Around our house, September marks the beginning of birthday season. My husband's birthday this week starts off our string of family birthdays--two in October, one in November, and, finally, mine in late December. (According to my daughter's calculations, I will be the answer to life, the universe, and everything.) I used maya*made's tutorial for newspaper bunting to create a reusable birthday banner. It's an easy and quick project, though I have to admit I skipped the ironing step. (I don't even iron my husband's shirts, so I don't think I'm ironing newspaper!) My husband loved the texture and fabric-like look of each piece. I love how the text and images from the newspaper subtly show through the paint.
I didn't notice until I posted these pictures, but the red "t" appropriately enough has an ad for sippy cups from Mama Goose, where maya*made did design work.
This lazy mom will probably leave the banner up until the New Year rolls around. I just realized that I'll only need one more diamond to spell out "Merry Christmas," so I can turn the diamonds around to commemorate our holiday celebration as well. How's that for multipurpose?
This great-horned owl, who has adapted to a wide range of habitats across North and South America, is winging off to tropical Sao Paulo, Brazil soon, as part of "A Little Fabric, A Little Chocolate" swap. He looks very fierce on the outside, but he's a real softie.
I admire how collage artists reuse whole images in a new context to create a unique piece of art. I approached making this guy as a three-dimensional collage. He's lovingly hand sewn and put together from parts of three different felted wool sweaters. As you can probably see, the main body is the cuff and lower part of a sweater sleeve. The "eyes" are cut from a larger knit pattern, and the "feathers" on his head and wings came together nicely from another sweater's design.
I find that felted wool is an extreme pleasure to hand-sew. The stitches just come through the wool very smoothly, and this stitch in particular is very rhythmic and soothing. It was kind of a gamble to use the contrasting blue thread, but I like the way it picks up the color of his eyes. I also included a hand-painted Altoids tin, which is lined with a scrap from a felted wool sweater and contains a few coins and stamps for my swap partner's collections.
The fabrics are vintage '70s prints (red butterflies, Crayon-bright stripes, and red-white-and-blue dots and stripes) and are from a flea market in Pennsylvania's Amish country. The little paper mushroom ornaments decorating the fabric bows are from small stump, which inspired finder and photographer extraordinaire Smooth Pebble introduced me to. Artist/crafter Jill Pilotte's small stump shop is a real treasure, with a great eco-friendly vibe. If I hadn't purchased a few too many treasures lately, I'd be clearing her shop out of the reclaimed wood slices to use as pedestals, coasters, whatever!
This was truly a fun swap to put together, and I thank doodlebug finery--who sews the cutest sock animals and other sweet kid items--for organizing it!
I've been enjoying glimpses of Chicago collage artist Linda Crispell's amazing collections. She collects just about everything and is a faithful estate-sale and flea-market hound. She has the eye of a slightly eccentric museum curator when it comes to displaying her found objects--vintage cake decorations, wooden airplane propellers, bird houses, etc.
Her kitchen looks like an old-fashioned candy shop, with vintage glass containers filled with goodies. In her dining room, she displays art work in a thrifted church bulletin case. It looks like her collage of items on display changes, and I think everything she does, including her paper collages, is completely inspired.
Enough of my words, go check out her blog and her Etsy shop.
Shown above are the kokeshi dolls I bought in Japan 11 years ago. I found them in a shop at Nikko's Lake Chuzenji, which is famous for its monkeys. Why only two, you may ask? Good question. We were on shopping overload in Japan. There was just so much there that we absolutely fell in love with that it was hard to choose what to buy. (We also had a tiny California '50s tract home at the time that had no extra space for collections.) And I guess I always felt that we'd be able to return regularly. So far, that's not happened, but I'm hoping that these two dolls will be the start of a collection.
I'd love to see what you're collecting these days.
Today I wet-felted the little acorn bottoms out of some beautifully hand-dyed wool roving, most of which is from Etsy-seller Fibrespace Supplies. Look how silky the balls of wool roving look snuggled together in a bowl. I love the subtle colors.I had a little bit of trouble with a few of the balls. One or two ended up with an annoying "seam." The method that worked best for me was pulling apart the wool roving into two-inch strips and making a small pile of them, one layer at a time. Each successive layer was laid out perpendicular to the first. Then I pulled off longer strips and wound them loosely around that first wad of wool. Each successive strip was also perpendicular to the previous one. I ended up with a loose ball of wool like this. I formed the wad of wool into a ball shape with my hands under hot running water and then dunked the ball into a bowl of hot, soapy water. (That first step under hot running water helped with the shaping; I found that if I dunked the dry wool into the soapy water first, the wool was too slippery to form the shape I wanted.) Then I worked the ball gently between my hands for a few minutes until it felted firmly.
