Emerald is an incredibly crafty person who loves to try all sorts of new designs and techniques. She hasn't done any specific training in any one particular area of crafting. Some of the following are projects done by reverse engineering a design she saw in person, winging a design she saw online, or trusting the process and bringing a design to life from her mind. Of course, these are only a few things that have been done within the last few years. There are always more projects to come! Emerald will never stop enjoying her craft time.
These are all art projects done with paint-by-numbers and diamond art kits. As you can see, Emerald often spends time being artistic with some friends.
Emerald started making blankets with her Step-mom, Crei, as a teenager. She has since continued to branch out and make more and more complex blanket designs. The dinosaur blanket is a baby blanket made for a friend and one of our godchildren when he was born in 2022. The t-shirt blanket took well over 80 hours of work (that's about when she stopped counting hours) and is made up of about 50 shirts collected by both Ryan and Emerald over the years. It is huge and heavy.
This was a quick, commissioned mantle piece based off of an image from Pinterest. The person who bought it loved it and as far as we know, still has it on his mantle.
This was yet another commissioned piece. It was made for Emerald's mom, Alicia, to use as a Thanksgiving dinner centerpiece. It ended up being a bit of a challenge to make in order to fit all of the vegetables together with varying shapes and sizes while still keeping the foam block underneath from being visible. The end result is something Emerald was incredibly proud of.
Speaking of things made for Alicia, this is a photo from her Bridal Shoot (also done by Emerald) and her gorgeous bouquet. She went with a Phantom of the Opera theme for her wedding. Emerald used the red, black, and white color scheme to create this massive bouquet.
These kitchen towel dresses were so much fun to make! Ryan's mom, Lori, makes them and gifted one to us a few years back. Emerald had a few people notice the dress in our kitchen and ask where it was from. She spent a little while looking over the way Lori made it and figured out how to make them herself. Since then, she has made many kitchen towel dresses as gifts for holidays.
This beast of a Christmas decoration was actually made with a ton of different pieces. Most of them were decoration pieces either gifted to us or laying around the house waiting for a home of their own. It is super heavy, a necessity of living in a windy area, but so worth bringing it out every year.
This is the final piece of art for this post. The book ends symbolize a set of mountains and starts from the "A Court of Thorns and Roses" series by Sarah J Maas. While this image is set up on our own bookshelves, the bookends were actually made for a friend of ours, the same one who has the baby blanket shown earlier.