every little thing

My Big Fat Greek Belly

I bought this Built By Wendy pattern on Etsy last month, and I've been looking forward to making the top (view C)  for weeks.  I finally found some time, and a few yards over super soft gray seersucker, and here is the result.  Very easy pattern, fast and pretty and totally wearable.  I simply love the top.  My one complaint?  It's too small!  To use a quote from AbFab, "...it fitted, but it was filled to capacity."  Definitely a little disappointing, because I measured and everything!  Hmph.  And I ain't even that big up top, so I can't imagine what the deal is.  I feel bad for you bustier gals, 'cause this definitely wouldn't be the pattern for you.  I am fairly confident I can make another one that will fit properly, and I have plenty of that same fabric left (found 5 yards at the thrift store for $2.)  I really wanted to make the top to go specifically with this skirt:

You know, so I can pretend I'm Samuel Clemens, (and wear seersucker and white linens.)  Or I could use one of these freshly thirfted fabric instead:

 

They are both super light-weight cotton, just perfect for garment making.  What do you think?  The lighter or the darker one?  Or should I just crash-diet and try to fit in the first shirt I made?  Ha..are you kidding?  Diet?  who could think about dieting when it is almost time for..........

GREEK FEST, BABY!!!  WOO!  It starts tomorrow, and I'm 'bout it.  I swear, I gain 10 pounds during Greek Fest week every year, and I DON'T CARE.  So worth it.  I start getting giddy as soon as the sign goes up (yes, I took this picture out of sheer joy and anticipation while driving by.)  I actually am Greek, too (in case you didn't know) so I really have to go.  Sometimes twice.  It's a moral imperative.   

At long last, I am finally updating my Handmade-Shop with brand new goods!  Hooray!

A few of the usual suspects....

      

Sweater Creatures and Tissue Cozies (in bright, sunny colors.)

And a new little item that I actually designed over the Holidays, and am just now getting around to making them for the shop!  They are my little Good Luck Birds.

    

   

Seriously, who doesn't love a mushroom bird?!?  It's practically a crafty requirement.  They are just so sickeningly sweet and optimistic-looking.  You can add them to just about any project, and everyone goes ga-ga over them.  These little trinkets are made with a wreath form wrapped in vintage seam binding, adorned with silver and gold leaves, vintage chenille flowers and (of course) a plump birdie.  They are also come super-sweetly gift wrapped.  you can pop over to the SHOP to check out the details on that.  The 8 listed are all I have left at the moment, but I plan to have another batch with even more color variations ready soon, too.   And, call me crazy, but I think they'd make really fun and easy do-it-yourself kits.  I've never put together a kit before, but it's something I've always wanted to do.  Hmmm...we shall see! 

Last but least, a few New Tote Bags:

   

I'm calling these The Joanie Market Totes, and they are exactly like the Garden Variety Bags I made last year except, instead of the fruit and veg appliques, I used vintage doilies from my stash.   I like making simple bags, not too many bells and whistles, but still unique and special.  I'm also not a huge fan of stiff interfacing, I like a soft and floppy bag that forms to whatever it's carrying.  I hope to have more of these soon, as well.  They really are fun to make!  Nothing extraordinary, sewing-wise, but just putting together vintage fabrics and notions, buttons and details, different colors and patterns...that's my favorite part.   

Thanks for taking a peek at my new goods!  You can see all of this and more at my online shop,  A. Bel Studio,  if you are so inclined.  I'm going to try and keep up the momentum and plan an Emporium Update for tomorrow, too!  (Lot's of  fab new miniatures, new cupcake liners and new sugar flowers!  Come back and see!)  Sorry for all the shop-talk, I'll get this out of the way soon so I can get back to my regular, mindless babbling!

We're Back!

(The little bird ornaments are a new item I had designed for the Holidays, but well, never actually got around to making before Christmas!  I decided that they could work year-round with some color adjustments, so I made a few for the show.  I really do like them, they are quite simple, and they seem like little good-luck tokens to me.  There will be several available in my Etsy shop very soon!)

