preparing for the festival

tonight i stretched the screen for our earring display. we'll have to keep tabs on how many sets of earrings we make - we may need another frame. my goal, however, is to finish everything i currently have started before i start anything new. i don't have a lot that's in progress ... four calendars need covers & binding and then all the preparation stuff (making tablecloths, business cards, researching sales tax, painting a mirror, pricing items ...). once all of that is finished/collected/ready to walk out the door - THEN i'll make more earrings and bracelets. otherwise i know i'll keep making jewelry & then the night before we do our dry run, i'll be going crazy trying to get it all together. and there's just no need for that. :)



these are the five photos i'll have at the booth. i have two boxes of these 8.5" square frames - free of charge. so i figured i'd use those for the booth ... but cropping photos down to squares isn't as easy as i thought it would be. so i found these five flower photos & stopped there.

and yes, julie, i'd be happy to take some inspiration from your favorite earrings. :)

craft-a-thon, day 3

i spent a good chunk of today working on my t-shirt quilt. i'm pretty sure i'll be making another trip to jo-ann to get more fusible interfacing & sashing fabric ... but i gotta say that cutting up t-shirts is pretty fun. i've got three done so far, twelve more to go.


kathy & april came over tonight to craft. i worked up a set of marble magnets. i wasn't planning to make any of these for the festival, but then i found all the supplies i'd need to make 'em ... so i figured i might as well. i've decided that super glue works better than everything else i've tried on these.


when i found the supplies for the marble magnets, i also found some larger magnets. so i made some pop cap magnets, too. i originally bought the pop caps for necklaces & bracelets ... but i haven't found the motivation to do that, yet. so i may use them for magnets instead.


and then i made a quick bracelet while i was watching will & grace. i do love that show. :)

craft-a-thon, day 1

i'm taking vacation days monday-wednesday of this week and having a craft-a-thon. yesterday becca came over to craft with me. she worked on a set of invitations (she makes beautiful cards) and i made some li'l plush monsters.

the guy on the right was pretty frustrating. his construction is simple, but i kept making stupid mistakes. he does, however, has posable arms - and that's pretty cool. the guy on the left is my favorite. i call him "running bunny".

here's a side shot of them so you can see the backs of their ears & bodies. the bunnies have felt arms/legs - it was the best way to make them small & not have to turn anything that small inside out.

there are some bracelets i did last monday at craft night. i like the one on the left, i think it looks like candy. :)

and these are the pieces i did while i watching "the breakfast club" at 1 o'clock this morning. i was totally set on going to bed when i got home from the fair - but i've never seen "the breakfast club" in its entirety ... so i stayed up & made jewelery. the bracelet on the left looks really nice when it's being worn. it looks a little weird just piled on a table - and trust me, i tried to get a photo of me wearing it - but this is all i could do. you'll just have to stop by the booth & try it on. :)

in other news: my internet connection is still slow & flaky. i'll be at the fair again this afternoon - hopefully it stops raining. i need to take a shower.

i bound something!

these photos are proof that my fancy-pants binding machine really does work. yay! after the failed attempts of binding records and a very frustrating time with some wallpaper (frustrating because i can't measure ... not really the machine's fault, i suppose), i was actually able to get something bound tonight. and that makes me very excited. :)

i've been wanting a small calendar to carry about in my purse. i currently keep my schedule on my calendar at work, so i don't promise myself to a work event when i've got a non-work event scheduled. and it works out most of the time, but i really need a copy of that schedule with me outside of work, too. so sure, i could've gone out & bought a small calendar ... but what fun would that be? instead i took a few hours, designed a simple template & made my own. i used some old photos for the covers and -poof!- a purse calendar for 'becca. yay!

for julie: the popcorn festival is september 8 in valpo. it's a saturday & the booths are until 6 p.m., or until we sell out. :)

with this current binding success i'm wanting to make some journals for the popcorn fest, now. but first, i'm going to fill in my new calendar. i'm like a kid in a candy store, this is so exciting!

