making your own cloth labels

A number of readers expressed interest in a "how to" about cloth labels. Whether you are selling your wares or gifting them for the holidays, it feels fantastic to tag your creation.
I'd been wanting to create my own maya*made labels ever since I saw the price tag to get them done professionally. Phew! Unless you're going into huge production, so not worth it. Besides, you know how much I enjoy making everything myself. The first thing I thought of was stamping onto twill tape. I ran out and had a custom rubber stamp made. It cost about $12 at Staples. I then proceeded to experiment with various stamping mediums. Tried stamp pads... not permanent. Tried textile paint... messy and inconsistent. I even made my own pad for textile paint... still hit or miss results. I gave up until this light bulb: a fabric marker hand applied to the stamp for each print.


It's time consuming and a bit wonky, but it's the best trick I've found for this method.

A little interesting "re-use" fact about the above twill tape... a friend gave me a huge spool of 3/4 inch yellow cotton twill tape. It's perfect, except for the yellow part. I love yellow, but just not for ALL of my labels! I couldn't let it go to waste, so I tried boiling it in black tea for an hour...voila!

A lovely natural brown/tea color. I love it and will find so many uses for it! When someone hands you lemon colored tape... make tea with it!

Not feeling 100% satisfied, I did some on-line research and came up these ideas:

1.Here are labels printed directly onto a colorfast fabric sheet on my home printer.


I haven't used them yet, but will try them out soon. Here's the tutorial I used.

2.This tutorial is worth trying someday... you put your cloth directly into your printer. Nice results, but I've been a little scared of mishaps and the complications of proper alignment.

3. And finally, this is the tutorial I've been following and am really happy with. These are the tags you keep seeing on my pincushions.


I've been ironing them onto a thick and rugged cotton twill and loving the results. Two tips when trying this:
-remember to reverse your image before you print it
-cut as much away from your label before you iron it on(notice how close to the letters I snipped)
Please let me know any label ideas you've had and methods you've tried... I'm always on the look out for something fun and new. Hope this is helpful!

how do you spell "hope"?

I struggled all morning for words. Tears come every time I try. Luckily my daughter (so tuned into this historic day) asked "how do you spell... ?"

These are her words... she doesn't know how powerful they are... but she will. Our children's future just got brighter.

don't forget!

PLEASE!

making mail fun!

Thanks so much for making my jump into the "selling" world so much fun. Your warm wishes on Friday made me happy all weekend long. I'm also feeling excited that I had my first couple of sales and even ran out of little toadstool pincushions. I only had made three, but "selling out" sounds so cool, doesn't it!? I just made two more and they'll be available tomorrow with a couple more items...
Sending off my little packages is totally exciting... I feel like an elf in my shop these days, and want to make everything, including my envelopes. I guess that's not really anything new for me. I thought I'd share this idea with you because the upcoming holidays means that just about everyone will be making more trips to the post office. I made my own sturdy over-sized envelopes out of paper bags.
First, I used a manila envelope as my template.


Second, I zigzaged around three sides with my sewing machine.
Third, I folded over top and tape with clear packaging tape. Ready for addressing. Easy!


These are perfect for a little soft item... like a pin cushion! Is this a time efficient way to package large orders? Nope! Right now, it's a wonderful way for me to personalize each shipment, and you might like to do this for a friend or family member's upcoming gift.

Before I forget, I love shipping internationally and now have officially (on my Etsy page) invited overseas buyers to convo me for shipping rates. See you tomorrow!

bringing the outside in

Happy November! It's getting chilly, and the geese are heading south. There's a desire to soak in as much sunlight and outside time as the crisp weather will permit. Midday was just warm enough to go out in a couple of layers... if you stayed in the sun. We went searching for art materials. I'm really miss creating outside, so I tried to think of ways to bring nature indoors with us. We'd recently talked about using different sized paint brushes for different kinds of paint and/or projects. I wondered what it would be like to look for "paint bushes" in our backyard. This activity was so much about the collecting of tools and the conversations that went with it... "what do you think that stalk would do?".


We brought in dried flower heads from Bee Balm, stalks from Russian Sage, Blue Spruce pine cones, and three different kinds of evergreen branches. The tempera paints came out with a sheet of brown craft paper. We set up in front of a bank of windows in our sunroom, where we still feel partially outside.

Now came the experimenting...





Our favorite was the pine cone, which was young and soft... perfect for stamping dots. Our collaboration was a bit "muddied" by the end. There was a so much enthusiasm around trying three different colors with each tool... multiple times. This was all about the process and sharing our guesses on how certain "brushes" would work.

