glittergoods

fairy nuts, fairy bolts

As I was making plans & gathering supplies for the fairy party, people kept warning me about my girl's sure-to-increase expectations, ie, the road to Birthday Hell is paved with fairy skirts & tiny cupcakes.  Maybe, but on the other hand, this is probably the last year I'll have the opportunity to fill my house with tiny round-cheeked rowdy fairies, & soon enough she'll be nothing but lanky & sneering & demanding to be dropped off at the mall, so why not?

Also, I am not denying that I do get a little crazy when party time comes around.   But fairy skirts are actually really easy to make, if you do the kind where you tie strips of tulle around an elastic waistband.  I bought armloads of tulle at a Joann's 50% off sale, was great because 1. cheap, & 2. I was able to mix colors with financial abandon.  If not for the sale, though, I would seriously have considered getting the 6" wide spools of tulle instead (best prices I saw were at some of the big online packaging supplies stores) & made things easier on myself.

(Fake flowers were on big sale, too.)

Frankly, the girls were so busy fairying around or patiently waiting to get their faces painted that we weren't desperate for a craft activity, but they did all really like this one.  I had the fairy bodies & heads pre-assembled, & the girls picked out their fairy parts, picked & put on flower skirts, drew the faces on (or asked for help) & then helped glue. (From this Klutz book.)   For this age range (3-5), I think this project only worked because all of the really time-consuming parts were pre-made, but I can see a similar but simpler clothespin doll project being another good option.  The fairy on the left is the one I made for a cake topper, the one on the right is the one my girl made at the party.

My girl requested chocolate cake with strawberry frosting, "a big cake so it will be fancier than cupcakes."  I chose the One-Bowl Chocolate Cake from Martha Stewart, & I have to say that it was a really terrific basic chocolate birthday cake.  I baked two 7-inch layers, then used the leftover batter to make mini cupcakes.  I wanted to fill the cake with whipped cream & strawberries, but wasn't sure how well it would hold up if I made it the night before, so I compromised with a variation on this recipe:  1 c whipped cream, 1 pkg cream cheese, 1 c sugar, 1 t vanilla, 1 c chopped strawberries.  Delicious, definitely way too soft for frosting, but excellent for filling + upcycling into strawberry shortcake a couple of days later.  For frosting, I started with this recipe, but instead of butter used 1/4 c vegan margarine (Earth Balance), 1/4 c vegan shortening (also EB), & 1/4 c vegan cream cheese (Tofutti).  Excellent flavor, plus I was able to use it on my experimental vegan strawberry cupcakes, which did not make it to the party table due to being hideous, but which were very tasty.

So, I am about to talk about fondant, but first I need to point out how the cute green & white striped mini cupcake papers are FALLING OFF the chocolate cupcakes.  This sort of spontaneous paper-shedding has never happened to me before, so of course it was going to happen (1) with expensive cake store papers (2) right before a party.  I ended up stripping half the batch & piping a bit of cake filling on top, then we frosted the few that were (sort of) holding on to their papers.  There didn't seem to be anything wrong or unusual or possessed with the cake, so I'm not sure what happened, but if you try the recipe, watch out.

Ok, the fondant.  Short version:  if you're just going to roll it out 1/8" thick & cut it into shapes with tiny cookie cutters, the hardest part of the project is mixing the exact color you want, except half a shade lighter because the color will deepen as it sits around.  Also, have plenty of cornstarch on hand.  Also, I see a whole new world of tiny-cutter-purchase-rationalization unfolding before me.

I was actually pretty worried that the vegan frosting wouldn't stand up to the butterflies on the side of the cake, leading to the heartbreak of a frosting avalanche, but even though I took the cake out of the fridge about an hour before serving, there was no problem.

We completely failed to get a picture of the front of the cake, but it was quite lovely.  And quite tasty.

And, apparently, full of fairy energy.

fairy factory

Yesterday was my first visit to Home Cake.  I went in for sugar flowers, came out with a plan involving fondant butterflies.  All of the Seattle blogs that marvel at that place are not kidding.  It's like a magical baking junk shop, from back before junk shops became "antique malls."

When I got home, though, I decided to wait on the fondant & make the tiny tortillas instead.  We have a Mexican food tradition at my Cinco de Mayo baby's birthday parties (which also gives us a good excuse to stand around drinking sangria while watching the kids play), but of course this year all the food has to be miniaturized.  For fairies.

And then I had to take a few moments with the last of the light to try a shot through my second TTV camera, which arrived yesterday afternoon.  As soon as I get out from under this party, I am working on my TTV setup so that I can do something besides plant myself & awkward camera situation on the front porch in order to take pictures of the sky across the street.  I do like those wires, though.

