All the Cool Kids Love to Craft

Oh Patty Dearest Have You Heard?

2010-03-17T11:09:00.004-05:00

Good day to ye! It's been aye but a long time since ye last heard from me. And that's the end of me trying to type like an Irish person. As a little girl (a lass perhaps), my mommy used to sing me the song that inspired this post's title -- "Oh Patty dearest have you heard the news that's going round -- they're killing men and women for the wearing of the green." It's a morbid song lyric I realize, but it does remind me of why it's so important to wear the green on St. Patrick's Day. It's not just a sign of liking green beer or being drunk -- at one time and place it meant something. Words like solidarity, faith, perseverance come to mind, that plus, well, the Irish are so charming and witty, it's hard not to love them.

I always wear green on St. Patrick's. Otherwise I'd get pinched. And though this post has already gotten its fair share of useless asides, I'll share one more from the archive -- when I was about four years old, my mother was asked to be Godmother to a distant niece of hers (Devin) and when we showed up at the church for the baptism, I saw that the baby was wearing all white. Having been told that one is allowed to pinch all non-green-wearing folks on St. Patrick's Day, I walked right up to the infant and pinched her. She was doing so well in her little white Christening dress until that moment. Whoops.

And to the craft, I didn't really intend to make a St. Pat's necklace except that I found in my big box of materials that I actually owned two St. Pat's themed plastic items. And like the siren song of the Emerald Isle, they were calling my name and tempting me to string them up for a necklace that will ultimately be worn, what, twice a year at best? Assuming the wearer uses it on both the holiday and the Saturday night before or after?

Final Christmas (but don't worry I've got stuff saved for next year already thus ensuring that the blog will still be happening come next November)

2010-02-08T07:13:00.000-06:00

Behold! The Christmas table. I thought it was festive. And modern. And urban. And, if it were personified my dad would lean toward me and ask, "Is that an urban hipster?" To which I automatically reply, "No dad, geez."

A tribute to the best craft ever

2010-02-06T06:37:00.001-06:00

That baboon amazes me. I can't even tell you all the reasons why this is one of the most awesome objects I've ever beheld. And I've been to the Louvre, seen Mona Lisa. I've gone to the Met and the National Galleries in DC, and the Chicago Art Institute and the Victoria & Albert Musuem, not to mention a semester's worth of train travel across Italy to see every last Baroque wonder, but seriously, this baboon figure is one of the best things ever.

And I bought him for a quarter at the saddest antique store in the saddest town in the saddest quadrant of Arkansas, which I'm not about to call "one of the saddest states in the US" though I'm sure many people would take such liberties when ranking US states by, oh, educational systems, poverty levels, etc. However, I love the Natural State enough to give it its own label on this blog. Anyway, main street of Ashdown, Arkansas houses some truly sad offices and junk stores. And as I rummaged through the sadness, I found THIS and many of his friends (think giraffe, penguin, bunnies), each for a quarter. Obviously, some truly talented crafter of yesteryear took felt, sequins and a permanent cloth marker and had some fun.

I actually sold all of his friends at my October craft sale ... making a tidy little profit. I mean, you gotta admit, it's worth more than a quarter, if nothing more than for the sheer retro awesomeness of the colors and shapes.

Baboonie was used as my tree topper on the first ever Hilary live tree. I know I seem like the type that would have a holy angel or something, but really, once the thought of topping the tree with Sir Monkay came into my noggin, I couldn't resist!

I know, enough with the Christmas already....

2010-02-04T08:15:00.000-06:00

And I promise to do that very soon. But I couldn't resist showing this sock monkey Santa Claus I made out of my forever gingerbread dough.

I think I mentioned this earlier, but naturally am too lazy to check, but the dough is 500% more pliable, smell-goodier, smoother and easier to work with when it's been heated in the microwave. Nuke the stuff for half a minute and you're really cooking with gas. Notice Santa's lovely complexion and smooth skin. Quite nice for a monkey man.

Cousinly Giving, Part Two

2010-01-10T05:50:00.001-06:00

Here's Cousin Will, looking almost Sweeney Todd esque? I don't know but the coloring of the picture combined with his Dickenesque scarf has me thinking of a Tim Burton flick. He's demonstrating how to play the miniature guitar I made for him out of my fav forever gingerbread recipe.

Poor guy. He's always been the lone dude in a family full to the brim with girls. I decided it would be wrong to give him a girlie sock monkey and wrong for me to make him an OU logo (no way!) so I thought I'd make him something that he'd like, a guitar. If you don't know him, you should know this -- he's a big music guy. Plays all kinds of instruments and knows an intimidating truckload of info about musicians and the local music scene.

I think he liked it, as much as a twentysomething guy can like a Christmas ornament.

Look a Gift Necklace in the Face

2010-01-09T08:13:00.001-06:00

Take a look kiddos, these are my three craft necklace Christmas presents. I noticed at my craft sale that the hottest necklaces were ones that were done in neutral colors, everyday colors, you know, your brown/grey/navy/black/white color families. Ones that work at the office as a subtle piece. And while I'm all about the boldest colors and the most outrageous shapes, I recognized that beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or the buyer) so I did a collection of five black, white and gold necklaces, each one with numbers as the theme for their center wooden coin. Both of these feature prints of bingo cards.

And finally, here's Cousin Meg's donkey necklace up close. Hee haw.

Cousinly Giving, Part One

2010-01-08T06:15:00.002-06:00

So someone (obviously me) was having some fun with the color toning on this picture... I was kinda going for a retro fade on the coloring of the picture, something like mid 1970s to match the beautiful Cousin Meg's shirt.

And what, pray tell, is that fabulous item she is holding or that lovely piece of jewelry that adorns her neck? Well, friends, those are homemade craft Christmas presents! My fam and I hosted my aunt, uncle and two cousins on Christmas Eve for a full out feast--Greenburg Turkey, flank steak skewers (prepared by me, never mind that the skewers caught fire), two sugarfree desserts and a rum cake for the sugar eaters--and a gift exchange. To cap off a perfect evening, there was snow! Right here in Dallas, Texas. And I tell you what, I had to see it to believe it. It seems every year we'd here about rumors of a White Christmas in Dallas, but every cotton-picking year we were scammed or cheated or just plain deceived by our weathermen as Christmas Day would roll around at a balmy 78 degrees or some other equally ridiculous temperature. But this year we got our White Christmas! Not that we're owed or anything, just grateful.

Of course I've very much digressed from the crafts at hand. So perhaps you've noted that I'm a little hot on "forever gingerbread," which looks like a regular gingerbread but you can keep it from year to year with no mold worries. It is made from a dough of apple sauce, cinnamon and white glue (yum!) and I used a few templates to make ornaments but I also broke out with some of my own drawings and designs, like, por ejemplo, this sock monkey gal. Making the dough is the most perfect Christmas craft activity because you can blast the carols and fill your house with no-calorie yet delicious smells. Sock gal is holding a gift and wearing a bow in her hair. I trolled google images of "sock monkey" to get the right look (keep in mind that long, long limbs are easy to snap off; she needed to be kinda bulky to have lasting power). I cut her out, baked her and coated her in different microglitter colors so she'd look just right.

And the necklace -- it's my Obamania necklace. Well, it's just three donkeys on a chain, but it's just write for my favorite Obamaniac, Cousin MegPeg. The gals just nuts about all things progressive politics and it seemed like just the right fit for her -- it's whimsical and completely silly but at the same time its colorful and fun and appropriate for lib parties. I don't really know if she actually attends liberal parties or if she's just a member of the liberal party, but either way, I hope she enjoys sporting her politics on a chain, given to her by, I dare say, her most conservative cousin.

(As a note, if you are lucky enough to tune in to Cool Kids Crafting with great frequency, you *might* be lucky enough to see a better picture of the donkey necklace oh, say, tomorrow.)

It's A Wrap (2009 Edition)

2010-01-07T07:45:00.003-06:00

So this is another in the never-ending collection of holiday posts. Presenting, this year's homemade package wrap -- sewn bags! Here's the background. A few months ago my mother and I were in the clearance section of a fabric warehouse in the seedy, seedy Harry Hines fabric warehouse district or whatever you want to call that particularly unsavory sector of Dallas, and I saw this fabric on closeout special for $0.50 a yard. I bought six yards for -- no calculators needed -- $3 and planned to use it to wrap every small to medium sized Christmas gift. I did use it for every gift I gave this year with a couple of big box items as the exception. And I still have fabric left over. What really amazed me was how easy it was to sew them all. I didn't spend a lot of time ironing hems or pinning things, I pretty much just freehand sewed little pouches for every gift. I sealed them all with safety pins and then attached ribbons. Pretty simple, eh? My favorite part is the green factor... During the year, you can use the bags to store breakable Christmas ornaments and during the holidays, you can reuse them to give new gifts away. My dad has already decreed that from here on out, the ones I gave to him and my mom will only stay in the nuclear family so they can get maximum usage out of them. Considering that I didn't bother with pinning or ironing, I'm serious when I say I think I got a run for my money in terms of time. A couple of bags in, I'm pretty sure I was sewing cloth baggies as fast as I could wrap a paper package.

If you are in the mood to make your Christmas a little more green or sustainable or you would rather hoard wrapping paper for more fun uses than just as package covers, give this option a try. I'm not one who puts too much stock in carbon footprints (or carbon pawprints as far as my cat is concerned), but perhaps I was able to balance out live tree with the cloth wrap? The point for me was to do something that was unique and fun, to try out a new idea and to make something worth keeping.

Also, there's no coincidence vis a vis the Longhorn package topper (above) and today's date. One last plug... Texas Fight!

Finally, don't judge the sparkley red leopard print tree skirt. I bought that fabric to use for Beta/Theta toga party (feel free to judge on that) but I never got around to wearing it as a toga. I've dutifully kept the fabric for years and it fit perfectly as a makeshift tree skirt. So exotic and classy...

Get Your Horns Ready...

2010-01-06T00:04:00.005-06:00

So a really special team is playing in the Rose Bowl tomorrow. It is, in fact, my favorite college team (Washington and Lee would technically be in first place there but you never see them on TV and, really, few people see them live in Lexington). The Texas Longhorns are going to beat the Alabama Elephants or whatever their Roll Tide symbol is beyond just a really big A.

To celebrate their awesomeness (and the extreme adorableness of QB Colt McCoy), I made each of my Longhorn relatives a forever gingerbread Longhorn for Christmas. I've shown you earlier how mine looked when finished. I thought I'd show how the collection looked on the baking sheet. So there you've got Cousins Meg, Laura and Mary with Uncle Trey and one for my mom. I guess I needed to make a couple more, since I didn't make one for Cousin Em or my Aunt Beth... Whoops.

And in the event that you thought I owned a cookie cutter, you're wrong. Each of those horns was hand cut with a sculptors knife from a printed out pattern of the logo. Hard work but someone's got to do it, right?

And below I'm going to let you in on a sad secret that would warm the heart of every dreaded Aggie, one horn did actually get sawed off. (Around Texas you'll see UT haters with logos on their cars that say "Saw 'em off" and have a picture of a hornless Longhorn.) I patched it back up and then added a little wire so that it would be stronger where it had been broken.* Good as new and no one ever needed to know about it... I covered it with glitter.

Hook 'em Horns! Go Texas!

* This sentence is meant to recall an Ernest Hemingway quote from A Farewell To Arms that was shared with me by my old journalism professor Ham Smith when I broke my legs:

"The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places."

Two Years

2009-12-21T09:00:00.004-06:00

Two years ago today I started my little craft blog. And it's been really fun. If nothing else, this blog has encouraged me to keep doing creative things every day, even if I don't post about them all, or even post regularly.

It's really gratifying to know that friends scattered around the country can keep up with my creative endeavors. I've pondered going pro as of late, and it's something that still might pan out, but whatever my crafting future holds, it's nice to have a record of the last two years of my crafting life.

And because birthdays cause one to ponder and reflect, I'm going to share some of the crafting things that I think everyone should own in order to be able to whip up creative projects in a jiffy:

1) Happy Tape. This is from Japan and it's brightly colored masking tape. How does this help your life? I'll tell you. A million ways. If you wrap a package in newspaper, happy tape makes it look like you put forth effort beyond just wrapping a package with garbage. On an envelope, it looks so fun to just slap a few pieces of tape along the seal. It's like stickers for grown ups. If you bring someone some cookies in a paper towel, it looks like you really went the extra mile with fancy pants tape. I love this stuff.

2) Fishing line. It's invisible, it's uses are infinite and if you buy one roll for less than five bucks, you will do twentyfivethousand projects and you will still feel like you haven't made a dent in the spool. I use it to string garlands, hang wreaths, tie plants to supporting sticks...

3) A standard-sized stack of paper that you think is pretty. I have a stack of 6x6" paper squares from all kinds of places. Some was originally sold as decorative paper, some came from magazines or catalogs, some is used wrapping paper and others are just scraps I've collected along the way. And the reason I think it is important for you to keep the size standard is easy -- it can be stored best this way. If you just keep stacks of randomly sized papers, the stack becomes a mess so quickly, you'll just throw it away. With the standard sizes, you can find a perfect box for them or just some corner where you can let the stack grow. For a quick homemade greeting card, a set of homemade place cards, unique gift wrap for small packages, etc., I just go to my stack and I always find something fun. When I get a catalog in the mail, or am handed a magazine that I know I don't want to keep, I scan the pages quickly for tear out sheets and then slice and dice the pages into squares.

4) Razors. I use these constantly! I have a couple of good holders for straight-edge razors (a comfort grip and a mini-blade holder that I use in tight spaces). You know, if you are dealing with a mess, you can often use a blade to clean it up. Because the blades are disposable, you can add some oil or grease to them to take the remaining parts of a sticker/label/price tag off a piece of glass or plastic. I've even been known to use a razor blade to get a tough stain off a dish if I'm in a rush! And what's better for cleanly taking candle wax drips off wherever they've dropped themselves? Learn how to use a razor and you are on your way to accomplishing your crafting tasks with such greater time efficiency. Also, the manual dexterity you'll learn from wielding your razor well will help with other creative tasks.

And One For All You Mack Brown Fans

2009-12-19T11:23:00.001-06:00

Hey, a gal can have more than one loyalty. At least my loyalties are split between a pro baseball team and a college football team. Right? So the two teams are based quite far apart. I think the premise of the movie "Road Trip" was about some duffuses who confuse "Boston" with "Austin" and drive across the state of Kentucky (as well as many other, less entertaining states) for no reason at all. Why am I explaining my different tastes in sports teams to you anyway? I'm pretty sure you don't care. Of course I have to have some content here.

And hey, look at those Longhorns and their precious Colt McCoy winningist quarterback ever! And champs of the Big 12 and headed to Pasadena for a little Rosebowl championship ! Having never attended the University of Texas, I feel a little like a poser saying things like "Hook 'em!" ... but I will always find the voice to sing,

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the live long day.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them,

Rise so early in the morn.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

Til Gabriel blows his horn...

Texas Fight! Texas Fight!

And it's goodbye to A&M!

Texas Fight, Texas Fight!

And we'll pull over one more win!

Texas Fight, Texas Fight,

For it's Texas that we love best!

Give 'em hell! Give 'em hell! Go horns go!

And it's goodbye to all the rest.

Yay orange! Yay white! Yay Longhorns!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

Well, there's more of that one, but I'm kinda tired of typing. Now if I could just divide the Camp Mystic dining hall into two parts, one side yells, "Texas" and the other "Fight" and we're going all afternoon.

What Could Be More Hilary?

2009-12-18T10:47:00.000-06:00

Seriously? What could be more Hilary? There's glitter! There's Christmas! There's baseball! It's made of cheap, biodegradable materials! It's just the best craft ever. And if you play your cards right (aka, you ask me for one), I'll make one for you. And, because I'm the always benevolent crafter, I'll even make an ornament for a team you support, assuming it's made of colors I own and isn't brain surgery difficult to render (Good example: the Ole Miss Rebel, he's too detailed for me to make a glitter ornament of, but the big Ole Miss "M" I can handle. And cringe-worthy second example, I can't do the patriotic hat on a baseball bat Yanks logo, but if you begged me and I was feeling particularly nice, I could make you that evil NY symbol).

But to get away as soon as possible from all things New York Yankees, let's focus on my little lovely pair of, what Sox ownership calls "dangling Sox." I'm so proud! I reinterpreted a Martha Stewart craft suggestion (she had me making birds before I thought of something I'd like better) and came up with my own template to cut the Red Sox logo out of the cinnamon/apple sauce/white glue dough, I baked it, let it dry out completely and then decorated it with the glitter. Let me tell you, that's a thin line of white glitter there my friends...

