Miss Carrie's Wedding

One of my fellow booksellers is getting married in a few weeks, and she asked if I would make the jewelery for her wedding.

This is what I've come up with: a three-strand necklace (pearls, sterling silver and seed beads) on 49 strand Beadalon, with matching bracelet and earrings (pearls and glass with sterling bead caps).


I may need to fine-tune the length once she tries it on with her dress, but that'll be a piece of cake.

And yes, that pun was completely intentional.

the zutter strikes back

I needed a finite project for the evening, and this is what I came up with:










And, if you can believe it, I cleaned up my cardstock scraps and put everything away when I finished. The only evidence of my activity is the finished product. Excellent!

Hope & Joy

Artist Trading Card #2. I should really call these things fun w/ rubber stamps.

My first Artist Trading Card

I had a few minutes to do a little something creative today. I just rediscovered my ATC blanks yesterday and decided I would play around w/ some ink and stamps. I probably needed to let it dry in between items so the inks wouldn't have soaked into each other so much, but overall I like it.

The Importance of Being Native

Of the handful of people that have checked out the humble blog here, most of you know how I love to get up on the soapbox about using native plants in the garden. A customer lingering in the gardening section? Same thing: blah blah native plants blah.

I'll be the first to admit that I have been ridiculously lazy about the garden this year. In fact, I have done no gardening at all... and I desperately need to weed all of the beds in both the front and back yards. However, with nothing but neglect and last year's mulch, I present to you the native plants in the front garden (most of which were half dead and on clearance at the end of last summer).

Blackberry lily (with daisies in the background).

Double purple coneflowers.

Some spindly variety of black eyed susans.

The view from the front walk. There's althea in front of the windows, as well as a mounding sunflower and a cup plant. They should all start blooming in the next week or so.

crafting night 06.26.09

We bitched and kvetched and complained. We ate. We drank. Most importantly, we were able to get together and be creative in the company of friends.




(We are chock-full of awesomeness.)

Credits: beaded box by Arafel, diagonal scarf by Catheniale, assorted earrings by Zillah. Click on the photos if you want to see our mad skills in greater detail.

Breaking out the Zutter!

I finally used my Zutter machine and made some journals!

The covers are actually old buy campaign signs. They get placed on the shelves so they're sticking out and catch people's attention. Mostly they get bumped into and fall onto the floor, but that's beside the point.

Anyway, these were going to get thrown away and I thought they would make good journal covers. My original plan was to gesso or decoupage them and reuse them that way. But they're kind of cute as they are, you know?

It took a little bit of time to get the holes punched exactly where I wanted them, but once I figured that out, it was smooth sailing. I economized on the paper, so the pages are a little bit short (hence the half hole at the bottom)... but I thought it made more sense to get as many pages with as little waste as possible. I was able to get 4 pages per sheet of copier paper with minimal trimming. The wires are 1/2" in diameter, and work nicely with the overall size. Bending in the wires was super easy, and it only took a few minutes to assemble all of the journals once I had the paper trimmed and holes punched.

I think next time I'm going to put in some pockets and different papers. Oh, the ideas swimming around in my head right now...

A pretty picture for a quiet Sunday

I know, I didn't make the flower... but I will take credit for saving it from certain death on the clearance shelf at Home Depot last year.

Paper Tearing as an Art Form

I decorated these journals last year and just wanted to post them here as proof that I do occasionally get inspired to craft things. When I worked at the bookstore I was addicted to stationery. I have more journals than I will ever fill in my lifetime. Several of them were plain so I used images from a calendar and an other-wise ruined Japanese Art book to spice them up a bit. I really like how they turned out.

Family Reunion Invitation

I finally completed a project! 36 handmade invitations to my dad's family's 29th reunion. My dad is the fifth of 12 kids and this is his third turn as host. He asked me if I could print the invitations. He wanted them to say "be there or beware" with a smiley face and a skull and cross bones for emphasis. My mom didn't like his idea and suggested a picture of my grandparents instead. I choose this picture of them from the 1930s just before they were married. I had the cardstock, but it was too thick to go through my printer so I had to print everything separately and stick it on with double-sided tape. The inside has a nice insert with all the reunion information. At the bottom of the insert, I instructed people to lift the page for RSVP info. Underneath I snuck in the slogan, smiley face and skull my dad wanted along with my parents phone number. It made my dad laugh and although my mom may have been irritated that I included the tackiness she disapproved of, she also said she hadn't realized they would be so fancy so I guess she liked them. It's near impossible to please my folks so I consider the invitations a success.

The FAILtruck

...or, How to NOT Succeed in Tree Removal,
otherwise known as "So this is What It Means to Live in Fountain Square."

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you:

The FAILtruck.

I can almost hear Bad Decision Dinosaur in the background...

"YESSSS."

I want to be the new thought inside your head...

Yes, I realize the purpose of this whole blogging exercise was to craft (at least) once a week. Although I haven't been able to maintain that kind of frequency, I have still been working on things... I just didn't have any batteries for the camera.

"So go off to the store and buy some batteries," you say.

Well, I would. I probably should have. The reason I didn't: I purchased a giant pack of Duracell Ultra AA batteries from Costco a number of months ago. I think there are 20 or 25 batteries in said giant pack. I have used a grand total of two, if for no other reason than I have absolutely *no* idea where I put them. Why buy more batteries when you have half a million of your own hiding out somewhere in the house, right? Right. So E. borrowed some from one of our neighbors because there is a truck in our neighborhood that he wanted to take some pictures of (so he could submit them to FAILblog).

