Love is Blund

Cute overload ahead!

Mette felt in love with Blund at first sight. She says "He just looked at me ... I looked at him... and took him home.... and promised myself to make as many jumpers and trousers as possible for MY BLUND and all the 'Blund Brothers'!

Apparently Blund has quite a few fans and some pretty cool clothes. Go see Blund dressed to the nines on the Blund Group. 

Mette's basic knitting pattern is available here, which includes a T-shirt, a vest, a pair of trousers, and a little rucksack for Blund. Awwww....

Updated! February 25, 2009
Nicole's Blund Bear

She says, "I was so excited to see your post on the hacked Blund bears! I've attached a photo of two bears that I modified for my nephews Dean (D) and Quinn (Q). They loved them."

Ciao Belli!

My favorite friends at Flair had a very chic little cocktail party the other night to introduce their Italian founder, Franco Mariotti, to New York and to celebrate the new exhibition of photography by Christopher Draghi. If you haven't been downtown to visit the store, you must stop in soon since they have all new fabulous funiture, art and accessories in the shop. You can also practice your Italian language skills while you are there! Ciao!

left to right: Jon Morato - owner, Franco Mariotti - Italian founder, Patrick - sales, George Nunno - owner, Christopher Draghi - photographer, Sean Clark - sales

More Halloween treats!

Isn't he cute? :) Here's another project I finished up last night, inspired by Joy over here. (She does amazing projects, check her out!)


I started with this loot:


I cut, glittered, taped and stickered till I got this...

This was a nice surprise -- I was going to make this:



But when I unpacked Halloween stuff, I found this (I bought it last year on clearance):



Don't you love when that happens?! I added a few little ornaments and love it!

Remember this? I finally just printed out letters and made my own stencils to make this:



This project was easy as pie -- frames, paper I loved and a tiny bit of paint. This area is done!:



(And don't doubt for one second that that big, nasty cord sticking straight out isn't driving me BATTY!!)

Narrow shoe cabinet for small landing strip

Idoia found the Sandnes shoe cabinet with 4 compartments (pix, right) too large for her space and decided to hack it into half.

She says, "It is the Sandnes shoe cabinet with 4 comparment (37 3/4 x 35 3/8") [link to a vertical version, which hey, could have saved Idoia the hacking!] but it was too big for my hall entry (if you can call this small space a hall. I cut it, painted it in black and made a little decoupage on the corners so it looked kind of old."

Bwwuuaahaaahaaaaaa!!

Oooohhhh aren't they SO spooooky???? Hee! Too stinkin' cute to be scary, I think. I love my cheesecloth ghosts...this is SUCH an easy project! I warn you though -- it is extremely messy.

I did these last year so I don't have step-by-step pictures, but the basic ingredients are glue, warm water, balloons and felt for the faces. To make them:

• Blow up a few balloons in various sizes.
• Mix equal parts water and glue (I'm not sure of the exact amount -- I can't find my directions).
• Soak the cheesecloth (cut up to the sizes you want) in the mixture, then lay them over the balloons. (By the way, the cheapest place I've found for cheesecloth is the grocery store.)
• Leave about a day until they are very hard. Then you can pop the balloons and peel them off.
• I used felt to make the faces. In the end, each ghost will end up only costing you pennies, especially since you probably have some Elmers laying around!

There are many different recipes out there but this is the easiest and it worked great! I thought it would be fun to mix some glow in the dark paint in there too. I guess they make "Stiffy" stuff that glows now.

One item I can't do without anymore, whatever the season, are my little LED tea lights. I started grabbing them up a couple years ago after Halloween and I use them in my candle holders where you can't see the candle. We have three very fat cats with very fluffy tails, so they are almost a necessity. (Don't want kitty to go POOF!!!) Plus with a little one around now, they are great to have. They even flicker! You can get them for a steal after Halloween and I just saw them at the Dollar Store the other day.

Whew, I was busy today...I know I've had a fruitful day when hubby comes home and notices everything I've done! (And loves it!!) Here's another project that was inspired by Cherry (check her out, she is SO creative!!) over here. I'm not sure how she did hers exactly but when I saw it, it got my wheels turning...

I took these items -- wooden pumpkin, sparkly scrapbook paper and leftover ribbon:



Used spray adhesive to attach the paper to the pumpkin (see his smiling face?):

Used an exacto knife to cut the excess paper off and got this:

He was a little rough around the edges so I sanded him down a bit. Hung him with the ribbon and here you go!:

I think I'm going to make about 10 more of these cutie patoots!! Love it! Total cost was about $2 for the pumpkin and $2 for the paper. (YES, $2 for a sparkly piece of paper!)

I have many more spooky projects to show you tomorrow (you'll be sceeeeeered!! Not so much.) But now I must sleep!

Good Things

In my haste to get my fabulous flea market finds into a cab and out of the rain, I accidentally left my silver edged glass cake plates with Eddie's even more fabulous flea market loot. He was kind enough to send them over today and to my surprise he included a little gift, Martha Stewart's Good Things from Tag Sales and Flea Markets! Eddie called it his bible and I especially can't wait to read the tips for how to clean your treasures once you get them home. Thanks Eddie! You're a good thing too!

Magiker decoupaged coffee table

Monica got a Magiker coffee table (link no longer available) but was soon sick of people seeing all her junk under the glass. So she took old CD covers and pasted them on the top of the glass. Then mod podged over on top of that, and a polyurethane spray on top of that!