see you tomorrow?
March 19, 2009 at 12:22 pm | In button it up, chatty, crafty events, oregon | 3 Commentsjust a quick post since I’m wrangling an under-the-weather little baby, but if you’re in Portland and up for saying hi and making yourself a set of button hairclips, I’d love to see you at my Powell’s event tomorrow… I’m nervous and excited about it at the same time!
In non-button news, I’m so glad to have our new president for so many reasons, but even more so once Sarah tipped me to his #1 pick yesterday morning. Awesome.
Let’s hope it works out for him! I watched the ESPN Barack-etology clip and was pretty impressed, he knows his basketball.
buttons + grab bags + events
March 12, 2009 at 12:13 pm | In button it up, california, crafty events, oregon, washington | 5 CommentsHey! I hope you can stand one more round of cross-posting over here and yes, a little more button talk. I’ve been trying to do most of it over at the Button It Up site, but since my first book event is next week(!) I wanted to officially invite you all to come make crafty things with me:
I finally made a little dedicated events page (why I didn’t think to just do that earlier is unclear; what can I say, having five sites keeps me a little too busy sometimes) so some further-out crafty things I’ll be doing are stashed there too: button-crafting at Maker Faire (Bay Area), Home Ec (Los Angeles), Urban Craft Uprising (Seattle), and hopefully a few more in the mix too.
So if you aren’t in Portland, I might be coming your way sometime soon! I never really got to travel with Bead Simple, what with the whole late-pregnancy/newborn thing, so I am really happy to do some fun book events in some favorite places now.
And for anyone out of town who is interested, I thought I’d put together a little bonus pack of the Portland book events projects to go with signed copies of my book in my Etsy shop. So if you want to buy a book, I will also send you a little random button assortment and two blank hairpins to get your first project started as a thank-you!
Okay, I’m off to finish up some work, do some chores, and take some project photos while it’s actually sunny out [another (!) here for sure]. I hope you’re having a nice Thursday!
a weekend of buttons and necklaces
March 9, 2009 at 10:23 am | In I love to make things..., button it up, chatty, oregon, projects to do | 3 CommentsI absolutely love wearing necklaces, though they’ve been forced off my heavy rotation lately (since Pearl loves it when I wear necklaces, too, but for a totally different and very predatory reason). But I got to wear one on Friday when Michaela took me, Diane, Jennifer and Lee out to dinner to celebrate Button It Up… and it was so nice to feel like an accessorized grown-up for a couple of hours! Of course when we got home, Pearl’s eyes lit right up and the octopus had to have an early bedtime, but it was a good run.
Then the five of us had a little craft night — well, they all knitted and crocheted pretty things, and I just sorted buttons, which is something I love to do. Two book events coming up that I can only use sew-through buttons for gave me the chance to empty a couple of gallon bags of stash, Etsy and eBay buttons onto trays and endlessly sort the shank style bits and pieces out to a different tray while we talked and listened to music. So relaxing.
The rest of the weekend was nice too. Aside from taxes, losing an hour, and getting a brisk shower of hail on Sunday, that is!
On the plus side: seeing friends, sorting buttons, a lovely dinner, a waffle the next morning, a trip to Knittn Kitten, two basketball games to watch, an ACC championship to celebrate, lots of time to play with Pearl, a quick visit to Crafty Wonderland, homemade soup and cornbread, and a long walk (on the non-hailing day, thankfully).
And I got to do one of my favorite tutorials for CraftStylish so far: button link necklaces three ways. I love craft projects you can truly make your own with your favorite colors or materials or whatever you like, and this is one of those. It’s ultra-simple to make and the real pop is in what buttons you mix in… I did three versions, including one using my black-and-white shrink art buttons from last week, just to show how easy it is to switch it up. My favorite at the moment is the reds, I just love those pretty little ones in a row.
