A Tale of Two Sofas

I've been decorating the living room in my head!

In the coming weeks, we'll be finalizing our move to the Chicago area. We're trying to sell or give away as much as possible to make the last move easier, which puts us in the market for... a new sofa! Initially, I thought I wanted a sectional. One sofa doesn't give both of us enough room to lay down and, let's face it, we're sofa layers. As I was shopping, I had a hard time finding a sectional that I liked and in the right color (my heart is set on gray). Then I found this beauty!

I love the shape and it's an awesome deal. No, it's not a sectional, but I love it! The solution is that we'll have to get two of them, of course. The color shown is Oyster, but it also comes in this amazing gray textured fabric. It reminds me of boucle.

I'm very excited! Just need to figure out how we're paying for it.

One project I'll definitely be undertaking for the living room is this fantastic wreath made of torn book pages.

Love, love, love it! Thanks to Living With Lindsay for the idea and tutorial. She made this for about $2 with items from Dollar Tree. It has a wonderful vintage vibe and would be awesome if you used a book that has sentimental value. If you could bring yourself to do it, that is.

Shop-side, I won a bid on Etsy's Alchemy, so I've been working on a custom purse. I'll post some pics when that's done. Should be cute!

Threadbangers!

How am I just now discovering this site?! Threadbangers is chocked full of fantastic fashion and decor DIY projects, with a focus on reusing and recycling. They have tons of video tutorials.

Below is an instructional video on how to fuse plastic bags to make a laptop bag. What a fantastic idea! I'm not an avid recycler by any means, but I do hate being wasteful and this is like getting free fabric! I can't wait to try it out and see what I can make.

A Foray into Beading

I'm on a bracelet and earring making kick. I picked up a bunch more beads on the way home from work this evening and hope to have some posted on the shop soon. This will be the perfect opportunity to test out the micro studio my super awesome friends gave me for my birthday! But here is a peek.

Yup. My high-tech jewelry making surface is a paper plate. Don't judge.

Ever wonder what it would be like if Slytherin had an a capella group who sung a medley of songs from The Who? Then you should have been watching The Sing-Off!

Hello, Interwebs

Greetings from (near) Chicago! The last few months have been filled with moving, starting a new job, our first anniversary and my birthday. I've been trying to settle in as much as I can in a temporary house with my husband living in another state. I feel like I'm coming out of the funk though. It's time to put my stamp on the house, put together my crafting area and do things that make me feel like Mel P. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Eating chocolate
• Getting a pedicure
• Making snarky comments

I just read through my old posts and realized how many projects I've started, but haven't finished. I have so many ideas, but there's so much stuff to watch. :-)

I just made a spreadsheet that, when purse dimensions are entered, calculates the size of the pieces of fabric that need to be cut. You'd think I'd have the math memorized by now, but not so much. This will greatly simpify things!

The etsy store is continuing to truck along slowly. I recently commissioned a new banner, avatar, business cards, etc. from Little Loveables. She did a fantastic job! Exactly what I was looking for. I also sold a purse to someone in Australia, which was super exciting.

By the way, you can now become a fan of Pomely Grove on facebook! All the cool kids are doing it. (Note: there's only like 6 cool kids at this time. You can get in on the ground floor.)

In other exciting news, the Pacman purse received a very nice review at GadgetHER.

Time for a snack...
Mel P

Random Thoughts on Packing

I have a love/hate relationship with packing. Organizing things and making them fit into boxes appeals to my nature. It's a lot like a big puzzle. It's even what I do for a living, essentially. Arranging things in a fashion that makes the best use of the space.

So what do I hate about it?

1- It's manual labor. I don't particularly care being hot and/or sweaty.

2- I get obsessed with packing "correctly." I will re-open boxes to make sure that things are packed with their like items. This leads to some irritation when I discover a rogue mixing bowl that should have been packed with the other mixing bowls. However, this does making unpacking extremely easy.

Packing tip! Stealing a technique from a friend, I've been using plastic wrap for packing breakables. It cushions and it keeps things from moving inside the box!

Here's a picture of Zeena "helping."

Thus concludes the most uninteresting post evar!!!

Times They are A'Changin'

I've gotten really behind on my blogging. I would almost feel guilty about it if anyone actually read this. :-)

As mentioned in a previous post, I've been unemployed since the company I worked for (rhymes with Schmircuit City) went out of business. I work in the field of retail space management, so my options are limited to retail headquarters. The Richmond, VA area doesn't have many more left, leaving me to pursue opportunities elsewhere.

So, elsewhere we will go! I've accepted a job with a company located near Chicago. I'll be very vague about my future situation for the protection of my job.

Anyhoo, my world has been occupied with interviews, planning, packing, etc. Unfortunately, this hasn't left much time for purse making. Once I'm relocated and settled I'll have more time to devote to crafting and blogging. Especially since I'll be leaving by hubby behind for 6 months to finish school.

I'll be making a headboard for the new place. Maybe I'll take some pics as I go and blog about that.

I'm very excited about the upcoming move. While I love this area, I've been here most of my life and am looking forward to having new things to see and new areas to explore.

If you, good reader, happen to be from Chicago, feel free to comment give me some ideas of cool things to do!

Pennsylvania

I just got back from Pennsylvania for a memorial service and now I'll be headed back up for the week to help some friends move. I have some bags to share from earlier in the week, but there's no time! Until next week!

Mel P

Grape Soda is Awesome

So, I've been a bit of a slackard. I haven't had much energy for anything that doesn't involve hulu. I guess I needed a break from sewing, but I seem to have the bug again. W00t! My goal is to burn through all my stockpiled fabric while the desire to sew lasts.

I finished the purse for my friend Kobi, which you can see above. I absolutely love this fabric and may use it as inspiration for redecorating the living room/dining room. But we'll wait a bit to see if any bites come through on the job front.

For those who don't know me personally, I used to work for a certain big box electronics retailer that closed recently. Being that retail floor planning is pretty specialized, the only leads I've had are many states away, so I'm trying to limit how much we do to the house. In fact, as I look around at the things in our house, I ask myself, "Do I want that enough to move it?"

Anyway, besides Kobi's purse, I finished the dinosaur purse and found out the requester actually wanted two dinosaur purses, so yay! There's the red dinosaur to the right and his green brother. How do I know they're boys? I just do.

For anyone who may be interested, I'm thinking I'll do a dinosaur applique tutorial soon. This coming week will be very busy, so it may be the following week.

I just started a cherries purse out of what is supposed to be a girl's sundress and I like how it's looking. You'll see that with the next update, hopefully, along with the beginnings of my new line of super scary purses! (You'll be so fweaked out.)

-Mel P

Monkeys and Skulls and Dinosaurs

Two more purses sold! The monkey purse is gone (thanks, Jennie) and I made a skull purse as a special request. I have a friend whose daughter loves skulls and purses, so it seemed natural that she have a skull purse.

On the agenda for this week: Complete the dinosaur purse, find fabric for a purse for my friend's b-day and get started on the cherries purse. I'm also very excited about a red toile bag that will be coming soon.

Artfire and Feedback

Now, in addition to etsy, Pomely Grove's stuff can be found on artfire.com!

http://pomelygrove.artfire.com/

http://pomelygrove.etsy.com/

Artfire is free, but you can only list 10 items, so see etsy for the full breadth of offerings.

In other exciting news, my first sale has reached its destination and the buyer says, "I received my Pac-Man purse and it is freaking awesome! I love it!!! Thanks =)"

W00t!