Just Jessica: red

Showing posts with label red. Show all posts

Monday, February 25, 2013

Red for the Little Lady

One of my friends and mentors who I've known since Jr. High recently had a baby girl! I couldn't be more excited for her and her husband! I put together this layered fringe/rag quilt with fabric that had been my mom's since technically she was my mom's friend first!

I've done this kind of quilt with flannels before but this was my first time using regular quilting cotton and machine quilting a 1 inch smaller piece of batting in between the outer layers.

I tried a different free motion pattern on each of the blocks!

Fewer layers of fabric with batting in between made for a lighter quilt, and it still looks just as full post washing. Call me a dreamer but I imagine the little recipient of this quilt having fun learning all the different quilting designs, picking a favorite square, and studying the different fabrics in the car, or before bed. I hope she enjoys it to pieces! That is the true sign of a loved quilt!

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

WIP Wednesday- Unofficial

Ok so I'm not posting to the flicker group or anything and I can't show you the main project because like I said it's a gift. Buuuut check out these fun little pain in the behinds I'm making with the scraps! I left one on the table and it even caught Lukes interest. "How many pieces...how did you...?"

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

One In Every Color- Phones

These phones all have quite the stories. Most of the stories pertain to color. Mom and Val got the phones first. They both go blue. Then I came into town from Idaho, and was up for a phone upgrade. Luke and I went to the store and Mom told me I couldn't come back with the same phone as Val or Val would be mad. So I got green. Turns out she had wanted green over blue. Lose lose situation. Well turns out Cindy W. had the same phone too. In green. We were always picking up each others phones but all it took was one slide open. Cute little grand kids meant her phone. Boy hearts girl meant mine! Then Lakeview Cottages phone went kaput. Lakeview got red. That's the color I wanted. No matter. I got a new (red) phone (with a camera that has a flash) the weekend this picture was taken so its a mute point. HOWEVER, I thought it was cool that we had "One In Every Color." haha.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Red21

Last weekend we celebrated my friend Destinie's 21st birthday! Mikey, Destinies boyfriend recruited me for help planning the event!

We were "Really Excited Destinie" was turning 21! Everyone was asked to wear Red and Black. A lot of this may look a bit similar to the Twilight Party but hey, why re-invent the wheel?

I put this swirly logo on the front of the invitation and on the envelope. Destinie uses a lot of french country sheik decor mixed with a lot of scrolling iron work and red/orange colors so this "scheme" fit her pretty well!

The whole point was to throw the party FOR Destinie so she didn't get all involved, but we had to tell her the theme so she could find an outfit, and when I arrived to help Mikey set up, there were little red and black things everywhere I KNOW she snuck in! Take for example the not so subtle re-decoration of the bathroom. I replaced all the Twilight quotes in the black frames with dramatic red and black images I found online and put them all over. Mikey's house has a two sided fireplace which meant I got TWO mantles to load with frames and red candles!I also pulled these photos of red and black sign letters off the Internet. Printed them as 5x7 images and strung them up with a red ribbon. This time around instead of having "bloody" glasses with red dripping down them I lightly rimmed the glasses with red syrup and then heavily coated that rim with red sugar crystals the night before. They dried really well which was good because it meant they didn't all come off right away!Destinie and Jess! Yay! I loved her dress! (Could be because I'm the ladybug fan in the group!)Beth and Kassy made a red velvet cake! It was really good!We managed to snag some of the guys to get a picture! They weren't so willing and definatly didn't want to take more than 1. (The girls took 3...or 4.)We loved the excuse to dress up! Yay!