All things considered, I'm in love with my little Sox logo Christmas ornament. Wistfully, I sign off on my first Christmas post of the year... it seems like just yesterday I was working on Christmas 2008 (probably because I drag these things out; I recall writing about Christmas at least through February). Below check out the red lights on my very first ever living tree.

Wild, Succulent Woman

2009-12-16T07:12:00.002-06:00

No, this post isn't about the weirdest art lady on Earth, Sark (but call her phone number seriously if you want an inspirational message 415.546.3742), this post is about my amazing ability to keep a succulent alive. I know, I know, that's like beating a five year old in a "basic arithmetic" test. I'm good at keeping alive something that is advertised as being hard to kill. Congrats to me. The reason I'm posting this is that, for one, I have a long history of killing succulents and all plants for that matter. And yet, with my new dirt recipe (throwing in sand helped), I've managed to not only keep these guys alive, but they are thriving. Some have grown by leaps and bounds. They are almost too comfortable in my home.

Screen Saver

2009-12-14T08:00:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been finding more and more reasons to exercise the old sewing machine. I'm not going to lie, back in September when my coworker when my coworker said my hems looked like they'd been done by Helen Keller, I was inspired to get better at sewing.

Don't get me wrong, I love this little flat screen monitor that serves as my substitute TV. It's the bestest way to watch movies and baseball games and the occasional TV show from hulu.com (Why is Parks and Recreation so amazingly hilarious? The whole cast is awesome.) However, I didn't like the way the screen looked, so sleek and gadgety just sitting out on my tabletop.

And when I saw this fabric at the fabric warehouse on Harry Hines for, like, fifty cents a yard, I couldn't pass it up. It's perfect. Trust me, if you are a regular blog follower, you'll see this fabric being used in all kinds of ways (at $0.50 a yard, I bought enough to do many many crafts!). This project must be the easiest ever though. I measured the size of the screen, cut the fabric, hemmed the bottom edge (no Helen Keller here thanks) and sewed the two sides together. Easy breezy beautiful cover girl.

Gobble Gobble Jewlery

2009-12-09T11:25:00.001-06:00

My coworker Mattdawg (that's what I call her, her real name is Mattie) has the most amazing collection of holiday themed earrings. She has a dozen Halloween ones and enough Christmas earrings to last from Thanksgiving to New Year's without repeating a pair.

Last year it bothered me that she had no Thanksgiving gems. So I promised her a pair. Perhaps some cornucopias or a pilgrim and Indian combo. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't find anything Thanksgiving last year. This year, however, I found these turkey buttons. I chopped off the button part and drilled holes and attached earring hooks.

And bless her heart, Mattdawg wore them all November long! Gobble Gobble Gobble! (and if you click on that link, sorry for the bad language and then the German version, I really just love when she's on the phone with her sister.)

Where Have I Been All Your Life?

2009-12-07T11:25:00.001-06:00

Since October 12, I've been away from ye olde crafting blog. Not because I don't love yous guys, but more like a little well-deserved break from the crazy craft blitz I was on in August and September (I'm the boss around here, so I determine when breaks are well-deserved). So I paused, reflected, cleaned up, put my thinking cap on, schemed some new plans, and renewed my little creative spirit. I think there's good things on the horizon.

And while I rested from my crafting labors, I had some time to enjoy the best season in Texas -- autumn. It's cool and crisp, the humidity takes a much needed rest, every day is a good hair day, the sun feels great shining down on your back. And of course, autumn in Dallas means the State Fair comes to town, and that's the greatest place on Earth. I don't usually go all Chamber of Commerce re: Dallas, but I wanted to share with you three of my favorite pictures from this year's State Fair. Above are the awards handed out to the vendors who win for the best fried food of the year. I love it! I had to jostle some truly impatient fried goober gobblers out of the way to take this picture. For those who don't know, that head is the head of Big Tex, the official mascot of the State Fair. I tried a fried snickers bar this year. It was good. Better than last year's fried cookie dough. Or at least that's what I think I tried. Whatever it was, it had been battered and deep fried and was still hot and greasy when I ate it. I pause to wonder whether I should really say, "yum."

And I love the signs at the State Fair. The fonts, the scroll, it's just a great piece of work. The vintage look and feel of all the stands, and they aren't vintage because they are going for a currently popular trend of interest in all things old. No way Jose. These signs look vintage because they are old. Why tinker with perfection? Oh and, I'm obsessed with Tiny Tim. Really, the obsession began years ago when it was a different smallest horse on Earth named Tiny Tina (it's amazing how many smallest horse on Earth's there are since that phrase is supposedly reserved for just one miniature animal, right?). I don't know why I love this exhibit so much -- it's a total rip off because it's clearly a dog with a horse tail glued on. It's so sad! But somehow listening to the tape they play on a 30-second repeat "This is the smallest horse in the world! He eats just one cup of oats a day!" just reminds me of what a silly experience the whole fair can be. But it is the kind of experience that everyone should just submit to, because life is silly.

This year they had swan boats on the pond by the science center. I thought they were pretty beautiful. It's not Boston or anything, and the pond is really quite a small area, but all in all, I felt good knowing I was getting a bit of a workout in my paddling, especially on a day that's so stuffed with fried fry.

Well, now you've seen my highlights from the State Fair. Get ready to see some crafts! Yay!

Out of Town Crafting

2009-10-12T22:44:00.002-05:00

Do you remember me writing about how busy I was because I had this fair, and all these things to do to get ready for the fair and that a trip to Chicago was thrown in for good measure? Well, perhaps you don't remember me being stressed out about lots and lots of to-do's on the to-do list or the fact that I made a trip to the Windy City, but I did. And, being of the craft minded, I couldn't resist volunteering (perhaps commandeering is a better verb choice for the situation) to do a craft for a friend, the lovely Jo, for a VIP event. And yes, I call the sweatpants and fanny pack pub crawl a VIP event. After all, it takes a lot of class to look as good as we did for hours upon hours of ridiculousness. I believe I'm digressing here, but I wanted to set the scene well. Jo wanted to go "Jon of Jon and Kate Plus Eight" level of classy by wearing an Ed Hardy shirt and Juicy Couture sweatpants. Of course, why buy when you can make?

Luckily, Emily, Joanna and Steph (my adorable hosts for the weekend) live just down the street from a hardware store (the kind of mom and pop place that advertises mace in a comic sans sign out front). So in Jo and I went to buy some electrical tape for this improvised project. One rerun episode of Sex & the City and it was done. Just one roll of electrical tape and a pair of scissors... voila!

I decided not to show you the Juicy Couture pants because, well, I got the sizing off a bit. Actually, a lot off. From the back, it just said UIC, which, by the by, is a university in chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago. There are actually people out there with UIC on their butts on purpose. Jo is not one of them. It was supposed to say JUICY, but the J and Y were on her hips.

Not to brag on myself, but I was a little sad that not everyone could tell that it was homemade. Some people thought it was a legit shirt. You kinda had to look up close to see that it was in fact electrical tape. My favorite letter was the "E" of Ed. The "a" and "r" proved really tricky for no reason that I can determine.

Sale = Good Times

2009-10-06T07:21:00.001-05:00

Here are three pictures of my oddly shaped booth at the craft fair on Saturday (yep, I had some hallway space that was 18 feet by 3', nice and awkward). Oh and thank you so much to friends and family who came out to support this crafter. And thanks also for buying my goodies. I'm pretty excited about how things went and, most importantly, I had lots of fun.

It's neat to look at this picture and see some necklaces that are no longer in my care! I sold plenty of them and I'm scheming some new ways to keep up the dream.

Here's one of my three bulletin boards of necklaces.

Table One, complete with succulent glass bottle planters and some Arkansas felt creatures (that sold out!!).

And table two is weird lighting picture -- sorry about that. I was so excited about the fair that I didn't take many pictures.

Thanks again for all the love!

Take A Walk On The Wild Side

2009-10-01T14:34:00.003-05:00

Three buttons merged into one necklace. Tiger print. What more could you want to know about this? The fact that you could own it, because you can.

On Target

2009-10-01T13:34:00.001-05:00

Same theme, different arrangement. After getting the hang of making trios of buttons, I thought I'd try my hand at strings of buttons. And here's one I came up with. The white ones remind me of a St. John's suit, minus the thousand-dollar price tag. I'm not saying this necklace is worthy of wear beside a St. John's suit. I'm just sayin'. And you know, everyone's just sayin' something.

Stuck Like Glue

2009-10-01T05:23:00.001-05:00

And again with another button trio. This one's a bit bigger than some of the others I've shown. It's a nice little centerpiece necklace for a V-neck sweater or an open shirt. It would also go well with a strapless dress. It's got a wee bit of bling epoxied on to one of the buttons. At the time of this adhering, I learned for the first time how to epoxy. Smelly, smelly stuff. It's like burning rubber and dead fish combined -- and my apartment reeked for two days. That's how much I love you readers, shoppers, crafters. I was willing to live with that wretched smell for the glory of it all. And I've actually always wanted to learn how to epoxy, so it's cool. And now another type of adhesive to have laying around. I don't like to write advice columns or anything like that, but I tell you what, I sure have a lot of ways of affixing one thing to another and I've learned a lot about which products go with which types of glue. I'd go ahead and say that if you're trying to build a glue wardrobe, add some epoxy to it. The bond is very intense. I would liken it to the bond between Angelina and Brad, but I've heard that bond is now searching for his own apartment in Paris. That's straight from the tabloids, waited a few days, and then passed on to you here.

Czech It Out

2009-09-29T19:12:00.005-05:00

Another one of my favs. I'm not completely sure that there is another soul out there who can love and care for this necklace as well as I can, so I'm not sure if I can really part with it. We shall see. The point is though, this pink piece is a combination of buttons and a charm from the Czech Republic. I bought it from a man with a glass eye. Ask my cousin Mary, she was there. She too bought some loot from the one-eyed Czech. You could kinda tell he had some wild stories to tell, but there was that whole GIGANTIC language barrier. Cousin Mary and I went on a whirlwind tour of the C.R. by visiting Prague, Brno and Olomouc (which is pronounced more like O-lo-moutz). We searched high and low for antiques and wonders the likes of which we'd only seen in catalogs and movie sets. We found Heaven when we found the one eyed man's shop in Olomouc. We loved it so much, we came back and shopped there again. And somehow because of the crazy conversion rate, we each thought we were buying way out of our price range amounts of stuff. But later we realized that we'd each spent somewhere around $20 for arm fulls of former Soviet stuff. That's just a little travel story to bulk up this post. You see I'm finding it harder and harder to come up with new ways of describing these necklaces. I love them all, I made them all, but eventually one's proverbial well runs dry. And thus you hear about the one eyed man.

I don't know why I like this picture so much, but I think the quality is really good. Note the texture of the button! Wee!

Take Me Out To The Ballgame

2009-09-29T12:45:00.000-05:00

I couldn't pick a more timely day to post this one. I mean, the Sox just clenched the Wild Card through losing five games straight! How's that for go-get-em spirit? And while I am kinda celebrating this event, I'm kinda nervous. I mean, we're not going to win the World Series by losing five straight. You can't back yourself into a World Series ring. But if your name is Hilary and you make jewelry, you can back yourself into this baseball necklace. I made it out of vintage style baseball cards. I love wearing it because it involves some of my favorites -- baseball, crafts, vintage items... I mean, it's kinda like me rolled up in a necklace. And sorry folks, it's a keeper. Not for sale.

Go Sox! Beat LA!

Do I Spy A Wren?

2009-09-25T14:53:00.000-05:00

I've never tried my hand at bird watching, so I really don't know. What is that bird? Some kind of wren or sparrow? It's too colorful to be a finch, or so I think and I think its head is too big. Like I said, I don't know what kind of bird this is, but I do know that I like this one a lot. Our dear feathered friend is applied to an old wooden nickel, sealed and on a chain. And for added flair, I attached a piece of old jewelry from my bag of tricks. I'm not sure where I picked up that little cloisonne collection, but it has been given a new life here.

Mexicali Blues

2009-09-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

A few of you know that I have a Grateful Dead bear on the back of my little Volkswagen. And a few of you may know I'm a Dead fan, on some "I hate the smell of pot and the look of grizzledy old hippies but this music is groovy" kind of level. But that bear is on my car because my favorite family in the Constitution State put that sticker on my car. It meant I was one of them. And I have always thought that the Angiolillos are my second family. A favorite memory ever was when the whole Angiolillo gang (John Jack included) took me to Playland in Rye, New York (where the amazing Zoltar from Big was filmed). Or the time I asked Mr. Angiolillo to take his speed boat into Manhattan and up the East River. So they remind me of that sticker and it reminds me of the Dead song "Mexicali Blues."

And that reminds me of these necklaces. They are, you see, of Mexican inspiration. Do you know how Mexicans play bingo? Because it's not with numbers and letters but rather with little pictures of objects. Instead of "B12" or "O64," it's "the lamp" or "the well-dressed woman." And I love me some Mexican bingo tiles. They are awesomely kitschy and so technicolored.

A set of Mexican bingo cards I recently bought in Austin was sacrificed to make a few necklaces out of the tiles. They are really bright and shiny. I kinda won't mind if I don't sell them because I really love them a lot, for me. And I kept enough of the pieces from the game set to have a bingo party for 12 amigos.

A close up, with the watermelon.

Super Green Garden

2009-09-24T18:27:00.001-05:00

I'm rather proud of this artsy kind of shot. It's from above and it shows a collection of glass bottles, chopped off and finished with a crusty rim of gold paint. Together with some glass marbles and stones, potting soil and a plant, it's a little garden. The glass echoes terrarium but it's also like a planter. I spend time and anxiety worrying about the variety of glass colors, heights, thicknesses just to make sure that the bottles are all slightly different; that each brings its own piece to the overall puzzle. I'm liking how this collection is going. (I have my own little garden of bottles on my window sill.)

And here's me holding the smallest of jars. It's tiny. I'm hard-pressed finding a plant that will fit inside this little guy, but I'm working on it! And in the background you can see the plastic container of marbles, stones, and sea glass pieces that I've collected to be the water-draining portion of the planter. Oh and you can see the mixing bowl that has been repurposed to house plants as they await their final planting in a jar. And, for kicks, you can see that this whole operation is currently going down atop my stove. Like I said a week ago, there are little projects everywhere! As long as I stay sane, I'm happy to let the crafts take over. It's not like I could put the plants under a cabinet or anything anyway.

Finally, the plants in all their glory, with some glitteratti frogs chillin' in the open space. I don't know exactly why I decided that I needed to glitterize a set of plastic frogs, but I enjoy them living among the plants.

Postcards from Switzerland

2009-09-24T07:15:00.002-05:00

If I had to classify myself as one type of crafter, I'd call myself a jack of all trades. I mean, I like to paint, sew, draw, write, cut, build, embroider, color, glue and string. And those are just the verbs I thought of off the top of my head.

And so when I thought of the merchandise I'd want to sell if it was all handmade and home designed, I thought it needed to represent my jack-of-all-trades-ness. So in addition to the necklaces, I have a couple of other ventures on display (i.e., for sale). A while back I bought a set of vintage printed linen place mats with scenes from Zurich, Switzerland. They reminded me of many a fantasy European cityscape (echoes of Paris in there, right?) and I loved the color scheme. Plus the mid-century sketches capture so many details from their era, the cars, the fashion. When I got home with these place mats, I realized that they are a bit small to actually use for meals. And then the poor cloths got shelved because I didn't know what to do with them. I finally decided on pillows and I'm excited to use them in my own home if I don't sell them.

They were easy as can be to pin and sew. Actually, snaps for my Marmadoo (mom) for pinning them for me. She's helping where she can. I think actually that she's more excited about the craft fair than I am, as we have always dreamed of running a mother/daughter store called, and I coined this name when I was in the fourth grade, "Ye Olde Cute Shoppe." So whenever we have any opportunity to work together and hawk we call it a chance to "Ye Olde Cute." That term can also be applied to items that we agree should be sold in our dream venue. But getting back to the original sentence of this paragraph, the sewing was super easy, but I discovered that pillow stuffing is its own separate ball of wax. If you don't treat the stuffing just right, you'll end up with sad, lumpy looking pillows, like mashed potatoes that need several more mashings. It's a frightening affair. I think I got them kneaded properly at this point and I'm ready to send them as merchandise to "Ye Olde Cute."

