Friday, August 13, 2010

Introduction


Hi! We are Breanna and Amanda and we're best friends. We've been best friends since freshman year of college some 10 years ago (yikes!). Our friendship has seen it all-- tears, laughter, anatomical diagrams created out of curly fries, you name it. We've also been connected because neither of us has ever felt very creative; we suffer from the painful condition known as Art-Jealousy! We've known the twinge of watching as other friends are drawing, painting, or taking beautiful photographs that we don't seem to have the artistic skills for.


Maybe you've experienced it too... maybe it was a girl that went to your school that won every art contest, or an old boyfriend that made you romantic presents with Mod Podge and magazines, perhaps your sister-in-law makes Martha Stewart look like child's play.


Well, that's been us. Try after try has resulted in craft fails galore. We've been on a constant search for the thing that would be OUR craft...the thing we would rock at. we haven't necessarily found "it" yet, but we are getting pretty good and faking it!! Sigh.


Despite that, we desire to become domestic divas! Crafting has allowed us to create even though we may not have the built-in talent for it. This is where we begin our craftlaboration! This is our place to share our existing projects and get ideas from you all for some new ones! We promise to post it all...the loppy sided pajama pants, the "looks like my 3 year old painted it" doodads and the things that we actually get right!!


There's no perfection happening here...no trying to make it look like we've got it all together...this is a place to fail for fun!!

Monday, August 9, 2010

It begins!


It finally arrived last Friday morning! I've been exploring my inner craft for the last few months, mostly through mod-podge, and I have at last decided to cast off all my fear and plunge into the sewing. It was the longest week of my life waiting for my new machine to come. I got the Brother cs6000i. I chose that machine because it seemed to be an economical option that still had some great features for a beginner. It comes with several great frustration-savers with the automatic needle threader and not making me have to pull up the bottom thread (can you tell that I don't know sewing jargon yet?). The instruction manual was a bit daunting (14 pages to show me how to thread the thing), but it only took about 10 minutes to wind the bobbin and get it threaded for the first time. I'm sure that going forward that will end up being super quick, but I'm a cautious perfectionist, so I'd rather try and take an extra minute or two to make sure I do it right the first time.

As the the newest sewing machine owner at craftlaboration, I'm several months behind in my skills, but hopefully I'll catch up quickly! I've been pouring my additional funds into some cheapie fabric pieces and some starting notions this weekend, so I'm all ready to start rocking! I've got quite a few great starter ideas from several of my favorite blogs, so over the next few weeks I'll be focusing on some pictures and tutorials from those. If you have some easy/great/modern ideas for beginning sewing, please link them up here. If you're starting yourself please check back and hopefully we can share and learn from each other!