Cabin Fever Craft Kit Roundup!

Seeing as my newfound madness for all things polymer clay has helped to cure my cabin fever woes, I thought that this week I would look for some other good things to cure cabin fever with! So without further ado, here are four awesome (green for St. Patty's) kits from Etsy!

• For those seamstresses out there who want something new to put on the sewing machine, here is a Twirly Swirly Ruffled Swing Top for your little girl from Littlefishbigpond. It has everything but the sewing machine and thread. And such cute green fabric, pre-cut, of course, for maximum convinience.

• Speaking of kiddos, get yours involved in the crafting, by having them help you. Make a festive Green Paper Chain for your St. Patrick's Day decorations with this hip kit from CrownPaperie!

• Keep warm at the St. Pat's Parade with this awesome warm Felted Scarf Kit from Etsy seller Kallerin. The kit uses Shetland yarn. Needles not provided.

• And last but not least, 10eisha brings us this Green Dotted Birdcage Veil Kit for doing it up in style at all the holiday parties! How could anyone not love such a fabulous accesory?!

That pretty much wraps it up for this week. Please pick up something to do during the long grey days of winter. We don't want winter to be a scene from the Shining. Be sure to check out some polymer art in my shop here and here. Also check us out in today's edition of the Journal and Courier.

Work as Usual

Busy weekend! Sorry for the day delay in updates, but I have been a workin' mama the past few days! Kyle and I are working on our collaborative art project for the gallery show in April, Kyle and I are collaborating with Annarae on some tech for her masters thesis project.

Yesterday we had lunch together at Anna's house and beforehand we made a bunch of origami stuff for a hostess gift. Look at the star I made!!! It was wonderful and lunch was a blast. (A+++ Would eat from again)

As if that weren't enough I taught Kyle crochet so that we can do some soft graffiti together. If you're in Lafayette, you should check out our first piece in person. I have loved soft graffiti since I first saw it three years ago on the Masquerade Blog. (So awesome!!) Kyle has been enthralled with it too, so we picked up some things at the craft store, and had a crochet lesson. Many thanks to Angela at the Lala Gallery for kindly giving us the site for our installation.

Last night Angela came over and we made polymer clay beads and pendants for an upcoming piece in the Journal and Courier on overcoming cabin fever. (for sale on Etsy later this week!) We went on a giant texture hunt throughout my entire house.

When you really look, it is amazing how much texture we have in our daily lives. It sort of reminded me of something out of The Island of the Colorblind by Oliver Sacks. In the book he talks about people who are born with no ability to see color, and how without that distraction they can see textures so rich that are practically invisible to the color seeing eye. Once you start to look for it, it is amazing how much texture there is in your life.

So we made polymer clay jewelry! I managed to dig up some suggested techniques from an old copy of Bead and Button Magazine which helped us tremendously. A few pointers from our toils of last night:

1. Use playing cards to control the thickness of the clay you are rolling out. 6 to 8 cards on each side of the clay offer a fairly stable consistent thickness.
   

1. You don't need a fancy rolling tool. We used an ink pen and it worked just fine.
2. Texture is FABULOUS! If it's hard to see, don't worry. We applied washes of acrylic paint to the finished projects before sealing them.
3. Be sure that your clay is all the way set and cool from the oven before you finish detailing and sealing it.

Past that there are some great tutorials out there. Good luck and have fun!

My Inspiration - Sixties Interiors

One of the places I pull a major part of my asthetic from is 60's/70's era interior design. Whether it is weirdly wonderful, or just plain weird, I'll take it all. I have always really adored that sort of feel in interiors. My grandmother decorated with wild lamps and big owls from that time period in her fabulous mish of a house.

James Lileks is probably the first place that really focused and put into words the wonderful wonkyness for me with his Interior Desecrations, a wonderful foray into the world of, "What in the HELL were they thinking?" He even wrote a book on the topic available at Amazon.

I look and look for books of interior design from that era. You can buy some repurposed at my Etsy shop in the form of Regrettable Design Cards.

I also love the DIY Crafting movement of that era. I am forever looking for more and more unique crafting books. (I occasionally come off of some of my stash.) They just have such a wide and great variety of projects and ideas in them that keep me pushing my skill set outwards and upwards.

Sorry for the late update this week. Stuff is starting to get crazy busy now that I'm seriously buckling down on getting paintings done for the gallery show in April. (That's next month, yo.)

SPECIAL!!!

So for this week's post, I am announcing my first ever featured item sale on Etsy! I sew a ton, and sometimes I custom make notions to fix some issue or other that I have.

That's what I did with the item I am featuring is the Needle Roll. I made it because pincushions just don't work for me. I travel a lot, and I basically need a traveling workshop. Needles were always sliding out of pincushions, or getting lost inside of them. I quit using them and started sliding them into the fabric in part of my sewing bag, but they would stab me.

Because of that, I started making these needle rolls. I LOVE mine! It keeps all my needles organized by size and purpose, and they don't get dull, bent, lost or stabby.

Until March 1, they are on sale for $2 at my shop, or free with any purchase over $10. Enjoy.

Great Glass Roundup.

Since I was so inspired by the Chihuly exhibit last weekend, I decided to share. Here are five pieces from ten sellers that I feel channel the colors, forms and spirit of what I felt at the conservatory.

First up is this gorgeous aqua hummingbird feeder from Etsy seller Glorious Glass Garden. The colors in this shop are so vibrant, and the outdoor nature of the brilliant glass is a win-win.

Remson Glass Works has a gorgeous hand blown ruffle edged bowl that evokes images of Chihuly's Macchia.

Chihuly makes some of the largest glass floats in the world. Scale them to fit in your home with a Blown Glass Oregon Coast Sea Float from Oberini.

Use glass to mimic the forms of nature by adding a fiddlestick from Glass Garden NW to your garden. Bright and beautiful!

Add some Venetian style with an abstract handled vase hand blown by undefined art.

These are just some of the awesome glass to be found on Etsy. It's amazing to see what a true craftsperson can do.