Fire, glass, and metal chapter: I'm going to the Street Fair!!

Handmade Metal and Glass Jewelry!

I started torch firing with a new technique after reading "painting with fire", by Barbara Lewis. There is a steep learning curve, and I would prefer to take a class or workshop, but I haven't seen anything like this offered in the Bay Area (though I haven't looked at The Crucible yet).  So, there are a pile of failed "experiments" at that back of my bench. I really believe that training as a bench scientist was perfect preparation for this sort of thing!

Anyways - in May, the owner of my local bead shop, Bead Inspirations, offered customers who'd spent at least $100 this year the chance to set up a table in front of the store at the Spring Park Street Fair. I had been making a lot of bits and pieces and trying new techniques, but didn't have enough pieces or time to prepare in time. But Vicki said I'd have another chance at the Art & Wine Faire July26-27 - that's this weekend!!

Here are some pieces as a preview:

These are the most intricate using many little enameled bits.

I made a series with just the larger pansy form as a focal piece:

And I made lots of earrings - some with enameled filigree beads or discs, and many pairs that I fashioned from Vintaj natural brass blanks or copper blanks. 

They've been embossed, shaped, hammered, enhanced with inks and patinas, polished, and combined with beads and other elements to make the finished jewelry pieces:

I made the earring card holder from two old frames (another post maybe). The photos lost some resolution in the iPad post-writing experiments - the earrings look quite lovely in person and not at all fuzzy!

Some of the earrings above use old clock faces. I made a pretty fun steampunky necklace too by riveting metal elements together:

More enamel pendants, most are made from copper discs or pennies (pre-1981).  Several have images from enamel decals fired into the glass:

I also made some bracelets using memory wire, others with handmade pottery focal pieces...

Another enamel piece - I want to make more hand cut shapes and pieces. Hopefully I will be able to sell some things and be encouraged to continue playing with different techniques and designs.

I have a couple of beaded necklaces, and many more beaded earrings that I haven't photographed yet. 

I hope some of my friends will stop by and say hello this weekend - I'm excited!!

The Fair is on Park Street in Alameda between Lincoln Ave (the Bead Store and my table will be there to the right of the bandstand) 10am-6pm - check it out!!

xoxo, janet

And now for something completely different...Cosplay!!

Cosplay? Ever hear of it? I think it must be short for Costume play, and it's what you do if you are going to Fanime Con (or probably any other anime/comic convention).FanimeCon 2011 is this weekend in San Jose, CA and I was commissioned by Teen Wonder to build a costume with her for Vocaloid Kagamine Rin

Rin and Len are Vocoloids - she's the female  one on the left. Far right is a costume you can buy online that ships from somewhere in Hong Kong. The nicer ones run about $98 USD plus expensive shipping. I'm sure you can find a good deal somewhere on ebay, but according to Teen Wonder it is actually cooler to make your own cosplay outfit than it is to buy one.  I'm sure we've spent at least $98 if you count the shorts, shirt and haircut...

There are some people out there very serious about their cosplay. And a few tutorials, but not a lot...and the ones that are out there for things like a vocaloid headset are pretty hardcore with LED lights and special paper clay materials - like check out this cool yet unachievable for me site for some tutes: http://pixiekitty.net/tutorials.htm  This young woman probably enters the contests for cosplay that include a performance element rather than just "Hall cosplay" which is walking around in your costume like Teen Wonder plans to do with her friends.

So here is Teen Wonder in her Rin costume:
Comprised of a white vocaloid headset with attached bow, white bobby pins, new haircut especially for mimicking the anime style (no product or stying in this photo), a sailor style collar with yellow trim and tie, arm covers with faux light panels, white tank modified with gold trim around arms and a treble clef embroidery at the collar,  black shorts, custom belt and loopy part, and black legwarmers with trim.

Process: Start with a lot of googling and web browsing to understand what I'm up against.  Then a search for white headphones, and then a trip to fabric/craft store to buy the following:
-  black, white, and yellow satin (actually I had to order the yellow satin online as well as the belt hardware),  - yellow trim ribbon in 2 sizes.
- Belt webbing - we wanted yellow, but they didn't have enough so we went with orange,
- Notions: thread, interfacing, elastic, snaps.
- Electric blue lame.
- Oh and craft foam in white, gold glitter and blue glitter.

Other supplies from home: cheap white headphones with attached microphone (from ebay), E6000 glue, masking tape, yellow fabric paint, some poster board (maybe it was matboard I had onhand)...

