two things that don’t have much to do with each other

May 18, 2009 at 12:07 pm | In I love to make things..., chatty, house crafty, recycled crafty, vintage crafty | 2 Comments

…except that I like both of them, I guess.

Our garden is kind of freaking out, in the best way. The combination of nice steady south-side sun, decent rain now and then, and some plain good luck has turned our formerly teeny snap peas, Red Russian kale and collard greens into giants! I took this photo on Friday right after I put in the tomatoes and peppers (at the back), exactly four weeks after I planted these little guys.

Day 1:

garden - week 1

Day 28:

garden - week 4

kale:

giant red russian kale

collards:

giant collard greens

Yay! We’re really happy about it. I’ve had a gray thumb (that’s a charitable description, actually) for years and it’s really fun to see the garden come along after last year’s in the back yard didn’t really like us much (probably something to do with the late planting, unexpectedly crappy soil, over-shadiness, and total amateur approach in general). We’re going to pick some greens for the first time today!

On a totally different front, I just did a jewelry project for CraftStylish that I wanted to share over here.

Revamped Sparkle Necklace

I haven’t had time to make much jewelry lately (nor wear any, with my quick-grabbing toddler on the case) so this was fun — I took apart an old necklace I never wore and turned it into a necklace and earrings set.

Revamped Sparkle Earrings

Maybe I’ll wear it while we’re eating our fresh greens…

p.s. thanks for the nice comments and emails, I am going to whip up some teeny terrarium kits and offer them up later this week!

garden crafting for a spring birthday

May 4, 2009 at 2:52 pm | In chatty, house crafty, recycled crafty | 2 Comments

Pearl’s first birthday is this week and the Western Garden Book gave me an idea for something cool to celebrate. After calling everywhere I knew of here in Portland with no luck, I found exactly what I hoped for at Van Veen Nursery, an incredible place for azaleas and rhododendrons.

Van Veen Nursery

They have thousands of varieties in dozens of greenhouses,

Van Veen Nursery

and Ms. Van Veen herself took the time to help me find the one and only baby Pink Pearl rhododendron they had — and for only $5. It was an amazing experience and I am eager to go back soon!

Van Veen Nursery

So we planted our Pink Pearl this week! It’s tiny now, but we have it on good authority that it will get big. It’s already started blossoming in just a few days outside.

the pink pearl!

And our garden has been happy too! It went from this

garden - week 1

to this in just three weeks!

garden - week 3

The little kale starts I had in recycled can mini-planters love it out there. I’ve already had to rearrange the rows to give them more space. They have grown from the size of this one (in the middle, maybe two or three inches tall)

my mini-planters

to at least five times as big — this one has happily taken over the corner of an 8 x 4 raised bed.

red russian kale growing happily

And speaking of recycled-can planters, I made some more to decorate our backyard for Pearl’s birthday, too!

my recycled planter project

This time I used industrial-sized cans instead of teeny-tiny ones and made simple hanging flower baskets. I filled them with trailing ivy geranium starts (which are on sale for 50¢ each at Fred Meyer if you’re also in the Northwest) in three shades of pink.

my recycled planter project

I left them totally plain except for some sparkly beads mixed into the wires, which I thought looked nice peeking out from behind the leaves and flowers. You could also paint them or embellish them with beads, buttons, or anything else you like!

my recycled planter project

If you want to make some too, my tutorial is over here. The set of 4 cost $6 to make total, for the flowers (not including things I had around the house — cans, wire, potting soil, beads, and a hammer and nail). After imagining spending $30 apiece for the pretty hanging baskets I keep seeing around, I was really happy with how mine turned out for just $1.50 each. I’ve already gone back to Fred’s to get more ivy geraniums to make a set of three more for our front porch, too!

spring flowers

April 27, 2009 at 11:24 am | In I love to make things..., bead simple, recycled crafty, vintage crafty | 1 Comment

Wow, after a super busy week and a lot of things I’m excited about and wanted to mention (mason jars! inventing some hanging flower baskets! estate sales! garden! making a cookbook!) I am suddenly feeling horribly under the weather so I’m going to save those bits and pieces for another day. Bummer.