bead night

i've decided to cut myself some slack about not taking good jewelry photos. i mean, i'm using glass beads - and a flash. how can i expect it to not be a little crappy? for example, the front right piece of jewelry is made of these white & orange swirled beads that i LOVE, but they just look shiny in the photo. you'll have to trust me that it's cute.

i'm trying round two of the bottle cap necklaces tonight. the first set is doing well - but the resin isn't completely set up yet. so this time i actually measured the two parts & i'll see if it sets up faster. funny how things can come out differently when you follow directions. :) i also learned, thanks to measuring, that i can get 7 bottlecaps filled with each ounce of resin. there's 16 ounces of resin in the bottle - so 112 caps per bottle. at $14/bottle - that's about 13 cents per cap. not bad at all. here's hoping it sets up properly. then i'm off to buy bulk bottle caps. and maybe some ball chain. you know that chain dog tags are usually on? the same stuff used for pull cords on basement lights? that's what i've seen these necklaces strung on. i'm not a huge fan of ball chains ... but it does seem to work well. so unless i find something i like better, that's probably what i'll use. although i really want to make some chokers that are just rings of caps - and bracelets, too. maybe some ball chain in the back to make them adjustable. yeah ... that could be good. or i could have the bottle caps individually - and let people choose which ones they wanted for a choker or bracelet. they're string together pretty easily. charge per cap. and then use a basic necklace extender on the end for the clasp. it'd be more work to customize them as people bought them ... but it might be a nice feature. hmmm.

i love thinking crafty.

catch up ...

from the drive out of the city a week ago saturday. it was plenty foggy that day.



the pirate i got at paper source. the bag claimed he was made from one continuous piece of string. i highly doubt that. but i love him anyway.



tonight's crafty endeavor. i'm filling the bottle cap with clear casting resin. never used it? it stinks. i'm not real good at following warning labels ... but i think they knew what they were talking about when they said to use in a well-ventilated area. yuck. of course, it might help if i put the lid back on the resin, too ... but i'm concerned about it sealing itself shut. so i have the plug back in the bottle, but the cap isn't on yet. i'm waiting for the messy resin around the threads to dry.

the past week has been ... full. work is busy. i don't like blogging about work, but it's been stressful & challenging. as in challenging my will to stay there. and challenging my desire to not be crabby all the time. but i've resolved to not let things bother me this week. i didn't make the decisions that put us in the situation we're in ... so why should i be the one who stresses out about it? i'm trying to breathe more & grumble less. i'm trying to laugh at the craziness of it all instead of growling everytime something new is added to the list of things to do. i'm trying to survive the work day & still enjoy my life outside of the office. i cannot allow my job to ruin the rest of my day. i will not allow it to do so.

i accomplished 4 projects at bead night yesterday. i will shoot a photo & post it soon. i may keep a couple of the pieces, we'll see. we've decided against doing the booth in july - we'll just do the popcorn fest in september. turns out 3 of the 4 of us aren't available the day in july ... so that was easy enough to rule out. that gives us more time to create. less need to stress. we're getting together in may for a crafternoon. the very word crafternoon makes me happy. a relaxing afternoon spent crafting with friends ... i don't care if it makes me a nerd, i love it. and hopefully it'll be nice enough i can open some windows if i work with this resin. :)

my weekend was good. game night friday night. a few good games of guesstures, followed by a lively game of spoons. as of friday night i am the reigning spoons champion. i have to say that having a game night at my place is one of the things i look forward to the most about getting my own place. game night at 'becca's. ladies night at 'becca's. bunco at 'becca's.

about bunco ... a little concerned only marlana, bethany & i have confirmed the 20th as bunco night. speak up, ladies. if we're not doing it, i'm leaving town after work.

saturday was mostly the garage sale. a saw a couple of you there - yay! it wasn't a bad time for working on a saturday. the hordes of people made the time go quickly. it's nice to wander around in a shirt labeled "staff" when the vast majority of people are pleased with the event. it also helps when you designed the shirt & the entire promotional campaign in acid green. :) and i do plan to quote parts of the newspaper article in my next performance review. things like it being the biggest event we've ever had. how could they not give me a good review when i say i was in charge of the promotional campaign for the biggest event we've ever had? go me!

