Love it or Leave it: faux feathers

This week: faux feathers

Not fake feathers that are supposed to look like actual feathers, but feathers made from other materials like fabric, paper, yarn, vinyl or felt. These can be made as simple and abstract or as detailed as you'd like, and in any color imaginable.

Here are some examples I've pinned as inspiration with links to my pinterest boards.



I love these so much!  Feathers, bold geometric patterns and native american themed color schemes are very in right now and while I don't like all of it, I'm totally into some of it.

Love it!

Love it or Leave it: embroidery hoop crafts

Today's love it or leave it: embroidery hoops

Specifically, wooden embroidery hoops. The plastic and metal ones are nice and can be convenient for actual embroidery, but the wooden ones look nicer and can be more versatile in my opinion. I mean as a craft supply and not just a frame to hold your material taught for embroidering purposes. I do like the look of leaving fabric in embroidery hoops instead of regular frames too though.


Here are some ideas I've pinned and think are pretty nifty:

I have yet to make any of these but I like all of them and would gladly have them hanging in my home or use them.  I have used a large 14" embroidery hoop to make two baby mobiles. The inner hoop was used for the sailboat mobile and the outer ring was used for the owls.  The metal bits were cut off the outer hoop.  Both were painted and have felt wrapped around the outside to give a softer look and bring the whole look together.



So, when it comes to embroidery hoop crafting...

LOVE it!

love it or leave it: bombs

My intention was to do the second installment of Love it or Leave it on Friday, but work got a little crazy.  I don't mean busy, I mean crazy.  I've mentioned on here that I work at the Baptist Student Ministry (BSM) by the UT campus.  Well, on Friday morning there was a bomb threat on UT followed by a campus-wide evacuation.  UT has about 50,000 students, plus faculty and staff.  Needless to say, it was slightly chaotic around here.  On top of that, David and I led worship for the BSM's weekend retreat immediately following work so any attempt at updating on Friday was just dead.

So instead of reviewing a crafting trend or product I will say this...

Bomb threats....leave it.

Next post will be full or owls and feathers!

love it or leave it: burlap

You've heard of pinterest right?  Of course you have.

I love it, mostly to organize my crafting inspirations and ideas.  I was already a big blog and craft site enthusiast, but saving bookmarks wasn't cutting it as a good organizing strategy.  Most times I'd just forget where I saved an idea or what the idea was in the the first place.

I do have some issues with pinterest though.  Lies.  There are so many lies on there!  Probably not intentional, but people see something that looks genius and repin it, not bothering to think about or look into the validity of a craft claim.  For example, homemade mod podge; you just can't mix water and elmers glue...it's not the same.  Also, all these random facts, most of them are just completely made up and it honestly amuses me that so many people fall for them.  Oh, Pinterest.

Now that all that is out of my system I can move on to what this post is really about.  I want to do a weekly post about popular crafting trends on pinterest. This isn't a judging post, just my personal likes and dislikes. You can agree or disagree, and comment away, I love it!

This week: burlap

There are SO many crafts involving burlap.  I have a few friends that love the stuff so I see a lot of pins with it.  It's not bad, but honestly I just hate burlap.  It's scratchy, messy, frays like crazy, and mostly it's brown.  I don't like brown.  When it comes to neutrals I prefer a good grey or straight up black.  They make colored burlap you say?  No thanks.  Still all the other issues. Not to say I don't think there are some great uses if you're a fan, because there are and my friends have used it in great ways. Burlap, you're just not my thing.

Leave it.

:)