Under Construction

Clay (redux)

The snail plate is out of the kiln.  The green isn't at all what I expected (or wanted) but I love the little snail.

It's really tiny. And sort of looks like an ashtray.

Speaking of ashtrays, I was looking at the back flap of the "Goodnight Moon"' dustcover and noticed that in his headshot, illustrator (Clement Hurd) appears to have a cigarette in his hand. That SO wouldn't happen these days. Take a look at your copy and let me know what you think. Pen or cigarette?
[update: (2 seconds later) it's a cigarette. and it looks like I'm not the first person to notice this. check out this first thing that comes up in a google search. geez!]

Thanks for all your nice comments on the stationery Mother's Day gifts. I am working on a way to get sets on my etsy site but I need to use a different printer. I discovered my inkjet ink is very susceptible to smudging while you write on the sheets that have a colored background. I'll keep you posted if I list them on the site. In the meantime, I'll make a few sets of imperfect-but still quite nice-notecards for folks I owe gifts.

Mother's Day gifts and cuteness

This scene nearly killed me with the cuteness. After a picnic lunch in the shade Biscuit took her nap outside. Of course all the bears were present.

Our tree is dropping hundreds of beautiful flowers so she woke up covered in blossoms. Weather that allows for an outdoor nap and some gardening made for a lovely Mother's Day.

And here's a quick shot of my mom's present. Photo of yours truly and Biscuit and a set of personalized notecards.

These are the six card designs. All are flats with rounded corners and are about 5x7 inches. Such a fun project!

For correspondence

Today was my niece's 6th birthday party.

I had wanted to give her a mailbox, mail carrier's bag and the relevant equipment but the proper mailbox eluded me.  This tackle box was perfect (and less than $5 at Walmart). I filled it with label stickers, pretty stickers and princess pens from the dollar store along with envelopes and her very own stationery.

Making the stationery was super fun and only took a few minutes.  I also enclosed a stash of 1 and 2 cent stamps, some pre-postaged postcards and a princess address book. You know, for until she starts keeping up with her friends via Facebook.

At the last minute I threw in some rubber stamps and an ink pad (second hand) and a roll of tape.  Tape is a critically important office supply. I also put her name on the mailbox (crookedly).

I'll admit, this gift didn't seem to compete with Barbie Mariposa nor the High School Musical Barbie Golf Cart but I'm hoping she'll have fun practicing her writing and "doing mail."

Next up: stationery for ME.

Clay and the camera flash

Ok, I admit it, the "natural light elitist" bloggers sometimes drive me crazy. You know the ones. With their perfectly staged images who never use the flash and wait weeks to show off a project because "it's just been so gray and the light is so terrible" etc. etc. Sorry, if you're reading this and you're one of those folks. Trust me, I still love your blog, I'm probably just jealous that you apparently have daylight hours available for photography.

ANYWAY this was not really meant to be a rant on photography, more of a comment that maybe those folks are on to something.

Exhibit 1:

Granted, neither is a masterpiece of photography but the non-flash image (left) is a lot more true-to-life colorwise and has more depth.

Exhibit 2:

I actually kind of like how the flash (right) blacks out the distracting background but the left image is much more realistic as to the state of my coffee table.

Yeah, yeah so maybe they are on to something. If my overhead lights count as natural light :) Maybe next I'll figure out how to stage photos so you can't see the mess in my kitchen or toys in my living room.

My nine mini coffee mugs are almost dry enough for bisque firing.  The tea (coffee) set is coming along.
   

Maybe I should just move to Davis

I already drive to Davis (30ish minutes away) every day for work.

Saturday I was there for Picnic Day.

Biscuit loved the parade, especially the bands:

She also enjoyed the (infamous) doxie races; a fuzzy shot of some doxies that don't understand the concept:

I got to milk a cow:

And this was just a funny photo op:

Then, today, I was back in Davis to take advantage of the wonderful Craft Center. I forgot to take photos but Lauren remembered. Her stuff came out way cuter than mine so go look at her images. We were working on screen printing and I was messing around in the clay lab. 