i spent sunday with marlana. i love that girl. and i have to say it was fun to realize there's someone else who has to tell herself to put down the camera & just enjoy the moment. it's good to know i'm not alone in that. plus she's been so encouraging about me buying my own place. if i haven't used the words here, yet - i find marlana to be inspiringly independent. if you haven't realized that about her yet - i suggest you spend more time with her.

so there you go. a longer post that i usually give you. some photos. some actual words about my life. and now i'm going to cap off the stinky resin & see if i can sleep without passing out from the fumes.

beads, beads, beads

this is the bracelet i made this past monday at bead night. i bead with three other gals - april, kathy and becca. so when i say things fit becca better than they fit me, it's because becca (the other becca) is smaller than i am. so no, i'm not crazy & talking about myself in the third person - there are two of us. although, we actually think we might be a little bit of the same person because we knew a lot of the same people in high school. we didn't meet each other though until she started working with me.



this is a bracelet i made awhile ago, but i don't think i ever shared. it's a three strand bracelet that i'm really tempted to keep. :)



and this is a set i made a few weeks ago. also temped to keep it, just because i love the green beads. they might be jasper? or a variety of jade? or ... something? i should probably pay more attention to what i'm buying at the bead store.

bah

so here's the now famous box from ups. it contains a beautiful new wiremac21. what's a wiremac 21? it's a machine for punching holes along the edges of paper & then inserting/closing wire binding into those pages. basically, homemade journals for everyone. this really does excite me to no end. and it punches the holes in the paper beautifully, as sort of seen in this photo ...



my frustration is in doing the covers. i plan to use vinyl records for the covers. and it's driving me nuts. the machine isn't strong enough to simply cut holes in the records, which i expected and that's fine. so i used my drill to make the holes. that worked well enough for the little pilot holes. but when i was doing the full-sized holes, it went all wonky & did this ...



this is obviously not acceptable. but it only did it on one of the two records i was drilling. and i had them clamped together, hoping to drill one set of holes through both records. so i thought that could've been the problem & finished the one record by itself. it worked better, but the holes aren't quite the right size and the very last hole on the record caused a little split down to the bottom corner. so i decided to start with a new record. cut it down to size & using one of the punched pages, i marked where the holes should be. so then i think, if i score along the edges of the holes maybe the machine could get the rest of the way through.

i'm not sure if it can or not yet. i mean, i think it can. it did, actually, on the test. but when i put the real cover piece in, it totally chewed it up ...



bah. i quit.

and in an unrelated disappointment, my camera was totally convinced that last photo was in focus when i shot it. stupid auto focus.

bead night

i also bought a length of silver chain at jo-anns (when i bought the big bird pelt). i've had these beads for awhile now and haven't been able to make them work. so i did a little wire wrapping, added in some chain links, and poof! a bracelet i think is cute. yay! it looks impossibly small, but it does fit around my wrist. it fits becca better than it fits me, so i figure that's a good sign. becca's smaller than i am, so she's good about trying on my jewelry & giving me that perspective.

i made a necklace, too. using the chain & some of the beads left over from my blue/green cube necklace. it's got a dangly glass pendant with green & blue streaks. it's very pretty, but i can't get a decent photo of it. so you'll just have to use your imagination.

the third annual michelangelo project

so i regularly visit the french toast girl blog. i love reading her posts - she's so real, so honest, and her kids are simply adorable. AND she's so stinkin' artsy it's incredibly inspiring. seriously, go check it out. (erin - you'll want to especially read the post on packaging girlhood.)

this is her third year of coordinating the michelangelo project, and i'm encouraging you ALL to participate. that's right, every single one of you NEED to be creative on march 6. why? because it's good for all of us to spend a little time really focusing on creativity. not forcing it - but allowing it to have a place in our lives.

this is quoted from the french toast girl blog:

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March 6th is Michelangelo's birthday! To celebrate the birthday of one of the world's most inspiring artists, I invite you to participate in this project.



