I am so excited!

I have finally made an Etsy store! I finally got my first listing on it today! Sadly, there is only the one, but that's okay because soon there will be more! Hopefully. And hopefully other people will like them just as much as I do.

Here is what I listed! Except the paper in her tummy has yet to be cut out in this picture. I really like the way it turned out and I hope other people do too!

I still have some work I need to do on the listing to make it more searchable, but that is neither here nor there. Bottom line is that I'm excited!

I do have some ideas in the works for photo frames that aren't sonogram-related, so we'll see how that goes!

Sonogram Frame the Third

I was invited to another baby shower a few days ago, and I decided to make another sonogram frame like this one I made for my friend Emily, and this one that I made for myself.

I really enjoy making these things. I think they will be my go-to baby shower gift from now on. I like how I can personalize them too.

For instance, my friend Amanda already has a boy-child, so I put him into the frame too. Well, I guess I'll show the picture and you can see for yourselves.

It's a little different, and I'm not sure how much I like her leg sticking out there, but I'm not sure what else to do with it. Something I ought to think about if I make another like this. The frame is something Gary whipped up with leftovers from another frame he made for a piece of art we have had lying around for ages. I think the dark stain (I sanded and stained it myself!) makes the pink pop extra-well. I think I also need to work in my writing.

I think she'll like it though, and that's really what matters right?

Edit 8/17:

Never mind. I decided that I didn't like it after all, so I redid it.  I didn't have another sheet of paper the same color though, so I used orange instead of purple. I think I like the color better anyway. Here is what it looks like now:

I think it's a good change.

A Couple More Picture Frames

So, I liked the sonogram frame that I made for my friend Emily so much, that I made one for me too! It looks much different, and I wrote something different on it as well. I think I actually misquoted the saying (I don't know who to attribute it to...) but it's just for me so it doesn't really matter. This is what mine looks like:

The lettering could definitely use some work.  This one looks more like me. I probably actually was that huge!

I also wanted to make a frame like this for my sister's wedding gift, so I made a prototype with one of our wedding pictures. It's good I made one for us first, because there are a couple things I'll probably change for my sister's. The quote is by Robert Fulghum, and is apparently often mis-attributed to Dr. Seuss. Who knew? I think it applies to many couples though. I just printed the quote on regular printer paper, because this is only a prototype after all. I might reprint it on good cardstock sometime later, but for now I think it looks good enough for us. Gary says he likes it very very much.

We aren't as cute as Peri-fetus.

I want to use paper that has my sister's wedding colors, and I want it to have more embellishments. Ribbons and buttons and such. I'm not really good at that kind of thing though, so I think I'll enlist the help of a gal I know in my ward who is really good at scrap booking. I'm also not sure I dig the layout of the rings. It works good with this picture because the picture I used is oriented that way, but I might make it so that Sarah can use two pictures that don't necessarily have anything to do with each other. They also have children already, so I was thinking of perhaps doing a "Family is Forever" sort of theme with another picture frame.

So many ideas popping up all of a sudden. I was thinking of doing more of these sort of frames with special moments for Peri and the like, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. I guess as occasions pop up, I'll have brainstorming to do!

Baby Shower!

So today is my friend Emily's baby shower! She liked how we did our baby shower so much, she decided to also do a Baby-Q. It's family friendly that way. Husbands get to come if they want!

Anyway I was trying to think all week what we should get them for a gift, and I just couldn't for the life of me think of anything.... Until I saw this:

Bonnie Marcus Collection

And I thought, "That would be perfect!" But I wasn't going to buy one, especially not for $20 (not because Emily isn't worth $20, but because we're poor, and I can't justify that kind of money for a 5x7 frame, even if some of the proceeds go to breast cancer research). And even if I wanted to buy it, it wouldn't arrive in time for the shower (I found this yesterday). So what's a girl to do but make her own? And I did, after a trip to Michael's for a paper pack that Gary's mom let us know was half off this weekend! Score!

And this is what she looks like:

What do you think? Is it as good as the original?

I really like how she turned out. I drew the silhouette and cut her out with an X-acto knife all by myself! I thought that was going to be hard, but it turned out to be pretty easy since Gary was also nice enough to get new sharp blades for my knife. I wanted to make her look more like Emily, but I totally failed in that regard. And Emily definitely isn't that huge! Can you imagine?

And because a photo frame wasn't enough for me, we got them some things to do while they wait to have their baby when the time comes. I found early labor to be pretty boring, so having some of these things would have been awesome!

Finally, thanks Elaine for telling us about the paper sale! I'm pretty jazzed about using my new paper in other projects!

(Update 1/18/2014: I've made some new ones and posted them to my Etsy store!)