glittergoods

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.