What you do:
1. Do something creative this Tuesday, March 6th. It can be something you love to do, something you've forgotten how to do, something you've never done and always secretly wanted to try. Here's your excuse! Some ideas are:
- paint/draw/collage
- sculpt (like the master)
- write a poem, a short story
- take a photo
- visit a museum or art gallery
- sew
- cook something exciting you've never made before
- see an art film, foreign film, or movie about an artist

2. Come back here and share your experience!
Post a link to your creation, write about your trip or creative process - share your creative story with others. How creative can we get? (There will be a special post Tuesday for you to post to.)

3. Link back with the above graphic if you've written about it on your site.

4. Have fun, for goodness' sake! This is not about being perfect or creating the best piece of art. It's about embracing your creative side in whatever form it happens to take.
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i participated two years ago with this post:

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in honor of michelangelo's birthday, in conjunction with the michelangelo project, and because i needed a good notebook to use at work - today i made my "top-secret, brown paper bag, string closure notebook". the inside is filled with paper we recently tossed at work. nothing like recycling paper into a new journal, and i'm a huge fan of having the vertical cyan lines on the pages. a couple of "x" eyelets to wrap the string closure around, and i have no worries of it accidently falling open in front of prying eyes. i love it. :)

the michelangelo project courtesy of french toast girl
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do something creative! it's good for you!

three years ago

this was my post from three years ago today. there was no text, just the photo. we were celebrating dr. seuss' 100th birthday. and nothing says happy birthday like a rice krispy cake. mmmm.

big bird pelt

walking around a craft store is therapeutic for me. so on monday, when i felt like ripping my hair out, i left the office and went to jo-anns. with no real focus, i ambled up & down every craft & fabric aisle. i hung out in the quilting section for awhile - checked out the books, the patterns, the rulers. dug through the corduroy - i do love corduroy. ran my hand along the flannels - nice & fuzzy, just as they should be. rummaged through their purse handles - i still love the orangy-red wooden set they have. compared sizes of straight pins - i think the yellow-headed ones are fatter than the others, but i couldn't make sense of their measuring system. poured over their black & white cottons - i WILL make a black & white quilt someday. and then i go to the remnant piles. and there it was. my little half yard of big bird fur for a simple 75 cents. jackpot.

running down the battery

i like to run my camera battery completely dead before i recharge it. normally that means just leaving the camera on, but this time i decided to just keep taking pictures - mostly with the flash on to speed up the process. here are the results.


stan & pete hanging out together. you can see pete's nubs better in this photo. also well illustrated is stan's patience with pete's silly antics.


here's a fuzzy one attempting to show off more of my hair color. the red highlights are completely throughout. i still love them, even if marji called them punk and clint asked if i did it because of valentine's day.


me modeling my newest necklace. i made it to go with this fabulous new chartreuse top i bought. of course, i'm not wearing that shirt because it was in the laundry. but trust me, it's fabulous. it has little cap sleeves (so unlike me, i know) and some pleating in the back with a little sash. scoop neck, lots of little buttons down the front. shimmery all over. looks great with my white tank & postively dashing under my brown corduroy jacket. it will be worn for our first bunco night.


i recently read about this gal who throws her camera to take photos. the results are quite fun, but i'm not about to throw my camera. so i played with the zoom instead. i set the exposure for 6 seconds & used the flash. i started with my lense set at 80mm, and once the flash fired i opened it up 28mm. it was fun. and it took some experimentation to get the exposure time correct so the whole image wasn't just white ... so it helped run out the battery pretty quick.

i also shot some photos of a quilting project i'm working on, but those can't be shared yet. i just like to mention them to make people curious. :)

meet pete

since the last guy was voted stan (with one vote for frank), this is definitely pete. though you can't see them in the photo, pete has li'l black nubs on his head where his horns haven't quite grown in yet.

meet stan ... or pete?