Today you'll see a couple of my "non jewelry" items because I'd hate for you to think that I'm a one-trick pony.

Secondary Colors, Interesting Shapes

2009-09-23T17:12:00.001-05:00

And yet another glamor shot of my neck. I have a really hard time envisioning a piece of clothing that would actually involve any of these three modern buttons. I mean, who would wear a shirt? coat? skirt? dress? with that huge purple and gold thing on it? No one! I suspect that's why I was able to track down that button and purchase it for use in a craft project. It looks pretty cool in its current arrangement.

What I dig about this one is the secondary colors and the shapes. It all reminds me of preschool art class when you learn that red and yellow together make orange and there are cartoon posters on the wall with the shapes telling you "triangle" and "square."

Green Re-Do: Chandelier to Jewelry

2009-09-23T09:12:00.000-05:00

Reduce, reuse, recycle. Go green. Think about the Earth. Use a tote instead of plastic. Shop locally. Unplug appliances when you aren't using them. Carpool. Use mass transit. Ride a bike.

So those are green suggestions that you've no doubt heard a million billion times by now. If not, please tell me what rock you are living under and if there's room for another person down there. But here's a creative solution to going green -- tons of my jewelry are made from "found objects" meaning that I'm giving a new life to something that was otherwise considered junk or potentially bound for a landfill. You're looking at a great example of this. This was a piece from a chandelier, but it's life in lighting fixtures came to a close and I've retooled it as neckware. And I am in love. The red, the elegance, the contrast between the chain and the the gems... it's just awesome. And what's cool about this necklace is that I have a few copies of it. And three copies feature a goldish brown color instead of bright red.

Continuing With The Dime Store Theme

2009-09-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

I don't remember where in my life I first heard the term "two-a-days" because I never played a sport seriously enough that it necessitated me to train more than once a week, much less twice a day. I suspect it was somewhere during the four years I spent in a sorority full of athletes. Or maybe it comes from an ardent following of baseball, including Spring Training. I don't know, but that's sort of my story around the blog here these days. I have too too many projects to debut before the October Market on October 3. So I'm doing them "two-a-days" style.

I absolutely admit that this is a completely strange necklace. It's just that I kinda liked the idea of pinkish purple goose as a necklace. I bought this goose at a trippy toy store a few blocks off the drag in Austin, so really, don't hate. I was down there pretending I'm still 21, and if I can pretend I'm still 21, I can pretend I'm 12 and that I need lots of necklaces with toys on them.

At least it's a genuinely attractive goose. Also, for note, there's matching pig and chicken necklaces. Just think about the statement you're making: goose, pig or chicken. Oh and the donkey. I'm pretty sure that all of us boil down to one of those animals. Frankly, I'm wishing I was "goose" but I probably need "pig."

Like Some Old Western Movie

2009-09-22T07:13:00.004-05:00

Yeah so this three dime store plastic figurines on a copper chain. What are you going to do about it? Buy it (pretty please). I think its whimsical and childish, colorful and fun, a wee bit ironic and generally just a cool thing to own. I think it would be super cheeky to wear it with a white button down and a wool skirt, you know, to show the world that you're a fun person with a spunky sense of fashion trapped in a boring working world. I dig the deluge of primary colors. If this was some old western movie, long tall Gary Cooper or John Wayne would be the blue one in the middle, the sheriff standing straight with his Winchester. He better watch out buddy -- there's an Indian with a bow and arrow on one side and a tomahawk on the other. I'm not a betting kind of gal, but my money's on the scalpers and not the scalpee. Of course, that's the thrill of the western movie, Gary Cooper is always so wise and lucky, he just might make it, provided he survives some lengthy horse chase scene.

And the whole thing reminds me (for no truly obvious reason) of Jerry Jeff Walker's Desperado's Waiting for a Train. Google it, jam to it... it's such a great piece of Texas Country Music. And yes, I know, the original version was by Guy Clark. I just like Jerry Jeff better.

What's Black And White and Red All Over?

2009-09-21T06:29:00.003-05:00

This necklace.

It's a button collage! On a chain! And I made it all by myself.

Going Once, Going Twice, Sold!

2009-09-20T08:00:00.002-05:00

Here's where the fun begins folks. Presenting the finished projects, the stuff that's for sale. What I've been working on all summer long. The deal with these two (well three because I'm keeping one for myself) necklaces is that I've already sold them. I guess that means I can now say I'm a professional jewelry maker -- because, hey, I've been paid for my creations. I made these necklaces and sold them to my coworkers out of vintage buttons. I don't have too terribly much to say about all these necklaces I've been making. And if I did write a full profile of each, I'd have a lot of writing to do. You're going to see a lot. Like a lot a lot.

P.S. Muchas gracias to my neck models (a.k.a., the purchasers). All the rest of the necks (unless otherwise noted) are, well, my own neck. You'll get used to freckles soon!

Little Stacks Everywhere

2009-09-19T06:02:00.002-05:00

All around my apartment are little arrangements. Preparing for this craft show or, more accurately, my booth at a shopping market, has turned my little crafting life upsidedown. And I'm not kidding when I say there are little collections of projects sitting out everywhere. Above you see a collection of Mexican bingo tiles with fresh coats of a kind of plastic lacquer that will make them hard enough to stand alone on necklaces. More details on that to come.

And here are some vintage/random buttons gathered together. Also awaiting their turn at the chopping block, or so to speak, when they'll be turned into projects. All of them have polished, flat backsides so they are ready for use. Sanding a hundred buttons is like a dream come true. (I've never gotten into sanding; if it could be skipped, it would be.)

And, yep, some more future projects. It's amazing to think that I've made any progress at all, since looking at these pictures reminds me that all I've done is set up more work for myself to do later. Yikes. Two weeks and a trip to Chicago thrown in... I better get busy!

And finally, here's a completed project. Woohoo! But like all the others, perhaps a bit difficult to explain. I'm just happy that there's one thing that I'm done with. I guess I do still have to worry about the packaging... I doubt this post has shed much light on my current bevy of projects, but it should let you know ... colorful, found objects...

P.S.

2009-09-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

Here is said father holding said father's day gift.

Waaaay Old, But It's New To You

2009-09-17T10:10:00.001-05:00

I tell you what, this one was hard to photograph. That's why you get half the project above and a super faded out pic below. I apologize my dears. I'm prepared to blame a lot of it on my summer's worth of computer issues.

This was my Father's Day gift this year. Yep, another thing I did in June and am posting about in September. Like I said, there's lots of baseball games to watch. I suppose you're lucky to be reading about this before November.

I've always thought of myself as the baby bear of our Goldy Locks family. I've got a Papa Bear and a Mama Bear and I'm the baby, the onliest one. So when in McKinney I spied this torn out page from a children's story book, I knew that I needed to buy it and craft it into something for my bear-obsessed father. He had a bear experience once in Estes Park, Colorado and has been inspired for life to devote time and energy to bears. And not in the Stephen Colbert blame all the evils of the world on bears vein. More like, love them, respect them, realize how fascinating they are.

And I wanted the frame to be extra special. And for the better part of a decade, my dad has dutifully kept the caps to his beers (when they aren't bent beyond possible use) and gave them to me whenever he remembered to so that I could use them for craft purposes. It all sprang from a project I did in college... I wonder whatever happened to that beer-cap table top? Oh well. So I've got a vase of beer caps and I thought that this would go together well for my father's sort of mountain lodge themed man cave. (Note that most Sam Adams' caps come from Red Sox watching experiences. You gotta go with the Boston lager if you're going to watch the BoSox!)

Oh and one more desk item...

2009-09-16T11:16:00.000-05:00

Last but not least in this desk upgrade: the ink blotter. My friends, there comes a time when something that you love, something that you find very pretty and perfectly appropriate, something that someone you love gave you must go. It is old, it is dirty, it looks tired, it is worn out.

That's the story of this ink blotter. Stained from years of both use and storage -- poor thing was even used as a makeup tray (ultimate death to all white-fabric-based products) at one point and endured moving trucks, storage units and one accidental Modge Podge spill.

You see, the trouble is, I still wanted an ink blotter. I still liked the overall size and dimensions of ye olde ink blotter and, well, I'm cheap. So I decided to upgrade. I have a small stash of fabric (Have you ever heard the slogan, "She who dies with the most fabric wins?" because I try to avoid that) and I dug around for the right pieces to help me. I found the pink quickly and decided that was a great frame piece but i wanted something extra special for the center panel. At one point in my mother's industrious career as a fabric collector -- she is going for a hoarding title -- she worked at one of Dallas' high-end furniture and interior decorating stores. And she asked the designers if she could have the outdated, unused or leftover fabric sample books. They are a treasure-trove of fabulous pieces of fabric. The trick is finding projects that can accommodate upholstery-thick fabric that is less than two square feet.

My friends I'd been eyeballing this sample for years before this project came about and I finally had a chance to use these whimsical frogs and Lilly-pad fabric for something.

The assembly was super easy. I painted the old blotter with white primer a few times, For the flat parts, I stretched the fabric and used duck tape to secure it in place. I cut a few small pieces of bunting for the padded part, wrapped that in fabric and glued the whole thing together with hot glue. It's not a piece that can withstand being used as a Frisbee or anything like that, but in its place, it's just fine.

Lilly Explosion: Watch for Falling Pink & Green

2009-09-15T11:02:00.001-05:00

I mentioned in my post from last May (just before I went to Denmark and the Czech Republic) that I had a new look ready to come right out at ya... And here it is. I decided that the red and gold were lovely and warm, but I was ready to express the Lilly side of life. One day early on in the Spring, I was feeling a little down and I decided to go to my favorite place ever to cheer myself up -- the paper store! This time it was Swoozie's in Preston Center and I found out there that Lilly P now does wrapping paper, paper plates, napkins and plastic cups! Pens and letterhead and picture frames and post it notes. I perhaps went overboard and bought it all, but as the Lilly ad posted on my office wall says, "Too much is never enough."

I got home with my Lilly treasures and decided to give this area of my home a makeover, pink and green and girly. I started with the backdrop. That's definitely wrapping paper on foam board and it makes a great place to pin up treasured post cards. The one of the airplane was sent to me by my most frequent pen pal, a well-traveled Naval Officer. Every time I see that plane I think of where it's going today and how much I'd like to hop on board, assuming that its flying me to Paris or Tahiti or Switzerland or Brazil. Plus the blue sky looks so crisp and inviting.

Next I decided that the lamp needed some doing over to look extra spunky. I spent a while getting the dimensions correct, but I finally was able to cut the right sized paper to cover the original design. And since I'm not sure if this Lilly theme will last forever (come January I might be awfully tired of all the pinks and greens), I decided to make sure that all the updating could eventually be removed without leaving a trace. I used a two-sided tape to attach the paper to the lamp, which, in case you didn't notice, has all kinds of corners and crevices. And from my old bag of tricks, I found the dingle balls to hang from the lamp shade. I feel like Lilly would approve. So useless, so cute, so ridiculous, so Lilly.

And just as a useless hint/trick -- The cord couldn't be hidden with this lamp, you can clearly see where the plug is and there's just no room for it to hide. I used the box that the frame came in with two slits cut in the back as makeshift cord storage. I carefully wound the unneeded bit and curled it into the box, which sits at the bottom of the books stack.

I surrounded the rest of the area with various other Lilly accessories and traded out the doodads so that they'd match, too.

Excuses, excuses

2009-09-14T21:39:00.002-05:00

See above, my dad's speckledy salt and pepper hair, a Red Sox hat and the backdrop of a ballpark. That's my first excuse for why I've been a ridiculously awful blogger this summer. And well, it's not the only excuse I've got.

My poor little computer died, well, that's me being dramatic, but it had to have its little hard drive reformatted and all kinds of extensive computer surgery, which I am neither qualified to nor interested in discussing with my readers. And now that baseball season is winding down (on a somewhat positive note for my beloved Boston Beaneaters), I'm prepared to deal with the inevitable -- life in the off season.

Of somewhat thrilling note is my upcoming presence as a craft vendor at a local market. It's pretty fun. I did the calligraphy for my first ever wedding. Well, not MY wedding, but you know what I mean, the first wedding that I ever did the calligraphy for. It was really enjoyable and I'm anxious to take on another penmanship assignment. And, finally friends, I'm dabbling as a video editor -- I recently went to Arkansas to learn from a true master of culinary arts, provided that culinary artists always start with crisco and then add butter, to learn from my precious Granny the secret to the Granny Roll. When I finish editing that video, I'll post it on this site for those who want to learn how to make a very authentic from-scratch roll. We're talking lots of time, talent, elbow grease, and love. You gotta love your potential roll eaters A LOT to put in the time to make these things. Especially when the Pillsbury dough boy sells a decent version of the dinner roll that requires eight minutes and no talent.

Synergized: A Lemon Yellow Necklace

2009-08-19T11:04:00.005-05:00

Click on the picture above and you should be able to be magically transported to another blog of wonder in which you will see the exact same picture but on an ever-so-slightly larger scale.

I bet you thought I just plum fell off the face of the Earth seeing as I haven't posted anything new in many many moons. Well, there, my reader, you are wrong. I am here. I am vibrant. I am going to have a booth at a market and well its going to be full of crafts and, dagnabbit, I'm busy making crafts. Like the above necklace. I made that. Yay!

As you must have gleaned from previous prior posts, I'm a little too in love with my Dremel. And inheriting a small collection of antique buttons from my mother and finding a warehouse full of similarly interesting buttons and realizing how easy it really is to buy a length of chain -- it was inevitable that I'd decide to make my own necklaces.

I'm calling this line the "Mother May I" line because of the prim and proper lady on the buttons. She's so cute, with her hat and her hair. I just love her, enough to saw a hole in her portrait, sandpaper her backside and varnish the buttons to finish. As Led Zeppelin would say "A Whole Lotta Love."

I'm not going to make any wild promises that I'll post more soon, but if I have the opportunity, I sure will. I have so many things to show you and so little will power to photo, photoshop, upload and write.

Get Ready for a New Look

2009-05-25T10:12:00.001-05:00

My desk area. As it was. Get ready to see it as it is now. You'll have to wait to see it, but I hope it is worth the wait. It is so much more united on one theme now. And decidedly more feminine.

Well Versed In 1 John

2009-05-21T08:34:00.002-05:00

You know what? I'm still in Europe (just like I was the last time a post was published) but I've written this in advance so you can get your Hilary fix even when I'm far away.

And it's another one of my church/calligraphy projects! Yay! About a month ago I had the privilege of doing three repetitive calligraphy projects in a row. It's fine. There's nothing like having a Red Sox game to keep me and my nibs company (especially when their offense is so impressive and deep). Lest I digress into my favorite topic of all, I'll get back to the point. One project was for money (no pictures taken because I forgot), one was because church ladies asked and the final was a gift. I already showed you the project that I was asked to do (the rose tags) and this is the project I did as a gift.

I loved the way it turned out. And so did the 30 women for whom the verse cards were made. A few Christmases ago, I sent out cards with glittered Holy Cards of St. Nicholas on the front. Perhaps you recall. Well, the company that I bought that cardstock from was having a buy one get one free sale so in addition to the red paper that I bought for those Christmas cards, I got a stack of pale green paper that had a shimmery look to it. It's nice and thick, too. I always figured I'd think of a purpose for it, but two years of looking at it and I'm no closer to having a use for it than I was when I got it for free. I thought it would be the perfect cardstock to use for these Bible verse cards. So I cut the folding cards into two flat cards each (which, by the way, means I only made a dent into the huge stack of green cardstock I've still got) so that I had 30 flat cards. Then I took some thick vellum paper and cut it to fit using my mini paper cutter. I cut 30 little snippets of ribbon, each sized to hang off the edges a bit of the cardstock. Next, because I like to make things difficult, I jumped into my mom's hand-me-down button collection and found 30 buttons that I thought would match the ribbon and paper colors (trying to keep a Spring pallet in mind). And then, I used my favorite craft tool ever, my drimmel with its diamond-edge drill bit, to cut the "button" part off of these buttons so they'd glue on flat.

