speaking of the decorated eggs, Mom and I put several handmade kits together for decorating Easter eggs.  We've included enough punched paper bunnies, flowers, leaves, butterflies and ribbon bows to decorated a dozen eggs.  All that's needed is a glue gun!  Decorate plastic eggs, styrofoam eggs or real colored eggs with this little kit which we are including free with our orders.  We only have a couple left though so if anyone would like to receive one, now is the time to order.

Tomorrow, I will starting the assembly process of my Button Crazy Quilt:

I'll take photos as I go so be sure to stop by and see how to put one together.

Finally for today, I'm almost up to 400 blog Followers!  YAY!!!!  I'll be doing a drawing when we reach that 400 mark.  The prize will be one of my Crazy Quilt Cat Dolls:

It won't be this Cat doll.  I made one in Green & Pink for my drawing.  I just have to sew him up and I'll post a photo over the weekend.  Be sure to spread the word!