ellebee

Diaper Cake!

i'm still absorbed in all things baby over here... we had our first ultrasound last week, and now are waiting the excruciating 3 or 4 more weeks or so until we can find out our baby's gender. i need, i need to know whether i should be crafting in pink or blue! because i leave it in the bathroom all the time, i'm about halfway through a second reading of what to expect when you're expecting and am seriously thinking it might be time for some non-baby fun reading.

in the meantime, i found this fabulous tutorial for a diaper cake that i had to share! it's very detailed and turned out absolutely beautiful! she also used the martha stewart pattern for those gorgeous pink coffee filter roses, which she also included a tutorial for. And to top it all off, she included pictures of the unbelievably beautiful tea party baby shower that she made both of them for!

be sure to check out her blog, homemade by jill, to see the other lovely craftiness she's up to!






my new favorite fabulous little bit of inspirational eye-candy to check out is oh joy! for beautiful styles and designs for home, clothing, jewelry, and other fun stuff! she posts pictures in that beautiful blog-collage style that i love.

in other fascinating news, i have a new job! i will finally be escaping my local target and rejoining the "real" workforce as an office manager for a dental school! if you love target (as most of us do) don't ever work there, it will ruin it for you. i used to always wonder if you worked at an ice-cream shop would you eventually grow to hate ice-cream, impossible though it may seem? well, the answer for me was yes, and i'll be incredibly happy for this new job to start on monday so that target can go from a place i love to shop and hate to work back to just a place i love to shop!

and a thank you

a thank you is well-deserved to you, dear readers, straight from me. thank you for your patience in putting up with my seldom-writing through the past few weeks of throwing a graduation party, celebrating my first mother's day both as a mom and without my mom, and the occasional doldrums when the crafting wind calms down.

thank you for your willingness to check back and visit!

around the studio

i've been doing a bit of work here and there on some new ideas for petite bee, hoping to get some things made and up in the shop to see if there is any interest in handmade baby things. seems like there would be, right? this is what a project-in-the-works usually looks like around here:

i guess because we don't know which gender our little B will be, i've been drawn to lovely greens, tans, yellows, light browns, and neutral linen in the meantime for petite bee. i'm finding it's very hard to find gender-neutral items that are

1. truly gender neutral (aka, no sneaking in of a bit of blue here and there) and
2. still cute, sweet, and adorable despite not being permitted to scream the obvious "boy" or "girl"

i've run into this so much so in my own shopping, that i'm considering making petite bee almost exclusively packed full of lovely neutral items to fill that void (though almost anything can be easily spiced up with a pink bow or blue boat to differentiate). and wouldn't it be nice to have a go-to place to make gift-giving easier for those who are too early in the pregnancy to know yet or (ahem... crazy enough to) want to be surprised?

the other slight dilemma i'm debating is whether to open a separate etsy shop exclusively for petite bee. as of now, i have just enough things posted that it's slightly bothersome to me to have the shop in such a jumble (and i don't want it to become too difficult to navigate). however, you don't want to have to send folks too many different places to shop for fear that they'll lose interest. any brilliant input on this idea?

also currently on a halt are any attempts at organizing my studio for now. anytime i get anxious or worried at the confusion i soak in the one little corner that does actually look nice and organized:

(and yep, that's me in the red shorts in the reflection! hi there!)

the red "B" bag on the left is the one i did the no-sew monogram tutorial on, and the one on the right is a new laptop bag bought on clearance from target because of the ellebee green trim!

i am excited though, that i've applied to be in show where i'll be allowed to sell only supplies (with a bit of ellebee advertisement thrown in, to be sure!) which will help relieve some of the supplies-overload situation from the loads of things i inherited from my mom. i've done this show before, back when it was humbly called the crafter's flea market, and now it has "grown up" into the designer's downtown market. The lady that organizes it is really nice, and it usually has a great turn-out among not only people wanting to buy handmade things, but also people who make things by hand themselves (thus the high hopes for releasing some of these supplies back out into the world). so i'll have lots of work on my hands getting them all packaged, priced, and labeled!

