the good stuff

Recently, I was testing projects from a kid's book on being an "eco hero" for work.  The book had plenty of interesting 'green' facts, motivating reasons to change your lifestyle, and practical ways of doing things to be healthier and greener.  One of the projects had natural food dye as an ingredient in a play dough, so off I went to Whole Foods to purchase some.  Yikes!!!  3 little vials for $20!  What?!  Who would...!? Why are they...?!  The colors were very pretty, like easter eggs only maybe a little brighter.  Now, the idea of naturally colored playdough is really in line with my philosophy, so I'm not sure why I've never thought to make them before.  I don't want my darlings eating artificial colors - I mean, where do they go once they are in there?  I see nothing blue coming out the far end, right?  Turns out (after a little tinkering), making natural playdough can be simple and beautiful AND CHEAP!  Here is a recipe:

1 cup flour

1 cup brightly colored juice (blueberry, cherry, pomengranate, grape, etc.)

1/4 cup salt

1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Put all ingredients in a pot and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the dough comes together.  This only takes a few minutes.  When cool enough to handle, squish and knead until smooth.  Voila.  Store in a container in the fridge.

A lovely yellow can be made by using the recipe above, replacing the juice with water, and adding a teaspoon of ground turmeric.

Update:  I just made a chocolatey brown using, you guessed it, cocoa.  Follow the turmeric version, but add 4 Tablespoons of cocoa in the turmeric's place.  It smells good, looks just like cookie dough for your young pretend bakers, but is too salty to eat!  A great addition to the above palette.

What's not to feel good about when you hand this over to those little lovelies?

My Linen Bag

I am excited to share this bag because I LOVE IT!  I've been thinking of a bag like this for a while now, with some fabulous Japanese sewing book in the back of my mind as inspiration.  It is a tote with some angles and my new silk screen design and sturdy over stitching in a turquoisey blue.  Here,  see what I mean.

I kept the selvage edge as it came, frayed but unable to fray any further, with a red thread running across.  How could I hide it!?

And the straps are roughly stitched in an intentional sort of way, adding what I think is an interesting detail, but also makes this bag so easy to make without a pattern or fuss, not to mention making it strong and sturdy.

I think I have come to sewing in the right era.  The art of designing things is more fluid and open ended- sort of an anything goes philosophy.  My dear friend's mother, who has a beautiful and magical touch with the things she makes, says that what you sew should be able to be worn inside out because it should be that well finished.  That is the era she was reared in with her sewing machine or needle and thread.  I would have run away screaming, it is so diametrically opposed to how I am able and willing to do things.  I want things finished nicely, I do, but my self-imposed rules are quite a bit different.  I like raw edges.  I like my stitching to show.  I like to take what could be a mistake and turn into into a cool detail.  I am not always successful with what might be a willy nilly approach, but when it works, even I love it.  The rest is chalked up to the learning process, which has it's good points.  I do love to sew!

I am going to make some more bags like this one and sell them in my ETSY shop.  Just click on My Etsy Shop above and see what I have there.  I am always making new things, so keep checking.  

I am thrilled to announce that The Crafty Crow is posting my Spring Birdy project, as seen in my last posting.  I hope it is my first of many on that fabulous site.  Let me know what you think of the tutorial and if it is clear.

a spring bird

Today I revisited a project that I made over a year ago for Family Fun Magazine for their April issue called "We Love Baby Animals".  I actually made quite a few of these birds and they live in our Christmas ornament box until it's time to adorn the tree.  Today's birdy went home with our friend Birdy (I couldn't resist, and she was so gracious and fun to give it to).   Here she is in her lavender fluffiness:

This project is super easy and satisfying.  I developed it to be made with styrofoam balls, and that is what I did today, but I would like to change that to something less creepy to work with and that won't stick around forever in a landfill (if the bird doesn't get handed down through the generations, that is).  A friend suggested paper mache balls, which are available ready-made at the craft store, so I think I'll give them a try.  The nice thing about styrofoam is that the yarn grabs at the roughness and makes the wrapping easy.  The only nice thing about styrofoam.

I hope the following tutorial is clear and everyone makes lots of spring birds.  I do love that image.

These spring babies are a quick and satisfying project to do with your kids.  You’ll want to make a whole flock.

