Sunday, September 30, 2007

more halloween wreaths

i finished a couple more wreaths. these ones are WAY faster than the other, only about half an hour each. amazing what a time saver the glue gun is!

they're both made of a flat wood wreath form from the dollar store that i painted, then wrapped garland around. (each wreath used two garlands to cover them)

the orange wreath

a black cat wire garland, little plastic pumpkin ornaments, orange mardi gras beads, black spider rings with the rings cut off, and halloween ribbon.

the fang wreath

(the flash made a few of the irridescent bats look orange, but they're not)

i got those cheapy plastic fangs and drilled holes in them, then used black embroidery floss to tie them into a biting shape. i threaded them onto a third garland to look like they were biting it, and wrapped that around. i added the irridescent bat garland, the purple spider rings with the ring part cut off, and the little purple flies.

i think they're so fun! and they were pretty cheap. i have a ton of halloween stuff already, so the base supplies were about $3 or $4 each, and then the extras. i probably spent about $10 for the two of them.

i've still got one more like this to finish, but i need to go buy more black garland. and then i have a grape vine wreath that i want to put halloween ATCs on too.

Saturday, September 29, 2007

seamrippers

i always thought seamrippers was pretty cool. i'm impressed with the stuff they put together, even if my craft fair experiences with them have never been particularily... well, let's just say there are often some organization issues with collective type groups. and i think they've gotten much better anyway, so that's probably irrelevant now.

i always wanted to go to events and workshops, but their parties were completely overwhelming and innaccessible (and, um kinda gross - sweaty walls! though that was a good party), and the workshops were either never anything i was excited enough about to take a workshop on, or something i already knew how to do (which sounds conceited, i guess).

i was always kinda intimidated by the coolness factor, and i think, unfortunately, that i let other people's negative opinions about seamrippers affect the way i thought. which is sucky of me, really. luckily, those particular negative people are no longer part of my life (yay!).

so. seamrippers has decided to do craft socials instead of workshops this fall, and i really want to try to go to at least one or two. they're themed, but you can bring your own stuff to work on, and they're at one of my favourite places, rhizome.

Rhizome Cafe -317 East Broadway, Vancouver
Every-other Tuesday at 7:00pm.
Instruction and supplies will be provided by donation.

the schedule:
Tues Oct 2nd- Embroidery
Tues Oct16th - Knitting
Tues Oct 30th - hand sewing animal hoods and tails
Tues Nov 13th - CRAFT SUPPLY SWAP!
Tues Nov 27th - doll making
Tues Dec 11th - seasonal pop up cards

one of my biggest problems with "craft nights" is the prep time involved - i never have my shit together enough to have a hand project ready to go. however, now that i've started embroidering again, i DO have SEVERAL projects waiting to go! so no problem!

well, except for the energy required to drive into vancouver. at least they're evening, and late enough that i can avoid rushhour. so hopefully i'll be able to go.

eyeball wreath

i finished this tonight.



i have three more i'm half done, but they're all different than this one.


i bought the wreath at micheals about a year and a half ago and never got around to spraypainting it, and i finally did a few days ago.

then i took all the eyeballs and drilled two holes in each one (they're like pingpong balls with the eyes painted on) and threaded them all onto embroidery floss with a few black pony beads between them. i wrapped the eyeball garland around, took a purple and a black mardi gras necklace and cut them open and wrapped them too. then i laid out all the gummy bats and spiders, which i'd drilled holes in earlier (i love my drill press!). i took a super long piece of black embroidery floss and sewed it all together to keep everything in place, and then i added all the bright colourful rings - i just threaded them onto pieces of the wreath to keep them in place.

i am SOOO GLAD to finally finish something! i have all these projects i'm half done or close to being done, and FINALLY, something is finished. i'm satisfied.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

cool site

i found this the other day and forgot to post it.

it's a project done in sweden that teaches people who are in wheelchairs how to sew clothes that are suited for a sitting position, and it looks really cool. it's got some patterns, and some interesting info about what kinds of alterations are required when you spend your life sitting.