Helpful tools - SERGER. I love my serger so much!, Embroidery machine for the treble clef detail, snap plyers (I just used a hammer but I cracked one of the pearl snaps), a paintbrush to help with the belt detail.
And of course a sewing maching, plus some hand stitching supplies...

Next: draft some patterns based on tutorial information online.  I made a pattern for the collar and for the legwarmers and arm covers (just a smaller version of the legwarmer) - just drafted on butcher paper off the roll.

Then get to work!  I didn't take photos along the way (kind of under a deadline!)

Belt - webbing with triangles painted on with fabric paint (dimensional worked best for coverage); simple D loop hardware.  The drop-down strap has clips on both ends per Teen Wonder's request.

Treble clef collar detail - should be bigger, but this was a last minute add-on so I used the stitch pattern already loaded on my Janome 10001.  Len is the male vocaloid in the cartoon above and he has a bass clef (cute, huh?)

The yellow bow has the hooks for attaching the collar, and I'm not too happy that they show on one side...but well, I don't have time to futz anymore (or the inclination to be honest) - it still looks pretty good.

The crowing glory!  a cool headset with earboxes constructed with stiff poster or mat board and masking tape. Then covered with the craft foam, including cutouts to represent the lights that go on the headset though we are faux rather than real lights (the arm panels can also light up if you are really serious about this.), and finally a very stiff (pellon) satin bow attached at the top.

So between business travel, church retreat, the Maker Faire, and this project...I haven't been able to work on much else. Even though I have been taking this week off from work. Backlog of the mundane really cuts into the stay-cation model, doesn't it?

And now I am signed up to "chaperone" the Fanime trip to San Jose. This is scary because it is a student organized club activity - meaning no adults in charge, not a sanctioned school event with all the waivers and stuff we usually get irritated by but which now I wish we had for this weekend. No contact lists, no rules about checking in or buddy systems, no curfew. Nothing but a drop off at a hotel with just a couple of adults staying there to "chaperone". I had to put my foot down and demand emergency contact information on a full list of students as well as their own cell phones.  Still working on an enforced curfew. I know nothing will happen, but it's like carrying an umbrella.

Teen Wonder is so funny. I think to assuage my anxiety about the lack of orgnaization or control over some 25 teenage nerds she says this: "Mom, you aren't officially responsible, and besides there are a lot of the group who are already 18."  What do I hear? "Mom, even though I'm only 16 and so are a lot of my friends whose parents you know and who expect you to keep tabs on them, there will be 18 year old boys in the group who have a lot more experience"  Yeah, she is a really good kid and thinks that the presence of 18 year olds will make me feel better.  But I was not such a good kid, and I know more about 18 year old boys (and girls) than she thinks I do. And perhaps more than she knows at least in some ways although that is impossible to say.

Anyway, Fanime Con 2011, here we come!

p.s. And because I need a Whoop Whoop! for this achievement in crafty innovative costume construction, I've linked to Sarah's linky at Confections of a Fabric Addict

sshhh...it's a secret surprise Valentine

I only have a few minutes during my lunch hour to put this up. I hope this isn't the first day ever that the recipient of this Valentine will actually visit my blog...  I won't link up to FB until later, so probably no one will see this post today anyway.

So, I am married to this wonderful man - Mr. Wonderful.  In honor of Valentine's day we had a nice dinner on Saturday and went to a performance at the Berkeley Rep. I bought a big bouquet of roses for our table, and baked a cake to have tonight with the kids.  So we agreed we were done with Valentine's day save maybe a card and a little chocolate (for him). And also I bought myself a new car (!!yay), with Mr. Wonderful's blessing. So yeah, spending more money seemed silly right now.

But, I had seen some of the last minute Valentine craft roundups on blogs in the past week, and this tutorial for a "Pocket Full of Love" popped up on craftzine.com.  Actually, the tutorial itself is from Cloud Nine Fabrics (yummy organic, soft...)

So, I hurriedly went through my stash and scraps to find something to use, printed out the instructions, made up my own template because I couldn't print the template provided on 11x17 paper, and got to it!

Admittedly, the quality of this little pillow would have been a little higher if I'd given myself more time. But I had to work fast in little pieces of the day that I could steal away to my corner in the basement (pretending to do laundry).  Remember, I was also making last-minute Valentine's with Wild Thing.

(our house is a mess.)

I took two seconds to admire it before I hid it away in my closet.  You can't find anything in there unless you know my system. hehe.

This morning, I filled it with messages of love and with chocolate!  I left propped up on Mr. Wonderful's pillow.

Is it OCD to not let go of your idea to create something romantic for this commercial holiday, even though you haven't had time to plan a project ahead of time and even though you've agreed with your sweetheart that we've marked the occasion enough already?

