The Bowls of Valentines Day

Allow me to introduce you to my Valentine's Day project. I tested it on Katie when I went to Mardi Gras last weekend, and she gave it a thumbs up, so... I'm moving forward and making a billion of these for my coworkers on Valentine's Day. And these are super-crafty, too. So they really belong on my blog (unlike a few of my recent posts, which reminds me, I'm thinking of doing something sort-of like DesignSponge does, 'Things I Love,' as a sort of way of showcasing stuff that's not really crafty but is still fun).
So this is a paper mache bowl, filled with chocolates from World Market (think Belgian and German, yum!), and tied together with a red ribbon. Thankfully, my workplace BFF Stepheny taught me some tricks for paper mache (homegirl makes a mean piñata!) so I'll pass those along with the instructions.
To make the bowls extra fine to the touch, I used tissue paper instead of real paper as my base ingredient. Actually, as you can perhaps tell, the tissue paper is from Anthropologie! I bought a set of glass bowls and some drawer pulls and came home with tons and tons of their red-dot tissue paper and decided I just had to do something crafty with it--thus, my inspiration for these little candy-holding cups! I mixed in some red and pink tissue paper I had in my craft cache to provide some interest and to break up the monotony of the red-dots-on-white tissue paper. I ripped up the red and pink paper, but cut up the Anthropology paper. Ripping paper makes for better shapes, but cutting saves time. So, if you are going to do this project, rip up your accent papers but cut the basic one, because you'll save so much time that way. Next, wrap bowls, cups, jars, anything you want in wax paper. And this tip is a bit complicated, so I'll try to use an example: If you want the cup to be about 3 inches tall, wrap the wax paper at least 4 inches tall, because you'll have to cut away the top part of the project as it's not possible for it to come out even all around the cup. Secure the wax paper with manilla tape (you know, craft tape) and buy some liquid starch. I always thought you do paper mache with water and flour, but Piñata Queen Stepheny told me that flour and water will mildew or mold in humid climates after about a week, two at tops. And since the above bowl was bound for Toxic-Gumbo land (New Orleans), I knew I better follow Stepheny's advice and use liquid starch to hold the project together. It's cheap and available in the laundry detergent section of Wal-Mart.
I did my bowls in three rounds, about six layers of tissue per round. You'll need a full day between each round, so this is not a last minute project. And that's why I'm posting this Valentine's Day idea now, before you hit crunch time. I'll post more pictures of my bowls as they become available. I waited for Katie to like this one before proceeding forward and making plenty more. To be honest, these are really easy and pretty cute, if I may say so myself!

Jaunt into Postcard Collecting

I don't really know why I decided I wanted to start collecting postcards--people who know me know I'll go to some pretty extreme lengths to nab a free postcard if I think it is visually appealing. (Katie from Subtropical Paradise had to pull her car over during Mardi Gras traffic in the Garden District so I could steal one with a picture of a superhero called NolaMan? Is that right, Katie? Whatever it is, it was a lot of trouble to grab a little piece of paper!) So, I guess it's not surprising that I decided to expand into actually collectable postcards. I am leaning toward covering a wall in postcards. I've got the wall picked out and, well, I have enough postcards to cover at least three feet squared, but clearly I've got to collect a lot more before I can finish this project. That's why I'm hitting up a flea market tomorrow with my mom. The above postcard is so beautiful. I am not sure of its era, but I can tell you, it's definitely a farm from my part of Maine. And by my part of Maine, I mean the non-coastal region. It reminds me of Maple Syrup Sunday, when maple syrup farmers open their sugar shacks to the public and serve fresh, hot maple syrup on top of vanilla ice cream! Yum!

This card is the oldest in my nascent collection. You can't tell from the scanned image above, but this postcard is embossed with a fine filigree, meaning it is pleasing to the touch and the eyes. I couldn't resist this turkey, especially since my family is so into Thanksgiving. And if Thanksgiving is not "Our National Holy Day," it certainly is "Our Family's Holy Day." I don't need to recap the entire 1848 covered wagon, happy family circle, persimmon trees walk bit here, but I will say, I love Thanksgiving and I'm awfully glad to own this little piece of history. The turkey wearing a hat also recalls all those crazy pictures of politicians (say presidents, governors, etc.) pardoning a turkey in publicity stunts pre-holiday. Those pictures always involve turkeys in patriotic hats.

