Handmade Gifts are Great... Most of the Time!

Spotted this example of bad craft in a thrift store in Seattle last month. We should all keep this in mind when making handmade gifts this season. Perhaps this Bud-loving "artist" had one too many??? : )

HaPPy HoLiDAze!

Thrift Store Finds to Get You in the Halloween Mood!

Aren't mannequin parts fascinating? I like the way these look like severed hands, yet they are immaculately clean & shiny.


Hee hee hee heeee! I'll get you, my pretty! (and your little dog, too!)

This little cutie-pie wouldn't scare anyone!

All of these pics were taken on a recent fun-filled afternoon thrifting with my WonderCraft pals. I posted the full story on The WonderCraft's blog, and you can also check out more pics from the trip in my Scenic Austin Flickr set.

Digging these Miniature Hats!

I'm knee-deep in fabric & thread, trying to get a lot of stuff made in preparation for the holiday show season, but just had to share these magnificent mini hats from Harriet Rosebud. They're so stylishly detailed, it kinda makes me want to start a mini-hat collection! I came across them in my research for the turtle hats I'm working on.

Someday Projects are now Sunday Projects

I've started a new thing in my work room that I'm calling my "Sunday basket." The idea is that I will keep an ongoing project in this basket: sewing, painting, a photo album - anything that I am working on purely for myself. Or it could be a gift for someone else, but it is most definitely just for fun & not for my business. The projects that are stowed in the basket will be my Sunday projects. I can spend all day on Sundays working on them if I want to - I'm giving myself permission to do that, and promising myself that I will refrain from doing anything work-related on Sundays. I can work on them whenever I feel like it of course, but knowing how busy my weeks are, I probably won't. But at least by saving Sundays for these personal projects I can realize some of those projects I keep telling myself I'll get around to "someday." Someday is today!!!!!!!

There are tons of things I've wanted to sew for myself (I envision a whole new wardrobe of skirts, tops & dresses) & I'll even go so far as to buy the patterns & fabric, but then I have a really hard time completing them. And then there all of those cute little one-day projects I always see in my Craft newsletter, like making bags from vintage pillowcases. I have a beautiful vintage pillowcase I thrifted about a year ago for just such a project waiting patiently on the shelf of my linen closet. Lots of other stuff I've been wanting to do just for fun, too, like collage a wall of my work room or go to more art galleries & museums, but I always seem to find myself swamped with work for my various small businesses. But I'm learning lately that in order to stay happy & inspired I really need to make an effort to carve out time for these things that I want to do, even though I always have a list a mile long of the things I "should" do. So here it is, typed out & posted to the interwebs for all the world to see: I'm taking back my Sundays!

More about what's currently in my basket in a future post...

Inspiring Places: The Blanton Museum of Art

I recently visited the Matisse as Printmaker exhibit at The Blanton and fell in love. I hadn't set foot in this lovely little gem of a museum on The University of Texas campus since I was an art student at UT, and I'm really glad I've rediscovered it.

This collection of etchings, lino-cuts, lithographs & other prints by Henri Matisse was phenomenal! I've been a big admirer of his work since I first saw his Woman in a Purple Coat at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on a high school field trip. Getting a long look at that wondrous painting up close & personal had a powerful effect on me and influenced my decision to pursue an art degree.

What has always astounded me about Matisse's work is his extremely adept handling of line. He had an uncanny ability to capture the essence of his subject matter with a few perfectly placed, wonderfully expressive lines. Matisse's magical way with line holds true for all of his artwork, be it a seemingly simple painting of lemons in a bowl or one of his colorful paper collages, but I find it especially lovely in the portraits he drew.

His Young Woman Contemplating a Goldfish Bowl (below), one of a series of etchings of women gazing at goldfish in a bowl, really knocked me out. I love the little details: the curls of hair, the overlapped hands and the way the ladies' chins rest on them, and of course the shapes of the goldfish themselves, all suggested by a few carefully observed lines. These lines by Matisse never seem over-worked. He placed them confidently & gracefully, without regard to perfection, which imparts so much energy and expressive character to his work.

Unfortunately, the Matisse as Printmaker exhibit at The Blanton is now closed & will soon be heading up to Canada for a showing at the Art Gallery of Alberta. But The Blanton has tons more to offer! They have very impressive & renowned permanent collections as well as an ongoing variety of temporary exhibitions.

