I had more awesome mail this week! This is actually a mysterious piece of art from Kirsty Hall.

Let me back up a little… Kirsty is a very smart, very talented artist in the UK. (You may remember her from this podcast, where we discussed her project of making a drawing on an envelope every day in 2007.)

I love the unique way Kirsty looks at art and the online world. She recently spun that envelope project into an experimental hybrid sort of product.

If you order from her, here’s what happens:

“Each envelope is completely unique and will consist of an envelope with your address on the front, a drawing on the back and a secret object, which might be another drawing, a letter, a photograph, a found object or something completely different.”

I ordered one right away. I love the idea that this envelope will contain something secret and chosen just for me, and that it has another original drawing on the outside.

The whole project is designed to make art more accessible to people who may not normally buy art. I’m a fan of anything that takes the stuffy out of fine art and connects people with artists.

…But what’s inside?

Ooh! This is beautiful! I have a cool blank book, and I can see this piece of art gracing the cover.

Kirsty mentioned to me that in some ways, this project has been “a bit of a stressful way to sell art.” I asked her about this. She said:

“If someone is buying a known item, then they’ve already decided they like it. But with the envelopes both the buyer & I are taking a leap of faith. The buyer is trusting that I will send them something they like, even though it’s a mystery.”

Personally, I really love that leap-of-faith aspect. This was a momentous piece of mail to get, and delightful to open.

You can check this project out over here, and definitely, give Kirsty’s blog a read. Her thoughts on art and life are always interesting.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

With Mother’s Day coming up (FAST!), my Mom and I decided to co-host a giveaway. She’s contributing something, and I’m contributing something.

My contribution is a set of four goodies I made on the Crafty Chica Cruise. They are…

One button bouquet, perfect for a desktop vase.

One reconstructed T-shirt pillow, ready for stuffing. (It has the cruise logo on the back!)

One wooden shrine, covered in glitter, buttons, and assorted pretties.

One hand-drawn silk scarf.

And then Mom is contributing…

… A copy of her ebook, (Not So) Sweets – so you can also make your Mom something yummy and low-sugar, and then give her the book.

So – one lucky winner gets all this bounty. To enter the drawing, post a comment here (or on Mom’s blog) and tell us what your plans are for Mother’s Day. We’ll draw a winner on Wednesday, May 5th, noon PST. There’s every possibility that you’ll receive these prizes in the mail after Mother’s Day – but you can always make your Mom a card and let her know they’re coming.

(International readers, you’re more than welcome to enter!) Good Luck!

UPDATE: Congratulations to our two winners! Holly, who commented at Mom’s blog, won the prize pack. And Bonnita, who commented here, won a second prize of a copy of the ebook!

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Warning: Not-So-Great-Photo Alert!

(Although, next time you’re trying to shoot in low indoor light with an ancient Nikon Coolpix while the room you’re in is tossing about on the ocean, let’s see how well you fare.)

Here’s a little something from the Crafty Chica Cruise. Each night while we were at dinner, we’d get turndown service. And as part of that, our cabin steward would make up a little animal from towels and leave it sitting on the bed.

How freaking cool is that?

Each night, it was something different. Apparently, there are many, many designs – do a Google Image search on “towel animals” to see what I mean.

They sold a whole how-to book on the ship, and there was even a class. But in most cases, a little careful reverse engineering revealed the secrets.

You definitely need older, harder, stiffer towels for this kind of folding. Your lovely, fluffy towels will yield animals that just kind of flop over.

According to the Towel Animal Wikipedia Page (HAHAHAHAHAHA!), these animals are a tradition on Carnival cruises, and on some other lines as well. If you’re curious, you might also like this Squidoo page.

(Bet you’re wondering about those eyes and noses. Well, they’re torn bits from the ship’s daily newsletters.)

Sigh… aside from the crafty, I have to say, the thing I miss most about the cruise was turndown service. And having someone clean my room every day.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

We’re busy this week getting ready for How to Host Your Own Blog, so I thought I’d share some crafty I’ve done for other people lately.

Over on CRAFT, I did this tutorial for an oilcloth garden tool caddy as part of their Bloom garden project series.

…It unfolds to reveal pockets for your tools, and you can use it as a gardening mat! Also, cherries and gingham FTW!

And then for Earth Day, I had this how-to for a recycled newspaper vase in The Oregonian. (For you locals, I used a whole FoodDay circular to make this.)