Resurrection Fern has a tutorial for easy wet felting that bypasses the handwork and uses the washing machine. However, you would miss out on playing in the soapy water while watching your local wildlife through the kitchen window--in my case, our resident woodchuck was eating dandelion leaves in our yard and then flattening himself on our driveway.A squirrel was watching his antics curiously. The acorns look jaunty and a little French with their little caps, no? The green ones are looking a little like Pepe the Jalapeno Acorn, so I like those little fellas.So, what's the deal with all the acorn love, you may well be asking. (Even if you're not, I'm gonna tell ya.) My kids and I have been collecting acorns and acorn tops (and the occasional cicada case and spider egg case) this summer, and occasionally we'll find twin acorns that have fallen off the tree together.I didn't realize why I found them so magical until I noticed one on a hike with a friend and a memory of a little tinkling of bells echoed in my ears. I had a quick memory flash of a truly magical movie that I had seen as a kid. It involved a girl who was given three magic acorns (I thought). Every time she wished for something, the acorn would open and the wished-for item tumbled out, accompanied by the tinkling of little bells.
Pre-Internet, that memory probably would have stayed a wispy, happy fragment. Ah, but today we have Google, the memory-replacement tool. I typed "what is the name of the movie with the magic acorn that grants wishes?" into Google, and the first hit, via Turner Classic Movies, gave me the answer: Three Wishes for Cinderella (1973). It's a Czech version of the classic fairy tale, and Cinderella here is a feisty heroine who lobs snowballs at the obnoxious prince and challenges him to a shooting contest. Oh, and she has a pet owl and a tall white horse that she rides through the snow. And the magic acorns were actually magic HAZELNUTS. Of course.
A little more Web surfing revealed that a dubbed version of the movie aired in 1973 on the CBS Children's Film Festival, hosted by beloved puppeteers Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. The program showed kids quality movies, most of them foreign, which is where I must have gotten my love for foreign films. (You can watch a clip of the movie on Youtube here.)
Thanks to the Web, I can align that almost-forgotten memory with how old I was and where I was living. If you don't mind indulging me in a little nostalgia, I can tell you that I was a tall, chubby, dark-skinned, bookish first grader living in a small, dusty, oil town in South Texas. Very small. Very dusty. Football and baseball for the boys, and cheerleading and twirling for the girls. My large, awkward self felt completely out of place there, and I lived through books. You can imagine how powerful it was for me to see Three Wishes for Cinderella and imagine myself galloping through the snow on my trusted steed and using my magic hazelnuts to make myself into the person I wanted to be.
Anybody have a tutorial for a set of three felted magical hazelnuts?
Practical Drawing, Art Education Edition, Book Five,
Practical Drawing Company, Chicago/Dallas, 1925.
All three kids got off to school this morning, fresh-faced, happy, and on time.
I guess that it's time to hit the books. For me this means crochet books, which I will study in my Resurrection Fern-inspired evening crochet class. Anyone care to join me?
What an exciting but challenging time of year September is. There's such a great feeling of possibility, of starting fresh on a new school year. Old friends to see, new friends to meet, a new teacher to get used to, and literally a clean slate in the classroom.
But there's also so much activity that revolves around just getting the kids back to school--filling out forms; updating medical records; checking to see who has outgrown what and shopping and then shifting out summer clothes for fall; sifting through old school supplies and replenishing the supply; scheduling and shuttling kids to dentist, orthodontist, and doctor checkups, etc.
Add in a lot of motherly anxiety about my rambunctious youngest starting preschool and my sensitive middle one starting 4th grade, and for me that means insomnia and a very low level of tolerance for the ordinary quarrels that occur daily between the aforementioned boys.
So, for me, that means it's time for me to craft a little bit of alone time to try to gain some perspective so that I can get back to a feeling of appreciation for all that I have.
After a quick hot dog dinner and finally getting the excited kids to bed, here are some friends that I spent some time with last night:
I've been trying to teach myself to crochet for a while, but without a whole lot of success. I can chain 'til the cows come home. But I was just not getting the whole idea of where that darn crochet hook goes for a single crochet.
For some reason, something clicked in the spatial part of my brain last night. Resurrection Fern's straightforward tutorial for her Crocheted Acorn Necklace turned out to be an easy first crochet project. After I studied her directions and looked through my crochet books for details on each step, it literally took me minutes to complete a necklace. The first one I did in a thicker cotton thread so that I could see what I was doing. But the pink necklace made from the finer gauge cotton was just as fast and easy. And it looks so sweet hanging from a vintage mirror and around my daughter's neck. I do hope it will bring her luck tomorrow on her first day back to school.
I made time for some crafting over the weekend, and it was satisfying to get 0ne project finished and another started. However, on Monday I woke up feeling a tad bit discouraged about what I had created (or maybe it was the six loads of laundry that could no longer wait to be folded that did it).
I sewed these reversible fleece slippers for my youngest, who needs them to wear at his new preschool starting this week. I made some size adjustments to this Baby Shoes Tutorial from Maked to sew the slippers.
I'm pleased that I was able to finish the pair (my first try, in cotton, was too small, and I only made one of that set). However, the seams are a little wonky, and I'm really wondering when my sewing skills are going to improve. I am definitely ripping out seams when they are not right. But I feel a constant tension between getting things done quickly and getting them done well--I just don't seem to have the time to accomplish both.