Maybe so. Yes, probably. But Mr. Wonderful is such a perfect fit for me - the partner I want to grow old with (am already growing old with!). So I couldn't stop the obsessing until I compulsively acted out to make this little pocket of love.

I know he will understand.

( btw, the image on the card tucked inside the pocket is a free download from a talented artist named Samantha Hahn that I also found through craftzine.com - it's perfect for us and works better than any of the choices I looked at in the stores. I just printed it out, trimmed it down and stitched it to a blank card I had laying around...)

"How DO you find the time?"

Well, right. I get this question pretty frequently regarding making crafty things...and blogging. But really, there are times when I just don't find any time. And then other times I am really productive in making things. Over the course of a month or a year, I don't think I have enough time for projects or really get that many done. There are so many of them backed up in my little craft corner and spilling out of baskets by the sofa.

As for blogging, I don't think I am terribly prolific since there are so many bloggers out there who find time every day to post their thoughts and/or pictures of the beautiful things they make. And tutorials, which I love to read and use. If I'm lucky I will get a post in once a week - but obviously I'm not that lucky most weeks.

But here are some of the reasons I have time to make crafty things (in no particular order):

1) I have craft stuff out all the time. I didn't used to have a place to keep a sewing machine or WIP out, but when we re-did our basement a few years ago, I carved out a corner. Just a table and shelving to keep my craft-y supplies in and to be able to leave out projects without having to clean them off the dining room table everyday. This makes such a huge difference because I can just go sew for 20 minutes if that's all I have. Like these piles of half square triangles which will eventually be a quilt. They take a lot of cutting and sewing and pressing that can be done a little at a time. Knitting is portable, so I have projects in ziplocs ready to go with me anytime.

2) art and craft are just things that everyone in my family has always done - I can't think of very many people in my immediate family (meaning parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, cousins) who isn't crafty or an artist, or both. So I grew up in this reality where it wasn't unusual, and where having a sewing room or art studio or workshop was a housing choice priority, and where time spent doing projects isn't considered only "spare" time.

3) I don't watch very much TV.  And very often when I do, I'm knitting or just listening to it from the sewing machine, or pressing things on the ironing board.

4)  I believe that you don't need to be particularly artistically talented or perfect at your craft for it to be worthwhile - I really think this is thanks largely to my dad, who if he reads this will take it in the good spirit in which it is intended.  It seems like this idea keeps a lot of people out there from making things with their own hands. I love trying new things and making stuff. period. If you want to make something and you don't know exactly how, you should go ahead and give it a shot anyway. You don't need to create something perfect. You are the one who will notice the majority of mistakes anyway. And with practice anyone can learn a craft or an art - of course, there are these amazingly brilliant and gifted people out there who have talents I can never really aspire to. But they inspire me, and I'll aspire to developing more skills anyway.

5) I try to trick convince my children to do projects with me so that I can justify the time and the trips to the craft store.  Teen Wonder doesn't fall for it anymore. But she is creating her own things now. Wild Thing really loves to make stuff and will still do it with me.

6) I have insomnia. And evening is probably one of my most productive times of the day. For my real job, I have to get up at an ungodly hour. Morning people probably think getting up at 5:30 or 6 is peachy, but I'd rather sleep until at least 7:30. Unfortunately, 7am teleconferencing requires at least getting up and having some coffee - and usually I like to go to the office to do them since we have such a tiny house and our "office" is in the kitchen. Unfortunately, I still stay up too late and I need more sleep...but the majority of my sewing or knitting happens after 9pm (or the rare weekend afternoon when we aren't running around like crazy).

Okay, that's about all I can think of now, plus I am running out of time to post...and I wanted to share a project from Christmas that still isn't quite finished. I wanted to make multiple sets of these, but I only finished two in time for gifting. At least one more set will go out to my uncle, and the last one (which will get done sometime before the end of the world) will be for me.

My grandma passed away in October. She was an artist, and an amazing quilter - wow. I wish I had a catalog of all her quilts, because I've only ever seen a small fraction of them. Anyway, she had made these paper dolls sometime when she was quite young - they are very old and laminated with some sort of tape. Extremely detailed, and all with these big round heads. A few years ago I got a small Xyron on sale at the craft store, and I used it to make bookmarks with old foreign cancelled stamps that I'd cut from reprint requests to scientists in my grad school lab. I'd been saving these things for something like ?15 years - sheesh. Anyway, that was fun...but you have to do more than one project to justify buying a new toy, right?  I've done some other stuff with it, but I have been wanting to make magnetic laminated copies of the Big Head Dolls for quite a long time.  My grand-dad scanned a few of them for me a couple of years ago, but not the whole set...and I could never find the magnetic-laminate cartridges in stock for my Xyron. But after Grandma passed away, my mom lent me the dolls so I could scan copies and do this project. (the dolls belong to my auntie - and they are priceless, so I was a bit nervous taking custody of them!)