You can see the tutorial online over here, and get more detail on the reed-rolling process over here.

And while I’m here, I freaking love you guys for your kind responses to my first video blog. Seriously, you rock!

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

If you’re looking for a crafty Mother’s Day gift, look no more. The nice people at New Sheer Creations have generously donated three (count ‘em!) giveaway prizes.

Up for grabs here three sets – one copy of The Art of Handmade Flowers instruction book, plus one of New Sheer’s bouquet kits. We have one Magnolia kit (pictured above), one Tulip kit (pictured below), and one Butterfly kit (pictured below).

New Sheer’s approach to the Japanese art of nylon flower-making is really easy and fun. I blogged about it a while back, and have an ever-growing stash of wires and nylon. (Also, if you’re looking for beautiful floral stamens at great prices, visit their website for sure.)

So, to enter to win one of these sets, leave a comment below and tell me why your Mom is awesome. (And also, tell me which kit she’d like.)

I’ll draw a winner at random on Monday, April 26th. Sorry, this giveaway must be limited to U.S. readers only.

Good Luck! And tell your Mom I said Hi.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Warning! Extreme crafty geekism ahead.

So, on our first day in Cabo, Bridget and I headed into town. Neither of us had seen it before, and we wanted to just wander about. Oh – and score some awesome food.

The area around the marina, where the tourists land, is pretty developed and rather Americanized, so we headed inland, hoping we might stumble on a nice museum or park.

Well, we stumbled onto a little paper store.

It was unassuming at first glance, until we wandered past a wall of rather plain-looking shelves, stacked with what looked like sheets of white paper. Bridget idly slid one out to take a look, and we both gasped with nerdly glee.

What we’d found was a treasure trove of beautiful Mexican educational posters. Hundreds of them, covering history, arts, literature, nature, human development, commerce, and more. And all gorgeously illustrated in this way.

Collage materials, anyone?

I would love to know more about these. Does anyone have information? My Googling isn’t turning anything up. The sheets have “D.R.” printed on them, and there’s a little logo, but no other information. The topic of the sheet is covered in Spanish text on the back.

I’m absolutely besotted with how the illustrations tell richly-layered stories. And the illustration style, which is detailed and colorful.

Here’s a sheet about adolescence. I understand Spanish just enough to get the meaning of the captions.

I’m resisting the urge to photograph every single one I brought home, and make you look at them all. I have no idea how I’ll ever use them – the perfect project will have to present itself.

Okay, two more things. I also scored these business-card sized pieces, which have text on the backs. The shop had these cards depicting modern and historical famous people, and animals, and plants.

Then these sheets are roughly index card size (3×5), and they describe various professions. I love that cloud-shaped die cut! And the illustrations are so charming.

If you want to see a little more of Cabo (because yes, I did photograph more than educational materials), you can peek at my Flickr set from the trip.

I still have some Mexico crafty awesome to show you, and a little bit from the cruise ship, but we’ll come back to that in a couple days. Rumor has it there are giveaways coming up here soon….

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

A lot of you have asked me what the Crafty Chica Cruise is like, so I thought I’d try to give you a more complete picture in this post.

(I should say up front, my little snap camera is aging rapidly, so these photos are a bit rougher than I’d like. Ah well.)

The ship departs from San Diego and spends about 40 hours sailing down to Cabo San Lucas. Then it docks there for two days, turns around, and sails back. (I know, nerdy much?)

So, while all that was going on, our group (54 crafters in total) took over one of the ship’s conference rooms. We had it 24 hours a day, and it was a hub of activity most of the time – even well into the wee hours.

In this room, we had a fairly mind-blowing array of products to play with. Paints, glitters, glues, appliques, buttons, stencils – wowee!

Our days were semi-structured into specific classes, but overall, it’s a very freeform crafting experience. People are working on all kinds of things at once – in fact, some folks just bring their own supplies and make whatever they want instead of doing the cruise crafts.

Let me share a few of the specific crafts we did. Here’s one of my favorites: a silk scarf that we drew and colored on with Crafty Chica Fabric Markers.

Here’s mine in progress – I added a lot more color, and sprayed on some paint later. (I’ll show you the finished project in another post.)