rutville, population: me

yes, it's true. i am in a creative rut. you'd think with the excitement of a new baby on the way, crafty goodness would be falling off my fingertips like raindrops, but sadly, it is not so. while i am very excited, i am in quite a bit of a rut at work, and it's affecting my energy level (as is pregnancy) and enthusiasm for doing anything creative recently.

i did attempt to start crocheting a new grannie square snuggly blanket similar to the one i made for my nephew last year, but i didn't get very far with it. i was working on it in the car on a day trip to the beach, and on the way home, i had a very sleepy puppy conked out in my lap. but then again, tired from soaking up the sun and the extra effort of walking on sand and staying vertical in the waves is the best kind of tired:

LOVE that sandy little nose.

also, it's hard to let the nesting instinct run wild on you when you don't know if you're creating for a boy or a girl yet, and you don't know if his or her nursery will be in this house because we don't know if both of us will be changing jobs...

sigh. rutville.

mmm.... organization

i had to laugh because i just saw a friends re-run (approximately in the season 8 or 9 or so era) where chandler decides to get a new job, so monica makes a big, labeled, organized set of files of different ideas for jobs he could pursue. it's alphabetized (of course) and they start with advertising, which is what he decides to go for... so he apologizes for her having wasted her time making the rest of the files when he picked the first one. monica replies, "are you kidding? i got to spend 8 hours alone with my label-maker!!!"

if you haven't met me, i'm a little bit like that. ok, a lot. i do have a bit of a crazy love for organizational supplies.

so, if you haven't seen this website, see jane work, it's a must! i also had to laugh when i saw this "office of the week" totally decked out in ellebee green:

my husband laughs whenever i say that because he thinks it's funny that i have claimed ownership over an entire shade of color for my business. i just love the color! in my dream world, i would have wall-to-wall bookshelves for my craft supplies, and they would all be organized in little labeled boxes and wire baskets full of color-coordinated fabrics like that top shelf up there. supplies are so much more inspiring when you can see them all at once!

they also have lots of fun, cheeky notepads and other office goodies with a bit of personality to make the day go faster! i've already decided i need these for corralling my craft magazines, i love the brown:

(ps- photos are thanks to seejanework's website)

for nesting! (or coasting?)

i finally got my current projects/products finished, photographed, organized for selling, and listed in the shop! they are just a few fun little updates, but totally new to ellebee studio... quilted coasters!

these are an absolute blast to make, and i couldn't resist using the amy butler prints, and i love how it looks combined with the linen for the backs! these are practically indestructable (and tossable into your washing machine which is the best part). plus the free-stitched edge give them a really laid-back beachy feel... which, if you're like me, makes it permissable to be completely anal about insisting everybody uses a coaster to begin with.

you can expect to see lots more of these coming up, they are so addictive to make! now then, anybody up for matching napkins?

speaking of new arrivals...

now that we've finally told all of our immediate family, i can stop chattering about secrets and shoes and just spill the beans already!

i'm expecting my own little petite B in early december!!!

i promise i did not intentionally coincide getting pregnant with launching my baby product line, but it did just seem to work out that way, and how fun is that!? matt and i really could not possibly be more excited! (you can read even more about it in our family blog).

finally, i'll have a reason to buy up all the adorable handmade baby things i've been loving on etsy, and i'm sure having my own little one will be a fabulous inspiration for the things of petite bee to come! (not to mention a great test market and build in baby-model!)

i had a little crafty fun in the way we told our families too... matt's dad's birthday was this week so we gave him a picture frame. i bought a shadowbox type frame and decorated it with some really cute jolee's and little stick-on squares that read "sweet baby B."

