Meet Iggy (aka Chichi) and Sally

Hi everyone!

Today I have a couple gifts I made for my grandchildren.

Let me introduce you to Iggy and Sally.

This is Iggy the Iguana.  I'm told that he was promptly

renamed Chichi by Asher, but I don't know if that name stuck.

I usually make these amigurumi critters with worsted 

weight yarn, but decided to use 

Bernat blanket yarn that I had in my stash.

This yarn is very soft, but since it is a thicker yarn,

the animals come out considerably larger.

I'm guessing Iggy is about 18" long.

This is Sally the shark.
I made her for Marie and I think she may have 

kept her name.

Sally is also about 18" long.

Here is a picture of Marie with Sally.

I used patterns from 
Crochet Cute Critters: 26 Easy Amigurumi Patterns

This book was a gift from Jaryd and Sara, so I could

make stuffies for the kids and I love making them.

I think I've made about half the animals so far.

Thanks for stopping by today.
I hope you have enjoyed your time here and got inspired

in some way.
Come again soon,

you never know what you'll see on

Kristie Kreates.

Note the links are only to give a reference so you can

see what the products are.
I didn't necessarily purchase from these sites,

except where specified,

and you may find better prices elsewhere,

I am in no way promoting any particular site.

 

Anniversary and Birthday Cards

Hi everyone!

I hope you're having a beautiful day.
As I write this we are having a warm, but

rainy day here in Western NY.

Hopefully, these cards might brighten your day.

This is an Anniversary card I made for my hubby.

I got the die from Temu and just love it.

The yellow background was embossed with a 

folder from my stash with little hearts on it.

It was a fun card to make and inside I wrote a

personal message.

This card I used the same die and made a card for my

daughter, Kelsie, for her birthday.

Inside, I stamped a birthday sentiment and 

wrote a personal message.

I totally loved making both these cards and will

be using that die for more.

Thanks for stopping by today,

I hope you'll come again soon.

Until then,

have fun being creative.

 

Be Magical Unicorn Card

Hello craft lovers!

Doesn't everyone love to receive mail?
My granddaughter, Marie, sure does.

That's why I decided to make her this card.

She loves unicorns, so when I found this stamp in my

stash, I decided to make a card with it.

Pink is her favorite color, so it had to be pink.

For the inside of the card, I stamped, colored and fussy

cut some other designs.  She does love rainbows too, so that

was another must.

I stamped and cut a few things for her to color herself.

Sending cards in the mail now and then is one simple

way to say I love you.

Thanks for stopping by today to see what I've been creating.

I hope you have been inspired in some way and will come again soon.

Until then,

send a card and make someone smile.

 

Art Swap Post Card and Card

Good day and welcome!

I've mentioned my art swap group before

and today I'm going to show you my latest 

project for the swap.

We were to make a masterboard then 

from that we were to make a post card for the

person we were given.

I made more than one masterboard.

This one I used paints and a few different objects 

to make marks (bottle caps, and a fork for instance)

I like how it turned out.

I made this masterboard using the washi tape in my stash.

I just started layering it onto the page and filled the entire

page.

This is the post card I made with the painted 

masterboard that I made.

I enjoyed making it and still have plenty of the

original board left for other projects.

I was a little hesitant to mail out the post card, so 

I made a card with the other masterboard and put the 

post card inside.

This was a fun challenge and the person I sent 

these too was happy to receive them.

Thanks for stopping in today.

I hope you have been inspired in some way.

Please, do come again,

until then,

stretch yourself and try something new.

 

Easter with the Maynard Family

Hello and welcome back!

I'm finally recovered from the bronchitis.

I don't have a lot to post, because I was feeling

so bad, I didn't even do any crafting.

We did have a wonderful Easter and had our 
Annual Maynard Family Egg Coloring Contest.
Here are a few pictures of my grandkids and also the

egg contest results.

Marie and Asher all dressed up in their Easter outfits.

Marie got a Jessie dress from the bunny.

Asher got a Woody shirt from the bunny.

Here's Marie with all their Easter eggs.

This year there were only 4 of us that participated

in the egg coloring contest.

Things have been crazy around here.

Kelsie and Sara have been very busy with their business

Clumsy Cloud Gifts (dot com)

Below are the 4 entries.  I posted them on facebook and

people casted their votes.

Sara's "Duo Color Explosion"

4th place

Jaryd's "Pink and Purple Splendor"

3rd place

Marie's "Pretty in Pink and More"

2nd place

Your's truly "Marbled Neutrals"

1st place.

I used onion skins to color my eggs this year.

Onion skins were chopped up,

the eggs were run under water so the skins would

stick to them.
They were then wrapped in pieces of 

knee high stockings and tied closed.

They were place into a pot with water, salt, vinegar

and a little bit of blue food coloring.

Boiled to become hard boiled eggs.

Once they were removed and onion skins were

rinsed off they turned out marbled.

I only had brown onion skins,

but next time I'd like to try multi colored

skins and include some white and red onion

skins.

They were easy to color this way and turned out

great.

Did you color eggs for Easter this year?

Here are winners from past years from our contest.

2023 Marie (age 3 yrs old)

2022 Kelsie

2021 Brad

You can see we didn't have the time to 

decorate like we usually do,

but it was fun anyway.

And now I have bragging rights until next Easter.

Thanks for stopping in today to see what I've

been up to.

I hope you'll come again soon.

Until then,

enjoy spring!

 

Bronchitis

 Hello crafty fans!

Sorry I haven't been around much lately.

I started with a nasty cold almost a month ago

and it turned into a really nasty case of bronchitis.

I'm going into my 2nd round of antibiotics now and

hopefully that will kick it out of me.

