Drapes Of Wrath

Something wicked this way comes..

2014-09-29T19:16:00.000-07:00

I know it's a little early, but the spirit of Halloween is already around us, and October is only two days away. To celebrate here are a few early Halloween treasuries we've been featured in.

This treasury from Bijoux Libellule has a purple theme for spooky goods.

Another collection from Creations of True Fairy has more of the classic orange and black.

Last but not least this gathering by 2Sophisticated is delightfully wicked.

PAX Prime 2014 Cosplay

2014-09-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

We spent the last four months creating our cosplay of Bittersweet Lulu and Wicked Lulue from Lague of Legends to attend PAX Prime this year in style. Since Cami and I were both in full costume, we didn't get many pictures of other cosplayers, but here are the few pictures we did get.

Our Wicked Lulu and Bittersweet Lulu with another Classic Lulu.

A view of the League of Legends 2014 NA LCS Summer Playoffs.

We loved this cross-play of Classic Thresh.

League of Legends 2014 NA LCS Summer Playoffs

This amazing Blackthorne Morgana is by Tiger Tessa Cosplay

A crochet Yoshi from SmallRiniLady being ridden by Luigi.

Incredible Nidalee cosplay in human and cougar form by Puppichu Cosplay

We'll be posting about the making of our costumes over the next couple weeks. We had a blast! If anyone has pictures of our cosplay feel free to email them to DrapesOfWrathAprons@gmail.com and if you know someone in the pictures above that isn't credited please let us know!

Artist Spotlight: Upton Elm

2014-03-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

Where can we find you online? (Facebook, twitter, shop etc.)
My main outlet for sales is on Etsy which is a great website for finding unique and beautiful creations. Follow this link to find my shop which is called UptonElm.

I can also be found on Facebook. I have just begun working on this site.

Please introduce yourself, what lead you to begin creating?
My name is Mary Fitch. I am a transplanted Canadian, married and living in Auburn WA. I wear a "few different hats" every day. I have been a Pharmacy Technician for 18 years, Mama of 3 kids beginning eight years ago and business owner for 4 months. Since childhood I have watched my Mum sew and knit and I quickly learned from her. I have made my signature item, the "Barley Buddy" for almost 20 years now. Many, many times I was encouraged by friends and family to market my work as they loved it and figured it would sell. I have never had the courage to try until recently. Once I found a name for my shop (Upton was my Grandma's maiden name and Elm is my street) then I began in earnest to produce and sell. I find sewing pretty relaxing and jokingly call it my "therapy" after a long day doing other work. Since it's not my main income I am grateful to be able to donate portions of my profits to charity.

Who in your life has been the biggest inspiration to your work?
My Mum. She will soon be 83 and she still spends many hours at her sewing machine. She also donates her time and sewing projects that she has created to a small non-profit shop in her local town. May she continue to have the energy and the eyesight to keep it up!!

What is your favorite medium to work with/favorite technique to use?
I use fabrics of all types. I have also done some painting and ceramics in the past but my current favorite is
fabric. Transforming something from a flat piece of fabric is great fun!

What do you hope to accomplish through your work?
I opened my business with a specific goal. Since I love to sew and create I wanted to use my talents to create items that I can sell and to use the profits from the sales to donate to charities of my choice.

Which item currently listed in your shop/in your collection is your favorite and why?

Seahawks Barley Buddy

My favorite is the Seahawks Barley Buddy. For a Seattleite that is a pretty clear choice at this point!!! GO HAWKS! Of course.
However all the Barley Buddies are my favorites as they have been what got me going in this business. Another favorite is this Original Barley Buddy in the Diamond pattern. I love it.

What fellow artist(s) have you been impressed by recently?
I have a friend, Emily, who is really into knitting. I like to knit but I know only the basics and I haven’t been able to learn the detailed work that she and her mom Laurie can do. Maybe one day I will learn it too. She has a site on Etsy that she has just begun and she sells the Cowl Scarves that are known from the Hunger Games movies. She can be found at KreativCrafts on Etsy.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist?

Barley Buddy in Diamond Pattern

“Work to make it nice and what people will like but be sure to make it yours." Don’t be afraid to make something different.

What are you plans for the future of your shop/work?
We are working on getting our items onto Amazon.com to sell. I am excited about that venture as it will hopefully bring us more customers and also a broader group of people to sell to. Etsy.com is great but a lot of people don’t even know that it exists. We want to grow but of course still keep it handmade!!

Artist Spotlight: Om Is Where The Heart Is + Giveaway!

2013-08-23T16:17:00.004-07:00

To kick off my return to the active blogging world I figured I'd start out with a new Artist Spotlight feature, complete with giveaway (details below). This feature is of a friend and colleague of mine Lauren Belleza. She runs an Etsy shop called Om Is Where the Heart Is and you like her shop on Facebook.

Please introduce yourself, what lead you to begin creating?

