Well.. I’m finally settled into the new year after all the rush of the holidays (well, as much as I’ll ever be I guess!). I’m still a bit dazed and confused as to what my goals are this year and how to accomplish those I do have. As I’ve said time and time again, I would love – or rather I need more time to create. I feel as if I have so many hours in a day – and yet they’re all wasted away and I don’t know where they’ve gone. I suppose I just need to be patient… remember to enjoy the time with my little ones, and organize what little time I do have for myself. My time schedule is only going to get worse I know… as I hope to get pregnant again this summer. So, I have a lot of planning and organizing ahead of me this year. I suppose time for myself can wait another five years when all our kids are in school! lol

As for those new year goals… for one, I definitely need to start blogging more. Another goal is to get Twiddle Lee finally off the ground. I need to finish up the website, and start listing my goodies. I think the design of the site is what was holding me back from getting it finished. I never really had a clear idea as to what I wanted it to look like. So, for now I think I’ll just start with a basic clean design, get it up, then work from there.

My biggest focus this year is to find my path in what I want to create. I know I want to make something that mixes crafting with fine art – perhaps a type of mixed media art. I’ve been collecting and reading Sommerset and other mixed media magazines for inspiration. But no bright ideas just yet! I need to just get in there and start experimenting.

But first… I have a show to prepare for. I actually have two shows planned for this year – one of which is an art show in October; but I’ll talk more about that another time. My first show is ‘Earthstock‘ an Earth Day fair on April 25th in Plainville, CT. I plan to make a variety of recycled crafts for this show including bottlecap jewelry from used caps, my JuNk Pins, and new goodies such as wrapper zipper pouches, bead bowls, plastic bottle jewelry, and some others. April will be coming up quick, and I’ve barely started! I’ll be working on some zipper pouches later today. I’m very excited about those; and have been collecting ‘trash’ for quite a while… its starting to build up around me! lol I need to get a move on with these recycled crafts. Not only to prepare for the show – but also to prove to my husband that I am not a hoarder, I do plan on making something with that! He rolls his eyes every time I yell “NO! Don’t throw that away!” lol  I’ll share with you some photos of my recycled goodies once I get a few to photograph – and perhaps a tutorial too.

..back to Christmas – I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! This year I decided to make a lot of my gifts. So, between making my gifts, shopping for the kids, baking, trimming the tree and all that other fun stuff; I was quite the busy bee since last time I wrote! Its a great time of year, but I’m glad its finally past us. I’m ready to start fresh again!

Here’s a photo of my family of Munchie Monsters. I made one for each of my  nephews for their Christmas gift.

I created a new design for two of my nieces – a Sleepy Bunny made from fleece and scraps of fun cotton prints. They each came with a mini quilt and their favorite stuffed carrot for bed time. I thought they came out so cute! I will definitely be making a couple more of these – as I know my girls want one too! Plus I think these Bunnies will also become my first Twiddle Lee pattern!

For my youngest niece, I created a set of felt foods to go with her shopping cart she has at home. I purchased a pattern from julyhobby, but I only ended up using it for the yellow pepper and the carrot. The pattern was great, and easy to follow; but most of the items were created with hand stitched seams on the outside, which I am no good at! I prefer to use the machine any day! So, I created my own patterns for the rest of the items, with a little help from THIS tutorial. The patterns in that tutorial also did a lot of the hand stitching on the outside; so I had to create my own bread pattern too. But, I loved their idea for the lettuce!

The larger item is an eggplant if you couldn’t tell! Its actually more purple in person… my camera isn’t so great at capturing accurate colors sometimes. The apple was made using my primitive apple pattern (#51) that can be found on my Rags-n-Tags site HERE.

I really wanted to blog about these goodies after I had made them and photographed them! But, I didn’t want to spoil the surprise of these gifts for my family before Christmas! he he

OH, and I also did a watercolor painting of a winter scene and a cardinal for my parents. I was really happy with the way it turned out. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to photograph it before giving it away! I’ll have to steal it back for a couple days for a photo session. ;)

That’s it for now. Hopefully I’ll be back soon with some photos of some fun recycled crafting!

~Twiddle