These are a couple of shots of just some of the dolls (and my first watermarking of photos - since I don't want anyone to reproduce these in any way. The photos are low res anyway, but still...

I love that they are magnetic! 

And here you can see why I'm still not done - this is a lot of cutting out. I can do it while watching TV if I don't need to pay attention to the program...but I'm still not quite done...

Happy Sunday everyone! Now go out and make something!

whipping up some handmade goodness!

In the corners of the days lately, I've been working on some crafty holiday projects...so here's a peek at the first "products" -

First, I'm so pleased with Wild Thing and this stenciled canvas bag project - I found it on the SewMamaSew! Handmade Holidays (my favorite tutorial roundup each year - check them out!). The tutorial is here if you'd like to give it a try! The idea was a bag for his teacher, who is putting in a lot of extra effort in taming Wild Thing in the classroom. We appreciate this so much because it's got to be tough handling 25 six-year olds anyway, without the rambunctious ones thrown in there to mix it up!  And one bag for his tireless day care provider who's been taking care of Wild Thing since he was very small. We love her so much.  Anyway, there's one more in a 3-pack of canvas bags from the craft store, so we have a total of 3 now. We'll need another project or two for grandparents and such, but this was a whole project off my list, done! (phew!)

This is a little crisper picture of just the bags - I think he did a great job!

 Then, we have the little zippered owl pouches (there are lots of free tutorials out there on how to make these, so take your pick!) I ordered an assortment of zippers from the best online zipper store - zipit - and she also had some pouch pre-cuts for these little owl fabrics. So cute! I forgot to take photos of the linings, oops...next time.

Lastly, a favorite from Noodlehead's crafty blog tutorials, the gathered clutch. I've been wanting to try this one, and now have the zippers and the incentive.  They are not too hard at all and after the first one I cranked out the other two in an evening (I think - but my time is so fragmented that you can't hold me to it because it was 20 minutes here and there until they were finished!  (The clutches are also linked into the Handmade Holidays)

Again, I should have photographed the insides because there are nifty little card pockets and a divider. These are a great size for a grab and go evening or trip to the grocery store without taking your whole wallet (or in my case a giant mom-sized handbag!)  But I did take a photo of Frida from the backside of the first one I made - probably I will have to keep this clutch for myself.

We have craft explosions in the kitchen and more in the basement craft corner - I've been stitching some modern designs on linen to make pillow covers, and Wild Thing has been helping me laminate some special vintage paper dolls (scanned copies) onto magnet paper with the Xyron. These were drawn by my grandma who recently passed away. My auntie will get the originals, but I wanted to reproduce them for mom and my sister, and the magnetic backing gives you the fun option of sticking them on the fridge or wherever (yeah, since my fancy stainless fridge isn't magnetic!)  Teen Wonder has some drawings in the works for the Gocco, which I can hardly wait to snap and print with her. So, more to come...

Fall Craft - a little leafy wreath project

Last year I picked up a couple packages of faux oak leaves in the clearance bin somewhere. I stuck them in the "Halloween and Fall Decor" box and forgot about them. They are sort of a fabric/plastic hybrid stuff (made in China, so who knows), but they look quite nice and not plastic-y.  I have no idea what I had in mind when I bought them, so they were sitting around on the buffet in the dining room waiting for an idea.  I thought a wreath would be nice, but never made the trip to the craft store to buy a wreath to tack them onto. I figured I could pin them to a foam wreath, or hot glue to a grapevine wreath...I hadn't decided.

Then Wild Thing pulled a coil of wire out of my wire and ribbon box in the craft corner while we were looking for a ribbon for a bell he found to tie into a necklace for him. At first I snapped at him a little for uncoiling it since I couldn't get it back in the box easily...but immediately I thought maybe it could be fashioned into a circle to make a wreath.  So I set out sticking the end through the leaves and experimenting with how to arrange them.

I tried to convince Wild Thing that this would be a fun craft to do with me, but he was not persuaded.

Then I tried to entice Teen Wonder, but I don't think she even took her earbud out long enough to hear a complete sentence. In her defense, she is writing a novel this month for NaNoWriMo. So okay. I was on my own...