And to the sounds (and sights thanks to MLB online) of Red Sox baseball -- an afternoon game I believe -- I wrote the same verse 30 times in a row. Without stopping. As the scripting went along (and the innings breezed past), I noticed that a few styles of scripting seemed to emerge. I tried to capture some of them here. The top picture features a script that is airy than the next picture, which seems dense. And some versions were more cursive than others. As a note, the first "r" of this verse comes in the 20th word, which is odd. I thought I'd throw that out there because I always antagonize over the letter "r" and I was pleasantly surprised to get so many words without having to write that one.

Of course, I can't mention the letter "r" without thinking of my mom's favorite riddle: Railroad crossing, watch out for cars, can you spell that without any r's?

Wallpaper, Drawer Liner, Greeting Card

2009-05-19T09:00:00.000-05:00

Howdy folks.
When you are reading this, I'm somewhere in Continental Europe, living it up, seeing the great sites, buying the good stuff, eating the delicacies. Yep, all in all, you should be very jealous of me. Or so I say now as I type this. I think most of you can remember the last time I said something about "you should be jealous because I'm going to Italy." Hint, few people are jealous of that life experience. Knock on wood, that won't happen again. Anyhoo, while I'm out of town, I didn't want to leave you without some crafts so I'm showing you crazy kiddos three things I've been up to of late.
I made a greeting card, as shown above, to accompany a wedding present, also shown above. I bought a stack of blue, turquoise, cerulean, and seafoam cardstock and I have found that it comes in handy all the time. How did I live without a standing stack of cardstock to dip into? I don't know. Also, I think I've blogged about this before -- I bought myself a miniature paper cutter, like the kind that teachers used to have in the teacher's workroom, with a big old blade, capable of cutting off a finger or worse. Mine is a mini version but it is great for cutting straight edges on things. This way I can size the cardstock exactly as needed.
What's special about this project is neither the cardstock nor the paper cutting techniques. No, my friends... What is special about this card is that vintage floral paper. I'm really proud of that. I love that paper. It is actually a little hard for me to part with even a few scraps. It is vintage wallpaper from the 1960s. And its been in the family since it was brand new. After a career as wallpaper, it was reused as drawer liner. And during its career as drawer liner, it was snuck out of its drawer and came home with me to be used for crafting purposes. It was smuggled out of the family farmhouse, up in Collin County. I only have a few scraps of this wallpaper and I generally don't pillage the family's property. After all, the family farmhouse is shared by a lot of people; I wouldn't want to be accused of overstepping the boundaries and taking advantage of communal property, now would I? That's so inconsiderate. All the same though, when I spotted this retro paper (so en vogue right now!), I figured it would be ok to take home one or two drawer's worth of paper squares.

My Marmadoo*, the Award Winning Crafter

2009-05-14T07:40:00.000-05:00

Strictly speaking, this is not my craft. Strictly speaking, it's also not really a craft at all. This is my mother's entry in the Bluffview Garden Club Flower Show. I wanted to share it with everyone out there because I think she did a great job -- the judges did too, she got second place in her division. My Aunt Jan won first place in their division.
I felt compelled to share this with you for a few reasons. First of all, I have a very soft spot in my heart for all things Bluffview Garden Club. It's the Dallas neighborhood where I grew up and I had plenty of fun as a child participating in the assorted Bluffview activities -- the Fourth of July parade (where we got to decorate our bikes with red, white and blue streamers and balloons) and the kid's contest portion of the Flower Show. As a note, at the patriotic parade, most people brought their dogs on leashes with red, white and blue. We had a pet parrot and I insisted that we decorate his cage, put him in the old Radio Flyer and drag him through the parade route. One of the many reasons why Ricky, the Amazon parrot, hated me. And the flower show kid's contest... how I loved to do my flower show entries. I always won first place. When I was about 12 years old, I realized that all the kids won first place. Then all my ribbons didn't seem to mean so much anymore.

My mother, however, doesn't always fare as well since the ladies aren't handed blue ribbons quite so easily. For her, taking home the red ribbon is a big accomplishment. And I helped... I didn't have anything to do with the floral arranging, but I did help her with the mandatory (and absolutely ridiculous) artist statement and arrangement title. The theme of the show was "In an English Country Garden" and my mom thought that her location (on an end table) had some subtle colonial/oriental themes to it. She wanted to run with the idea of the British Empire and India as a territory of Britain. The judges insisted that each arrangement come with a 20-word description of the motivations and emotions behind the the arrangement. My mom turned to her copy editor daughter (me) and I drafted a little something, something for her to use. The judges liked it! Yay.

Here's what it said (the more than 20 word version):

In the shades of Rudyard Kipling…Imagine the juxtaposition – on one hand is the orderly English garden, the temperate green hills of Britain’s countryside. Lowly cows, ivy crawling over ancient brick and thatched cottages. And the Empire that expanded to the Far East and India, with the rich fragrances of exotic spices. The ornate and mesmerizing patterns of Indian art and architecture. This flower arrangement, with its delicate small flowers, seeks to marry the two cultures – casual, easy living in the English countryside with not-so-distant memories of a lifestyle gone by, time spent in exotic, hot India, where tigers and adventure dwell in a lush, crowded tropical landscape.

In spouting off such total drivel, I am reminded that I did minor in art history. And that's what it's all about.

* We're a family of robust nick-name givers. All those that are near and dear to Henrys have many a nickname. This is a new concoction for "mom" that is derived from the title that Louisa May Alcott's Little Women use for their mother "Marmie" and me being silly. I thought it fit the fact that the arrangement is from India, as one of my favorite Indian restaurant dishes is chicken vindaloo.

The Eggcellent Easter (Or the End of Egg Posts)

2009-04-29T07:29:00.000-05:00

A little late perhaps to be debuting my Spring Easter decorations, but I'm such a lagger when it comes to blogging. I sure hope you'll forgive me. Above (and in a few shots below) is the arrangement I did (with all flowers grown by my mommy) and the Easter Egg wreath I made for our family's Easter lunch. We decided to do things super laid-back and casual. We grilled hamburgers (in the rain, as the weather didn't cooperate with our plans), baked french fries and had an All-American chocolate cake instead of typical Henry-family over-the-top feasts of fancy-pants foods.
I don't know why we decided to go super laid back, but it worked out really well for everyone. Did I mention the Bloody Mary's? With spicy Cajun salt on the rim? Oh my goodness. It was a great holiday.
And I got to do the centerpiece! I showed you a week ago my technique for draining the eggs shown here. I dyed them all with kiddie egg dye and high-end paint supplies. Then I thought they weren't quite showy enough so I rolled them in rubber cement and added super-fine glitter. Awesome. It made such a mess but it was great! You know how when you play with rubber cement it gets on your hands and rubs into those little balls of rubber cement? Well, add in tons of glitter and you have a genuine mess on your hands. Thankfully my nose didn't itch or anything like that and the mess was completely containable. I took a cardboard box and cut out a 9" circle and then inside of that I cut a 7" circle and used the 2" ring as the starting point for my wreath. Then I took a piece of fancy tissue paper (made by Papyrus and purchased at Central Market, which is generally way to fancy for me for craft supplies, but with tissue paper, you can see the quality) and cut it into strips, wrapping the strips around the cardboard ring and then letting the extra stick out of the ring like grass. When the wreath was completely covered, I glued the glittery eggs in a haphazard way to look casual and springy.
The arrangement was simple enough -- I took what mom had grown and picked and put it in a mint julep silver cup.

Below is a much better picture to get a straightforward view of the whole project.

And below this is the cake I made. Dyed the vanilla icing green and covered it with coconut flakes and some little Easter peanut M&Ms.

Oodles of Doodles

2009-04-28T07:12:00.000-05:00

I'm going to Denmark in less than a month. So what does that have to do with doodles? Well, I'll tell you. It's intricately connected. In order to have all of my work done in time to stress-free evacuate the office in about three weeks, I had to read a heckaofalot of papers in a short span. We're talking me editing seven papers in three days. And I got a little loopy. And loopy means doodles. I thought some were fun so I decided you may want to see them. Frankly, I don't really have much more to say on the topic.

Rose tags, And you'll see this verse a lot

2009-04-27T07:25:00.000-05:00

Some lovely ladies at my church asked me to do a calligraphy project for them, so I scripted 36 copies of the same verse (1 John 1:7) on white tags using super-thick charcoaly India ink. What's fun about writing the same sentence 36 times is that I played around with the treatment. As the project went on, the "J" of Jesus got more and more exaggerated because I found that no matter how big I made it, it looked good. Some are in print and others are in cursive. I like to think that as these tags are given away to women who participate in the church retreat weekend, that the Spirit guides the right font to the right person.

In the Beginning

2009-04-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

So this is a painting of the first book of the Bible. Genesis 1, the creation story.

4	And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5	And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6	And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Those are the verses that inspired this. On one side you've got the light and on the other, the waters. I've never actually painted "something" before. My paintings are usually like Seinfeld, all about nothing. But this one is about something. It depicts the very creation of the Earth. At first I didn't think I'd like the way my painting of "something" would turn out. I assumed that it would look corny, but when I was done I really liked it.
I guess even in its depiction of something, it is still pretty abstract. You probably wouldn't believe how long I worked on it since it looks rather like all the other paintings I have done before. Yet, for some reason, I took hours and hours painting this, making sure that each layer of paint was just so.

Egg Treatment, Part One

2009-04-16T09:02:00.000-05:00

I got a little photo happy with my Easter project and today's post only shows the beginnings of it all. Above is a collection of empty eggs soaking in the sink. What a challenge to get the egg out of the eggshells. But I devised a way that worked for me. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. And then you watch a "how to" video by Martha Stewart and find out that there is a fairly easy and seriously more sanitary way to de-egg an eggshell and, wait, oh the corniness, I felt like I had egg on my face! No that's too lame of line to actually use...
What I did was stab the eggs with a steak knife, cut little holes from that stabbing, holes just big enough to fit a drinking straw through. Then I just blew the egg out of the shell as though I was blowing bubbles in my milk. I ended up with a bowl full of 18 eggs. Waste not, want not -- I cooked myself two casseroles. I decided that given my intimacy with the eggs that I better just keep the casseroles for me own personal consumption. Maybe that still sounds gross. It was just the best way I could think of.

This is how I rigged two kabob skewers and a plastic mixing bowl into being a decent place to let egg drain out of the eggshell.

Two casseroles in the fridge. Meals for weeks!

Six little glasses of egg dye. With Easter rabbit spoons to boot!

And alas, a bird's eye view of the mess once my eggs got their dye jobs. Amazingly enough, the whole mess was a snap to clean up and no permanent damage was made to anything at all. Not even my dish rags show any signs of being mixed up with this mess. Oh and I decided that just plain old egg dye wasn't good enough for me. So I mixed the standard-issue egg dye with high-end art supply to come up with some interesting combinations. You'll have to stay tuned to see how it all turns out.

Sacred House of Blues?

2009-04-13T23:44:00.001-05:00

With a West Coast baseball trip for my beloved if not beleaguered boys of summer and a bit of a bout of insomnia (must stop with the drinking of the diet dr pepper so late at night!), I find myself glued to the MLB HDTV (my favorite kind of acronym soup, honestly) with nothing to do but watch the Sox fail miserably and, well, present some new crafts to my loyal readers.
Here is a new painting. It's the first time I've ever left the majority of the canvas (a 12x12 square of glass) even partially unpainted. In fact, I had every intention of making a giant picture with all kinds of zigzag layers, but when I got to this point, I knew that I needed to stop and relish the simplicity. And I feel like the result looks like a cross between Mexican-inspired renditions of Catholic symbolism like the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the somewhat corporate, irreverent House of Blues logo. Anyways, I'm pleased with punch by it and I like how I've arranged trinkets around it, especially the fact that I can actually place things behind it and still see them, like the antique Maine postcard. When I started the drawing for this painting, I had intended to channel Indian patterns (as in subcontinental Asia, not Native American ones, though they are quite nice, too). The paisleys were supposed to set that spicy, exotic tone. It would have been fine and Indian looking had I not decided to paint with a bright, Latin pallet. As soon as the pink was layered atop the yellow, I knew that it was headed in a different direction than my original intention, not that I mind.

What's that I hear, did Don Orsillo say "ballgame over?" Long yawn and I think I'm ready to hit the hay. Amazing how awake I am when there's a live game, even if it was a bit of slaughterfest in the yuck direction for this little fan.

Geography Bee

2009-04-05T10:39:00.000-05:00

You know what? I never posted a picture of my bedroom with its mapped-out wallpaper. My landlord won't let me paint the walls, so a continuing mission of mine is to decorate the walls with various other ways of completely covering the surfaces without opening a can of paint. Thus, the maps.

I went to a cheapskate's paradise, Half-Priced Books, and found out that old maps cost 25 cents each. Eight dollars and I had enough maps to do two walls. I had lots of fun digging through the map bins looking at the various places I could buy a guide to. Most of the ones in prominent places are maps of some of my favorite global spots -- I've got Texas (home sweet home), Maine (my big adventure state), Italy (well, my love/hate/tragedy story with that place is well documented) and some regional ones too. I've got a map of Louisiana and Arkansas that reminds me of my family's roots. I've got the whole South to remind me to behave like a good Southern lady. One of my prettiest maps is a National Geographic guide to Ireland, colored a lovely Emerald Green. And in a favorite spot, I've got a driving map of Boston, which is funny because Boston is a terrible place to drive in. The best part of this map -- I can point out Fenway Park with my toe.
I picked some maps for their arty qualities, like the map of the Indian Ocean Seafloor. I never knew how beautiful the bottom of the ocean could be!
I used a big collection of shiny golden tacks to put up these maps. I love how they look. Come on over sometime and judge for yourself!

Let's pretend, a lesson in Paint By Numbers

2009-04-04T07:04:00.000-05:00

Let's just say that you developed an interest in paint by numbers. Why? Well, it looks relaxing and that mid-century modern concept, that by using a little map and some stalls of paint you too can be Van Gogh! So you research paint by numbers -- completed retro versions are pricey -- yikes no good for this little crafter. And the modern ones, well they are as trendy as Dream Catchers and similarly themed at that -- think a western coyote howling at the moon or an eagle soaring through the Utah skies or something. Bad bad bad.

So what's a crafter to do? Well, after a wee bit of internet searching I found that there's a software (we a 15 day trial period) available for download that turns your photos in paint by numbers kits. Score! After downloading it and playing around for a while, I gleaned all the info I thought I needed to start the project in earnest. *Key hint* you must use a really simple photo. I tried some complex pictures and then just some normal ones and we're talking a really difficult paint by numbers painting.

And then there's the fun part (I say that knowing that I haven't even cut the wood for the canvases much less painted these; I'm at a purely digital point thus far)... I had to make a computerized catalogue of every paint color that I own and mixes I was willing to make to cover for the colors that I don't own. I ended up with a home-made pallet of 54 colors, a real rainbow span at that. It took forever! Sitting there with all my tubes of paint evaluating the exact shades to create a digipallet. Geez louise.

Anyhoo, so once I got the yuck work out of the way, I had a blast creating a collection of patterns. I have 10 patterns but I wanted to show off this lovely pattern because it involves a 1970's version of my dad. Ha! So Mr. Moustaches and his pup are lounging and you can see the various versions -- the final colored in pattern (a pallet with lots of pinks and purples), the pattern with and then without numbers, then the original picture in all its glory. I'll keep you posted on the progress of this one... it's an exciting new collection.

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-31T08:23:00.000-05:00

Yeah little ones, I've been neglecting you. Though I'm about to enter another one of those sporadic "one week of a new post every day" kind of periods because I am motivated, that's why.
This post is just to let you know that the temporary dearth of posts is because I've been trying to get all my Spring cleaning done. It is apparently a feeling as old as the human race. When the temperatures start to rise, I suddenly have this urge to clean out my closet, use q-tips to polish my silver and even reorganize under my bed. Notice how sparse my dresser is... yeah, that's the fruits of my reorganizing labor. No piles of junk or stacks of things to sort through here! I'm all straightened out.
Oh and I generally think of each room in my little apartment as corresponding to a certain season. My bathroom is summer, my living room is winter, my dining area is fall and my bedroom is spring. So I wanted to post a picture of the fresh spring colors that fill my bedroom. In the deepest, coldest part of winter (not like you'd have too much pity on a Texan in winter, that cold time I speak of is something hovering around freezing on a bad day, not like the coldness of winter up north), having a spring bedroom lifts my spirits so.

Almost as much as the fact that baseball opens in one week (well, less than that...). I'm all smiles. Oh and this year MLB is selling team-themed gnomes. Really, I'm pretty sure that just about sums me up in one ridiculous item. A baseball themed gnome.