wedding crochet

when one of the other mods on craftster was planning her wedding, she had an idea for how we could all "share" in the wedding without actually being there.

emily (emilyflew) sent balls of yarn to all the mods who wanted to participate, and asked that we knit or crochet a piece for her. the only requirement was that it be 3 feet long, it could be as wide as we wanted. then we all sent them back to her before her wedding, and she seamed them together to create a a beautiful piece to decorate the space on her wedding day.

she posted the full piece on craftster here.

these are the two pieces i sent - closeups only, unfortunately! (click on the pics to see the full image)


fishnet with seed beads in orange and yellow, her wedding colours.


and shells.

the yarn was super lovely, very very fine mohair, and it was much nicer to work with than i'd expected! one day i'll make a shawl or something out of similar yarn, it would be fabulous! (but i won't do the fishnet, cause that took forever!)
aren't these the fun-nest cacti you've ever seen?
(and YES, fun-nest is a word, at least in amy land!)

they'd be fabulous pincushions!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

oohh!

isn't this gorgeous?

(see, that paypal balance really is tempting!)

of course, i still haven't found a way to store all the rubber stamps i do have (of which i found an awesome stash while cleaning the studio - a bunch of halloween ones, praying hands, a camera, a grasshopper and more!) that i'd forgotten about.

but still.... a typewriter rubber stamp? that would make me so happy!
(almost - but not quite - as happy as a virgin mary snowglobe - that would make my life complete)

zines, mail art, fabric collage, typewriter

i made a simple quilt this weekend, for the weekend halloween swap on craftster.org, but i think i'll let my partner receive it before i post it.

lately i've been thinking a lot about making fabric/applique/collage postcards. partly because i owe a few people something fabulous in the mail, and postcards are always perfect for that, and partly because i signed up for the halloween/day of the dead postcard swap on craftster.org (because i really can't resist anything halloween- though i'm not letting myself start on them until i get caught up on other stuff!). i've done some fabric ATCs lately, and i kept thinking how fun it would be to make them bigger so that they could go through the mail...

totally coincidentally, i found this blog tonight with some pretty amazing collages. wierd coincidence, huh?

but it's totally inspirational, and now i'm even more impatient to play around with them.


in other crafty news, the studio clean up project is going s l o w l y . . . .
part of the problem is my inability to stop making stuff long enough to actually get it clean, though the sheer amount of stuff i have in there is also to blame.

i did load up the trunk of my car with two boxes and two big bags full of stuff destined for the thrift store. i'm sure there will be more.


tonight i opened up an envelope of vintage embroidery patterns and hit a jackpot - there were 5 other envelopes stuffed inside! lots of pretty flowers, vintage cars, stuff like that. it inspired me to dig out a couple of other vintage embroidery envelopes i'd stashed away, and found some lovely letters and more fleurs. then i remembered that some of my old workbasket magazines had embroidery patterns in them too, so i had to search for them. i only found a few issues, but one of them had embroidery patterns in them, and they are super duper cool - paper lanterns and a pagoda and a lotus blossom and a dragon and a bonsai tree! so gorgeous, i need to find the perfect project to use them for.


i'm working on an ATC for the alphabet ATC swap on craftster, this round is Y and Z. i made a card that was Z for zipper, but i decided that it was too common, and it occurred to me that z can also be for ZINES! so now i've decided to make an atc sized zine for the swap, and i've been typing up the little pages on my fabulous new typewriter.




