Sweep it under the proverbial rug...

My crafting and sewing has seemingly taken over the house.  The ugliest of which is in our dining area.  Right between the kitchen and the living room.  Translation: where everyone can see it.  It's so convenient to have it close to the table when I drag it all out, but it's not pretty.  So I finally did something about it. 

  
What?! That before and after didn't knock you off your chair???  I'm still on mine as well.  I would have liked it to hide a bit more.  But I used what I had on hand.  It turned out to be more of a distraction than a cover up.  :)  This area is such a high traffic area because it's a pass through to the living room.

It's a vast improvement over that (above)!  And the worst part...I didn't even bother emptying the cabinet before I started piling my stuff in it.  

This is the first time I've run plain ol' contact paper through the Silhouette.  It worked best on these SD settings:

• speed: 10 
• thickness:1 
• blue blade cap  

I used transparent contact paper that I already had (bought at Target). If I had frosted, I would've used it instead. Then cut it to fit my Silhouette SD and fed it in (without the cutting mat).  The new Silhouette Cameo's 12" cutting width would've made this project a breeze.  Instead, with my SD, I had to cut three 9" sheets for each door and line them up with each other.  Well worth the effort though!

I organized inside the cabinet, too.  Put the china in a safer place, but still using the crystal bowl to hold miscellaneous stuff.  I knew I registered for that for a reason. Ha!

Here's a better look at the contact paper circles.

This pattern of interlocking circles came on a CD with my Silhouette SD, but you could use any pattern you can find a .jpg of by Googling (or on Lougle - for any Hot Tub Time Machine fans out there!).  

That is the beauty of the Silhouette...there's an easy "trace" function that can help you transform your design (or a 'borrowed' one) into a cutable file.  It works best with black and white line drawings.  

Here's a quick tip to filtering your results on Google, if you didn't already know:

In this example, I've searched for "interlocking circles pattern" and these are the initial results.  Let's narrow this down.

The left-hand menu gives you options for filtering.  First, select "Images".  This filter will give you just the images that match your search criteria.  

Then filter one more time by "Line Drawing" to make your search for the perfect file even easier:

There are a ton of free clip art-type images out there...just waiting to be made into something beautiful (or to disguise something not-so-beautiful in my case)! 

Dear Blog,

Dear Blog,
It's not you, it's me...I've just been really busy with work and the holidays and all.  I promise to spend more quality time with you now.  Really, this time I mean it.  No more 3-week hiatuses.  Pinky swear.  
Love, 
Jamie 


P.S. Here's a bit of what you missed while I was neglecting you:

Christmas Morning at our house.

Playing with Dad's antlers (sorry, Bambi) at the farm.

Bacon and Egg headband for my bacon-loving niece. 

I was only following instructions...

Maeve's first tooth!