And get this, admission is free every Thursday! How great is that? Get on over to The Blanton & treat your eyes to some fabulous art! Find all the details on their Visit page.

Young Woman Contemplating a Goldfish Bowl

Art Waiting to Happen

Oh, the (almost) blank canvas - sooooo much potential! It's an exciting part of the artistic process, I think. I like to let my ideas simmer, so sometimes I prep my canvas & then wait a bit before starting the main subject matter, as I've done with this garage sale frame here. I've painted it my fave shade of peacock blue & added a two-tone fabric background & some cute trim on the inner edge. Now it's just waiting for my next fabric collage to take shape! I'm thinking about creating a Charley Harper-esque bird, inspired by the recent Shout-out to Charley Harper on Craft.

Oh, and what's that dear little deer, you ask? Take a closer look.

It's a crazy-cute, lacquered deer plaque I found at a thrift store. Isn't it cool? I thought it was so cute, but just in need of a pop of color & some texture. I'm going to add some fabric collage on top of it, without covering up the deer. I'm imagining a kind of fabric flower & tree forest, with a tiny little bird or two. What do you think?

Craftrepreneurs: Rosalie Gale, Tara Gentile & Megan Auman

 I've come across some very cool, helpful resources for indie craft biz owners recently & wanted to share. I am simply in awe of the brilliant ladies behind these organizations. Hope you find them as interesting & inspiring as I have! ~Beth H   {re-posted from Get Crafty, Austin}

First up is Rosalie Gale, founder of Unanimous Craft, a tagable, sortable index of resources for crafters, artists and indie business owners. Rosalie says,

"I was inspired to build Unanimous Craft after seeing a huge list of links to different resources that The House of Mouse posted in the Etsy forums. I wanted to make a tool that our community could use to get organized and share information.

It's sort of like Yelp for the crafty community. People can submit resources (great articles on Twitter, awesome magazines, online tools, accounting spreadsheets, inspirational blogs - whatever) and the community votes on the usefulness of each listing. Then, people can curate lists of resources that fall into a common theme like: 10 things you should do when you start your indie business, 500 ways to deal with Twitter, etc."

Pretty awesome, no? Rosalie recently added The WonderCraft to the index - check it out! We are honored! And we'd totally love it if you visited our listing & rated us, so that we might place high in the Popularity Contest. : )

Next up is Tara Gentile of Scoutie Girl fame. Tara has long been an involved & highly respected member of the crafting community through her work as the editor & head writer behind Scoutie Girl, "the blog with a penchant for the passionately handmade."

Now she's taking it up a notch with the launch of her awesome new Big Thinking for Small Businesses blog & a "big thinking" consulting biz. The gist of it:

"We specialize in web strategy, branding, product development, community building, and marketing to help build your small biz empire. Specifically, I work with creative entrepreneurs: those interested in building their businesses by breaking down convention and finding customers who think outside-the-box too.

To help you reach your goals, I have a wide range of products & services. Here you will find self-paced products, a la carte services, and full-fledged invasion packages to suit your needs no matter what stage your empire is in. I only ask that if you decide to work with me or buy my product, you are committed to your own success – regardless of fear, opposition, and self-doubt – as I am."

Sounds amazing; Tara really knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter for small biz owners. I've been very inspired by her writing on her blogs & just bought her "52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion" e-book! I'm looking forward to getting re-energized about my creative work & revamping my own blog with Tara's wonderful advice.

And last, but certainly not least, Megan Auman, the genius behind Crafting an MBA. Her blog is filled with tons of great information & business advice for designers & makers. It runs the gamut from practical posts on making & manufacturing to extremely thought-provoking discussions on product development & growing your business. The blog covers everything in between & above & beyond these topics, too - it is a wealth of great information! 

You can even take part in the Crafting an MBA book club! Megan says, 

"One of my goals when starting this website was to create a community where designers and makers could come together and discuss business related books and concepts. Its partly selfish – I always find myself wanting to discuss what I’m reading with others. But I also want to help others read business books and figure out [how] to apply those principals to their own craft-based businesses."

I hope you'll check out these ladies' websites - they're all very engaging reads that inspire deep thinking about our field & offer many amazing resources for growing a small business.

Green Crafts to Honor Earth Day's 40th Anniversary

Happy Earth Day, everyone! What are you doing to celebrate? I've rounded up some awesome green crafting ideas from the blogosphere to share with you. I hope you find them inspiring!