People also stenciled on them with markers…

…And with fabric paints. We had so much fun with Tulip fabric spray paints! They’re awesome for stenciling, or you can use them to spray a fine mist of color onto fabric. (Look at all those colors!)

We also had some reverse stencils on hand – stick them to fabric and then spray some paint over the top. When the paint dried…

…You could peel it away, and then embellish from there.

Here’s Amy, outlining her entire stencil in glitter glue.

(An idea I promptly borrowed to make my T-shirt pillow. I’ll show you the finished product later.)

Those were some well-loved stencils!

We also had divine cruise aprons, made by Kathy. (There’s a really funny story behind these, but I’ll save that for the upcoming cruise podcast.)

Anyway, we had a ball stenciling, applique-ing, glittering, and otherwise embellishing them.

The floor was our ironing board. We probably shouldn’t mention this to the cruise director.

Here’s another fun craft we did – lino block carving (thanks, Speedball, for the stuff)! We got to carve several blocks, and then make prints on cards, fabric, etc.

There’s Kathy’s husband Patrick, the Mantastic Crafter, watching over a group of lino-cutters. I’m happy to report, in our whole group, there were no lino-cutting injuries at all.

What a glorious creative whirl! It seemed that every surface had someone’s project drying on it. You could walk around the room and see so many interesting works-in-progress.

This is one of my favorite shots. Each morning, the ship’s staff would re-stock our water pitchers and glasses, and by nightfall, they were all full of paint!

By the last day, we had a really grand mess going.

I should really say that most of these pictures represent only the first day of crafting on the cruise. Sadly, some bad-food illness and a little bout of seasick kept me from shooting much of the other craft sessions. There is, however, a Flickr group where everyone is pooling images, if you want to see more.

Incidentally, this was our view from the craft room – looking out at the back of the ship and the ocean speeding away behind us.

I tell ya, there are worse ways to live.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Wowee. So much to tell.

Okay, so in short, the Crafty Chica Cruise was freaking amazing. I think I’ll report on it in a series of posts, so I can go on and on and on in some kind of organized way. Suffice for now to say that Kathy is every bit as lovely in person as she is online, and Hoo, Boy did she round up a lot of crafty for us to play with!

In this first post, I want to share a fabric store we visited in Cabo – Parisina. Two vanloads of us (about 25 crafters) descended on it one bright afternoon, and collectively lost our minds.

(Before I go on, I want to point out those pricing signs you see in the photo above. They’re in pesos. The dollar-to-peso exchange rate was sitting at about 12-to-1 when we were there. So, for an easy conversion, just move the decimal point one place to the left.)

There was an insane selection of trims – all kinds of ribbons, beautiful bright-colored lace, sparkly gold ric rac, beautiful sequin chains. Lordy. And so affordable, you kinda wanted to weep a little.

This, my friends, is burlap – in every pretty color under the sun. And less than two bucks a yard. I didn’t get a photo, but they also had some absolutely stunning oilcloth, in many patterns I’ve never seen here. Also just a couple dollars a yard.

(That’s right – oilcloth at two bucks a yard. Imagine my hair-pulling angst at already being over my luggage capacity. There were others in our group who simply bought extra luggage.)

Felt yardage, incidentally, was running about a dollar a yard. Mixed in with all this amazingness were so many gorgeous Mexican textiles, in a riot of colors.

Now we’ll have a little digression about sequins. All day, as we were traveling around Cabo, our group was talking about this fabric store, where rumor had it, “there were sequins the size of your head!”

Well, at last we found them! A whole big box of shiny giant-sequin goodness.

Here’s Bridget, offering a head-size-comparison.

…So actually, they’re closer to the size of English muffins, but still! (Sequin nerds, you may feel compelled to point out that these are actually paillettes. It’s okay – no need to rain on my parade.) :-)

Anyway. I was also blown away by this display of craft foam. It was also available in gigantic 24″ x 36″ sheets. What does one do with all this craft foam?

So, imagine 25 women running around this store, clutching all this precious cargo to their chests. Parisina has a fairly complex process for purchasing. First, one of the staff has to write your entire purchase up on a paper ticket. (For those of us buying a meter of nearly every trim in the store, this took some time.)

Next, you took your merch and ticket to a kind of holding area, where another staffer bagged it up. And after that, you proceeded to a third station where you paid for your purchase. Then you went to the holding station and claimed your bag.

