Misc May crafts

It’s hard to believe it’s almost the end of May – and I feel like I haven’t accomplished much this month – or at least in the last couple weeks.  I’ve made the usual birthday and anniversary cards.  My favorite is one I’m giving away this weekend to my great aunt who is turning 90! (I don’t think I’m in danger of her reading the blog beforehand).

The little flower is one that I crocheted.  Does that count as one project done?!  If so, I might have to start making a lot more of them. I might anyway – they’re quick and a rather cute addition to cards.

I have been working on some long-range crochet projects, so that may be part of the reason I don’t have much to show.  The bath mat I’m trying to finish for my sister has been frogged (rip-it, rip-it) and redone countless times.  I didn’t have this much trouble with the one I made Mom for Christmas!  Hopefully I have it right this time.  I’m also working on a Tunisian crochet afghan that was restarted several times – I’m getting close to half done now, so at least there’s some progress.

In an effort to give myself a boost and to say that I finished something this week, I offered to test another pattern for Donna at SmoothFoxLover.  This one is called Fox’s Easy as ABC square, and I believe it will be offered as a free pattern on her website.  It was pretty easy – I had one done in under an hour.

 

My big project this last week was to make up a gift for my good friend Lucy who just had a BIG birthday.  She loves to have family pictures up on her refrigerator, so I decided a good gift might be to make her some personalized magnets.  I have seen these in various places on the web, but the most comprehensive directions were at Not Martha.  It wasn’t until after I had purchased the glass 1/2 marbles, that I read it was best to find the non-iridescent ones (which I’m not sure the store had anyway).  I think the underlying pictures would show up better if they were completely clear.  In my enormous stash of punches, I had a circle punch that was perfect for the size of these marbles.  I grabbed a stack of magazines I had intended on looking through ages ago and went to town. The bonus was that I was so intent on finding small pictures for these magnets, that I ended up ignoring the recipes and other articles … no extra stray papers around the house!  (You can click on the pictures to see a larger view)  In addition to learning about the iridescent versus clear marbles, I also think if I were to make these again, instead of using silicone caulk, I might try decoupage liquid instead.  Some of these ended up with air bubbles, especially on the edges.  I think I could control it a bit better with a thinner liquid.  I found the magnets for the back at Wa$mart – in their kids craft section.  Those I used super-glue to attach the magnets, so they should stick tightly.

Not all of these ended up in Lucy’s gift.  I chose about a dozen, including a jalapeno, onion and tomato.  All in memory of the infamous salsa making episode last summer!  I also included a few flowers, some fun words (like “blessed”, “hugs”), and I even found a little picture of a farm – barn and silo (that picture didn’t turn out so good).

The magnets that I saw on the internet were usually wrapped in small tins – like those for Altoids, but since we don’t really use anything like that, I had to find a different container. I found an small round tin and covered it with this awesome star-embossed paper I’ve had forever but couldn’t figure out what to do with it.

Even though my husband is of the opinion that refrigerator fronts should be CLEAN – devoid of all papers, magnets, pictures, etc., I made him two magnets.  He loves Spam, so I couldn’t pass up these pictures since they were the perfect size! (And I won’t mention that the only two “papers” on our refrigerator front are business cards that he put up there!)