Cookie Placecards

 I've taken to decorating cookies lately. At Christmas I did some fancy trees, girls, etc., and this time it was for a little luncheon/tea that Debbie, Carolyn and I had for Laurie's daughter Jayne who is getting married.
We ate great food, toured Laurie's beautiful refinished apartment in the city and shared stories.
Here, I am just writing about the personalized cookies I crafted for the event.

Some of the cookies were iced with flood consistency royal icing in yellow followed by spokes of blue through the circle. You then drag a toothpick through the colors to marbleize them and then let the icing dry.
Starting out with pale yellow royal icing, I made a couple of styles of round cookies. This icing dries to a hard smooth finish if it starts out the right consistency. I basically copied this cookie from a tutorial I found on a Julia Usher site.

Literally used a rubber stamp from my stash and tapped it onto a paper towel that I had lightly covered with maroon colored gel food coloring. I then diluted some pink and green food coloring and  colored in the design lightly with a brush.

I personalized the cookies and placed bicolored dots of icing around each  after "glueing" a cookie frame to the top of the base cookie.  Then glued the double wide nameplate to the base with more royal icing. Learning all the time here. Next time I'll lessen the glue, and cut out the frame on a silpat so I don't have to move them around or touch them before cooking.

Here is a picture of the two girls flanking Carolyn at the tea. We loved getting to know Maggie and had a wonderful time eating and socializing with the group.

Chuck Taylor

Apparently Chuck Taylor started wearing All-Stars by Converse in 1917 when he was playing basketball in high school. After working as a shoe salesman thereafter, he suggested adding a round protective patch over the ankle and changing some other aspects of the design for comfort and support. The company hired him to help with the design and that was followed by the addition of his name on that ankle patch.
These shoes are all the rage again for little girls and boys alike, and I ordered some to make my version of "altered shoes" for a couple of the granddaughters.

 The first ones are orange low tops that we just glued some crystals to.
I know that sounds a little simplistic, but it really was a super easy project and my cute little granddaughter who was just short of 6 helped me decide which colors to go with. I let her work with some less expensive sticker crystals while I did this and that worked out well.

I bought some nice Swarovski type crystals at Michaels and then just used E6000 Industrial Strength Adhesive to put them onto the plastic toe of the shoe.

I should ask if they are staying tight to find out if it is the right combination of materials. She's been wearing them for a couple months now, so I'll try to find out how it's working out, and report back.

We also added some colorful laces to the shoes in the form of ruffled ¼" ribbon and shoelace plastic end pieces that I purchased from ribbon and bows oh my. They have a crazy assortment of ribbon at this place.

Okay.... onto the next shoe. After I completed the orange shoes I found out I'd ordered too big of sizes for the girls so I've just been dragging my feet on the next project for her big sis. I finally got to them this last week and here's the result.

 Starting with high top "Chuck's" in a bright fuchsia color I hand sewed woolen yarn to these shoes with crazy embroidery stitches.
Using a large and strong needle and metal thimble was key to this project, and I learned as I went. (I always do that, 'cause I always just do one or a few of a project before giving it up for another.)

 These heavy canvas shoes are lined with a lighter weight natural cotton canvas and I pretty much stayed under the lining with my stitches so they don't show through to the inside of the shoe too much. Obviously I have some knots in there that I couldn't avoid showing, but most are actually hidden in other stitching, under seams, or behind the tongue of the shoe.

 I used feather stitch, french knots, stem stitch, and a couple that were new to me.

Some of the stitches I used needed some review as I hadn't done them for several years. I found a lot of great stitch tutorials on this blog here. There are several types of stitches listed on the left side of the blog. The directions were easy and doable making the project easier, and I was happy with the results.

Aren't they SO CUTE!
Hope the girls like them.

Dedication

Yesterday was a temple dedication that was wired in to all of the Utah congregations.

My Mom and Dad sent all their progeny (except half of my kids who they apparently don't have in the family email list,) this little note.

We just got home from the 3pm dedication session.  We, of course are in Utah. (St George) Want all of our family to once again realize that all of you living in Utah were invited to the Brigham City Dedication.  In our afternoon meeting Elder Nelson was the voice for dedicatory prayer.  We, as the singing of "The Spirit of God" was sung mentioned to each other that all of you were singing along with us and had waved the hankie together.  Now, 139 temples are in service.  When Joyce and I were children, there were 4 in Utah, 1 in Arizona, 1 in Canada, and 1 in Hawaii.  The Church will continue to grow and assist us with our righteous activities - whether it be in school, in our homes or at our work.  Even those of us who are retired will be blessed.  

Love you all this Sabbath afternoon, GPs Kel 

Never has the church done a dedication like this before, and my DD lives in Orem, so I made her this special temple hankie and sent it last week. I used 2 different white thread types. One was a bit shinier than the other and I use that for the leaves and flowers. In the pix below you can turn your neck around (even though I can't) to see the "S".

Here is the nearly finished piece as I gathered and sewed on the ruffled lace edging.  This kind of French val (cotton) lace has a thread on its header that just needs to be tugged on for a gathering affect, and it doesn't need much of a gather to make it very pretty. 

 These 4 surrounding mitered borders were completed about 20 years ago and saved in my lace bucket. I have meant to use them for before, but usually this gets put on the back burner when I'm busy with other things like a wedding gown or something. (right Kathryn?) So now they have been put to good use. I guess that's why I don't throw things away and why my sewing room looks is out of control.

 I had an extra mens handkerchief in my socks drawer so I put Steph's boyfriends initials on one and sent it too.

 Here is the end result.  I love it. So did Steph.