(click to see the full pic)

it's probably the best $4 i've spent in my life! i ran out of ribbon today, but damned if i know where any of my back up ribbons are in my disaster of a studio, so i decided to just rewind the ribbon enough to type the last few pages of the zine. so i took the ribbon off, winded it nicely, and then realized i had no flippin clue how to put the damn thing back in.

i mean, i THOUGHT i had a clue, i thought i totally knew how to do it, but i proved myself wrong. after much cursing, many inked fingerprints everywhere, waiting for my mom to get home and try to load it (since she's actually USED typewriters for more than crafting in her life!) and then much more cursing as neither of us could figure it out, it popped neatly into place, just to prove us wrong.

speaking of zines, i love them. i finally found the box in which i packed ALL my zines (it's a big box, actually, though i managed to lose it for almost 2 years) and i'm excited to start reading them all over again. zines are actually one of the few things that i'm super organized about - they're all stored in alphabetical order by title in little japanese notebooks (like the one i decorated here), and i have a corresponding excel file that documents the title and the author so that i can search it and see what i have before ordering more (i started the excel file after i bought my third copy of the same brainscan issue!) and find all the zines i have by the same author.

i especially love crafty zines, and i think there needs to be way more of them out there. i love love love CROQ zine and i fell in love with the cuteness of a zine called scrappy a few months ago, and just realized tonight that the author (niku) has an etsy store called The Ephemeral Mailbox Museum! where she sell several other exciting looking craft zines. i have to admit that i've had a mini i've-never-met-you-but-you-seem-super-cool crush on niku for several years now - she wrote a submission for one of our femme affinity group compilation zines, and her bio made me swoon. she's a pretty amazing crafty political femme, and those are all my favourite things for people to be.

since i have yet to figure out how to get moola off my paypal account, i ordered all the zines listed on her etsy that i don't already have, and i'm very excited for them to come! i also got really enthusiastic a few days ago and bought a ton of zines from not sorry distro. (that paypal balance was really burning a hole in my pocket!)

i'm super duper excited about all the zines - maybe the time has actually come to get my ass in gear and write my own??? we'll see, won't we?

Monday, September 17, 2007

it's been a long time since i've made a quilt, but i'm so in love with this one...

this looks a lot less time consuming though!

Saturday, September 15, 2007

embroidery #1!

this is the first skirt i embroidered, with the more complicated design.

you can't see it super well, but that's okay with me. i know what it says! (lucky in love - i was hoping if i embroidered it it might come true!)


originally it was even harder to read - i ripped out the dice and redid them in green and went over the words with chain stitch in the same blue. i'm kinda sad that there's no purple on it anymore, but it just didn't read.

the design is from sublime stitiching, it's the viva las vegas pattern sheet. i changed the lettering to read lucky in love instead of lucky lady, since i don't particularily want to be referred to as a lady! unfortunately, i decided to change it AFTER i'd transferred the pattern, but a shot of stain remover spray got the extra pattern lines off the skirt.

it works! fabulously!

last night lindsey and i had a mellow hanging out night, watching a movie, and i embroidered away while she knit, so i've used the tear away stabilizer to embroider two skirts now, and it works pretty well. on one of the skirts, my stitches weren't quite as close together, so it was harder to rip out, but it was awesome for the first skirt. i'll post pics, but not this minute, cause one still needs to be hemmed and the other is in the washing machine as i write this.

i cut out fabric for a couple more skirts, and went to my friendly family owned fabric store and picked up some more elastic. i think i need to get some more skirt hangers too!

i got some napkin fabric at the fabulous store too, because i couldn't find the perfect white cotton to embroider on, and this has nice weight. i'll be cutting out the embroidery and appliqueing it onto a skirt (surprise! another skirt!), so it won't matter that the cotton has a border around it.

i also went to wineberries, a quilt store here in surrey. i went there on thursday in search of the tear away stabilizer and ended up buying a $13 pencil to transfer embroidery patterns. i was chatting with the woman, and wasn't paying enough attention, and after i left i realized "wait! i needed something that would IRON ON, not draw on!". plus, $13 for a pencil? i'm cheap! i'm all about the cool little accessories (i ADORE my clover seam ripper), but sometimes they're just silly. so i went there today and returned it and looked at some yarn (i'm sad that they only had bamboo yarn in boring colours! it was all so beige!) and asked a few questions and they were kind of snippy, which reminded me why i so rarely go there. i guess the nice woman on thursday was just a fluke!