Lauren and her son Orion

My name is Lauren Belleza. I have always enjoyed working with my hands. When my son was born five years ago I decided to open an Etsy shop and begin creating! I put the proceeds into his college fund. Then I realized I could also use half to fund whatever charity I felt like donating to at the time! I get to save, create and help others all at the same time!!

Who in your life has been the biggest inspiration to your work?
My husband since he has been completely supportive since day one. No matter how many times he trips over my sewing machine cord or picks up extra beads off the floor he always is excited for every order I get:)

Custom Hand Stamped Necklace

What is your favorite medium to work with/favorite technique to use?
I love metal stamping. It's so fun to create one of a kind works.

What do you hope to accomplish through your work?
I hope to save a little for my son and at the same time be able to contribute to charities close to my heart.

Which item currently listed in your shop/in your collection is your favorite and why?

Handcuff-ed

I love all of my items. Each and every one is made with love, truly. Each piece has a little part of my heart in it. If I had to pick I think I'd say the "50 shades" pendants. They are so risqué but at the same time so sweet and such a great layering piece.

What fellow artist(s) have you been impressed by recently?
I love several Etsy artists. I love that they create for individuals. A few of my faves is Karina Grace, Zenned Out and Drapes of Wrath. :)

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist?
Create what you would actually use or wear.

One of Lauren's recent charity causes
is building of an indoor skate ramp
at the local YMCA.

What are you plans for the future of your shop/work?
Just keep busy and remember to create things that I love. I'd like to always stay busy. I have a day job but my passion is with my creations. I'd love to do craft fairs in the future in the Seattle area.

Lauren's shop doesn't only feature jewelry either, she also crafts comfy tank tops from up-cycled tee-shirts and infinity scarves with bright pops of color. Here in the Pacific Northwest we need all the pops of color we can get in all that grey weather.

Not only is she giving away a necklace to one lucky reader, she's giving away the one-on-one experience of crafting a one of a kind custom designed piece just for you. Instructions on how to enter the giveaway are below the break.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

May Fabric Preview

2012-05-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

We spent Cinco de Mayo thrift store hopping for fun new fabrics for the end of spring. Here are a couple previews of what you can expect to see in our shop.

This is a fun vintage floral cotton in bright orange, mint green and lavender, paired with a remnant of lavender polka dot cotton.

Another great vintage print, forest green with white, red and yellow tulips paired with up-cycled royal blue and navy cotton.

Drapes of Wrath Hits 100 Sales!

2012-05-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

Today we hit 100 sales in our shop, and we just wanted to give a big thank you to all of our readers here. To all of our customers. To all of our friends and family who've been cheering us on.

To celebrate this milestone we're having a sale in our shop. You can use coupon code: 100SALES25OFF for 25% off all orders for the next week. April was a great month for us, at a record 13 sales, and what better way to start off the month of May than with a celebration! So share this with your friends and family. We appreciate you all so much.

Treat Yo Self!

2012-04-23T14:09:00.000-07:00

When we started Drapes of Wrath almost a year and a half ago, we had no idea we'd still be going at this point. It's an awesome feeling of pride and success. And all throughout that time we've been constantly striving to improve our workmanship, come up with fresh designs, and really put 110% into our work. Recently we finally broke down and admitted that if at least a third of the time you spend sewing an apron is spent ripping stitches because the bobbin jumped the track, or tried to eat the fabric, something has to change.

We'd outgrown our sewing machine, not that it hadn't served us well. But it had become like the grumpy old cat that crosses the whole linoleum kitchen to hock a hairball on the carpet out of spite.

Enter the Singer 160 Limited Edition sewing machine. We'd been eying it longingly for a month or so since it came out when it finally went on sale. The price was equivalent to our online shopping when the shipping cost isn't an issue, and we could take it home that very same day.

This was our Treat Yo Self moment, as you can tell we're big fans of Parks and Recreation, and we weren't about to let it slip away. We bought the machine, and after an unbearably long "instructional" session with the representative at the store, we brought it home.

This machine is a thing of beauty, both literally and figuratively, starting with the sleek black design with gold trim, reminiscent of the original singer machines. It has a large sewing area with a lot of room to move fabric around, which is invaluable when we're working on our suit aprons.

If it's physical beauty weren't enough of a selling point, this machine sews like a dream. It's incredibly smooth and rarely steps out of line. While it's not a super robotic embroidering machine, it had a wide selection of stitches that more than meet our needs. All of which can be easily switched to, or adjusted with the touch screen panel.

We've actually had it for a while now, but honestly we've been to busy playing with it to stop and take photos for the post. We even got a special attachment used for ruffling and pleating. My personal favorite function is one of the decorative stitches which makes a little vine pattern with leaves. It adds a cute and fun touch, and is no more difficult that sewing a straight line.

When it comes down to it, we're not only treating ourselves, we're treating all of our customers. When you have good tools that make your work easier, and more enjoyable, the quality improves as well. We've been able to create high quality pieces that we are more than proud of as we head into the uncharted waters of internet small business.

