plastic shore

A couple of weeks ago, I did a segment with Martha, demoing the Sailor's Valentine boxes using all nature materials that I found on the beach. We also showed a piece of art I created from all the plastic remnants I collected that littered the ocean shore. 

Besides being automatically drawn to the specs of bright colors heading down the beach seeking shells, the remorse I would feel to "pirate" the natural and pass by the manufactured. How could I do that? Once that ida was in my head, it was impossible to stop picking it up.

After cleaning, drying, organizing by color and packing in my suitcase, all the plastic from the beaches of a small island in the Bahamas, we journeyed home to New York City. One night, I sat indian-style on the floor, scrutinized over layout and puzzled together a color gradient composition.

It changed a few times, many times, before I decided to glue the pieces down.

Now that I've composed the blue, green, grey, purple—I have the red, orange, yellow left to map out.

Side Note: live plastic free, don't litter and pick up trash.

piers antique show

This past weekend I explored the Antique Show at the Piers here in NYC and posted a gallery of photos on thecraftsdept blog of many of the interesting things I saw. Here are my favorites:

Bakelite prison rings—originally made out of toothbrushes by inmates!

Confirmed once again that I am not alone in my dead animal collecting. 

This cardigan was totally awesome—knitted with a variety of different dog breeds.

Antique dolls can be highly collectible and utterly eerie when they all get together. Some alone can be completely awkward and strange, like this crawling porcelain doll. I guess their bizarreness is part of their appeal.

I was thrilled to see antique pom-pom animals. We've made very similar ones at Martha but seeing the originals made by Steiff was really neat. Here are a few links to different handmade pom-pom how-tos:

Basic Insects & Animals

Bunny

Turkey

Chick

Snowman

T-shirt yarn pom-poms

I am not a paper cup

We did this very simple project on Martha's show of stenciling on reusable "paper" cups. The cups look like an ordinary white paper cup but are actually ceramic—I'm sure you've seen them before. Anyway, they are a perfect blank slate ready for embellishment and can help in our efforts to save trees! Martha made some decorative on the show, but also artlessly stenciled the names of all her home staff on cups so that they can have their own to re-use everyday.

Martha Stewart Crafts makes an adhesive film for customized stencils. She also has a slue of ready to go stencils including a typewriter style alphabet . I customized one of the cups for Ashley in one of my favorite fonts.

 I printed the name out, taped it to the stencil film and cut each letter out with a craft knife, keeping the negative space of any letter that had it (the a & the e). I prepared the cup by cleaning it with alcohol, then peeled off the paper backing of the stencil film and adhered it to the surface. With a little stenciling pouncer, I painted over the stencil. 

Before the paint was dry, I removed the stencil. Martha Stewart craft paint made by Plaid is a multi-surface paint the will cure permanently to practically any material. For ceramic, the paint takes about 20 days to cure so that it can be washed without the paint removing. 

I put the cup aside for three weeks and now Ashley has a special coffee cup to use everyday at the office.

quartz caps

I made these quartz crystal capped jars a while back using this awesome adhesive clay called Mighty Putty. It a two part epoxy that hardens and sticks to just about everything. Its one of those materials that is so neat, has endless uses, yet you really don't know what to do with it?! 

I had a bunch of crystals that I collected for my wedding so I used them to create these  capped vessels. All you have to do is slice a piece of Mighty Putty from the log it comes in, mix the green and white together really well, blob it onto the top of a jar's lid and stick and embed crystals in it. I finished the clay edge by pressing glitter into it before it hardened and wrapped the rim of the lid with a pretty silver ribbon. 

I made a set of graduated jars to fill with assorted bathroom essentials, cotton balls, Q-tips, tylenol and aspirin (the pills were more a styling thing—I couldn't find anything else white to put in them!).

There's a more refined epoxy clay called Crystal Clay that is available in many colors and used primarily to pave Swarovski crystal rhinestones (the ones with pointed backs). Martha used the clay around Valentine's Day to make glittery red heart pins. 

drip drip drip

Another lost-wax-casting of a skull in sterling. 

cutting on the bias. making a fringed shawl.

A woven fabric is said to be cut on the bias, or cross-grain, when the fabric's warp and weft threads are at 45 degrees to its major seam lines. Every piece of woven fabric has two biases, perpendicular to each other. Non-woven fabrics such as felt or interfacing do not have a bias.

To make a triangular fringed shawl, choose a wool fabric that is about 60" wide or more. You will need a square of fabric, so be sure to purchase two yards. Remove the selvage on the fabric and trim it to be a square. Woven fabrics can be ripped along the grain to get a straight edge. Use a rotary cutter and ruler to cut the fabric diagonally, at a 45 degree angle, through the square of fabric. 

You can use one of the bias cut triangles as your shawl or you can cut on the bias in the perpendicular direction to your first cut and seam the four triangles together. Overlap, about a half inch, each connecting edge to the adjacent triangle's edge and machine sew each seam with two straight stitches about one quarter inch apart. This will make your shawl a bit larger.

For the leather fringe, follow the same instructions as the scarf. For a 60" wide piece of fabric, my resulting bias cut triangle needed about 50 tassels along each side, starting from the point of the 90 degree angle.

fringed scarf

Last week on the show, I demoed how to make this leather fringed wool scarf. You can find the how-to on MarthaStewart.com, but I thought I would provide a photo how-to of for threading the leather tassels. 

This rectangular scarf is the width of the fabric (which was 60") by 13 inches. On the 13" sides are about 25 leather tassels that hang 12" long. 

The tassels start a quarter of an inch in on each end and are a half inch apart from one another. Line up a ruler a quarter of an inch into the edge of the fabric and punch holes at every half inch. A Martha Stewart Crafts screw punch, fixed with a 1/16" tip, is ideal for making the holes in the fabric.

Cut 50 leather laces (from The Leather Guy or Leather Impact) to 24 inches long. Prepare a thin piece of folded wire to use as a needle. Fold a piece of leather so the suede sides face each other and sandwich between the fold of your wire needle. Pull the leather through the top of the fabric until you have a loop on the under side.

Remove the needle and flip the top length of leather to be suede side up. Both lengths should be suede side up at this point.

Fold the leather over the edge of the fabric and through the loop. To tighten the loop, pull the leather close to the hole. You should not see the suede side of the leather from this side.

Keep adding tassels until you complete one side. 

Repeat process on opposite end of fabric. Done!

For a video how-to click here.

kurt.

No one has inspired me more than Kurt Cobain.

In every aspect of my life. 

I was molded as a pre-teen and my Nirvana "phase" never passed. If I hadn't believed in everything about him I wouldn't be who I am. I'm not sure my life would have gone in the direction it has. It still amazing me today that a person I never knew could influence my life as much as it has. 

Happy 45th Birthday Kurt.

"Flat" Ashley comes via mail

Ashley always succeeds in creating a unique (and cheeky) way to convey his love on Valentine's Day. This year it came in the form of "Flat" Ashley...

Folded up and mailed in an envelope...

Delivered by messenger in a tube...

And shipped UPS in a box...

By the end of the day, I had three Ashleys wishing me a Happy Valentine's Day!

My Sailor's Valentines

 Today makes ten years of love between Ashley and me. Valentine's can certainly be corny (and I do hate to admit that V day is my anniversary), but it can be truly meaningful when you do something extra special for the one you love. 

I made these Sailor's Valentines for my Ashley with shells, sea glass and sand that we collected together from the beaches in the Bahamas.

Additional little presents wrapped inside : )