I do have one thing to show before I crawl back into bed: a little flower-embellishment project to resparkle a plain vintage handbag over at CraftStylish. I took some assorted rhinestones in two different colors

materials for the handbag project

and mixed them into a floral pattern in the spirit of my favorite handbag designer ever, Enid Collins.

flower-embellished handbag

It is also a bit like the Blossom Book project from Bead Simple (same color mix — I love those deep-gold rhinestones) and a bit like the Treasure Box I made for CRAFT: 05 (yes, same center rhinestones again! I am a creature of habit, I guess.).

I like it!

Okay, I’m heading back to bed for now… I need to rest up so I can cheer on the Blazers in Game 5 tomorrow night.

terrariums + tea kits

April 20, 2009 at 1:11 pm | In I love to make things..., recycled crafty | 4 Comments

I am still completely obsessed with terrariums and I’m always on the lookout for Mason jars… but this week I branched out and made one on a smaller scale, using a baby food jar!

teeny-tiny terrarium

I think it turned out pretty cute.

terrarium + tea kit

I wrote it up for CraftStylish: how to recycle baby food jars into a teeny-tiny terrarium and a mix-it-yourself chai tea kit for good measure.

tea + chai kit!

And of course I had to work buttons in there somehow.

button toppers on my terrarium + tea kit

Don’t forget to check out Jenny’s original post for all the terrarium-making details!

terrariumania

March 23, 2009 at 12:11 pm | In I love to make things..., chatty, house crafty, recycled crafty, vintage crafty | 15 Comments

Pearl and I headed to an estate sale on Saturday morning, just ten blocks up the street. I was pretty tired from button-ing and on day three of solo-sick-baby-wrangling, and I almost just stayed home with her. But I’m so glad I didn’t.

I’ll post some more pictures of my other finds tomorrow, but for now I’ll just mention the seven vintage mason jars that were out in the garage for 50¢. Yay! I loved Jenny’s CRAFT: tutorial last week on making mini-terrariums, and suddenly I had jars galore for just such a project. So I invited Diane over, and we had an actual Sunday together… involving crafting for fun instead of a deadline or project. And it was magical.

making terrariums with Diane

We washed all the jars, checked the lids, and walked over to Urban Flora to grab the rest of the stuff we needed — terrarium-supplies heaven right here in 97202. The super-friendly woman there pointed us to the charcoal, soil, and pebbles, mentioning that she was also a terrarium enthusiast, and we were home again pouring pebbles into jars in minutes!

making terrariums with Diane

Pearl obligingly went down for a nap and we were off and running.

making terrariums with Diane

One of the (many) wonderful things about living in western Oregon is that it is so green here. I love it, it’s well worth the rain (and hail, and snow, and more rain) to have all these lush, beautiful plants and trees everywhere you look. So finding moss and a few interesting stray plants in the yard was kind of like the easiest, most fun scavenger hunt ever devised.

making terrariums with Diane

A few months ago, I also happened to fall in love with the same Bake It Pretty cupcake topper set that Jenny had, so we mixed in plenty of deer, rabbits, mushrooms, and trees, along with a little vintage frog I’ve had forever.

making terrariums with Diane

I’m not sure what this pretty curving, curling plant is but it looks like it’s having a good time in there so far…

making terrariums with Diane

These two bunnies look very happy together too.

making terrariums with Diane

I mentioned last week that my grandparents had a huge, beautiful terrarium in their living room and I loved hanging out and gazing at it when I was a kid. I was so excited to make this little one — it’s so much smaller and the shape is totally different — but the color is just the same and looking at it makes me happy.

making terrariums with Diane

Naturally Diane made some gorgeous ones. Here, the pet rabbit she’s always wanted eyes a mushroom with interest.