Happy Birthday Destinie! XO!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Wax Job

I've been playing with wax. I know it drives my dad crazy. He sees (and remembers) all the things that can (and sometimes do) go wrong and it sort of freaks him out. For some reason I cant stand to let all those broken crayons go to waste. Theres good color left in them just waiting to be utilized! I loved to lay crayon bits on paper in the sun to get all swirly and melty! (It didn't help the case against my dad when it didnt occur to me to weight these projects down. The wind blew them over and the wax melted into our pourous pool side concrete. oops.) Any way we've got lots of broken crayons at work and once again I found myself saving them. We did the melty wax project at school with the students, but then I found ideas for making crayons around the web. Mine are sort of a mix and match of all of them but I did learn some things:
1.) When baking the wax in a slicone mold (big flowers) it really is important not to get the temp to high. If you turn the heat up to speed up the process, you'll get a clear layer that doesnt color.
2.) If you use mom's special non stick pans for acting as a double boiler, and the can the wax is in tips over, she'll find out what you used them for (even if you think you wiped it all out) when she makes mashed potatoes and the bubbles on top are blue.
3.) Use heavy duty bags to smash the crayons in, because "Dad" (substitute roomate, husband, sister) doesnt like it when there are tiny wax bits on the floor that stick to feet.

Happy crayon making! Its a lot of fun!

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Finders Keepers

Or at least until you find these too! There have been some comments regarding Twilight party food and as I like to say: Sharing is caring! I'm going to let you in on some of the food "not so" secrets. I purchased the drinks in the pretty tall bottles from Cost Plus World Market. (Honestly, the cranberry juice was at the dollar store.)

I got this Raspberry soda along with its sister, Pomagranate soda on sale. They came with reccomendations from the employees. I really liked the pomagranate. The left over raspberry made for a better ice cream float though.

This Cranberry juice with bubbling spring water...well I liked the packaging, liked the color, and love the bottle. Unfortunately Im not the biggest cranberry fan. I prefer it mixed with grape or "something." It also doesnt have an extremely long life once opened. But if you like cranberry I say check it out!

I, in all my years of wisdom or lack there of, decided to not listen to the "Hostess with the Mostess" (designer of the drink labels) and figured why soak the bottles in water to take the label off if I have Goo Gone. Well that was pretty labor intensive. On the last two I finally thought, OK. Ill soak them. Well ladies (and gentlemen) the lables came right off. I felt like a sucker. So please, if you're removing labels, attempt a soak first!

The pasta was a suprising find! I had ducked in to Marshalls on a hunt for glass decorative containers. On my way out I saw they have a neat little food aisle. I checked it out for anything new in black and red and there on the bottom shelf were these pastas! I was going to have to hunt in Whole Foods for them and wasnt even sure they would be there! AND I got them for six dollars a package instead of $12! Score!

Last was the chips! The blue chips actually look very black so they were in and are once again found at Cost Plus World Market. The red chips were found on a stroll through Save Mart!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Team Twilight

You've seen the invitations, here's what they led to! At "twilight" fans of the book started showing up to Cindy's house (yes, it's Mark's house too but Cindy and I were co-hosts.) Cindy's house really was a great place to have the event because she has so much great black accenting which really set off the colors of the decorations. (See giant black clock!)

The book covers alone made great dramatic decorations! It was amazing how many red an black things came out of the woodwork once we started decorating!

The fabulous images I used in the frames came from the Hostess with the Mostess found <here>.

Credit for the glass ideas goes to these inspirational people <here>.

I found some great drink options at Cost Plus World Market ranging from Pomegranate and Raspberry Soda, Soda Water with Cranberry, Cranberry Apple Juice and Sangria. Cindy found the coolest beer (that was non alcoholic) at Bev Mo. Apple Beer, see <here>.

We were in fact on a special diet of Red and Black foods. Some of the things on the menu:

Hot Tamales, Cherry Sours, Licorice BITES, Black (blue) and red corn chips with salsa and bean dip, cherry tomatoes with a Kalamata Olive spread, cherry tomatoes, chocolate covered strawberries and licorice, red velvet cake, red chips with a red pepper spread, Squid ink pasta and Chianti Wine pasta sauteed with sun dried tomatoes in olive oil and seasoning, and home made strawberry ice cream with dark chocolate pieces! MMMM so good!

We had a photo shoot with each guest and the famous apple. I was the guinea pig and we tried out different lighting. Cindy is such a good photographer to think of that! I think she did a great job capturing everyone so well.