Anyway, then I made some fairy heads.  I couldn't resist this Klutz book, but since the girls are too small to manage the fiddly bits, I am pre-assembling the bodies & heads, then we'll put them together & add faces & flower skirts at the party.  I am not even kidding myself about this part:  I hope that the girls will love the project, but it's mostly an excuse for me to set up a satisfyingly tiny & fussy assembly line.

Speaking of tiny & fussy!  Today:  fondant! 

through the viewfinder

I think it must have been about a year ago that I started following the flickr group Through The Viewfinder, where people use digital cameras to snap shots through the viewfinders of old-school twin lens reflex cameras & end up with these amazing, dusty, black-framed, square-format results. 

So, inevitably, about a week ago I decided that I needed to try it for myself.  I'm not sure why it took me so long; possibly because I'd only been paying attention to the photographic end result & so hadn't noticed how completely gorgeous these cameras are.  Photos aside, I would be very happy to have a lineup  of these little beauties on my shelf.

This is from my first bumbling attempt.  It's not hard, exactly, but it's physically awkward & a little visually disorienting.  But just look at that light.  (This is straight out of my D70, except for cropping.)

I am utterly won over. 

In a dorky, crushed-out, mix-tape making, tiny portrait painting kind of way.

a little spring cleaning

I love the Northwest, really.  I'm one of those people who doesn't mind the drizzle, someone who thinks that our endless gray days are a fair tradeoff for our other beautiful seasons, etc.  But, MAN, my mood is approximately one thousand times better the past couple days than it has been for weeks, & I'm pretty sure it's just because I've seen a little bit of sun for two days in a row (never mind that as I was leaving dinner with friends last night, we were debating whether it was rain or snow we were seeing.  Rain, I say, rain!).

Since I'm feeling like an actual person who makes actual stuff again, I thought maybe I'd poke around & see what's hanging around the studio that would be better off hanging around other people's houses, to wit:

The last two pillows from my "fall collection,"

& a whole bunch of rings.  The pillows are already up on etsy, the rings will be following a few at a time once I sort out some good photo light for them.

Of course, I have to offset the moving out of things with the moving in of other things, though I am trying hard to make sure they are smallish, & nice to look at.

Like this:

I am obligated to love this because my son made it (in "art club," no less), but I would love it anyway.  See that flying saucer up in the corner, there?  This is tissue + other paper decoupaged onto a scrap piece of wood, & guess whether this idea is going in my boring-days-of-summer toolkit?

I am not obligated to love this, but I do, so much.  It's from theantibride at etsy:  the chair is screened onto muslin, surrounded by lovely meticulous hand-stitching.

It will fit right in.

Maybe I wouldn't mind the snow so much

if everything looked like this.

I love this kind of processing (we tried to get our wedding pictures done this way, but were only partially successful, back in the days of film (which is also why we have no pictures of the ring exchange, but that's another story)), but right now the thing I love even more is that peek of blue sky coming through the branches.  About time, APRIL.

practice fairy

I have been trying to talk my girl into a fairy tea party sort of birthday party for the last couple of years, mostly because of the tiny food, but she has been staunchly disinterested.  Last month, though, her brother was in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, & she was glued to her seat with wide-eyed fairy love the entire time (2 hours!).  So then there was plenty of fairy talk for the next few days, & one day in the car I said "You know what I think would be fun to do sometime?  Have a fairy party."  And she said "YES!  FOR MY BIRTHDAY!"  And I said "Oh, wow, that's a terrific idea you just had!"

And then, after a triumphant phone call to my husband in which I gloated about having PUT ONE OVER on my four year old, I immediately started plotting.

And practicing. 

We've just discovered the Flower Fairies chapter books, so this skirt is specifically modeled after Wild Cherry Blossom,

with her red bow in back.

She took it for a test run this morning, & it seems to hold up ok.

This one, she says, is "for regular," when she's a "workity fairy," which is different than the fancy birthday party fairy, & which implies that she has BIG PLANS for her fairy wardrobe.  Probably I'm going to need some more tulle.

hey, cowgirl!

After a false start or two (excellent false starts which will eventually end up in my shop, but still), I finished the pillow that accompanies the Reading Rocks bench.

First I was thinking about how I will try not to over-commit myself to auction junk next year, but then I was thinking about how this particular pillow was the tipping point that finally sent me out to buy that serger I've been wanting, so maybe I should go ahead & over-commit next year but just do it in some interesting new area that will require similar sort-of justifiable purchase of expensive equipment.

Anyway, then I had time to turn my attention to a birthday present for my girl's best friend, which was specifically & jealously requested by the friend when my kid showed up at her house in full cowgirl regalia last week.

(Note the totally unnecessary serging around the hem.)

So we were in the cowgirl mood & all, but had no idea there would be real live ponies.  Ever since we saw her brother's elementary school production of Midsummer Night's Dream, we've been planning a fairy birthday party around here, but now there's some small, hopeful talk about whether fairies have ponies.  Fairies with bigger backyards, maybe, I said.

she'd put bells on her toes if she could

Today is a sitting around kind of day, everyone is tired & half sick, plus there is nothing truly pressing that has to get done this instant.  But then my girl found a scrap of pink pipecleaner & turned it into a ring (because she loves nothing so much as adorning herself), & the box of leftover auction project jewels caught my eye, & hello, fastest kid-pleasing project ever.

