Archive for crafting

Update!

June 11, 2012 conventions, crafting, cute, geekery, heroescon, projects No comments

So I finally got all theconvention dolls I’d planned on making finished! Two hundred and five if you’re wondering.

I’m not done yet though. I still have some plush to make that’s a different size and style than my standard plush. Here was my first endeavor….

rb1

Stay tuned for more updates and hopefully some vidoes!

February Make Out – Let’s Pollinate!

March 1, 2012 charlotte, crafting, Crown Town Handmade, Make Out No comments

No, it’s not what you’re thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter! This Make Out is a free monthly craft session organized by Crown Town Handmade, Charlotte’s group of crafty entrepreneurs. (Of which I am a proud member.) Make Outs are the last Thursday of every month and are open to all ages. Crafty fellas are welcome too!

For the February Make Out we brought a little color and cheer to the cold, gray winter with fabric flowers. Tsunami kanzashi flowers are made by folding small squares of fabric into petals and then joining five or more together to make a flower. The flower can then be attached to a pin, hair clip, or sewn directly onto another surface. Or just carry it around to demonstrate your awe inspiring ability to turn little squares of fabric into pretty flowers. Only really cool people can do that.

The flowers are pretty easy to fold, but do take a little dexterity. It helps to starch the fabric or iron on a lightweight interfacing, but we used untreated fabric and they came out fine. It does take a little finagling to get those petals positioned. Luckily the center gets covered with beads, buttons, or a bit of fabric so any imperfections are pretty easy to hide.

We all worked dilligently, by which I mean we mostly screwed around and chatted and got distracted by all the pretty beads around us and made inappropriate jokes. Getting to visit with other crafty people is one of my favorite things about the Make Out and we always have a total blast.

Here’s everyone with their creations.

If you want to make your own, feel free to print out or save the instruction sheet below. We used 3″ and 4″ squares of quilters cottons to make our flowers.
A big thank you to Beadlush for hosting us at the last minute and to Rachel for taking pictures!

Nifty Thrifty: Thriftenstein

October 18, 2011 crafting, nifty thrifty 2 comments
So, I’m a girl of simple tastes. A bit of a bargain hunter perhaps. If there’s one thing I love more than thrift stores, it’s thrift CRAFT stores. Craft supplies are awesome, but insanely cheap craft supplies make me have a small fits of glee. Not to mention that, like regular thrift stores, thrift craft stores are full of the hilarious mistakes of taste from years past. Naturually I was downright giddy when I got to visit not one, but two, thrift craft stores on a recent trip to California to visit my mom.
The Legacy Thrift & Gift Shop
781 Gravenstein Ave
Sebastopol, CA 95472
My mom and I paid a visit to The Legacy on my previous visit and we couldn’t wait to get back again. We actually had excellent timing; we ended up going to day before they briefly closed for a remodel. The store is now three doors down at 789 Gravenstein Ave while the original space is being completely remodeled. The original shop was well organized and the staff is very helpful and friendly; I’m sure the new space is no different
Besides the great prices, you can feel doubly good about shopping there as proceeds benefit the Sebastapol Area Senior Center, which provides activities and classes for adults and seniors.

Fabric is sold by the pound, trims by the yard, and other materials are prices as marked. They have a large selection of supplies including sewing notions, books, cross-stitch and embroidery, yarns, appliques, and more. They also offer some ready made consignment items.
Our second stop was new to us, but had been around in one place or another since 1976.
SCRAP: A Source for the Resourceful
801 Toland Street
San Francisco, CA 94124

SCRAP was started as a way to get donated craft and art supplies to underfunded schools as well as artists and parents. SCRAP now diverts up to 200 tons (that’s TONS) of materials that would otherwise be sent to landfills. They also offer field trips, classes, volunteer opportunities, or simply just a place to find amazing and weird cheap stuff.
 

SCRAP is really dedicated to creative resuse, which means you’ll find more than just your average art supplies. Not that the selection of art and craft supplies is anything to sneeze at. SCRAP offers fabric, paper goods, buttons, paints, trims, brushes, wood pieces, metal, and glass to name a few. The fun is in the entirely random and wonderful things hiding in there. The picture above is a detail of a huge drum on these. I have no idea what they are; I bought 20. There was a huge bin of teeny glass bottles; another of what looked like promo buttons. There was a rack of books and magazines, which housed a collection of sci-fi novels from the 70′s. (I so would have bought them all if I hadn’t been flying back.) My mom and I spent probably 45 minutes going through tubs of buttons.
Also, there is some rad signage.
Does anyone else visit any similiar places?

A Long, Long Time Ago…

July 5, 2011 crafting, plush, star wars, Stitch Wars 2 comments

Star Wars is probably my longest running nerd love. I used to watch the all day marathons of the Original Trilogy with my dad during the holidays. For a long time I had no idea what order things went in as I would wander in and out. I have the attention span of a goldfish. An easily distracted goldfish who likes shiny string. I did always love it though, and even more so when I actually sat down and watched the movies through. I even met my boyfriend on a Star Wars forum.

So of course I had to bring some cuddly friends from a galaxy far away to Hereos Con with me.

They want to hug you or eat your face, they haven’t decided yet

These little Hutts were a last minute addition and sold very well. At about a foot tall they’re a great way to use up smaller scraps of  browns, greens, and greys. I love their nubby little arms!

It’s not a trap, it’s a doll!

 
Guess how many times I heard, “It’s a trap!” over Heroes Con weekend. A MILLION that’s how many. Apparently this is a nerd reflex. Tap your knee in the right spot and your leg will switch, when you’re in danger you have a flight or fight response, see Admiral Ackbar in any form and you must yell “It’s a trap!” Seriously, I had a lot of fun making this little guy. The bulging eyes are extra cute and mouth looks vaguely like a moustache. Some of them were Señor Ackbar.

