I am perfecting my DSL Camera Bag

June was birthday month in our family and I promised my two daughters that I would make them each a camera bag. I made my first one over a year ago and them made some for Christmas presents. While making the bags at Christmas, I revised the construction of the bag. By June, I was anxious to try another revision in the construction of the bag and now with this third revision, I think I am ready to make a pattern to sell.

In the next few weeks, I will be working on making up the pattern if anyone is interested. I love my bag-in fact, I have 2-one for each camera. (My husband thinks I am a "camera-aholic"!)

Here are a few pics of the bags I completed in June.

I Just Love These Tin Can Treats!

I woke up yesterday morning and realized that it was my friend, Helena's birthday. It was Sunday and since shopping was not on the schedule, I tried to think of something homemade and special to give her as a little treat for her special day. I remembered the darling "Tin Can Treats" I made for Mother's Day from the instructions on the "Our Best Bites" (instructions found at that link) blog and decided to make one for her birthday. I had everything I needed to fill a pull-top can (emptied peaches) with some goodies. I included: lip balm, Lindor's Truffles, a Luna Bar and some hard candies.

Camera Bags

My daughter had a great camera bag for her Canon SLR (the bag was a Canon Brand). I just loved the shape and the versatility of it but I was interested in jazzing the bag up with some great looking fabric so I set out to create my own version of the bag. By the way-this bag fits most SLR cameras with normal size lenses-mine's a Nikon.
So far I have made 4 bags. When I made the last two camera bags, I refined the pattern and construction method so some of the things that really bugged me construction-wise were solved by my new method!

I do have a pattern but not a tutorial-yet. I might work on the tutorial soon-some of the steps are on the difficult side-especially trying to get the zipper to fit in the lid and not get stuck with those sharp little pins! My daughter posted her bag on her Amazing Mae Blog.

It is a great little bag-fits right over your hip and is great for anyone on the go. I toted my camera around Europe and it was really handy!

Baby Room Banner

We had a shower for my daughter who is expecting Baby Velzy any day. I made a banner for her to hang in her room (and we used it as a shower decoration.)
Here is the tutorial-http://www.scribd.com/word/view/39490837

Halloween Banner

Last Christmas my husband gave me a Cricut personal cutter. It sat in the box for a while and then I pulled it out and started playing around with it. I found a few uses for it but lately I have been finding more and more things to use it for. For one thing, I found that you could buy software and plug the Cricut into your computer and use many of the fonts you already own to make great works of paper art.

I bought a program called "Sure Cuts A Lot" and it is really fun to use. If you get this software you need to download the firmware for your Cricut by signing up for the trial version of Cricut's Design Studio. There are tutorials available on youtube to help you out.
Anyway, here is a Halloween banner that I made with my Cricut and some fun Halloween paper.

Baby Time

My daughter, Jennilee is having a baby girl very soon. I found some wonderful prints to make a quilt and some other things for her baby shower. The pattern for this quilt is found here. I was so happy to find such an easy but eye-catching design for this quilt. I also used the walking foot and some machine quilting thread to quilt this. It was pretty easy-straight lines. The walking foot allows both sides of the quilt to be fed into the machine evenly with few puckers on the underside of the quilt. Give this quilt pattern a try!

For the Babies

I've been following the lead from my daughters as they make baby gifts for all the special people in their lives who are having babies. These designs appliqued on "onesies" belong to my daughter, Traci. I just copy her artistic style! Some of her darling appliques can be found here.