making terrariums with Diane

And the same estate sale yielded these two hula-ers, perfect for a tiki-rarium to go with Diane and Katin’s bar!

making terrariums with Diane

Anyway, if you have a few minutes to spare I wholeheartedly recommend this craft. It is such an instant gratification pick-me-up and effortlessly fun, and the results are so charming! I now have five terrariums scattered around the house making me happy when I look at them, and Diane and I are both plotting to make some nephew-friendly terrarium-kits to spread the craft far and wide. Not to mention trying to figure out how we can quit our freelance jobs to devote our lives to making terrariums instead.

making terrariums with Diane

Some Oregon-style modifications we did: you can use fresh moss right out of the yard or the park instead of dried, layer a thinner stripe of potting soil (since the fresh moss will have its own dirt underlayer), and spray the dirt with water before putting the moss down so that it’s dampened first, instead of waiting til the end as you might with dried moss.

A huge thank-you to Jenny and CRAFT: for the idea and step-by-step instructions to transform an ordinary Sunday into something so nice!

green day

March 17, 2009 at 2:21 pm | In I love to make things..., button it up, chatty, new writing!, projects to do, recycled crafty | 2 Comments

I’ve been making lots of button hairclips as samples to show at my Powell’s event Friday night, and thought I’d wear these green ones out and about today in honor of St Patrick’s Day…

st. patrick's day button hairclips

In other colorful news, a mini-tutorial I wrote for CRAFT’s Mending Month is up! It shows a very simple way to mend a torn [green, what a coincidence] sheet — actually a pillow cover, but this hand-sewing technique will work for any woven fabric piece. Diane did a fantastic (as always) tutorial for mending ripped upholstery that I thought I’d spotlight too. I love the Mending Month posts — so practical and simple. It is very refreshing to me to fix what I have instead of constantly buying new.

how to mend ripped upholstery and torn sheets

And Jenny Ryan has a lovely how-to up today: make a terrarium in a mason jar! I love this one. I adore terrariums — my grandparents had a huge one that I loved when I was a kid — and hers is awesome.

how to make a terrarium

Speaking of Jenny, the review I wrote of her wonderful new book, Sew Darn Cute, is up at CraftStylish. You can win a copy this week — just comment on this post by next Tuesday and you’re in the mix!

Jenny Ryan's Sew Darn Cute!

three little things to make

January 26, 2009 at 5:48 pm | In new writing!, projects to do, recycled crafty | Leave a Comment

I’m in a rush today so I thought I’d post links over to three tutorials I’ve done for CraftStylish recently… they’re all jewelry-making-related but I guess more embellish-y than anything else. Hope you like them!

beaded brooch

Yesterday’s how-to is one of my favorites lately: converting broken costume jewelry into a spiraled flower brooch. This is one of my favorites because it rescued two things gathering dust, a broken 50s beaded necklace and a swingy camel-hair coat (after a long everyday grind as my only maternity coat last winter, it has spent an uniterrupted hiatus in the back of the closet). I’ve worn it twice since it’s been fancied up and it feels a little bit new again.

recycled aluminum can craft storage

The one before that was craft room-related: adding a beaded “necklace” to a plain aluminum can for storing craft supplies (in my case, scissors, scissors, and more scissors — this is about half of my ridiculous collection).

winter wineglass charms

And to celebrate my birthday a couple of weeks ago, I made up some super-simple wineglass charms with some favorite bits and pieces from Ornamentea.

I heart CRAFT: 05

November 8, 2007 at 2:45 pm | In I love to make things..., books and mags, new writing!, projects to do, recycled crafty | 4 Comments

I’m so pleased that the new issue of CRAFT is out! I really love this one, there are tons of inspiring projects to try (33 total!), super interesting crafters featured, and some truly great holiday handmade picks too…

05

here are a few of my favorite things in no particular order: Diane Gilleland’s profile of Teresa Sullivan (a fellow Portland beader!), Natalie Zee Drieu’s crafty guide to San Francisco, Christine Haynes and Kent Bell’s fabulous party dress project (pictured above), the whole Papercraft section (too many things to list one by one…), Christy Petterson’s personalized notebook project, Susan Brackney’s paper mosiac-ed floor (must be seen to be believed), Mister Jalopy’s tin can tiles project, and Cathy of California’s folded magazine cat and mushroom pincushion.

