Crafty Friday {and fun news!}

Well, I did it! I finally completed the pipe-cleaners-turned-word project (DIY found here) and I think it looks pretty sweet. Here are some pictures, step by step. 

I found these balls of yarn at Goodwill for $3.99 and thought they would look cute and colorful housed in glass jars. 

I decided on the red and pinks, all those LOVE colors, you know.

But before all of that, I grabbed the stash of pipe cleaners from the kid's art supplies and went to work (1) twisting 2 of them around and around each other for what I thought might be a more stable letter to work with and (2) shaping them into letters and twisting the ends together. Really simple stuff. 

Then I started wrapping with yarn, a bit of trail and error with the ends but eventually I figured out a good system. 

(and decided to change the "F" to lower case)

And last night, the entire family sat in front of the fire wrapping their own letters while I finished mine. 

 And here it is!

And now for the exciting news! 

I've been given some really amazing opportunities of late and I wanted to share them with you. First of all, I'm freelance writing for a women's magazine in town called You and I couldn't be happier about it. I'll be writing a fashion column for the mag and my first one is out in the March issue and is all about your vacation wardrobe and finding inspiration from the resort 2012 runway trends. So much fun! I will say, writing about spring break and packing an imaginary suitcase was sort of odd in the middle of all this snow, but it wonderful to dream about the sun. :) I'll be sure to share the articles and pictures here too. 

And then, I found out yesterday that Lovelies will have a feature on one of my favorite DIY and vintage lifestyle blogs in this blogosphere - A Beautiful Mess! It's a must see site, so definitely go and take a look. They'll be featuring the DIY collar I shared here a couple of weeks ago. What an awesome surprise! I hope to have many more faces come this way from all of this exposure. 

So dear readers, I'd like to ask a favor. If you enjoy reading Lovelies, I would be honored if you spread the word and invited your friends and family this way (linking a favorite post on Facebook is an easy way to do so). I'm working hard to grow this little place. Many of you have told me that you're fans but have not yet become "followers" by signing up at the left side of the blog page. I do understand that many are not bloggers themselves, which tends to make this territory a bit unfamiliar and inevitably keeps you from "following". Funnily enough, now that everyone's on Pinterest and feels comfortable there, I'm finding that soon I'll have more followers on Pinterest than I do here! Pretty insane. So please, click "follow" here too! A seemingly insignificant technicality but very helpful to me in the long run :). 

Have a beautiful weekend and I'll see you again on Monday!