glittergoods

big project, little project

In true little-project-after-big-project fashion (see also:  felt box) I tried to dive right in to the next thing on my list yesterday, really I did.  Only, I've been picking up bags of clothespins & pipecleaners here & there for a while now, & I've been sort of half-thinking about making little personalized clothespin dolls for party favors (all of my plans for my daughter's party hinge on my ability to talk her into the fairy tea party concept, an idea that I love because 1.  clearly, it would be sparkly, 2.  I could make tiny food, & 3.  it's not My Little Pony/Barbie/Dora/Princess/etc), & so yesterday I thought maybe, while I was gearing up to start doing some actual work, I would just see about a clothespin doll for a little minute.

The blonde is my daughter (the skirt gives it away), the brown is one of her best pals, & I've got another best pal on the drawing board, if I can figure out a couple of hair issues.  These are quick & addictive & I can see myself getting [more] completely ridiculous over them (the t-shirt has a freezer paper stencil on it, ok?). 

Now I just need to see if I can bring myself to let my daughter play with them.

in like a transformer, out like a butterfly

Q:  Can I run a paper lunchbag through my inkjet printer with excellent, timesaving results?
A:  No.  You're going to break that thing one of these days, you know.

Happily, I had a Transformers screen just hanging around.  I also took the opportunity to bust out the tiny xyron, which is a lot of fun when I remember it.  See?

But, really, that's old news by now.  Oh, except:  thank you all so much for the great comments on the tees, & that also reminds me that I have a thing or two to say about printing with Versatex inks.  My usual black ink is some house brand or other, & the heat-setting process I use for my glitter means that I have never once had a problem with ink fading.  HOWEVER (yes, I'm a little shouty about this because it just about made me cry), if you would like to print something up with Versatex (despite nearly reducing me to tears, it's otherwise very nice ink, smooth & flowy & easy to mix, I picked up a couple of sampler sets at Dharma Trading) & you are, say, not sure that your hottest ironing action will really heat-set it because you read on a blog somewhere that it doesn't always work, try this:  preheat your oven to 350F, put the shirts on a cookie sheet, turn off the oven, put the shirts in & let them sit for half an hour.

On the other hand, if you're after that distressed, vintagey look for your prints (which, luckily, was pronounced super cool by the birthday boy, so I felt a little better), the insufficient-ironing method is a great way to get it.  (Except with the silver ink, which washed out enough to ruin the image but not enough to re-use the shirts.)

Ok, so, after the party, which was immense rollerskating fun, I was immediately sucked into yet another vortex of school auction prep (this being vortex the second, after the week where I spent all my free time in the classroom helping kindergarteners paint chairs), since I had somehow become the decor co-chair.  With the help of about 400 paper butterflies, I think we did a pretty respectable job transforming a huge gym into, well, a fancy huge gym.

What you can't see here is that our very excellent crew of balloon assemblers weren't quite as excellent with the balloon filling, so over the course of the evening the "floating butterfly" concept became more like "drunkenly hovering" butterflies.

I spent a lot of time cutting out these flowers.  I'm pretty proud of the butterfly bush, though I wish the glitter showed up in this picture.

Nothing was particularly fancy, but we managed to do quite a bit with paper (& glitter).  Having a clear theme made a huge difference (the person I was working with is a graphic designer, & everything we did was based around the auction invitations she'd already designed).  Also, we gave the flowers more water, they looked much better by that evening.

And here's my pillow, ready to go.  I'll always love you, pillow!

 

robots in disguise

It has become traditional, in our little family, for me to make themed t-shirts for birthday party favors.  I started it when my son was three, although I didn't realize that I was starting a tradition until the following year, when he said let's talk about the birthday shirts!  I started out with iron-on transfers (vintage digger, old-school skateboarding), then did one of my glitter tees (t-rex), & this year it's a straight-up screenprint:

I'm so used to printing tiny line drawings + text that it was a lot of fun to do something bigger & inkier & less fussy. 

I felt a little unsure about doing the shirts this year (what started out as a sweet way to avoid sugar-filled goodie bags for a few kids has turned into a lot of shirts!), but now that they're done, I love them.  My kid loves them, & my husband loves them enough that he's handed me one of his own tees for printing, please.  Now that those are taken care of, I just have to figure out how to get the Transformer head thingy onto a cake (I found this site, though, which lists more cake image transfer options than I ever dreamed, so I think I'll be able to work something out).

liberace could totally hang his coat on this

Yesterday I had a sitter over for the afternoon & instead of doing anything on any of my lists, I cut out one set of batting/backing for one shade & then spent the whole rest of the time painting & glittering a flower hook (that I originally bought for $1 at Michael's, on my semi-annual "I can leave the kids with the family for a few hours & there is gigantic Michael's within easy driving distance of my parents' house but not much else to do in this town" shopping spree; I prefer not to work out the exact economics of how much the hook ended up costing).  I had originally picked up the hooks with the idea of doing something felty & minimalist to them, so I'm a little bewildered by the final direction I ended up taking with this one (though, really, it's way less of a stretch for me than minimalism would be, also it became something of an excuse to try out coating resin (vs. the casting resin I use for jewelry), of which I am now an official fan).

