Paper Sensei

Hedgehog the first!

2012-01-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

I finished my first Valentine hedgehog. This one is for my older son.

AhHhhhhHHHH!!!! I LOVE IT! It's the Huggable Hedgehog pattern which you can purchase on Ravelry, or if you live in the Phoenix area and you'd like to support an amazing local business, you could buy it at Tempe Yarn and Fiber.

Anyway, I freaked out just a bit because I thought I had gotten eyes that were too big. If you look at the eye placement of most other people's projects on Ravelry, you see that they're more above the nose. I knew that these eyes were too big to do that, but JoAnn was all out of the smaller ones. I texted my hubby and said, "I think I got eyes that are too big. I guess it's not too big a deal... if these don't work, I can go somewhere else and get smaller eyes. They're only $2."

He texted back, "Is it anime?" And I texted back, "Probably! LoL!" And I kind of forgot about it. When I got home, though, and I started trying to make this work, I took his funny comment to heart and suddenly thought of Hello Kitty and how her eyes are almost on a straight line with her nose. So I thought I'd give it a go. And I LOVE it!!! I'm so glad that JoAnn was out of smaller eyes and that my hubby is brilliant on a future-seeing-psychic scale.

My husband is also wonderful because he sat after this was finished for probably at least two hours, pulling all of those little tendrils out so that the hedgehog would be extra hairy after felting. If you don't use a fun fur type yarn, it's almost required that you pull all the little bits from the inside to the outside so that you have a more dramatic finished product. TOTALLY worth it, by the way. He actually found it relaxing. So he gets to do the next one, too. But even if he didn't, I'd be doing it because the results are so incredible.

At first, I thought a crochet hook would be easier, but it was actually much easier to use the tip of a dpn and just flick them out, rather than having to hook each one individually.

Also, after the guy was felted, I couldn't poke those eyes and nose through to save my life. I marked the spots where I wanted them to go with a black marker and then snipped a tiny hole (no wider than 3/16") on those spots very carefully with extremely sharp scissors. Basically aim to make the hole you snip just a little smaller than the width of the post of the eye/nose attachment you use. I used 15mm eyes and a 21mm nose.

Also, just in case any of you are unfamiliar with the process of felting, this is what the hedgehog looks like BEFORE you felt it. Everything felts faster, by the way, if you felt it (in a zippered pillowcase... that's not faster, it just saves your washing machine) with a pair of jeans in the cycle. Just so ya'll know.

Basic felting instructions (Kathy style) are as follows: set your machine to the hottest water, the smallest load size, and the longest wash cycle. Throw in just a touch of laundry detergent. (Some people leave this out, but I figure that you might as well wash it at the same time.) Zip up your piece into a zippered pillow case (or tie an overhand knot in the end of a normal pillow case, which is what I really do because I don't have a zippered pillow case, but I want to get one because untying a knot to check felting progress is a pain in the butt... but I do know that tying the corners together is not good enough because it always comes undone in the machine). Throw into the washing machine with a pair of jeans and run the cycle. After agitation begins, check the piece every 5 minutes. If it looks like it's almost done at one point when you pull it out, then put it back in and check after only 2 minutes. DON'T let the machine go through it's spin cycle (why you picked the longest wash cycle) because this can apparently create permanent creases. Rinse the item by hand, fold a towel over it and step on it a lot, like you're crushing grapes, to remove most of the moisture, and then temporarily stuff it until it's completely dry, to get the shape you want.

Boxes are great for purses. Use plastic bags for soft, round things like this. It usually takes 1-2 days to dry completely, or, if it's summer, leave it in your garage or outside if you're not afraid of animals (animals LOVE wool... it's weird) and it could seriously be completely dry in half a day.

Anyway, I wasn't intending to write this much, but then I never really do. I'm the Sensei.... I just kind of can't help myself. ^_~

My Corner Studio

2012-01-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

Lupe requested pics of our spaces to put in the AZPCG (Arizona Polymer Clay Guild) newsletter. She specifically requested pics of mine because it's small, I suppose. I feel like it's kind of huge, but then my space started off even smaller than this. I get a corner of our living room all to myself, and I have jokingly called it my corner studio. This thing has evolved slowly over the course of the last 8 years or so of my life. It's been built very organically, actually. I gradually spread out as I could to where I think are the limits.

My space is possibly unique amongst most creative spaces that get shown online because I'm going to show you the "for real" of it... It's totally low budget. I think I'm the fourth or fifth person to own my desk, for instance. I didn't have some designer come in and make my area. I have barely any purchased storage. Most of it was made by moi. If it wasn't, it's likely I purchased it at a garage sale. I am going to get really honest and transparent about my storage spaces, too. I'm posting this mainly hoping that I can potentially help someone else with their space, rather than with any wish to show mine off. (Not that there's anything wrong with showing off. I show off quite frequently. That's just not my intent today. ^_~)

Below is a shot of what my area usually looks like. The primary tip I have for using a smallish, multi-purpose space is to keep it clean. I'm pretty militant about cleaning up every single time I finish, unless I'm in some marathon session and I know I'll be making the same thing for quite a while. In any case, I also believe that I need to lead my family by example. If I expect them to clean their messes up, then I expect the same thing of myself. (My younger son usually sits and plays in that empty spot on my coffee table and I let him because I think it's cute.)

Here's another shot of the area, not including my coffee table setup. One of the other tips I have is kind of obvious, I guess, and overstated, but still... Go vertical. If you don't have a lot of space, you can usually build up. Don't forget to build down, too. I use the space underneath this little table to store a few things I don't usually need to get to, as well as a little gift bag that I frequently fill with things I no longer want/need. I let my crafty friends look through the bag when they come to my house so that they can take stuff home with them if they like it.

These stackable plastic drawers are pretty neat. There are three sets here. I started with only 1 (about $12 for a three drawer storage unit at Walmart) and eventually bought the other two as I expanded. They are a perfect size for storing scrapbook papers. I also store my purchased papers in kits. A 2 gallon Ziploc bag is perfect for storing 12x12 scrapbook papers. I put each separate paper pack and all of the stickers/accessories that go with it into the bag, then store them flat in the drawers marked "paper".

I picked up this rotating thingie at a garage sale for $4. Previously, I stored all of my items in a storage container I made from an old tin and toilet paper rolls. I covered the rolls in paper and stood them up in the tin to separate my pens and pencils and whatnot. Invariably, there were little spaces between the lip of the tin and the curved edges of the rolls, and those were the spots I'd stick my scissors and bone folders and other tools into. That little cheap organizer served me for a LONG time before I finally found this beauty.

I basically played Tetris with this thing for months before I got it exactly the way I love it now. It was just experience... I realized which things I used constantly and which things I didn't really need at hand and I cycled things in and out as I worked. That's another tip, I suppose... It's all a process. I don't think you can perfect your space overnight, and you certainly can't perfect it just by buying a bunch of expensive stuff and then suddenly hoping it will be organized. You've got to do it as you go, as you learn about yourself and about your art and what you use and what you need. Just because everyone else needs this tool right by them, for instance, doesn't mean that you need it, especially if you never use it. You'd be surprised at just how much your own preconceptions and other people's opinions about art and life can influence your space in ways that make it less useful to you. You've got to learn to listen to your own process to make it work for you.

Up on my shelves, I have all of my glorious Stampin' Up! stamps. I'm officially out of room, too, so I'm going to start rotating the ones I don't use as much out as I buy new sets. The ink storage was handmade. It's basically a divided box that has sections big enough for the ink pads which I store upside down.

I use my big stamps quite frequently to create texture in clay and to create my own background papers for paper crafting. So I didn't have to keep guessing, I cut pieces of paper that would fit on the outside and then stamped the paper with the stamp. I glued the piece to the end of each stamp. They're arranged biggest to littlest in a stack.

I also cut a piece of cardstock that fits under the rubber of the biggest stamp so that I can slide the stack in and out as I work. I had done a piece for each stamp, but it was too much of a pain to put back in place. I like to work mostly sitting down. Pretty much everything I need most frequently is in reach. I discovered that it was just easier to slide the entire stack out, use the ones I wanted, then slide it all back once the stamps were cleaned and dried.

This shot shows my other homemade inkpad storage. As you can see, over time the little "shelves" of the divided box have curved to the impression of the pads, but it still works beautifully. So that I could easily tell which color was which, I stamped a little paper with a design and then cut out a bit and inked the edges with the same pad before attaching the piece to the side of the ink pad.

This shot also shows my use of the shelf space behind the two pretty jars in front. I use so many recycled containers to hold my stuff. Spice jars, and, my favorite, the strawberry jelly jar in front. I use these to hold buttons and various other trinkets.

Here's a shot of my top shelf. I used old container candle glasses after the candle burned all the way down. You just pour the wax out while it's all liquid. To get extra finicky, just stand the glasses in a pan of simmering water until the wax gets all liquid inside, too, and then wipe them out with a paper towel. The two on either end actually had metal wick holder glued into them with some kind of crazy glue that NOTHING has removed. I was going to just throw them away in utter despair (^_~) before I realized that I'm storing buttons in them and the buttons will cover up that metal bit. Guess what? They do.

You can see some more of my homemade storage here. The red box up top is a cardstock box with ribbon handles glued into the sides and across the bottom. The storage boxes you see are homemade. I made my little ribbon tower (you can see a link over to the right about how to make your own homemade ribbon tower storage) vertical like this because I don't have space to have a big horizontal bar somewhere. I also try to keep just my spectrum stocked in kind of plain ribbon because, seriously, no one needs 72 spools of ribbon. I'm not criticizing. It's just kind of true, right? How do you use it all? Is your finished art really so effected by whether or not your ribbon has dots/ruffles/etc.? Every now and then I DO purchase a cute, fancy ribbon, but only if it fits in the tower. I could make myself another tower, but I don't have room. Anyway, this is all to say that you need to make decisions when you have a smallish area, and a severe limit to ribbon was one of those calls I had to make for myself.

I store random 3D embellishments in this little white box that was part of the packaging of my Nook.

I like this cute white storage thing I got, too. It was $3 at a garage sale and it had these horrifying wicker baskets in each hole that took up so much room. I pulled them out, cleaned the entire thing up, sanded all of the edges so that it was worn evenly, lined the back with some of my favorite papers, and turned it into storage without the baskets.

Over on my wall I hung up some decorated binder clips just slightly more than 6 inches apart. I can clip a single page in the middle or two on each end and have it look balanced. Or I can have a marathon scrapping session and hang a ton of pages up like I did recently. I like to hang them for at least a day to make sure all of the glue is dry and whatnot. I also think it's fun to have the pages displayed for a while before shoving them into an album on my shelf.

I store my non-kit paper scraps in a binder with 8.5x11" page protectors. (The scraps that go with a certain collection just stay with the collection in the 2 gallon Ziploc bags.) If your scrap is too big to fit into one of these page protectors then it can probably just go back onto the shelf. 12" scraps are easy to store... Just let them stick out of the top. I have it organized by color, with two protectors for each color... Plain paper/cardstock first, then patterned. Don't agonize over this too much. Whatever your very first impression of the patterned paper is, file it in that folder. I periodically go through this folder and recycle a bunch of the scraps, too. I also make sure to look here first when I'm looking for a specific color so that I can make my modest paper supply last longer.

Oh, clear stamps... how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...

I've written a lot about how clear stamps are actually awesome and DON'T give blotchy images if you use pigment or chalk ink with them. And how you can appreciate the blotchy image you get with dye ink if you call it "vintage" or "distressed". I adore clear stamps. They're easy to clean and easy to store. And in a limited space, this storage glory is key. It turns out that an 8.5x11" page protector is the PERFECT size for two sets of most of the clear stamps you can buy in JoAnn or Michael's. Manufacturers have to get cute, though, and make weird, non standard sizes. So Paper Sensei has a solution for that, too.

Lay your stamp sets down on a page protector and draw sharpie lines around them. Leave plenty of room. If you have stamp sets going in the bottom of the page protector, then draw a line over the top of each stamp set plus about 1/4". Slip a piece of cardstock into the page protector and cut the line with an X-Acto knife, being careful to only go through the protector and not through the cardstock to the other side.

Remove the cardstock from the page protector. Sew up the lines you originally drew with your sewing machine. So easy! Now you can slip your stamps into the spaces up top and slide your other stamps through the slits you made and into their holes. These things hold up over time, too. I have some that I know are at least 3 years old and they still work perfectly.

Here are shots of my drawers now. I store most of my pens flat to keep them from drying out. (Apparently this is a concern... I don't know for sure. I'd just rather be safe than sorry.) My alcohol inks and some spare clay blocks are stored in some more handmade storage, another divided cardstock box. I pretty much just try to keep the stuff I use the most on hand and easily accessible. I will sometimes pick a spool of ribbon to use up (you will actually use your stuff if you decide to use it up, and that keeps your space from getting overcrowded and gives you something to buy next time you go to the store) and throw it in here and try to use it on practically every project.

I also purposefully don't fill my drawers all the way if I can help it. This combined with using up my stuff means that I always feel like I've got wiggle room even if I never intend to use it.

The drawers are really a big Tetris game, too. I try to keep stuff in trays and boxes. The three cardstock boxes you see there are more homemade storage. They were made specifically to fit the things they hold, so that helps take up less space, too. Rather than buying bulky bins for everything, I tailor make much of my storage.

I store my embossing powders in some jewelry storage, too, to save space because the bottles are all different sizes. This way I can keep them all neat and use the little embossing powder bottles for other things. I can recycle them or use them as packaging for tiny gifts of little things like buttons, charms, etc, which I put together quite frequently for my crafty friends. (Giving stuff out of my stash, usually, which they love and I love because they get cute stuff and I free up more space.)

The tiny bits of jewelry storage are perfect for brads and such. I sort them out, especially if they come in a package that is all mixed colors. Don't look at me like that.

Anyway, I try to just stick to neutrals with the brads and the eyelets. Sure, other colors are cute, but this is another one of those decisions I've made so that I can save space.

Another tip: If you run out of silver brads or eyelets, just sand the tops off of some of your colored pieces. Virtually every one of them is silver underneath. You can also color these with alcohol inks if you'd like a brighter color that you don't have because you don't buy bright colors. ^_~

The final drawer is my exception to the "don't make the drawers too full" rule. But this one works for what it works for. I made homemade storage for my Cricut Solutions cartridges, too. There are little cardstock bars in there that hold all of the cartridges in place while all of the keyboards and booklets sit in the bottom of the box. I store all of the extra cords for my devices (and other things) in that clear shoe box bin so that I always know where they are.

Here's the coffee table where I store my Imagine, Imagine cartridges, and my filing cabinet, which is that wicker thing. I store all of my craft ideas, knitting patterns, yearly receipts, and other such things here. You can see here, too, that I use the space under the table to hold various things. Storing things in a tray on the floor is handy because I can just pull the entire tray out, grab what I need, then push the tray back. It keeps everything much neater. I also store my Kates here for my spinning.

Here's another shot that shows the other end of my corner studio... My polymer clay stuff and tools are all stored in the black pull case, and my clay oven is on top of the case. This fits perfectly, but there was a bit of Tetris involved here, too. It's evolved over time, so everything is right where I want it.

Okay, here's the part that horrifies me. I can't believe I'm showing this. But here is the area where I store all of my beads and jewelry tools. It's separate from my studio area, but still in the living room. These were built in cabinets. The boxes up top actually are very neatly organized with old baby food containers lined up inside of them, filled with various bits. They make the boxes stack quite neatly. I used to have ALL of my jewelry storage set up like this, in these boxes. But eventually I was running out of room and needed storage with smaller containers, so I finally purchased storage for my beads.

My primary recommendation here is to not go anywhere NEAR bead storage that is just a divided box with a lid that snaps shut on top of it. I still have nightmares (not really, but you know what I mean) about just how many times I have dropped, dumped, or hit one of these containers while it was open and sent my entire collection flying... Every single bit of my storage was required to be separate containers within another container. Yes, I sort out my brads after I buy them, but I'm not completely crazy. I only want to do it once.

You can actually still see some of the cute little stackable baby food containers in this shot. Funny! Those things are so old. They're Gerber, by the way, in case anyone with babies out there wants cute stackable storage for their craft area.

Here is my tool shelf which actually slides out. This is the coolest thing! Anyway... I'm able to keep it semi-messy because it slides out. But actually, everything is here even though it doesn't all fit because this is ALL of the stuff that I am constantly using. Buy a button from me at TYF and, seriously, practically all of this stuff was used in making that little thing you enjoy.

Ack! This is really the full Monty, isn't it? Anyway, here's my other cabinet. So while I have a smallish space, I actually do have quite a lot of storage space. But I like to think I use it effectively. Except for those top two shelves... I have a vague idea of what's up there. It's the one area I'm not entirely clear on. If I ever need that space, I'll go through it, I'm sure. ^_^

One last thing... I can't show off my yarn storage because we're rearranging the living room right now and there's stuff in front of my yarn shelf. (The yarn you've seen in previous pics is a collection of my handspun yarn, including one skein that isn't my handspun, and is in fact my genius friend, Kim's, handspun... it's kind of in the middle. The lightish one that has a lot of glorious colors. I had to have it, so I bought it.) But I'll show where I store my scraps and leftover balls of yarn...

Cute, huh?! I was at Yumiko Alexander's house for a spin-in and saw a huge fish tank she has which she uses to store gobs and gobs of yarn. It's so neatly organized, too, because she's a designer with Universal Yarns and they send her yarn to work with. Anyway, it kind of inspired me, and I remembered that I had this huge hurricane candle thing that was left in our house by the previous residents and I grabbed it and started filling it with my scraps. I love the sight of yarn in the glass like this. Don't know why. It just speaks to something inside of me.

Anyway, I can't believe I've written a post this long. I have things to do! ^_~ I hope it helped someone.

Oh, my gosh... Blame Pinterest.

2012-01-23T17:15:00.000-08:00

Sorry for three posts in one day! But I just found out that TYF got three of the spindles that Ken Ledbetter made with my flowers and I have to post them somewhere so that I can pin them on my pinterest... So that's what this is about.

I'm loving how they turned out!

He's writing my name on the bottoms of the spindles, which I think is almost unnecessary... He clearly did so much more work than I did. But still... it's cool!

Geeking out just a bit... He matched the shafts to the flowers, too!

Lovelove!

Manners

2012-01-23T14:38:00.000-08:00

This is the current configuration of my dining room table.

I like to set it extra fancy so that it's fun to sit and eat dinner here. We don't eat here every night, but we do eat here probably at least 4 days out of any given week.

When we eat here, we all practice our table manners. The boys are becoming quite proficient.

It turns out that the key to a perpetually clean dining room (something I've always longed for) is setting the table and leaving it. Also, taking the table cloth off of what is the most expensive piece of furniture in our house certainly helps. Everyone is being so careful. I love it! ^_~

Latest Shawl Pins

2012-01-23T10:53:00.000-08:00

Here are some of my latest pins. They sell for $20 each and a lot of them are already sold. For now, I sell these exclusively through Tempe Yarn and Fiber. Visit their website here for their location and information.

The one above is possibly one of my favorites. Ever.

The one above has a piece of brass I etched using my super secret image transfer technique. I'm hoping to get my fourth instructional magazine article published about this technique. ^_~

The one above uses one of my earlier polymer clay beads, sanded and buffed to a high gloss shine. I really miss being able to do this on a large scale. My hand and arm bother me too much if I try to do too much sanding now. I'm hoping to find some solutions. If any clay people out there have experienced the same problem and solved it, I'm ALL ears.

I love the turquoise/bird's nest one. ^_^ The inspiration for this came, as it often does, from a friend's special order necklace. I LOVE special orders, especially for things I've never done before. I get to try new techniques and learn new things. My favorite ones are the ones that start off with, "Is it possible to...??" Or, "Can you do...??" And God always lets these ideas work out so well, too. I was hunting through some of my old stuff and came across these bird beads that I completely forgot I had. So I had to make them work with the little nest I made. This one sold to one of my favorite people at the yarn shop, too. I get really happy when the pieces I treasure go to people I treasure. ^_^

Love the heart one and the squiggle one above.

I'm in love with all three of these... I love the squiggle one and the fun shape that just so happened to PERFECTLY set this crystal. And my polymer clay octopus, of course.

Anyway... I'm going to be making some more pieces pretty soon. I'm actually looking forward to translating a lot of these design ideas into pendants and earrings. The one above, for instance, can also be a pendant. Just take hold of the jump ring, hold it up, let the crystal fall into the lovely frame, and string it that way on a chain to wear it like that instead. ^_^ I'm not sure how to package/market this idea. But I'm going to be doing more like it in the future. I like multi-purpose pieces.

Fast Christmas Cards and a Journal

2011-12-21T08:12:00.000-08:00

I am still moving faster than a speeding woman, so this is going to be as succinct as I can make it while still making it thorough. I have given myself a time limit of 15 minutes to write this post. Let's see if I can make it!

First, I was in a gift exchange at my polymer clay guild, and I gave this journal I made as one of the gifts in my box:

Actually, if you put a lot of 3D stuff all over the cover of a journal, it ends up acting like a thick cover because all of the 3D stuff pokes up from all over and it doesn't interfere with writing at all. I say "actually" because I know someone just thought, "But she can't put all that 3D stuff on the front of a notebook!" ^_~ Anyway, the filler is a bunch of graph paper that I hope the recipient can use to envision some gorgeous new creations. Sequins are one of my favorite supplies for bling-ing (word?) up paper crafts. I like to string them on in a huge clump and then tie them on like I did here. I think they look so festive! They're gorgeous glued on, too, in place of rhinestones. And SO much cheaper!

Here are the promised card formula photos. I use this basic design background over and over and over and over and over again, and not just for Christmas cards. As creative as everyone says I am... (And I am, I don't deny it, not because I'm some egomaniac, but because sometimes it just doesn't make sense to try to be "humble", whatever that means, because when you ARE good at something, you just are, and you shouldn't mince words about it to make other people more comfy. Everyone is good at many things, and I think more people would uncover their potential if more people would be willing to just be obviously good at what they're good at without trying to make it look like they don't think they're very good. But that's getting too deep into philosophy, and we don't have to go there right now. We're talking about card formulas and I have 6 minutes to finish this post.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. As creative as everyone says I am, I am also a mom with two boys (10 and 5) and I have 34 people on my gift list. Most of what I make I make because it doesn't take time, not because I'm lazy, but because my life simply does not allow for long stretches of me reveling in the creative process. This is why knitting and spinning have become such a HUGE presence in my life, because I can be knitting or spinning while on the couch, spending time with my family, watching TV, or playing games, or knitting while driving in the car, or waiting at a restaurant, in a line, etc... I get to be creative without being over in my little corner. It's great!

Okay, 2 minutes now, but I had to go take care of something with the boys, which took at least 2 minutes, so I'm saying four minutes for this. ^_~

All of that said, I like to do fast, easy things. And this card is my fastest and my easiest. I think it looks pretty durned good, so I will share with you some finished photos and the exact measurements of the pieces I cut, which I don't see a lot of people do very often.

LOVE the above card... I love this new punch from Stampin' Up. I love how rich it makes the accent for this card look. So when I had yet another person to quickly throw a card together for this morning, I took pictures so you could see.