meet franklin

i'm not sure why his name is franklin, and i'm not sure of his story yet, but isn't he the cutest li'l three-eyed octopus you ever did see? those of you who see me on a regular basis might think his body material looks familiar. it used to be the pink button-down shirt i wore to work on wednesday. i decided it looked better on franklin than it did on me. :)

i want to make more octopus monsters! i think i want some with stubby legs. stubby legs made of orange fur. with little claws on the end. yeah.

meet greggles & kim-kim

i made these little monsters for my college buddy greg and his fiance kim (see her veil?). they're made of scrap materials i had lying about, and they've got rice in their cabooses to help them sit up. greggles actually sits up better than kim-kim, but i think that's because he has a wider base. regardless, they were fun to make and well received by the giftees. the bands around their boxes read as follows ...

greggles
born during a violent thunderstorm, greggles likes to eat butterflies, hug strangers and dance in the dark. he’s happiest when he sees people crying as they laugh.

kim-kim
kim-kim is a tea-party hostess from a distant planet. she attributes her success to her polka-dotted stockings. beware of kim-kim’s tea cookies - just one of them can make you silly for up to 60 days.

these are just the first of many little monsters to come. i'm hoping they'll sell at the popcorn festival. i'll post 'em as i make 'em. i've got some fun ideas!

memory in action

if you'll notice the fairy skirts in this picture (emily's wearing hers, alyssa's is the pink/purple fluffy mass on the floor- they're the gifts my mom made them for Christmas. they're ADORABLE. and the girls loved them.

suggestions for my 28th birthday goals include:
- get reaquainted with friends i've lost contact with (jody)
- trip to texas (erin)
- volunteer somewhere (jody)
- go out to dinner with fred (fred)
- stop in colorado on my way to texas (laure)
- the mustard challenge (laure)

the mustard challenge was originally taken up by my brother, but he claims he "didn't have time" to finish it. the challenge is to eat a gallon of mustard in one week. any kind of mustard, in any combinations.

my birthday's the 24th. so i've still got a couple of weeks to decide. which also means i have just a couple of weeks to finish up on last year's list. yikes.

still taking suggestions. what do you think i should do this year? :)

Christmas ornaments

so you may have read that i've recently found an affinity towards beading. well, i was skiddish of making jewelry for people for Christmas because it's so subjective. but i wanted to make something for my parents, sisters and brothers. so i made these beaded star ornaments. they're about 4" tall, and i hung them with a sheer silver ribbon. everyone seemed to like them, and they were a lot of fun to make.

i want to try making some pendants with the same technique, but a lot smaller, to use for jewelry. april and i are going to have a booth at a craft fair this summer (we ARE going to do it), and i'm thinking i'll try the necklaces for that. then i can just make a bunch of jewelry that i think is fun, and people can choose their own gift. and pay for it. :)

speaking of craft fairs - i added sandi's etsy shop to my "'becca recommends" list. sandi does fantastic illustrations and makes them into the cutest baby clothes you ever did see. she had a booth at a weekly european market last summer, and we bought one of her "you need a little bug hug" onesies for my niece. she's the one who suggested the specific craft fair this summer. check out her shop. she's adding new stuff daily, and i LOVE the milk monster!

Christmas for alyssa & emily

my cousins alyssa and emily are 4 and almost 2, respectively. for Christmas i made them a customized memory game using photos of everyone in their family (grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins - both sides of the family). it's made out of felt & vinyl, like alicia's photo album. there's a total of 36 pieces (18 photos, two pieces with each photo for matching). i even made a box for it to store in. well, i got a papier mache box, cut it down to size and covered it in felt. but you know what i mean.

alyssa really enjoyed playing. we spread all the pieces out after she opened it & played 4 or 5 games that night. it was a lot of fun. emily's a little young to play, but she liked looking at all the pictures. and i think it will be a fun way for them to remember who's who in the family. they live in virginia and only see us a few times a year. so i hope this will be a lot of fun for them. i know i enjoyed making it. now it's up to them to enjoy playing with it. :)