Brr-Rrrr, Heavy Traffic

2009-03-05T07:02:00.000-06:00

When I was a child back in the days of "C:/" instead of today's visually intuitive computers, my daddy bought me (or maybe he bought it for himself, fuzzy memory) SimCity. I'm not going to say it was the very first ever edition of SimCity, because I really don't know. Alls I do know is that I loved that game. LOVED. It was so fascinating. I could build a whole town. And then destroy their power plant and see how long they'd live without electricity. In many ways, SimCity might just be what started it all. From there I graduated to home design software (I'd try to fit all the essentials -- stove, fridge, toilet, shower, bed, door -- into 100 square feet or less. I think the best I ever did was 80 square feet, in a house where the bed was stacked above the fridge and stove, which, obviously, would be a really pleasant place to live). And from that software, I started to read interior decorating magazines, study art history and ultimately become a craft blogger. Wow, what a progression...
And you may wonder why I am mentioning SimCity in conjunction with a picture of my kitchen. I'll tell you: in the SimCity of my youth, when you had traffic congestion, a radio helicopter-esque voice would say, "Brr-rrr-rrr-heavy traffic." Or at least that's how my dad and I interpreted what the guy said. And it joined the Henry family lore as a family phrase -- brr-rr heavy traffic. It's right up there with "tit-titilly-boo," "teeka-teeka," or "fiffffty." And if you know much about we Henrys, you may well have heard these phrases. Well, when I was painting this piece of glass (detail shown below), I could only think of one phrase, "Brr-heavy traffic." I don't know why it reminded me of a busy SimCity, but it just does somehow.
I painted this 1 square foot piece of glass over the weekend. I thought I'd tuck it in behind my kitchen CD player and radio to create a little vignette right there under my canned goods cabinet. It's about three layers of paint deep, so it's pretty busy. Good thing it is nice and small. The color palette is a range of colors of the rainbow between orange and blue -- all my yellows, greens. It's like Mediterranean citrus colors, the palette of a bottle of Orangina (seriously consider clicking on this link, if nothing else than for the cute little Vespa graphic). All the swirls, curls and zigzags are very tightly wrought. And there are dots on top of dots. Plus I used lots of shimmery and glittery paints so that the whole thing really sparkles, much like the fizziness of a bottle of Orangina sipped in Italy... (cue some Dean Martin and daydream with me).
Frankly, its been a long, long time since I last presented a painting. This is partly because I didn't bother to post my last three paintings and partly because I thought ran out of glass and keep forgetting to order more. But over the weekend I found this pristine little piece and pulled out the paint trough. It felt so good to get back into the paint-covered swing of things. I found three other plates of glass -- all so well organized that I just forgot how neatly tucked away they were -- so I have lots to work on. Keep your eyes peeled for more.

Ahoy! Welcome Prince

2009-03-04T07:15:00.000-06:00

I'm just plain kicking myself for not taking better (or more) pictures of this craft project. What was I thinking? Just two decent pictures to show and only four pictures taken in all. And I'm so proud of this project. Today and, well, sometime soon I'm showing pictures of some crafts I created for a baby shower for a lovely lady from my church. Today I'm showing off the nautical theme flags. I see these sorts of stringed pennant flags in Pottery Barn kids catalogues (seriously, buy something from them once and you're on the list for years) and in Martha Stewart magazines and I was dieing to give them a try myself. Most of the flags you'll see are sewn. And I have a bit of a phobia about dusting off the sewing machine so I tried to think of how I could do pennants without using a sewing machine. And here's the recipe I came up with.
I'm a huge fan of liquid starch. It's uses are limitless. I completely saturated the fabric (approximately 2 yards) with the sticky stuff and hung the fabric over my shower bar to dry overnight. And when dry, the seersucker was like paper. I was able to cut it with scissors for paper and paint on it with poster paints. I cut an isosceles triangle out of a box of Ritz Crackers, leaving two little inch long tabs along the top of the triangle to use to attach the flags to the rope. And here's a true essential for something like this -- I created a template for where and how large to place the letters so that the lettering was consistent from "W" to "O" and each letter in between. I used the same box of crackers to cut out a box for the letter and I made sure that each letter touched the top, bottom and sides of the box when it was placed over each flag.
I used scrapbooking brads (cheap from the craft store) to attach the flags to the rope.
This is something worth doing for a party because it provides some great craft bang for your buck. I should also mention that a trio of Command Adhesive hooks anchored the project to its walls and came off with no problems. This project cost around $13 in total:

Fabric -- $5 from the Harry Hines fabric outlets
Brads -- $3 for 80
Rope -- $2 from the hardware store
Liquid Starch -- $3 from any old grocery store, near the fabric softeners and detergents.

And from that I have plenty of starch and brads left. The compliments came pouring in as the guests arrived for the party.

Can't Stand To See Them Go

2009-03-03T08:12:00.000-06:00

St. Valentine blessed me with a pair of flower arrangements this year. What can I say, I'm a lucky girl. Oh that and my Granny loves me (aww, Arkansas!). And while the bulk of the flowers in the arrangements lasted a good week or more, when it came time to throw out the flowers, there were three white carnations with life left in them still and a heck of a lot of greenery that still looked nice and fresh so I decided to do a quartet of mini arrangements. I have a little collection of baby glass jars/vases and I thought they'd pair nicely with some bone china candle holders. I tinkered around with a lot of destinations for the four little flower holders and after a stint in my bedroom, bathroom, desk area, kitchen, living room window sills, they found a good home atop my light-up liquor table. I had to turn old Queen Victoria on an untapped bottle of Bombay gin on her side to prop up one little vase, you know, to give the arrangements so height variance.
I was pleased with my camera's treatment of these pictures. Usually shooting candles and twinky lights can be dull. I thought the colors turned out pretty vibrant (and I cheated with a bit of dramatic photo toning). So I am showing three pictures. Below is a shot of a single vase and then a view from above.

Thanks for Voting!

2009-03-02T08:01:00.000-06:00

Sixteen of y'all voted on my wall arrangement. Thanks! And the winner from the get-go was B. So B it will be.
I had to mess around with the blog's layout to accommodate the voting and I'm glad it is back to normal, though with updated "spring" colors. I was getting tired of the old font color scheme. And I'm really looking forward to spring this year; I don't know why exactly since summer follows spring and that's never any good in Texas.
So enjoy it. It's March and we're rocking some bright, refreshing greens and blues over here in my corner of the internet.
And thanks again for voting. I would promise to upload pictures of the wall when it is all finished, but I'm not very good on following through with these promises so I won't promise. I'll just say I'll try. Happy Monday...

Yay! Wine Crates!

2009-02-20T07:19:00.000-06:00

Ok, it was typical Hilary hyperbole when I said I started this project a year ago. I checked the archives here at All the Cool Kids Love to Craft to find out that I started this project in April 2008. However, my inspiration from the DIY blog of Design*Sponge was posted in October 2007. And thus, my enthusiasm that this project has finally been completed isn't ridiculous. Fifteen months of living in an apartment with wine crates lurking in empty corners is a long time. A couple of weeks in one of my crazed all night crafting sprees, I finished wall papering the crates and reassembled them. (The original Design*Sponge post doesn't advocate taking the crate apart to paper it, but that's what I'd advise doing so that there aren't rough spots at the corners. The paper is of a thickness, perhaps unlike cheaper wrapping paper, that is lumpy when folded over. I took each crate apart into three portions, the lid, the four sides and the bottom. I gave the bottom piece to my dad for use in the chiminea pot in my parent's backyard , papered the remaining two portions and reassembled them to create the finished product.) I nailed a pair of picture hangers to the back of each crate. And despite my protests last week about using math to hang things in an orderly fashion, I had to use the old measuring tape, calculator and level to get these crates to line up and fit in a pretty small space. It turns out for these to fit without the bottom one being awkwardly crammed into the TV, I had to hang the top one 3" from the ceiling and 4" from the corner. Wow. That hanging experience was pretty painful. And required more than one try. Whoops. Fitting a power drill that close to the juncture of three walls and that high off the ground forced me to stand one leg on the top rung of the ladder, one leg on the top sill of a window -- safety clearly was abandoned at the wayside for this installation. But after hanging that top one, the rest was smooth sailing. And I think it is mathematically correct. Yay!

I realize that I didn't bother to load up the crates in an artful way before snapping this picture. Honestly, I just wanted the satisfaction (15 months after the dream of this project began) of saying... I'm done. Plus now that these are there, I really don't know what I'm going to do to stock these crates. My mom stopped by to drop off an umbrella (best drop by reason ever) while I was lamenting the emptiness of the crates and she uttered a great Martha pun, "You should just be crateful that you finished them."

And folks, on that note, I'm outta here. Don't forget to vote at the bottom of the page. I'll catch you next time I'm feeling crafty!

This May Look A Little Odd

2009-02-19T09:43:00.000-06:00

This looks odd. For one thing, it's not a craft that photographs well. For another thing, well, it's not that great to start out with. But this is a dream of mine and this is my first crack at that dream and I'm pretty excited about it. So what you are looking at is a wine bottle that has been sawed in half and has two little holes drilled in it to thread wire through, then filled with little rocks, sand, and a pot with seeds in it. I'm going to hang the whole contraption in front of my window so that the little seeds will grow and plants will live in an old wine bottle. I'm going to make a series of these and hang them in my window. It's going to be some kind of recycled hanging gardens. Yeah, that sounds about right. Who wouldn't want a hanging wine bottle garden? Right now I've only got a small cache of empties to saw through. But I've got a bunch of full bottles. From now on, my place is always on tap! And I'm going to start bugging you about not throwing away your empties so I can get better at this glass cutting business. Do you see the roughness of those edges? It's pretty rudimentary. Let's not even mention the pair of cracks in the glass near the wire holes. Yikes. Hope the whole thing doesn't bust. Fingers crossed.

More details -- this is my first Drimmel project. My Nana gave me the Drimmel for Christmas. And it took me a while to locate the perfect bit -- I needed a round diamond tip. I visited a few hardware stores before the man at Elliots had just what I needed (which, of course, reminds me that I shouldn't ever try to find hardware somewhere before I have hit up Elliots). However, using a rotating diamond wheel on a piece of glass kinda terrified me. I had to pull out the old safety goggles from chemistry class (sometimes its good to be a partial packrat) and wear some dish gloves before I'd try this out. I practically had 911 on speed dial before I first placed the whirling, buzzing, Drimmel bit against the wine bottle. I was sure it would split into sharp splinters, flying at high speeds at my face, neck, arms, hands, priceless porcelain figurines, antique dishware, you name it (Ok, those last two don't exist, but still, a flying shard of glass is a pain where ever it goes). Of course, nothing of the sort took place. It did create a very grating sound -- like a million pieces of chalk squeaking on a chalk board -- and a cloud of fine powder filled the air. Holding the Drimmel steady is kinda tough and that's why the lines on my first try weren't very good. That plus I was too scared of getting hurt to do a good job. I think most of my fears were unfounded but I'm going to keep up the caution around the Drimmel. It's a little more risky than say, paper and glue (the subject of tomorrow's post). Anyways, I'm going to find that happy medium -- the Taoist wu wei -- between caution and precision, chaos and order for my next cut bottles. It shouldn't take me too many cases of Riesling to get one that is chiseled properly.

And finally, about the letter "e". There's no relevance. It can stand for anything under the sun -- eggplants, Ethiopia, energy... I bought a bunch of letters at Curiosities (on Abrams) and I thought it would be neat to attach one letter to each wine bottle/plant. Perhaps I'll spell out something when I'm all said and done. Starting with "e" is a good idea, since it's in like, every word.

Two More Loves

2009-02-18T08:42:00.000-06:00

Here are two more of the thoroughly freeing and completely enjoyable Valentines that I made from available (household) materials. These two feature some snippets from a recent Anthropolgie catalogue. I guess there's not too much artistic merit to these other than the fact that I really enjoyed just making things, third grade style. In fact, I've always been a huge fan of the collage. I usually try to come up with really elaborate plots and fancy materials, but just sitting down with a box of markers, a pad of paper, a few catalogues and some glitter -- ultimate crafting enjoyment!
The one at the top was pretty abstract. It involved finger painting and buttons! And glitter and hearts that I made by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting out a heart, just like elementary school students do! In keeping with yesterday's theme of using cliche love sentiments, this one's inside said, "Valentine, you're as cute as a button."
And the bottom one, that's for my mom. When I was a little girl, she used to sing me a song with those lyrics. I thought it was fitting for the heart with a little heart missing.
Oh and sorry that the pictures were fuzzy. I'm starting to think that I might need a new camera...

My Funny Valentine

2009-02-17T08:26:00.000-06:00

Well, a holiday can't breeze past this crafter. You know I have to do something to mark these occasions. And this year I wanted to make Valentines completely out of things I already owned. No spending! Not one dime, which reminds me I've added a new label to my label arsenal "Recession? Not Bad For Crafters" because these tight times can be a boon for the creative types. Now if only "homemade" had sounded less shoddy during the era of excess. Skinny wallets mean creative stretching must go on and I'm such a fan! Not to jump atop a fav soap box, but I've always said more credit should go to the creative spender than to the overspender...
And since I used my own paper, glitter and googley eyes, I wasn't going to spoil the "no shopping" spree by purchasing some custom-sized envelopes. I had to make my own out of packing tape and pottery barn catalogues. I even owned the stamps I used to mail these puppies. I'm really proud of this one. It's a joke. And here's the punchline, on the inside it says, "Valentine, you're one hot mama."
Where, you must be asking, did I find such a cartoon character? Well, that's easy. You know those annoying weekly inserts that you get in the mail? Well, I'm zoned with some Mexican meat market whose mascot is that dude. Every week his jocular smile beckons me to buy pound after pound of meats with which I am not familiar. The pictures of cow brains and pigs feet are usually the first postal item to get File 13'ed. Well, not last week. Last week Señior Sausage was cold-cut right out of his advertisement and used as the star of my star Valentine.
Also, if any of my readers are in need of their own Mexican meat merchant men, drop me a line. I can collect one a week from the circular. I'll even throw in a pair of googley eyes... Aww, I'm so sweet.

Vote!

2009-02-16T16:30:00.000-06:00

At the bottom of my blog, I have installed a little quiz for you readers. You'll have to do some scrolling. I hope it doesn't wear out your mouse... Anyways, above you see "the wall" in its real form, as opposed to my doodled versions. And now you see what we are working with here folks. Pardon the oddly shaped shadowy thing in the middle of the picture. I don't know what was going on with the camera; every picture I took looked funky.

Get Out Of Craft Jail Free

2009-02-16T09:30:00.000-06:00

Spray paint, a power drill, safety goggles, a Phillips head screw driver, a level, a diamond-blade rotattor drimmel bit, rubber gloves, three types of scrubber brushes, chisels -- and a wedding! This was a very busy weekend for me, with lots of crafting tucked in to the free parts. And as you can see from this outdoors shot, I had some choice weather to work in. I'm working on a couple of little projects for a baby shower that takes place next weekend. Can you tell it's for a boy?
I'm really excited about a lot of the projects that I completed this weekend. I stress the word "completed," because I'm pretty often starting things without finishing them. I'll have to take a look back at the ATCKLTC archives, but I think that completed a project over the weekend that I started this time last year. Seriously. That's procrastination.
And that's why I titled the post the way I did. I feel a sense of freedom in completing these projects, even if I worry that my to-do list is dwindling to pretty low levels. Plus I love to use a Monopoly reference whenever I can.

Sorry Kid, You Really Do Use Math In Life

2009-02-10T12:15:00.000-06:00

The title says it all here, but upon the rarest of occasions, I have to use math to be creative. Yuck! You know I was the president of the math club in high school (mom said it would look good on the transcript for college applications and I was the only one who showed up on Mu Alpha Theta election day). And then you know I got a D- in calculus freshman year of college and retook the class to get to B-. Oh Paul Bourdon! That class was all but impossible (to me, lots of other people seemed to ace it, overachievers). Not that my personal relationship with mathematics is particularly exciting (Does it count that a lot of my favorite people in college were math majors -- Dj Jazzy, LDA & Molly McGint?), I just wanted you to know that it is only on the solemnest occasions that I will get out the tape measurer, graph paper and draw something to scale. You do know that "to scale" means solving some math equations, right? So being a regular Archimedes, I decided that I wanted to make a wall of art. And I couldn't decide on the right arrangement for these prints and paintings. So I took measurements of the wall, the height of my comfy reading chair and then measured each little work of art. Above you see the results. I'm actually planning to show you a collection of arrangements I come up with and letting my general readership vote on the final selection. We'll see if that works. I fully expect no votes at all, but who knows.