Yeah, so, what's the draw for this one? I will grant you that this is less interesting visually than the rest of my postcard collection, but I bought this postcard because it shows baby Dallas, back in the day. The back tells you quite an interesting collection of facts about Dallas: "Dallas is the Nation's largest inland cotton market -- practically one-half of the cotton crop of the Nation is produced within twelve hours ride. Dallas leads the world as an oil center -- more than 65 % of the oil of the United States is produced within easy overnight travel by rail." Well, none of that stuff is true anymore. But, hey, if it hadn't been true at the time this postcard was written, Dallas would never be the city it is today. I love this bridge. I *think* I have driven over this bridge a few times myself. The street lamps look familiar. Of course, I could be wrong. I'll have to ask my dad about this stuff... He always knows (even though he's not a Dallas native).

Above is another great Maine postcard, and below is a great Dallas postcard. Do you sense a theme? I decided I'd only buy postcards that have an emotional appeal for me personally. Of course, this goes against the advice of postcard collecting books (I read an article from one online, I'm not that into it), but that's the point to me. To collect things that make me happy, things that I can look at and have memories of. Thus, Dallas and Maine are two sources of memories. I never saw that Maine signpost, but I've been to a lot of those towns and worked with people from a few of them. And John Nealy Bryant's cabin is--aside from the JFK drive--the historical spot in downtown Dallas. So I wanted a postcard of that, too.

Nothing new.

The camera cord is still missing. Sorry folks, that means no new posts. It's a bummer for both you and me because I have a lot of things I want to post pictures of. Can anyone think of where it might be?

Week Two Calligraphy

So, here I am again. Posting pictures of what can only be described as idealized first grade handwriting. I mean, really, this stuff doesn't look too advanced. You might be surprised though at how hard it can be to use an ink quill and make these letters! Above is the "gothic" lowercase letters, a through k. On the last line I determined I had the skills to write one of my favorite names, that of my cat, dear "jack" McCoy. To be honest, I was pretty surprised at how difficult an "h" is for me, since it's my letter. "e" and "f" are cool though. I guess I can tell someone to "eff" off with beautiful, simple handwriting. And, naturally that's why I took the course in the first place.

Here's a much more crowded page of scripting. And the crowded figures make it look more interesting, but they don't help me determine my skill level at the letters. The (page designer's term here) white space of the top image allows me to more quickly determine my skill level than this more crowded page above, but I still thought my blog's most frequent reader would want to know that as soon as I could, I wrote "dj jazzy" and I think it looks pretty good.

And the capital letters. For the first time in my class, I was so annoyed by one of the letters that I actually crossed it out! I found the capital "P" to be so difficult I couldn't stop myself from just striking through one of my flops. I hit a stride there in the center with letters like "I, K, L" so I guess I can now write "ILL" and "KILL" beautifully. So my range is growing, eh? eh?

And on another note, I have lost the cord that connects my camera to my computer. Thus, no new pictures. Everything I've got has to come from my office's scanner. Sorry that this leaves you poor readers with nothing new to peruse. I am searching all over for the cord. And then you will really be in for some treats!!

All Start and No Finish

This has been a not-so-hot week for this crafty girl. Not that it hasn't been a fun week, it just hasn't been a super creative week! I did start a couple of new projects (the photo montage above was made using Paint, the saddest of all photo manipulating programs, so please don't judge critically... I tried... ), but so far they are just started projects and not really nearing the finish line. I thought I'd throw a post up anyways, because I hate to think that my poor readers have nothing to read about! And there's not much to say about this, especially as one is sortof a secret-ish kind of project. And the other, well... it's got a long way to go before it is used.

I'm off to New Orleans tomorrow and I hope to be so inspired by beads that I do something ridiculously crafty and useless with the stash of beads I'm sure to bring home.