i know i look young, but i've been sewing for over 15 years, and i know what i'm doing! i hate going to stores where they treat me differently than their older customers. that's why i refuse to go to masons anymore, even though they're he only elna dealer in the lower mainland. i used to live right by them, and their attitude was so terrible, i hated going in there. i've had other crafty friends my age who experienced the same thing there. wineberries is almost always the same. boo on uptight older quilters.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

i got it! tearaway stabilizer. i hope it works well!

it was super cheap too, $2.50 a metre.

that kinda makes up for the other stuff i fell for at the fabric store.... i love halloween fabric! especially 50% halloween fabric!

i ADORE this fabric, but i wish alexander henry wasn't so bloody expensive in canada (unfortunately, the crows weren't on sale!). i just can't justify spending $15 a metre at the moment. and unfortunately this fabric seems to be quite old, so i can't even find it on any of the fabulous cheap american fabric sites. boo.

trials of embroidery

well! now that i've posted so much of the stuff i've made in the past, i can start actually using this blog. i'm sure i've missed stuff in my posting, but oh well. i KNOW i've missed stuff, i don't think i posted any quilts at all, but i'll get around to it eventually.

lately i've been really enjoying embroidery. my health's been crummy, and embroidery's something i can do on the couch in front of countless episodes of CSI. i'll start crocheting again as well, but it's still a little warm for that.

i've done a few small embroidery pieces, and i'll post them here once the recipients have received them, but i want to do some larger ones. i've been searching for tear away stabilizer so that i can embroider jersey (because i adore clothing made of jersey!), and i've been to or called 4 stores now! my fabulous family owned fabric store didn't have it, but i didn't really expect them to. then i went to the expensive quilting store close to my house and they were out of stock. then i called the stitiching store (all they carry is supplies for embroidery, crosstitch, etc) and they don't carry it! what? i called fabricana, the huge independent fabric store that's pretty pricey but carries hard to find stuff and they told me that they usually have it in stock, but were unable to go check for sure before i drove 45minutes to get it. boo on you!

i'll go to fabricana though, because i don't have a whole lot of options. they're open till 9 at least, so i can wait until after rush hour to drive there.

yesterday i sewed myself a few skirts. two were very simple, one involved ruffles, but really, nothing fancy. i'm happy anyway, because i love skirts, and i need more of them. i want to embroider one of them, hence the obsession with the tear away stabilizer!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

august/07 - wedding totes!

mr and mrs sweets4ever's wedding was such a mod-family project!

jean was looking for gifts to give people in her wedding party, and it had to be something interesting and hopefully useable, and totes came up. once i started thinking about it, i couldn't stop the ideas from coming!

(click to see the full pics, blogger cuts them off)



i made 5 total. 4 full sized totes for the maid of honour, both the moms, and for her sister in law, and 1 little tote for the flower girl.



they're made of shot taffeta, so they range from red to black depending on the light. the taffeta was interfaced with heavy weight interfacing, and i ironed a layer of that iron on batting stuff onto the black cotton lining.



the appliques are black vinyl, and took forever both to cut out and to sew! each bag has the recipient's name sewn onto the back, but we wanted it to be subtle, so i matched the thread shade to the fabric really closely.




each bag has a zippered pocket (using old-new stock red zippers) and an iron on message from mr and mrs sweets4ever. (i used the dark iron ons for th first time and they worked pretty well. the white didn't turn out quite as crisp as i'd hoped though)




the straps aren't interfaced (the thought of turning interfaced tubes terrified me!), but they have strapping threaded through them to add strength and to keep them from folding or anything.







they have so many special little details, and that's why they were so time consuming, but it makes them so special. the wedding colours were wine and black, and the maid of honour's dress is of the same basic material. the cherry blossom theme/naturey theme is throughout the wedding, the applique is based on one of the images they used for the invitations and decorations and stuff. the inner tag is an iron on transfer, and the photo is one jean took of the wedding site last year, and then she altered it to remove some colour and add the message thanking them for their part in the special day. the coloured part is all roses.



