craftlog: May 2005 Archives

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May 19, 2005

away

Poor me, I'm off to Italy for 2 weeks for a conference + vacation. Maybe I'll have some airplane crafting posts when I return. Ciao.

Posted under Random at 09:56 PM | Comments (2)

May 16, 2005

Vintage rebeading

I was at home for my sister's graduation this past weekend. My mom's gotten into beading recently, and she'd been going through my grandma's old jewelry looking for interesting beads. One of her finds was this 4-stranded necklace made of neat beads that didn't seem to match. I cut the strands apart and made two necklaces and a bracelet.

My favorite is the bracelet. The awesome clasp is from the original necklace, and instead of 4 strands, I just put 2 strands of one type of bead.

A necklace with the same beads, knotted on silk thread with extra seed beads on either side. My mom taught me a nifty technique for knotting the thread right up next to the beads.

The other necklace was just restringing these neat beads that look like rice.

Posted under Jewelry at 11:31 PM | Comments (9)

May 10, 2005

needle felted decoration

I needle-felted some of my dyed roving onto my felted change purse. I'm still getting the hang of the needle felting, so a simple shape seemed best. I stuffed the purse full of polyfill so it wouldn't felt shut. There's another dot on the other side.

Posted under Felting at 12:11 AM | Comments (8)

May 09, 2005

kool aid dyed roving

Experiments with Kool Aid tonight. These are little tufts of roving dyed in the microwave. All I did was mix up a packet of kool aid in 2 parts water and 1 part vinegar (one set of instructions said 3:1 and the other said 1:1, so I split the difference). You can see the bizarro white Lemon Ice koolaid that I accidently bought.

I soaked the roving in hot water for about 30 minutes, then gently squeezed out the water and laid it on some saran wrap. I dribbled on enough kool aid to saturate the tuft and wrapped it up in the saran wrap. Then I squished it around a bit just to make sure, and put it in a Pyrex dish. Popped the whole batch in the microwave for about 30 seconds, and, like magic, they suddenly absorbed all the dye leaving the liquid clear or milky. Rinsed in warm water, and here they are set out to dry. They look (and smell) like candy. I can't wait to try something with them. Plus, this was a color test run for some bigger projects (a bag and a scarf).

Top row, left to right: grape, cherry, orange, wild watermelon kiwi, raspberry reaction

Bottom row: pink lemonade, lemonade, mango, pina-pineapple, arctic green apple

Posted under Felting at 12:02 AM | Comments (10)

May 05, 2005

giant-sheets-of-paper crafts

I also went to Paper Source when I was in Cambridge. What a beautiful store. I really wish they had them around here. The one in Porter Square was even advertising a Gocco class! I must've spent an hour in there, and I came away with some nice letterpress cards, velvet ribbon, linen bookbinding tape, and 4 giant sheets of pretty paper. I don't scrapbook or anything, so I really had no clue what I was going to do with big pieces of paper. I figured out two nice things to show them off, though.

One piece I just framed. It's a nice graphic pussy willows design by Lizi Boyd Paper, which doesn't seem to have a web presence. We have some poster frames in the closet, so I just cut the paper to size and hung it up. It really is pretty enough just to look at for it's own sake.

Another piece I put up as the backing for my new bulletin board. Unfortunately, the paper wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole thing, so I used some ribbon to fill in the empty space. It's not great, but I like it OK. And since it's all just pinned on, it's easy to change and there's no glue to gunk up the pins. What I've got up there:

crochet swatches (one swatch is on vacation from the board being used as a bookmark)
embroidered treelet
neat Mizna Lens stationary that Angry Chicken sent me
New York state trail markers (from downed trees only)
crafty shopping and idea lists
pink fuzzy Japanese deer stickers

some favorite things from Samplers:

cherry made by oh! bara!
bird patch from Star Serge
pin with great packaging from 77 industries

Posted under Paper Crafts at 12:01 AM | Comments (7)

May 04, 2005

update

I updated my stylesheet, as you can tell (if you can't see, try emptying your cache). The background pattern is from some Old Navy wrapping paper I scanned in and edited. The script font is Little Days, downloaded from one of the free font sites (which one I can't remember at the moment). I might play with it some more tomorrow, but I'm liking it enough to go to bed. I also updated the links page with another crop of blogs. New ones are in bold.

Posted under Random at 01:04 AM | Comments (8)

May 03, 2005

Magpie

I had a really good shopping weekend up north. RISD sale was pretty good, and then there was a May Day Fair in Harvard square that was also good. I stopped in some neat stationary stores, too, but the highlight of the trip was going to Magpie, aka crafter mecca. You must all go on pilgramage there.

Magpie is up in Davis Square and is run by 5 of the coolest crafters, including Leah of Craftster fame and the folks who run Bazaar Bizarre. I think it was Emily Arkin (you may remember her silkscreened playing cards on Crafters Coast to Coast) working when I went in. Even the name is cool: Magpie: Shiny Things for Your Nest.

Literally everyone I stalk and envy on the web had stuff for sale there. I must've circled the store 3 times, touching everything. Ones I remember, since there's unfortunately no list of them on Magpie's site:

I know there were more, but I can't remember. I got some Happy Owl Glass pins for me and my sisters and my mother (you guys can argue over who gets what).

Posted under Wants at 03:42 PM | Comments (3)