The base cardstock card (not pictured) is your typical 4.25"x5.5" card base, made from an 8.5"x5.5" piece of cardstock. The other pieces are made to fit with a little 1/8" border all around...

Here is the formula:

Two main pieces, usually slightly different, with the "denser" one on the bottom. Cut them 2 5/8" high by 4" wide.

3 accent strips, usually from the same double sided paper (flip it over for the smaller strips, or you can use two different pieces). I make a 4" wide piece and then cut off three strips: 1/4", 1", and 3/8". Flip the 1/4" and 3/8" strips over to show the other side. The wider strip goes on the bottom.

And some kind of accent... Like I said, I'm in love with this punch, but this part could be anything. I like to do something that has a sentiment as part of the main accent of the card so that I don't have to figure out then where my sentiment is going to go after the accent is attached. It makes it all very easy.

Oh, and as a random accent that doesn't take a lot of time, I like to round the upper right corner of the top paper and the card itself. I also usually ink all my edges, but I do it FAST. I don't pay attention. I just hit all the edges.

Glue the two pieces, lining them up to make roughly the same border all around. Good news about this card, too, is that if your join in the middle is not exact (and it rarely is), it doesn't matter. Focus on getting the border all around even.

Glue the strips down, first centering the 1" piece over the middle join of the two first pieces. (This is why your join doesn't matter as much... but you don't want the two pieces beneath overlapping each other, because THAT would show through.) Glue the 1/4" strip above the 1" strip and then glue the 3/8" strip below the 1" strip.

Center your accent. I glued the first punched piece down flat and then used 3D adhesive to pop the second piece up. You can stop here, but I usually add a couple of things.

Like... pearls! I love pearls. I love the Stampin' Up pearls. I save these strips for when I'm in a rush, and around this time of year, I'm always in a rush. A happy rush, but a rush nonetheless. I add the strips of pearls, and I purposefully let one pearl be slightly underneath the popped up piece so that it gives the illusion that there is a strip of pearls going across the entire front of the card underneath the accent.

Anyway, there it is! I only went 5 minutes over. ^_~

Faster than a speeding woman...

2011-12-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

This time of year is crazy. Let's not mince words. I can't believe I am even doing this. But I mailed all the long distance presents this morning, only forgot to include two things, and proceeded to bake over 100 cookies cookie press style because we bought one last night because Stephanie Pearl-McPhee inspired me with her Cookie Boy post... and now how could a mom with two boys resist that?

Here's a fly by of my last several days.

Christmas cards for the boys' teachers and their bus driver. This was with the build a blossom punch, and inspired by the latest Stampin' Up! catalog. I used their jewels and pearls, too, and one of their antique brads, and a stamp from the "Tiny Tags" set.

I ALWAYS decorate the backs of my cards. The 25 is from the Merry and Type set and this is one of the newer Stampin' Up! punches, which, if such things were possible with inanimate objects or crafting supplies, is my soul mate. I have more pictures using this punch coming up hopefully tomorrow.

This is a neck warmer made for a relative I won't mention just in case the person is reading the blog. I find this unlikely, but you never know. This is Manos Del Uruguay Maxima in a stunning blueish colorway that leaves me almost (ALMOST) speechless with adoration. Manos is getting closer and closer towards becoming one of the yarns I sing. (Malabriiiiigooooo being the first one.)

A hat crocheted for my bestest sister friend since seventh grade. She saw the baggie I made (pictured below) and loved the colors, so I made her a hat with the leftovers. Seriously, I had 2.5 feet left when I was finished. It's my handspun, a lovely 50/50 soy silk/wool blend which used to be bright yellow and red, but is now this fun colorway after I overdyed it with sky blue Wilton paste dye. It's the Green Berries pattern from Warm Earth by Yumiko Alexander who just so happens to be a beautiful human being and one of my favorite fiber friends. Seriously, she hangs out all the time at Tempe Yarn and Fiber and asks us for opinions on her designs and everything. ^_^

This is the baggie I made with my handspun using the Counterpane Accessories Pouch pattern from Handknit Holidays, one of my favorite books. It's my notions pouch now and I swear the lining took longer to sew in than the bag took to knit. I'm not a seamstress. But, hey, this is only like my second time installing a zipper and I did an AMAZING job. (It never hurts to pump yourself up... Why wouldn't you?) It's also the first time I've EVER touched my knitting with a sewing machine, which was terrifying, but I had to just do it, right? It turned out fine. Most of these things do, actually.

I hand stitched the lining in. Look at these stitches.

Seriously, this was so much of my life for two days. I just feel ridiculously proud. Partway through this project I yelled at my husband, "I don't WANT to do a good job! I want to do a CRAPPY job!" It took sooooo long that I'm not giving this to the person I was originally intending it for. Not that I don't love her with all of my heart, but she will NEVER fully appreciate what went into this, between the handspun yarn and the sewing with a SEWING MACHINE on my KNITTING which was knit with my HANDSPUN YARN and then the HAND STITCHING inside. I don't mean to get emotional, but you know what I mean.

Here's another shot of the notions pouch. This is my most beautimous love right now.

Okay, that's enough.

Wait. One more.

Yep, it's mine now.

This is what my afternoons look like right now...

2011-12-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

That's pretty much it. Merry Christmas! ^_~

Imagine Advent Calendar, Neckwarmer

2011-12-02T08:20:00.001-08:00

I made some stuff and I'm posting it before I get too bogged down again.

Here's an Advent Calendar I made from card stock and decorated with papers and images from my Imagine:

Here's a neck warmer I knit for my hubby out of Malabrigo Twist (my favorite yarn ever) for our dating anniversary. We've been dating for 9 years now. Yes, we got married in there somewhere, but we still celebrate dating because dating is different from marriage and no married person should ever stop dating their spouse.

Until next time! ^_~

Long break... Update!

2011-11-16T13:19:00.001-08:00

I've taken a hiatus from a lot of blogging lately, and I am honestly not sure if I'll ever really do this a lot. I just have a lot of stuff going on! And blogger has been so weird lately... I try constantly to post comments on my friends' blogs, and it never lets me. Maybe it's my browser.

Anyway, I figured I'd do a quite montage of my crafting highlights over the last five or six months. Above and below are shawl pins I made in June, I believe.

19 knitted strawberries for my son's play food stash, made in July from a free pattern on Ravelry. To get to it, you can see my project page on Ravelry. (I'm KathyCanuel on there, and everywhere else, I suppose, but usually with a space between my names. ^_~)

In August, I improvised a cute crochet chef hat for Elliott. He's a bit obsessed with play food and cooking and kitchen stuff.

My first knitted shawl, also completed in August:

I got an order for a trinity link ring, which was a new challenge for me. But I love the way this turned out, in September.

In September, I got a new bible from my husband, and I added bling to it by gluing crystals on the cover and by adding this cluster charm on the ribbon.

Also in September, I made my first real knitted garment (I've previously done a very bulky cardigan for my son and a little baby sweater, but I don't count those) for my sweet older son. He gets cold in his classroom at school and they have a uniform policy that states that if they're wearing a cover up inside, it must be navy blue and it must NOT have a logo, and it can't be made of sweat material. You would never realize just how hard it is to find a plain navy blue cardigan. So I made one.

In October, I made two more signs for Tempe Yarn and Fiber, to mark sections of yarn in the store. I had a lot of fun with both of these!

I also made a lot of really, really cool pieces for my trunk show. These earrings are my super fave. I don't think I have to point out which pair I'm talking about. ^_~

In October, I also managed to knit two entire sweaters for my sweet husband for his November birthday, shown here. He was so excited to get them, which makes it really easy to knit stuff for him.

So far this month, I've finished my second lacy shawl, also made from a free pattern on Ravelry, called Echo Flower.

And I have another trunk show coming up in the beginning of December! I'm keeping busy. So busy, in fact, that I apparently have no time to post about it. ^_~

More JT Imagine Cartridge fun

2011-05-27T10:27:00.000-07:00

This time I used the JT Cartridge on my Imagine to make winter layouts and a birthday layout for my son. Again, I'm posting them here because I've got to put them on the web somewhere or I can't add them to the Cricut board.

What I made with the JT Cartridge...

2011-05-26T18:01:00.001-07:00

I wanted to just post this on the Cricut message board, but I had to enter a URL for my images, so I need to post them here first. Basically, I used my JT cartridge in my Cricut Imagine to print papers and make a box and then I decorated it and made a card, too. I also made the box bigger than the DS game that was the present so that it would be tricksy packaging.

I finished the box with yarn from my remnants stash and added extra knots and stuff to make it messy and more boy-friendly. Hopefully it all worked out.

Interesting, I think...

2011-05-26T15:52:00.000-07:00

Interesting that:

1. Thad is currently engrossed in "The Red Pyramid" by Rick Riordan. He's reading it on my Nook. I barely suggested he might like to check it out and he jumped at the opportunity, I know, because of the technology more than because of the book. Of course the book is proving to be quite interesting or he would have stopped staring at the immobile screen (except for page changes, of course, but that's not really very exciting) long ago.

2. Thad refused to even start the Percy Jackson series by the same author, for which we own paperbacks of the first four books. (Waiting for the fifth to come out on paperback so that my set can match. I always do this to myself.) I wonder if he'll be interested in reading those once he's read through "The Throne of Fire"?

3. I can't read "The Throne of Fire" right now because someone is using my Nook.

4. I don't mind this because my 10 year old is choosing to read instead of playing a video game. Not that I feel that video games are entirely a waste (at least they're engaging his mind, right? Not like mindless watching of TV.). I just like that he's choosing a book, even if it's presented in a non-traditional form.

5. He's going to a birthday party this evening and I have yet to prepare the present/card... I wonder if a 13 year old boy will appreciate stuff made on my Cricut Imagine? I wonder if a 13 year old boy appreciates anything?

6. If I continue buying series of books on my Nook, I never have to worry about the "waiting for the paperback" thing again. This pleases me.

7. Adam's surprise and super secret anniversary socks are moving along well, even though it's pretty slow. I'm throwing myself into working on them every morning. I'm not sure Elliott will recognize me after this is all over if I don't have a dark gray sock in progress in my hands. I have heard a million times that "slow and steady wins the race", but I'm really hoping eventually for some "warp speed and steady" to enter my fingers. This project is dragging.

8. I think that's it... I have to go make packaging for a present for a kid I'm sure will throw it all away within 2 minutes of opening the gift.

9. I will still make the packaging, moved by some inner compulsion to always give my best even when people will fail to recognize or appreciate it.

10. God and I just had a moment of mutual understanding on that one. Touche, Big G. Touche.

Spice Jar Tooth Fairy House

2011-05-20T09:16:00.001-07:00

I'm both really proud of and really embarrassed by this project. It's a house for the Tooth Fairy made out of an old spice jar.

I'm trying to trace back to what made me think of doing this and all I can figure is that it started with Thad losing a tooth yesterday morning. He put it on a piece of paper on the counter with the cutest little note: "Mom, please put my tooth somewhere safe. Love, Thad" This empty jar just so happened to be sitting very close to the note. I had used it up in our glorious Chipotle style food night and I was trying to figure out what to store in it.

Suddenly, as often happens, my mind suddenly rushed with a huge mesh of ideas. I thought of the Tooth Fairy. I thought of the wonderfully cute fairy doors I read about on Yarn Harlot's blog. I looked at the spice jar and thought of old fashioned apothecary jars. I thought of a safe place for a tooth. The Tooth Fairy's house, right? And also the idea of a wonderful little place that we could put a tooth where the Tooth Fairy could go in, stretch her wings, relax, grab the tooth, then leave money before leaving. Sort of a Tooth Fairy exchange place. And it all kind of meshed in my mind and this is what happened:

(The tiny door knob fell off during sanding, but I'm going to fix it.)

(I've always been obsessed with chandeliers, so Tooth Fairy had to get a chandelier for her crib.)

And even though this was technically made as a safe place for Thad's tooth, somebody else thinks it belongs to him.

(For the record, Thad, being a wise and advanced age of 10, no longer believes in the Tooth Fairy,
but we still have fun with it.)

A bit of "drama", Sensei style

2011-05-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I'm compelled to call my every strong emotion "drama". Why is that? It's perfectly acceptable to have strong emotions. In fact, I believe so many of us desire people in our lives to actually feel through things--to care about things. I felt a little bit embarrassed about sharing this page, but I've done this kind of unspoken thing where I've decided that I'm sharing all of my pages from 2011 on my blog as a way to keep me motivated to keep up on my scrapping this year. This is one of my emotional pages.

The more emotional I get, the more organic my photo layout tends to be. It's like all of that stuff gets jumbled up inside of me and I can't force myself to make a grid of pictures, to line everything up all neatly and perfectly. The stuff I feel doesn't get lined up neatly and perfectly inside of me, so I put a little bit of that randomness onto the page. I had a really hard time getting this together, so I made a few decisions early on to give myself some boundaries so that I wouldn't stress myself out with the possibilities. (This is another one of my tips for getting some of your scrapbooking actually finished... You MUST set yourself some sort of rule that you will not stray from so that you can actually get your stuff on the page. IF, however, you receive a flash of brilliant inspiration contrary to your original rule, then you MUST break your original rule and go with your flash. I just like setting the rule out so that if my flash never comes, I'll still get a good page done. Get it? Got it? Good.)

Prior Decisions:
-2 page layout
-One page would be solely for showcasing the journaling I had recorded on the specific day that this all happened.
-The other page would be for pictures.
-This page would have an old, much loved, vintage feel.
-I would not force myself, as I usually do, to be done in one sitting. This one would take some time and my desk would be a mess and that would be okay with me. (Here that, Self?! The messy desk is FINE on this one for a while. You just shut your mouth.)
-I would ONLY use papers and embellishments from the Colorbok Flea Market collection. (Remember this rule, because I did end up breaking it in a flash of inspiration.)

Those decisions made, I set about making this:

After finally setting my boundaries, the page flowed so naturally and organically, it was another one of those processes where (seriously, I'm not preaching, just expressing my own experience in the creative process) I felt like I had Help. I am a Christian. Most people know that about me. Closer to the truth is that I'm more of a charismatic Christian, which is where people think it gets weird. Basically, I have this open and flowing experience with God pretty constantly in my life and I feel it expresses itself in all kinds of ways, whether through words, or through feelings, or through times like this when as I create, the process is so smooth and flowing that it's like He and I truly become one in mind and motion. We bond a lot by making stuff. It might sound crazy or silly, but you can think of it as me being connected with the creative energy of the universe or something, if that helps you, because it's still technically correct, I guess.

Anyway, the first moment It happened was after I had used the pink measuring tape fabric stickers at the bottoms of both of my pages. It seemed so fitting somehow, but I didn't know why, until later after laying my pictures out and tearing up just a bit again, I remembered the quote I eventually put there. "Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold." -Zelda Fitzgerald.

Then with the journaling, and the borders, and all of that. The other paper strips you see are ones that I took off of the tops of the papers in the Flea Market paper stack. I love these double sided strips and use them all the time. They're like pre-made embellishments. I like working with loose paper anyway, so I always get home and tear my paper packs apart so that I have all loose sheets. In ones like the Colorbok sets (which I love), you end up with all of these double sided strips that you can just tear off at the dotted line. I originally didn't like that they had holes in them, but then I grew to really enjoy the look.

As I kept going, though, I started to realize that the stuff in the Colorbok Flea Market collection wasn't going to be enough to help me out. I left the page, and the next day I went shopping for a 7Gypsies Letterpress Tray at Scrapbooks Etc., which they didn't have. But while I was there, I bought some Basic Grey rubons (Designer Rubons, 843940029959 rub-2995... they didn't have a specific name, just numbers... They're the black old fashioned travel themed ones, really cool) and rubons from Melissa Frances called "Vintage Transfers", which had a whole bunch of crowns and wings. Also very cool. I also picked up a sheet of pearl stickers, also from Melissa Frances, labeled "1962 Trinkets and Baubles".

I wasn't planning on using any of these things for the page I was working on. I just grabbed them because I loved them. They spoke to me. I'm developing more of a vintage style, like everyone else, so I resisted it for a long time, until I realized I just love it and I always create most easily with the products I love.

When I got home and I began working on my page again, I realized that some of the images and pearls I just bought would look perfect on the page. So I broke my rule. I put some of them in there. I added a whole bunch of old fabric accents I had in my stash. I put pearls everywhere (to indicate how precious I felt it all was).

Just working through the page gave me such a sense of fulfillment. It was emotionally releasing to get this kind of stuff down on paper. I realized how grateful I was for my son's growth, and what a joy he has been in our lives. He gets funnier every day he gets older. I wanted to express what I felt today as I made the page, and not just what I felt on the day I took the pictures. I made a custom journaling spot, which is one of my favorite things to do. It's very easy. Just take some good border stamps, like the ones I used here (the straight flourish), and stamp yourself a box. The corners were empty and, again, It happened when I saw that in the same set (Pink Paislee Pop Fashion) there was a tiny crown stamp, and I stamped the corners with the crown. (I used crown rubons earlier on Elliott's two pictures.)

I then basically drew lines across my stamped box with a normal gel pen and using a ruler. I like to push at different strengths as I draw my line to make them look more like the worn out, store bought stuff you usually get. Again, a lot of scrapbookers think they like "perfect", but what they usually like is "store bought" and the store bought stuff is almost NEVER perfect.

I worked through a lot of emotions about my kids growing up as I made this page, and it was so nice. One of my favorite tidbits I added was from the BasicGrey rubons, of the little ship at the bottom right corner of the picture of Elliott in the playpen. It's sailing off, towards outside of the bounds of the picture, symbolizing that his journey and his adventure are continuing. It was a quick little thing to put, but as soon as I did, there was a kind of release emotionally in me. I celebrate his journey, not just his times as a baby. And I'm so honored to be a part of it all.

Lost Coffee Cup, Birthday Layout

2011-05-14T09:55:00.000-07:00

I'm talking about this:

...later. So scroll down to read about that, or stay here and read about my coffee cup first.

This morning I lost my coffee cup.

I was somewhat beside myself, to say the least. I'm not one of those people who can get overly dramatic about coffee and how it's the "brown elixir of life" and all of that, but I have grown quite fond of having a cup in the mornings. It really does help me wake up. I don't know if it's because of the caffeine (by this point in my life, I'm not sure the caffeine content of a cup of coffee could even matter to my system) or because of the mental thing that happens when I take my first sip. That "ahhhh..." feeling that comes over my brain. This is how I start my day. My day is now started. Before that point, my brain hasn't reconciled itself to being awake. Until I have my "ahhhh..." moment, I'm not too happy. I mean, I'm not a mindless harpy or anything, but I'm not perfectly content.

I think it's really more the mental thing. As of this morning, I had very strong evidence to support my theory. My coffee doesn't taste the same if I use a different cup. It's about the ritual of the thing for me. My coffee, in my cup, with my raw sugar and my fat free half and half is what equals "ahhhh..." for me. I used to be lazier about this. I would just use a different mug. But it would never be the same. I've started washing my mug before I make my coffee if it's not already clean the next morning. I want my mug and my coffee and my "ahhhh..." and it's not going to happen unless all of that comes together. Again, not having this doesn't mean I make it my excuse to be horrible to people in the morning, but I don't have my own inner contentment. I'm just faking it.

I looked on my desk. I looked on my other desk. I looked on the counter. I moved some dishes to make sure that I wasn't missing it behind something else. (The fact that my kitchen is currently in that kind of state is not something I'm entirely proud of, of course, but I also know it's not permanent. I just have been focused on other things lately. Give me 45 uninterrupted minutes and that space will look like Martha Stewart's kitchen. Give me 15 minutes and I'll have every counter cleared. It's not as bad as it looks.) I went into the dining room, I looked in the dishwasher. I looked behind the couch. (With my boys, you never know.) I even went so far as to post on Facebook that I couldn't find my cup. I found myself nearing my end when I pulled the bread machine off of the counter (we made homemade pretzels for Family Fun Night this week) and I still didn't find it.

Just when I was reconciling myself to not having my coffee in my cup with my raw sugar and my fat free half and half and was ready to settle for my coffee in not my cup with my raw sugar and my fat free half and half, I decided to look in the dishwasher one more time.

There it was. No kidding. It wasn't there the first time I looked. I mean, I know it was. But there it was, big as day, sitting exactly where the cups in the dishwasher go, looking all innocent like it had been there all along, and part of me just knows that it wasn't in there the first time I looked. But I know it was. But you know what I mean. I pulled it out, all shiny and clean, with its beautiful green interior (which I love... it's such a beautiful compliment to the color of the coffee... makes the whole experience so nice) and I stared it down for a second, wondering if it was off fooling around with one of the bowls or something the first time I looked. It managed to look a bit sheepish. (I might have caught it.) And I proceeded to make myself my coffee in my cup with my raw sugar and my fat free half and half.

But this morning, I ran out of sugar. So I either have to go shopping or switch to my coffee in my cup with my German rock sugar (from Teavana) and my fat free half and half, which is a good substitution. I can't use white sugar anymore. I've gotten spoiled to the richness of the raw sugars... They taste different. Coffee with white sugar will definitely not make my "ahhhh...".

I guess it's true what they say... as you get a little bit older (Notice I did say OLDER and not old, for heaven's sake. I know I'm not old. No one hit me.), you begin to become set in your ways. People can think of it as high maintenance. I tend to think of it as just being clear about my wants and desires. And the fact that my sweet husband knows all of these little details about me and he can make me a my cup of my coffee in my cup with my raw sugar and my fat free half and half... Well, that's the best "ahhhh..." of all. It gives him another opportunity to know me down to the details, and I love that about him--that he cares enough to know these things about me.

Anyway, on to the scrapbooking:

I am caught up with all of my 2011 scrapbooking for now. Basically, it's May, so my goal is to finish all of April's scrapbooking before the end of the month. Once I complete April 2011, I go back and work on my catchup stuff. I finished February 2009 with this page about my son's 8th birthday.

Basically, I usually start my scrapbooking time with some kind of a challenge to myself. I wanted to use the Basic Grey Nook and Pantry collection, and make most of the design out of paper scraps. (I'm using a non-specific color of light blue cardstock for my background. It was from a textured cardstock pack at Walmart.)

I set up my photos how I wanted them and then cut paper scraps to fill the holes and make a nice grid. Here, I've got everything placed but not glued down yet because I decided I wanted to antique the edges of everything. I'm using Vintage Photo Distress Ink.

One of my favorite things to do with these newer double sided kits from Basic Grey is to cut off the bottom strip of paper from each sheet, where the label is. If you flip it over from the label, you get all of these fun 1/2" strips of the other pattern. I use those on my pages all the time. On this page, I used two of them. I cut across a strip of leftovers with my scallop punch and then used the tiny bit left over from that at the top of the page there. I really, really love the way this all turned out.

I added some fun buttons in the design triangle thing, along with other embellishments (my title, the "tasty" and the journaling block are another triangle). I did two button triangles on the page, actually. I decided to make my title French because I didn't feel like writing "Happy Birthday" up there. It felt lame. So it's "Bon Anniversaire" instead. This is one of my favorite things to do. If you can't think of an interesting title, just make it a different language. (I usually use French.) Get the Google translator to tell you how.