 

Materials:

-        2 styrofoam balls of differing sizes.  This babe was made with 2.5” and 1.5” balls.

-        fuzzy yarn

-        craft feathers

-        felt for the beak

-        2 black beads for the eyes

-        a pipe cleaner

-        tacky glue

-        a branch

 Directions:

1)     Coat half of the bigger ball in tacky glue.  At one end, begin spiraling the yarn around and around in a circle until you reach the equator of the ball (It is tricky to wrap the ball with yarn as the diameter is decreasing, as the yarn slips).  Cut yarn and repeat process on the other side.

2)     Repeat with smaller ball then attach the 2 balls together by inserting the toothpick into one and sliding the other on top.

 

3)     Cut the felt into a diamond shape, fold it in half so it is beaky, and glue in place along the crease.  Glue on bead eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

  4) To make the feet, cut pipe cleaner in half and bend one end into 3 toes.  Cut the leg to desired length and insert into bottom of bird body.  You may need to poke a pilot hole with a skewer first.  Secure with glue if desired. 

 

5) Put a few drops of glue on one end of the stick and begin wrapping with yarn.  Wrap the whole branch and secure other end with a dot of glue.  Glue birdy to the branch a prop to dry. 

Oh, here is another one I have in a shadow box in my kitchen with an abandoned nest on top.

Tweeeeeeet!

winter weeds and screen printing

I finally did it. I sat down over coffee with a couple of friends, took out my Winter Weed Finder by Dorcas S. Miller (illustrated by Ellen Amendolara, bless her) and drew several things, including a wild leek that I successfully made into a silk screen (only successful on the second attempt, but successful, just the same). I have been wanting to silk screen forever. I even bought all the supplies a couple months ago, but that first drawing felt so important to get right that I was immobilized for a good while. When I finally decided to not take myself so seriously, I drew the picture (so simple) and then proceeded to attempt using the photo emulsion method (which required going to the copy shop to make a transparency, allowing the photo emulsion to dry on the screen in the dark of my closet, away from the exposing effects of the big bad sun for so long it seemed like I'd never again be able to change my clothes without considering what to grab before opening and slamming the door shut again...phew...story not over. Then came the burning of the image under the brightest lights I could find in the basement, which apparently, were not bright enough). Basically, on that first pass of ink onto paper, came a solid swath of blackness. No image. Hmm. I decided to use the drawing fluid method and it worked great.

Silk screening is magical. The print looks so much cooler than the drawing and as long as you have things to print, you can keep going and going. Here are some things that I made after printing thrifted t-shirts. First is a skirt that was a 2xl super wide men's shirt. It was wide enought to make a lovely a-line. I printed the image several times along the bottom and used fold over elastic to make the waistband. Pretty. Comfy. Kinda my perfect everday skirt.

The next project was a large red thrifted t-shirt where I silk screened one image onto the chest. I turned this into a little swing dress/ tunic for Ava. She even modeled it for me in Cowboy boots! For those of you who know her, this may be a surprise. It is even more of a surprise that she asked to keep it instead of allowing me to put it in my ETSY shop. Sure!

Well!

fooled ya!

My daughter is definitely a gag kind of gal. It doesn't need to be the first of April to have a pillow fall on one's head while walking through a doorway in our house. Nor should Grandad be surprised if there is poop on his Sunday supper plate (of the plastic variety, but still!). Not to overuse the apple theme in our lives, but you know what they say about where apples land when they fall from the tree. The tree being Jonny. I'm afraid I am just coming out of my shell as far as humor is concerned.

In any case, we take April Fool's Day seriously around here so I thought I'd share what's planned for tomorrow. I don't know what I'd do if the first fell on a weekend. There is something great about packing a gag lunch and wondering all day how it went off. For Ava, we have packed an extremely small lunch for her. So small, in fact, it fits in a matchbox. See.

What you see: A cheese and lettuce sandwich, a carrot, a chopped raisin, and a piece of cake. This we packed in the matchbox, then put that in a small plastic container, then put that in a bigger plastic container, which finally ended up in her metal sandwich container. I think I'll put a bunch of empty containers in the bag to make it heavy. She, of course, is expecting something, but will love the itty bitty surprise.