After getting all of us through that, I can only imagine the store staff heaved a great sigh of relief to see our vans pull away at last.

Here’s my modest haul – well, aside from those aforementioned sequins! I have no idea what I’ll do with any of this stuff – right now, it’s enough to have it.

But next year, you can bet I’ll be bringing a whole extra bag for my Parisina haul.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Happy Weekend, Everyone! Two quick notes for you:

First, there are only two more days to sign up for my Craft Blog Tune-Up online class. It starts up on Monday.

Visit this link to register. We’re collecting a really fun, diverse group of bloggers and I can’t wait to dive in!

And secondly, I’m all excited because my Hook, Needle, Pencil Case project is featured in the CRAFT Pattern Podcast right now. Head over to their website and grab your free copy!

…It’s made, you know, from plastic canvas. I may have mentioned at some point how much I like this material.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been meaning to show off some of the super-cool handmade goodies I scored over the Christmas season. Don’t you love this star, wound from magazine pages? What a cool variation on that magazine-page jewelry idea I did last year!

My grandmother sent the star from her recent trip to Provence, along with this fabric ornament. I like the overlap of the fabric points, pine-cone-style. Seems like you could do some pretty cool fabric flowers using this basic idea.

…And then there’s Chris, who blew me away with this garland. Those are old-school plastic slide mounts, covered with colorful duct tape. She even left the bottom of each frame slit open, so I could slip in some photos. But I don’t want to cover up any of those pretty art-bits she made.

Kate sent me these beautiful hair pins, which were made by Kasia Blue. Love!

This is the Darwin (as in, Charles) cameo Hope made, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post. I adore this thing. She’s an innovator, that Hope.

…And these are two ornaments my Mom made me. She used precious bits of Christmas fabric we’ve had since I was a kid. How awesome is that?

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

A few weeks back, you may remember that Pat and I asked you all a series of questions about indie craft stores.

(If you missed those posts, they’re here, here, and here.)

Well, Pat has very kindly sent some treasures from her two companies, Aussie Threads & Fibers and Access Crystal, as thanks for all your insightful comments.

So… I divvied them up and drew three winning names. But before I announce these, let me switch to bold type for clarity:

This is not a giveaway, it’s a gave-away. I selected winners from those who have already commented on the above posts. You cannot enter to win these prizes now, sorry.

Anyway… here are the winning names I drew (one winner per post):

Fuzzy Dragons wins the lovely set of Swarovski crystals pictured above, plus this hand-dyed fabric. Riches galore!

Jen wins a copy of Living The Creative Life, which looks very tasty.

…And Moonmist wins a fabulous needle-felting kit, including this pretty Merino, needle-felting tools, and a foam pad. Mmmmm… needle-felting. (Hey, Moonmist – I need you email address! Will you contact me?)

Congratulations, Winners! Maybe stop off at The Crafty Retailer and thank Pat for her generosity?

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Yaaaay! Mom and I got together for a craft day yesterday, and explored the wonderful world of felting!

We had a great time making these felt balls, which are totally intriguing. We used Judy Coates-Perez’s tutorial, which worked like a charm.

It’s so easy – you lay your roving down in layers, with the strands criss-crossing. Then you make a yarn ball for the center.

Then you wrap the roving around the yarn, making a rather loose ball. (There’s nothing wrong with your eyes, by the way – this is out of focus. Sorry!)

Next, you gently slide this ball into the leg of a pair of nylons, and tie it off. And then it goes into the washing machine.

When they came out of the washer, we were giggling with glee to see that they were smaller, tighter, and nice and round! After the dryer, even more so. Like magic!

I cannot wait to play around with stitching, beading, and sewing buttons to them now!

We also noodled around with needle felting. I’m really intrigued with the idea of felting one piece of felt to another. It worked pretty well with these fulled sweater scraps. Needed a lot of stabbing, though.

I also fulled one of the two scarf-size scraps I picked up at the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store. Now it’s nice and felt-y, and I’d like to cut some assorted circles from other colors of wool felt and then needle-felt them to this scarf.

Is this even possible? I don’t know yet. Felters, any thoughts?

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Here’s what The Crafty Bloggers have been up to this week. . .

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Aileen’s Musings
Find out what Formica and Christmas have in common when Aileen shares a great gift idea with you! Check out her tutorial and download a free Vintage soda label while your at it.