The "8" from my sheet of stickers that came with the collection was totally not the right color for my page or this accent, so I colored it brown with a marker and it turned out great. Also, I felt the page still looked a bit plain once I was done, and I considered adding stitching, but my 10 year old was standing behind me, looking over my shoulder, asking for about the 100th time (don't feel bad for him... it was the 100th time in about 2 minutes real time, which is more like an hour in his time or 10 seconds in my time) if we could play Star Trek Scene-it. I don't like leaving pages unfinished, so I just decided to add some dots with a brown marker around the central block of the page, and that worked out fine.

The stickers and buttons on this page are also all from the Basic Grey Nook & Pantry collection. It makes coordinating so simple if you don't try to match everything yourself. It may feel lazy, but if you actually get pages done, it's worth it, right? I no longer think of it as lazy. I think of it as boundaries that produce freedom, kind of like with your children. You put boundaries down so that they feel safe and loved, and they flourish within those boundaries. Hopefully your flourishing will involve less crying fits, but hey. We all have those days. Especially if we can't find our coffee cups.

(Luckily I found mine today, though...)

Fun with stamps: Make your own patterned paper

2011-05-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

I love, love, love working with stamps. I love making my own patterned paper. I pull images from unlikely matches in my vast clear stamp collection. I truly hope that clear stamps never go away... I've noticed even JoAnn is starting to sell more of the repositionable rubber stamps. If clear stamps go away, some of my favorite effects will be gone, too!

Lemme splain.

I love using clear stamps with dye inks because it gives a mottled texture to the image. Some people hate this about clear stamps. You can relatively easily get rid of it. Either stamp the same image twice in the same place (if you have really steady hands), or coat your stamp first with Versamark Watermark ink and then get the dye ink on there and then stamp. Or just use pigment or chalk inks for perfect clear stamp images.

However, when you're making your own patterned paper, I believe the mottled look actually adds to the illusion that your paper isn't handmade. Now, unless you are a small portion of scrapbooking personality, you actually don't like perfect papers. You think you do. Go look through some of your patterned cardstock and really stare at it. The images in the pattern are aged in some spots, with extra ink in others, clear some places, and faded away in others. The images are NOT perfect. So you can, even though at first it feels weird, go for not perfect when you're trying to create your own patterned papers.

One of my favorite ways to do this is simply to use dye ink with clear stamps. Apply ink to the stamp and go to town. Sometimes I purposefully put less ink on the stamp by tapping the stamp against the ink pad (or tapping the pad against the stamp, if I'm using a tiny ink pad) purposefully softer. Also make sure you do some whisper stamping--stamp your image once and then immediately stamp it again somewhere else on your page. This helps create variety in your stamped images so that they don't look so super perfect and handmade. I mean, I mostly am aiming for perfection in my finished product, but sometimes my "perfect" is really translated as "looks store-bought". I think that's true for a lot of us.

I stamped the following patterned paper for a page featuring pictures of my son and my husband from April. If you're using multiple colors like I did here, it helps to use a coordinated ink set so that everything will look good. I used the Regals collection of classic (dye) ink spots from Stampin' Up!. I love the ink spots, too. Using the smaller ink pad gives you more control over how much you're inking your stamps. Ink heavily on one side and then sort of tap softer towards the end... That's another thing I love to do. Create your own fade looks. You can't do that with a huge inkpad.

Below is a picture of the paper with the stamps I used piled on top. They are, from left and traveling clockwise:

Inkadinkadoo 98693 Rock Star (Used the skull border and the star)
Basic Grey Oliver Shield (Used the flourish and the star)
Kelly Panacci Inc. (from Sandylion) KSTP18 Love (Used the straight flourish)
Basic Grey Crumpets (Used the dot strip)

I started here with a plain textured sheet of white cardstock. I used the straight flourish from the Love stamp set to go around the entire page, then began adding extra bits here and there. One of the best tips I EVER heard about making your own random patterns with stamping was from a show I watched on PBS a few years ago... I can't remember which show. The guest showed that if you stamp in a triangle shape, you can truly create random patterns. Since my stamping is confined on this page to the borders, I just did triangle shapes in the borders of the accent pieces such as the flourishes and the stars. I did a lot of whisper stamping with the red dot strip.

Once all of my stamping was completed, I inked all of the edges with Vintage Photo Distress Ink, and then took my sponge dauber and scribbled in the middle of the page with it.

For those of you who think that scrapbooking this way takes way too long, I timed myself. From start to finish, creating this paper took me about 15 minutes. I work pretty fast because I refuse to get hung up on any one individual step. I have learned that in the end, after you've added all the elements, the finished product will be good. It doesn't have to look perfect at steps one, two, or three. The finished product will be perfect. Move on, even if it looks weird. It'll all come together in the end.

(Incidentally... If you get to the end and you think it looks weird still, I recommend putting it away for at least a half hour and messing around with other stuff. It's funny how focusing your mind on something else for just a while will keep your brain from re-focusing on whatever it was focusing on in the first place that made you think your work looked weird. When you pull the paper out again, you'll look at it and usually think it looks fine. These are my favorite tips for not driving yourself crazy when you're doing this stuff. ^_~)

Now to the actual page...

I had these photos. They're all random photos from our April that I wanted to mark and include, but I didn't want to make three individual pages. So I decided to turn this into a month collection.

I knew I wanted this basic layout, but I didn't like how wide the photos were on the page.

I could pull my trimmer out and trim the left photo, but it's easier to just slip the photo behind the one next to it like so. (I purposefully left one of the little edges up higher so that you could see that you can just slip photos behind sometimes instead of trimming them. It works really well. Why dull up your blade or risk messing up your photo if you don't have to?) This way, if you accidentally put too much behind, you can pull it back out again, and vice versa.

Once I had my photo layout figured out, I just played around with a few more things. I really didn't do very much more on this page. I had already had fun making the paper, right? I rounded the corners on the photos and the journaling block, creating a faux box from the uneven elements which I believe helps tie them all together into one unit even though their ends don't match up. The corners of the unit are rounded here... Do you see it? The top right and left and the bottom right and left of the entire piece are what I rounded, not of the individual items.

I finished it out with stamping April 2011 on the page in random colors (from the Regals set to keep it all coordinating). I used the Inkadinkadoo 97719 Maison Ornate Alphabet stamps, which is one of my favorite alphabet sets. It's ornate enough to be fancy for fancier pages, but also not so fancy that it looks out of place on a page featuring only boys.

I am so pleased with how this page turned out, too, and it was less than 45 minutes, including the time it took to make the paper.

Return of the Sensei

2011-05-11T20:48:00.000-07:00

(Scroll down to the bold "Page Walkthrough" heading if you don't want to read me getting mushy about scrapbooking here.)

I've been posting so much about my knitting that I haven't been showing any of my paper crafting stuff lately. I find myself crafting my scrapbook pages, still thinking about how I could show people how to do what I'm doing, but I'm sadly without an avenue to do so. I really miss teaching! And paper crafting was always one of my favorite things to teach. I think paper crafting is a magnificent "gateway drug" into further exploration of the creative spirit. Paper crafting is one of those things you can do with very few tools, almost no experience, and only a little motivation. You can create something awesome, and it fuels your desire to create more. Pretty soon you, yes, you... the one in the back who thinks you can't do anything... I'm talking to YOU. Pretty soon you find yourself actually experiencing the freedom of creative expression, and it can lead you on to bigger and more complex things.

I love scrapbooking. I have two boys, and I scrapbook a lot about them. But I love it in general and feel that it is so important. It's important to get your stories recorded. I have a 10 year old and I'm already so appreciative of the baby pages I made for him. Your mind forgets so much, and it's a real treasure to have a record of your life for you to look through. Both of my boys, 4 and 10, really enjoy flipping through the albums. Thad loves reading about himself as a baby and Elliott just loves seeing pictures of himself. When he's old enough to read, I know he'll more fully enjoy what he's seeing in the pages I make for him.

I miss teaching! I want so much to share this craft, and really, just a love of creative expression in general with everyone I come in contact with. So, here is my first post as the return of the Paper Sensei. I'm going to walk you through some of my creative process as I was going through it on this particular scrapbook page.

Page Walkthrough

What is always first for me is printing out my photos. I have a system that is working SO well for me now that I almost can't describe how joyous I feel every time I work in it. I have catchup scrapping to do, just like every other scrapper, but earlier this year I realized that I was making my catchup gap bigger and bigger by letting all of my current events go unscrapped while waiting to catch up on previous pages. I vowed that I wouldn't let that gap get any bigger. I'm current through 2011 right now and still catching up in 2009, so hopefully by the end of this year I will be 100% current on my scrapbooking. Isn't it unbelievable!? I'll talk about how I'm doing that later, but right now I'll get to the page itself.

So I got the photos, one 4x6" and three 3x4". I usually try to follow some of the guidelines for good pages... Like, if you have people facing a certain direction in a photo, have them facing into the page insted of away from it. So you see the lovely Beckah Shae (my favorite singer ever) facing into my page, and the photo of my best friend and me where I'm kind of facing into the page, so I put myself on the outside there. The others sort of fell into place. I like grids and boxes of photos, but I like for everything to still feel a bit organic... Like, not perfectly symmetrical. At least usually... I always find reasons break my own rules, which is why I call them guidelines instead. But for this one, I stuck to it.

I wanted to accent my main photo. I love doing inking and stamping right on my photographs. I used to be afraid to do this, but I've been doing it SO much lately that it's becoming kind of my new signature... Kind of like attaching buttons with brads was for a while in my pages there.

Basically, grab any dye ink (you can use pigment, but it takes a long time to dry and you run a higher risk of messing up your photo) and a little sponger tool, which creates a softer edge. Get the sponger thing in the ink and just go around the photo. You can do it with the inkpad itself instead of the sponger, but it's not all dreamy like it is with the little sponge tool. I imagine you could just use a piece of sponge. Why not?

I kind of went crazy and stamped a lot then. I like layering a lot of different stamps and creating a fun look. For softer stamping (for instance, the text bits), I stamp on paper first and then on the photo, which is called whisper stamping, I believe. It just gives a fun, faded look. All of these stamps are Stampin Up!, from the Vintage Vogue and French Foliage stamp sets. (Can't find French Foliage online to link to it for some reason... Sorry! I only used the text stamp and the blotch stamp from that set. The rest is in the Vintage Vogue.)

I put everything back and really liked the stamped photo better, then decided to ink the edges on all of the other photos, too. I started playing with embellishment placement. I love layering accents, so I layered some fun butterfly shapes on top of each other.

From there, I started moving too fast to take pictures. ^_~ This is the finished page, with a tiny bit of journaling (off to the right). I took the challenge from The Busy Scrapper, which is a very cute and good book full of tips and fun ideas, even though if I had to choose which book to buy, I'd pick Elizabeth Kartchner's 52 More Scrapbooking Challenges. But the first book mentioned that to save time, you could do shorter journaling, and I've been taking that advice to heart on my pages. I've been trying to keep it short and sweet. We'll see how long it lasts.

I wanted to point out all of my design triangles, too. I don't know if you can find them all. There's a general scrapbooking guideline, too, about using design triangles on your page to give good balance and also to draw your eye into and around the page. I used three in this page: the two butterflies and birds are one triangle, the three pearl frames are another triangle, and the three white lines of text are the last triangle. You can see here that you don't have to make them all separate... In fact, all of my triangles are overlapping each other. But it creates a general balance to the embellishments (at least I think so) and it can help you in the future if you're wondering why your embellishments don't look right. Try arranging them in a triangle shape and see if that helps.

Here are a couple of final detail shots of the page:

Again, I LOVE layering my embellishments. These are some older butterflies from my stash layered over a lovely oval pearl frame sticker from Martha Stewart crafts that I bought yesterday because I simply could NOT resist it. I thought I'd never be able to use them and here I am using them the very next day. ^_^ I realized that I didn't have to use the frames to frame something specific... I mean, they're framing my butterflies, but really they're adding another dimension to this already fun layered embellishment. I really love the look.

Also, at my main title point, I put half of one of my favorite frames. I realized that I could cut it in half to create a lovely arch up there, and I couldn't be more pleased with how it turned out.

I love feeling free to do stuff like this... Use my stickers in unconventional ways... Cut them in half... That kind of stuff. It makes me feel really clever. Hopefully you got at least one idea from all of this. Now I'm off to eat a melty McFlurry that my sweet husband brought home for me quite a while ago. Blog post done! Time for icecream! Yum!

Confessons and Finished Objects

2011-05-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

First I'll start with finished objects, since I had a major case of finishitupitis this last week which was amazing and long lasting and got me through some of the oldest projects in my bin.

Lacey Baktus: (free pattern on Ravelry... awesome because you can use up a single skein of sock yarn and make a shawlette that's actually pretty big. You can use any size yarn for this pattern, too, and use up all the yarn you want.)

Garden Wall Scarf: (done from the book, Warm Earth, which is an incredible book written by my friend, Yumiko Alexander... She's amazing. Incredible. Super design genius woman. But she doesn't think she is. She's so humble and so shy when you say anything nice about her or her work. She seems genuinely pleased and surprised when anyone gushes over how good her stuff is. I would knit/crochet EVERY SINGLE THING in her book, which is insane, because you never get a book that good, right? You can buy the book at Tempe Yarn and Fiber, my favorite local yarn shop. I'm pretty sure it's, like, $16. A steal.)

I changed Yumiko's design because I didn't have enough yarn. I only was able to do two of the motifs, and then I put a netting bit between it to turn it into a scarf rather than the original glorious wrap that she had designed.

Remember back a while ago when I said I would do a really long magic trick with five wands and turn yarn into socks for my son? Well, I finally finished the spell work this last week:

These took stinking forever, too. They're the Vilai socks from Cookie A's book, Sock Innovation, which is an essential sock guide. This book, beyond having amazing sock patterns, was my introduction into learning how to read knitting charts. She has such an amazingly well laid out and thought out beginning section in the book that shows, line by line, how the charts are built from written knitting instructions. It was amazing. I am SO grateful to her for laying out the information in the beginning of the book, along with different heels and toes and all of that, so that now I'm a fearless sock knitting (and other kinds of knitting) machine.

Now to the unfinished objects. (This is my confession bit.) I'm just laying it all out so that I know what I'm working on, and it's fun, because I realize it's not so bad.

First up... My Michael Jackson Princess Gloves! These are knit from the most fun yarn ever, I think, with all of these fun little sequins (that's the Princess and Michael Jackson part)... I read once in a fantasy book about a girl getting married who had pearls sewn all over the palms and fingers of her gloves. It said something like, "...showing that the new bride was expected to do nothing more strenuous than lift a goblet..." And that stuck with me. I wasn't even a mom yet.

So as I was knitting these gloves, that image stayed with me. I saw these little sequins poking out and I thought of that. But then they reminded me of Michael Jackson. So it's kind of a fun thing... and then the very obvious joke being that if they're my Michael Jackson gloves, I only need to knit one, right? Which is appealing. But I do need to go ahead and knit the other. These are my personal pattern. Work left: weaving in all the ends on the first glove... (they're in there with my hand in this pic) And finishing the entire second glove.

First lace shawl: Gail (aka Nightsongs), a free pattern on Ravelry.

Surprise anniversary socks for my hot and sexy Adam: (It's my personal pattern... with weird modifications for his weird feet.)

The beginnings of Christmas socks for someone I won't say because even though I'm virtually convinced she doesn't read my blog, I can't ever be too careful. They're the Kai-Mei socks from the Sock Innovation book. I know you can't tell yet. I just started them yesterday. They are to become my first traveling sock, here pictured with their first victim... I mean, MODEL. This is a knitting blog tradition, in case you didn't know. To get people to take pics with a sock. Kiss did it. Barack Obama did it. Several other celebrities have done it. Knitters are crazy. (Spend 3 months knitting a pair of socks, though, and you'll understand why we all want them to get the attention they deserve.)

So, here, with the most worthy and amazing person to ever hold a sock, EVER: My friend, Christy, on her birthday yesterday.

Donna's batwings shawl...

And the Umaro blanket... I love Umaro! It's so pretty!

So the grand total, without hiding or missing ANYTHING, is 6... I have 6 current works in progress. I don't think that's so bad, especially considering that most people can't count on both hands what they're working on. So meh. I could confess to the extent of my yarn stash, but I think that people would laugh at me. It's pretty pathetic. But I like it that way. Too much of anything stresses me out. I think I'm kind of amazing, actually... I manage to fit everything I do into relatively small space in my home. I keep it all contained and picked up. I figure that I can't expect other people to be clean if I won't.

Sexy Gloves. It's a Sign. (And other clever distractions.)

2011-04-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

I could be a tad obsessive. I'd rather think of it as "extremely focused". I LOVE these gloves. They're the Joan Crawford Gloves pattern on Ravelry by Miriam Felton. I love, love, love them. They are sexy gloves. Yes, you read me right. SEXY gloves. That extra large keyhole detail showing a tiny bit of palm cleavage... Yeah. I feel a tiny bit dirty just from the way I feel about these gloves. I can't wait to knit them and wear them. I'll feel so classy. It's amazing what covering something up can do to make it sexy. That's a lesson for all you youngsters out there. (Of which I fully realize I am still one, BUT I have never been able to dress in any kind of provocative way. Ever. Never been thin enough. I'm not some moral paragon, people. If I could flaunt it, I probably would. But I like to think I'd do it with some class.)

Anyway, this is what I'm spinning to make those gloves. I can't wait. I hope I get the weight of the yarn right. If not, I might have to go BUY some yarn to make the gloves. They seem too sexy for normal yarn, though.

Now, back to our regular programming... Distractions. Yes, distractions, my precious. I am making this sign for Tempe Yarn and Fiber:

It's double sided. I cut those letters on my Cricut after fitting them perfectly into the width they needed to be. I cut four of each letter and glued them in a stack so that they would be more like chip board. I love how people think a Cricut makes everything super fast and easy. I mean, comparatively speaking, I suppose it does. But because it cuts everything faster than you can do with scissors, you find yourself cutting far more than you'd ever cut yourself and giving yourself hours of work even though you have a Cricut. At least this is my experience with the thing. I love it to distraction. But, yeah. I feel a little righteous indignation stirring in me every time I show a project I made with my Cricut and people think it's so quick and easy. And I'm thinking, "No. It's quicker than it would have been, but it still took about thirty seconds less than forever." Like, the Cricut just makes it POSSIBLE for you to put your inner vision into production. It's a tool. It's certainly not magical.

Anyway, the stupid curls on the wire took forever, too. (I'm in a bit of a crabby mood today. I watched Eat, Pray, Love yesterday and I pretty much hated every second of it. I thought it was so dumb. But I won't get into that right now.) I learned from my Silver Threads book that to make truly lovely curls in wire, you need to make them look more like the curl in a snail's shell, rather than just a straight spiral. And that's actually pretty easy if you're working with wire that has any kind of spring. Aluminum just doesn't. I had to physically curl every millimeter of that wire to make it look like that, and then I hammered and connected and blah, blah, blah... that was a process, too.

And I'm saying all of this because the sign looks so simple. Doesn't it? Doesn't it look like virtually no work went into it whatsoever? But here I am with hours and hours of my life into the thing and I don't know what to do. I don't know if this is acceptable. I had wrapped tons of beads around the wire, too. But when I went to hang the thing up, the top wire started bending too much from the weight of the beads, so I had to take the beads off. I'm wondering at this point if I need to take the whole thing apart and rethink it all, or just take it in. Adam says I'm over thinking it. No. Remember? Extremely focused. I don't think I can obsess too much about this thing which isn't just supposed to be a lovely pointer to their machine washable yarn section, but also is supposed to be a huge advertisement for the work that I sell in the shop. I was in last time and Aaron asked me about the sign. This is the nice way of saying, "Can you please finish it up already?" And I don't know what to do!

Well, Elliott saw me taking pics of the sign and insisted that I take a picture of him. So here he is. Man, I love him. He's too cute. And he's pretty much the main reason that the sign isn't finished yet. This is my excuse right here.

Maybe this, too.... I have two skeins of this lovely yarn made now. I love it. Everyone loves it. They say it's soft and can't believe it was spun with just plain Merino. I feel like finishing up twenty skeins of it and mailing it all off to Stephanie Pearl-McPhee because it was reading her archives and learning about long draw that is making all of this spinning possible. I love her. I love how she shares everything she knows so freely. And I love all of her "useless" books about knitting. (Although Knitting Rules wasn't useless. It was so funny and so useful.) And, just so you know, I'm not being mean. She jokes about writing "knitting humor". And how she has to clarify when people try to clarify that she must write patterns, that she doesn't write patterns, she isn't a designer, and she writes "useless books about knitting". I love it.

Here are the tags I made and attached to my yarns. I can post a tutorial about these later. I couldn't believe how many people have commented on the tags. I did it, not because I'm some super amazing and extremely focused person, but because I can't stand to put some plain thing labeling yardage and whatnot on my HANDSPUN yarn. And the only reason I've labeled these is because they have a very specific and different stripe sequence. There are two sets of a five color stripe sequence in these. I did this to try and prevent pooling and whatnot in my knitted object. Stripe sequences A and B, if you like... and the first skein is A, B, A. The second skein is B, A, B. The third will be A, B, A... Yeah. Don't look at me like that. Extremely focused.

Here are pretty pens I made yesterday while I was avoiding the sign staring at me from my wall. I love the skinner blend. I will sand and buff them today as I bake the dice I made for a new Farkle set for my purse. Yes. I'm doing polymer clay to avoid the sign. This is all turning rather ugly.

I can't believe how excited I was at first when they asked me to make the sign. I'm still excited, actually. I've never been "commissioned" for something like this before, even though I know it's not really that big of a deal. The potential of it all drives me crazy. It's so public. For forever now, all of my friends in TYF will see this sign and know that I made it and if it sucks, it will be forever that people will look up and think, "Ugh... I'm skipping Kathy's display because clearly she has no discernible talent." And the discomfort of never buying my stuff again will seep into our relationships until eventually I sit at the table and people barely say hi to me and I disappear into a corner and then Terry and Fred ask me to get my worthless junk out of their shop and my sign gets accidentally run over by a car and they bring in someone better who will dazzle and wow everyone and they will forget that I exist.

And then I'd be forced to shop for my fiber stuff at the local-shop-which-shall-not-be-named. A fate worse than death. I can't do it. I couldn't do it. The sign has to be perfect.

But I have to make more dice first. Maybe spin... and dream of sexy gloves. You know. To take the edge off.

Favorite necklace ever and other not-as-cool-but-still-really-cool stuff

2011-04-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try a new thing to actually get new pieces listed on my Etsy page. I'm going to alternate production and finishing/posting days. So yesterday I had a lot of fun pulling out some of my bead stuff and wire and making 8 new pieces: seven pairs of earrings and one necklace.

When I got up this morning, this is what I saw in my dining room:

I couldn't believe how beautiful I thought those flower petals from my arrangement there looked lying on the piano like that. It was just one of those random happy things that I had to thank God for. He's always arranging little moments like this that just take my breath away.

It inspired me to take all of my photos in this area of my house. Here are some of the things I made:

Here is my favorite necklace ever. Period. Even more than the huge filigree piece that took me forever forever. Even more than anything. These are my ultra treasure vintage glass beads that I have been stashing for so long that I thought I would NEVER use them.

I absolutely love the asymmetrical drape of this necklace. I think I managed to balance it all very well.