The Star Wars love continued after the convention as well with several custom orders.

I made a Boba Fett a long, long time ago as part of a Secret Santa exchange on a forum. I think this little guy turned out very well for my second attempt at everyone’s favorite bounty hunter.



My backpack’s got jets
There was some love for the Jedi too. I was also commissioned to make this cuddly Kit Fisto, which I had to wrestle away from my boyfriend to get in the mail. This was one of those ones that was incredibly hard to put in a box and send away, and I am definitely making more of him.
These are all going to be good practice for my first ever gallery show! I was invited to participate in Bear and Bird’s second Stitch Wars gallery show and of course jumped at the chance. It was amazing to see all the talented people involved in and the beautiful artwork that was part of the first Stitch Wars show. I’m so excited to be part of the second show! I’ll be posting progress pictures and updates as I get my submissions finished over the next few weeks.

You’re My Hero

June 24, 2011 conventions, crafting, geekery 3 comments

Preparing for HeroesCon and subsequently recovering from it kept me super busy, but it was completely worth it!

I’ve gone to HeroesCon for several years; it was actually my first “official” date with Bats. (We also met on a Star Wars forum. Oh yeah, super sexy.) I always have a great time spending money on toys and tee shirts, seeing friends, and generally geeking out. The last two years I’ve brought a doll with me during the day, and actually gotten a few custom orders from it. After the all the positive response both online and off I took the leap and bought an artist table for this year.


The Handmade Stuffs table

I’ve never been a vendor at anything this well attended and never sold at a comic convention period. In the month and a half preceding Heroes, I spent the most of my free time lately basically chained to my sewing machine. I made sixty dolls in a just over month. Yeah, SIXTY. That doesn’t include thirty little plush skulls and twelve Huttlets. I had nightmares about drowning in stuffing and had to climb over dolls to get to my sewing table.

Behold the majesty of the Tower of Plush

I lucked out with a fairly good spot and a wonderful neighbor. Cassie Hart’s adorable art was a great compliment, although it was really hard to not continually run over there every time I made a sale. I did trade a zombie for an awesome owl pillow. My favorite zombie too, just so you can understand how cool she is. Go visit her website and buy things. Now! (Well finish reading this, then you can go.)



Super lady



Bats was largely in charge of character selection, so the dolls I brought had a definite 70′s and 80′s tilt. I had some He-Mans (He-Men?) and Skeletors, Lion-O from Thundercats, Admiral Ackbar from Star Wars, and cuddly little Mr. T’s. I also had some little Cobra Troopers and Destro from G.I.Joe.

Which lead to probably my favorite picture for the whole weekend, Cobra Commander with his wee minion.


This makes me happy forever

I donated one of my little Lion-O’s to the charity auction held on the first night of the convention. He went for a $100 and apparently was a big hit, yay! Lion-O hung out at the top of plush tower most of the weekend, holding his teeny sword aloft.

Thunder…Thunder…Thundercats! Ho!
Skeletor was probably the most popular for the weekend. What’s not to love about a muscely blue guy with a skull head? I’ve made Skeletor before, but this time I had some little plush He-Men so they could have epic battles.
Sup guys?
One He-Man sold by himself, but luckily the rest went home with a Skeletor friend to play with.
I don’t have many pictures of the actual convention as I was stuck at my table most of the time. (I’m hesitant to leave my very gruff boyfriend behind a pile of cute dollies for too long.) I still had a metric ton of fun talking to people passing by and watching people’s faces light up when they saw the dolls. I was even able to overlook the eight hundred times a day I heard “It’s a trap!” in references to the Admiral Ackbar dolls and “I pity the fool!” in reference to the Mr. T’s. Comic conventions are looking like a whole new market for me and I’m really excited about the potential.
Now back to working on the twenty plus custom orders I have to do…

Birdies

April 13, 2009 birds, crafting No comments

It’s springtime, and I’ve been on a bit of a bird kick lately. There’s the embroidery for my mom (which I did end up coloring, and I like how it turned out). And there’s the Nite Owl embroidery I’m still working on, which I am also counting as bird themed.
Then I got a commission for these little birdies as a wedding cake topper. They’re about 7″ tall. I’m pretty please with how they turned out, although they were a bit of a pain. The fabric frayed like crazy (I used fusible interfacing to back it and had to zig zag along the edges) and the pattern was very finicky, but they are quite cute. They’re beaks are made from polymer clay and I found this nifty wired jute to use for their legs.

And with Easter, there was also Eggschach…

"Tone It Down"

October 4, 2008 crafting, musing No comments

I’ve been freaking out a little trying to get things ready for Craft Attack. This is my first craft fair and I really want everything to go well, so I’ve been finishing up some things and making some new things to try and have a good selection of items and prices. I think I’m ok, I have items ranging from $1.50 to probably $35 (still have to price some totes eek). I was showing off my pillow covers and he mentioned that I should think about toning it down to appeal to a larger audience.
While I would love it 85% of people would want to buy my stuff, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. Everything has an audience. People will pay $50 for a grilled cheese sandwich with a religious figure on it. People will pay good money for a purse with a little vagoo on it. Some people like to make little plush mufflers with faces. And that’s ok, that’s awesome! Everyone is different and everyone has different tastes and what makes one person gag may make someone else stupidly happy. That’s what I want. I don’t care how much I sell, I want to make things that make me happy and that makes whoever buys it happy. You can go out to the store and buy a tote bag with your favorite sport team or a pillow with a teddy bear on it, where can you get a little sushi pin or a sushi monster or a stuffed zombie? From me, and THAT is why I make things. To have a little bit of me in the form or fabric or beads or clay. For the community. To see what little bits of themselves other people make.