Portland Iron Chef Apron: Put A Bird On It

2012-03-26T14:51:00.000-07:00

We recently were invited, through the Pacific Northwest Artisans Team on Etsy, to participate in a silent auction in Portland, OR. The auction will be held at the 11th Annual Portland's Original Iron Chef event, benefiting Children's Relief Nursery. We were drawn to this event initially because, being from Oregon, we like to give back to our home state. But also, how perfect an opportunity to give an apron up for auction at a cooking event!

All of the fabric used on this apron is up-cycled, with the exception of the heat resistant batting used in the potholders. We wanted to keep the design simple and size-friendly, but we still wanted to add a touch of personality. For this we were inspired by a skit from the show Portlandia, where a couple take over an entire shop in Portland putting birds on everything. We finished off the theme by making the potholders egg shaped.

The event is Friday April, 20th and we can't wait to hopefully see some pictures of the event and maybe even hear from the winner of our apron. Did you see that apron before? I didn't. Now it has a bird on it!

Mandy's Bytes: Dulce de Platanos

2012-03-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

Today's recipe post stems from our new project on YouTube, You Can't Handle the Fruit! in which we try various fruits and veggies that may be intimidating because of their appearance or just fear of the unknown. After our first video featuring dragon fruit, we got a request for plantains. Since plantains need to be cooked we decided to use this recipe for Dulce de Platanos from Epicurious.

Dulce de Platanos
(Sweet Plantains in Buttered Rum and Coconut Sauce)
2 very ripe (brown to black) plantains
1/2 stick of butter
2 Tbsp dark rum
1/2 unsweetened coconut milk
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup heavy cream
First cut the ends off the plantain and peel them, then slice into diagonal slices, unfortunately for our dish the plantains we found were no where near as ripe as they should have been.

Start by melting the butter in a large skillet, the recipe says to warm the butter until the "foam subsides." We weren't really sure what that meant at first but, sure enough, the butter got foamy. And then it subsided. The butter was also just starting to brown, this is when you want to add the slices of plantain.
The slices need to cook in the butter on each side for about 3 minutes. Make sure not to crowd them too much in the pan, we used a nice big 12" skillet. After 3 minutes flip them over to cook on the other side. One they are done cooking use a slotted spoon or spatula to scoop them out onto a plate.

Save the butter, you'll be using that next. Add the sugar to the pan with what's left of the butter and stir until it caramelizes, this will take at least 5 minutes. While this is in progress, combine the coconut milk and rum in a small saucepan and heat until warm. You'll be able to smell the alcohol cooking off.
Once the sugar is fully caramelized, remove the skillet from the heat. Pour in the coconut milk mixture and whisk continuously, the caramel with bubble and produce a lot of steam, so don't let it take you by surprise. Return the pan to low heat and keep whisking until the caramel has dissolved in the coconut mixture.
After the caramel has dissolved again, return the plantain slices to the skillet and cook, without stirring for another 5 minutes until they are warm all the way through and become tender. (Since our plantains weren't ripe, so they never really got tender, which was very disappointing.) In the saucepan not heat up the heavy cream until warm.

Once the plantain slices are tender, drizzle the warm cream over the skillet and shake to mix the cream into the caramel sauce. Then let it all cool, and serve over vanilla ice cream.

You can see our You Can't Handle the Fruit! video review of plantains on our YouTube Channel.

Spring Fling Fabric Preview

2012-03-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since we showed off any of the awesome fabrics in our stash (which is waay to big at the moment), so while were were picking out things we want to use for spring time we took some pictures to share.

We just found these floral vintage linens at the Goodwill in Monroe the other day and fell in love with them. We happened to have the perfect green in stock, also up-cycled from linens.

We've been holding onto this adorable bunny print until it got closer to Easter time.

Of course we couldn't do spring without a bunch of beautiful floral prints, this one has a gorgeous deep red that matched a maroon linen we had left over from a custom order.

This is a piece of vintage fabric that was a gift from a friend. I love these vintage floral prints that are so delicate and the combination of yellow, black and blue is very unique.

Lastly this find was so awesome, also from our trip to the Goodwill in Monroe, we bought an entire queen sized vintage white sheet just for this floral edging. Fabric hunting is easily half the fun of running our shop, it's so hard not to keep it all for our own devices. Keep an eye out for these to show up in the shop!

New Thank You Cards

2012-02-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

From the time we started our shop, we've gone through many different ideas and techniques for our care tags and Thank You notes. Most of the time we would just grab blank card, or use a fancy card-stock page for the care tag and thank you note. But none of these looked very polished or professional. The one technique we feel really fits our style is using stamps. So when we saw a large stamp at the store which had Thank You in many different large and small typewriter style fonts, we knew it was perfect.

It matched our logo font of a typewriter style, and was just the right size for a small card. Our original plan was to use a neutral card stock with the Thank You stamp and then paste on a cut out of a bright color with our logo in the front. But as we made the cards, placing our name stamp at the bottom, they looked so crisp and nice that we decided to trust our gut and keep it simple.