So, after a morning of folding laundry and cleaning up messes made by a bored preschooler-to-be, I luckily ended up checking out my favorite blogs early this afternoon. To my delight, I found the perfect post from Smoothpebble. Her photographs totally wow and inspire me, but she feels that she's not where she wants to be with the photos. (That's not the delightful part--it makes me sad that she doesn't realize just how talented she is.) The delightful part was this video from my fave radio star Ira Glass, host of the brilliant and often hilarious "This American Life," who talks about the gap between what you want to create and what you're able to create. Please check it out:
His advice to just keep generating tasks for yourself and keep completing them no matter how sucky they turn out is just the motivation I need at this point in my creative life.
This blog has made me more accountable for taking on and completing projects, so here are some projects that I have in the works and that I won't abandon. I'll keep at them and develop the ideas that are in my head, even if they don't quite get where I want them to be right away.
Here's a little wooden doll, inspired by the earlier ones I made and by Japanese Kokeshi dolls, that I made late last week.
Snippety Gibbet's post about Hina Aoyama's delicate papercuts (find more of her cuts on Youtube here and here) inspired me to try to do a very lace-like papercut, with the thinnest lines that I was able to cut. This little vine emerged, and I wondered if it might fit on one of the little wooden doll forms. It twines around the figure so nicely, but I'm not sure where it should go from here. I'm thinking that it might become "Sakura-chan" (Cherry Blossom Kid). And I want to have the papercut tell a little story about the figure. The beauty of the finest kokeshi dolls is the simplicity of the carving, so I'd like to capture that as well.
Following the same path of combining multiple inspirations, here's another project that I'm thinking might improve my skills and be a fun, quick autumn project. You probably know Lisa from Lil Fish Studios for her beautiful, inspired button bouquets.
Well, she also does these lovely wet-felted acorns (shown above). When I saw the soft autumn colors of the acorns on my Flickr contacts, I knew immediately what I wanted to do with the acorn caps that we have been collecting all summer (see first photo, above).
Lisa wet-felts the wool roving into the acorn bottoms and then glues the felt balls into the caps (see another Flickr photo of Lisa's acorns here). So far I have soaked my acorn tops in a diluted-bleach solution. Now they are dry and ready for the felting stage.
I wanted to mention Lisa specifically in this Motivational Monday post because her recent craft self-challenge fits in very well with Ira Glass's advice. She challenged herself to make six felt hearts a day for one week. She exceeded her goal (Go, Lisa!), and you can see the gorgeous results here. I hope that Lisa will consider offering the felted acorns and wool hearts through her Etsy shop!
Motivational Monday wouldn't be complete without the prodigious productivity of Resurrection Fern. She recently completed her entry for Plush You 2008 in LESS THAN a week, and the results are beautiful, thoughtful, and thought-provoking.
I read Margie's blog every day, and I come away completely inspired by her work and her very generous tutorials. She also astounds me with her productivity (she's a full-time M.D.). In addition to getting up early and going to bed very late (I just recently "caught" her commenting on my 2 a.m. Flickr upload, so shame on both of us!), her secret to getting projects completed seems to be devoting time every day (even on vacation!) to her craftwork.
So, with that motivation, here's my next project that I'd like to work on. This one also uses acorns and is a perfect keepsake of summer. Margie crochets these delicate basket necklaces for acorns, and here is her tutorial to create one of your own.
Resurrection Fern's Crocheted Acorn Necklaces
I recently scored a lovely box full of fine-gauge crochet cotton at an antique mall, so no longer do I have the excuse of not having the proper materials to tackle this project.
O.K., one last bit of motivation (sorry to go on so long!). Jane Brocket, author of The Gentle Art of Domesticity, and creator of the knitting-and-everything blog yarnstorm, recently went on holiday from her blog. She returned with a renewed appreciation for blogging:
When I [was] younger I was really only good at seeing out, which is why those essays [back-to-school "What I Did This Summer"] were such a torture. But writing this blog has changed the way I look at things, and even though I was on a break, I often found myself reviewing what I'd observed or made or read and composing posts in my mind. And it was amazing how much this practice of trying to look from a different perspective, articulating my thoughts, finding words, capturing moments, made all sorts of little events and pleasures so much more significant and meaningful.
Don't you love her lyrical writing? I feel the same way about blogging, and I just have to keep remembering that the effort I am putting into my crafting and my blog are improving my skills and leading to something that I hope will be fulfilling and exciting.
Happy (late) Motivational Monday, and I hope you share with me some of the things that are motivating you at the moment.
Around our house, September marks the beginning of birthday season. My husband's birthday this week starts off our string of family birthdays--two in October, one in November, and, finally, mine in late December. (According to my daughter's calculations, I will be the answer to life, the universe, and everything.)
I used maya*made's tutorial for newspaper bunting to create a reusable birthday banner. It's an easy and quick project, though I have to admit I skipped the ironing step. (I don't even iron my husband's shirts, so I don't think I'm ironing newspaper!) My husband loved the texture and fabric-like look of each piece. I love how the text and images from the newspaper subtly show through the paint.
O.K., one last bit of motivation (sorry to go on so long!). Jane Brocket, author of 