I loved teaching that art supplies don't have to come from a store. Promises were made to do it all over again tomorrow. It will make fine wrapping paper for a lucky grandmother... who enjoys any creations from her grandchildren.

This was a satisfying project for this time of year, but would be fun in spring and summer, too. Now we're wondering what other alternatives to paintbrushes we can find...

welcome to designs maya*made!

Hi friends! Did you wonder where I went? Halloween parades and pumpkin muffins for 24 children were my first priority, but here I am...

You're just in time for my first shop announcement. My knees are shaking a bit, and I'm feeling rather shy after your flood of wonderful wishes in my last post. Thank you for supporting me as I pursue my dreams.
I have high hopes and a slew of wonderful ideas for the very near future, but today is just a small step. Remember, I really want to start out little and slow. The pictures in this post are some of the items available at this moment.





When I'm feeling comfortable and have learned my way around Etsy, shipping, and all of those other pesky details, I'll increase my stock. For now, my goal is simple... open the doors and let you in! Please go visit me at my new spot on the web at designs maya*made! Or just click, here. Any suggestions or helpful advice will be welcomed, so don't hesitate to leave me your 2 cents! I'm such a newbie at all of this, and I'm still ironing out the kinks!

on my desk...

For other players of "on my desk..." please visit Kirsty's.
Over the weekend I hinted that I would be making an announcement soon (no, I'm not having another little one, at least not right now). My desk will give you a very big clue. The doors to my Etsy shop are finally getting ready to open. There was a point back in September where I almost let go of that dream. I recently realized that I could start slowly and small. With blogging, I jumped in before I knew how to swim. With Etsy, I'd love to start in the shallow end and work my way towards the deep. Any advise from you seasoned sellers or buyers would be so appreciated.

So on my desk are several different maya*made labels. Coming soon will be an entire post just on different techniques I've been trying out... in hopes of helping you if you ever were to need a label of your own.

Above my desk are a couple of the things I plan to have in my shop. I decided to display them as if my studio was my shop. I'm really enjoying this idea.

More coffee sack pin cushions- you all seem to love them as much as I do! Above my window is a string of linen "patches" that are stenciled and hand painted with simple organic images.

It was suggested a while back that I sell some of my designs on linen... ready to be turned into other peoples creations. They also look nice mounted and framed. I did that with this bird. So now that I've gone public, I guess I'd better get to putting "things on the shelves". Doors open on Friday. I'll slip you the directions then... :)

sew and tell

I'm excited to show you a couple of the things that I've been making. First up, is my new knitting basket. It's a burlap vessel- the perfect size for holding a little embroidery or knitting project. It's also nice for gathering up those odds and ends that gather on counters and surfaces.

I lined it with this luxurious black dotted linen. I have some salvaged pieces left over from a local clothing manufacturer. I love putting it to use and it works so well with the black graphics of the burlap. As much as I love it, I know that I just how I want to improve upon it. This was a wonderful starting place for a burlap container... I'll show you the evolved design at the end of the week. I'm enjoying the challenge of working with burlap more each day. Are you wondering what those vintage wooden clogs have to do with the basket in the top photo? Nothing! My daughter was clomping around in them and they wound up in the photo shoot, because I love them so much. I own two pairs of clogs that my grandparents brought back from a trip to Amsterdam in the early 1960's. All of the grandchildren in our family have dressed up in them, and I loved seeing them worn by a little one again.

She's wearing them with her new dress made from this Sugar City Journal pattern. It's made out of soft and cozy flannel in sage with brown bias tape. It's meant to be a dress or a tunic and the neckline is low and square to show off layers. A perfect fall dress. My daughter would live in pajamas if she could. This feels like a cuddly nightgown, so she didn't want to take it off, but I realized it was missing an important feature. A pocket! Now it has a place to put all of her little treasures: sticks and stones... maybe a pretty leaf.


We're expecting our first inch of snow this afternoon... I'm wishing I had a flannel dress in MY size!

pumpkin madness

The week of Halloween has finally arrived, and my children can talk of nothing else. Yesterday we had a pumpkin extravaganza. We always carve one pumpkin for each of us. I've collected a wide assortment of child-friendly tools and we let them design and carve on their own as much as possible. Several years back my son begged for a fancy carving kit that came with a wide assortment of templates. Each year we take them out and admire them, and then agree that they look too tricky. It's satisfying to design your own, but this year. My big ten year old was totally ready to give it a try. He carved for two hours! I only helped a little itty bit. The front of the pumpkin has two rats...the back is carved, as well, so that it will project a shadow of a cat face onto the wall... spooky. This is the pattern book it came from here.


He was so proud of himself, and rightly so!