I loved making it, though, it was very relaxing to just mess around with paints & inks & glitter with no particular goal in mind except for making it fancy  -- & clearly, I reached that goal & kept right on going.  I meant to have it mostly painted, with glitter accents, maybe some rhinestones, but then I couldn't find the rhinestones so more glitter, & then I went a little too far, & you know how it is:  sometimes the only thing to do mid-project when you go a little too far is to see whether a LOT too far will solve the problem.

Luckily, whatever I end up thinking of it, I can be pretty sure my daughter will not object to having it on her wall.  Today she went to a museum with her preschool class; on the way home we had the most excellent conversation about what would be in HER  (pink) museum:  princesses, my little ponies, sparkles, skirts, Nana, & a blue bowl of tangerines, clementines, & satsumas.

best thing here is the play-doh guy

This morning I finished my first shade using the Simple Blinds pattern from two straight lines -- I'm planning on using the same method for the window quilts, & had actually not been planning on making a dining room shade like this, but then the string on the cheap Ikea roman shade that never really worked that well anyway broke, & I had some greenish-greyish canvas hanging around, so a test-run seemed in order.  This particular color in this particular spot in my house turns out to be very hard to photograph, but you get the idea (except please don't get the idea that it's discolored, that's just a nasty trick of the light).  The piecing is the result of my ongoing failure to properly do fabric math, done haphazardly because I expected it to end up on the back of the shade (which it still might, but for now, we like it).  I actually love the way the piecing looks when the shade is all tidily folded up & hanging from the bottom-most loops, but I will have to wait until -- well, I don't actually know what the exact right lighting condition will be, something involving less gloom inside & less glare outside, I guess -- I'll just keep trying to get a picture of my window treatment at its most charming, ok?

At any rate, it was easy as anything to make, & works quite well with a double layer of canvas (I love how nice & even it is when folded up), though I may still add a third loop/knob across the top to get rid of that dip or else maybe run a dowel across the top (I think this would be much less of an issue with a lighter fabric).

I thought seriously about waiting to post that first picture until I could get a more attractive shot of the shade + the room in general (though that's more or less what it looks like in the dining room, really), but it gives me context to post this closeup of the play-doh guy.  My mom & my daughter made him a long time ago (I am not sure who did what, although the neatly cut out body vs. the excellently uneven & googly eyes give a clue), & when I randomly stuck him up on the picture thingy, I didn't realize how much I would grow to truly love him.

Aside from being a googly-eyed play-doh guy, the other way to my heart is to buy me pretty craft books, which is clearly the angle my husband was playing when he bought me this one on our last date night (or, truthfully, it was the angle I was playing when I wandered up to him clutching this book & said "how much do you love me?")  I will admit that once out from under the influence of date night (+ a perfectly cold, perfectly limed Corona), I am less bowled over by the projects in this book, but the pictures are very, very pretty (the author is a regular contributor to Marie Claire Idees, it says)

& the general sewing info & specific project how-tos are really clearly & usefully illustrated.

The projects are mostly straightforward home dec stuff, though; there are a few interesting little things (like that ottoman in the picture above), but also lots of cushions & duvet covers that seem to mostly depend on interesting fabric.  I'm hopeful that there may be a technique trick or two that I can pick up from the directions (there are a lot of directions in this book), but in the end it mostly makes me impatient for the next issue of MCI to hit the stands.

craft geek goes to studio craft

Ok, finally a chance to sit down & write about Studio Craft, which was just about the sweetest little show I've ever seen.  If you read any of the blogs involved, you already know that each participant is already wonderful at the little details, so just imagine what happens when you get them all together.  For instance:

See what I mean?

Also, everyone was just flat out charming, even more so in hindsight when I realized that I was just one of many who came to the show to meet the crafters as much as to see the crafts, & so the very pleasant chats I had with Blair, Sally, Alicia, Abby, Melissa, & Stephanie (plus hearing a great story that proves that amazing vintage finds are cosmically attracted to Lisa) probably had less to do with me having fresh & witty things to say & more to do with them being excellent + tireless hostesses.

I loved seeing all the goodies in person (it was like celebrity sightings for the terminally craft-geeky, Look, there's one of Stephanie's squirrels! Ooh, & Sally's pin boards!) & picked up quite a few little things here & there, but I have to say that my score of the day was this notebook cover from Melissa:

I love so many things about it:  the brown, the white stitching, the polka-dots, the pocket.  I am a big believer in notebook pocket systems.

I also get a kick out of the Denyse Schmidt fabric on the inside; one of the things that was great about the show was seeing a bunch of familiar fabrics used in ways I wouldn't have thought of (craft-geeky, remember?).