It felt like a jam packed weekend but very little blog worthy content to show for it! Hope your weekend was fun.

Clay

I bought a $4 bag of recycled clay. Biscuit and I collaborated on a small plate (she added the lump next to the snail). Tonight I made three more (snail-less) plates. My goal is a tea set....

This is fun!

Photographing embroidery in the new light box

Rather than continuing to whine about only having time to take photos at night I decided to make a quick lightbox and play around with it. Inspiration from Soulemama. The images are really yellow but I think you can see the detail pretty well.

The yellow must be from the light--I used Mr. H's work light from the garage.  Too lazy to photoshop.

I had fun embroidering several more pages of the nursery rhyme book while we were in Las Vegas last weekend. Lately I've been feeling really lazy so tiny, handwork has been perfect and exactly what I've been in the mood for.  These embroideries on paper are so fun. It takes quite a while to do each one but it's relaxing.

Other fun stuff:
Anna Maria Horner's interview on Craftsanity.
Really awesome clay project to do with kids via Bloesem Kids. Scroll through to see several great ideas!

Using up my thrift store loot

I'm kinda excited about this little series I'm working on.  Here's a close up of the embroidery:

I'm worried some elements (the grass?) might be too subtle but I still like it. Now I'm working on Little Miss Muffet.

And also, the Spring issue of Small is up. I love online magazines.

Inspiration: Soft stones

I really like UNIFORM Studio Blog because she talks a lot about the inspiration for the pieces she makes and the process she goes through in creating her clothes. I think it would be fun to keep a log of what is inspiring or interesting to me (I realize this may not be at all interesting to you--sorry!). Also, I think it will be fun if I do make something to have a link to the source of inspiration.

Over the holidays I got into wet felting roving into balls. It started with a purchase from Wool Handcrafts. Then I went to the local yarn/wool store and ended up with $15 worth of roving (credit card minimum charge--$15 will buy a lot of roving).  After making all the Christmas ornaments and balls and felting kits I still had boatloads of wool.

When I saw this photo (via Design Sponge) (please follow that photo link, it's not even that exciting but took me a seriously long time to find again) I realized I wanted to make a bowl full of brightly colored wool "stones."

Tonight I finally got around to it:


I think they'll be a fun, toddler-friendly table decoration in a wood bowl (or maybe a felt bowl if I really get my act together).  They're all slightly different roundish shapes from about the size of a tiny tangerine to the size of a potato from the cheap 5# bag of potatoes (a smallish potato).

This was a fun evening project--I recommend it.

Shadowboxes of Asia

These were the final (and very late) handmade Christmas gifts I gave this year. One for my dad:

And one for my sister: (you can click to make the photos larger)

My sister lived in Southeast Asia for 5 months in early 2007 working as a tour guide. In March my dad joined her for a side trip to India. To say it was a step out of my dad's comfort zone would be an understatement. I wanted to make a little something for each of them about the trip and when I saw this post on Poppytalk I knew I wanted to make shadowboxes.

I took some photos and memorabilia from my sister, added it to some stuff from my own trip to India and backed each box with pieces from a prayer flag they got in the Himalayas. I hope it's not bad luck to cut a prayer flag. The weird straw thing in my dad's is an ingenious bubble blower made of recycled wire and a twist tie. Came with a film canister full of bubble stuff. On the bottle, I transfered a photo of them in front of the Taj Mahal using water slide decal paper that I also used on another project.

And did you know Ikea is now carrying some fantastic shadow boxes? Exactly what I was looking for and only about $8 each!

Finally, when you take the mat out of the frame, it makes a cool photo prop. This was just a quick in-the-moment snapshot but I think it'd be fun to try to get Biscuit to pose again with the mat.

That's it for today--hope you're having a great Monday.