the supplies:


the finished frame:


for my side of the family, we gave a playdate invitation for our nephew to come play with his cousin-to-be when he or she (and we will find out!) arrives in december. i made a little template in paint, added the who/what/when info, and then used a little clip-art whale for the bottom corner to say hooray:


i had so much fun designing and making it that of course, now, there is one more idea for petite bee swirling around in my head. playdate invitations... birthday invitations... mommy calling cards... so many ideas, so little time! (not to mention energy these days. i thought 7 and a half weeks was too early in the pregnancy to be crashing out with no energy already!) i just can't wait to be big-pregnant, and of course to hold this little one in my arms and love and kiss on it and all the fun stuff that comes along with officially being a mommy. if i thought i was 'nesting' before, you better believe i've got some projects i want to start! baby quilts, crocheted blankets, a crib mobile, and about a million other things!

a shoe search

ok, so i never claimed that this was a fashion blog, but if you're anything like me, sometimes the creativity just spills uncontrollably from genre to genre in your life! or maybe it's more about love of color, because ever since i saw the yellow cover of last spring's domino magazine, i've had yellow on the brain:

sorry for the fuzziness, but now you can get a visual... yellow flats, yellow printed dress, and a cute, classic tan trench coat. what could be better? keep in mind, i've been a black tee and jeans kind of girl for a long, long time. so not only a bright yellow dress, but a bright yellow outfit is pretty revolutionary for me.

i felt like i got the dress down pretty well, i got this one at target for about $25 in time to wear for easter sunday:

(a side note... unfortunately the dress is a bit thin and therefore slightly see-through, so i'm also finding myself on the hunt for a light yellow camisole to wear underneath, which apparently does not exist. may have to go with nude/skin-colored).

i had less luck with the flats. i found some really cute ones on clearance at the gap for $20... really cute yellow and white gingham, but i tried them on and they just plain hurt. ladies, life is too short for shoes that just plain hurt. unfortunately, i have a very wide foot and "just plain hurts" can usually be used to describe 90% of the shoes i try on.

in a perfect world, i might be the proud owner of these:

however, since a $430 price tag on a pair of shoes will never be a reality in my world, sigerson morrison  might as well not be either.

a slightly unsatisfactory google search brought me to these:

but, having never even heard of the brand , i'm wary of ordering these online without being able to try them on. you never can be too sure how yellow the yellow will be either, although these look pretty.

and then of course, there were these:

yellow polka dots.  i love polka dots . took me a minute to regain my composure... ok.  reality is coming back to me, and these definitely look too narrow and painful. i do much better with the wide, slouchy, squishy flats, preferably with an elastic back part to keep it from digging into your heel.

so the search continues.  i'm glad to see i'm not the only one a tad obsessed with yellow shoes at the moment!

(photos are thanks to the individual websites linked with each one).

busy times!

poor little neglected blog... oh how you suffer when we have lots going on in life!

things have been super busy here on the job front... we're waiting to hear definitely about a potential job offer that would mean a near-cross-country move away from our family and friends, and a completely new city, workplace, lifestyle, new friends... exciting, but a lot of change all at once! so you can see why we are literally on pins and needles for now, and hopefully we will hear some news this week.

i've also got another SUPER special secret project swimming around, just waiting to be revealed !

a new arrival for spring!

after a bit of delay (and about a week of very rainy weather that prevented any product photos) i am very happy and excited to announce the arrival of:

:::petite bee::: lovely little things for your little one!

these sweet little baby things are great for baby shower gifts... and i'm sure every momma deserves to replace some of those grungy, old, overused baby things if only to have some fun, new, pretty things to use everyday!

i'm also excited to be filling out the for nesting section of the shop as well... lots of great new coaster designs and prints, perfect for lemonade on the back porch this summer!

i bought some amy butler prints and went totally crazy with these coasters... they are so fun to make! there are also some new magnet sets, and i think what's coming next will have to be cloth napkin sets (maybe with matching coasters?) because i obviously can't resist making them!

i've also got some new notecard designs coming available soon, including some made of vintage wallpaper... stop on by anytime!