Calligraphy Class, Part One

That's it. My first shot at calligraphy. There's room for improvement, I'll give you that, but I'm really excited about the whole thing. The class was tons of fun and the instructor--what a hoot! I thoroughly enjoyed my first calligraphy class and am excited to learn more as the weeks go by.
As you can see, last night we learned some of the basic strokes of calligraphy as well as the most basic way of printing numerals. I think that the "4" is particularly enjoyable. You can tell that I really had some initial problems with the "5" -- what a doosey! But I picked it up after a bit. My best number (as in the one that looks the most like the model) is a "7" though there's not much to that number in the first place.
Up at the top are the basic strokes, which were really fun. I could spend all day working on those, of course, they aren't too pretty. After you work on them for a while, you start to notice that what may initially look straight, is actually not straight at all, but slanted or crooked. And all the "c" and backwards "c" shapes are my attempts at semi-circles. Wow. That's hard to do, and I'm serious. Getting a perfect semi-circle is near impossible for me, but obviously, these things take lots and lots of practice.
I'll keep y'all updated on my progress...

Yay! New Calendar Day!

My abacus calendar arrived from Maine! I had to celebrate and post a picture, because it makes me so happy to have a brand new collection of beautiful prints. And they remind me of my days Down East...
Sorry if all the hyperlinks are distracting. I just get carried away when I think about the Pine Tree State!

Cabinet Upgrade

I like my apartment, don't get me wrong. It's in the ideal neighborhood for me--quieter than Dallas' West Village or Uptown, but by no means boring. The building is small and quiet, I rarely hear my neighbors and that's great. And the layout is fairly ideal for me. But, I'm not a huge fan of the white walls (there's a very strict no paint clause) and beige carpets. It's so bland! And I'm such a fan of color, texture, patterns, eye-catching elements... That's why I insist on undertaking projects that, yeah, I could live without, but that bring extra colors and patterns into my home.

When I moved in to this apartment, I was thrilled that the bathroom has turquoise tiles (a lovely escape from the white-on-white scheme that rules the rest of the pad). But I was fairly depressed by the bathroom cabinets under the sink. The hardware couldn't have been more boring if they tried and, to make things worse, the cabinet doors didn't match up and close correctly, meaning my cleaning supplies were always visible!

If you've never ventured into the cabinet-hanging world, I urge you to avoid it at all costs. On a previous house redecorating kick, I took down about 14 cabinets, thinking it would be a breeze to re-hang them. Boy was I wrong! Apparently, it takes an engineering degree to get the doors to line up perfectly and also to shut correctly. Thankfully, in my apartment's bathroom, I only had one cabinet to re-hang and I got through the whole process without cursing or pulling out any hair.

And now for the fun part of this project...

I wanted the bathroom cabinets to have color and different handles. I'd been looking around for hardware at various stores (Elliot’s True Value, Restoration Hardware) and online. I found some great handles at Anthropologie's winter clearance sale and they were cheap, so I snapped 'em up. They are an ivory-colored bone-like material, in a very classic shape. I bought a roll of Caspari wrapping paper to cover the cabinet faces and added in the handles, and voila a very refined looking collection of bathroom cabinets. To cover cabinets with paper, you should use a high quality double-stick tape. Often in the scrapbooking section of a craft store you'll find the kind of tape I'm talking about. Make sure, though, that you don't use a "puffy" tape, or else you'll be able to see the tape when the project is finished. Cut the paper to fit the cabinets (whether you want a little to wrap around the sides or a small border of the cabinet underneath is your choice), carefully place the paper on the cabinet, flatten out any wrinkles, and then cover with clear contact paper, for a lacquered look.

At right is a "before and after" picture of the cabinets when I was half-way done with the project. It's such a typical before and after shot because it was taken in low lighting and doesn't look very good, kinda like those pictures of people before and after a diet or tooth whitening--in the before, they are wearing ugly clothes, without their hair done and frowning, and in the after they are totally glamour shots. I liked the way this turned out so well, I might just do every cabinet in the apartment this way!