Making a New Wallet and Coin Purse

I've been wanting a new colorful wallet for a long time.  Brown leather is just not me.  :)  I looked and looked for one to buy but they were all either really big or really boring or really expensive. So I told myself, "Self, there are so many cool tutorials on the internet, you should be able to find one for a wallet you could sew out of fun fabric!"
After way too many a few hours of searching, I found this great tutorial from Modest Maven that looked like it would be almost exactly what I wanted.  The only problem was that it only had 6 slots for cards.  Well...I have a lot more cards than that.  For heaven's sake, I have two library cards!  So I decided that I would do a slight modification to the wallet to give me more card slots.  This is what I came up with.

Hah!  Nothing boring about these colors, huh?

I added a center section with more card slots.

Here's a better view of the inside.  There are 6 card slots on this side of the wallet and six more on the other side.  There's a pocket for bills along the top edge too.

Of course, once I finished sewing it, I started to move everything from my old wallet to my new one and hmmm...I still had too many cards for all the slots.  Everyone wants you to have their store loyalty card and since I'm cheap I like to save money, sometimes I don't say no.  :)

After many hours of pondering and looking online, I came up with an idea of an accordian pocket that I could sew right in the center of the wallet to store some of the extra cards I didn't have room for.  Out came the seam ripper so I could take the center section out and remake it with the pocket.  A little cutting, a little sewing, a little straining of brain matter, and after an hour or so here's what I had.

The only thing I didn't do was put in a little zippered pocket for change.  I decided it might be better to have a separate coin purse so the wallet didn't burst its seams.  :)

Later the same night, I decided to make said coin purse but got distracted when I did a search for coin purse tutorials.  I found this tutorial on CraftPassion for a really, really cool coin purse made with a zipper and ribbon.  Of course, I had to make it!  After all, we needed something to hold coins in the car too.  :)  What do you think?

Unzipped...

Zipped!  Isn't it cute?

I love projects like these!  They're quick and lots of fun to make.  My only problem is that I want to make a lot more--there are SO many cool tutorials online now!  I'm constantly amazed at the brilliance and creativity of people's brains.  :)

Back Yard Photo Safari

I was talking to my oldest boyo a few weeks ago and was whining about not having taken any pictures at all in the last 6 months or so and he encouraged me to just get my camera out and get shooting.  I didn't feel up to going anywhere that day, but I decided I could just walk out to my back yard and see what I could find.  Luckily, the sun was shining and so I got some fun stuff.  :)

New Watercolors...

I have a couple of new watercolors to share.  These were both painted last week.   I have some new paintings from last night's class I want to post too but I'm having problems with my camera's focus and want to try to fix it before I take any more photos.  We'll see how successful I am.  :) 

This was painted from a photo I took a few years ago.  I like that I was able to capture the strong light and shadows and the reflections that appealed to me in the photo.

This is the second in a series of daisy "portraits" I'm doing (I forgot to photograph the first one and it's hanging in a show right now so I can't take a photo until I get it back).  I'm experimenting with a few new techniques and trying for very loose, almost abstract images.  I think I got closer to the effect I want with this one.  Now to try even more experiments!

In more painting related news, I entered 3 watercolors in a juried show at the local gallery here in town.  It's the first time anything I've painted has been hung in a gallery so it was a step forward for me in that regard.  I got honorable mentions for two out of the three paintings so that made me happy too.  :)  The show goes through the end of October so if any of you are in the mood, head down to the Sidney Art Gallery and check out all the paintings the South Kitsap Artists have done.