Also, it has always bothered me that people of UK-ish origin (Aussies, Kiwis included) call it "maths" instead of "math" with the idea being that its a shortened version of a plural word: mathematics. I've never bugged a Canuck about that particular English misnomer, but I ought to. I'd like to think we have Canada on our side of this crucial linguistic debate. And today, I've really strayed away from the usual topic. Err, sorry.

Found Sketch

2009-02-09T16:19:00.000-06:00

Hey there. I was rooting around for something or other the other day and I came across an old sketchbook that I used to lug around when I lived in Maine. I was always finding something that needed to be rendered in charcoal. And I thought I was particularly clever because in addition to toting my sketchbook and charcoals, I brought these little colored pencils so I could add just the tiniest bit of color.

And much to my surprise and amid a zillion landscapes (seascapes to be more precise) and some particularly random character sketches, I drew a generic picture of a baseball player. I can very vividly recall the occasion that inspired me to draw this little guy. A bunch of the guys I worked with at the paper in Maine played ball and I went to one of their games, armed with a beach towel, jug of lemonade and my sketching supplies. This is a pitcher, on the mound, at about the time when he's reading the catcher's signs, before he enters the wind (or the stretch, depending on the circumstances). Well, and Spring Training is just around the corner, so I thought I'd post this tribute to Spring and, well, the greatest game on Earth.

And, hey now, I wanted to show off my sketching skills, too. I never considered myself to be that good at drawing.

It's A Wrap

2009-01-16T09:32:00.000-06:00

There you have it! Fifteen pretty little packages wrapped in my homemade wrapping paper. Perhaps you can spot one that you received -- I know that a few of my readers (Katie, Dj Jazzy, Lucy) each have a little-green-tree-festooned box in that picture. I can't tell you how delightful the reactions I got to the paper were. I truly didn't expect it to get any reviews at all. I thought I would make it, use it and feel good on the inside that I did my part to conserve resources and be creative. I didn't dream that the gift recipients would get such a kick out it, too. Lots of people saved the paper. No joke! Uncle Jim, Mrs. Sue Woodward, my dad ... and those are the ones I know about. How touching! To think that my wrapping paper was good enough to save! I watched several of my readers who had the chance to open one of the above boxes try to guess what part of the two phrases they had received. If you recall, the options were, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end."
I really enjoyed adding buttons and bows and various other doodads to each present. The pallet of green and off-white was really easy to work with. Red added such a pop and buttons dressed the packages up and made them very snazzy. And yet, a simple (and heavily hot glued) pine cone kept the paper feeling very natural.
Lots of design magazines and blogs really pushed for a homemade Christmas. And while I didn't have time to home make gifts for everyone on my shopping list, I was pretty excited to have homemade paper. I'm definitely going to be doing something like this again next year. I already have some ideas (and I'm 99% sure I will have forgotten them by next year, but just in case I wrote them on stickies and put them at the top of my Christmas decorations box on the top shelf of my closet). I hate to forget a good crafty idea.

No One But Us And The Indians

2009-01-14T09:01:00.000-06:00

I did the Charlotte Collins Thanksgiving Classic invites this year. And above you see the results. Oh and my mom is the RSVP contact. Hi Mom! That was actually lots of fun, writing that up for everyone in the you-wouldn't-believe-it extended family. I think I'm the only spawn of my generation to know who everybody on that list is and how they are related. And as much fun as I had with the invite its self, I was really having a blast with the envelopes. And then I had lots of fun making jpegs of all the envelopes, as you can see. This is a bit ridiculous, I realize, but I liked some of them and wanted to show them off.

Not wanting to reveal these peoples' names and addresses, I tried not to show full envelopes. Well, all except Mary, but she already moved out of that place and now lives in Spain. So if you were trying to track her down or if she is secretly not a part of the family but has indeed been a part of the FBI witness protection program since five or six days after her birth (which is about the time when I first met her), well, you are too late in finding her on Nueces in Austin. So about the above, I'm a big fan of the new "A" and below is the old "A" but it is paired with the new "M."

I don't know why I liked this one so much, but I thought it turned out pleasantly so here it is for you to admire.

The new "A" and "M" on my nana's name.

A Berage Of Holiday Posts

2009-01-12T08:35:00.000-06:00

So in typical Cool Kids Crafting style, and when I say "holiday" posts, I mean I'm reaching all the way back to November for a last look at Thanksgiving. I decided to give myself the gift of stress-free holidays, and for the most part I achieved this modest and self-serving goal. And I put off the crafting posts until now. But in the coming days (about two weeks), it will be like Christmas all over again! Yay! And who couldn't use an extra dose of Christmas in late January? Well, if you must, pull out the Bing Crosby Holiday album and warm yourself some hot chocolate or some spiked egg nog. I don't know what your particular holiday traditions include, but crafts and entertaining are a major part of mine. And after the holiday season posts are all hung by the chimney with care, I'll be showing you two paintings and introducing a new arena to my blog -- recipes! In the past I've done a bit of baking and shared that with y'all, but this is like meal stuff, meats, veggies, et cetera. So clearly 2009 is going to be a fantastic year for this little corner of the Web.

Office Tannenbaum

2008-12-18T11:35:00.000-06:00

This is my 16" office Christmas tree, all decked out with battery operated red lights, little glittery silver snowballs and, just to amp up the Avril Lavigne factor, some skull and crossbones garland (homemade of course). And if my desk doesn't say "festive if not overboard" I don't know what does. I hope y'all enjoy this slice of my daily life here at work. Behind the tree is a corkboard covered in that I choose to call my inspiration board because I tack up little bits and pieces I collect.

A close up. You needed it. You wanted it. You got it.

Look Who's Turning One

2008-12-17T07:00:00.000-06:00

This time one year ago, my baby blog was born. Doodle commemorates the occasion. Celebrate with me. Do something crafty. Fly a kite.

Button Upgrade, Once More

2008-12-16T07:07:00.000-06:00

I got this cute little jacket/blazer thing at a ritzy boutique in the West Village for a business trip to California last year. And sadly, the buttons came off the jacket a little too quickly to call the thing high quality. But alas, I'm not here to be a garment inspector or a clothing critic. I'm just here to tell you about this sewing upgrade. Do you think I've been in a sewing mode lately? It's a little ridiculous. I hate pulling out all the supplies so when I made Mr. Gingerbread man, I sewed everything else I could think of so I could put away the machine and the rest of the pins, threads, needles, and assorted other bits and bobs. This is, I believe, the last thing I've got to report on of this nature for a while. Whew! A girl gets tired of these kinds of projects. Sewing is my mommy's game, not mine.
Anyhow, back to this blazer thing... so (or should I be punny and say "sew") I got to delve into the aforshown bowls of buttons to find a good match. I added them to both sleeves and its a big time upgrade.

Cuff Links, the Homemade Version

2008-12-15T06:55:00.000-06:00

So I got this shirt years ago at a Gap Outlet in Freeport, Maine. And it came with buttons as cuff links. Well, wouldn't you know, immediately one set (four are needed for the shirt, two per cuff) died in the dryer. And then I lost a second set. And well, then the shirt disappeared into the back of the closet or was only used when the sleeves could be rolled up three or four times each to avoid showing off the missing cuff links. I pulled out the bead kit, found 16 identical pearls (let's admit they are knockoffs) and a nice colored embroidery thread to sew them into cuff links. It was pretty easy as a process and I'm prepared to say this is a big upgrade from the original.

Christmas Doodle

2008-12-12T07:15:00.000-06:00

I drew this snowman out of text. I'm digging the idea. I'm not going to claim that I came up with the idea, but I really got a kick out of creating this snow man and plan to mix this concept with some calligraphy skills and do something really spectacular for next year's Christmas card. Too bad I didn't come up with something like this a few months ago or I could have used it for this year. It's not that exciting of a craft, but I wanted to show it to my lovely readers, anyway.

Button Switch Upgrade

2008-12-10T07:03:00.000-06:00

Look at my WalMart sweater! I've garnered a plethora of compliments now that I've upgraded its buttons. This is a wardrobe upgrade. I took something that looked OK and made it look great. Clearly, I'm proud of this one. I liked this shirt when I saw it at WalMart. It is so versatile. It can be paired with so many outfits, too. I always thought the buttons were a give away that the thing came from a discount store. So, I bought some new buttons and changed the sweater up, quite drastically. I got these green ceramic buttons at the craft store without measuring the size of the originals. And naturally I guessed wrong. The new buttons are significantly larger than the old ones and, therefore, the buttonholes needed to be changed. I hate breaking into knit sweaters and buttonholes can be so tricky, but as the sweater was both cheap and fuzzy, I figured, what's the worst that can happen? Turns out, not much. The ceramic buttons are so much heavier than the old plastic ones that I had to sew a snap into the neck of the sweater so that every part would stay in place. And while I was sewing that in... I decided to give the label an upgrade, too. I take the sweater off frequently, so I thought it would be neat to have an arty little label inside instead of WalMart's No Boundaries. So you can see that in the pics, too.

This is my arty button shot. I don't know why I included it with this post other than because I thought it was just plain awesome. I inherited this massive button collection from my mom when she was trying to pare down her sewing supplies. I carefully separated them into categories, by color, material, size. I love when I get a chance to dive right in and grab some good ones. I'm always scheming of ways to use these buttons. I think you'll see lots of 'em in the next few weeks!

Here's the before shot. The sweater in its cheap button glory. And behind it is the lovely postcard wall that I've been working on for the past year. Thanks to all of those who have contributed.

I included this picture so you could see the size difference between the green ceramic button and the cheap plastic ones.

And finally, I took this picture and liked the way the fuzziness showed up. Hope you enjoy it, too.

Blueprints for Mr. Gingerbread

2008-12-09T07:00:00.000-06:00

I wanted to share this creative sketch-out that I did before I started on the gingerbread man. I was talking over the project with one of my coworkers and I drew my concept for him (top right) and he inquired about the placement of the man on the tree. Those two faces on the left were his impressions of what a gingerbread man should look like when he gets a Christmas tree enema.

Gingerbread Man of My Dreams

2008-12-08T08:00:00.000-06:00

And now for the Theta Christmas tree topper.
First I'll tell you the supplies and then I'll tell you the process... This is an
old school crafting post, one that actually offers advice on making the above
pictured tree topper.

brown foam
six green and red buttons
two packages of white brick-a-brack trim, medium thickness
scissors
craft glue
a hot glue gun with glue sticks
brown thread
a sewing machine or the will power to sew quite a lot by hand
lots and lots of straight pins
cheap cotton cloth, appropriately ginger colored
several examples of other gingerbread men, to use for inspiration
something to use as eyeballs, four of 'em
a brown crayon
red paint, to use as a mouth.

Take yer brown crayon and your brown foam, draw a gingerbread man. Cut out the gingerbread man from foam. I used two pieces of foam and cut them both out so that I could give, as a coworker called it, the poor final product a Christmas-tree enema. I took a picture to explain what I'm talking about. So next you take your fabric and lay it out on a flat surface folded in half so that it is two pieces of fabric thick and place the gingerbread man cutout on top. Trace around the man, leaving about an inch and a half border. Cut out the fabric so that you have two pieces of gingerbread man looking fabric. Now it's time to put the foam bit on the inside of the fabric pieces and pin all around him. Sew him up, leaving a space between his legs so that you can take out the foam and eventually install him on top of a Christmas tree (thus the enema comment). Turn the sewn product inside out so that the hem is on the inside, replace the foam inside to give him a taut look and feel. Real cookies are never wrinkled. Not to get naughty here, but you'll need to glue the fabric from between his legs to the foam, so that he is complete, all around. Next you'll add the brick brack using craft glue (or hot glue depending on your personal preferences). I left about a quarter inch on the outside of the brick brack, but again, it's up to you. Add your buttons for his tummy and your sparkly eyes and then paint on a mouth. I added a gross grain ribbon sash around his neck to make him extra pretty. My guy was double sided for a tree to be displayed in the round, so I had to do the last several steps twice. Stick a tree up his bum and you're done!

I've uploaded lots of pictures to show off the project (and my somewhat messy process).

So here's the guy all covered in pins. And you get a good idea of the supplies I used to create the man. Note the shoe in the top left of the photo and the trash on the floor. I was so messy the night I made this dude!

So I needed brown thread. I bought some when I bought the fabric only to come home and find almost an identical color thread in my sewing box. Think of all the gingerbread men I could sew with these two spools.

This is my dude when I'd sewn him up. Notice how snug his cover his to the foam underneath. Also notice that I cut my finger while doing this craft. Whoops. Suffer for the love of the craft.

And here I've added brick brack but have yet to add the face. I really liked the way it looked at this stage in the process.

And finally... here we see the backside of the tree. My craft on display at the Dallas Country Club -- what a proud moment for this crafter!

Tree Saving Tree Wrap

2008-11-20T11:25:00.000-06:00

I think I told you last week that I was planning to reuse the scrolls from my office Halloween. You remember, the ones that said, "Once upon a time" and "And they all lived happily ever after. The end." Added together, the scrolls measured 16' long, which will wrap plenty-o-Christmas presents. So I took my kitchen sponge, drew a tree on it, cut out the tree, and stamped little trees all over the scrolls in various greens and silver craft paint. What's great is that I was reusing the paper and I bought the paint when I was a sophomore in high school for a project for Mr. Jensen's English class. It was something artsy that had to do with A Tale Of Two Cities. And here I am a decade later using the same jars of paint for a Christmas project. A little ridiculous. But I'm giving myself a "Conservationist Queen" award for reusing and recycling and being environmentally conscious. Oh and you can't beat a project price of nil. And as long as I'm being super smug. Three cheers for me thinking about Christmas wrap before Christmas is hitting me over the head and is less than a week away. This year I've been getting so far behind in craft projects, I'm proud that I'm done with something Christmasy in November. I've even purchased three presents. Join me in praising myself on so many accounts... Haha. I took a picture of the supplies I needed to do the project. I think its pretty obvious that they are household supplies. Nothing fancy. I loved mixing the green colors across the sponge to produce trippy little striped trees. And they mixed in with the plain jane trees to make quite the forest. I can't wait to wrap presents with it! I love doing projects that require a lot of time, thought, planning, smarts, know how, expensive supplies and all that, but let me just tell you, it is truly liberating to do something as simple as sponge painting. This project required the motor skills of a third grader. Every once in a while, I do a project and think, you know, I could do this again and again. Sponge painting fits that bill. If you are ever in a crafty mood but don't want to have to work very hard to do something satisfying, try something like this. I already have plans for another type of wrapping paper for Christmas. I'm thinking that the next needs to be red and gold to counterbalance this green and silver one. Right?

Neverland, the Last Office Halloween Post I Swear

2008-11-19T08:01:00.000-06:00

The pictures of this craft don't look so hot. I'm the first to admit this fact. It was too awkward of an angle to get a good shot. Plus, I'm not so hot with the digi cam. My apologies. Here's the idea behind the craft though. So my office area was dressed as the characters of Peter Pan for Halloween. We needed a distinct Neverland theme. And tossing aside any obscure Michael Jackson references, we turned Wikipedia to remember the tale of Peter and his pals. And you know how you get to Neverland? Well, you fly through the window and take the second star to the right and fly on til morning. Please note that's from memory and I'm not sure if that's the exact celestial direction, but that's not important here. What is important is that I took a bed sheet, painted a window, used packing tape to make the frame of the window and scissors to cut the panes out. And we had ourselves a window. And when our visitors came by we covered the floor with white balloons to simulate the clouds with a pirate ship attached to the window. It was pretty cool. The entire department's efforts to transform into a fairy tale land won us $75 worth of breakfast tacos from Taco Cabana. So there's that. For the crafting details, I used craft paint with poster paint. What's great is that I diluted it pretty well with water and it took just a few ounces of paint to cover the entire twin size sheet.

Oh and as far as the pictures go, you get the overall view, which, granted, is cropped pretty funkily. And then you get some shots of me as Peter Pan and my coworkers as Tinkerbell and Captain Hook, respectively. I thought our costumes really sold us. What's great is that Mariya owned that dress already and it is perfectly Tinkerbell colored!

Vignette, How's That For Diction?

