NYC Summer: Tinsel Trading

During my lunch hour at work, I read blogs and follow links and just get lost in it all sometimes. Back in April I read this post over at the Colette blog about Tinsel Trading and I just had to go there. Unfortunately, I don't have any good photos of the shop but Mr. Lemon kept the wild child occupied while I shopped around. She had a blast looking at all the bins full of bits. We bought her a sparkly letter Z for the alphabet in her room. I could have spent a million dollars.

Luckily, I didn't. But I did pick up some gorgeous ribbon. The striped grosgrain is to go with what I'll show you tomorrow. The yellow velvet on the far left is to spruce up some binders in my office. The wide brown velvet was just too gorgeous to pass up, the yellow striped velvety ribbon was really cheap, and who can see super wide orange ric rack and not buy it? Panda is in the shot because my little helper thought it was important. But can you see my yellow theme? How weird, huh? I've never really been into that color much before but I picked up a good bit of it on the trip.

Overall, I just loved this shop and will try to pop in every time I'm in Manhattan.

Lego Sack with Window

Before our vacation, I spent a lot of time gathering books and toys to take with us. I searched for anything portable and with enough substance to keep the 2-year old occupied for "long" stretches of time. She loves legos (it's in the genes on both sides) and seemed ready for the upgrade to the smaller size so I bought the big set of pink Legos from Amazon. Of course we couldn't bring the massive tub with us on the plane so I decided to make a bag for them.

I had seen this amazing drawstring toy sack tutorial on Make it Perfect through Craft Gossip. At the time, I just thought it was very clever. I had no plans to actually make it. But then I bought some Yo Gabba Gabba panties and they came in this nice little pouch. Of course, I threw it away and had to dig it out of the trash when the thought came to me to make a little window out of the vinyl just like in the tutorial.

I wanted something more case-like so I didn't even follow the tutorial at all beyond the inspiration (although that might not have been a bad idea because she uses paperclips to hold the fabric to the vinyl since you can't pin through it. I just fought with it instead). I used Lizzy House's Red Letter Day again with the Pearl Bracelet print and more ducks. The tree stump fabric is by Jay McCarroll, my favorite winner of Project Runway, and grosgrain ribbon for the handles.

This, surprisingly, was not too difficult to make. I had to do a drawing of what I had in my head. Then I added some measurements to that. Then I kind of exploded the drawing and added seam allowances to my edges to figure out what to cut. The bottom has a layer of stabilizer/interfacing in it and I wish I would have used it on all sides because now that the case has seen some use, it's not as stiff as I would like. I expect our Lego collection to outgrow this soon but I'm impressed with it. Even though it is not perfect, I was proud to pull it off.