I kept trying to take a picture of our three inside pumpkins (the biggest is on the porch), but someone kept trying to make off with my props. Fresh baked pumpkin-cranberry-chocolate chip muffin/cookies. Can't blame them, they're addicting. By this morning, they were almost gone!

I got the recipe from a friend, who got the recipe from a friend, who got it here. We make them every year and so far, everyone who's ever tasted them wants the recipe immediately. Our version has a few variations and less sugar(organic).. .sometimes mixed with maple syrup , grain sweetened chocolate chips and cranberries. It seems like the kind of recipe that you can modify to your liking and ingredients on hand.

We always roast the seeds after carving and nibble on them throughout the day. After rinsing them, we toss them in olive oil, garlic, salt and a dash of maple syrup. Then we spread on a cookie sheet and roast until golden... mmm! I took a moment to sit in the fading sun and look around at the rapidly changing scenery.


Winter is right around the corner here in the Northeast. Tree skeletons are everywhere...

Cows graze in a cut cornfield....


Take a look up at my banner. Here's the same view a couple of weeks later!


I've been squeezing in a bit of sewing and am having so much fun coming up with new designs. Some are still in the prototype phase, but if you stop by tomorrow I'll give you a sneak peek.
Happy Monday!

countdown to halloween...

Just stopping in to wish you a lovely Saturday. We'll be finishing up costumes, carving pumpkins, and baking cookies for the next couple of days. Hope you're having a great weekend filled with Halloween fun. Here are a few holiday links I wanted to share, just in case you don't already know about them:
The Crafty Crow: a huge line-up of wonderful children's crafts, sweets, and more for Halloween
one pretty thing's Halloween Round-ups: brimming with Halloween DIY and fun hand-made ideas
Green Halloween: an entire site (with a blog) dedicated to eco and alternative Halloween choices
family fun costumes: there's still time to make your own costume...here are some great ideas
Martha Stuart Quick and Easy supermarket costumes: just what the title says :)

I'll leave you with these pictures I took at the barn last week. These are my Grandfather's Halloween costumes from the early 1920's. Yes, we've saved them...wouldn't you!?


The one on the left is a mime or maybe a clown. The right is a Native American Indian with head dress. The vintage pumpkin on top of the rack seemed just right.



Thanks for all of your great feed back and enthusiasm about my sack ideas... I've got a bunch more! Next week I hope to share another tutorial, art project, recipe, and a little announcement. See you then!

recycling: good, clean fun!

I missed playing "on my desk" yesterday, but my little napper has suddenly given up napping. My Wednesday blogging window just got a little more challenging. My making window didn't seem to disappear, though. She and I whipped up a little storm together. I'm going to confide in you: I'm having a little love affair with coffee sacks, and it looks like I'm not alone...my inspiration board turned up all over the place this week: Design*Sponge, Craft, whip up!, Apartment Therapy's unplugged and re-nest, one pretty thing...maybe more. Thank you soooo much! I really enjoy working with burlap, playing with the graphics, and most of all... giving new life to a resource that would have otherwise gone unused. The above bag is my daughter's new tote: a lunch sack, snack bag, nature collector, and anything else she might decide. Here she is waiting to go to nursery school... Miss Upcycle, herself. She sits upon my re-done chair, with her Mama Goose shirt and her handmade (from thrifted fabric) skirt. She wears it all with pride, that's my girl!


Back to the bag. Don't you love the shape? It's a soft and drapey (yes, burlap is not as itchy as you might think), but has structure even when empty!

I made a quick and simple lining in linen, and the straps work over her shoulder or as a handle. A friend dropped buy today, and now she wants one too...for her knitting. I'm going to make several in different sizes and style... I need a couple!

I hate wasting. I had to use the scraps, of course. This is my new favorite pin cushion.


It reminds me of a little sack of coffee. The loop means I can hang it on the wall above my sewing machine, and always know where it is. I have a habit of misplacing my pin cushions, so this is GOOD.

In other making news:
I had a special request for some more stone dolls. I spent a beautiful fall afternoon collecting more stones at the lake, and here they are:


I also stitched up a couple of these birds from Spool after seeing this gorgeous interpretation of their project by Molly.

I have big holiday plans for these sweet little birds. They can take on so many different personalities depending on your fabric choices. Here's my simple, rustic one in linen and ticking (one of my favorite combos). I added some quilting details to the tail that I'm really enjoying. Might play with the pattern a bit to make it my own...I love tweaking.


I also made one for that little girl at my side... with her fabric choices. She loves it more than any softie I've ever made for her. I've made quite a few in the past year, but this one feels just right in her hands, and she hasn't let it go for 24 hours!

Maybe we all need a little someone to hold onto...