2008-11-18T10:00:00.000-06:00

The Halloween Vignette.
I'll go months without decorating for holidays. The apartment will look exactly the same for months at a time and then suddenly I'll get this urge to really do up something bizarre for a holiday. And the night before Halloween, I just decided that I couldn't live without creating a Halloween vignette on top of my microwave. Of all places. And so I scoured my apartment for creepy things or typical Halloween colored things that could be added to some creepy elements and become part of the vignette. Have you noticed how much I love the word vignette? It's one of my favorite words ever. It's French and I'm a francophile. Plus, like those amazing donut-y pastries from New Orleans, it has that "nay" sound where it looks like "net." Clearly I've moved past the point of the post and I sincerely hope you'll forgive me. I'm a little hopped up on caffeine while I type. Thanks a lot Buzz Brews (By the way, as long as I've mentioned that I'm at a coffee shop while I'm writing this post, I'm going to tell you that the girl who is trying to be all seductive with this guy sitting at the table next to mine just told him that she'd never heard of CCR. Who are these people? How can you live without knowing of Creedence Clearwater Revival? And is that really going to impress anyone? She's all, I'm not into popular music, but not knowing CCR? That's like not knowing who Abraham Lincoln is because you aren't a history buff. She also claims to hate how many Internet cafes have recently sprung up in Cambodia and that when she goes to Cambodia, it's to relax, not to check email. Eavesdropping never loses its appeal). So back to the vignette... Halloween things have to involve candles, right? So I used two little votives, one placed on top of the microwave and approximately 5 inches below the wooden cabinet, which incidentally, is my crafting cabinet, and every intelligent being knows that votive candles don't belong within a few inches of a wooden cabinet. So I lit the candles, turned off the lights and took this picture. Then I had to blow out that little votive. But I think it turned out cutesy eerie. I would never be going for straight-up eerie because that kind of thing just isn't my bag, man. However, I'll take my best stab at cutesyfying any holiday, from Kwanzaa to Arbor Day. And below is a picture of the vignette with the lights on so you can see my efforts in full daylight glory, even if I'm expecting you to appreciate my Halloween efforts though we've nearly reached Thanksgiving.

Fairy Tale, Part One

2008-11-14T09:00:00.000-06:00

Yep, that's my boss dressed as the Pied Piper, with rats on strings attached to his belt loops. He clutches a South American flute of some variety, which of course is a trademark of the Pied Piper, as you can hardly call yourself a "piper" if you don't come complete with a pipe. And though his costume is daring for the workplace and shows quite a bit of creativity... that's not the point of this post my friends and devoted readers. Instead, I draw you attention to the "scene setting" (yes Katie, those are some useless quotes) scrolls of paper that are hanging on the front door, above, and bottom door, below.

And so begins the crafts for the office Halloween party. And no, you don't need to tell me that my office is a bit like The Office. I already know. I work there after all and I'm pretty high up on the Party Planning Committee. And I stayed up half the night making this and a few other assorted crafts that you are soon to see on this blog for our one-day-long celebration of Halloween. Thank goodness we came in second place (it was a tie for second but who really is counting) for our decorations. We tied with the IT department who turned their computer fixing area into, of all things, a dead cowboy train station, a theme which I believe is a little too out there. They just wanted an excuse to be half ghost half train robbers. And we transformed our lovely 15th floor office into a Fairy Tale Wonderland of sorts, complete with a whole host of delightful fairy tale characters.

I thought that these signs would make a good visual impact on our visitors, setting the tone for the theme. I used one of my favorite types of handwriting--that is my Tim-Burton's-Nightmare-Before-Christmas kind of handwriting so that the font would come off as slightly eery, fairly cheerful, youthful and full of whimsy. Michaels sold a 16' roll of paper, which I used as a table runner down the length of my dining table for a week or two before I had to make the craft and I'll be using again in another creative venture that you'll be reading about in a few days, well, if you want to. Each scroll piece is 8' long and features a few rolls on top and bottom of the writing, to give the storybook look. I sketched out the words in pencil (my least favorite writing utensil) before I wrote the words out with a Marks A Lot marker (or three).

I know that this post has made you anxious to see some more about my office Halloween festivities...

First Carved From Stone, Then Painted On

2008-11-13T10:03:00.000-06:00

So my friends, this is a t-shirt with an Easter Island head painted on it in glittery silver paint. So that doesn't need an explanation, right? Pretty simple?

Well, it goes something like this. My coworker was in quite a tizzy. It seems schools these days won't just let their kiddos dress in costumes for Halloween. (Yes, this is the first of several extremely belated Halloween posts. Sorry about that folks, I got a little teensy weensy bit behind.) Her middle school daughter had to dress in a costume that reflected her geography research project, which happened to be the mystery of the Easter Island heads. And as my coworker had neither the budget (hey, she blew the costume money assembling a kick-booty Hermoine Grainger outfit for Halloween night) nor the time to find a true Easter Island head costume, she decided to go for a different tack -- she decided to play up the fact one silly explanation for the statues is that aliens from outer space came down in their shiny silver UFOs and built the statues and lined them up facing the East. So she made a lovely foil headpiece and got up extra early to paint her daughter's face silver. All she needed was a t-shirt to tie the alien bit to the Easter Island thing.

And that's where I come in. She was lamenting this ridiculous story to me and asked if I had any iron-on transfers so she could print something off the Internet. I volunteered to undertake the project because its just the kind of ridiculousness that makes me love public schools in America. Off to target went my coworker for a cheap t-shirt -- got this one off the clearance rack -- and I brainstormed to make the Easter Island thing as alien-y as possible. Silver paint and some extraterrestrial stars do the trick as far as I'm concerned.

I sketched the guy on paper until he looked just right, put the paper beneath the t, used a sharpie to outline the design on the shirt and then filled in the rest with a home-mixed paint that used silver craft paint with some high-end pigment dust from Azel Art Supply. I used real silver flakes to up the luster and voila!

Little Miss Julia looked awesome, so I'm told, and she was really excited about her shirt. Too bad the silver flakes can't weather the washing machine. It's kind of a one time use only project. It was fun. Let me know next time you need something this ridiculous.

Plug #2 Art Show

2008-11-11T14:58:00.000-06:00

In many ways, it is quite fitting that my first ever art show should take place at Inwood Village. It's a shopping center that is so tied to my childhood. I had my first job there -- at Smoothie Zone (I can't even remember if that was it's real name!) down where the TCBY used to be, near the old Black Eyed Pea. I made smoothies and served up fro-yo back when I was old enough to work, but not old enough to drive so my mom had to pick me up and drop me off every work day. I had my second job in Inwood Village. I worked at the Zuka Juice that became a Jamba Juice that is now a high-end candle store. So many fond memories of working at the trio of smoothie joints that tried to make a go of things in Inwood Village.

It's amazing that I can get so nostalgic for a simple shopping village, but I love that place. It's anchored by the ever-bizarre Inwood Theater, where, a few weeks ago, my mom and I were walking past the box office as a ticket seller sat in the booth serenading the empty parking lot with his guitar cover songs. I believe he had turned on the box office microphone and was belting out John Denver's classic "Country Roads." It has shops that rival Highland Park Village, Preston Center and Snieder Plaza, yet it is outside the Bubble, and therefore more casual and serves a broader, more diverse community.

In my childhood we took family walks to Inwood Village, accompanied of course by our most beloved dog, Montie. We'd walk to that Starbucks and the cashier would bring out a cup of water for Montie and she'd make a big mess. Now days, there's a permanent doggie water bowl outside the Inwood Village Starbucks, but back then you'd have to tap on the glass, point at your dog and hope that the employees were feeling generous.

The countless hours of time I've spent there eating and shopping, bumping into friends--I really feel like its my home base. I remember my cousin Emily's surprise birthday party at the pizza joint that eventually became Lover's Egg Roll, only to recently become the crepe hot spot, Rise. Emily thought that no one loved her because we'd all done such a great job forgetting her birthday that she ran away from home and missed the first hour or so of her surprise party. And when that pizza place closed, I thought it was the end of the world. And again, when Lover's Egg Roll met its demise (that's the original location, you know), I thought that the place would never be the same. But Rise fits in as well as any place before it. But now I see that it is in those cobblestone paved streets that things are always changing. A smoothie store can become a candle store. And Children's Collection can become Chico's. And Mario Accardi's parents' costume supply store above the floral shop can become Tyler's Dallas. And, finally, the girl who's mom dropped her off to make smoothies $8 an hour can show her art at Starbucks at age 26, 11 years after her first debut in the Inwood Village community.

So, at the top is my invitation to my art show. Which really isn't much of a show because it's just four paintings on the wall between the bakery counter and the bathroom (pretty glamorous, huh?) but it is a start.

And sorry if I get a little too verbose on the subject. I haven't written much lately so I'm feeling a bit wordy.

Plug for the Other Blog

2008-11-04T10:16:00.000-06:00

Hello my dears --
I'm sure you're all too busy voting today (an activity which takes like forever -- I spent at least 10 minutes in line this morning. Geez! This country thinks I've got 10 minutes to spare every four years, how ridiculous) to check on my poor old blog, but I wanted to give a plug to my other blog, my artsy-fartsy borders-on-the-bizarre PDF'ed. I haven't had time to post lots of my bevy of craft projects to this blog, but with Halloween last week around the office, I kinda went nuts on the other blog. In fact, I have a post scheduled for every day this week and three days of next week. So if you like what you see of my pseudo-artistic endeavors using the copy machine at work, check back frequently.

Other coolkidscrafting items of interest include... Yours truly is busy designing the tree-topper for the Dallas Theta Christmas Tree Auction to be held this weekend at the Dallas Country Club. Never ever in my wildest imagination did I dream that one of my craft projects would end up prominently displayed at DCC, right there on Beverly Drive! It's gotta be really awesome, so naturally with T minus four days to go I haven't drawn up a plan, bought any supplies or started working on it! Yay for being a crafter and procrastinator. Oh and in case you were wondering, some of the Christmas trees to be auctioned off are designed by professionals with every craft and design supply at their fingertips and a limitless budget. Yowza! I just hope my tree topper isn't sad and Homer-Simpson-designs-Lisa's-costumesque when compared to the others.

Wipey Board Wonders

2008-10-16T10:09:00.000-05:00

I'm still having difficulty getting too much crafting done. Or perhaps I should say that I have recently crafted and then forgotten to take pictures of the completed craft... Doh! For my church retreat last weekend, I did a calligraphy project. I scribed the same Bible verse on 36 cards, which were then tied to red roses for our retreatants. They looked simply marvelous darling and naturally I forgot to take a picture of the completed project. Rats! The women really loved the calligraphy project and many of them told me last night that they planned to keep their cards for a long time. Yay! My craft projects have gone to live in other people's lives and that's what really matters. So today I'm showing you some recent drawings from the wipey boards at work, all done by me of course. Above you'll see my Pooh and Piglet. Monday was in fact the birthday of Winnie the Pooh or as they say in Russia "Vinni Puh." If you've got a wee bit of time on your hands, you should watch that link's video. Russian Winnie the Pooh is awesome (thanks to the Russian coworker, I know of his greatness). Normally I don't blog about Soviet cartoons, but just this once... In my drawing, you'll see a particularly trim Pooh (I couldn't quite get the rotundity) with a honey pot and his buddy Piglet giving him a birthday balloon. We like to mark the important anniversaries around this office. Clearly.

And here's my front door. The quote about the hurricane was contributed by one of my coworkers... I'm not that bitter about baseball. I just wanted yall to see what the office mates get to see when approaching my door.

And of course to gloat about defeating the LA Angels of Anaheim or whatever ridiculous string of words and locations they are going by today, I added a dead rally monkey to my door. Enjoy. I promise I'll be crafting soon and then I'll post some cool actual crafts instead of just useless stuff.

Two Months Back

2008-10-03T08:33:00.000-05:00

Here's the highlight doodle for the month on August. Pretty exciting, huh? Well, it seems that Hilary has finally mastered the art of the swirl. Oh wait, I've been doing swirly things for years. This is just an ultimate manifestation of all things swirly.
I still wanted to show it off though in case you wanted to see more from me, which, of course, you always do.

p.s. Sorry I'm so delightfully sassy this morning.

Three Months Late

2008-10-01T11:19:00.001-05:00

Here are the doodles from the month of July. I haven't posted my monthly doodle sets in a while, so I'll try to do that, now that I've got three months worth stockpiled as pdf's on my computer. I realize that posting my doodles verges on narcissistic, but I just feel like my little inked up calendar is such an expression of me. Anyone who knows me or has ever sat through a meeting with me has certainly seen me have at a piece of paper with relentless, wrapped attention to detail. I won't stop doodling until the whole page is covered, even at the expense of the necessary information on the piece of paper... like phone numbers or deadlines...

I'm particularly proud of this "doodle." I'm also forever indebted to my coworker who handles the office supplies catalog who ordered me the most awesome marker set ever. And I'm proud to say that I've actually managed to incorporate the markers into my work on at least a half dozen occasions. Judging by the doodle, you can tell that I was really looking forward to the leg surgery. I was, for what its worth. I was most anxious to have the surgery in the rear-view window instead of always looming on the horizon. And it was as pleasant as could be expected, considering the crux of the operation was to remove a 17-inch nail from my thigh. Delightful, folks. I decided to follow up my two days of intense health care with a tribute to America.

You'll note that throughout the doodles, you can see the Red Sox scores noted on each game day. A particular highlight of my stay in the hospital (besides the fact that a billion loving people came to bring my flowers and tasty food ... always a huge plus) was that the hospital carried a station that aired the Red Sox. So I got to watch my beloved baseball boys whilst doped up on Aunt Beth's brownies and morphine! Talk about a sweet summer...

Finally, I just really liked the way this turned out. And, no, I didn't win the dessert bake off. I'm not even going to claim that I was robbed (though my cupcakes kicked major booty). It was a high calorie day of office fun.

Church Logo

2008-09-29T12:58:00.000-05:00

Can I come out from my hiding place now? I feel like I've been carrying around the weight of this "craft" project for a really long time now. And few of you will even know what this thing could possibly be. Oh well, this gives me a chance to explain!
I was not chosen to be the team artist for my church retreat group. However, when the woman who was chosen had to leave the job half way through, I took over. And thus, you see the results. This is the logo for the upcoming church retreat. The original artist, Kathleen, did the bird and hand part and I added the leaves and branches. And I did a lot of the computer technical parts.

It's not really a craft project I realize. But it is an art project that has been snagging a lot of my time that I usually reserve for crafting. As the retreat date draws closer, I'm sure I'll be showing off some more retreat crafting projects! Get excited!

I did most of the art for this logo on Gimp, which I believe a blogged about a while ago, but is a freeware photo manipulation software that I have downloaded for my laptop. I have nothing but good things to say about Gimp considering that it does all the stuff that I normally do using Photoshop, but is completely free. It's also quite easy to use, though I really ought to get a mouse for my laptop for these kinds of projects. The touch pad thing for your fingers is really tough to use for selecting specific regions. That's a personal problem, not a software one. I did have to shout out for help from my coworker and complete computer graphics guru Eric. He helped with the feathering on the outside of the blue circle.

I'm so glad to be emerging from this project! I get kinda stressed out about digital art projects. I feel like you can always find more ways to enhance the digital files, so the toughest part of a digital project is saying "done!" I am apt to "gild the lily" as it were and keep messing with things until it looks overdone. I hope that this one is simple and dignified yet technically decent. That's all I'm shooting for here folks.

Trapped in an Ironic State of Crafting Affairs

2008-09-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

Readers -- No pictures, I know.

I am trapped in an ironic state of crafting affairs. Perhaps you could have guessed that from the title of this post. Well, I'll be so kind as to elaborate on this sentiment for you in case it is enigmatic.
When you are of a crafting nature, people think of you when they have a craft project that they need to have done. And being excited about the prospect of helping others, I jump at the chance to take on crafting roles of all varieties. And then the procrastination sets in. And I start to long for the day when my crafting docket is empty and I can paint and doodle and draw and build my silly little designs all on my own whims.
So for now I'm trudging through these ridiculous crafts that I'm doing for others (they truly range from the sublime to the bizarre and one is an absolutely hideous mess on my bedroom floor that I suspect will be FILE 13'ed long after its due date). And well, I'll be honest when I admit that there's at least one project of my own initiative that I'm procrastinating on (bookshelves!).
I'm going to the Natural State this weekend, which does not imply that I'll be going nude, but instead that I'll be going to Nashville, Arkansas to see the Granny and Papaw. My mom and I call this Nashville, "Little N" because when you say you are Nashville bound, people envision you crooning country tunes with a guitar case and greyhound bus ticket to Grand Old Opry Fame. But alas, I'll leave my Hank Williams dreams in check as I go to Little N this weekend, but I'll be sure to pack some crafting supplies!
And hopefully I'll get some work done and have some new gems to share with you all.