Once we decided that, we realized that now we had a huge package of bright colorful cardstock that we no longer had the intended purpose for. But as the saying goes, go big or go home. We made cards of every color in addition to the neutral toned cards.

In the end the grand total came out to 76 cards, each having been stamped three times, for a total of 228 stampings. But the end result was well worth it, I love the way our cards turned out and I will feel proud using them knowing that they were made in anticipation that they will all be used.

No longer will we wait for an order to come in before making a care tag and a card as an after thought, as though we weren't really sure another sale would happen. It's time we started acting with the confidence and assurance that all of our 82 sales have shown us: we make things that people want to buy, and we should be proud of it.

So keep an eye out for one of these cards in your next order, because they were made by hand with the care and appreciation we feel towards all of our customers.

Giveaway Winner!

2012-01-24T22:37:00.001-08:00

Congratulations to our giveaway winner Kate S.!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Artist Spotlight: Sharon Swanson Glass + Giveaway!

2012-01-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

Our featured artist this week is Sharon Swanson of Swanson Glass Designs. You can see here work on her website here or her Facebook page.

Please introduce yourself, what lead you to begin creating?
I am a stained glass artist working in the beautiful Pacific Northwest in Blaine Washington. Ever since I could hold a crayon I have been involved with one form of art. Over the years I have jumped from different art medias, but finally ended up with stained glass and stuck with it.

Sharon in her studio.

What drew me to it was how beautiful glass can be. It can look one way with the light in front and look another color with the light behind. The colors are also endless. I have had the pleasure of working with glass for over 10 years now, starting out making items for friends and selling at local craft fairs. I now sell wholesale to a few stores in our area, create commission work, participate in adjudicated art events, and donate to local causes.

Who in your life has been the biggest inspiration to your work?
It isn't a specific person, but a manufacturing process. Years ago, I went to the local, Spectrum Glass factory to see how glass was made. They only opened up for tours a few times a year. They showed us the process from what ingredients they added to silica to make specific colors to the final glass sheets cooling on the conveyor belt. I was hooked! I now go a few time a year to Bullseye in Portland to handpick funky and interesting sheets of glass.

What is your favorite medium to work with/favorite technique to use?
Favorite medium? Stained Glass of course! It is timeless. It is just metal and glass put together to creative something that will last forever. I purchased a kiln a few years ago to try glass fusing, but I when back to stained glass. It is so rewarding, when you hold you project up to the light for the first time after working on it for days and see the light shining through it...magical!

Copper Foil Technique

I prefer the copper foil technique, the method made popular by L.C. Tiffany at the turn of the century. It involves wrapping the pieces of glass with copper foil and soldering them together along the length of the seams. This method can be used as an alternative to lead to make the window art lighter for hanging. It is also much stronger than lead when soldered, needs no putty, is waterproof, and allows me to make intricately detailed projects where the bulky look and weight of lead would detract from the aesthetics of a delicate design.

What do you hope to accomplish through your work?
My lifelong goal is to do stained glass as my full time occupation and not rely other jobs to supplement my income. But when I look back, I noticed that by working so many hours with a job and my second job (stained glass) I had very little time for housework. The kids did their own laundry and my husband cooked and cleaned, so I really accomplished my important goal already...no housework!

Which item currently listed in your shop is your favorite and why?
My favorite items in my shop are the pendants. When I sell them at art fairs, peoples reactions are fun to see. They are just simple colored jewelry but people always look for their favorite color.

Melted Marble Jewelry

What fellow artist(s) have you been impressed by recently?
Kristi Thorndike-Kent, from Glassworks Northwest on Etsy. We meet once and a while at local art events and she is always so friendly and helpful. That is tough to do when everywhere you turn, more glass fusers are popping up! She just keeps producing high quality art and her sales keep coming in. I am impressed with her commitment to only puts items out for sale that are perfect and not stress about the rest.

A piece inspired by the Pacific ocean.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist?
Believe in the quality of your work and persevere.

What are you plans for the future of your shop/work?
I am planning to focus on larger stained glass works. I usually produce items that I know are consistent sellers and do not set aside design time. It is difficult to do when you are busy or always behind in production. This year I plan to do it.

Sharon has been so kind as to offer one of her lovely pendants up to one of our readers. You can find out how to enter below the break.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Love is in the Air

2012-01-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

Now that everyone has settled in to the new year, the beautiful reds, pink, and purples of Valentine's Day have started to seep into the Etsy scene and filling it with romantic hues. 'Tis the season to celebrate love, even if you're single and only celebrating your love of cooking. We wanted to share a few of the lovely treasuries our Valentine's aprons have been featured in this week.

This treasury highlights the rich, modern color combination of red, white and black.

I think everyone can relate to the theme of this treasury: "How Come You Don't Call Me?" We've all been there, amirite?