(credit for the pictures goes to sweets4ever, she took way better ones than i did!)

july/07 - vinyl bag

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket


(did you know that it was the teeny little super guy?)

6 months worth of ATCs

i can't remember which of these i've posted, so i'm just gonna post them all in one place. these aren't all of them, the movie swap ones are posted separately.

(if the pic is cut off, click on it and it'll open full size in a new window)

i started making ATCs in february or so, so this is basically 6 months worth
- some of the first ones i did -


a little bit of ink around the edges, and rub on words for embellishment. i changed it up a bit for the three i made a bit later, i cut the paper smaller than the actual ATC so that i could glue it to black paper and have a border. i couldn't figure out why the honour one looked so wierd to me until mom pointed out that it was spelt wrong... duh, that's why! stupid american craft supplies! (someone commented that it's not wrong, it's just american.... i stand by my original comment! it's not MY FAULT that americans can't spell!)


i mostly just wanted an excuse to use another one of my stamps, and cause i was in a sappy mood.... fuscia pigment ink for the stamp and around some of the edge, pink rhinestone, and polka dots!


this one is a commemorative ATC, valentine's day 2007. it uses the black burlap paper, the red paper, the stamp and the image i used for a valentines card i made, and the shiny red is the foil from chocolates i got. i'm a sap, what can i say?


i love fake woodgrain, and i love leopard print, they're both so deliciously tacky. i added a few brown rhinestones to add to the tackiness factor! (oddly enough, when i bought a thing of 6 different colours of rhinestones, i thought, brown? when am i gonna use brown rhinestones? but i used them first!)


a purple vellum overlay with black pen drawing, black pigment stamping, and black pigment ink around the edges. the vellum is attached to the backing with a grommet, with ribbon looped through that says "identify". (identity would have been even cooler, but oh well. i found this ribbon at a random sewing store last year, and have been waiting to use it!) the pic's a bit dark, but the flash and the vellum took an instant dislike to each other.


under the vellum is a picture of me taken a few years ago (in seattle at the femme conference) that i played around with in photoshop and altered the colour. then i printed it out onto cardstock and glued it onto this paper i'm obsessed with- it looks and is textured like burlap! but it's black! i'm wearing huge false eyelashes in the picture, which is why the eyes drawn on the overlay are so dramatic.


- some very simple ones with vintage buttons





- for the craftster.org alphabet atc swap p, q, r
P is for patchwork


pieced together, then cut, then sewn onto batting and backing fabric before trimming it and zigzagging the edges. the back label was written on white cotton which was then wonder-undered onto the backing fabric. the p is attached with a brad.

Q is for quilt


it's all fabric. i kept it fairly traditional log cabin, two shades of colour, with light and dark on each side. i didn't have a good red cotton handy to symbolize the hearth/fire in the centre of the cabin, so i used woodgrain instead. wood=logs=hearth!
you can kind of see the quilting on the back, i used wonder under to add the label after it was done.

r is for red, rhinestones and robot... the writing is the binary code for robot!

the robot charm is held on with a brad, of course, and the charm is from a 1970s disney movie about robots, it says V.I.N.C.E.N.T. across it's front. the charm and the rhinestone printed paper came from www.sacredkitschstudio.com the fabulous mods helped me get the binary code, cause i'm not talented like that myself! too left brain!


- entry for the "wings" atc challenge on craftster.org

fun black burlap textured paper, little angel wings, red paper lips and dymo words. i love dymo.



i'd wanted to do lino carving for the wings and print onto vellum, but i ran out of time, so they're drawn onto the vellum instead. i actually really like it this way, though i still want to do the wing carvings another time. when the wings open up, you can see the photo of a corset piercing underneath. the photo is glued onto red backing, and the wings are sandwiched between the two. i pierced the card and threaded super thin red cording through the holes, just to add a bit of colour. i love corset piercings, though i'm not sure i'd ever do one, cause the scars from the surface piercings might not be worth it (especially when they're done incorrectly, like in this photo!). and my tattoo would kind of mess up the visual anyway. but i love the way they look.