After all the chatting & shopping, I rounded out my trip to Portland with my first visit to Bolt, which is a perfect little jewel box of a fabric boutique.  Portland really seems to have a knack for the perfect little boutique; I'd say that maybe it's all the time spent indoors that lends itself to creating that kind of thing, but we have rain up here too & there are far fewer amazing little shops than I'd like (though we do pretty well when it comes to the needs of knitters).  Anyway, I found & immediately snapped up all they had left of this fabric

which is something I've been looking for for months & had given up hope of ever seeing again in this colorway (it's one of those Alexander Henry short run prints).  For this, if nothing else, Bolt has my undying love.

Then a wistful glance at all of the other enticing but unvisited (by me) shops on Alberta, a sandwich from the Wild Oats deli, & a drive back north through horrible, horrible rain.  I didn't stop to fortify myself like Blair did, but only because I didn't think of it (though I did have a handy bar of Green & Black's in my purse).

Great show, great day.

wee, wonderful

I wanted to blog about this yesterday, but I had important pincushion business to take care of first.

So, then:  on Saturday I attended the Wee workshop hosted by Blair as part of Plush You, which was exciting because of getting to get out & make stuff with other crafty people, with the added benefit of getting to meet Blair in person.  I have no pictures from the workshop because I forgot as usual to take my takealong camera, but that's actually ok because I was so busy chatting that I didn't finish my wee until later that day.

I hadn't tried the pattern before, & so I was pretty surprised at how big the wees actually are. (Just right for tucking under your arm, football style, if you're three.  Or for wrestling away from under a three year-old's arm, if you're five & having an excellent display of bad behavior.)  Anyway, not having any particular wee-creative ideas before the workshop began, I took along remnants of three skirts I've made for my daughter over the past few months because I thought maybe a brightly clashing jumble of fabrics would make up for the complete lack of design direction.  (The tasteful brown trim?  That's from the workshop scrap pile.  The aggressively hot pink face?  I brought that.)

Of course, at the workshop I started getting all kinds of ideas for customizing wees, particularly because there was someone who I thought I overheard talking about making a jedi wee (I think this was not what she was actually doing, but isn't it such a good idea?), which got me thinking about making a series of weeble-esque people wees.  Not that I probably ever will, but I could.  Next wee workshop, I'll be ready!

go go gocco

I've had my gocco for about three years now, but this morning was the first time I used it to print on paper (I came at gocco not for paper arts but because I was looking to get into a screenprinting system I could do with one hand while rocking my baby daughter with the other).  I know I'm seriously behind the curve* on this, but the thing is that, although I am in love with the idea of pretty much any hand-printing method, I realized early on that I had to draw the line at too many levels of handcraft with my cards (although between you & me?  You know those old Martha Stewart to-do list jokes?  The ones with things like "Dig streambed, divert river, plant organic heirloom papyrus for use in making handmade paper for this year's holiday cards.  Also invent new method of making the perfect black ink"? I think there might have even been a joke list in an issue of MSL years ago.  Anyway, if I had the time, that would be me, & not in an ironic way, either.).

But these cards?  These are not for me, or for work.  My little sister & her long-time boyfriend have finally gotten engaged, which means that I get to have some fun.  The ordering-gocco-supplies, finally-having-a-reason-to-go-to-Paper-Source kind of fun.  I have no idea if these are anything like where the final design will end up, but I had to have something to test print, now, didn't I?

*the other thing I am seriously behind the curve on is podcasts, probably because I don't have an ipod (yet, those new teeny shuffles are calling to me) & also because usually when I'm at my computer I've got one ear straining to hear sounds of sibling conflict in other parts of the house, so music is not high priority & I don't often have the time to listen even the most interesting long interview.  But I just discovered (I've been doing a little research in preparation for the shuffle, see) kexp.org's (local indie radio station) Song of the Day podcast, & I'm completely in love.  One song per day!  Even I have time for that!

good mail day

There's just something about a fresh stack of art supplies, isn't there?

back to school, 2.0

The first day of kindergarten was a success for all involved:  my boy was pale & quiet & big-eyed in the morning, but he determinedly sent me on my way, & after I picked him up he had a lot to say about three recesses & how he's going to start riding the bus home next week.  I feel this indescribable sense of relief, like, ok, whatever ridiculous parenting blunders we've made over the past five years, at least we managed to produce someone who had a good first day of kindergarten.  He's the school system's problem now!

The end of pre-first-day jitters has freed up a lot more creative energy around here, so of course I immediately turned to my new resin kit.  So far, I haven't done more than make a series of glittery lumps:

Which are cool because I made plastic, but otherwise pretty useless.  I think I love this stuff, though.  I have big plans.

In the meantime, there I was with a lump of glittery resin + a ring blank, so, why not?  My daughter is just green with envy.  (Any sources for kid-sized ring blanks would be much appreciated!)