Anyway, it’s up over here if you want to check it out, and I would love to see yours if you make one! Or three.
p.s. CraftStylish has just put together an ongoing archive of all the March button projects, and there are some really awesome tutorials up so far… I especially love this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. And it’s only the 9th!
handmade nation screenings!
March 5, 2009 at 3:01 pm | In crafty events, oregon | 2 CommentsI’m super excited that the Museum of Contemporary Craft has just announced the details for the Handmade Nation film screenings in Portland next month!
It will show Friday, April 3 at 7:30 pm and Saturday, April 4 at 12 noon at the museum. Tickets are on sale now and pretty limited, so be sure and scoop yours up soon! There are cool things going on both days:
Friday: Join director Faythe Levine for the Northwest premiere of Handmade Nation, the documentary companion to the book Handmade Nation: The Rise of DIY, Art, Craft, and Design. Artists featured in the film include Mandy Greer, Jenny Hart, Nikki McClure, Portland’s own Susan Beal and Jill Bliss, and dozens of other crafters nationwide. Tickets to the premiere include a Handmade Nation tote bag filled with crafty goodies. A brief Q&A with Levine will follow the screening. Doors open at 7 pm. Please enter at 720 NW Davis Street, 2nd Floor. ($25)
Saturday: Join director Faythe Levine for a screening of Handmade Nation. Doors open at 11:30 am. A free panel discussion with director Faythe Levine, Susan Beal, Jill Bliss, Kate Bingaman-Burt, and Garth Johnson will follow at 2 pm. Participate in a Crochet-a-thon with artist Mandy Greer from 4 to 6 pm. ($10)
I will be there for the Friday showing (the Northwest premiere!) and after the Saturday screening for the panel and would love to see you if you can make it to either one. And Sunday is Crafty Wonderland’s third birthday, too, what a fun weekend!
three good things
February 23, 2009 at 12:32 pm | In button it up, chatty, new writing!, oregon | 1 CommentJust a Monday round-up of things I like…
First, I am so excited that Sarah, who contributed her magnificent button tree to Button It Up, is offering up an amazing giveaway: she has made another button tree and will be giving it away to one lucky blog reader! Hurry over to her Let’s Celebrate post and comment to enter to win. Her adorable son Jack is showing off her beautiful project in the book here — I love this picture so much. Yay, Jack!
Speaking of giveaways, tomorrow is the deadline for my books and buttons contest, too — please swing by and tell me a little story about buttons before midnight tomorrow and I’ll draw the four winners on Wednesday morning. Thank you again to everyone who’s commented so far!
Also — I have a new mini-tutorial up at CraftStylish, how to make pet photo magnets, if you want to check it out.
This was a fun one to do — not only did I get to spotlight Sarah’s Saoirse and Caitlin’s Patches, it was such a cool throwback to the good old pink-and-brown getcrafty days (1999-2000-2001). It reminded me so much of having friends over to our old apartment on 20th to cut up magazines and glue endless sets of marble magnets together. Good times! Anyway, it is a fun and easy little project to do, whether you use photos, art paper, magazines, color-copied fabric, or your own drawings… you name it, it looks pretty good under glass.
Last, I took this little ten-second video last weekend when we were in Salem for the Sesquicentennial party.
I am a pretty terrible gardener, all I successfully pulled off last summer was a bumper crop of zinnias, but this really makes me want to try some kind of ornamental shrubbery I can turn into letters to adorn our yard. Maybe spelling out P-E-A-R-L?
Props to the Salem Area Garden Club for such a lovely example of state pride!
happy birthday, Oregon!
February 14, 2009 at 11:04 am | In oregon | 1 Comment
Happy birthday, Oregon! We’re off to Salem to celebrate with everyone, but speaking of birthdays, Andrew surprised me with the beautiful Sesquicentennial Pendleton blanket last month for mine. One of my treasures, for sure.
