Thursday, January 1, 2015

My Favorite Projects and Posts From 2014

Okay, I've already shared your favorite House Revivals posts of 2014. Now, here are my favorite posts!


In 2013, I was dealing with a copyright (copyfraud) bully, and decided to share a bit about my experiences and research in What Crafters Need to Know About U.S. Copyright Law.



Later in the year, I created some dollar store jewelry and shared the tutorial in How to Make Gorgeous Pendants With Dollar Store Supplies.  I loved this project (so did you -- it made both our lists)!  I even did this project with some of our Thanksgiving guests, while we were relaxing after dinner -- they got to go home with pretty new pendants!


I LOVE Christmas crafts, and had a great time making icicle ornaments that looked like vintage spun cotton. They were actually made from lowly paper towels!


I've had a little time to inventory my various stashes (my family thinks I need an intervention), and spent a Saturday morning doing a "stash-busting project" for beads and broken jewelry. This has turned into one of the handiest little projects I've worked on, and has been great for putting together last minute gifts.


Flower Power and Getting a Little Love on the Side had my phone ringing!  My daughter called from Alabama, saying she had found this hysterically funny article while poking around on Pinterest, and had gotten half-way through reading it, when she realized it was my article!


This Juju hat inspired vintage book page project sparked a lot of interest with my twenty-something kiddos and their friends! We even did a craft night with some of my son's friends (at their request) and made these.


Going back and forth between two homes, can be a little disorienting and exhausting at times. During the week, we live in a tiny city crash pad, and on most weekends we go to our house on the coast. This leaves little time for "home improvement" projects at our house. After all, sometimes you need to choose between painting a wall or walking on the beach. However, I did paint our vintage bed, and LOVED how it turned out.


We had the amazing opportunity to host our dear friends from Colorado, The Amber Waves Band, late in the summer. I had been feeling a little stressed about entertaining, worried that my house wasn't nice enough (it is still very much a work in progress), but realized that good friends accept you as you are, and it's the company that makes an occasion beautiful -- not the decorating. I wrote about Entertaining in This Imperfect Life HERE.


You all loved the Dyed Vintage Inspired Bottle Brush Trees -- they almost made your top ten. I loved them too!


This Mini Book Pendant project I worked on to help Amber Waves Band promote their new Storyteller CD (did you get your copy yet?) was one of my favorites, and helped propel me back into jewelry arts this year.


This was not actually a "favorite" post, but it was one I will never forget -- It truly was the saddest post I've ever written. When fellow blogger and dear friend Tina Downey, from Life is Good passed away, the blogging world was heartbroken. Tina, a Swedish American, was a dear friend for nearly twenty years, and when she found out I was being bullied by a copyfraudster, she immediately pulled out her family's heirloom woven advent star and shared about it on her blog, putting to rest, once and for all, the idea that woven stars are one person's recent invention. She was always there for her friends, and she is greatly missed.



2014 has been a good year. There have been some terrible losses of family members and friends, as well as times of joy. We have welcomed new family members, and enjoyed the company of people we love. Life is like that -- sometimes it's crazy hard, and sometimes it's crazy good. Overall, I believe Life is Good, and I think my friend Tina Downey would agree.