And now, some of the earrings, which are very pretty, but still not as cool as the necklace. But don't tell them I said that.

(I LOVE the way the pearl ones turned out with the extra blue pearl dangling so far below the frames and the clusters of those beads. They look so cool!)

And there we go... All of this stuff is now on my Etsy page. Now that all of my stuff is posted, I will go ahead and make more. This is the best way to do it, I think. Hopefully I'll actually get some of it sold instead of keeping it all in my super uber secret stash of pretties that only I ever get to wear.

I'm thinking that my sons are going to need to grow up (a LOT... like for at least 20 more years) and give me a bunch of granddaughters so that they can enjoy my huge jewelry stash just like I enjoyed MY grandma's huge jewelry stash when I was little. I'll let them play with all of it, too, just like she let me play with hers.

Always a bridesmaid...

2011-04-18T08:51:00.001-07:00

I'm going back and catching up on some photos I never blogged, so here we go:

I finished a really cool shawl pin earlier this month. After I did, I found myself staring at it, kind of not believing how cool it was and how neat it looked. The phrase, "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride," came to my mind because I seem to be capable of making very clever shawl pins, but not shawls.

It inspired me to start a lace shawl, which I'm currently working on at a snail's pace. I'm not very good with finicky knitting. I find that I actually seem to prefer kind of plain knitting... Garter stitch. Give me garter stitch and knitting in the round, and I'm a happy camper. It's something to keep my hands occupied without making me actually pay attention too much.

Here is my work space while I'm creating these shawl pins:

I like throwing out random old bits that I have lying around and turning them into cool stuff. I went through some of my much older stuff, and I pulled out these three polymer clay beads:

Aren't they beautimous? It's from back when I used to sand everything up to 2000 grit and buff it. Yeah, they're clay. There's no lacquer or varnish on them. That's just the result of sanding and buffing. It's so pretty, but it hurts my hands too much now. I find myself missing doing work like this. I have no idea how I'll use these beads. Maybe I should donate them to Beads of Courage or something. I just don't know.

Another short post today. I still have a sign to finish. It's taking forever. But that's really typical for me, so I'm used to it. The key is sticking to it until it's done so that annoying stuff like real life doesn't distract me too much and make me forget about it.

Egg and Yarn

2011-04-17T20:05:00.000-07:00

I've been pretty busy over the last bit. But here are a couple of things I've been doing:

Vinegar etched brown eggs for Easter:

I can post instructions on how to do this later.

Newest handspun yarn:

I put the colors together for a self striping yarn. Hopefully it looks this pretty when I knit it up.

And that's all from me for today! I'm going to ply another skein of this stuff. I'm also working right now on a sign for Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I love them. If you ever go in there in the next few weeks and you see a glorious "Machine Washable" sign, that was me.

Cowl for Japan

2011-04-02T07:47:00.001-07:00

This is the pattern for the Japan Cowl, including some hints for picking up stitches if you'd like to do the version seen in the pictures.

Yarn: DK weight yarn in two colors. Final project used about 209 yards. I believe the color usage is pretty much equal.
Main Color (darker color): Naturally Caron Spa in Dark Driftwood
Accent Color (lighter color): Naturally Caron Spa in Misty Taupe

Needles: US size 6 (4.0mm) 16" circular needles

Gauge: 6 stitches per inch and 7-8 rows per inch.

Final measurements: 21" circumference, with plenty of stretch, and about 8" tall.

Notes: There are two versions of the pattern presented here. I call them the "Easy Version" and the "Hard and Stupid Version". The Easy Version is what you'd do if you don't feel like doing a whole bunch of extra and mostly pointless work. The Hard and Stupid version is what you'll do if you want a cowl exactly like the one pictured, with an extra edging and a cute rolled edge. This all happened because this was my first Fair Isle project and I thought the rolling would stop at the colorwork and it didn't, so I had to pick up stitches at the end to fix it. I have an unnatural obsession with rolled edges. I just love them. So I wanted to keep it. If you don't care that much about rolled edges, then feel free to just do the Easy Version.

Please remember that if you choose the Hard and Stupid version, you can't leave nasty notes on Ravelry saying that the pattern finishing was stupid and hard and ridiculously long and why didn't she just do it this way, etc. I've warned you beforehand.

For a taste.... Here is a picture of the cowl in the middle of its saving surgery, part of the Hard and Stupid option.

Also, I made no effort to hide the weird step thing that happens in the colorwork at the beginning of each round. It made so little difference in the finished cowl that I don't regret this decision at all. If you're that kind of knitter, you will want to take whatever steps you take to make the little step in the pattern that happens at the beginning of the round disappear.

And now, for the actual pattern:

Easy Version:
Cast on 126 stitches in whichever color you want on your edges. (Cast on extra inches in multiples of 6 if you'd like a larger cowl... The colorwork is a 6 stitch repeat and is easy to size up or down.) Join for working in the round, being careful not to twist. Place marker for beginning of round.

Rows 1 and 2: K1, P1
Rows 3 and 4: P1, K1

Beginning chart: if you used darker color for your edging and you want the look I achieved by having my accent color be the lighter color, then begin chart by working a row in the lighter color for the first row. If you chose the lighter color, then the first and last rows of your chart is in the same color.

Work until the end of the chart. It's very easy... every single row except for the first and last rows are just alternating four and two stitches. The stitch pattern repeats over and over again across the row.

After completing the chart, work rows 1-4 again. Bind off loosely.

Finishing: weave in ends.

Hard and Stupid Version:
Cast on 126 stitches in the main color.

Work four rows of knit stitch in main color.

Work chart, making sure that the first and last rows are in your accent color.

Work four more rows of knit stitch. Bind off LOOSELY (or your edge won't roll and all of this will have been for naught!).

If you don't need more help, just pick up and knit 126 stitches from the accent row in the back of the knitting. (You will possibly need to pick up one extra stitch at the very end between the little jog in colors to get your 126.) Do yourself a favor and place a marker after every 20 stitches or so. Knit the first four rows of the Easy Version. Bind off loosely. Repeat on the other side.

If that made your brain hurt, I'll do my best to explain this here. Keep your knitting right side out and just roll the edge down a bit (the plain stockinette edging makes this very easy) until you see the bumps of the accent color row of the first chart.

Find the place where your first row made a little jog. I have it pointed out here in this picture. See the little step? You'll start picking up stitches at the first stitch that is a step down from the other one, in the stitch that my needle is pointing to in this picture.

Enter the stitch from the top and yarn over and knit the stitch through the one you just picked up. This is called "pick up and knit".

You can see here that I've picked up and knit four stitches and I'm getting ready to do the fifth one. I did this so that you can see the angle of the needle, and what it all looks like in the middle of the process.

In this photo you can see that there are three more bumps of accent color between my already picked up stitches and my thumb. This is what you're looking for, and why I insisted that your first row be a different color. You're picking up one stitch for each bump.

Here is the cowl with all of the stitches picked up. After you've gone all around the circle and picked up a stitch in the last accent color bump, you may find that you are one stitch short. Just pick up another stitch out of a bump from the main color, right in between the first and last accent color bumps, and you'll be fine.

I love this project and I think all of this was worth it. I hope you enjoy it!

Kay and Ann's fault

2011-03-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

Since my post yesterday was kind of dramatic, let's get back to our regularly scheduled program of me being crazy. Not as crazy as when I accidentally spilled my black hair color on my bathroom sink and couldn't get the stain out so I decided to sponge the entire sink with the leftover hair color, but... (It worked, by the way, and everyone always said how cool my sink was and laughed their heads off and said, "Only you!" when I told them what I did, like my usual personality gives way to people being able to easily picture me doing these things. What's up with that?)

I got the two Mason-Dixon Knitting books from the library and really loved them both. The second one talks about some harder techniques that you might like to try in your knitting to take it up a notch. I mean, I've done some hard knitting. Cookie A, anybody? Hello? Read a chart much? Have nightmares about little symbols in little squares? But, I digress.

I hadn't successfully tried Fair Isle, though. I've messed around with it before, knitting a few rows in a couple of colors, to kind of prove that I understood the concept, but ultimately never cared enough. I mean, I live in Arizona. Mesa, Arizona. When the heck do we need carefully knitted double layer super oven warm anything? We have, like, a three week long winter, if you can even call it that. Leaves don't fall off of our trees until around Christmas or in January. I didn't care enough because I didn't have a reason to care enough.

This all happened to me because of Kay and Ann, the authors of the Mason-Dixon books. I had been looking through the books, mainly in the second one, and saw this lovely circle pattern Fair Isle blanket, and it stuck in my head. When I read the TYF thing, it said that the Japanese mostly wear neutral colors. This meant that, in my head, my knitted item had to be these things: easy to care for, neutral in color, and warm. My best neutral colors in easy to care for yarn were the Naturally Caron Spa yarn I have in my stash, but they would only be warm if I worked them in Fair Isle. I never would have even come up with this idea before reading Kay and Ann's books. But here I was, designing a circle pattern for a neck warmer, ready to knit it in Fair Isle. And I did it. All by myself. Came up with the base pattern and everything.

Bohyah.

Alas, not the happy ending I had envisioned. I cast off, and wouldn't you know that the rolled edge I had knit that seemed to magically stop where the Fair Isle started (when it was on my needles, of course, deceptive little rolling edge) now suddenly burst free of any preconceived border, rolling right past the beginning of the color work and hiding my meticulous stitches on BOTH SIDES of the neck warmer.

Turns out, of course, that this is that moment in the movie where you think, "Yay! They're safe!" But, actually, they're not, because the bad guy didn't die the seventh time they thought they killed him, either, so here he's back for the final, epic battle in which the hero tries one more time to appeal to his humanity and let him live, but ultimately, Mr. Evil is felled by his own inability to reconcile himself to what the hero is trying to say, and while the hero tries not to kill the bad guy, he finally accidentally does, and then they all live happily ever after.

So that's what this is, I think. Rolled edge not behaving? Well, fine. Reconcile yourself to not rolling past my colorwork, dudes, or I'll cut you off or something extreme. But we're trying to reign it in right now by picking up stitches and knitting an extra textured edge on the inside. If that doesn't take care of their evil ways then there will be a lot of ripping out and a lot of quasi-cussing (raggafraggafrickafraggafartnuggetspoopbuttholepoopers, etc.), which I find much more fun than real cussing, actually, because it makes me laugh. And then I'll bend this thing to my will.

I think it looks properly put in its place, though, doesn't it? Take that, neck warmer, for I am not just your knitter, but your CREATOR, and I say that your edges will stop rolling. So meh. I am knitter, hear me roar.

And, yes, this adventure is brought to you courtesy of Kay and Ann and Mason-Dixon knitting books, mainly Mason-Dixon Knitting Outside the Lines. I'm buying both of these books as soon as I can and you should, too.

One less thing.

2011-03-26T12:59:00.000-07:00

Tempe Yarn and Fiber is collecting handknits (and crochet items) to help those in need in Japan. To find out how you can participate in this effort, click here.

There is a story of a man who walked along a beach absolutely covered in thousands of starfish who had been somehow trapped on the sand. He came upon a little boy who was hurrying as fast as he could, flinging starfish one by one back into the water. Struck by the insurmountable nature of the problem, and the futile efforts of the boy to help, the man thought to at least help the boy. He said, "You're just exhausting yourself. You can't save them. In the end, thousands of these creatures will die on this beach in spite of your efforts. Nothing you're doing here will matter."

The boy, not pausing for even an instant, threw yet another starfish back into the sea and replied, "It matters to that one!"

Last night I cast on for a cowl that will go to someone in Japan. I was struck by how futile it felt to do something like this. People have lost their lives. Those who survive have lost everything else. What do I think I'm doing? Knitting something? That's it?

I prayed about it. God helped me remember that story, about the boy and the starfish. You know, I can't help everyone in Japan. I can't even truly help one person with anything that really matters. But you know what? One person in Japan is going to have a warm neck this fall and winter because of what I'm doing here. They may have nothing else. But, damn it. Because of some knitter in the US, at least their neck won't be freezing. It will be one less thing for them to worry about and grieve.

Maybe there it is. That's what I'm aiming for. Not to think at all that my efforts will bring help. Certainly not that they'll bring comfort. My highest hope for this project and any other I do is to bring one less thing to have to think about. To one person.

And I think that's the kind of thing that will matter.

Random venting with no pics and a silver lining!

2011-03-24T16:32:00.000-07:00

1. I hate Facebook. I still use Facebook, but it has nothing to do with Facebook. It's my people on Facebook. I wish there were some other way to keep track of my people, but alas... I must use what I've been given. Anyway, I saw the nastiest photo that I never wanted to see that one of my friends commented on (it was posted by someone NOT in my friends, apparently for good reason) and I'm kind of royally pissed that I had to see it. I don't want to look at anything that isn't from my own nicely selected group of friends. Ugh.

2. I feel lame because I haven't taken any pictures. I have been running rampant through this house like a crazy person, working here, working there, working everywhere and apparently accomplishing nothing at all.

3. I have a special order for buttons from TYF and a bunch of bracelets to repair for a friend and neither one of these things has gotten done because of #2. If Adam were reading this right now, he'd be laughing his head off because of the poop joke in there, and this time I would wholeheartedly agree with him.

4. Video games are either the most annoying thing ever to take over a child's life, or the greatest blessing God has ever allowed on this earth. On the days I'm yelling for the 752nd time that NO, Thad can't play games because of X, Y, Z, it feels like the first. On days like today, where my brain is nothing more than a huge pile of mangled mush (see numbers 1 and 2), it feels like the second. Loving anything that will keep him occupied enough to accomplish two miraculous things: 1. He stops bothering me to play video games. 2. He stops constantly asking for food.

5. I want to make cool polymer clay beads. I want to finish the socks I have going so that I can freely move to something else. I want to be (released from) finished with the (monotonous and endless purgatory) Lacey Baktus so that I can free up the needles for something (infinitely cooler and better in every way) else. This isn't to say that this is a bad pattern. I'm just making mine with yarn I don't like in colors I don't like that keeps splitting and splitting and makes the 3,858 rows of k2 tog, YO feel like a more fitting punishment for Sisyphus than the boulder thing.

6. You'd think that blogging instead of taking care of #3 is possibly why #3 isn't done yet, but that's not true. I have to rip up my cabinets and pull out all of my jewelry stuff for that and make it all and then put it all away again. And I'm going to need Adam's soldering help on one of the bracelets. And I just realized that I could make the cool polymer clay beads I've been longing to make as a fix for one of the bracelets I have to do... (It's a Pandora bracelet with a broken charm that my friend wants fixed, but also with several new Pandora beads added on. I saw wicked awesome clay beads made like Pandora beads that Bonnie made at Clay Guild this last Saturday, with eyelets stuck in the holes... Oh, my gosh. I think I just found my silver lining.)

7. Yay! I'll make beads and be working at the same time. But first I'll finish the process for all of the chicken broth I made today, make dinner, put away two loads of laundry, start muffins for breakfasts, and finish the button order. This might be how #2 happens.

Stop it, Adam.

More Yarn Stuff

2011-03-21T09:37:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of pictures of the shawlette I finished on March 5th:

This is the Storm Cloud Shawlette, a free pattern on Ravelry. I worked it in a worsted yarn on 6.5mm (US size 10.5) needles instead of the recommended laceweight/US size 8 needles. It was a remarkably fast knit. The openwork is a result of a double garter stitch, which really spreads out nicely. Anyway, I loved it. I just worked until thought I would run out of yarn, and as a finish, I used Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off, which is my bind off of choice for pretty much any shawl edge, hat bottom (I knit hats from the top down), or anything else I need to be really stretchy. It's wonderful!

Oh, and this was hand-dyed yarn... Colorway "peacock". I LOVE it.

Above is a skein of my handspun that I'm lovingly calling "Adam's Yak". LoL. It's a 60/20/20 merino wool/yak/silk blend. It's very soft and lovely, about 50 yards of a bulky weight. I'll go get new fiber soon and spin another skein so that I'll have enough to make him a hat.

And here is the finished single from 2 ounces of that lovely top I showed the other day. I gave the rest to Adam and he's spinning it now.

Navajo plied, this single turned into 200 yards of sock weight goodness. I'm in love. This one is called "my pet".

I've been experimenting a lot with my clay lately, too, and I'll post pics of that pretty soon. I'm making a bunch of buttons for my display at TYF. I'm having a lot of fun with different effects, such as molded faux bone buttons. Totally fun!

Long Draw Spinning/My brilliant son

2011-03-15T13:31:00.000-07:00

I've learned to do long draw spinning. I'm in love. I was inspired by Yarn Harlot and I think I'll love her forever for this, even though I already would before I learned this. But this has solidified my feelings for her the way finding out that Adam is an incurable romantic, loves cuddling, and hates sports solidified the way I feel about him. It's forever, man. And it's beautiful.

I have been reading her archives lately. I just got completely read through August of 2005. It was somewhere in 2005 that she began discussing long draw spinning, I believe. I was finally validated by discovering her secret. I mean, seriously. The woman would sit down (saying that she was not a proficient spinner) and say, "I turned this 20,000 grams of wool into 4km of yarn this afternoon." I mean, obviously that's a huge exaggeration. But that's how it felt. I kept thinking, "How in the world did she spin all of that? She's either lying or manipulating space time." Turns out it was long draw, which I theorize IS a method of manipulating space time. Let me demonstrate.

This is four ounces of lovely Falkland wool that I got as a present from my lovely friend, Jodie. She was destashing. Lovely. I LOVE her.

Anyway, I split the entire length of fiber in half and began spinning a bit. (Okay, sorry, this is a flashback episode of the PaperSensei blog. Flash back to Sunday, when I went into TYF and Terry showed me how to spin long draw from the fold, a lot like this video on Youtube does. I love Terry. I love this lady in the video. I seriously am having amorous feelings for the video lady, too, because she did this with virtually no fiber prep. Yay! Now I am, too!)

So here, even including what minimal initial fiber prep I did (I'm breaking off small chunks, then splitting those in half, and then fanning them out a bit before beginning my spinning on the fold), after my first half hour, this is what I had on the spindle:

Give me another half hour. This is what I had:

Another half hour from today (WHILE dealing with the kids, breaking up arguments, and generally keeping peace in my house using only the sheer volume of my voice and the deadliness of my eyes... did I mention it was Mother Bootcamp, I mean, Spring Break?) made me firmly convinced that I did, indeed, learn how to manipulate space time. I was nervous about not finishing my fiber before the allotted half hour I had given myself. It was 12:26. I proceeded to spin through four, count 'em, FOUR of my fiber fluffs, and I looked at the clock, and it was still 12:26.

I almost fell over. Crying, laughing, whatever. I LOVE this. I love Yarn Harlot. I love Jodie. Terry. Video lady. I'm going through my stash at the speed of... well, I don't know. If I'm manipulating time somehow, speed would be completely irrelevant, wouldn't it?

And, last but not least, my brilliant 10 year old (who I'm trying to remember is a very intelligent and amazing child, despite his tendency to involve himself in inane arguments with his FOUR year old brother... It's Bootcamp, remember? It's just long enough to drive you totally freaking bonkers, but not so long that you actually pull yourself together and develop the rhythm you have by the end of summer that makes you almost, read, ALMOST sad to see school start again) made this jewelry set for my grandma's birthday. He picked out all of the beads himself, did the design, and even disagreed with me about part of it and did it his own way, and wouldn't you know, it's amazingly gorgeous. (It would have still been gorgeous my way, but I would never have done this myself, which is one of the primary reasons I so LOVE to make things with my children or anyone else's. I love their complete abandon in the creative process. I try to mimic it.)

All I did was attach all of the crimps and whatnot, to make sure that they were solid, and do what little wire work was involved, because we were on a time constraint. Child has done wire work on his own before, too. I think when he was about 8. He learned so well. I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of him.

Now to get rid of him for a while so I can watch what I want to watch on our only TV. We need to get the DVD drive on his laptop fixed, dangit.

Buttons and Elliott's Car Book

2011-03-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I've figured out the weird bold thing... you have to click in a space to the right of the eraser. It showed up one day, a little white thing, and I clicked it, and then the bold thing stopped happening. Now it's not showing up anymore, but I click there, and my text is normal again without having to do the strange bold/unbold dance. I feel a bit like I've just figured out some deep blogger secret... Maybe programmers sit around, staring at their screens, watching us battle it out with these editor systems because we are the lowly ones who don't do our own HTML, or whatever the heck they use now, and we have to use interfaces built by THEM, the REAL power of the internet blog... mwahahahaha...

All I can say is, "ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!?"

Anyway. I finished packaging up my buttons for Tempe Yarn and Fiber. Here they are:

How ridiculously cute are those? I seriously almost don't even feel like I can take credit for them. They just happened one day. God said, "Let there be coffee bean buttons for My Kathy's FreshPrinceFrenchPress." And there were buttons. And it was good.

Random possibly controversial tangent, but not intended that way: Someone just cringed because I typed out "God", but if I had said that the universe must have told me to do the buttons, you'd be fine. "The universe" is really a modern euphemism meant to replace "God" for those who don't believe in Him, but still believe that there's some power out there. It makes no sense to me. I'm saying "God". For one, it's shorter, and for another, it's more accurate. And I'm a Christian, for Heaven's sake. But I like to think I'm a Christian who can actually think, like, I can celebrate Halloween because I'm willing to celebrate Christmas. That kind of stuff.

(Whoa, did she just go there!? She just went there!) Sorry if I just offended any other Christian by saying that. But it's true. But I am sorry.

Okay, I feel better. Here's the book I made for my baby:

The child is obsessed with cars. I mean, OBSESSED. Like, almost to the point that it's unhealthy. Every single time he gets his hands on a piece of paper, he wants me or Adam or my grandma to draw him pictures of all of our cars. I can't even count how many pictures of these cars I've drawn for him in the last few months. I decided to circumvent this process by making him a mini album featuring pictures of all of the cars he makes us draw.

I'm throwing in the letters because he loves letters, too. And it was just too handy to make pockets. So far, I've done uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Next, I'll add shapes and whatnot, as I add more pages to the album as I get more pictures of cars for him. I love this mini album design because it is really easy to add pages on at the end.

I plan to decorate the pages more later. But this has to be good enough for now because I intend to leave it with him when I abandon him at my grandma's house and take Thad to karate. Sometimes Elliott is fine with this... He just plays with cars or wants to watch "treehouse" (Madame Blueberry) or something, and he basically says, "Go away, Mom, Nanny's house is much cooler than you." But other times he just breaks down and sobs and it's heartbreaking, but what am I going to do? Truck him around with me everywhere I go so that he never gets used to it, or teach him a valuable lesson that he can survive in the care of others and I'll always come back for him?

I might have just touched another nerve. I'm in kind of a naughty mood today. Netflix changed the queue on PS3 and it RULES again. (Thanks, Netflix people... I love you!) So I guess the primary source of irritation in my life is now gone and I'm floundering around, and all the other ones that were repressed in the horror of the SUCK queue are starting to surface again.

And I remain, as always, completely grateful, and full of praise for the fact that the Netflix INSTANT queue on my PLAYSTATION 3 being sucky was the worst problem in my life for a while. I have it so good. It's because I'm blessed.