Hope you have a wonderful Sesquicentennial, and a lovely Valentine’s Day wherever you may be!
happy anniversary to me (and Oregon too)
February 12, 2009 at 4:59 pm | In chatty, oregon | 4 CommentsI realized this morning when I was writing the date that today is exactly 12 years since I first set foot in Portland! Pretty cool. I came out for a three-week visit, loved it from minute 1 (in gray, chilly, blustery February — that’s when you know it’s meant to be), and moved here six months later to go to jewelry school. After bouncing around a dozen different places all over the east side of the city, and our part-time two years in LA, here I am again, back in my first-ever neighborhood as that long-ago visit.
We live close to a bunch of coffee shops and restaurants, and a good handful of them just banded together for this cool little passport. If you go to five of them this month and collect the stamps, you’re eligible for a drawing to win prizes and gift certificates — and have a chance to win even more stuff if you round up eight visits. I took it as a challenge.
I got my elusive #8 on Tuesday at Pix and I have my fingers crossed! It would be so fun to win a prize so I am hoping that we’re one of the lucky ones… along with Caitlin and Patrick, the only other people I know who collected eight stamps too. It has been a really nice excuse to get a cup of coffee with a friend at a place a few blocks off my usual route, and a convenient nudge to treat ourselves to breakfast at Sub Rosa one weekend, and most of all a cool little reminder to support our local spots. Plus it’s not like my real passport is getting any action, so I might as well enjoy the one that’s right here in my zip code.
Speaking of anniversaries, it’s Oregon’s Sesquicentennial on Saturday! I’ll post something else nerdy about it then but I have to say that I’m pretty excited. I love my Centennial souvenirs I’ve found from 1959 (some glasses and fancy plates and trays) and I absolutely love my one 150th treasure, which was a birthday present from Andrew. There is a lot going on to celebrate the big day/year. My friend Carye, who always knows about this cool stuff, is going to the official state celebration in Salem and we are talking about planning an Oregon 150th party here in Portland sometime soon, since it goes for a whole year. I’ll keep you posted!
Friday update:
-Patrick reminded me that yesterday was Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, too, I had completely forgotten to include him in my anniversary/birthday round-up. Even more to celebrate!
-We are now planning to go to Salem to attend Oregon’s birthday party tomorrow! I’m pretty excited. Here are a few more details on it, if you want to come too:
Governor Ted Kulongoski, Senate President Peter Courtney and Speaker of the House David Hunt will be making sesquicentennial comments in the Capitol Rotunda and helping everyone to a a 6-tiered cake large enough to feed 3,000 people! Blacksmithing and wagon wheel demonstrations, historic building tours, gift bags for the first 500 children, pictures with the Gold Pioneer, candle making, and square dancing. Oregon geological and historical exhibits will also be on display.
-Carye and I are definitely doing our sesquicentennial party here in Portland sometime soon, too. I don’t know if we can swing cake for 3,000, but it will be awesome.
at the top of my wish list
February 9, 2009 at 4:43 pm | In art and craft, oregon | 2 CommentsI bought some valentines and a coffee cozy at yesterday’s Crafty Wonderland, and while I love what I got, I spotted something else that I just can’t stop thinking about…
Jennifer Kenworth, aka Juanita, has unveiled some new and magnificent black velvet paintings, including that fantastic portrait of Barack Obama on election night! I have always loved her stuff, but wow. It is sharing the #1 spot on my wish list with Ryan’s portrait of John McLoughlin. I saw them back-to-back this weekend and the combination was really something. Also, next to Barack is a brand-new screenprinted-Gocco-sewn Mr. T collaboration between Cathy and Levi.
Here are a handful of Jennifer’s other paintings from the sale…
You can also find her new black velvet jewelry and smoking jackets on her site and contact her there… she also does extremely cool commissions. My favorite custom piece of hers is this one of Cathy, Greg and Levi in front of Mt. Hood!
fortune cookie finale!