And last but not least this gorgeous collection features vibrant pinks and purples. We've got a couple new Artist Spotlights lined up soon, and we'll also be having a Goodwill to Good Lookin': Valentine's edition as well.

Holidays are over! We made it out alive!

2012-01-07T17:37:00.000-08:00

You may have wondered where the Drapes Girls have been since Turkey day, and now that we have made it over the river and thru the woods, we are ready to share!
The holidays are always a hecktic and dreamlike adventure for us, between working out the logistics of aligning 3 healthcare worker's schedules and making the grand trek to Oregon, Christmas often leaves us exhausted and barely willing to get out of bed let alone blog.

This year we wanted to support only local artists in our gift giving and receiving- so here are some of the presents we gently nudged our parents towards and are now happily enjoying.

Necklace by TwistedSister Arts

Buttons By TessaAnn

Necklace By BethStone Studio

Wrap by SandMaiden

Rather than eat a simple meal and enjoy the afternoon relaxing it has always been a family tradition of ours to
1. Go shopping at the worst possible moment (christmas eve day)
2. Make an overly complicated dish and

3. Amass such a rediculous mess in our parents small kitchen that it takes the majority of our holiday energy to clean it up!
This year it was: Aebleskivers! Nothing like tiny fried danish pancakes to start that holiday 15lbs off in the right direction! We filled ours with a variety of things including; mozzarella, tomato and basil, fig and goat cheese, and lemon curd!

Even with all the work and driving about, we are proud to announce that it was a wonderful and joy-filled Christmas for all, brought to us mainly by the Mommy and Daddy Drapes pictured below~

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-23T19:55:00.001-08:00

Originally at the beginning of November I had planned to do a whole Mandy's Bytes series of Thanksgiving recipes but here we are, tomorrow is thanksgiving, and I procrastinated too long. This weekend I may do a late Thanksgiving edition when we go home to Oregon for our celebration. For now though I have a few beautiful Thanksgiving treasuries that our aprons have been featured in.

This first treasury is my personal favorite because it showcases the cooking side of Thanksgiving dinner, and the title is so appropriate. I'm never dined out for Thanksgiving, and I don't plan to start anytime soon.
Our That 70's Apron was featured in this treasury which has a primitive feel well suited for Thanksgiving.
Lastly we were featured in this bright treasury which embodies the warmth of the Thanksgiving and the whole holiday season.

As for us, Cami and I are very thankful for all of your followers, and for the success we've had since starting this shop over a year ago. Without the support of all our family, friends, customers and followers we certainly wouldn't have made it so far with this blog and our shop. Happy Thanksgiving!

Drapes of Wrath See TMBG and Jonathan Coulton!

2011-11-15T12:42:00.001-08:00

So you might have taken a hint from our Guide to PAX that we're nerds, it's not really a secret, but I hasn't come up too much here on our blog, but I hope you're ready for a little more nerdity. Last week Cami and I saw Jonathan Coulton and They Might Be Giants and the Showbox SoDo, and it was amazing! Apologies for the low quality cell phone pictures.

Jonathan Coulton at the Showbox SoDo

Jonathan Coulton was the opener for TMBG and he was fantastic, in fact I wished he'd played a few more songs, but hey that's how it goes with openers right?

If you play video games you might know who Johnaton Coulton is, he's probably most well known for writing Still Alive, the song written for the ending credits of Portal. He's also the mastermind behind the song Code Monkey, and my favorite (which didn't get played at the show) Re: Your Brains which is a song in business letter form from a zombie to his former coworker who is still human. Strangely enough Jonathan Coulton was at PAX too, but there was a million mile line to meet him.

John and John at the Showbox SoDo

However, the main event of the evening was our favorite nerd rock back of all time, They Might Be Giants.
Thier music pops up in the most unlikely of places such as the theme song for Malcom in the Middle, Tim Burton's Coraline, and 2 well-knows songs from Tiny Toons; Istanbul and Particle Man (currently under the tyrannical oppression of YouTube, hence no animated version...)
However, of our favorite songs we were lucky enough to hear "Why does the Sun shine?" and Ana Ng. Sadly "They'll Need a Crane" was not on the set list.

RIGHT BEFORE WE TOUCHED EET!

Of the newer songs our favorites were "Marty Beller Mask" (their new drummer truly looks like he is having a seizure while he is playing!) and "You probably get that a lot". The pièce de résistance was getting to touch Flansburgh's guitar (for the 2nd time!). This is a good time to note that John Flansburgh, at 51 years old and weighing what appears to be as much as Cami and I put together has hands DOWN more hippity-hops on stage than most 18 year olds. Additionally, John Linnell age 52, even with his crooked teeth and mismatched ears is still as cute as he was in their videos from the 80's - a fact that we attribute to his intense eye contact with everyone within about 10 feet of his keyboard (because he is more or less blind without his glasses. We are all amorphous blobs to him).