Polymer Clay Coffee Bean Button Tutorial

2011-03-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

I posted pics of my FreshPrinceFrenchPress over on Ravelry and a couple of people said that they cared about me posting a tutorial (because I said I'd post one if anyone cares), so here I am! This is so ridiculously easy, I feel almost embarrassed to have taken pictures, but here you go. I'm not even going to list tools because if you've been doing clay for even longer than maybe a day, you probably already have this stuff on hand. If not, then you need to go buy the stuff.

Supplies: Raw Sienna and Black Premo polymer clay

First of all, you need to mix a 50/50 blend of the raw sienna and black clays to come up with this completely yummy espresso color. I've seen some people who do a 50/50 of burnt umber and black to get a coffee color, but I really prefer this color for coffee stuff. You can tell it's still brown, and it might be technically lighter than the real coffee stuff, but we're going for more of suggestion of coffee than actual coffee. I mean, for heaven's sake. No actual coffee beans are this big, and certainly none of them could make buttons this well. But I digress. I'll be succinct and professional from now on.

Once I have my blend, I use one of my little square cutters and cut two squares from a sheet rolled out on the thickest setting of my pasta machine. I use the cutters to make sure that I'm getting the same amount every time so that my buttons are mostly the same size. If you don't have cutters, or your cutter makes too much when you cut from a sheet this thick, then run the sheet through on a thinner setting to get less clay with each cut. Just so long as you remember what your settings are so that you can get consistent sizing.

When you figure out how much clay you want per button, form it into a ball shape in your hands, and then make it more of a fat pill shape, like this:

I was analyzing actual coffee beans and noticing that most of them are not football shaped. They tend to be kind of straight-ish, with a rounded end. So I'm changing my original instructions from "football shaped" to "fat pill". Hopefully it translates. ^_~

I squash the fat little coffee pill against my tile with my palm so that one side ends up flat and one side ends up domed, like this: (Don't worry about prints for now. We'll take care of it later.)

I then use my tissue blade to peel the little pre-bean off of my tile and place the domed side against my palm in my non-dominant hand, preparing to indent the flat side.

I use a needle tool of some kind to make this mark in the flat side of the bean. (Now it's starting to look like a bean, but it's not magical yet. Just wait.)

The real magic happens now... Squeeze the sides of the bean in just a bit, squashing the line slightly, and lay it on your tile, flattening it again just a bit, still squashing a bit. At this point, I use my fingers to gently wipe away any prints off of the back of the bean.

Use your tissue blade to pick it up again and... VIOLA! How cute is THAT!? It looks just like a huge coffee bean. If only they were actually this huge, huh? Then you could get more coffee. Maybe it would cost less. Well, it probably wouldn't. But a girl can dream. Ack, professional and succinct. Okay. I got it.

Lay the bean down with the lovely little indent facing you. Use a needle tool to poke down into it as it's against the tile. It kind of looks like this. Note on holes: you can pierce longways or horizontal for beads, but because of the dome shape on the back, the holes won't really be perfect. You can experiment with it. But I also love to poke just one hole towards one end so that it can become an impossible to resist little coffee bean charm.

Because you listened to your Sensei and did the poking against the tile like I told you, you have these weird little not-quite holes on the other side. Poke through them from the other end now, widening the hole as you see fit.

LOOK at how it makes a perfect little hole. Repeat with the other hole.

Bake them flat side down on cardstock on a tile in your oven according to the manufacturer's directions. (Usually 275F for about 30 minutes.) Once they're done and they're all cooled, sand them gently with wet dry sandpaper and plenty of water with 400 grit, then lightly buff them on your shirt or your pants or your couch. Not a lot of sanding because they don't need it. It just helps them look and feel SO much better. You won't regret it.

And that's the tutorial... once I finish sanding all of the buttons I made, I'll post what they look like all finished and in their cute packaging as they're ready to sell over at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I guess go crazy with these. Make as many as you want and sell them, too, if you're lucky enough to be able to. Just send lots of love my way. ^_~

Busy bee, where your honey at!?

2011-03-10T18:36:00.001-08:00

In case I ever wonder again about why my life seems like an endless sea of busy, yet somehow the work never seems to accomplish anything, perhaps this can help clear it up:

I was going to be so on top of things today. I had a very busy day already laid out when I got up, which consisted of actually finishing the clay pieces I've been making (turning them into pins), going to another parent teacher conference at Thad's school (the one for his gifted class... The other one was yesterday.), and trying to make some headway in this house. My half hearted one load of dishes per day and sporadic laundry was just not seeming to cut it anymore. Since I'm speaking of all of this lovely potential in past tense, I'm sure it's clear that this is not what happened today.

I got breakfast together, took care of e-mails, did a little bit of extra internet time because I need to make my grandma a birthday present and it's going to be the Fuzzy Feet pattern from Knitty. So I got that lined up (her birthday is on the 14th... don't remind me) and set and then finally sat to work on the clay stuff I feel I so desperately need to get done. Over comes my sweetheart, Elliott, my four year old. "Mom, I want to be with you." It was obviously too cute to resist. He yanked something out of all of my clay stuff and said, "Mom, what's this?" And I showed him that he could make textures in the clay with it. And it just sort of all went down hill from there.

You can see my lonely little unfinished pieces there to the left. Elliott is bending one of my tools in this photo. (I bent it back... no worries.) He's standing exactly in front of me so that I can't possibly hope to get anything done around him. He learned the pasta machine today, too.

My area is a complete wreck, which is just what it has to look like when I'm doing the clay. It's usually about a week at a time like this and I hate it. I like for everything to be perfectly clean and put away, but it's just not practical to pack everything up every time, so here it sits, a blotch in my living room. The other problem, of course, being that if my desk looks like this, it's likely the rest of the house does, too, because I'm so deep in production mode that I'm no longer picking up after everyone, and barely picking up after myself. So it's three against one there, and it's a losing battle.

Oh, well. He's obviously having quite a bit of fun. I won't begrudge him that. I had enough presence of mind to snap a photo of the new fish I made while he was working.

Here is the new octopus and a pendant I made for an Etsy order. (The fish, octopus, and pendant were NOT finished today. I did nothing today, apparently.)

Hopefully tomorrow I can be busy all day and have something to show for it. This is my fantasy. This is my dream. Some honey for the bee, please.

Moderate. Represent. Yee-ah.

2011-03-09T11:11:00.001-08:00

THIS, by nothing more than the waving of five pointy sticks for about a month will be magically transformed into SOCKS for my sweet son, Thad:

It's mysterious and miraculous, I tell you. Absolute magic. I would show you, but it's a long trick, so I'll just let you see the finished product.

Also, I might become a moderator for the polymer clay group on Ravelry. Super excited. Clay and knitting. Knitting and jewelry. Knitting and everything, really. It goes with everything. Like chocolate. Chocolate and milk. Chocolate and soda. Chocolate and steak. Chocolate and mashed potatoes. (Not mixed, obviously, just like knitting... You can't knit and do another hobby at the same time. I guess unless your hobby is something like watching every single sci-fi show you can get your hands on in the new Netflix queue for PS3 which SUCKS, but we won't speak of that... Well, that's one of my hobbies. But I digress! Seriously, knitting is like chocolate. I'd be hard pressed to come up with something that I would NOT want to eat chocolate after eating the first thing... or vice versa. Knitting is like that.)

So. This is a completely random rambling post, isn't it? I guess not having any readers makes you feel like you can get away with anything. ANYTHING. Like if the kids are playing alone... As soon as I hear them stop fighting, I wonder what they're up to, and I have to go look. It's either completely cute or completely terrifying... there's just not a middle ground with these two. They will either succeed wildly or fail with such spectacular splendor that no matter what they do in their lives, they will be amazing. We're working on the succeeding part, of course.

I need more caffeine. Time to wave pointy sticks. FIVE of them.

Actually pics this time

2011-03-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

First of all, every time I add pictures now and then go to start my blog post, I have all of this bold type that takes some mysterious combination (not sure what... seems different every time) of clicking the bold button and typing and clicking and typing and backspacing and clicking and typing and backspacing more before I get type that looks normal with the bold "b" not highlighted up there. Like, stuff looks bold even when it's not highlighted until I do the weird ritual thing. I guess I could look like I feel so important and really know what I'm talking about by having everything so emphatic, but I don't feel like it. It's just annoyed me enough now that I have to start the post by venting about it. Venting complete.

Now to the good stuff:

All of those are my newest polymer pieces that are mostly (except for the bamboo branch thing and probably the gray octopus) destined to be shawl pins for my display at TYF. I'm loving the red octopus and feel sad for the gray octopus who was the experiment. He was so cute until I made the red one. :( I know it has no feelings, but still, I feel a bit bad for it.

I also made a French press cover for my French press. I keep saying "Fresh Prince" instead. Ugh. But, seriously, try to say "Fresh Prince French Press". It might be even better than trying to say "Irish Wristwatch". It's definitely better than "Aluminum Linoleum"... you have to say the last one at least 3 times before it starts tripping you up. Anyway, it's still fun. These are the little things I like to do in my spare time. Fear me.

I love the way it looks. I knitted it out of bulky yarn and even made a little dip up in the top for the spout. I'm going to be posting the pattern on Ravelry soon.

LOOK at the buttons. They're coffee bean buttons! I LOVE THEM! I made them out of polymer clay. They are the cutest and coolest little buttons ever. EVER. Ever. Ever. Yeah.

I love how the spout opening flows so well with the cables. That was totally God there. I had nothing to do with planning that. He just likes me.

Here it is again... the buttons!

I charted random purls into the stockinette section to make it look kind of rustic. I'm really, really hoping I achieved the rustic-because-I-wanted-it-rustic look and not the rustic-because-I-didn't-know-what-the-heck-I-was-doing-and-screwed-it-up-so-I-called-it-rustic look. That's right up there with "making it look like crap means it's handmade" and we all kind of know how I feel about that. I won't rant about it today.

I'm feeling so good right now. I have chocolate. I have coffee. I have a cute French press cover. (Fresh Prince!) My kids are with my grandma. I'm blogging. I got to go to the bathroom earlier today without ANYONE knocking on the door. Or just opening it. This happened several times, the lonely toileting... It was glorious. I had forgotten what this felt like... this "going to the bathroom alone"... I think the kids should give me coupons for this. Like, on Mother's Day or something... One for each of them. "An entire day of leaving you alone while you're in the bathroom."

This is right up there with "no complaining about my brother while you're in the shower" (from Thad) or "no musical theater renditions that you MUST watch me perform while you're in the shower" (from Elliott). I mean, I'm seriously having kind of a daygasm over here, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

I don't even feel unhappy about having to undo all the buttons and ties from the French press cover because I didn't realize that I need the buttons on the left of the handle if I want to comfortably pour with my right hand. The moment I become inconsolably upset about this will probably coincide exactly with the moment my grandmother brings my children home. It will be a complete coincidence, I assure you.

Finishing up!

2011-03-06T18:12:00.000-08:00

I realize how utterly boring a pictureless blog post is, but since I don't think anyone is even reading this, I'm going to just keep throwing this stuff out there because I think it is so fun to go back and see the growth of my processes.

Anyway... I have finish-it-upitis. I offered to touch people at TYF today so that they could possibly catch it. No, they didn't think I was weird. But none of them wanted me to touch them.

I finished Adam's glory socks which I will be trying to get Knitty to publish. Woohoo! This means that I CAN'T show a picture, even if I wanted to, since part of the publishing guidelines say that they can't have appeared before. If they don't get accepted (why the heck would that happen?), I will be posting the pattern on Ravelry.

I have been published 3 times already (3 articles in Polymer Cafe). The nervous thrill never gets old.

I finished my square of Mawata knitting that will be turned into a pillow. Knitting straight from the mawata produces a fabric so soft and so warm that it must be felt to be believed, so trying to explain it here would be as pointless as showing you a picture, so I don't feel like I have to do it now, either. Google it.

I finished my Storm Cloud Shawlette knit out of my glorious skein of Laughing Cloud (no, I didn't pick the names on purpose, but I thought it was an awesome match when I thought of it) hand dyed wool in the "Peacock" colorway. (Finished it yesterday.) It is so cool. I spent $20 on that one skein of yarn and I don't feel like it was a bad purchase. A lot of my yarn purchases are in the $20 per skein range now. If you get a knitted present from me, especially if it's hand wash, it's likely that on top of having countless hours of my life that I can never get back invested into something you won't fully appreciate, the base cost of the item was at least $20. Does that make it feel more like a "real" present now?

I'm touchy about the knitted presents. I love them and completely realize that I'm handing them off to be not-loved-as-much-as-they-would-be-if-I-kept-them-myself. Turns out I love people, though, and feel that demonstrating my love, even if it is unrecognized, is vastly important. I'll try to remember that my knitted presents are not actually possessing of any feelings that could be hurt by their rejection.

I don't think about the fact that I'm likely projecting my own feelings onto the "feelings" of the knitted objects. I'm all too satisfied with that--it means those feelings are projected, as in, not on me, so I like them that way.

I'm working in polymer clay again, but none of the stuff is finished, so I don't have pics yet. I'm making more shawl pins for TYF. I realized that I hadn't been working in it at all lately and I miss it, but it still hurts my hands.

I'm really sad that the clay work hurts my hands.

I think that's everything... big, pictureless blog entry... But I'm happy about all of my progress.

Chai, chocolate, chuddling, chillaxing, and... children?

2011-03-05T06:56:00.001-08:00

Today Elliott woke me up by screech-singing while he was on the toilet. I began an inner struggle as I lay there, so desperate for the sound to stop, but I ultimately proved more desperate for him to think I was still sleeping. So I remained silent.

I was sleepily congratulating myself when this little cherub, my treasure, and one of the many joys of my life, stood in the doorway to my room. "Mo-om. I went poop!"

Anyway, this is what my day looked like yesterday:

I spent seven solid hours of my life working. I mean, I know that I'm a stay at home mom and I work every day and blah, blah, blah. But we're talking seven solid hours of "actual" working as I prepared pieces for my display at Tempe Yarn and Fiber and "watched" Farscape while Elliott was up, which consisted of telling him to be quieter and rewinding to keep catching the dialogue I missed. The only beef I have with Netflix (besides their totally STUPID new instant queue display on PS3, but my feelings are so strong on this that I just can't go there) is that there are no subtitles. Zip. Zilch. Nada. None. How parents of small children watch ANY TV with no subtitles is entirely beyond me.

I had purchased 1 ounce of fine silver wire yesterday morning. Starting at 11:00 (I decided to time myself for fun yesterday) I made my coils and proceeded to cut all of the rings. This is what $40 (ouch! I remember when it was $16 an ounce!) of silver looks like:

I had it all cut up into rings and it was so pretty. (Everything is lying on top of my peacock shawlette that I'm making from the Storm Cloud Shawlette pattern on Ravelry. I got to knit maybe two rows yesterday. No wonder I'm going bonkers.)

After all of the rings are cut from the coil, I have to sit with my pliers and individually close each and every single individual one of them. Individually. One at a time. Me. Closing with pliers. Now you know why my right eyebrow twitches.

And I have to say that this isn't just closing jumprings, either. It's got to be utterly precise or the resulting fused rings will either not close or be lumpy and I hate that. If even one person breathes, "Well, having it look like utter crap is how you know it's handmade," I might begin another rant, and I already avoided the one about the new Netflix instant queue (I hate that word, too... why not just say "q"?), so I'm pretty much a paragon of restraint this morning.

Here is what $40 of fine silver looks like all closed up:

Somewhere in that stage, Elliott blessedly went down for his nap and about 5 minutes later Thad got home. This was around 1:30. We had brief discussion about his day as I worked, and he wanted to watch me fusing the rings, so I showed him what I was doing. He stood there for a while and then asked, somewhat brilliantly I might add, "Why are you heating them all up?" What a cutie. Like there's some reason I painstakingly laid out 720,000 little rings on my firing brick and went around heating them all up. "They looked cold." "Because they've been convicted of witchcraft." But I didn't say anything clever or sarcastic (note to self: next time I get irritated at Thad for being sarcastic, I must search the deepest part of my soul and ponder the great mystery of just where he has gotten this tendency from and then be convinced it's Adam). I just explained that I have to heat each ring up until it melts so that the metal flows over the join and they become solid.

I showed him how each ring is actually not a solid ring to begin with (but you can hardly tell because I did the individual. closing. with. pliers. me. myself. each. ONE. step earlier) and needs to be melted and fused to become a solid ring. So he watched the metal melt for a while and seemed utterly fascinated, then asked for candy, and we were pretty much back to normal.

Finally, I was finished with fusing and hammering all of the rings. They're all hammered differently. I hammer some flat, but for these sets without beads, one ring is always hammered on the outside to give it a different texture so that if you're working in a round, you can mark the beginning of the round with the textured ring. Here they are, ready for tumbling:

Note the totally ingenious solution for searching out 50,000 rings in the tumbler. I string them on a length of craft wire first. This is what $40 of silver looks like ready to go into the tumbler. (Do you have the sense yet that I am utterly horrified that I just spent $40 for an ounce of silver?! At my awesome secret cheap supplier!? What do people who shop at bead stores do for their silver?!)

Into the tumbler they went. Then I had to begin preparing all of the packaging for the display at TYF. At about 4:30, I was printing a pile of cards and I recognized how horrible and starving I felt and I realized suddenly that it was 4:30 and I hadn't eaten any lunch yet. So while stuff was printing, I ran off and reheated some polenta and taco chicken stuff (it was SO good) and ate. I got all of the cards together and proceeded to go through the packaging nightmare, which I took no pictures of, because by this point in my day I was so tired and worn out, just mentally, that I couldn't even begin to remember or want to take photos of what I was doing.

I finished the absolute last piece of the packaging at 6:09 as Adam walked through the door. Seven solid hours of my day on this stuff. This isn't the first time I've had a marathon day of creating things for displays or my site or whatever, but this is the first time I ever timed myself. Add dishes, feeding people, and cleaning to all of that and it's no wonder I didn't feel like doing anything last night except curling up on the couch with some chai, knitting, and watching Pride and Prejudice.

Didn't get to. But I took the new stuff to TYF, came home, and Adam was making dinner. Have I ever mentioned that I love him? After the kids were in bed, I told him I wanted chai and chocolate. And then it became this big "ch" joke. Not really that funny, but it amused us last night. We both had really long days.

I suppose I had better go. It's Saturday. I should get off of the computer before one of the children comes up and starts making unreasonable demands for things like "breakfast" or "motherly affection". Can't they see I'm chillaxin? On the chomputer? Ha. Ha.

Ha?

Yeah. I'm tired. Wish me luck today.

Just quick

2011-03-03T16:02:00.000-08:00

Thad wants to watch TV once I get up and "start making dinner".

Whatever gave him the idea that I plan on doing such a thing?

Random, busy, random

2011-03-03T08:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, so it turns out that two boys (one 4 and one 10) can really use up a lot of your time. I don't know if anyone else knew that. I don't know why I didn't know that. It's not like I didn't know what it was like having a 4 year old and a 9 year old or a 3 year old and a 9 year old, and back and back and back... But, yeah. Somehow it still always manages to completely shock me that so much of my time can be taken by caring for them (not in bitterness, I assure you... I love my family and I enjoy them). That, really, weeks will pass for me and it feels like days. I tell a person, "I'll take care of that." And three weeks later, they're e-mailing me, "Uh... I haven't heard from you..." And I'm so completely mortified that I can't manage to juggle a business, family, and household (because the house is its own separate time sucker... who knew!?) and do 68 hours of work in 24 every day of my life without letting a few things slip.

All of this to say that finally, finally I have finished new button stock for Tempe Yarn and Fiber. I have 18 single buttons and 1 set of 3 going over there TODAY. I keep telling myself that I'm going to take them when I get them and the shawl pins packed up, but seriously. Just bagging these things up was a huge portion of my day yesterday. If I could, I'd make the slow cooker my second husband. That thing saved my life yesterday.

This one has one of my favorite quotes EVER: "If you're going through hell, keep going!" -Winston Churchill. Reminds me of Psalm 23. "Though I walk THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death..." I don't know how many people catch that. You're supposed to keep walking. Not sit and wallow in it. And believe me, this is me reminding myself and not preaching.

I love the new ones I'm making with the little charms dangling inside:

Here's Elliott's new hat which I made for him in one day because it was supposed to be bitter cold last weekend and I realized that all he had were sucky store bought hats and everyone else here, plus some out of state relatives, are now the deliriously happy owners of custom Kathy hand-knit hats which are far superior in every way... But my own little pwooshbooga doesn't have one yet. So I remedied that with this lovely chunky 100% baby alpaca yarn which is pretty much the softest thing on earth which makes it heavenly even if it does shed and ever since I knit it we've been picking tiny alpaca fibers out of all the food like we own a cat or something, but we don't.

And last, but not least, here is a knitted boob:

This was made for the Knitted Knockers charity that TYF is focusing on this month. I love this idea. Basically, these knitted prostheses are much lighter, more comfy, and nicer to wear than silicon ones. These are for women who have had to undergo mastectomies due to breast cancer. They can go into a bra and be nice and cool against the skin, which is, of course, incredibly important here in AZ.

I feel really happy to have been a part of this. I want to make one more before the drive is over.

I need a friggin' time turner.

Spinning, spinning, spinning

2011-02-19T07:07:00.000-08:00

Lately it seems like all of my energy has gone into scrapbooking and spinning or knitting. I'm scrapping 2009 right now, with my beginning of the year goal being to get to scrapping current events by the middle of this year. I think I'm going to make it. ^_^ I'm beginning to take the scrapbooking pretty seriously, too. It used to feel silly, but now it absolutely doesn't. My oldest son is about to turn 10 (tomorrow!). I was flipping through his books recently (made before the digital cameras allowed the capture of every. single. thing.) and lamenting that I didn't have more to help me remember all of those precious moments and memories. I'm determined not to miss any more of them. And I'm doing it in a very organized fashion. I love the book "Get it Scrapped!" which is so wonderful for helping to organize photos and get things together to actually get your stuff done.

Now to my spinning. I love spinning. I LOVE spinning. People wonder if it saves money. Haha. HAHAHAHA. If my laugh looks a little crazed, then it came across accurately. There's no saving money in spinning your own yarn. And it takes hours and hours. And if you ask me why, I can only tell you that I just like the process itself. It's not about feeling extra smart when I knit with the yarn I spin, like, being part of the process from start to finish. Oh, it has nothing to do with that. Spinning is its own beautiful, relaxing thing. (Once you get past the initial cussing fit that learning this will cause you to throw over and over and over again.) But you get yourself a person standing over you and correcting what you're doing enough, and you eventually get it.

So here is my setup, complete with my new wheel. (Why, yes, I realize that the chair matches the wheel. It just makes it even more perfect.)

That's a SW (superwash) wool braid that I got from a good friend who was doing fiber destashing. It's my current spinning project.

I'm farther than this now, but here is some single on the bobbin. I began it this month hoping to finish spinning all four ounces of the braid by the end of the month. I'm looking at the date and thinking I might not make it. But I'll try. Now it seems unreasonably cruel that February has less days than the other months. It's like some ancient enemy of mine knew long ago that I would set myself unreasonable goals almost always during this time of the year and they cackled to themselves and said, "Hahaha... we'll divide the year so that THIS time always has less days!" I mean, I know it's highly unlikely. But the drama within suggests a dark, ancient conspiracy, and that suits me just fine.