And I have three pieces in this issue, too — a modern heirloom quilt, a jewelry box, and a recycled sheet project! I really loved making the quilt and it was such a treat to create it for the magazine — I’ve wanted to make something like this for years, and this assignment was the perfect excuse to visit Purl Soho and buy the Denyse Schmidt Katie Jump Rope collection, get out my Gocco printer, and choose some favorite pictures for photo transfer on fabric. It was finished just in time for our second wedding anniversary, so that was cool too.

05

I wrote up instructions on how to create the squares, embellish them, join the strips together, baste the front and back, and bind it, along with tips on how to build the log cabin squares and make your own bias tape. The whole thing took me about a month and now it makes me happy every day when I see it on the bed.

Modern Heirloom Quilt in action

I also made an Enid-Collins-inspired jewelry box embellished with rhinestones, ribbon, and sparkly trim, which was a lot of fun.

05

And I turned a vintage sheet into a trio of little things: a craft apron, belt, and sunglasses case.

05

Thanks so much to Carla and Natalie for the great assignments! You can pick up the latest issue of CRAFT at bookstores, subscribe online, or get the issue at the upcoming Felt Club and Crafty Wonderland events. Viva CRAFT!

a whale of a onesie

October 24, 2007 at 10:23 am | In I love to make things..., projects to do, recycled crafty, wardrobe refashion | 7 Comments

I got a chance to do some crafting for fun this week, for the first time in far too long! I whipped up some fun appliqued pieces for my dear friend and for her little boy, due in December. I found a onesie, a baby shirt, a bib, and a t-shirt for her at the Children’s Exchange (a maternity and kids consignment store down the street), and added some fun, simple appliques to liven them up (and cover up a boring design, in the case of the red onesie).

whale onesie and t-shirt

I have always loved whales so this seemed like the perfect little thing to decorate his pieces with. The applique process is so simple: just draw your design on the paper side of a piece of steam-a-seam, press the sticky side to your fabric, cut it out, peel away the paper, and press it onto the garment with a hot steam iron. It worked perfectly on each of these little things. Then I just edged the designs with a tight zig-zag stitch for added security.

two whale appliques

I also added a little heart-shaped applique with a monkey on it to a plain bib the same way!

Monkey bib and close-up

And I appliqued a little sewing machine on a plain t-shirt for my super crafty friend.

sewing machine t-shirt

This is a great instant-gratification craft project — just fancy up something plain, or cover up a rip, stain, or ugly design with a bright, cheerful applique!

new gocco and letterpress articles for Venus

October 1, 2007 at 10:10 am | In art and craft, craft to wear, new writing!, recycled crafty, vintage crafty | 1 Comment

My new article on Gocco printing is up on venuszine.com! I got to interview Mark Pawson of Print More Postcards and Cathy Pitters of Bossa Nova Baby and feature some of their amazing Gocco artwork. The piece was originally going to run in the fall issue of Venus, but got bumped to the website since there was so much content this time — but my article on letterpress, featuring the beautiful work of Carye Bye of Red Bat Press and Maria Vettese of Port2Port Press, is in the current print edition.

Two Gocco-printed postcards by Mark Pawson
gocco-printed postcards by Mark Pawson from the Print More Postcards series

Cathy Pitters dogwood sweater
dogwood-flower gocco-printed and stitched vintage sweater by Cathy Pitters; photo by Greg Pitters

The Venus DIY section is paper-themed this issue, which I think is such a cool idea. I really love Gocco, so writing about it and spotlighting some of my favorite artists was a lot of fun! I’m also excited that I have a new Gocco project in the upcoming issue of CRAFT: (05) so more on that later…

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