Cathie Fillian
Craft up an end of summer wine tasting with Cathie!

 
Craftside-A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world
Craftside has a bunch of cool photos that have words spelled out with objects – try it and post your photo in the Flickr group. Plus, fun photos from the Squam Art Workshops, single letter cards to send out for the Week of Hope Sept 1-7, and how to turn an old metal link belt into a fat cuff bracelet.

 
Crafty Princess Diaries
Check out this unusual call for entries the Crafty Princess found for Momiji doll lovers.

Cross Stitch at About.com
Get ready for Halloween with free Cross Stitch patterns. Ghouls, ghosts, bats, cats, About.com is where it’s at!

 
Farm Girl Roots, City Girl Style: A crafty blog
A quilting project needs some attention–read the story, see the pictures, offer your suggestions.

Mixed Media Artist
Why take a class? Cyndi shares about her experience learning from the fabulous Jane Sassaman!

Naughty Secretary Club
Jen gets invited to a mustache party and busts out the fun fur and old records to make kitschy masks.

Stefanie Girard’s Sweater Surgery
My Christmas tree is getting adorned with a cute crochet bird from the charming new book Crochet Adorned by Linda Permann

The Artful Crafter
Eileen would like to introduce you to Precious Metal Clay. It’s an amazing medium for jewelry crafters as well as polymer clay artists.

The Crochet Dude
Drew shares before and after photos from his recent studio makeover!

 
Vickie Howell-Craft.Rock.Love
Knit hats for the homeless with Vickie, Lands’ End and Warming Families! Read more for a free hat pattern & the scoop on how you can be a part of the FeelGood campaign!

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

I hope you’re having a relaxing Labor Day Weekend. We had K’s nephew Logan, and Logan’s mom Jen, over for a little crafting – boy style.

K. had some great cardboard inserts from a computer-related purchase, and these made a perfect foundation for a Star Wars rebel base.

As you can see, it’s a bustling hub of activity. View screens are courtesy of the Hubble website.

Plus, as you can see, those metal beading discs are not only great for embroidery, they also make nice booby traps.

Excellent computer consoles are courtesy of Uncle K.

Jen provided the high-quality masonry on the outside.

…And, after mistakenly trying to provide teleport pads, I decided it was best that I stick with the role of Supply Wrangler.

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.

Here’s what The Crafty Bloggers have been up to this week. . .

_________________________________________________________

About Family Crafts
Find out how to can make a story sack for the book, and soon to be movie, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

Aileen’s Musings
Aileen’s created a quirky copper bird pin,,,,stop by and check it.

Alexa Westerfield a.k.a Swelldesigner
Alexa revisits and reconnects with a craft from her childhood.

 
Craftside-A behind-the-scenes peek at a crafty world
Craftside has a sneak peek into the soon-to-be-released book, Who’s Your Dada? Redefining The Doll Through Mixed Media, plus free graphics of good angel/bad angel birds with a tutorial for using them as T-shirt iron-ons. Also, how-to’s on bleaching and cutting photos to create windows, and a mosaic chicken project. The book and bobbin winder contest continues – leave a question on any topic and you are entered to win!

 
Crafty Princess Diaries
ou’ll find some big crochet fun in these new little books published by Leisure Arts and written by Drew, The Crochet Dude!

Cross Stitch at About.com
Sometimes, you’ve just gotta go against the grain. Find out when and share your comments about stitching against the grain.

 
Mixed Media Artist
Have you ever tried using heavy watercolor paper to make a peeled paper collage?

Stefanie Girard’s Sweater Surgery
Relax! A Toilet Paper Cozy never looked cuter then when embellished by embroidering with ribbons to make a plaid square on a recycled sweater using a tutorial from the book, Ribbon Embroidery by Natalie Bellanger-Clement.

The Artful Crafter
A reader asks, “What are the pros and cons of selling crafts online?” Eileen answers.

The Crochet Dude
Drew gives good advice on how to handle the non-crafty people (muggles) in your world.

 
The Impatient Crafter
It’s time for back to school fashions and Madge has whipped up a fab tiny Moulin Rouge inspired top hat headband project for your discerning teen…or any gal who likes a little splash of whimsy in her accessories!

Vickie Howell-Craft.Rock.Love
Make cute-as-a-button frames to match with your favorite picture!

©2010 CraftyPod. All Rights Reserved.