And now to the real show. On Valentine's Day, I taught my husband how to spin. (Remember the beginner cussing fits? Well, this might cause an advanced spinner cussing fit.) Look at how much he had spun on the bobbin. I mean, literally. This man had NEVER spun before in his entire existence and here is the work that he had done:

...before his singles consistently looked like this:

He spun a tiny bit and NAVAJO plied his FIRST tiny skein of yarn into a yarn that is so cute and so consistent that I need to go take a picture and show it off. I haven't yet.

And, earlier in the month, here is my baby (the one turning 10 tomorrow) learning how to spin. He had fun, too.

Yeah. I need to do a scrapbook page.

Pics later

2011-02-05T21:25:00.000-08:00

You know, I'd post so much more often if it weren't for how long it takes to get stupid pictures together.

Finished yarns/fun jewel effects

2011-01-31T15:21:00.001-08:00

I've finished spinning all of the lovely fiber I had mixed. Here are the finished skeins of my Rumpelstiltskein yarn. These are my 8th spinning project. I'm really proud!

I have a lot of fun with different things in my paper crafting. I was working on a birthday layout for Thad's 8th birthday dinner at Golden Gate, and after I added these fun buttons (one of them was covered in paper, the other two are transparent buttons that I glued matching glitter to on the backs... all three buttons are attached with 1/16th" brads, which is another one of my favorite "techniques". I know I didn't invent this. But I did discover it for myself, and I love it.), I felt that the page still needed something more. So I decided to add a few jewels. LoL. And this is what happened. I had, on a layout I just did, run out of the string of jewels that I was using to border the left side of all of my photos. I still needed a bit of it, so I applied a line of glue and just glued a straight line of clear jewels. On this layout, I decided to try making something fancier. I saw my little jar of mixed jewels and thought they would make a perfect party accessory. This is what my finished thing looked like:

Here's what it looks like super close up: (If anyone ever gets this close to your page, smack them. It's rude.) I glued these down with my favorite liquid glue: Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive. It dries perfectly clear. You can see that here. My happy discovery on the smaller thing I did on my other page was that even though I made a huge glue mess when I was doing it, the glue really does dry so clear that you don't even notice it. Also, this is about as much adhesive as will show on even some of the super fancy jewel things that you can buy in a store for like $5.00 each.

This is what it looks like wet: (I added more at the top of the page because I can't help myself.)

Here's how you do it. Basically, just draw the line that you want with your pencil, if you're doing a fancy swirlie thing like this. Use a stamp as your base, maybe, or trace it from a stencil, or just free hand it like I did. Over the photos, I sort of eyeballed what the line would be. Draw your line of glue over the pencil line (or the imaginary one). Don't do a whole long thing or else the glue will dry too fast. I could do about 3 inches without it drying before I got to the end of it, but I'm really fast. You might want to start with a shorter length until you figure it out.

Place your jewels with tweezers. Again, these are acrylic jewels. Holy moly, don't do this with Swarovski. Please. Basically, I pick up any jewels that are face up and then let go of them when they are where I want them to go (without touching the glue, which you'll figure out, but until you do, wipe the tweezers frequently), and then close the tweezers and push on the top of the jewel to make sure it's in the spot.

It takes a while. But I think it's fun. I also think spinning my own yarn is fun. This might be an indicator of my crafting personality, and a sign that we might not match. If we're not compatible in this way, you may want to proceed with caution. Start small. (There, I did a disclaimer... that was awfully nice of me. Wouldn't you say?)

I added extra fun shapes once the other swirl was there because apparently 100 little jewels in a lovely swirling row is just not enough bling for me. Again, personality indicator, etc., we may not match, proceed with caution, blah, blah, blah. ^_~

There's my final title before it dried. I need to take a picture of it dry so that you can see how perfectly the glue disappears. It doesn't just dry clear. It dries smaller. So the HUGE pile of white glue you see will be clearer and a bit smaller once it's completely dry. This process takes a long time, by the way. At least an hour. Maybe two, even though it says it's quick dry adhesive.

Rumpelstiltskein #1! And a card!

2011-01-26T09:39:00.000-08:00

I'm back after a pretty long break from blogging and it feels good. I think I've finally figured out what the heck I want to do this for, which helps out a lot. Oh, and if this type looks bold, I don't know why... it's not like I feel so ultra self important that everything I type must be in BOLD letters. It looks bold in my editing box, but later in the blog, the text turned normal... so who knows?

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching. Last year I made 14 cards for Adam, one for each day of February leading up to Valentine's Day. Last year it was a totally last minute idea, like I usually get, on probably January 31st... And I thought, "Ooh, that would be so cool!" And then I frustrated myself to death, because suddenly the standard had been set and I felt like if I only made him 5 cards, that would be woefully inadequate, and really... what kind of wife would I be?

Well, this year, I still want to make 14 cards. (Wait for it... I HAVE learned something.) But this year I'm starting early. I also frustrated myself trying to make all of the cards somewhat masculine last year. This year, I'm going to have every single card be a celebration of my own artistry and my own style. I'm having them be almost like big artist trading cards. Each one of them is going to be a piece of me. So I finished the first one last night and it's awesome. Yeah, I'm shameless. I love this thing. It was so fun and I think it turned out SO beautifully. The finished size is 5.5"x8.5". I made an envelope for it using the instructions in my Martha Stewart scoring board. I had seen the thing and thought, "Why the heck would you need that if you have a scoring blade in your slide cutter?" Oh, you need it. It has instructions for boxes and cards and envelopes... nothing you couldn't really figure out on your own with some only slightly complex number crunching, but not having to do it is so worth it that I think I would adopt the thing and buy it puppies if it were to ever gain sentience and express such desires.

Adam's first card: Pretty much all of this stuff (except for the little acrylic jewels and the sentiment and ribbons) is from the Jubilee collection by K&Company. How I love it! It's like bright and flashy vintage. Which is pretty much exactly my style. Adore!

Also, I blended some fibers for the first time. I did 80% wool and 20% silk. Here's what I started with:

Blended to this...

Spun to the pretty yellow... I'm calling it my Rumpelstiltskein... get it? Spinning gold!? Into a SKEIN!? I felt too clever. (Still do.)

I just absolutely love it. It's 1.5 oz. so far (half of what I blended)... A chain plied sock weight. (At least it looks like a sock weight... I didn't do anything so scientific as actually MEASURE. Just eyeballed it.) Can't wait to spin the rest of the blended pieces. I don't know what I'm actually going to MAKE out of any of this yarn I'm making. At first it was too precious. Now I think it's because I'm finished. Right? I mean, my project was making the YARN. It's finished. Yay! Move on... How do I take my yarn and make something else now? That project was finished. Now I start another one? LoL. Hopefully I'll get over that soon. I'm developing a wee pile of it.

Wire pieces from today

2010-11-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

Again, I'm trying to do at least a few pieces every day for the new display I'm putting up over at Tempe Yarn and Fiber next week. Today I felt like doing some fancier stuff, so I did.

Earlier this morning, I focused more on some knitting. I finished a sock and started the second one. Finally, later this afternoon, I did these three pieces. Two pairs of fun earrings and a cool bangle. Materials: sterling and fine silver, black onyx, moonstone, AAA grade Chinese crystal.

I asked my honey to bring a flashlight over and see if it would help get better pictures. I think the spotlight look is actually pretty cool, especially for these pieces with the crystals. It makes it look very Hollywood premier.

Anyway, these pieces are going to get antiqued. I'm on an antiquing kick. Once they're antiqued (with the pieces from yesterday), I'll post those pics, too.

Adding more hours to the day

2010-11-18T08:20:00.000-08:00

It stands to reason that if I don't have enough time, I should add more hours to my day. So I got up around 5:30. I made 32 pumpkin muffins (from the best pumpkin bread recipe ever... coincidentally, this recipe also makes the best pumpkin muffins ever). Got Thad his breakfast, made his awesome lunch (deli turkey sandwich on sourdough, Cheeto puffs, organic apple, and coke zero) and got him out of the door, managing to pray a blessing over him and everything.

I also managed to make some jewelry this morning and here I am to show off some of my stuff before I get started on the rest of my day!

First of all, here's my latest handspun yarn. It's about 336 yards or so of a fingering weight yarn, peacock colored wool plied with yellow and purple silk. My friend, Barbara (the same lovely Barbara who is letting me borrow one of her spinning wheels as I'm paying off the one I have on layaway now), dyed the silk. They were spun from silk hankies, or mawata, and it was really fun to do them. I really love the fact that this isn't just handspun, it's got some hand dyed stuff in there, too. Makes it even cooler. I'm calling this one my Cleopatra VII yarn.

Here are the earrings I made yesterday. I got stuck on these citrine beads and decided to just go with it. I couldn't decide which of these pictures I liked better, so I'm posting them both. I like the arrangement in the top better, but I prefer the background of the other one.

Production mode desk looks like this:

This is before I clean it all off and pull out my torch for stitch markers. I think I'll do that later today. I may clean everything off and pull out my clay stuff, though, for shawl pins. I just can't decide. We'll see how the day shapes up!

And here are the pieces I made so far today: four pairs of earrings and two pendants. I tend to really love certain beads at certain times and I always used to force myself not to use them (how DUMB) because I didn't want all of my stuff to look the same. But this time around, I have finally realized that if I get "stuck" on certain beads one day, I will most likely find new favorites on another day and eventually, in the big mix of time, I'll end up with several varied pieces. So, holy DUH. Today I was all focused on these absolutely lovely prehnite beads I've had for pretty much forever. I wanted to use all of the rest of them, but their holes are so tiny that to use up my remaining four beads, I need to get some 28 gauge sterling wire! Crazyness. So I pulled out my citrine again and had fun, and did a bit with crystals.

I used to always be so paranoid, too, about the cost of the final item as I made things, and I would make decisions in my pieces, trying to make them cheaper so that people would be more likely to buy them. I've decided to stop that, too. Forget stupid Target and Walmart and all the crap they sell for $3. Anyone who can't already tell the difference between my stuff and that stuff wouldn't care about the difference anyway.

So, yeah... It's been fun! I'm enjoying just doing what I want creatively without worrying about whether anyone will buy it or not. If I can't sell any of it, then I've got a huge, AWESOME stash of gifts now or I have a whole bunch of awesome jewelry that I can wear. Woohoo!

Who has time to freaking blog right now?!

2010-11-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

So over the last week, the world has come together and then fallen apart again. For 6 solid days, my precious Elliott slept through his nap without wetting his bed (in underwear!). Yesterday and today? Ugh.

Add to that extra crafting for gifts. I literally started making stuff in JANUARY. How this has happened to me again, I don't know. But I am having fun pulling all the stuff out of the gift pile that I've been building all year. If I actually sat down with a list, I probably don't have as much to make as I think I do, but I still freak out a bit. It feels like it's some badge of honor at this time of year to be kind of (read: totally) frazzled. I need to get over it.

Add to that making stuff for my show in December at TYF, and the new display I'm setting up as of next week and I'm just sort of beyond myself.

Oh, yeah. And my family. And my house.

I guess blogging will keep me sane. I'll post pics of all the earrings I made today for my display. If anyone wants some super high quality gifts for Christmas, you know where to go get them. Nordstrom. No, but really. My stuff is really cool.

More cards!

2010-10-27T13:36:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of updating from September's pictures: (My new Christmas cards are at the end.)

I LOVE the birthday card above... I had so much fun with stamping and layering. I made the little piece behind the flower using a few flourish stamps which I stamped in different directions to form the shape. I also stamped it with a graph patterned stamp I have, and before I did any of that, I had started with a plain white sheet and aged it with some Antique Linen distress ink. I love making cool stuff with my stamps.

I loved this card, too. I love the mindscape stamps by Inkadinkado. If you look closely at the humming bird, you can pick out several pictures, mainly butterflies, that make the whole. Do you see the one in the wing? That one's easy. How about the one on the face? Cool, huh?

And HERE are my new Christmas cards. I just made these a couple of nights ago. The one on top here is continuing my theme of stamping stuff. I started with plain cream paper and stamped these gorgeous images for top and bottom to create the patterned paper look. All of the red stamped images are from Stampin' Up!: Tiny Tags, Artistic Etchings, and Day of Gratitude. Over the tops of these papers, to add some extra interest, I stamped another pattern with Antique Linen colored Distress Ink--music notes on top and my graph stamp on the bottom. Most patterned papers, if you look at them, have several layers of images. You can create the look yourself by adding a bit extra like this. ^_^

I love this one, too. I cut the red piece from an old patterned paper scrap I had on hand that I couldn't throw away because it was too pretty. The paper was stamped with the Joyeux Noel first, then I covered it with another paper and stamped the rest of the sheet with the pretty french script stamp from Stampin' Up!. The Joyeux Noel and the cool tree from the other card are both from the Mistletoe & Co. stamp set by Pink Paislee.

I also really loved the fun sequin addition I did to the bottom card. It's SO easy. I love sequins, first of all, because they're super cheap and you can really load up on colors without breaking the bank. I used to glue them one at a time all of the time (like on the first Christmas card, come to think of it), but in the last month or so, I've started stringing them in a lump and tying them to things. Once everything is set, you can play with spreading them out a bit and making them look cool. They're very garland like, aren't they? I thought they worked for Christmas. But I'm putting them all over my scrapbook pages right now, too.

Okay, that's it for now. Gotta go do some laundry. I'm also probably sewing some napkins today, finally. I'm redoing my table in fall colors, so I've got some nice burnt orange cloth from JoAnn that I'll make into napkins with instructions I got from the Martha Stewart Encyclopedia of Fabric and Crafts. I love Martha Stewart and I'm not afraid to admit it. She is one incredible woman. She had a vision and she really went for it and she achieved it. What a success story! I think those of us who are really young don't even realize that the world used to not have all of this information out there, and she is really one of the pioneers that started this entire sharing of information thing, not only in household stuff, but in crafty stuff, too. And it's just awesome! I'm really glad I live in this time! And in America. But that goes without saying. And I said I was doing laundry, but I kept typing instead... so now I'm actually going to go do laundry. ^_~

Catching up, Cards, & New Clay Shawl Pins

2010-10-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

First of all, I have to share this with everyone:

We let this verse sit unfinished on our wall for probably two months or so and we finally finished putting it up last night! Yay! I used my Cricut to cut the letters out of a slightly textured black contact paper I picked up at Home Depot. This is NOT vinyl. Sheesh. I'd go broke if I tried decorating my house with vinyl. Anyway, when I bought it, it was about $6 for a roll of 18" wide contact paper that was several yards long. It does, as I said, have a slight texture, but it's seriously no big deal. You can't tell from far away. I cut it with the contact paper side down, with the sticker part sticking up (leaving the sticky backing on it, of course). So if I'm cutting any words, I reverse them so that when I pick the letters (which are face down) off of the mat, they come up facing the right way.

Here are the new shawl pins I just took down to Tempe Yarn and Fiber. The flower ones can double as pendants. The flowers and the little Japanese style one have sterling silver loops in the back for the knitting needles to slip through and they're only appropriate for lacier weight scarves and shawls. The flowers can also double as pendants because of the way I placed the loops. Oh, and the little Japanese girl is already gone. She got purchased the first day they put them out. I need to make more! ^_^

Isn't she CUTE!? I had so much fun with her. She was about 1.5" tall, maybe shorter. I just loved doing the details on her little face. You can't see from the picture, really, but her lips were totally textured and shaped like little lips, and I brushed a hint of pink PearlEx on her cheeks to give her a slight blush. I coated her (and all of the other shawl pins) in a satin finish clear coating to give them just a tiny bit of shine, but not too much. I like the satin finish because it doesn't make them look all plastic. At least in person.

Here's a closeup shot of one of the flowers. I made a base petal shaped Ikat cane out of blue pearl and white which I proceeded to slice. I dyed the slices with alcohol inks before arranging them into flowers. I think they're so cute! Especially this one, with its little clay button center. The others have Swarovski crystals in the middle.

And now for some cards...

Above is a thank you card I made with a coffee theme. The inside, of course, says "Thanks a latte", which was SO cute when I first saw it, but now every single coffee themed stamp set seems to have a stamp that says that. I mean, it's still cute. I feel a little dorky using it now, though, like I always feel dorky doing anything I feel that a lot of other people do. I need to get over it. Most people haven't seen it yet. (This one got sent to my Aunt and Uncle, thanking them for a cool birthday gift!)

Another fun layered card.... I sent this one to my Uncle and Aunt, thanking them for their cool birthday gift.

And here's another thank you card... I forget where the idea came from. Some magazine. I LOVED the idea, though. It is such a cool, fun use of scrap papers! Especially my oh-so-precious BasicGrey scrap papers. A moment of silence for the glories of BasicGrey, if you please. Okay. That's enough. It's not like I'm super weird or anything. I just love BasicGrey above all other paper companies. It all started with Marrakech. I won't get into it. This card got sent to my mother in law for the awesome birthday gift she gave me. (I just had a birthday, if you couldn't tell, so I sent a lot of cards which I naturally had to photograph before I sent them.)

Naturally, with Christmas quickly approaching, I'm making Christmas cards now!!!! (I don't usually do Hanukkah cards even though we celebrate it, Messianic style, because I don't know anyone else who celebrates it. So who am I going to send cards to?) I loved this card so much because I used a little piece cut from a Scattergories game that we recently played where Elliott obviously got a hold of a pencil and scribbled on one of the pads. I just thought it was the cutest, so rather than using some random piece of paper, I used that one, and so this card is definitely going to one of the grandmas this year.

And here's the last card for now. Very fun! I stamped the kraft background paper with watermark ink to create this look which I totally scraplifted from a paper that Stampin' Up! sells. I don't think it's wrong. I mean, the paper uses these stamp images, which I bought, so I made it.

I was looking through September and I still have so many more pictures to post. I've really got to catch up. I'll do that later. I can't believe I haven't posted pics yet of my new craft space! It's so lovely! I'm really excited about it!

Until I post again... many blessings on you and yours. You're fabulous. Go make cool stuff.

Covered tins and homemade ribbon storage

2010-09-20T08:30:00.001-07:00

Recently, we got an awesome new (to us) couch from our friends. It's HUGE and we had to rearrange our entire living room to fit it in, including moving my craft space from in front of a window on one of our walls to a corner of our living room. I am thrilled beyond thrilled to have a wall in front of my desk now so that I can eventually do some storage hung on the wall. The plan is to eventually put a shelf in and add a florescent light underneath so that I can get rid of the big light above my desk.

Anyway, anyway... I was at JoAnn and got these tins on clearance, then covered them with some paper. They've become my embroidery floss/chalk storage. I love them so much! I sanded the tops of the tins, then cut a 6.75" circle (the tins are about 7 inches across) out of kraft cardstock for each, then a 6.5" circle of this really cool patterned paper... I decorated/aged the papers and attached them with Mod Podge decoupage glue.

The circle plastic canvas thing is NOT for doing plastic canvas. *shudder* It's for marking circles and curves for my stitching. I forget which brilliant friend introduced this idea to me. But I love it and it works really, really well for evenly marking dots to poke and stitch in your papers.

NOW. On to my ribbon storage. It's not fancy, but it's functional and cool. I had gotten these wooden pieces at Hobby Lobby for making spindles, and I've successfully made a spindle that I love very much, but you know, when you buy these wooden pieces, you get many pieces in a package and I was starting to wonder what I was going to do with it all. Then I decided to undo my former ribbon storage and make a ribbon tower.

This is a 12" long 1/4" diameter wooden dowel. with a toy wheel and a knob that both have 1/4" openings. The packages say right on them what size opening they have, so you can make sure you get the same stuff.

Basically, just put some glue inside the wheel and stick the dowel in so that the bottom of the dowel is flush with the flat side of the wheel, as shown in the picture below. Set it on your desk so that it all evens out. Slip your ribbons on. This setup holds 18 ribbons with spools about the size that you can see in my pictures. I leave the knob unglued so that I can pull it off later to change out the ribbons. This setup actually stands up very well, even though it doesn't look like it would. I haven't had it fall over at all.

Secure ribbon ends with small pieces of tape so that they don't fly everywhere. I was originally thinking that the ends hanging down looked cool, but they soon got way too long and really tangled and that was not a fun mess.

So here's a general photo of the space now. I'll post more pics once I get my shelf. I recently got a new three drawer tower from Walmart, too, and I haven't labeled it yet. Oddly enough, this is pretty much what this space always looks like. I always keep it clean. I make stuff, then put it all away. To me, I just love the freedom of being able to sit whenever the impulse hits me and make whatever I want. I do scrapbooking, jewelry making, polymer clay, and other general crafting at this desk. So it's a multi-use station. It's not as pretty as the craft spaces in the magazines, but I love it.

New pieces and fun stuff!

2010-09-17T14:05:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've got some new stuff. Yay! Here are my semi-famous lotus pendants. People love these. I put a tutorial on claylessons.com for how to make them.

Here are my latest pieces posted to Etsy. I've gotten obsessed just a bit with crosses. I have to say, too, that I've had some pretty severe carpal tunnel type pains developing in my right hand and arm, so all kinds of things are becoming too painful to do in various crafts, including sanding and buffing. I allowed myself to sink into the depths of despair a la Anne of Green Gables, but then decided to just explore and perfect techniques that actually shouldn't be sanded when completed. These pendants are a result of that. I'm adding beads, crystals, and accenting with PearlEx before baking. They're a different kind of work, but they're still a lot of work. And I've been strengthening the use of my left hand, too. A lot of these pendants were worked with my left hand, doing texturing and cutting and whatnot. It's annoying, I suppose, but also kind of fun. I feel like I'm really exercising my brain now.

So there they are! I'm really quite proud. Oh, and I have a new camera. So I can take awesome pics now. Aren't they pretty!?

It's been forever, I know, but I have pretties!

2010-09-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've been off the radar for a bit. Basically, I had a really successful show at TYF and then I rested. Because I was a silver fusing maniac for about 2 weeks and it was just time to take a break from everything.

I've been really embracing fiber arts lately. Specifically spinning. There's something so cool about it, and it's really neat to be able to sit on the couch with my wheel in front of me while we all hang out, playing games (they move my pieces for me), watching TV, etc. I don't have to be off by myself at my craft desk and that's awesome.

Anyway, my friend just got here, so here's the rest of my blog post in super summary mode. ^_~

Spun skeins of yarn soaking before dyeing with Kool-Aid:

Dyed skein with Kool-Aid:

Original skeins, both about 100 yards of fingering weight, Navajo plied, spun (by me!) from merino wool. These skeins were named "Sand" and "Blue Sky".

Skeins after dyeing with the Kool-aid. Now they're named "Aurora" (from the Blue Sky skein) and "Sedona" (from the Sand skein).

Latest handspun: 220 yards of fingering weight in a 70/30 merino wool/silk blend. I'm calling this one "Aloe".

So there it is! That's what I've been doing. I need to go now! ^_^

Another post, same day, but it's cool

2010-08-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that I never have shown spinning stuff on here before. So, just for a fun aside, here is the current spinning I'm working on with the wheel I'm borrowing from a friend at Tempe Yarn and Fiber:

It's a beautiful 70/30 merino wool/silk blend that is just a dream to spin. I'm having SO much fun with it. I can't wait until I see whatever yarn I eventually make with this.