Once they were all strung, I just wrapped the wire ends and fashioned a little loop to hang it with.  I had to fuss around with the shape of the wire and with the leaves to minimize the amount of wire showing. Then after I hung it on the door I had to do that again. A drop of glue here and there would probably minimize the shifting around of the leaves - we'll see after a day or two.

voila! A little Fall crafty for a Sunday afternoon.

In other news, I am overcoming my fear of free-motion quilting.  So far, not too bad though my stitches are all over the map in length. I'm sure I will get better and hopefully the recipients don't know much about quilting!

(No) time for a quickie?

(NOTE: I had to delay this post, beacuse Blogger or my connection or both conspired to force me to go to work rather than post on my blog by not letting me attach more than one photo. boo. Here is the post now with the photos included...)

At 9:01am on a Monday?  Not really...as I've taken too long to get all my (bleep) together for work this morning already. But since some of what I was doing was work, I'm going to justify a really quick post because I had me some fun with kids and Halloween yesterday and things are a bit bleak around here (and not just because of weather, but that certainly adds to the gloomy weightiness of it)...so viva la craft!

Firstly, we (meaning I) dragged out the box of decorations from years past, and we (meaning I) sorted through it all and put up what I could muster any enthusiasm for. Wild Thing picked out a few things and taped them up too, bless his heart. I think he will be prove to be the most willing participant in my fervor for holiday craziness over the years.  Case in point - Wild Thing helped me to christen the "skull cake" mold that I bought online in a compulsive craft shopping moment weeks ago.

Cool, huh?

I saw this cake pan on Not Martha several weeks ago and became quickly obsessed with finding one and then I did in short order. online. duh.

Here is the mold itself (used and unwashed), and we made the "Carrot Pound Cake" made from the recipe in the box:

While this was baking and cooling, we were meanwhile in the next room with paper, scissors, and glue (and pens and pencils and crayons...)  It was your basic garden-variety craft explosion!

We ended up with some pretty spooky and fun things to put up around the house in support of one of the best holidays of the year!

Get ready for a great Halloween!!

Say Cheese!

So, last week I posted about cool new paper crafts and then we did some that afternoon. But I never had a chance to come back and post about them. It has been a crazy week and I am stretched really thin at the moment.
sigh.
ANYHOW.  From The Toymaker (link over there on the right), I bring to you Doctor Skelly's Magic X-Ray camera!!

Have you lost some weight?  You look great!


via Gordon I got another link for seasonal paper craft too...so not to disappoint here they are!
Really creepy gift box concept, don't you think?

If you are into paper crafts, this Ravensblight website has a huge assortment of scary and extremely intricate free paper toy downloads.  SSPOOOOOKKY!!

And here is my neophyte papercrafter tip of the day: Photo paper can substitute for cardstock if you are desperate and too lazy to run out to the office supply store right that minute.  BUT, your fingers will be covered in ink by the end of your project. I should have taken a photo of mine...but didn't think of it until just now.

Week's end undoing entropy wrap-up:
Not a heavy crafting week since last Friday. In fact the general level of entropy in our household has gone up exponentially in the past couple of weeks.  We did start Wild Thing in Kung Fu class and the extra time I've spent picking him up from school and generally rewarding hard work with attention has really been working. He's starting to at least not protest so much about having to go to school.  So the fact that I haven't had time to exercise or create has been very much worth it. Though I feel tired.

I did a little TV knitting on Teen Wonder's hoodie vest which is coming along slowly. I'll post another photo of that soon.

I did some OCD relief shopping late one night and ordered some craft porn, including the new Wee Wonderfuls book by Hilary Lang.

oooohh, I cannot wait to get this! Her stuff is so adorable!  A couple of Christmases ago I made a couple of Pointy Kitties, and for Wild Thing I made a Space Boy and Robot set.

On the quilting front, I've got nada to report in terms of projects - I did some organization of my fabric stash and a lot of planning for new projects. Christmas quilt, baby quilt, Bento Box anime print quilt for Teen Wonder (I did get some coordinating fabrics when I went to the quilt shop last), a couple of skirts, knit wrap dress (will take much courage for me as I wrote about in my serger series), a door stopper for the hall (for which I already bought 4 pounds of dried split peas on sale...), a couple of new pillows desperately needed in our living room...the list goes on and on...

But first I need to bind the big quilt I finished so we can use it.
And next Saturday I will probably get to pick up Megan's quilt if it is finished by then. I can't wait to see it! I also now have a deadline for binding that one and finishing it - October 24th...

Okay, we are off to Tahoe for a long weekend so I need to whip out some clean laundry presto and pack up!!  HAPPY FRIDAY!