A Weekend in Walcha

Another, non-crafty entry.

If you remember I just bought a beautiful, brand new bike last month (if you don't, see the last post).

Now I don't usually complain about riding, anytime, anywhere, but the following are a few pictures of what happens when I go for a weekend ride with Bikie Chic Adventures. People kept telling me how dirty my bike was, and I'd look at theirs and it hardly looked like they'd been riding. Must mean mine is more "well loved"! lol Good thing it's only dirt and she'll get a bath tomorrow.

My newest "Fun"!

Yet another off topic for a crafty blog... but it IS my blog! lol.

This is "Arabella". It's a 2010 Yamaha XVS V-Star 650 Custom. I picked it up Saturday morning August 14th, 2010. We went for a long ride after I got it and it was a great experience!

It looks a lot like my last one, it's just 400cc's bigger and a lot of the black parts were shiny chrome on the 250. Less to polish I say! I'm getting a luggage rack on the back and a windshield next week. Two things that are absolutely necessary on a bike you intend to ride all over and back! I probably should have taken the picture before I put the Airhawk on the seat. Oh well, you get the idea anyway.

Sorry, way off topic for a "crafty" blog

This is our new office. We've been in it now for almost 2 months.

Christmas 2009 Cards

Just a quick one because the subject of my last post has taken up waaayy too much of my time lately!

These are my cards for Christmas 2009. They're very simple because of the aforementioned last post, but I did so many they took me two whole days to complete.

Here is the front

We have simple Bazill Basics cardstock. I soaked the right side of the card with my aquwash brush, then pulled it/tore it apart to form a softly frayed edge.

The first image of the tree is stamped in Hunter Green Stampin' Up ink.
The second tree image is first stamped with VersaMark, then embossed in gold. Boy, does new embossing powder make a difference!

The words on the bottom are stamped in the same hunter green.
It's then finished off with a Hunter Green grosgrain ribbon.

The Inside

The inside left is stamped with a whimsical holly looking design in the same hunter green. I stamped off the stamp once to fade the ink.

The right side is printed on the computer.

Happy Christmas to those that visit my blog. I hope your new year is a happy and prosperous one!

Not Really Crafty, BUT FUN!

Look what I got today!












It's a 2001 Yamaha XVS 250.

I've been looking for a bike for a few months and was actually looking for a Yamaha Virago. I found several that I liked on our good friend Ebay, but couldn't bring myself to actually bid on anything. A friend of ours had decided to sell his and the rest is history. It's pretty much what I wanted, except the color, which can always be changed someday. And it has all the extras I wanted as well. It came with the windshield and brand new saddlebags. The sissy bar was put on a while ago.

It's so shiny and pretty .














It may look huge in the pictures but it's really not. I can actually stand flat footed on both sides and I'm about 5'3". It's super comfortable, the seat is nice and cushy and the foot rests, since they're forward, don't hit me in the calves.

















I haven't been able to ride it yet, just a test ride, because I didn't have a proper helmet, AND because it was so windy I probably would have gotten blown off. Tomorrow, however, watch out!

Finito! The Saga of the Bargello quilt ends!

I'm finished! Finally! And with pretty nice end results. I wish the colors would have come out better in the photo. I loved working with these fabrics.

However, the quilting was another story. I did the best I could, there is no perfection in it, and my inner perfectionist will never let me live it down, I still have to admit I learned from it. And after taking it to Janelle and practically begging her to quilt it for me, and her telling me that I could do it, that I'd done harder things, I took the bull by the horns and just went for it. I had sharpened the photo, but realised you could actually see the quilting clearer, I did an "unsharpen", sorry. This way it just looks like it all flows! lol

The back was a bit of fun... no, really... I added a little foot pocket. I don't know about you, but in the winter, when you're trying to watch tv and all you want to be is snuggly, your feet somehow always find the "cold out from under". I wanted to remedy this for my friend as the idea came from watching her struggle to keep her feet covered one evening. I thought it was a pretty brilliant idea, and it wasn't that difficult. I had to make the binding a bit wider, but it really seemed easy to attach, and it didn't seem like there was too much there. That end is a bit heavier, but not much. It's only one piece of fabric, folded in half and one piece of batting in between. It ended up being about 15" wide, which I thought was sufficient without being over kill.

I took it over to my friend, just 4 days before the official end of winter. Hey, I made it at least! lol. It matched her couch so well. She has pretty little throw pillows and the cream colors on this quilt really matched well with them as well. I think she really liked it because mutual friends had approached me and told me she had shown them. It didn't actually stay on the couch though, it ended up being a sort of bed spread on their bed. I had thought it was a bit small for something like that, but it actually looks nice, kinda like a decoration.

I'm pleased. Now on to the next project... I wonder what that will be. Perhaps I'll go back to this one.

This time, however, my inner perfectionist will get her wish, even if it means unsewing and resewing several times, I have all summer before I need it!

Photoshop Crafty 2

This is another PhotoShop thing I put together. Gotta love PhotoShop!

If you've been to my blog before, you know that I've been drumming for close to a year now. The company I go to for my lessons is In Rhythm. Most of the people that attend the classes are djembe players, there's only a couple of us that play the djuns. They have some of the coolest t-shirts they sell at events, but they only have them with djembes and djembe players printed on them. So I thought about it one evening and began playing with different images to see if I could come up with something that I could put on a shirt. It took me all evening, but this is what I came up with. I don't know why, but it's coming up green. The finished product is brown.

Each bit is from a different photo, the sticks, the hair, the torso, the drums were actually a picture of my own, and the feet even belong to someone else.

I sent it to my friend at In Rhythm to see what she thought of it, and the company wanted it! How cool is that! So I was able to broker a deal with them and they now own the rights.

It was a fun little project and this was another area where I learned some valuable lessons for the future. I can hardly wait to get a shirt of my own, with my own work on it!