And above is the spindle I made tonight. My hubby and I walked through Hobby Lobby for quite a while tonight. It was therapy for my day. ^_~ I just have to say again how much I love him. Sweet man got me ice cream AND walked around in Hobby Lobby with me tonight. He made the hook for the spindle. I designed it using the basic toy wheel setup, but I think I made it just a bit more sophisticated. It spins very well and I spun a tiny bit of merino wool on it just to test it out and plied it up, then tied it as the cord for this big fine silver ring I made that I'm not turning into anything for my show. It's just a fun, completely simple rustic piece. And it feels cool that I spun the cord for it. I think I might start doing that for a lot of my pieces. It's super fun.

I've got 6 more pairs of earrings to make (to balance out my display) and one more bracelet. I think I'll just end up getting up early tomorrow. I hope I remember everything. At least I only live 2 miles away from this place.

Crazy week. New stuff. Venting (a bit). And still going strong.

2010-08-20T16:06:00.001-07:00

Okay, I'd like to take the first section of this post for my wee bit o' venting. Brought to you today by our sponsor: the crappy week, new and improved version, as in the crappy week just before I had a show that weekend.

Honestly, it's hard to pin everything down. I'm sure that as a survival technique, my mind has blocked out a good deal of it. But here's a snapshot:

-I canceled a class this week because I was informed at 2:05pm on the day of the class (I have to be there at 6:00) that I had 2 students signed up, but it was curriculum night that night at my son's school, so... I'm supposed to get 48 hours of notice. I know I annoyed people by doing this, but for real. I have too much stuff going on to drop everything because someone else didn't call me in time. (And classes are supposed to automatically be canceled if there are less than 3 students, but I just won't get into it... this is the 3rd time in 2 weeks I've done this. I'm sure they assume I'm crapping out since I'm quitting after October, but it's always been this: not getting enough notice and there also not being enough students. It's too many hours of work to do a class so that I can get like $15.00 in three weeks.) Anyway, this was a hard decision. I don't like saying no. But I've vowed to be more assertive. So there you go.

-My 3 year old, Elliott, my sweetheart and my joy, a blessing to my life... Really, he's a treasure. Okay. *sigh* My 3 year old, Elliott, picked THIS week to have a huge regression in his using of the potty. Every single day this week he has had an accident. I thought yesterday was the topper when he started in the living room and went all the way to the bathroom tracking pee-pee footprints behind him. But today might have been better. I don't have to share the details, but he might have been trying to make a new lake in the bathroom. I'm not sure.

-Our weight room got flooded from this weird and freaky micro-burst storm we had a couple of days ago. It apparently loosened shingles on our roof because we got two huge leaks, too. On the surface, this wouldn't appear to effect me too much (can't remember the last time I used weights), but it did because this is also the place I store all of my jewelry displays and organza pouches and ring boxes and bags and all of that stuff that I use to make my shows successful. I mean, I hate to be obvious. But, yeah... this is all stuff I NEEDED to be easily accessible this weekend. Now it's all shoved willy-nilly into the garage and part of tonight will be pulling it all out and sorting through it all to find the stuff I need.

-Today was the worst day of the whole week (if you can believe it), started off by getting some horrible news that should be good, I suppose, but the potential bad of it is so much that I was really mad when I heard it. I got, for lack of a better word, yelled at for nearly a half hour about a disagreement that a certain person can't let go of, but that I would happily never talk about again. It's just one of those trying to convince me of their opinion things that doesn't work because I simply don't care and I know what I think and I'm done. After this is when Elliott tried to make the lake in the bathroom. (See above.) And then, because I was momentarily distracted upon leaving the house and taking the kids to my grandma's (she's watching them so I can finish all of this show stuff), I locked myself out of my house and, bonus, my car, and my grandma came and picked up the kids while I waited outside for my husband to drive in from his work, 22 miles away, to let me back in. Did I mention I live in Mesa, Arizona? It's not that pleasant outside today.

So maybe that was more than a bit of venting. But it's been kind of building up for a long time today. And I don't do it that often. So... I actually feel a bit better.

Just for fun, here is my table as it sits now after nearly 3 days of constant use:

It's a card table I have set up right by my couch so that I can do my torch stuff while we're all watching TV. I'm excited to get it out of my living room tomorrow.

Here's the pile of stuff I pulled out of the tumbler today. This is what it looks like before I separate it all out. I had accidentally gotten rice in the tumbler at some point this week, which I saw when I pulled the stuff out. I thought that was kind of funny. It's some really clean rice, I guess. ^_~

Those huge purple beads are SO cool. They're vintage glass beads I got from an older lady at the church I used to go to. She knew I made jewelry, so she handed me this bag of old, gorgeous purple beads that apparently fell of a necklace that snapped. I offered to restring them, but she didn't care. I've had them for years and never used them, and I finally decided to make something with two of them.

Here's the whole setup so far. It really doesn't look like a lot. I've still got to price everything and find my displays. I won't have a lot of room, and most of my thing this weekend is my demo of how I make my buttons, which reminds me that I have to cut a lot of blanks tonight, but I think it's still a pretty good supply.

That's my ugly desk, too. The icky background of a lot of my photos. It's really sturdy, though, and can take a lot of abuse. Just like me. ^_~

Overall, I feel pretty good. Maybe partly because my sweet hubby ran off to McD's to get me a McFlurry after he drove home and let me in. He just took the rest of the day off. Even though we're obviously not interacting right now, just having him around is so nice. I always feel more at ease when he's near me.

So tomorrow is going to be good. Still a lot of work to do, but in the end, it will have been fun. I always look back and feel glad about my accomplishments. I make amazing stuff. And even though most of this doesn't have anything to do with knitting, it's exciting to be selling in an area where people really can respect the time and skill it takes to make things. And I'm starting a new pair of socks tonight. Wewt, wewt!

Weekend show stuff/Cool knitting stuff

2010-08-18T13:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've been busting my rump to get stuff ready for Saturday and here is just a taste of the goodies in store if you wish to come and buy my stuff and support not only a local artist, but an awesome locally owned shop (Tempe Yarn and Fiber... I'll be there this Saturday from 12-4 with cool stuff and a neat demo).

Here's a pair of earrings (all fine silver, carved onyx beads) and a pair of bracelets that I made recently. The bracelets are the first two in what I hope will be a long line of stitch/row counting charm bracelets. Sometimes as you knit, you're asked to repeat a certain number of rows a certain number of times. I don't like to mark up my patterns/books a lot because if I want to make the thing again it's hard to discern between my two sets of markings. So these bracelets are all fine silver (the chain made by me, link by link, the clasp and the headpins the beads are on--all me!) except for the hooks which are made by me, but out of sterling silver instead of fine because the sterling has a bit of spring to it and will let the hooks stay formed longer. If they ever do loosen a bit, it's really easy to just squeeze them closed again. Anyway... the idea is that as you knit, you can move one charm along one side to count rows and one charm along the other side to count repeats. That way you don't have to mark up your pattern. ^_^ And they're GORGEOUS. So, yeah. You know you want one.

Here are other bracelets I made in the last couple of days for the weekend. I really love these. From left to right: Another bracelet inspired by my pwoosha son, Thad (he had made me a bracelet when he was 5 for Mother's Day... I gave him free reign in my beads and he picked only Swarovski crystals and bali silver [good boy!], but he mixed them all up so freely and used all kinds of colors and shapes, and it all looked so good and that bracelet goes with everything and I still get compliments on it.), with various Swarovski crystal beads; black onyx and fine silver; Swarovski and fine silver; Swarovski again and fine silver; and amazonite and fine silver... All of these bracelets, again, are made by me 100%, every link, every clasp, and every bit of awesome. LoL. I LOVE these.

And Barbara let me borrow one of her spinning wheels. Yay! Here's the first test yarn I spun on it to get used to the wheel. I love it even though it's just plain red without fancy colors or anything.

Here is my second Malabrigo sock almost finished....

Here's the most artsy photo I took of my completed glorious socks on my feets:

I just bought more Malabrigo today to make socks for my sweet husband who is my favorite person on this earth. $20 for a skein of yarn and SO totally worth it. I laugh at myself... if I tried to describe Malabrigo to a non-knitter, the first thing that comes to mind is, "It's like the cashmere of wool yarns." LoL. I guess it gets the idea across. Until that person gets to paw some real cashmere. *sigh* If only cashmere socks were able to stand up to wear. I wonder if I could knit myself a pair of cashmere socks and just sleep in them or something. Something to ponder... Now those would be expensive.

Show this weekend at TYF

2010-08-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Hey, all! I'm having a show this Saturday over at Tempe Yarn and Fiber in Tempe. I'm not sure of the time yet. I'll be doing a demonstration on how I make my sheet metal buttons and pendants as well as having some of my newest fine silver pieces for sale.

Hopefully some of you can make it! You don't even have to be in the clutches of fiber arts to appreciate the pieces I'll have. Although, I am super THRILLED to be debuting such designs as stitch/row counting bracelets and plain fine silver stitch markers and several other items that you will not find on my Etsy.

Canceling Scrapbook Social Class

2010-08-12T18:56:00.001-07:00

Due to lack of response, I'm canceling tomorrow night's class. Just posting here in case anyone was planning on showing up.

Scrapbook Social 8/13/2010

2010-08-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

I'm teaching the depressed window cards again this month since I didn't have anyone come last month (except Gail) and we both agreed it was okay for me to push this back so that more of you could have the opportunity to do this. (And it was a TON of work to put this together, so I'd really rather teach more people to make it worth it for me.)

The class will be Friday night, the 13th of this month (August), from 6:30-8:30 at the Riverview JoAnn. Cost is only $10 per person!

Basically, this class will teach you how to make a little depressed box like shape in your card which would allow you to add extra embellishments and generally make a fun piece. You could add jewelry or tiny gifts right in your card and it's a really fun thing to do! These are usually best handed to people in person, but if you want to try to mail them, you could. You'd just have to use a stiff mailer of some kind that will fit the card inside. The card will be as thick as the depressed box is deep, if that makes sense. (A 1/4" deep box will yield a 1/4" thick card, unless you get embellishments poking out that will make it even thicker.)

Here is an image of a card I made using this technique:

And here is an image of the wall hanging I made using this technique:

The wall hanging is actually about 10" across, so you'll be able to use this technique to make more than just cards. It's pretty fun!

To make this card, you only need the most basic paper crafting tools:

Supplies:
-At least some cardstock (for your card base)
-Decorative cardstock or paper as an accent to the design
-Your preferred embellishments (buttons, stickers, brads, rubons, ribbon, etc.)
-Adhesive or glue, such as my favorite, Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive
-Markers or pens or colored pencils or chalks or whatever you'd like to use to add color or text, if you wish.
-Inks for adding antiqued edges, or for stamping with, if you'd like to use stamps in your project

Tools:
-Ruler
-X-Acto Knife (or similar craft knife)
-Scissors
-Paper trimmer (with scoring blade if you have it)
-Bone folder (for making deep folds... you can borrow mine if you don't have one, but you may have to wait if other students are borrowing it, too)
-Any stamps you may like to use as embellishment
-Paper punches, if you have favorites, for creating embellishments (the classroom has a large selection of punches for you to use)

It looks like a lot when I write it out, but if you've ever done any kind of crafting, you likely have a lot of this stuff already.

Please e-mail me if you're planning to come to the class. It takes a lot of time for me to pack and prepare and I'd like to know that I'm showing up to teach people. ^_^

New Etsy!

2010-08-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

I'm announcing now even though I won't be premiering until a little while in the future. It has occurred to me that since I put a lot of time and thought into tutorials I post in the blog that I should try to sell some of them. Many good friends (including Bonnie, Rose, and others at Clay Guild) have suggested that I try to sell my clay tutorials either through Etsy or www.claylessons.com. I will maybe get some clay stuff together in the future, but for now, I'll focus a bit more on the paper stuff.

My new Etsy site will be www.papersensei.etsy.com. I'll be doing tutorials first on making your own craft space storage from cardstock, including cute folders and boxes and whatnot. I will probably branch out into clay and jewelry tutorials in the future, including some of my favorite earring components and whatnot. I know that www.jewelrylessons.com and the clay lesson site exist for those purposes, but honestly, if I can just sell things without having to give half the cost of each lesson away, I'll be a bit happier. And having all of my stuff in one place is good, too, in case you like what I do. Then you'll have one stop shopping. ^_~

My stuff!!!!

2010-07-22T09:28:00.000-07:00

So, as I said, I've been doing a lot of etched metal lately! Yay! It's SO cool. Below are some of my most recent things, mainly the "create" pendant (which is my current all time fave) and the three curvy rectangle things on the left which are prototype shawl pins. I think they work really well. The other stuff is older (except for the curvy rectangle pendant on the right).

Here are a few more pieces. The etched pendants are older. The spindle is polymer clay on a chopstick. It works really well, actually! I love it! I can't wait to spin more on it, but I need to do something about the hook. The bookmark is probably my newest new thing, lol. I shaped and hammered the bookmark itself and filed it up and made it kind of rough so that it actually stays in the book instead of flying out at the slightest resistance (like, you know, AIR). These bookmarks are SO pretty and I love them, but I hate that they never stay in the book. So I decided to make my own and, yeah, it's better. I'm not surprised. ^_~

Up close shots of two of my favorite of the etched pendants, a nickel peacock and a copper butterfly:

My knitted hat from the boutique knits book:

Having so much fun!!!! Still no desserts! AAAAAGH! I'll run off and make some more stuff.

It's a wonderful life, even when it kind of sucks.

2010-07-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

SO. I've given up desserts as a first step in trying to detox my body from an excess of sugar. Gotta say. I'm addicted. There, I said it. There's definite, definite withdrawal, too, when you begin to purposefully eat less sugar. I'm experiencing it. Irritability (excessively!), headaches, and other things. Also, the fact that I WANT SOME CANDY. But, yeah. Gotta break the cycle. I'm sick of this stuff being such a big deal in my life.

Anyway, aside from all of that, I'm quitting my JoAnn job. I'm quitting my card exchange. I'm focusing more on knitting lately because it's so calming and nice. I don't make any money off of it, so it feels more relaxing than jewelry at this point. Not that I'm giving up on my jewelry or my polymer clay. It's just about choices.

So I suppose the main thing is the sugar right now. I feel awful. But I know that eventually it will all work out. Life is still good. God is still good, duh. And eventually I can look on all of this and laugh. Pretty soon I'll post some pics of all the new stuff I'm working on. It's actually pretty cool. I can't believe I haven't shown off my etched metal yet!

Interesting Fiber Facts

2010-07-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

This is a largely informational post of stuff I found out about various fibers while doing research for vegan fiber information. The general message: animal fibers are probably best for the environment, and best for the animal. You don't have to eliminate all animal fiber from your clothing/knitting/crocheting hobbies in order to do what's best for the planet or for the little critters. Lemme 'splain.

Plant fibers such as Bamboo, Corn, Soy, etc, are actually NOT really the most environmentally friendly thing to choose for your clothes. The processing of many of these plants is actually more harmful on the environment than just using the stuff that naturally makes good fiber (Bamboo [not contradicting myself, more on that later], Cotton, Hemp, Linen, and pretty much any animal fiber out there). The processing uses really harsh chemicals to bind and form the pieces of the plants into yarns, essentially binding them with plastics and resins. The fibers are usually the farthest thing from natural or safe.

Bamboo, although it is renewable and is pretty good for fibers, is actually being harvested in irresponsible ways because of consumer demand! This was a bit of a shocker for me. Bamboo is one of my faves. It's so ridiculously soft. But now we've got to make sure we're buying even Bamboo from good sources. Cotton, hemp, and linen are great plant fibers, but not for everything. So if you're really paranoid about the animals, you should stick with those.

And about the sweet widdle critters. Wool, alpaca, cashmere, angora, silk, and others come from animal sources. With the exception of the silk, no animals are killed to get this fiber. More on the silk later.

Wool is so naturally amazing, it's almost miraculous. It's naturally very warm, it stays warm even when it's wet, it freaking EMITS HEAT as it dries if it does happen to get wet. It's great. You can pick it up in superwash varieties so that you don't have to worry about it felting anymore. It's also available as glorious merino wool which I would seriously defy anyone to find itchy. Wool, more so than almost any other animal source, forms fiber so naturally that there's virtually no processing. Just shear, comb, spin, dye, and you're done.

Also, the main thing is that virtually all of these animals (especially sheep and alpaca) NEED to be sheared to be kept healthy and happy. You can imagine if you were never allowed to get a hair cut, how you'd feel, and that's just on your head. Their hair is like that, only it's all over their bodies. They will grow and grow and grow their hair until they end up unable to move, or get caught in things and die. (My yarn shop owner told me that there was some poor sheep that got lost in New Zealand. Apparently it was lost for a long time. When they finally found it, it had 200 pounds of fleece on it and it was stuck in a bush! They sheared it and I'm sure that was the happiest day of the little sheep's life.) So shearing them is something that is GOOD. It keeps them happy. I know I said that already, but I felt like really stressing the point.

The other thing I learned was that sheep and other animals are really a lot like us, too, in that if they're stressed or unhealthy, their hair growth sucks. Stress causes hair to fall out of our human heads, and it does the same thing in the animals. The quality of the fiber shows the health/happiness of the animal. So it doesn't kill them to take their fleece. It actually helps them. And if they weren't happy, said fleece would suck anyway. And this is a seriously renewable resource, as natural as hair growth.

So, seriously. I know some people out there have all of these convictions about not using stuff from animals. But it doesn't seem to make sense in light of the information. At least not to me.

And we get to the silk, which is something that even non-vegans have shunned for it's "cruelty" to the silk worms. First of all, we're talking about worms. If you spray your house for bugs, you're pretty much already killing the same kinds of creatures. If you purposefully plant certain things in your garden to attract certain predatory pests to kill plant munching pests, you're also just doing the same thing. Killing. Causing death. Whether by manipulating the natural order of things or by using chemicals, your results are the same. So there. If you just live in peace with all things, though, and truly never even step on a bug, and never even drive your car for fear of smooshing some poor creature with your windshield, then good on you. But most of us do some of these things. So I'm not sure why the silk thing is a problem. But after learning more about it, I'm even more inclined to think that silk is a good thing for the little worms. Read on.

Silk is made from two kinds of worms that form two kinds of moths. I won't get into the differences too much, but just know that one kind has been bred for 4,000 years and is so dependent upon humans that they must be hand fed certain foods from the moment they're hatched to the moment they form their cocoon. The others are wild. Obviously the first kind makes the best silk, but the other kind is good, too. Basically, each silk worm forms a cocoon with a single thread that they wrap all around themselves. This is anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 feet in a single cocoon of a tiny, tiny thread. Cool, huh!? Basically, to get the silk uncut, you've got to kill the worm inside the cocoon. This is where the morality of it all comes in. Oh, poor little wormies, boiled or steamed as they sleep.

The other option is silk called, I believe, "ahimsa" silk, which means that the worm is allowed to go through its normal life cycle. It forms a hole in one side of the cocoon and comes out as a beautiful little moth with no mouth which will mate and then slowly starve to death one or two days later. (Because, seriously, they have no mouth... they die once their internal food source, built up during the worm stage, is exhausted.) The silk from this process is not as good because, obviously, the fibers are shorter, and it's harder to make the yarn or the cloth with shorter fibers.

So there you have it. Either the wormies die quickly in the cocoon, or they must slowly starve to death if they're allowed to become moths. And that's the way the cookie crumbles and all of that. So I find myself totally fine with either kind of silk now.

And, obviously, the silk harvested from wild moths is totally environmentally and moth friendly and all of that. Basically they go and grab all of the holey empty cocoons off of the trees and make the silk out of it. So they could either let all of these things go to compost or use it. So why not use it? Same thing with the sheep. They NEED to be sheared. So you can either throw it away or use it. So why not use it?

And there's the truth, and the info, and all of that. And maybe someone's view has changed, or maybe someone got mad, or more probably, nobody read this whole thing. But it was good for me to get my thoughts down. And there you go. Animal fibers rule, even silk. Plant fibers aren't what they're said to be.

Spinning class! Polymer clay spindle!?

2010-06-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

I've signed up for a spinning class that is happening on July 10 and 17 over at Tempe Yarn and Fiber, 5-7pm both nights. Cost is $40 for the class, plus supplies, which will end up being about $4-$8 worth of fiber for the spinning. You can use the wheels at the shop or their spindles to learn the spinning without having to buy your own stuff first.

BUT. I'm so impatient. I'm like a kid waiting for Christmas. Like, a tortured kid. A kid who knows what her present is, but isn't allowed to open it yet. I'm practically bouncing up and down, begging time to move faster, and somewhat unreasonably annoyed that it's not getting off of its pahtootey and doing so! I don't get to learn to spin until July 10! How annoying! UGH! How will I busy myself until then!?

Funny as it seems, being a craft polygamist with quite the harem over here, I can't seem to find anything I want to do. I'm trying to distract myself with other projects and I just can't. My mind keeps going back to the spinning. I'm stuck.

But today I got this vision in my head of a beautiful polymer clay spindle. Not the kind you usually see--a plain slab of marbled clay stuck on a plain dowel rod with a plain hook in one end--no, no, no... Not like that at all. Something glorious. A beautifully textured and crafted spindle that will be worthy of my genius. Rofl. Nah, but really. It won't be boring.

BUT now I don't know what makes a good spindle. Because I don't know how to freaking spin yet. So I'm feeling a bit hyper and a bit fussy, but in a mostly good natured way. I think I'll start the project anyway, and if it doesn't work, then at least it will have kept me busy until my class on July 10. JULY 10. 16 more days. URGH and a half.

Published again!!!!

2010-06-14T21:56:00.000-07:00

Wewt, wewt! I'm tooting my own horn here, but I don't care! ^_~

My Zen Garden article got published in the August 2010 Polymer Cafe magazine! Check me out! It's so cute--teaches how to make cute little box AND a cute little rake for a cute little relaxing rock garden. I think we could all use a bit more Zen in our lives.

I'm so pleased for the opportunities. And I've got TWO more articles pending publication! So I'm kind of dancing around tonight. We went to Texas Roadhouse to celebrate and the balloon man there made these totally awesome twisty balloons for each of the boys--two balloons twisting together, with little balloon balls inside! I can see how he made them and I can intellectually realize that it wasn't sorcery or anything, lol, but it was still pretty darned cool and magical. ^_^

Now I'm having an Oreo McFlurry with a shot of hot fudge (to make the icecream all swirly and fudge-y... you should TOTALLY try it). Celebration is over tonight, though. Back to whole grains and good foods tomorrow. ^_^

Totally easy earwires!

2010-06-10T16:36:00.000-07:00

Oh, I've been so busy and I can't get into it. But, I'm thrilled to report that my second article is going to get published soon in Polymer Cafe. Don't know when exactly yet, but I'm sure I'll find out once they get my contract.

Also, just as a little tidbit, since I haven't been too instructional lately, I'll share my new favorite thing... Drumroll, please...