I have to apologize for the cruddy, fuzzy pictures because I always forget to bring my tripod to craft shows.  Which is ridiculous, because I usually end up dragging along everything except the kitchen sink. 

   

The Richmond Craft Mafia put on a fantastic show, in probably one of the hippest venues ever.  Sadly, the weather was not very cooperative and the rain poured all day long.  Monsoon like, really.

(Sister's bike seat covers.)

Despite the apocalyptic skies, tons of people braved the elements to come browse and shop, and the day was still cheerful and bustling.  The best part of shows, for me, is justing seeing all of the crafty people together in one place.  It's so darn inspiring, to be part of a movement like this, *sniffle*....better move along before I start to get all gushy.

So, I try not spend all my profits on shopping at the shows I'm in, but that can be difficult with so many talented people around.  This time I had my heart set on buying a necklace from a local jewelry maker I know & love.

    

Isn't this just perfect??  I didn't even fully realize how symbolic the little girl with umbrella was until later.  The perfect memento for a very, rainy day.  The pendant is double-sided, and made by the very snazzy Mood Swings (of which I'm sure you are all familiar with, because she's famous and all.)  Something else I love about this piece is that the vintage flower bead at the top actually looks old.  I love it when people aren't afraid to use vintage pieces that really have age to them, stains, fading and wear.  Love it.  I'm so happy!

I do have lots of leftovers to list in the etsy shop, and I hope that I will get to that tomorrow.  I've been playing catch-up on my shipping this week, and Max and I had a super-fun-rainy-day-out on Monday that included a long overdue library visit (get it? over-due visit, haw haw!) and a matinee at MacArthur Regal of Nim's Island.  We both completely loved the movie,  I highly recommend it.  Perfect for the 5 to 10 age group but still interesting enough for an adult to enjoy.  (Yes, Jodie Foster is in it but she's not that annoying.  After watching Contact about a gazillion times, I'm sorta Jodied-out.  "ssshoulda ssentt a poet...ssso, bbbeautiffful....") Kristy, I know you remember that.  Still, not quite as frightening as the migraine-inducing number of times we watched The Man in the Iron Mask at the dollar theater.  What was wrong with us??

It's a Zoo Around Here

Even the meercat was looking at me like, "What are you doing here?  Don't you have a craft show this Sunday?!?"  Seriously though, it was a lovely afternoon at the zoo today.  I made a promise/mission statement this year that I would not let my work+business stuff dominate my life, even when it's 'crunch time', like the week before a craft show, and add to that a surprising flurry of business at both my vintage and supply shop these last few day, too.  I am always grateful (and often even amazed) that I sell anything at all, but keeping perspective can be hard.  My instinct is to pack every order immediately, list more items, research for new products, make new handmade things, etc.  But, as the saying goes, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. And it is very true.  Finding that elusive balance that everyone talks about seems like a pipe dream most of the time, but I have to keep trying, right?

We thought it very strange that the peacock was just hanging out in rafters of the barn area like that, but I guess they are allowed to just roam about the zoo on their own, because later we saw this same bird wandering into the Men's Room next to the reptile gallery.

If you haven't guessed already, this is turning into the obligatory - I'm too busy to blog this week so here I am blogging about how I'm too busy to be blogging - blog post. I'll be back soon though, I promise.  This Friday's Hero post will be replaced with a Friend-of-the-Blog coupon for the Bada-Bing in Richmond this Sunday.  So if you're local, planning on going to the show, and you like free stuff, you may want to check back here Friday!

Bye for now.

 

Catching up

The fabric-giveaway bundles, headed out to lucky winners.  (Perfectly complemented by postcards from J.J.)

Finishing up a Wes Anderson themed swap I joined over on Swap Bot.  If you are a fan, you will recognize the movie right away!  I'll be sure to post more pics after everything is sent out.  I had so much fun with this swap, it was just perfect for me and I really got into it.

