Thompson Family-Life

adventures in peyote beadwork with perler beads

I've been interested in doing some beadwork since last year when I proclaimed my Summer Crafty To-Do list, but as you know, I never got around to it! But when I saw this on one of my favorite blogs, Minieco, I knew I needed to try it. I LOVE the look of Perler beads (also known as Hama beads)... they just look like candy to me. They are also large-ish and I'd much rather work with larger beads than tiny sead beads.

I was also hugely inspired by these vintage beaded baskets that Elisabeth Dunker blogged a while back. What an incredible collection! I've searched high and low for these online and I can't find any. They were popular in Sweden in the 70's.

I also can't seem to find any patterns for making the baskets. I'm hoping one day I can figure something out on my own.

I searched online for some peyote patterns and stumbled onto this one (of which I tweaked a little). As you can see, butterflies seem to be popping up in my work a lot. While this one seems much more 70's, these below have a much more 60's feel to me with the colors and shape. I handpicked the individual bead colors on Amazon instead of buying one of those big containers at the craft store. I didn't want to have a lot of leftover colors I didn't want to use. I bought these in lots of 1,000.

It's a bit tricky starting out, but once you get past the first few rows, it goes easily. I completed this over a few nights of watching the first season of Game of Thrones. : )

I'm going to look for a small cylindrical vase or candle holder of some kind to wrap it around like she did on Minieco. I want to make something even larger at some point - trying to figure out what I want to do next.

If you'd like to try out peyote beading, you can check out this and this tutorial. I used the second one and it's very helpful. And you don't need a loom to do it!

Do you like doing beadwork? Any fun projects you want to share?

*55 Days of Vintage Christmas* - Wall Hanging Craft Sneak Peek

Wow, that Thanksgiving holiday really has me behind. What about you?

I had grand plans of having a super-duper-awesome Vintage Christmas post for you today, but I told myself I had to clean my house first and yeah... that took me all day. And what I wanted to post is taking me for-e-vah - so many photos to edit! But the good news is, it will be well worth the wait. I took photos at one of the most amaaazing vintage shops in Memphis while visiting family this past week - Flashback. I go to this shop every time we go to Memphis and I finally emailed the owner and got permission to take photos. This place is especially amazing at Christmas time and lucky me, she had all the decorations up the day after Thanksgiving.

The photo above is what I worked on while Ethan and I spent two days at a State Park cabin right outside of Memphis. It was pure bliss! We stayed in, had a fire going (and made s'mores of course), watched Auntie Mame (quickly becoming one of my all time favorite movies), Homeland (HOLY smokes, this show is SO GOOD - and I'm happy I get to watch my high school girl crush Claire Danes) and also the new season of Dexter. My parents watched the kiddos while we were at the cabin. (YES.) 

Can't wait to show you the finished wall hanging. It's come quite a long way from the photo above. It has been one of the most enjoyable craft projects I've worked on in a while.

More soon!

P.S. In case you missed them, some more of my posts over at the Lucky Kids Blog went live last week. You can see those here.

It's a Work in Progress - Holiday Crafting (& giveaway winner!)

I found some time to work on some holiday decor ideas last night. (Tutorials to come.)

Making me happy:

jewel tones

the textures of velvet and suede fabric covered buttons!

pinwheel shapes

the textures, patterns and colors of vintage polyester

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I have a giveaway winner for the Midwest Maude Giveaway! Sorry for my delay on this!:

Yay! I'll be in touch, knitxcore! :D

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I posted this weekend for my *55 Days of Vintage Christmas* series. Click here and here if you missed them!

Hope you had a lovely weekend!

bedspread progress, online yard sale & bicycle love

I was feeling very good about my progress on this project until I saw there were only six and a half octagons in this photo. : ) BUT to my credit, they are BIG. Like 12 inches or so big? Maybe bigger? Anyhoo, I'm working my little fingers away when I can find the free time, so I'm happy with that. I heart these colors.

I F-I-N-A-L-L-Y got my bootie in gear with my Online Yard Sale! Something I've been wanting to do for soooo long. (sigh) I went back and forth on whether to do this or not. I've donated my fair share these past few months, but some things I just have a hard time taking to my local consignment store or charity store. Because I know folks like you might be interested in THESE things! (I mean, I can't imagine the average-Joe is going to get much excitement out of a Shinzi Katoh Bento Box.) ; )

These online sales are a lot of work, but they're also a lot of fun! I'm enjoying curating a shop full of odds and ends that I've collected over the years, but I just don't have use for any longer (or I didn't use them in the first place! Many items are brand new.) Just pretend that you're driving around on a Saturday afternoon hitting up all of the Yard Sales you see - but this time you don't have to set foot in your car.

Just wake up, keep your jammies on and shop.