First up, my absolute favorite idea: Jessica Wilson's Garden to Go tutorial, which she shared on the Craft blog. She made pretty little gift jars full of seeds from her garden, complete with costume jewelry-topped lids, to give to friends.

What a wonderful way to share plants & spread the gardening love! As an avid gardener myself, I'd love to receive a gift like this. I'm now thinking of which of my plants I can collect seeds from to make my own jars to give...

Another awesome garden-sharing idea is making your own seed tape. Amber of Giver's Log has put together a fab DIY seed tape tutorial (thanks to Rachel for sharing it on Craft!). Amber's how-to explains how to make the seed tape as well as how to turn it into a super-cute gift.

Seed tape helps a lot when planting those extremely tiny little seeds. It allows you to create nice rows with the seeds evenly spaced. And what a great way to share the bounty of your garden & inspire others to grow their own!

Along with tending the earth in the form of gardening, being a good steward of our planet includes the three R's of course! This next idea helps you reduce the amount of plastic you send to the landfill: reusable food storage bags. Bells and Unicorns, a great Etsy shop with an even better name, stocks their shop with a plethora of reusable bags in lots of sizes & pretty fabrics. They have Velcro closures & a water-resistant nylon lining for easy cleanup. How cute is this "Give a Hoot" bag?!

There are also lots of opportunities to reduce & reuse in the ways we clean our homes. One of my favorite tools is my Swiffer, but I don't like the throw-away nature of the cloths. So I was super-excited to find The Quilting Mama, an Etsy shop that offers reusable cloth Swiffer covers (among lots of other great earth-friendly products).

I bought a set of these covers & I looooove them - I highly recommend them! You just throw 'em in your washer & they're good to go for tons more uses. Here's a tip, though: give them a quick rinse under the tap to remove major dust bunnies before throwing in the laundry; they'll come out of your washing machine a lot cleaner.

Etsy has tons of awesome, earth-friendly products, of course; way too many to list here. A search for "eco friendly" comes up with over 51,000 results!

And now for the grand finale, a masterpiece of recycling (or upcycling may be the more accurate term for these): reclaimed plastic horse sculptures by Sayaka Ganz (via Craft again).

Wowee-wow-wow! I can't get over these. So beautiful, and made from discarded spatulas & the like!

I hope these craftacular ideas inspire you to come up with your own ways of honoring Mother Nature today. Please leave any awesome green crafting ideas or links of your own in the comments - thanks for reading!
{re-posted from Get Crafty, Austin!}
 

What's Growin' On: A Burst of Orange!

Our California Poppies are out in full force now - they're so gorgeous! Some people think of these lovely widlfowers as weeds, but I love them.

There were a bunch of California Poppy seeds in the mix we planted in our wildflower buckets. I think they make a lovely counterpoint to the pink & blue flowers.

They've also really inspired me in another fabric sculpture I'm working on, similar to my little giraffe. This new work of art is an elephant in a pretty jungle setting, with poppy-like flowers in the foreground (I'm not really going for botanical accuracy!). I'll post pics when I'm done.

Do you have California Poppies in your area? What are your favorite wildflowers?

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone!

Weekend Ink Sketches

Over the weekend I did some playing around with brush & ink, my favorite medium these days. I was mainly experimenting to see what kinds of textures & varying sizes of brush stroke I could create by "letting the brush do all the work," as they say in art classes.


Coming up with some patterns that can be used here and there as borders & embellishments was my main goal.

I gathered some scrapbooking papers & this photo of a bullfighter's costume from National Geographic & taped them into my sketchbook for inspiration.


I'm feeling pretty productive lately - been working on my kids' activity book & got 2 more pages done! I'll post about those soon. Hope your Monday is off to a great start!

Adorable Postal Workers by Richard Scarry

How cute is this Valentine delivery man, er, squirrel? I just love Richard Scarry; he was a childhood fave of mine. I scanned this from his Best Storybook Ever, which I recently bought used on Amazon for only a few bucks.

I also got What Do People Do All Day? which has another cutie-pie postal worker, Uncle Benny the Postmaster.



If you ask me, there's nothing cuter than animals going about their days doing the laundry, fighting fires, building roads & bridges, plowing the fields & raising their kids. All while remembering their good manners, of course! My growing collection of inspiring children's books definitely feels more complete now that I've added some classic Richard Scarry.