And now I can take pictures again. And clean up the house (someday).

I made this almost a month ago, and I still wear it frequently.
That's sadly not always the case as I am a fickle creature with poor short-term memory skills.

The beads are pink, green, and watermelon tourmaline, strung on 19 strand Beadalon. The spacers (which, in retrospect, I probably should have used a few more of but didn't have any on hand) are pewter. I have no idea about the clasp, but they were on sale at JoAnn's and I liked them. Sometimes that's all the reason I need. It matches the bracelet well, and it hasn't turned my wrist an unsightly shade of green, so WIN.

Although the gemstone lore varies from source to source, watermelon tourmaline removes imbalance caused by conflict and confusion. Green tourmaline brings a joy for life and encourages patience and openness, while the pink alleviates stress and obsessive behavior.

(And it's awfully pretty.)

This is the second multi-strand bracelet I've made so far (the first is two strands of faceted garnets), and I really like how they're chunky yet delicate. I fought the urge to go over to Bead Palace this afternoon since I figure paying for a new title/license plate/registration for the car was probably enough money to drop in one day... now it's time to throw in some laundry and pick up some of my mess. I'll try to post one of the FAILtruck pictures a little later on.

Rock you like a hurricane.

So, the magazine price structure changed at work from half cover to 50 cents an issue. This is good news in that customers are purchasing magazines like crazy, and multiple people will have had the chance to enjoy them before they end up in the dumpster/recycler (depending what store you're working at). This is bad news for me because it means I'm bringing magazines home.

There was an old copy of Bead & Button that I picked up, and I noticed in one of the ads that there is a store called Bead Palace in Greenwood, on Madison Avenue.

Wait for it...

I went to Bead Palace yesterday. It was my day off, I'd just had my sixth eye exam in as many months, stopped at Luna on the way home to get the new Decemberists CD, and decided that it would be a good time to keep on truckin' to the bead store. And that's exactly what I did, and it's where I found this lovely amber pendant. It's strung on some 19 strand wire with some silver spacers, reddish-brown glass beads from India, and some yellowy-brown beads that are made of horn. Yes, horn. Stop judging.

Of course I was compelled to wear it to work today, as it's all shiny and new and I'm like a magpie when it comes to things that are shiny and new. Boy howdy, I don't think I've ever gotten so many compliments from complete strangers as I did today. One very nice customer with a heavy German accent commented on it, and I smiled and thanked her. She then asked, "Are you a scorpion?" So I replied that I wasn't, and when my brain finally processed her question, she had already moved along and I couldn't tell her that I'm actually a goat. So much of my witty repartee really only happens in my head.

It's difficult to tell in these photos just how large the pendant is, so Freeman decided to take over the Vanna White duties while I was taking a few snapshots...

(The last photo was taken just before he completely lost his shit and pulled a Sean Penn on me.)

My project and why it isn't

Remember that beautiful burgundy alpaca sweater I picked up thrift a few years ago? The one someone had already felted on accident? The one I was going to make into a bag for Jen? The one I then decided would make a really cool pair of slippers for me? The one that is obviously still here with nothing done to it? I got it out and decided what I was going to do...needle felting (like embroidery, but no sewing, just intricately felting w/ a barbed needle) and then make a bag for whoever. Only I can't find the barbed needles needed to needle felt. I may have to order them online. So even though I don't have a project, I have been attempting one...sort of.

Covetous Beads

These are the beads that Jen wanted to buy at St. Theresa's. There were 3 similar strands. 1 strand was quite exquisite and was clearly marked $125. I believe it had some silver attached to it as well. These and the 3rd strand seemed to be marked $25, a bargain in comparison. Unfortunately, it turned out that they were ALL $125... *gasp*. So these were reluctantly returned to the sales lady.

Off to the library again

I have another two books on hold at the library, both of them to do with beading. God forbid that I should use Google to self-diagnose (never, EVER Google "spider bites"), but I'm beginning to think that I'm crossing the line into OCD behavior.

I must add, though, that the IMCPL has a pretty good variety of books on arts and crafts, and I'm too cheap to shop at Borders.

I'm hoping to have some photos to post later on.

Um, yeah

I am a lazy bastard *hangs head in shame*

Projects for a mechanically imposed lazy Saturday

An aerial shot of the bracelet with the red Swarovski crystals and strawberry charms. Pardon the cat-induced scratches on the dining room table.

Because the truck took a monumental crap and died last night on the way home, I was stuck in the house by myself for most of the afternoon. There's nothing like forced immobility to let loose the creative juices, right? So I made a couple of bracelets, one of which also has matching earrings.

A shot of the bracelet and earrings resting on my new bead board. The blue-green beads are some sort of primitive looking frosted irregular glass that I found at St. Teresa's Textile Trove in Cincinnati last Saturday.

A close-up shot of the danglies at the end of the bracelet (which are composed of glass beads, Swarovski bicone crystals, and hematite stars).

I really don't know what I'm doing with this...

...yet.

I'm tired of having art and craft supplies, an overabundance of ideas, and absolutely no follow-through whatsoever. So, with shame being the powerful motivator that it is, I'm going to muddle through creating this page with the end result of having a place to post (at least) one thing I've created each week.

Perhaps this can be an outlet for the Thursday night SnB get-togethers as well. Someplace to post our progress for one another.

Bear with me, as I am decidedly analog at best.