Harry is only 4 and though he knows what happens on April 1st (Ava has briefed him), I am maybe a little concerned he will be confused by a trick. I am more concerned that he will feel left out of the fun, however, so a trick he will get. Here is his lunch.

Of course, he may just think he scored an awesome lunch.

Their teachers will be alerted and told where the actual to-be-eaten lunches are hidden.

HA!

on sewing and spring

I have been filling every spare moment, and stealing the unspare ones, to make things for my Etsy shop and sew things for fun, but mostly trying to fill the shop up a bit. The napkins have been flying out of the machine, and I must say, it feels a bit like knitting used to feel to me- repetitive and kinda relaxing. I'm sure this would not be my description if I was still using my old Singer, but my new Janome "Sewist" (what's with that name? I look at it and I think something between sexist and Jewess) is truly a marvel of a machine and I swear there is something other worldly about it as it only seems to run out of bobbin thread on the last stitch I intend to make. I mean it! My Singer seemed to always run out about 3 inches from the end, and then would come the re threading the bobbin drama and curse flinging. Ah, well.

Here are some things I have made recently. For our friend's 6th Birthday, I made her darling dolly Charlotte a reverse applique sleeping bag. It was quick to whip up and turned out just as I wanted. She loved it, the lovely gracious gal!

I have also been making some children's clothing. Some if it is made for 5 year olds, so Harry models the dresses and skirts for me. He wants to keep everything so much, I feel bad. I think he might get away with wearing a dress to his school, but I don't know and I don't want him to buy into the boys don't wear skirts or pink thing yet, in case someone does say something. Dress-ups would be way less fun and wacky.

Here is a swing dress modeled after a favorite of Ava's when she was 5.

I have also been making skirts. One is done with reverse applique and the other is decorated with a print of a bird contemplating birdseed.

I just bought my first silkscreen and I intend to use it this week. I am very excited. Stay tuned.

Oh yes, Spring. I nearly forgot since yesterday's 60 degree day turned into today's snow and sleet. But I need to be nostalgic for yesterday because it was glorious and I had an honest to goodness spontaneous date with my little boy. We had dropped Ava at a birthday party and were driving home when he saw the levee and river and said, "Mama, I think it would make me feel so much better to take a walk there with you". Not knowing he was feeling in any way bad, but always game for a walk on a perfect day, I swung to the side of the road to park. We ended up walking down West Street to his favorite cafe, Esselon, for hot drinks, stopping at every single sap bucket to taste the barely, almost imperceptibly, sweet sap. We chatted and ran and stopped to look at things on the ground. We had NO agenda and plenty of time. Now some of you might be bored to tears by this simple little story because it is a nearly everyday occurrence for you with your little folk, but not me. With Ava as a little one, it happened more often, but this guy...not so much. We were in love. We were not in jackets. He even noticed and commented, "We are being so nice, Mama". We were. Who wouldn't. Mental note taken.

small places

Jonathan built me a little house 5 years ago (I love to say that though I guess it wasn't actually for me but for us, but, just the same, I feel like it was for me).  It is small and lovely and unfinished still.  Because it is so small, and seeing how our kids are not staying small, I feel like I am constantly trying to come up with ways to keep our heads above the rubble ( I mean, creative work) that is washing in on the high tide of childhood business.  

Ava is very attached to her animals and creates very comfortable worlds for them to live in.  What this looks like in our little home: All available windowsills, cardboard boxes, and shelves are desireable real estate and the critters just keep moving in.  Now, despite not actually having a well organized house without overwhelming clutter, I really really dream of such clean spaces.  It is a dilemma.  I want my kids to express themselves fully and the worlds Ava creates are truly awesome, but alas, such clutter makes me a grump.  I fight it.  I lose.  So, like I said, I continue to be confronted with the puzzle to solve and a balance to strike.  IKEA shelves have been very helpful, certainly, but here is a sweet little idea that not only provides a home for wayward stuffed animals, but allows Ava's creativity and attention to the sweet little details to shine.

I bought simple wooden shadow boxes at the craft store, and they have become her animal's homes, right there on her bedroom wall.  They serve as a sort of doll house that she could rearrange if she wanted (though generally, she doesn't), and are compact/neat/modern/artistic/smart.  Windowsills are cleared!