With the holidays coming up, these are a great way to save some money, and get a head-start on your shopping.

Here's a sneak peek:

I hope to have my first "round" of items up for sale by the end of this week. There's a lot to list so I'm going to do it in 2 or 3 parts.

Lastly, I got a new bike this weekend! This is something I've wanted to invest in for a couple years now. The boys have bikes, but I didn't. I'm looking forward to getting off my lazy butt and excercise a little. And also those bike rides at the beach every summer.

We bought this one at our local bike shop and it's technically a men's bike. But the style is sort of in between a boy and girl style (from what the sales person said). I liked it more than the other retro style Schwinn's for women. It felt a bit more substantial I guess? And I love the color - it's a pretty caramel color, a color I can live with for a long time. I already started browsing the interwebs for crochet patterns for my wheels and my seat. I hope to add some color that way! There are so many fabulous accessories now for women and their bikes, I can't wait to start adding to my wish list.

I love this crochet wheel cover pattern so much! It's in Dutch though. :*( I would pay or trade with anyone that could translate this for me! I know the terminology can be tricky when translating. Anyone??

Here are some patterns from Ravelry (with English version!):

And some cute bike seat covers:

heart pattern

stripey pattern

Do you have any fun bike accessory links? Please share!

Vintage Craft: Vintage Bedspread Crochet Pattern

I started this last week and I'm just loving this project! It's a pattern from a vintage booklet called "Current Attractions: Flowers, Pillows, Gifts, Fashions", Star Book No. 214.

I'm alway a bit hesitant when it comes to Vintage Patterns because you just don't know how easy they're going to be to follow, but this one has been super easy. It will be a bedspread for our bed (unfortunately my beautiful quilt needs to be repaired because one certain vintage sheet that was used was a bit TOO vintage, and everywhere that sheet was used, it has torn and the inside batting is coming out. :(

The octagons are pretty big and they are working up so fast with the bulky yarn I'm using. I'm thrilled about that. Because the idea of making a bedspread for a king sized bed sounded a bit daunting to me! But with the way these are going, it's not going to be bad at all and I think it's something I'll actually finish because I really love how they are looking and I'm enjoying working on it. (because who wants to work on a project that you aren't enjoying? I have a lot of unfinished projects because of that.)

I bought all my yarn from Joann's. This is the first time I've committed to a crochet project using the more ecomonomical yarns. I usually use nicer yarns (i.e. more expensive!) because I worry about how these cheaper yarns hold up, and the feel of the yarn is very important to me, since it touches your skin. And not that I'm a yarn snob, I just feel that if you're going to put hours of time, effort and love into these projects, you want them to hold up and be made of good quality materials.

I've never worked with bulky yarn, so I wasn't quite sure what to use! A lot of people on Twitter suggested some brands at the craft store, so I checked them out! I knew this project would take a lot of yarn (which could mean lots of $$$), but I wasn't too worried about the FEEL of the yarn because I knew it wouldn't be touching our skin, but rather lying on top of the bed sheet. I ended up going with several different brands and most of them feel pretty nice! And they look really pretty, too. And I was happy with the colors I found. I went with many different colors, mostly different hues of similar colors. Nothing too bright, but more subdued. 

The brands I went with:

Lion Brand Vanna's Choice Baby, Lion Brand Vanna's Colors, Paton's Beehive Baby Chunky (this yarn is really pretty to look at and so soft!) and Sensations Rainbow Classic (I'm still not sold on this. It comes in a GIANT skein and the feel is soft but looks not of the best quality.. we'll see how it does). All are acrylic (maybe an acrylic blend in there?) because I don't do well with wool. I also don't love the feel and look of it at times.

Some of the brands are actually not "bulky" weight, but they were thicker than a typical Worsted Weight (although they are marked as that weight!) and only slightly smaller than bulky weight. It is working out fine.

So needless to say, I'm a new fan of bulky weight yarn. They work up FAST. I love making the little flowers in the octagon centers, made of popcorn stitches! I LOVE the pompom fringe on the pattern (you can see it in the pattern photo above), but I'm not sure I want to make pompoms (not something I enjoy). And mine tend to come apart if overused. So I'm thinking of trying a premade pompom fringe (probably vintage) and working it into my crochet.

We've been watching a lot of Buffy (this is our first watching of the series, we're watching Season 6 and I'm just D-Y-I-N-G for Buffy & Spike to get together.. don't tell me!) and the new season of Fringe and I crochet while we watch. It's a great combo.

Hope you had a nice weekend! Are there any Bulky yarn brands that you like? Did you start any fun craft projects? Link me up! I'd love to see. : ) If you used a vintage pattern, please post your projects to my Vintage Craft Flickr group!

Also, I added this in my lefthand sidebar a few weeks ago. Be sure to check it out if you'd like to follow me at one of these places. Thanks!