One last shot of two very happy girls, status post BO assault by a bunch of sweaty, middle-aged nerds! NO REGRETS!

Drapes of Wrath is One Year Old!!

2011-11-13T09:42:00.001-08:00

That's right! Today is Drapes of Wrath's one year shop opening anniversary, and to celebrate not only am I going to share some of our memories here, we are having a sale! There are two ways you can get your savings, use coupon code: ONEYEAR10 for 10% of your entire purchase -OR- use coupon code: 1YEARFREESHIP for free shipping within the USA.

Looking back I can hardly believe it's been a whole year since we decided start our shop. And the precise moment we decided to sell aprons specifically evades me, but here we are so we must have done something right. I thought we'd look back on some firsts from our year.

It seems fitting to begin with the first apron we ever made. We knew from the start that we wanted to do at least a fair portion of our aprons with up-cycles materials. This apron we made from a pretty Hawaiian style shirt and wrap skirt set. The embroidery was gorgeous so that's what we brought to the forefront on this apron. We made it completely from the up-cycled set, no new materials at all. It's still one of my personal favorites. (And yes that is me modelling the apron, we didn't acquire a dress form for quite some time.)

Another milestone for us was our first sale, and oddly enough it was not on Etsy from our shop. When we first started out we also posted quite a few of our aprons, with links to the Etsy shop, on Craigslist in the Seattle area, and that's where our first sale originated. The best part is that I was able to get this picture, a lasting remembrance of the moment, because the apron was delivered in person. (Even if I do look incredibly short...) This apron meant a lot to me since the strawberry you can see on the pocket was hand embroidered by yours truly.

Unfortunately not all of our memories can be positive, in the world of the online sales there will always be problems. This apron represents our first real test of customer service, it is our first casualty of the United States Postal Service. It was shipped and then marked delivered, and weeks after we come to hear from the customer that it never arrived. We may never know what happened to it, but I just hope that someone out there is enjoying it. We've been lucky to have few problems like this one, but every mistake we've made has helped us to constantly improve our methods.

It has been a crazy year, and none of it would have been possible without our family, friends, fans and of course, our customers. Thank you Mom and Dad for teaching us how to sew and craft, and for drilling into our heads that what we can dream, we can accomplish. Thank you to all those who have lived with us and tolerated our cloth hoarding and constant sewing mess. Thank you to everyone out there who put your faith in our work by purchasing an apron for yourself or someone else. And especially thank you to every single one of you who reads this blog, or shares our aprons with your friends on Facebook, or told a friend of a friend where to find our shop, it is you guys that keep people coming to our shop.

Thank you so so much, and here's to many more years of aprons!

Goodwill to Good Lookin': Linen Scotch Broth Recipe Dishcloth

2011-11-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

Up until we found the linen calendar dish cloth that we made the That 70's Apron out of, I didn't really know that these linen decorative dish cloths were a pretty big thing. But they make such cool aprons that I've been keeping an eye out for them ever since. And I'll be honest, a lot of the ones I find are pretty hideous, like the one this one was paired with when I bought it (something to do with coffee), but I had to buy it to get this one, because this one is so damn cool.

I would have bought this based on colors alone, it so vibrant and fun. I went through a long punk/goth phase of fashion in high school, and my dad is very involved in genealogy (we're part Scottish), so I have a secret love for tartan plaid. And I don't know what it is about the veggies, but I love them, they're so cute.

For the process of making it into an apron, we wanted to preserve as much of the original design as possible, so any pleating or darts were out of the question. We went with a simple butcher style apron design, and added additional chartreuse linen around the skirt to make it more full.

Since we were adding this extra fabric, it was easy to do a simple pocket across the front, as I like to call it a kangaroo pocket (baby kangaroo not included). And because Cami has an obsession with ric rac, we added some around the edge of the dishcloth to give it a extra pop of color.


Plus Size Up-cycled Linen Dishcloth Apron

I love the way it turned out, and I'm glad we found a good match for our yellow linen, too, it's a very unique color but it compliments the blues and greens in this apron very well.

Goodwill to Good Lookin': Green Plaid Linens

2011-11-06T19:22:00.000-08:00

Todays Goodwill to Good Lookin' project is one that I'm really excited about. The up-cycled item is the green plaid shown in this photo, which is a top sheet that we picked up at a thrift shop.

We picked it out originally because the colors were very crisp and there was no fading evident, which is often the deal breaker on using up-cycled linens. That and because Cami's favorite color is green. The problem was, once we got it home, nothing else we had matched it. We've had this fabric for months, and we would never remember to bring a swatch with us to the store, and it clashed with everything!

Last week when we used our awesome coupon to stock up on fabric we got this awesome leaf print. On a whim I pulled out this green plaid just to see if it

Green Plaid & Fall Leaves Apron

might match and lo and behold it did! I was pretty surprised, it was a total coincidence, but it turned out looking great.