I Knew I Was Saving Those Caps For A Reason

2008-09-13T15:56:00.001-05:00

Hey folks, as Paige likes to call me, here's a birthday present I wrapped up and gave to my favorite recently turned 30 pal, Paige. I gave her one of my paintings because she liked it a lot at the time she saw it for the first time and she was fairly excited about receiving the painting. She looked pretty funny walking down Greenville Avenue on a Friday night clutching a piece of painted glass. Oh well. I used this hard-to-define-the-correct-genre wrapping paper that was echoing American farmhouse, sunshine hippie flowy dress, tacky kitchen wallpaper to wrap the piece of glass and I tied it with twine. For those who have ever tried to tie a bow with twine, you know... you are doomed to fail if you are looking to be aesthetically pleasing. So of course this sends me digging around the house for a doo-dad that I can glue into the center of the hot mess to make the whole thing look presentable. And my eyes fell upon my glass jar (thanks Emily!) of bottle caps that I've been collecting (with a lot of help from my dad as I don't really "do" beer) and I saw the perfect solution to two problems:

1. How can I make this present look pretty?
2. What am I ever going to do with these bottle caps?

And I think it looks nice. I got some compliments and that's all I'm ever really going for. You should try it!

Day Off Correspondence

2008-09-12T11:01:00.000-05:00

To add to the recent collection of calligraphy posts, here's what I did this morning for some letters I needed to send. I tell you what, I've gotten pretty good at the standard, "Dallas, Texas 752.." because I use it so frequently! And I decided to really roll out the personalized pink stationery that I bought from vistaprint.com (which is cheap yet high quality... I can't say enough good stuff about using them though I'd advise going for the "linen" paper option so that the paper feels really high quality).

Thanks to several practice sessions, I've really gotten comfortable using the colored ink. At first I had a really hard time switching from black to blue or red or gold (the three colors I own besides black) because I felt like you could see differences in color as the amount of ink left in the quill started to dwindle. And that's true -- you can see the color difference, but I've gotten better at knowing when to refill the quill, which is, like, constantly. If I were to write a sentence with my quill with colored ink, it would look like this,

"Geez, d(refill)o you thin(refill)k that t(refill)he So(refill)x have (refill) what it(refill) takes t(refill) to make (refill) it to the (refill) Series (refill) this ye(refill)ar?"

Clearly, it's not an efficient way to write a lengthy amount, but it's all right for addresses... if you are in a patient mood. Luckily for my lady friends to whom the envelopes are addressed, I was in a patient mood this morning.

But now I'm not, I only have so many hours to shop on my day off! Goodness gracious folks, I hope this post will sustain you through the weekend and my trip to NYC.

Calligraphy doodling

2008-09-11T17:11:00.000-05:00

I had a couple of minutes of free time on Tuesday to do some calligraphy practice. I tell you what, September for a rabid baseball fan can be so busy. Especially when you insist on going a full weekend of games. More on that later if I can get my act together...

I'm trying to get a little better with this new nib I purchased. I need to spend some time working on my form instead of just free styling all the time. I know that Miss Susan likes to see my every calligraphy creation so I hope this keeps my DJ Jazzy happy for a few minutes.

This weekend finds me flying to New York to catch the 7th to last game ever at Yankee Stadium on Monday between the Yanks and the Chicago White Sox (wrong colored Sox for this fan's taste, but you can't get everything you want). It's overwhelming enough to know I'll be attending the wake of the cathedral of baseball, especially in a down year for the Bronx Bombers. But alas, I've wandered away from the strict confines of my craft blog to boast about my good baseball fortune. The reason I bring this up is that it seems that I won't be getting a chance to do too much crafting over the weekend. I'll see if I can get something done...

Toodles!

Giving You The Bird

2008-09-05T10:15:00.000-05:00

What in the world is this? You should be thinking that thought when you look at the above picture.

Well, it is a bird that I carved out of garden foam--you know that stuff that you soak in water and then stuff into flower pots to make an arrangement? I don't know what it is officially called, but I do know that it is super easy to use for carved projects. Of course, it's easy pliability can be a problem, too. As soon as you are done carving your little object, you'll need to coat the the sculpture with a bunch of layers of sealant. I used modge-podge but I think you could use rubber cement if you wanted to.

The picture above is the little birdy all carved and covered in a coat of glue. He's being held up by a toothpick stuck into another brick of plant foam.

Tune in for updates on this project! Pretty soon he should look a lot more like a precious birdy! He'll even be perched on a log!

Nerd Alert: I've started collecting stamps

2008-09-03T10:15:00.000-05:00

If you are lucky enough to have received personal correspondence from me in the last few months, then there's nothing new about this post. But alas, I don't think that my regular readers correspond with those folks I've written to recently, so I'm showing off my new style.
I can't even remember when I read about doing this (or where, but I'm thinking it was in Domino a year ago or so), but as soon as I saw this concept for the first time, I decided I had to become one of these kinds of people--the kind of correspondent who artfully arranges a collection of stamps to letters instead of just slapping one Liberty sticker on the envelope.
And you know what? Stamp collecting is actually a little fun. I haven't crossed a total geek line -- all of my stamps are those that can be purchased online from the US Postal Service. I am not out there on eBay scoping for some long lost collector's edition something or other.
I love that two of my stamps show pitchers--a lovely silver one and a porcelain one, too. It's all so delightfully domestic, well, all except for the mountain goat, but he's a cute little character so I don't mind.
I'm a little nervous that my postman is going to freak out on me at some point though I'm quite sure that all these post office tasks are handled by robots nowadays anyway.
Another reason why you should consider doing this besides the obvious--quick addition keeps the brain alive and active--it's pretty cheap. A whole stack of two-cent stamps costs less than a dollar. If you are interested in doing this, address your envelopes AFTER you've put the stamps on. Otherwise, the envelope may look crowded and less like a miniature work of design art. As long as the point of writing a letter to someone is to be exceptionally thoughtful (hey, if you wanted to be a slacker, you could just email or call in your thank yous), the envelope might as well be an outward sign of your courtesy, right?

Mean Green Clothes Dryin' Machine

2008-09-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

Notice anything green about my bathroom? (Besides the plethora of green clothing...)
This weekend I successfully installed my drying rack in my bathroom. And when the shower curtain is closed, you don't even see the plastic monstrosity. Of course, in the eyes of an environmental protector (or whatever green people want to be called), the drying rack is a thing of beauty. For me, it means I can run four loads of clothes through the washing machine but only two in the dryer, saving energy and having softer, less shrunken clothing.
I recognize that this isn't a particularly crafty project, but as my little mission statement says (see the Left Panel), I like doing things that are cheap and using the dryer less is cheap!
Plus installing the thing was nightmare-ish. My ladder didn't fit in the space so I had to stand on the (very) narrow wall-side ledge of my bathtub to install one half of the thing. And all whilst using a power drill at an awkward angle. All in all it's worth it though and I get a kick out of being a little friendlier to the Earth.
And really, it isn't that ugly. I enjoyed artistically arranging my clothes on the hooks beneath the mirror and on the drying rack. Note that no, as Martha would say, "unmentionables" are visible! Goodness gracious, even a green girl has to have some standards!
And now for a completely useless aside... when I was a study-abroad student across the Atlantic in Florence, Italy. I lived with the lovely Bianchi family and enjoyed many, many moments of it. Of course, I declared war on the clothes line that was precariously placed outside my fourth story window. I had to dry everything outside! And I had the absolute worst eye for Tuscan weather. I'd often go to classes with my "unmentionables" and other assorted clothing items blissfully blowing under the Italian sun only to remember as I rode the crowded bus home from school through a blustery downpour that all my poor clothes were getting pounded! And naturally a sock or two wouldn't be able to stand the storm (this compounded with my weak clothespin skills) and would plummet to the ground and gated garden below. I'd have to knock on these poor old people's door and try to explain in very sad and broken Italian "sock" "ground" "over there."
Oh Italian laundry. How difficult it all seemed then. How quaint it seems now. I'm delighted to recreate the situation right in my very own bathroom!
"Posso fare un bucato?" -- That's Italian for "Could I do a load of laundry?"

New Nib

2008-08-12T10:12:00.000-05:00

Roundhand Special

2008-08-11T12:12:00.000-05:00

Pool Envy, a new painting style.

2008-07-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

Above is the new painting style I'm trying out. Like Daisuke's Gyro-Ball* or Zoolander's Magnum, I feel like I've been promoting the "I've got a new paint style coming up!" for quite some time and I'm happy to finally be revealing a finished product. What do you think?
The picture doesn't do it too much justice, to be honest. I'm really a fan of this style and those that have seen it in person seem to like it a lot too. Well, everyone but my mom. She doesn't like it much at all. Oh well. You can't please everyone.
I'm tentatively calling the new style "pool envy" because it reflects a few facets of my life. One, I recently had surgery and wasn't supposed to go swimming so as I painted each little blue circle, in my mind I was splashing around in some perfectly situated pool, with tin bucket of girly tropical drinks right next to the stack of plush, soft beach towels. Two, I live in an apartment building that doesn't come complete with a pool. So I suffer from a bit of pool envy, even when I'm given doc's clearance to splish splash to my heart's content. Thankfully casa de mom y dad offers me a lovely place to swim and reconnect with their gaggle of pets (conveniently located just across the Park Cities from my apartment). And three, there's a point in the Texas summer when even the pool water gets too hot to really cool you down. At that point, your mental vision of a refreshing dip in the cool waters is, in reality, a chance to wade around in tepid water. As Dallas has experienced quite a few days in the 100s, I expect that this "pool too hot" syndrome will set in very soon, if it hasn't already. At the very least, I can look at this painting and dream about the refreshment that a chilly dip would bring about. And that's the inspiration behind these pools of blue.

I wanted to include a few pictures of the process by which this piece was created. Above is the picture of the painting with all the blue bubbles filled in but without the shimmering silver background color applied. Obviously, the piece of glass is resting on a work towel, which looks pretty dirty. Hope you can get past that. Below is the original sketch for the painting. I planned to make a few "colonies" of circles and then add in a few "families" in the white space. I really like the shapes that can be created from the little circles, especially the biggest "colony" of circles. I thought that one turned out particularly well.

* I've been kinda aching for a few days to throw in some Red Sox references when I post stuff. I mean, it's a pivotal point in the AL East and then there's all the Manny drama. But alas, I am not writing a baseball blog. But I don't see why I can't occasionally add a Sox reference. Right?

10, 2 & 4

2008-07-30T08:15:00.000-05:00

Hey kids! I know I promised my most loyal reader that I'd have tons of projects rolling out this week. And I wasn't lying. I've got a lot of things ready to post. A month ago (perhaps more?) I believe I mentioned that I have a new laptop and that this new computer would help me post more frequently. Well... As I discovered, it wasn't going to let me post anything but raw, uncropped pictures until I got photo manipulating software. And since I didn't want to splurge on Photoshop, I thought I'd shop around for something cheaper. I was mentioning this little photo editing crisis to a coworker (who happens to be the ultimate Photoshop whiz) and he told me I should get GIMP, a free photo manipulation software that has vectors and layers and all the cool bells and whistles of Photoshop but is slightly less intuitive and of course completely a bigger bargain, i.e., free. So I downloaded it and have been loving it!
I forgot how much I love being able to do cool tricks with photos. And not that I did particularly cool tricks with today's pictures, but I was able to lighten the color of the Diet Dr Pepper so that it wouldn't look so black. Instead its kind of a creepy shade of neon maroon or something but I'm learning the ropes with this new software. I hope you'll cut me some slack. It's not like I professionally edit photos (anymore).
This is an update of my kitchen shelf complete with old school style glass Diet Dr Pepper bottles, which will eventually hold spices and baking supplies. For now, I have the uber tough task of drinking all that soda!

A funny thing happened while I was installing this project. Or at least I chuckled. I got the power drill all ready and figured out where I needed to drill holes and had everything all ready. I reached to look for the screws I needed and couldn't find them anywhere. And I'd been sure to buy 16 golden screws designed to fit the "L" brackets I used for the project. I searched high and low for the screws--through two tool boxes, opening drawers and cabinets. The logical crafter walks away from the project until the screws surface, knowing that 16 screws can't really vanish into thin air. But not me! I was really determined to get the project done, even at the expense of abandoning these 16 golden screws. (insert apparent non sequiter here) If you know my father Dale, you may know that he never throws away a piece of hardware. He keeps nails, screws, bolts, nuts, washers, and countless other metal objects designed for some household/outdoors/automotive function in old coffee cans and washed out jelly jars. He has shelves full of these jars. And he searches through them with great care and pride. It's a wonderful relationship he has with these jars. The greatest part is that he can grab a jar off the shelf, empty out a few items and pick up a washer and tell you where he got that washer and why he chose to save it. Some have great stories like, "I found this while walking down a sidewalk in New Orleans" or "This came out of the engine of my 1975 BMW that I drove when you were born. It's been waiting a long time to finally be used again!"
Well folks, I too have such a jar. I only have one jar and it's not full of truly storied pieces of hardware. But it did manage to produce 16 mismatching screws that I could use to complete my project and hang up my Diet Dr Pepper shelf. And I kid thee not, as soon as I finished hanging the shelf, I walked out of the kitchen and saw the 16 golden, matching screws on my coffee table. How irritating. Murphy's Law I guess. I put them in my hardware jar. Sometime during the next five decades, their time will come.

I like this project, but I feel like something is missing. It's still a little drab. I can't decide what to do to make it more fun. Something behind the bottles? A different collection beneath them? I don't know. Let me know if you have any thoughts. I am really open to suggestion...

And one more note, how come that one bottle is so much more full than the other bottles? Doesn't that seem odd? I'm really looking forward to drinking that one.

Lion Swirl

2008-07-28T22:09:00.000-05:00

I'm a little pretentious in comparing my glass art paintings to those by the, as some critics would argue, father of the 19th century Romanticism movement, Eugene Delacroix. Yet that's just what I'm about to do! As I started to sketch this design and choose the colors I would use to color the glass, I was immediately reminded of the Delacroix painting, Arab Attacked By Lion. I've copied a picture of the work (below this paragraph) for those who don't remember Art History 201: 19th century European Art, though honestly I don't know how you could forget it, the effects of those genius artists still resound throughout modern design and shape much of what we envision when we think of museum art. Anyhow, I never start writing these things with the intention of sounding like a huge art history snob, but I think my affection for the subject can come across as a bit snooty. Sorry folks. I'll give that subject a break, but not before I tell you why I think that my glass painting, which I've named Lion Swirl, recalls the aforementioned Delacroix piece. One of the tenants of Romanticism is the movement captured by the artist. The piece is a shot of action, and a dramatic moment in the action, at that. In its own time, it was revolutionary to convey so much energy, dynamic movement--even the weather in the background calls to mind a turbulent storm at its breaking point. The eye is guided through the painting in a circular motion. One glances from the fierce lion to the Arab with his sword ready to strike and continues back around the canvas in a swirl. And in my painting, the colors and the shapes cause the eye to follow a similar swirl. The red and gold pallet is broken up with a smattering of purple and white dots.
I hope you like it. It's the last of this type of painting that I will be presenting for a while. I've run out of glass!

At the top is a shot of the whole piece. Again, as with all the glass paintings, it's really hard to take a good picture without the flash on the camera messing the whole thing up. One of these days I'll figure out a good way of taking pictures of these paintings. And below, I show you a close up of the picture so that you can see it from a different angle. Perhaps with this picture below you get a better idea of the swirly nature of the lines. I don't really know because, of course, I know what the real thing looks like. And finally, I unveil a silly picture of the painting propped up against a zebra print cloth (that's my shower curtain to be exact!). I just wanted to show how transparent the glass is. Sometimes you see the various backgrounds and start to think that the painting isn't see through, but it is.

Doodle, Possible Painting?

2008-07-28T16:00:00.000-05:00

I wanted to show off a new type of doodle I've been working on lately as sort of a template for some future paintings. I'll keep you posted on how it goes as far as the painting thing goes.