organizing, labeling and purging

 Remember plastic label makers, way before p-touch?! Well they're one of my favorite manual gadgets and although it comes out rarely, I wouldn't organize without it.

 For all my metal drawers and boxes, that hold a variety of craft supplies and tools, I punched out a plastic label and mounted each on a sheet of magnet, cut them out and slapped them on the appropriate storage container. This way I can move things around, if need be, without any issues or new labels. 

Organizing is never fun, but it feels good to purge, know what has been accumulated and know exactly where everything you need is.

rockin' baby

Posted about these rock 'n roll onesies I made for my friends on its way baby on the craftsdept blog, couldn't help but share here too!

 

To make:

1. Pick a band. Print the logo out backwards. 2. Pick a fabric. For dimension in a design, layer fabrics—I used a thin cotton quilting fabric with wool felt on top for a few designs. For fine detailed designs, I recommend not using felt (Nirvana shirt). 3. Iron Steam-a-Seam (a double-faced fusible webbing) to a piece of fabric. Peel the protective paper off one side, place it web-side down to the backside of your fabric and iron it in place. 4. Print out design backwards and tape to web side of fabric. Use sharp scissor and a craft knife to cut out design. 5. Peel the protective backing off of cut out design and place on shirt. I referenced the original design for positioning. 6. Place a press cloth over the design and iron. Move iron in a circular motion, so not to burn the fabric. 7. Remove press cloth and let cool. 8. When soiled, hand wash and hang dry.

letters to kurt. april 5 2012

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a special performance and book release for Eric Erlandson's Letters to Kurt. I finished reading the book last week and was touched by Eric's introspection and reflections on his friend and his suicide. Yesterday also happen to mark the 18th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death. Sharing the evening with all the bandmates of Hole, minus Courtney Love, on April 5 was unique. I truly enjoyed Eric and Melissa's rendition of "Seasons in the Sun"—a song being about a dying protagonist's farewell to relatives and friends. Kurt once sang the song too.

plastic bird

 When I was gathering all the plastic off the beach in the Bahamas, I couldn't help but think of the inspiring collection of photographs by Chris Jordan of deceased albatrosses with stomachs teeming with plastic debris. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an ocean gyre spinning with garbage from land-based sources as well as ship-generated waste. Dead birds with plastic particle-filled bellies are only one effect of this floating mass. With an estimated 100 million tons of accumulating pelagic plastics, I can't imagine what it is doing to the wildlife, ecosystems and even us, the reason for all the pollution. 
Sometimes I feel guilty crafting—am I causing more waste?

making sweet carrots

For those of you expecting the Easter bunny on Sunday, a carrot is the perfect way to entice him to leave you some sweet treats. Instead of a carrot packed with Beta-carotene, you can make your own carrot pouch and fill it with candy instead. I'll be joining Martha on her show to demonstrate how to make life like carrots perfect for an Easter basket. Made from wool felt—one of my favorite materials—these carrot pouches are fun to make, but more fun to fill! 

How-to:

1. Cover a big carrot in cling wrap. Use a piece of paper to determine the template of the carrot. Wrap the carrot in the paper and trim where paper overlaps. 

2. Trace paper template onto piece of orange wool felt and cut out.

3. Saturate the felt in warm water. Wrap the carrot with the wet felt, stretching it around and creating overlap on the seam. Pin along seam and let dry.

4. When completely dry, use Fabri-tac to glue seam together. Once dry, remove carrot.

5. Make carrot stems: 

-cut 5 pieces of green felt in an asparagus shape. 

-use a sharp scissor and fringe the "asparagus" tip.

-saturate the stem and stretch it out from the just below the fringe to the end.

-gently stretch the fringe top and let dry.

-once dry, bundle 5 stems together with a knot on the end.

6. Attach bundle of stems to inside top of carrot with glue and let dry

7. Use a screw punch to create holes along the top edge of carrot and weave an orange cord though.

8. Fill carrot with wrapped candy or treats and cinch and tie top closed.

 

A single carrot makes a lovely hostess gift or make a bunch as favors for all your guests!

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.