Tutorial Tuesday - Gift bows from recycled magazines

This tutorial could be a little bit dangerous for me. If you remember I have a slight obsession with magazines. I really want to make a million bows and put one on every gift I give this holiday season, these are so much fun! The tutorial comes to us again from How About Orange, this blog is full of great tutorials. Click Here to see the instructions.

-All images from How About Orange-

New blog discovery - Dollar Store Crafts

I absolutely love when I find a new blog to follow, I love it even more when that blog is about crafting and I go over the edge if that blog is about crafting without spending lots of money. So you can only imagine my delight when I discovered Dollar Store Crafts. This blog is full of great ideas, tutorials and links to other fun blogs and crafty sites. I can barely contain my excitement long enough to write this post, I should be searching through their archives discovering new crafts and techniques. Enjoy a few photos of wonderful (cheap!) crafts from this fun new (to me) blog!

These are made totally our of paperclips! Insane!

Images via Dollar Store Crafts

Great Idea! Kraft Paper table runner

I love this idea from Remodelista. I love having people over for dinner or game nights and this is a perfect way to keep things clean and super easy to clean up. She suggests using Kraft paper as a table runner - genius! This looks nice, crisp and clean and is pretty inexpensive and I love her idea of setting up colored pencils or markers on the table for your guests to write notes or leave a special doodle for you. I've seen this idea used many times in restaurants and it would be so easy to bring the idea home to your own table.

image via remodelista

Tutorial Tuesday - How to transfer an image to fabric

Today's tutorial comes to us from the wonderful blog How About Orange.

She gives a great tutorial on how to transfer an image to fabric using gel medium. She makes it look super simple, I haven't tried it yet but this great how-to might just be the inspiration I need. Click Here for the tutorial.

-All images from How About Orange-

Small Business Saturday

I just found this link last week and I think it's a wonderful idea. We have Black Friday, Cyber Monday and now Small Business Saturday to get us through the Thanksgiving shopping weekend. A great way to kick off the holiday shopping season - make sure to support small businesses throughout the country this holiday season! This new movement started in New York City by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Chief Executive of American Express - Kenneth Chenault. They are hoping to encourage people to shop at locally owned, independent businesses instead of only shopping at large chains. Celebrate Small Business Saturday on November 27th!!

Show 2 complete

Today I went to the Huggs for the holidays craft bazaar. I normally only have good things to say when I return from a show but today this was not the case. No problems with the show itself or the organizers, everything was well organized and they did a great job. The problem was with the traffic - slooooow. Not many people and the people that were there were not in the mood to buy anything. But I made enough to cover my booth fee so I guess I didn't loose money - you have to look at the bright side, right? I did meet a few nice people and made a possible connection for another local show in the summer so hopefully it will lead to good things in the future. I hope to see you at Bizarre Bazaar in December!

Fall '10 Quilt Market Recap - More great booths

There is a lot more than just the big fabric companies at market so here are some of my favorite "other" booths that had fun displays and great patterns:

Make Your Day Designs

Indygo Junction

Art Gallery Fabrics

Here are two of my favorite quilts that I saw:

I can't remember the name of this designer, if you know her name please post a comment below

Tula Pink

To see more photos from Quilt Market be sure to check out True Up, Kim has a great overview of TONS of booths and sneak peeks at upcoming fabrics.

Fall '10 Quilt Market Recap - Top 5 fabric designer booths

I think I had the same late Quilt Market recap for spring market. I have so many things to catch up on after market it seems like the blog post gets pushed aside. Sorry about that! Without putting you through more waiting here are some of my favorites from market.

Of course the bigger designers always have amazing booths - here are my 5 fabric fabric booths:

Amy Butler - Always amazing, first place booth winner this year

Tina Givens - I didn't get a photo so this is the best one I could find online, not too great, her booth was awesome!

Anna Maria Horner - Always a colorful place

Alexander Henry Fabrics - great setup, really awesome tablecloths

Jenean Morrison - awesome booth, yes that's a bike covered in fabric - too fun! And over to the left a guitar covered in fabric too.

Mark Twain Craft Bazaar

The first show of the season is over - and it was a success. A great way to kick off my set of shows. There was a great crowd and people were there to shop which is always very important. I had a wonderful time and I'm sure I will be back next year. If you stopped by to see me at the show, THANK YOU! I will have most of the products from the show on Etsy soon so keep checking back. Here are a few photos of my table. Sorry they aren't great, I left my camera at home so I had to use the camera phone - not too bad though! You will notice my wonderful new shelves from Ikea!