Category Archives: Creative Projects

45 Creative Things in 45 Days

A friend from high school decided to write 90 stories in 90 days, leading up to her 40th Birthday. I love the idea as it being a journey into the 40s. I decided I could make an effort to bring my creativity back to life by doing something similar.

90 days is a long time, and heck, I’m going to be 40 in 45 days, so lets do this thing, but do it my way. I haven’t written anything creative in a long time. In fact, I barely do anything creative anymore.

I actually had to write it on my “to do” list this last week for me to make something for myself. Did it happen? Not really, but I did make a big fake fur covered floor pillow for my daughter at the store. It kind of counts. It was a creative used of an old foam mattress. I hate to throw things away that could be re-purposed or reused, so I took our old foam mattress and re-cut out the cushions for the couch I reupholstered, then used the last bit for this floor pillow.

My daughter loved it. She jumped up and down on it just like she does on our bed. She even pulled up a step stool to climb on it just like uses to climb on our bed. She didn’t need it, she was just being silly.

What I had really wanted to do was take a box of silk scraps and make a gown with it. I will put it on next weeks schedule, so maybe I’ll get a chance to do it. Isn’t that a little sad, I have to schedule my creativity.

I always seem to find an excuse to do something business related in my spare time and not actually do something for myself. I’m actually quite disappointed with myself that I haven’t been the creative self I have always been. Motherhood kind of changed my focus, then business took over my focus, then I just plain forgot to make time to do it.

Here is my pledge:

Over the next 45 days, I will post something daily – whether its just writing about life, maybe a short story, a cool project I have completed or just some fun stuff I do with my family.

Animals on my Feet

Now that my shop is finally in a groove and I can let go of some responsibilities by having employees, I’ve been working on some personal crafty and fix-it projects. Today I repaired my giraffe slippers.

These are my giraffes. I have worn holes in the bottoms and the darn necks don’t stay up.

The bottoms are pretty bad as shown.

First thing I did was remove the bottoms of the slippers with my handy new electric seam ripper.

I used some left over foam from recovering my dining room chairs for the new bottoms. The bottom insides I used some fuzzy faux fur type stuff. I used some upholstery fabric for the absolute bottoms. I’m actually using the underside for the bottoms since it has more texture to grip the ground.

Before I started sewing, I added more stuffing to the neck of the giraffe so it would stand up. I first sewed the fuzzy part on the bottom using my awesome industrial sewing machine. I doubt a regular machine would work on this. Then I placed the foam on the bottoms and then the upholstery bottoms. I would have used the little bands around the foam, but one side was torn up pretty bad. I pinned it all together around the edges and sewed it again.

Voila! Fixed slippers in under an hour. I guess I can now pull out the other slippers sitting in the back of my closet that need repair.