These earwires are so easy to make, you'll wonder if you're cheating. Take some half hard 20 gauge sterling silver round wire. Wrap it a few times around something slightly smaller than the desired finished size of your wires (the half hard wire springs). Using your flush cutters, and switching them around with each cut to keep the ends flat, cut rings from the coil. With your fingers, form the cut circles into rings. Take round nose pliers and make a loop on the inside of one of the rings. Tumble polish/file the cut end that remains to make sure it's not pokey. Make totally cool looking earrings!

Now how easy was that? I made myself a whole collection of little earrings this way today. I think these are officially my favorite earwires now.

www.jewelrylessons.com

2010-05-26T20:51:00.000-07:00

Poking around the web led me to find www.jewelrylessons.com. It looks much like www.claylessons.com and there are a TON of gorgeous, gorgeous tutorials on there. Ack! It's overwhelming!

Just thought I'd share. ^_^

Ananda Khalsa... AHHH!

2010-05-26T08:29:00.000-07:00

So Ananda Khalsa just sent out an e-mail with images from her latest work. She's setting stones in some pieces instead of paintings, and while I am a HUGE fan of her original work, I really, really love the stone pieces, too! They still look so much like her. I just LOVE her stuff. If any of you haven't heard of her or seen her pieces, go take a look. She might just be my favorite jewelry artist ever, or artist in general. I mean, I think I love her stuff even more than I love Kathleen Dustin's. And that's saying a LOT.

www.anandakhalsa.com

Crazy Scraps/Weird Validations

2010-05-23T17:31:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you experience strange and random validation of your art, but I often do.

Last week, I took some silver scraps into Lonnie's to trade for more silver. As I was gathering them all together (they used to have one spot--what happened?!), I noticed how crazy they were. Big, messy coils from some failed attempt at whatever idea I had at the time. I often mess up quite a bit of wire on weird ideas that usually work, but sometimes really, really don't. And as I looked at my ridiculous pile, I felt that little brush of validation. In art, at least, I don't fear failure. I've managed to work out in my art what I'm trying to work out in my life in general. It's something I felt God say to me a while ago about various things I'm attempting in my life. I told Him about being afraid of failing, and it felt like He said, "Don't worry about it. If you don't make it, it's not another time you failed--it's another time you tried." If anything, I suppose it's a spectacular thing to keep trying in the midst of such a train wreck. LoL. And I like to think that even if I never quite make it with a lot of this junk, I'll be taking some pretty spectacular scraps up to Heaven with me, and probably a lot more finished work than I think.

Also, I was looking around online at some random beginning polymer clay artists. I liked a lot of what I saw. They made beautiful, beautiful work. But as I looked, I saw just how many of them really seem to be channeling the books I've seen, and aren't quite doing their own thing yet. Their days will come, I'm sure! But I sort of had to think of all the stuff I make--that stuff I feel isn't too special most of the time. I tend to feel like what I make is mostly lame. But this exercise gave me some new eyes. I've been doing polymer clay seriously now for about 6 years. I have so few things I've made based on a book. Virtually all of what I have now is stuff that is mine. It's me! And it was kind of exciting to have that validation, to realize that I don't think I'm a beginner anymore. I think, even though I don't necessarily have a "style" yet, what I'm making is still mine. And it's really cool to realize that.

I just should on myself too much. I think we all do. Ah, well. I'm sharing to hopefully give someone else some validation. Don't be afraid of failure. Don't belittle your work. You're a beautiful, unique creation, and your own creations are awesome. ^_^

Stitch markers and buttons!!!

2010-05-21T13:54:00.000-07:00

I'm delivering my stitch markers, buttons, and shawl pins to Tempe Yarn and Fiber today for their grand opening (at their new location--next door to their current one!) on the 25th! This has been weeks and weeks in the working and I'm excited. I'm delivering a pretty huge stock (for one person, at least) today. Over 30 pairs of stitch markers (which can easily be converted into beautiful earrings with provided hypoallergenic kidney ear wires) and close to 50 buttons. Some of those are in sets, but still. It was a butt load of work.

Anyway, it's exciting to be back out there again. Last time it was Art on Boston. Now it's a yarn shop. So this venue is combining my love of metal work, jewelry making, polymer clay, AND fiber arts.

Oh, and I made one button that says, "Eat, knit, and be merry, for tomorrow we dye." Isn't that SO cute?!

New Rivoli Pendants/Polymer Thief

2010-05-19T17:51:00.000-07:00

I made new pendants. But that's in a sec. Look at this cute picture I found when I was rifling through 2007 photos. This is my sweet Elliott, at about 8 months old, attempting to pilfer a block of polymer clay from the table as I was crafting. He used to sit next to me in the high chair all of the time as I crafted. I tell people all the time that he was raised around my crafts. This is usually in response to their surprise as Elliott runs off with my jewelry or plays with beads or whatever. I trained him early to be gentle with that stuff, just like I did his older brother. And he always listens when I tell him not to touch or to put things back. Anyway, it was just fun to find this pic of my little craft supply thief. (Oh, and the spot on his cheek is eczema. Virtually all of his baby pictures have his little spotted cheek in them.)

I've been obsessed with the Rivolis lately thanks to Lynne's demo. These are some pendants I made setting them in a different way. I like their look... chunky and antique, kind of. I like them both antiqued AND left shiny silver. I'm going to try gold next.

I was thinking about putting this up at claylessons.com. It could be my inaugural tutorial. ^_^

I almost can't express my level of stress right now, though. I got all of my shawl pins finished and buffed, but I still have so far to go. I got stitch markers and buttons made yesterday and I'm starting to feel really overwhelmed with it all. It's good that I have these opportunities, but it's also really hard between teaching, selling, taking care of my kids, and trying to keep my house livable. If anyone else out there has ever figured out a perfect balance, let me know. For now, though, Flylady is saving my life. And keeping dinner on the table. ^_^ Earlier today, I was joking with myself. I'm weird. I was thinking, about myself and my art, that someone else might say, "She's such a poser. She still does housework." LoL.

Rivoli Pendants, Shawl Pins, Other Stuff, Oh, MY! (Or: Holy Lotta Pics, Batman!)

2010-05-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

Holy lotta pics, Batman!

Okay, okay. I've been working my butt off (not literally, unfortunately) and not posting any pics. Here's some of what I've been doing lately. None of these shawl pins are completely finished. The first one, even though it's all pretty and coated in Magic Glos, is unsanded on the sides and bottom.

I made color chips after Jodi's demo at last month's Clay Guild. I had a TON of little leftover bits of the grayed colors, so I rolled them into snakes and decided to make a shawl pin with all of them. I'm not pleased with this yet. We'll see what miracles some Inca Gold paint (from Folkart--my FAVORITE gold color) can do. Oh, and Rose, that's my paint color. Hopefully you'll read this.

This is my most recent shawl pin. I love it! I did it with my jade mix. Although I'm pretty sure that this particular jade mix isn't what I usually do. I can't wait to sand it and buff it! Well. I can't wait for it to be done. Maybe I could enter a temporal vortex (subspace rift?) or some kind and exit after the sanding and buffing were done. Oh, if only Star Trek were real.

Random cane slices on a base.

More little cane slices and some old strips of mokume gane.

My current pride and joy--this beautiful necklace I finished at Clay Guild yesterday with 14kt gold filled wire and a bunch of Swarovski. ^_^ I love the little pendant, which is that technique I'm going to write an article on for Polymer Cafe. That will be my third accepted article. I'm really excited about it!

Lynn did this awesome demo yesterday at Clay Guild. These are shown in the order I made them. The top left was made yesterday after the demo. The others were made at home, late at night, and early in the morning. ^_^ They're so fun! The only thing that stopped me was running out of Rivolis. Although I like the cabochon look, I really, REALLY love the crystals. Oh, and because I'm kind of kooky: I made super tiny ones out of 6mm drilled Rivoli drops (cleverly concealing the holes) for earrings. They need to get finished a bit better. I used the FolkArt Inca Gold acrylic paint for some of these and some FolkArt Warm White, I believe.

Since I started my blog post, Adam wisely started playing a video game. (Star Trek Encounters for PS2, in case anyone was curious.) I was already planning on making this pendant with a long cab into a necklace. I may just do that now. I need to sand and buff this one, too, though. Dangit.

Earring Swap/Card Exchange

2010-05-14T10:19:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy. But it's good!

Here are my card exchange cards for May. I've got to go drop them off today. (They're due every month on the 15th!)

And here are my earring pieces for the guild swap on Saturday. I kind of had this total freak out over the last week when I realized that I had 15 pairs of earring pieces AND 8 cards due on the same day this month. LoL. But it's been kind of fun, I suppose. I've watched a lot of Hercules on Netflix while crafting. You can laugh all you want. That show is so lame, but I love it.

Yeah, I really love being able to set my laptop on the desk next to me and have it playing something as I work. It really helps me concentrate! I know sometimes I look rude in church, too, as I flip through my bible looking for various things that I think of as I listen, but the extra activity somehow allows my brain to focus more on what's going on. In various meetings I attend, too, or other things, it's helpful to me to be working on things while I'm listening, then I can focus on my work and on what's said. Otherwise, I find myself daydreaming. It's like my brain really needs something else to do in order to focus. It's an extreme right brain thing. It helps me understand my son, Thad, too. We're so alike, it's weird.

Yeah, like, on Sunday, Adam sent him into his room to get dressed. We already have him pick his clothes out the night before to help. He was in there for 10 minutes doing nothing. Just standing there, spacing. Adam had to remind him again that he should be getting dressed. Then, Adam came into our room as I was getting ready and asked, "Is it possible that he actually just spaced for 10 minutes?" And I said, "Totally. He could have seen something on his desk that reminded him of something and he thought about it, then a stream of a million other things, and he just has no idea how much time has passed." Adam said, "Weird. I just don't understand that." But I feel mushies at him because he's so sweet. Even though he doesn't understand, he recognizes that, and he's a really good dad. And a darned fine husband. (Like the bible says, "Dwell with your wife in understanding..." It doesn't say they'll ever understand us. LoL.)

Anyway, anyway... This was fun. I put some tips on the cards included with my earrings, too, and described color mixes and whatnot. So guild people are getting a treat. Even if my earring pieces aren't as good as Bonnie's or Lupe's (Lupe's post made me feel like crap, lol!), maybe people will enjoy my tidbits. ^_^

YAY!

2010-04-29T17:16:00.000-07:00

They said they want it, so I'm sorry that I can't share the info here. ^_^ But hopefully it will get into the mag soon. So look forward to this technique and my upcoming Zen Garden article which is to be published at some unknown date in the (hopefully) not to distant future. ^_^

My experiments!!!!!

2010-04-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, okay. I'm finally sharing this! I was inspired by the shimmering batik stuff that everyone has been making, but I was too cheap to buy the demo and I came up with my own thing that doesn't really look like that, but still looks really cool!

I just submitted this stuff as a possible article for PolymerCafe, but if they don't take it, I'll tell everyone how I did it.

These are coated with Magic Glos, too. I really am proud of the way they turned out. I don't recommend trying to do something like my third one, though. I had SO many issues with the Glos running down in that little crack. If you look close, you can see some of it is still there. I'll have to figure something out for making cool shapes like this in the future. But I still love it, and that is the one that most people really ooh and ahh over when they see it.

Steampunk! And other things...

2010-04-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've gotten really into Steampunk stuff lately. I've been making jewelry and whatnot. Adam and I are also working on a clock, which I will post pictures of once we're finally finished. We're altering a store bought clock to make it Steampunk. If you don't know what Steampunk is, you should google it.

Ugh, Elliott just poured juice on my shoulder when turning his cup over to show me that it was empty. LoL.

Anyway, I've been making some things, but not updating as much. I'm doing clay a lot lately, trying new things, and eventually I'll have some huge post with 20 pictures, so you can wait for it. I went through a Silpada catalog and took some inspiration from a lot of the pieces in there and am making some fun new things with my clay. ^_^

I'm also doing shawl pins, buttons, and stitch markers for Tempe Yarn and Fiber, which is super, super cool and exciting. I'm going to have my stuff in there on the first of June, so yarnies can look out for it.

And... I suppose that's all... I've got dishes calling my name and laundry that needs to be switched over and a child who apparently needs more juice/attention. I know art must be served, but real life must be served sometimes, too. Ah, well.

I HATE Mohair! I HATE Mohair!

2010-04-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Does anyone remember the scene in the Disney movie, "Sword in the Stone", where Mad Madam Mim is bested by Merlin and they have her in her house and let sunshine in to help her get better? She pulls her hair over her face and starts shrieking in the best fit voice ever, "I HATE sunshine! I hate horrible wholesome sunshine!"

Anyway... I mention this because any time you me saying that I HATE something, I'm doing it in my head in this voice. And I HATE mohair! I hate horrible, hairy mohair!

I'm just having issues with a scarf right now that is very soon to be made a muffler. A LOT of my scarves are turning into mufflers lately. I can't imagine why.

Oh, and in case anyone is curious, here is the link for the video of Mad Madam Mim's fit on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMJ8JGfuCAw

They don't let it carry on as long as it should. :( And it starts at about second 30, in case you want to skip right to it.

Varnishing tips... And, uh, where the heck have I been!?

2010-04-16T08:54:00.000-07:00

Hey, all! I just thought I'd get on here and update just a bit and explain why I haven't been posting anything lately!

In a word, I've been BUSY. Here's some of it:

-I have two kids. And a husband. And my husband and I really love each other and like spending time together. So there's that pesky family that really takes up most of my time.
-I've been teaching a lot more at JoAnn lately. People are actually taking my classes! Yay!
-I've been potty training my younger son with much success and very few horror stories which I won't share because, you know. Ick. Although my day is frequently punctuated now by the ever interesting quest for the underwear which always begins with the running of the little streaker.
-I've gotten involved in www.ravelry.com, which is like Facebook for knitters and crocheters. And I'm actually using up a lot of my stash yarn now because I'm finding great patterns specifically for my yarns thanks to Ravelry's huge pattern database.
-I have a new business opportunity. I'm selling metal buttons, fine silver stitch markers, and polymer clay shawl pins at Tempe Yarn and Fiber. Exciting!!! But I'm also busy making a million things and not blogging about it as much.

Overall, it's all good stuff. Hopefully soon I can post about the shawl pins I've been making.

And... for the VARNISHING TIPS!!

I discovered this while varnishing a shawl pin. I use a super cheap water based varnish that I buy out of the acrylic paint section at JoAnn--it's called Duraclear, if I'm not mistaken. I squeeze a bit of the gloss varnish out onto my surface and dip a paper towel into it. I then proceed to build up very, very thin layers of varnish on my clay, wiping it almost completely off each time. After four or five coats, on the last coat, while little streak marks are still visible and the varnish isn't quite dry, I lightly buff the surface with the paper towel to remove the marks, then let it dry. This leaves a virtually flawless surface, and looks really quite natural! Like, it's not a big, glaring plastic coating. It honestly looks like it was buffed. This was an exciting discovery for certain techniques I'm using in the shawl pins that really can't be sanded.

I've also picked up some Renaissance wax for my copper and brass buttons and am looking forward to trying it on my clay. If anyone out there has used Renaissance wax for clay and had success or horror, let me know.

Teardrop Ink Box/Ink info

2010-03-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

So, as I said earlier, I decided to make another little storage thing for all of my teardrop inks. Here they all are inside the lid:

I basically turned the thing upside down and pulled the bottom out so that I could see all of the colors. I think I'll do that every now and then to get a better picture of what I have, even though technically I can see all the color bits even when they're upside down as they are in the next photo, which shows how they'll actually be stored:

I put this together using Kraft cardstock as the base, which I've noticed, probably because of its makeup, I don't know, is actually a naturally stiff product. I covered just the edges with Basic Grey paper scraps on the bottom and did the top and sides of the lid. I had fun poking through my folder of Basic Grey scraps (YES, I keep them separate... sacred Basic Grey papers are not to touch other less worthy and more common products... I'm a huge paper snob that way...) and pulling out all of my Marrakech scraps to cut up and cover this box. I really like the way it turned out! I'm such a hopelessly ridiculous fan of Basic Grey that I actually can pick through all of my scraps and identify what collection each scrap is from. Oh, well.

Anyway... as to ink storage... I'll elaborate just a bit on inks. These particular inks are actually good for use with polymer clay. The reason these inks are good is because they're made up of chalk, if I'm getting my facts correctly, since they're "chalk ink". So the color behaves on the clay about like you'd expect chalk to behave. As always, it's good to get a feel for how the inks work before you try too much with them. They're about $10 a pack at Michael's and JoAnn, and you can use coupons, and they come 4 colors to a pack. Although I think all of them are 30% off right now, so bummer. But the inks last a pretty long time for how big they are, and it's a GREAT way to build up a huge selection of colors without having to spend the $7 per pad in the larger sizes. Although I have gotten some of the larger sizes of the colors that I discovered I really, really loved... such as Turquoise Gem and Perfect Plumeria.

When you see the packages in the stores, look for Dewdrop, which are the chalk inks. Not Momento, which is dye, I believe.

As always, StazOn is the perfect permanent choice for all of your polymer clay work, or for working in paper. For instance, you can stamp an image in StazOn onto a piece of paper and then watercolor because it won't run. You can also stamp it on metal or your cell phone or whatever, although the greater wear the object endures, the more the stamp will fade, even if it never fades completely.

One more thing for working with stamp pads... To get really rich stamped images, it helps to pull the ink to the surface of the stamp pad before you stamp. This is helped a lot by storing your ink upside down, keeping the ink resting at the top of the pad. Also, before you stamp, rub your stamp over the top of the pad. This is sometimes referred to as "seasoning" the pad. Once you've rubbed the stamp onto the pad, gently tap the stamp on the pad to get the ink onto the stamp. Rubbing really doesn't get any ink on the stamp--it just helps bring more ink to the surface.

This isn't usually necessary with newer stamp pads, but it can help give you richer images for a longer amount of time. It just helps you use what ink is in the pad rather than having to throw them away too soon.

And now I have a 9 year old on a broken record saying, "So what are we going to do?" "MOMMA." So I guess I need to go. ^_~

Cardstock Ink Pad Towers

2010-03-28T09:12:00.000-07:00

Here's what I did yesterday:

I got all of these glorious brand new stamps from my Stampin' Up! party order and I just wanted to stamp away, but my ink shoebox (a plastic shoebox that previously stored all of my inks, in a big jumble) was annoying me. I started pulling things out and realizing just how many awesome colors I have that I never get to use because I don't remember that I even have them. So here's what I've done so far. I've got 1 tower for some colors and 1 tower for all of my blacks and browns and my embossing inks. YES, there's a difference between all of those blacks and browns. But I don't have to get into that right now.

I had become inspired by the idea of having a lovely little ink tower when I saw the beautiful spinny one Stampin' Up! sells for their inks. That's $55, though. And I don't have enough of their inks yet to justify that. So I figured I could try to make something for the inks I have, but didn't really get to sketching a design until seeing them in a sad jumble yesterday and becoming particularly convicted about it.

So these are made 100% from cardstock and glue (my FAVORITE glue, of course... Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive! Which not only dries fast, but dries hard, lending structural integrity to things.). I covered the edges once finished with my glorious Marrakech Basic Grey paper, which makes me feel like crying in some ways because almost all of my Marrakech paper is gone. Luckily I have this beautiful way of enjoying two pieces of it for a long time to come.

The shelves dipped a bit overnight, so I flipped it all over and put the inks in again. I think the shelves might end up just dipping, which is fine. I didn't need for it to be a perfectly structurally sound object (it is only cardstock, after all), just something that would stand and hold my inks in an easily accessible and upside down fashion. Storing inks upside down is best because it always keeps the ink at the top.

My next puzzlement is to how I'm going to store my little Tsukineko Dewdrop chalk inks. They look like teardrops. I could create a piece similar to these, I suppose, but these were a hellish amount of work and I'm not ready to put myself through that again, quite frankly. Maybe those will require a simpler solution. Something to keep them straight, but also easily accessible.

The wheels are turning now...

Coming out of it... Martha Stewart... Zakka...

2010-03-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well, I seem to be coming out of it somewhat gradually. I can't quite explain what's been going on lately. Maybe it's been all kinds of things that are completely out of my control, and that gets grating after a while, of course.

I've been reading Japanese blogs. Or, rather, I've been looking at pictures on Japanese blogs because I can't read Japanese. I've been inspired by the simplicity of people's homes and the handmade things that are everywhere. I've been taking a look at my home and realizing that I can't really turn my head in any single room in my house without finding at least 1 (or 10) things I've made decorating each area. I'm realizing that even though I have a constant feeling of never doing enough, I clearly have made a mark in my home.

I've also come to something of a decision. For at least a little while, I think I will completely abandon any crafting of any kind that I will try to sell. I think I'll focus on myself, on my family, on my house... I'll try to rediscover the joy of making for what it is. It's possibly one of the best things about being human, the spark of the mind that separates us from the animals. Maybe it's part of God making us in His image. Who knows?

It might sound funny, but lately my biggest inspiration has probably been the Martha Stewart website. I love looking at stuff there. They have a whole section in the decorating area of the website dedicated to entire rooms of certain colors. GOSH, I love seeing those.

http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/livings-colorful-rooms

There's the link to the beginning if anyone wants to see. I'm really inspired lately by zakka crafting from Japan. Their ability to create incredibly beautiful objects with such simplicity will never cease to amaze gaudy-just-10-more-rhinestones-and-a-pound-of-glitter-to-finish-it me.

If ANYONE out there who likes to bead hasn't checked out the Bead Fantasies (I-IV) series by Takako Samejima, you're seriously missing out.

Okay, okay..... I know what to do now. It's really helpful to have a blog to talk about these things. ^_^

Funk punk me

2010-03-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

Well, lately I've been in a bit of a funk. It's been harder and harder for me over the last few days to sit myself down and do anything creative. I'm kind of listless. I have the desire to create, but nothing satisfies the urge. I start something, then stop, throw away, recycle, rip out, or store whatever I just started on because it doesn't seem to be the right thing.

So, whatever the heck this is about, I don't know. I mean, the feeling isn't spilling over into the rest of my life. I'm not really depressed or anything. I'm just in a creating funk.

I reorganized my craft area today and I hate it. I hated it before. I can't decide which was worse--before or after. So I'm keeping the after for a while to see if I can stand it. Why does everything feel wrong?

I have been noticing a lack of satisfaction building in me over the last little while with my crafting situation. I'm fortunate enough to have my own space, but it's a multi-purpose space and it's in our living room. This means, really, that I've got to pack up and clean every single time I finish making anything. Out of protection for my younguns sometimes (especially with those 6" razor blades you use with the polymer clay, or sewing scissors, and the like), but also out of respect for my family. I mean, even I feel like it's a real eyesore when I leave all of my crap out. I like for everything to be neat. I just wish I had enough room for everything to be neat in its own spot. Like, a polymer clay station, a sewing station, a jewelry station, a scrapping station, etc.

Oh, well. I'm not complaining, really. Just sort of trying to get to the root of my current issues with making things. I was thinking about trying to do something more expressive. Something more reflective of the inner struggle. Something actually artist-y. But I just don't really feel like it. Maybe I'll just yank something out that I haven't done in a really long time and try it out. Maybe I'll clean more of my stuff out. Ugh, who knows?

Has anyone else ever been in a creative funk? What did you do to get out of it? I'm interested to know.