But for now I won't be posting for a bit,

I just don't have the energy to do much more than

 read, watch tv and sleep.

I will be back though, once I'm feeling

better and can get back to some crafting.

For now I'll leave you with these two 

crazy grandkids of mine.

They are just the cutest!

Christmas Exchange Gift

Hello everyone and welcome!

I know this is a little late, but that's because

our Christmas Crop was late.

Our group always plans our Christmas Crop for

the first Saturday of the new year,

but that didn't work out.

The other gal, who runs it with me, and I 

both had covid, so we had to postpone it.

We ended up having it in mid February.

We bring a gift and do an exchange game.

Here is what I took as my gift.

I crocheted this little Christmas chick ornament.

And a pair of mittens, which I put a gift card for 
Joann's inside one of them.

I also made a "money tree"

I found a piece of tree branch decoration

at the store for 80% off and put that

through the top of a jar lid.
I covered the jar with wrapping paper and

then made dollar origami ornaments.

Here is a boot.

This is a butterfly that actually looks much better in 

real life.

A shirt.

A sail boat.

A duck.

A peacock.

And a leaf.

I had made one of these for a family exchange and

it went over very well.

I think the gal that got it liked it,

but I actually think she liked the mittens even 

more.

Thanks for stopping by today,

I hope you have been inspired in some way.
If you are interested in trying some

dollar origami, just google it

and you will find loads of tutorials online.

I hope to see you again soon.
Until then,

try something new and different.

 

Easter Eggs

Hello all you crafty people!

Easter is coming and in our family

we usually have an Easter Egg Hunt.
In the past we have used those little plastic eggs

and put numbers inside that correspond to a 

prize.  The prize is inside a plastic cup that is covered

with tissue paper.  You have to "punch" through the

tissue paper to get your prize.  It could be anything

from candy to some nice squishy jello.
We have a lot of fun with it.
Sara said she'd love to have some reusable fabric

eggs and sent me a picture of them.
So of course, being me, I had to make some.

They were simple to put together and I used 

some fabric that each of us had and scraps that others

from my Buy Nothing Group gave me.

I made my templates in 3 different sizes.

They can be made in any size you want and 

we wanted them to be fairly small.

Here are some of them in the smallest size.

They open in the back to put a little treat inside,

or in our case, a number.

Here are more, you can see that any design of fabric 

can work.  It just needs to be a light weight fabric.

All my fabrics were fabrics that would be 

appropriate for quilting.

They turned out so cute and we can use them over

and over.
They can be used for any kind of goodies in an 

Easter basket also.

Here is the video I used to learn how to make them.

I made my own pattern, but otherwise followed these instructions

Thanks for stopping by today, I hope you'll be back again soon.

Until then,

have an egg-cellent day!

 

Gifts for the Twinkies

Hello!  I hope you are having a lovely day!

Today I have a couple gifts I crocheted to show you.

We have a cousin that has twin girls, they call them

the Twinkies.  Dave was going to visit them

and asked if I could make something for him to 

take to them as a gift.
Jaryd and Sara had given me this book a few years ago

as a gift and I have been making animals for the

grandkids ever since.

I decided to make a couple animals for the Twinkies.

I made this robin bird for one,

and this jelly fish for the other.

I don't know which twin got which,

but Dave said they loved them.

I'm thinking they will probably share them

with each other.

I really enjoy making these

arigurumi animals

and am working on a couple more

for Marie and Asher for Easter.
I'll be posting about the ones I made them

for Valentine's Day soon.

Thanks for spending some time here today,

I hope you enjoyed your visit.

Do you crochet?

If you do, have you made any animals?

If you haven't, give it a try and if you don't crochet,

there is no time like the present to learn.

Hope to see you again soon.

 

Book Purse

Hello creative friends!

Today I'm showing you a gift I made for a friend.
My friend, Danielle, loves reading and has an area in her

home that is her personal library.
Her favorite book is A Prayer for Owen Meany.
I decided to make her a purse from her favorite book.
I don't know if she will ever use it as a purse, but it would look

great in her library.

I carefully removed the pages of the book and they

can still be read, so I may put a new cover on them.

The actual book cover was just plain, so I decided to

use the dust cover.  I cut the dust cover to size and 

used some strong glue to adhere it to the book cover.

I did the same with the back of the dust cover.

I kept the spine of the book as the bottom of

the purse with no dust cover on it.
I could have attached some type of feet to the spine,

but didn't think of it at the time.

This is what the purse will look like if she chooses

to use it as a purse.

For the inside I found some fabric that matched nicely

with the book and dust cover and lined the inside with it.

The sides are gusseted, so there is room to open

the purse and the sides easily fit back inside the purse

when it is closed.

Here is a look down into the purse when it is open.

I purchased the chain handle and the "loops" they are

running through from Temu along with the magnet that

I used to hold it closed.  It's hard to see, but I made a little

closure that is attached to the left side in this picture, it 

goes across and holds the purse closed on the other side

with a magnet.
If you are interested in doing a project like this,

here is a link to the tutorial I basically followed.

There are others out there, but Nik the Booksmith is one

of my favorite You Tubers and I found it easy to follow.
I did make some changes, only because I needed to 

with the supplies I had, but her tutorial is a good one.

On the other hand, if you are interested in purchasing

a book purse, I have a friend that makes and sells them.
Check out 
BeeZ Vintage Book Purses.
Kathleen does an amazing job with her craft and

they are far better than anything I could ever do.

Danielle absolute loved her book purse and she 

showed it to everyone that came to the event we were

hosting when I gave it to her.

I enjoyed making it and I know she will enjoy having

it, whether she wears it or just displays it.

Thanks for stopping by today.
I hope you were inspired in some way and

will come again soon.

Until then,

think outside the box and try something new.