Safety Pin Bracelet

Miss E has been in a crafty mood lately.  A friend of hers was sporting a safety pin bracelet at school, so of course, just like any 4th grader, she wanted one too.  So off we went to the fabric store to purchase a large bag of safety pins and some stretchy fishing-line type of stuff.  Fortunately Miss E has a rather large bead collection (thank you yard sales!!!) so we did not need to purchase any additional findings in the bead department.

Each safety pin was beaded individually... kind of like the friendship pins of the 80's that we all wore on our shoes so it looked like beaded tassels flopping along as we walked.  But this version has the pins strung on the stretchy line with a spacer bead between each beaded safety pin.  

The results are rather spectacular and it took about an hour to put the whole thing together.  

Leotard Production for my Twirler

I thought I had posted these pics earlier this year, but apparently not.  Miss E is a baton twirler... or just "Twirler" but NOT "baton-er".  We had fun making her a competition leotard this spring.  I drafted a pattern just for her because what McCalls, Simplicity, et al had to offer was not usable even with your imagination.

Prototype and skirt layers

Final Leotard

Unfortunately due to the "Great Hard Drive Over-write of May '11"  I have lost some of the pictures of Miss E wearing it.

I need to enlarge the pattern slightly and make her a new one for this year.

Where have I been lately?  We have had a home repair project going on in the basement studio.  A few weeks ago, we noticed the wall mount bookshelves learning scarily away from the wall.  Upon closer inspection, we realized that the bookshelf was taking the dry wall with it.  It was not too bad so we didn't take immediate action.  However a week later there was a loud pop, some serious leaning, and a frantic unloading of the bookshelf.  I had to hold it against the wall and hand books to the kids.  They stacked the books all over the studio.

The white patch is where the hole was

The contents of bookshelves taking up my
new worktable space and the floor
and every other horizontal space

I have been working in piles and piles for a couple of weeks.  The semester started at the University, and I have a brand new freelance client.  The good news is that I could find my text books.  The bad news is that I cannot find an apparel industry reference book... and still can't.

Primed

Painted

 We decided to change the wall from its green to the same color as the rest of the studio.  We needed to bounce more light around.

New book shelf for the bottom and reinstalling the old shelving

We had several hundred pounds of books on the wall mount shelving.  Books are like an addiction for us.  I love books!  So we replaced the bottom couple of selves with a separate book case from IKEA that will hold the heaviest books.  Everything is back in place, but I need to take a picture of the final result.  

And did I mention that the spouse broke a florescent tube light bulb in the middle of all the this?  In the laundry room too!  The one room that is used daily in this house. That was a mess that took a whole day to clean up... as well as a lengthly trip to Home Depot to purchase plastic tube covers for all tubes in the light fixtures so this mess doesn't happen again.

I really want to work on some fun projects now.