and all fabric based. i LOVE bat wings, i made myself the best pair one year for halloween.



close up of the heart

it IS even, it just doesn't look like it, i think i need to add a thicker backing so that it lies flatter. the heart is upholstery vinyl cut into pieces and then stitched back together (though you can't really tell, so i probably shouldn't have bothered) with a big fat zigzag and then i added more random stitching to make it look bruised and battered. i sewed it onto a piece of slick black snakeskin clothing weight vinyl, which is sewn onto a piece of interfacing. the wings are made of a black sheer netting fabric that has cool crinkles in it. i cut out the pieces and laid them on a piece of looseleaf paper and then sewed the ribbons into place, the paper gave it enough structure that it didn't twist while i sewed the skinny ribbon. then i ripped the paper off and sandwiched the ends of the wings between the heart and the backing when i sewed the heart on.


- gifties-
robot for emily

you can't see the shades of the paper that well, but oh well. the outer is honeycomb textured, it was red, and i stamped all over it with an orange pigment pad, the next one is textured orange with lines, and the inner red is plain. the robot is a pic of a vintage toy. and i put red brads and star brads on it.

poodle for sarah


blue vellum with the dymo word, affixed with a brad.
under the vellum is a sassy little poddle (from a vintage bridge score card), pretty pink and white polka dots and blue burlap textured paper.

snowglobe and crow for stiffy

the image inside the snowglobe is of the moulin rouge. it's sandwiched between layers of acetate and paper, and the glitter inside moves just like a real snowglobe. i crumpled up the main paper and coffee dyed it, cause it was a bit too light. the suitcase brad was just for fun, to match the words!

the crow image is from a paper bag i got from an art store. it's called the upstart crow, and all their bags are stamped with a crow image. i used a different part of the bag to stamp the word crow with black pigment ink. i used the same pigment ink around the edges, though it wouldn't stick to the super glossy rusty orange paper.

J's for jamie

the paper reminded me of her! the initials have flocked stripes on them, and then i sewed vintage buttons on.

falling leaves for angie

i wanted something nature inspired, and when i found the printed twill tape, i knew what to do! the tree is woodgrain vinyl, and then i cut out a bunch of teensy little leaves and sewed them on as though they were falling.

poppy for angie

fairly simple, i mostly wanted to showcase the poppy button i'd gotten at a local quilt shop. the other buttons are all vintage, and the paper is this stuff that i'm completely in love with. i covered a book with it, and was so happy i had enough left to use for the card!


- the craftster.org alphabet swap s, t and u
S is for snowglobe, sphinx, stars, suitcases, and stamps.

the stars are done the same way as the glitter in stiffy's card. i used stars instead of snow since snow's pretty unlikely with the sphinx!

T is for tin

i cut a pop can up and embossed it from the back. i prepared the backing card, and then punched holes in both the tin and the backing, and then i sewed silver vinyl around the edges so they wouldn't be sharp. i think it turned out really cool!

U is for umbrella

i sandwiched crayon shavings and a little drink umbrella between wax paper and ironed them together. trimmed it down to size, and attached it and the big U with a brad. the wax paper can be moved, and when you hold it up to the light you can see the umbrella much more clearly.



- for the craftster.org alphabet atc swap, V, W and X.
all my ATCs for this round were made with vinyl. they have a smaller card inside the layers to keep them stiff.

v was for vintage and vinyl


i used vintage vinyl, vintage buttons (that i collected on my recent trip to the prairies. i think i went to 13 different thrift stores, and i bought WAY too many buttons!) and a teensy little vintage pic that was left over from a swap a few years ago, and i love how the pieces all fit together so well.

w was for wavy woodgrain


i used two different shades of vintage woodgrain vinyl, and vintage woodgrain dymo tape (damn, i love that stuff!).

and x was for xylophone


i used really bright colours for this one, because i wanted it to look like those fisher price xylophones we had when we were kids. (do they still make those?)
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