Obviously, a girl can't stop at just ONE jeweled pipecleaner ring.

Wrap the pipecleaner around the finger, twist a time or two to keep your loop in shape.

Trim the ends to a couple of inches above the loop.

Take a pair of beading pliers (or similar) & make a little loop at each end to get rid of the sharp bits, then smash the loops flat.

Holding the two ends together, twist them around into a circular "nest" that sits perpendicular to the ring loop.  There is no particular trick to this, just twist & tuck until the setting is the shape you want.

Once you've got your nice flat setting, you could put just about anything on top (as I type this, I am suddenly wondering where I put my shrinky dink sheets).  We put on our jewels with Fast Grab Tacky Glue, which is my current favorite kid-craft glue due to it being thick &, well, fast-grabbing. 

After you've made rings for every single finger, don't forget the matching bracelet.

and now for something completely different

Except completely the same in that my Sisyphean auction season will not end.  I am probably even more tired of talking about it than you are of reading about it.  Though that still doesn't stop me from writing this post.

Ok, so, Auction 1, the big one, was on Saturday & came off very well, if I do say so myself.

The only time I almost cried during setup was when it turned out that we -- & when I say we, I mean me, an interior designer, & a graphic designer, so we're not a spatially incompetent bunch, ok? -- had completely overestimated the distance between mezzanine railings & people's heads, so my mobiles were way too dangly.

Eventually we figured it out, managing to avoid the threat of forehead paper cuts for our taller guests.   I didn't even have to rebuild anything.  [I will mention here that they were not hard to build in the first place:  each one is based off of a pair of 36" dowels, wired together as an X, with an 18" X suspended from each of the four arms.]

One last picture of the Quilt for old time's sake.  We hung it from a sturdy coat rack they had on-site, but the rack wasn't quite tall enough so my husband rigged up a rail from a piece of composite trim molding & a handful of bulldog clips.  He attached it to shelf brackets on the back, then zip-tied the brackets to the top of the coat rack.  It worked beautifully, & I'm pretty sure the rail is destined for a wall in my house somewhere, if I can figure out where.

I loved working on the Quilt, mostly, but I never particularly felt like it was mine, & I wasn't too sad to see it go.  Especially since it went for a satisfyingly large bid.

Glitter aside, I take no responsibility for these little arrangements of kermit mums (my design/decor co-chair knows her flowers!), but I love them.  Also, this picture reminds me that I think there's one of those little boxes of chocolate rattling around in my purse somewhere, excellent.

Now then.  Auction 2 is coming up, & while my original plan was to only be involved to the extent of donating that little quilt & helping out with my son's classroom project, I of course immediately fell into the irritatingly sucking black hole of me not being able to resist making things for auctions (though I did stand firm about not decorating an 8-foot umbrella this year), so in the end it was me & one other artist mom doing almost all of the work on the GIANT DECOUPAGE BENCH.

I don't have pictures of the entire thing, since it was flipped on its back today when I finished working on the front panel, but I think that the front ended up being pretty excellent in a totally over the top way:

It's a "reading bench," & so we put READING ROCKS! on the front with fancy rocks & jewels (the kids did this part), then filled in all the gaps with tinier jewels & beads & sequins (the other mom & I did this part, discovering that we were both perfectly, serenely content to spend hours fussing over getting the letters glamorously encrusted just so.   It's possible that this was more excellent to do than it will be to buy; also, this is not the way to speedily finish an auction project.).  Our teacher was the one who suggested that we "bedazzle" (actual quote) the words, which is only one of the reasons we love him.

Like I mentioned, the bench is flipped on its back; this is the front panel, just under where the lid closes, just above two big drawers, just next to a stack of three smaller drawers on the side.  (I told you, GIANT DECOUPAGE BENCH.)   The rest of the bench is covered with vintage book pages (try setting up your book-destroying decoupage project in an elementary school hallway & just SEE what kind of crowd reaction you get), color copies of favorite book covers (brought in by the kids), & kid art that represents something from their favorite books.   

Plus a teeny little bit of glitter.

Now it's in the hands of the varnish volunteers, so I just have to make a pillow for it, & then I AM DONE.

crossing things off the list

Finished this:

[45" x 51", it's off to Auction 2.  I will miss it.]

Finished this:

[Sample custom pillow for Auction 1; silent auction companion piece to Auction Quilt.]

Still working on this:

[A lot, though probably not as many as we'll need, of glittered leaves for the three big mobiles I'm building for Auction 1 decorations.  My leaves have a crush on Meg's flowers.]

Almost, almost there.