It's really nice to bring fresh inspiration to a piece of fabric that has been sitting around forever, when you've almost given up hope that you'll ever use it. We've got a couple new man aprons in the works, too and I'm excited about those. It's definitely been too long since we had one in the shop.

Do you have a piece of fabric or other supply that has you stumped? Tell us about it!

Fall Fabric Sneak Preview

2011-10-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Cami and I took a trip to the fabric store and got a killer deal stocking up for fall, thanksgiving, and of course Christmas goodies. I really love the color themes of fall and we got some very cute fabrics, and some basics to match vintage and up-cycled pieces we already had. We've got a lot of idea in mind and I'm really excited to get started bringing them to life. In the mean time, here's a little sneak peak of what you'll be seeing in our shop soon.

Up-cycled Green Plaid Linens and Retro Leaf Print Cotton

This leaf print is from the fabric store, and I was so thrilled when we got it back and realized that it matched these green plaid linens. We've had them sitting in our stores for quite a while now, and I was convinced we'd never find something that matched.

Vintage Turkey Trim, Cotton Leaf Print, and Burnt Orange Linen

We were given this awesome vintage turkey and pumpkin trim from our grandma last spring when we visited our family down in Florida, and I have been waiting to use it ever since.

Green Wrench Print and Black Canvas

I don't know if this really fits into fall themes, but I love this print and I think when it's finished it would made a good Christmas present.

Retro Leaf Print, Burnt Orange and Mustard Linen

We've had that mustard yellow linen hanging out for a while, too, like the green plaid, it just isn't easy to match. But if any season is perfect for mustard, it's fall and I love this combo of yellow, orange and the leaf print.

Keep an eye out in the Seasonal section of our shop for fall aprons, and you can still find out Halloween aprons there as well.

Sandwich Bag Freezer Smoothies

2011-10-24T19:03:00.000-07:00

I recently made a pretty exciting purchase while browsing the kitchen wares isle at Ross, there was a nice Black and Decker blender sitting there all alone, for just $15. In hindsight it seems a little strange that it took me so long to buy one, since they're so very useful. Naturally to celebrate the awesome blending opportunities I also bought a huge tub of plain yogurt and two big bags of frozen fruit for smoothies. On my first attempt I made almost an entire blender full of smoothie trying to balance fruit and milk and not kill my blender.

So I was very excited to find this idea via Pinterest for bags of smoothie goodies ready to just pop in the blender. Not only are these a perfect way to save time on preparation, you don't have to worry about yogurt and fresh produce going bad if you go smoothie-less for a week. The first step is to make yogurt cubes.

My boyfriend helped me out on this step with the genius idea to go piping-bag-style with the yogurt. So I dumped a huge tub into a quart freezer bag and snipped the end off to squeeze even amounts of yogurt into the ice cube trays. Stick these in the freezer and wait a few hours.

Originally I bought frozen strawberries and frozen peaches, because they were extremely cheap at Grocery Outlet. To these I added fresh bananas and kiwis and frozen blackberries, there's a world of possibilities out there.

It's not exactly easy to measure chopped and frozen fruit, but you want roughly 1 1/2 cups in each bag, and 3 yogurt cubes. Each bag is enough for two smoothies, just dump into a blender and add milk or juice until you reach the consistency you like.

I did combinations of blackberry-peach, strawberry-banana, and strawberry-kiwi. I even had one bag that ended up strawberry-blackberry-banana because I ran out of strawberries and bananas, but it was eaten right after I made it. It was clearly the weakest member of the herd.

This post in entered in the Pinterest Challenge: Round 3, you can vote for it here between Oct. 28th and Nov 3rd.

Where Have I Been, You Ask?

2011-10-22T12:16:00.000-07:00

Sick, still sick. As you may recall from about two weeks ago I mustered enough energy to make Apple Cake even though I was sick. I thought I was on the up and up, I made cake, so I must be getting better. Unfortunately as you may also recall from this post, I am a pediatric home health nurse. I work day shift, which means that every Wed-Fri I spend 7 hours in an elementary school (aka germ cesspool). As a result I have been feeling crappy for pretty much the last two weeks straight, even spiking a 100.4 fever. So I hope you can forgive me for not blogging.

Purple Chiffon Spiderweb Apron

Today I wanted to celebrate with you guys a little excitement, one of our Halloween aprons has been featured in three treasuries in the last two days! How cool is that?
This is an awesome collection of Whimsicle Halloweenery from the April's Army team.
I love this bunch of cool and creepy stuff, especially that bloody bowl, spooky!

This last one is just purple for the sake or purple, which is great, because I love purple!
I never get over the sense of flattery and what an ego boost it is that someone else, most times a total stranger, like our work enough to put it in a treasury. And maybe I should just take it as a compliment to my photography skills, but even that is a boost when I'm feel sick and congested. So thanks very much to everyone who's featured our work, it really means a lot.