February 8, 2009 at 11:00 am | In I love to make things..., chatty, crafty events, oregon, projects to do | 4 CommentsMy tutorial to make a felt fortune cookie and matching ring (the little secret spin-off I hinted about last week) just went up at CraftStylish! If you have a minute to check it out, I’d love to hear what you think. Here’s a look at my set, I do like that little ring…
Speaking of fortune cookies, you can make your own (a glued version like these instead of sewn like mine, play-food-style) at the DIY table at Crafty Wonderland today! Jen of DIY Lounge is leading this cute little make-and-take project with all kinds of fun colors to pick from. Pearl and I are planning on stopping by the sale shortly (I may be only a spectator at the fortune cookie end of things, having recently cranked out several dozen of them) and I can’t wait to see all the cool handmade stuff.
If you go, be sure and stop by Grass Hut across the street to see their Oregon Sesquicentennial art show. It’s awesome. My favorite has to be this portrait by Portland art hero Ryan Berkley!
And speaking of art shows… Kayte mentioned that she’s in a fantastic embroidery show at Gallery Hanahou in New York called Forget-Me-Not, curated by Kristen of Schmancy, one of my favorite Seattle places. I’m hoping to grab a couple of Kayte’s photos to do more of a write-up, the previews I’ve seen look incredible.
Hope you’re having a good Sunday (and that the Blazers do too)!
coraline!
February 6, 2009 at 3:14 pm | In chatty, crafty events, oregon, reviews and interviews | 17 CommentsI was so lucky to get to attend the world premiere of Coraline last night here in Portland!
It was absolutely amazing, to say the least. I was so captivated by the gorgeously hand-crafted details… some of our friends worked on the film as stop-motion animators and artists, and they and everyone else at Laika produced an astonishingly lovely piece of art. Here are my photos from last night’s premiere and the afterparty. I could have taken a million more and I’m sure that there are some fantastic ones out there, I will link to any that I find!
We got Portland International Film Festival tickets and a Coraline-button key to get into the afterparty. Hmm, it looks so familiar…
Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher walked the red carpet, which was quite a scene for this town.
Afterwards, we got to hang out there too!
After the film, we walked over to the art museum for the afterparty. Laika brought some of the sets from the movie over, so everyone got to marvel over them in person. Each detail, each motion the film captured… everything we saw on the screen was painstakingly hand-crafted, and it was such a vivid reminder of the intensely focused artistry involved when we got a peek at the real pieces they created.
Here’s the garden set… it was amazing to see how small and intricate it was in real life, after seeing it so gorgeously huge an hour earlier.
One of the eyes, surrounded by flowers and fanciness:
The Pink Palace was the showpiece of the ballroom, just luminous and incredible, surrounded by hundreds of glowing stars.
Laika even brought some of their workshops over to the party, hosted by the super-talented art stars who worked on it all. I loved the hair station, which had all kinds of incredible crafty things to look at.
Suzanne Moulton, the lead designer in the hair department, showed me some of her favorites from the collection!
Our friend Cynthia Star worked on creating and painting the characters — awesome.
There were all kinds of cool detailed tie-ins swirling around. The handmade Coraline boxes folks got looked awesome, I’ve seen them pop up on people’s blogs and flickrs over the last few months and was super impressed. We left the party with a souvenir of a creepily other-mother chocolate neatly tucked into a box. And one of our friends who animated for the film got this amazing pair of custom Coraline Dunks… so cool.
I won’t give any story details away and spoil things for you, but here’s what I’ll say:
1. Go see this beautiful movie!
2. If you can, see it in 3D. It’s even more amazing.
3. DO NOT go late. Trust me, you don’t want to miss the absolutely amazing opening credits, especially if you are crafty. They are just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen, and I would love to see them five or six more times, or to be honest, five or six dozen times.
I am so proud that our friends were part of this beautiful film! Andrew has worked in the film industry for years, and it was so wonderful to see this jewel of a movie, made right here — seeing the credits roll at the end spotlighting folks we know and their years of work was so cool. I just loved it.
Okay, I have used up my year’s allotment of amazings and awesomes but it was well worth it! If when you see it, I would love to hear what you think, too.
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