What was your favorite picture book as a kid? I might need to add it to my library!

Fun Freebie: My Birdy Valentines

Some little birds for all the lovelies in your life. You can download a sheet of them from my Fun Freebies Flickr set & print your own. How sweet!

Quirky Valentine Idea: Mail Order Pals

Mail Order Pals is a really creative & fun little Etsy shop that could be the answer if you're looking to send someone a unique Valentine. Get a load of their Shop Announcement:

committing creative acts of correspondence

here's how it works:
if you buy someone profiled in the shop, that person will send YOU something made, found or otherwise created

These are some of the artists' photos - click on a pic to go to the listing for that artist.

Don't these folks seem like they'd send interesting mail? There are other artists too, so be sure to visit the Mail Order Pals shop to see them all.

I bet, if you act quickly, you might be able to convince one of them to send a one-of-a-kind Valentine to your sweetie!

Getting mail is always fun, especially in this digital age we're in now. You could brighten someone's day by sending them a little piece of art - for under $5!!! What could be better?

Creative Genius: Emily Hensen

Have you ever seen a more cheerful room?! This display of bird houses on a painted tree is such a simple, lovely idea, but something I've never thought of myself or seen done anywhere else. I love it! It caught my eye over on Design*Sponge today.

And oh how I love this chalkboard wall! You see them a lot, but this is one of my favorites - it's just so cute & Parisian cafe-looking!

Emily's living room is so funky & light & airy! We're trying to create a more light & airy feeling in our own home, so this pic really spoke to me. We definitely won't be painting our floors white (they're original hardwoods & in beautiful condition), but I am looking for a lighter color for the walls.

We've just re-painted our hallway & seeing how good it looks makes me really look forward to doing the rest of the house! I'll be posting soon about the extensive remodeling we're doing right now in our hallway. Take a peek at my Flickr set if you're curious to see the process unfolding. And be sure to pop over to Design*Sponge for the full Sneak Peek: Emily Hensen post.

Digi-Doodle: Nanners To Go!

This silly drawing was inspired by some Richard Scarry books I just bought for my collection. Love his work, which is always full of busy little animals working, raising families & otherwise being productive citizens. It made me wonder, if this guy had a job, what would it be? A banana delivery driver, of course!

P.s.
I decided to change the name of this series from "A Design A Day" to "Digi-Doodles." Trying to do one a day turned out to be a little bit over-ambitious. I'm still going to stick with this challenge, but it will be more like every other day, or perhaps every 3 days, or maybe every 4 ... whatever I can muster. : )

Care to share some of your own doodles? Post them on your blog or Flickr account, then leave a link in the comments below. They can be in any medium - photography, digital illustration, collage or traditional illustration that you simply scan in - anything you like. I'd love to see what creative things you're doing!

Etsy Crafters Support Haitian Relief Efforts

Lots of wonderful fund-raising efforts for Haiti going on now in the blogosphere, particularly in the Etsy community. There are currently over 3,000 handmade & vintage Haiti Relief items for sale on Etsy.

The items I'm featuring here are all ones in which 100% of the proceeds go to Haitian relief organizations! If you have any gifts to buy (or want to treat yourself!), consider some of these fab handmade goodies. Pictured above is a pretty headband/neck warmer by bitsy blossoms. These bands come in tons of colors & are only $15-$17.

Modern Bird is donating every bit of the proceeds from sales of items marked "Haiti Relief" to Oxfam International. One such item is this lovely sterling silver Peace Dove, available for $48.













These adorable little bear postcards from Stockton come in a set of 6 for $6. Proceeds go to Doctors Without Borders.
















From now until February 30th, 100% of the proceeds from all sales at Twee Prints will be donated to Habitat for Humanity to support the relief effort in Haiti. They have lots of cute cards for all occasions. My fave is this funky Thank You card with an orange bird perching on a bicycle, available in a set of 8 for $16.












The sale of these cool peacock earrings from Pretty Paris will also benefit Doctors Without Borders. The earrings are only $11 & also available in gold.
















You can keep your coffee warm (& cute!) with this knitted coffee cozy from One in the Hand. The cozies are available in many designs, and for the rest of January, 100% of the proceeds from every sale will be donated to Partners In Health, an organization started in Haiti that provides medical care to the poor.

Remember, this is but a small sampling of the items available on Etsy that benefit Haitian relief efforts. Search for "haiti relief" to see 'em all!