Occasional Vintage: Hazel Hues

2011-10-10T17:39:00.000-07:00

Normally I would have titled this post a "Weekly Vintage" but then I realized that it's really not fair to call it weekly if I don't do it every week... None the less, here is my latest find for our vintage shop. When I saw these I had to get them, it's a set of 70's ceramic corn dishes.

Set of 4 Ceramic Corn Dishes

Genius! How have I never heard of this idea before? Perfect little plates just the right size for corn on the cob, and I'm always down for some 70's brown and cream glaze. These would be a great decoration item for Thanksgiving, even if you don't use them for some delicious corn on the cob, slathered in butter... mmmm.. But I digress, these lovely dishes were also featured in a beautiful treasury which highlight pretty much the only fall color we were missing: brown.
Another treasury with a harvest theme feature our Stalk of Wheat Mug. After living on a hazelnut orchard for 10 years, I still have lots of fond (and some not so much, heh) memories of harvest time, so I really like this one.
I still haven't decided on a Halloween costume for this year, but I've been doing a lot of inspiration searching on Etsy and Pinterest. We'll have more Halloween aprons coming out this week in our shop, including a few more sexy designs, I'm excited to get them posted. I'm also excited to go eat some more of the delicious apple cake I made yesterday. Who needs real food?

Mandy's Bytes: No Cinnamon Apple Cake

2011-10-09T18:38:00.000-07:00

I know I promised this post to be yesterday... but you'll have to forgive me because I've spent my first two days of a four day weekend with a cold. So I was too busy having a pity party about being sick to bake a cake yesterday.

The original recipe for this cake was one I found on A Whisk and A Spoon, I made some slight adjustments this time after making it last fall as well. My favorite part about this apple cake is that it doesn't use cinnamon! Cinnamon and apple are such an overdone combination, so this recipes use of vanilla instead is a nice change.

No Cinnamon Apple Cake

aka Fresh Apple Cake with Brown Sugar Glaze

Cake:
- 3 cups flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 3 cups chopped apple
Glaze:
- 1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar - 3-4 Tbsp butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla - 1 Tbsp half and half

The first thing I do when making this recipe (besides preheat the oven to 350 degrees) is to chop up the apples, because it's the messiest part, and I like to get it over with. I used honeycrisp apples this time because, well if you've ever tried them you already know, and if you haven't tried them, you should. They're amazing. I actually only ended up using two apples to make three cups chopped, but obviously this will depend on the size of apples you use. You can also add chopped nuts to this recipe if you like, the original recipe calls for pecans or walnuts. In a medium bowl, combine all your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Mix these together with a fork and set aside.

"Foamy" Eggs

In a large bowl you will now need to "beat the eggs until pale yellow and foamy." Now in the original recipe they suggest that this can be done either with a mixer or a wooden spoon. Big hint: DON'T try to beat eggs with a wooden spoon. I don't know what kind of Hulk-like upper body strength the person who wrote this recipe had, but trying to make eggs foamy by hand with a wooden spoon sucks! Of course I was much too stubborn to give up and transfer over to my mixer, resulting in eggs that were bubbly at best.

Once you eggs are nice and foamy, thanks to a mixer, you will add in the oil and vanilla. Fortunately these are easily mixed in with a wooden spoon. To this mixture add in the dry ingredients from the other bowl. Stir the dry ingredients into the liquid until the flour just disappears. The resulting batter will be very thick and, coincidentally, look quite a lot like applesauce.

Now you can stir the apples, and nuts if you choose, into the batter and mix until they are evenly dispersed. Mine ended up very wet, I think because of the apples being so juicy, but you'll be thankful later when you cake ends up super moist and delicious.

You can make this cake either in a 13" x 9" sheet cake, two 8"-9" rounds, or three 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pans. Whichever you prefer, grease it with butter or cooking spray, and spread the batter over the pan using your wooden spoon or a spatula. The dough is pretty sticky, so it needs a little coercion to get into all the corners.

The cake will need to bake at 350 for 45-50 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. About 5 minutes before the cake is done baking you'll want to prepare your glaze. In a medium saucepan combine all of the glaze ingredients: brown sugar, half and half, vanilla and butter. The original glaze recipe is actually double what I have listed here, but in my opinion it was just too rich. Bring the glaze to a boil and let cook for about 5 minutes. When the cake is done, take it out of the oven and immediately pour the glaze over the top. Use a spoon or spatula to evenly distribute the glaze.

Pre-glaze Cake

Post-glaze Cake

Let the cake cool completely before serving. This is important for two reasons: 1. the glaze is very hot (hot sugar=burnt mouth) 2. the apple chunks are also very hot (hot juicy apple chunks=burnt mouth). You get the idea, you won't be able to enjoy the cake if you singe all the taste buds off your tongue with the first bite. Believe me because, being the impatient type, I'm speaking from personal experience.

Once the cake is cool, dig in! It is moist and sweet, but not too rich, and the edges have a perfect amount of crispness. I imagine it would also be great served with some vanilla ice cream on the side. This cake will be a hit, and is not too difficult, for a yummy fall dessert.