Giant tub of half-done creatures.  Some for a surprise wholesale order, some for Spring Bada-Bing.  I've now officially and completely depleted my felted sweater supply, and since most thrift stores have cleaned out their Winter clothes, these will be the last Critters until Autumn.  How I shall miss them.

Speaking of Bada-Bing, there is much to be done, I can't believe how fast this show has snuck up on me!  Only two weeks left!  I'm very glad to be sharing the booth with my sister, that takes a lot of pressure off.  I have several new, never-before-made-by-me projects up my sleeves, I hope I can get everything done in time. We (sis and I) have actually come up with a "theme" for our booth!  I'll tell you all about it later, it's sort of silly, but we are getting such a kick out of it.

Thanks for stopping in, I hope you all made it through Monday in one piece.  Speaking of pieces...

  This post was brought to you by.....

Delicious Jalapeno Pretzel Pieces.  I'm so addicted to these right now.  Perfect to nibble on while brainstorming and idea-mulling.  (Just don't plan on smooching or even talking to anyone later, yikes!  These things leave you with dragon breath for hours.  But so worth it.)

Three is the Magic Number

At long last, we have the winners (courtesy the Random Integer Generator)

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

41 33 24

Timestamp: 2008-04-01 14:17:32 UTC

CASSY             JESSICA            LETTY

I sent you guys a "Winning Notification" email, but please do send me your address so I can get your fabric bundles out to you right away!

Thank you all so much for playing along!!  I wish I could send fabric to everyone, but that would leave my stash pretty bare....76 comments, wow!  Fun fun.  My apologies for not getting this taken care of yesterday, I was going to come up with some elaborate, fantastic excuses (since today is April Fool's and all,) but I'm just too lazy.  In fact, that's why I didn't get around to it yesterday.  Oops.  But there is much more to chat about, so I'll be back on the blogging scene soon!

 

Studio Part II (Dance Remix)

(Please Note:  All photographs in this post are included only as random filler and do not actually have anything to do with the written text.  Thank you for your time.)

Spring Break!  Whoo! 
We keep saying that over and over, and it makes it feel more like were in Cancun.  Seriously though, lots of stuff getting done over here and it's very exciting.  With the help of my lovely sister, we have managed to completely rearrange the second story of the house, which means I now have my VERY OWN STUDIO.  This is a tremendously big deal for me, I can't even tell you.  I started sharing a room with Mike, and it worked out for a while.  It may have been doable longterm if it was just me and my handmade-shop.  But, once the miniature shop started to take off, the stacks and piles of stuff grew and grew, and I added more stock and the piles swelled and heaved, toppled and crashed.  Not a pretty picture.  It became pretty apparent that no amount of clever storage and organizing was going to help the situation.  It was either give up the biz, or move it out. 

Organizing this move was no small task, we have three bedrooms and one of them is so small, I'm sure most people have closets that are bigger.  (Our house is almost 100 years old...what are you gonna do?)  The itty-bitty room started as Max's nursery, but his toy collection quickly out grew it.  Then it became Mike's studio room for a while.  Now, sadly, it is our bedroom.  With room for a bed and a small dresser - and that's it.  Sort of like their bedroom in Barefoot in the Park, except you don't have to step over the bed to open the closet.  ( I just love that movie to pieces.)  Happily, the other two rooms are quite spacious, and one of them is ALL MINE!!!  It's so amazing, I mean, I spend so much time making, and packing orders, now I have a bright, uncluttered room to do it in.  Heaven.  I will share pictures very soon, but you have to keep in mind there is still much to be done.  I still need to thrift some pretty accent and storage pieces, decorate the walls, and the whole room desperately needs to be painted.  It's the only room in whole house that we haven't painted since we bought the place (over 7 years ago) so....yeah, it really needs it.  I'm having a hard time picking a color, too!  Should I just repaint it a nice, crisp white?  Is that best for working a creating?  A large part of me is screaming PINK!   Paint it PINK!  Then again, a light mustard yellow would be quite nice.  Hmm, decisions.  When I narrow it down, I'll post my top three colors and maybe you all can help me out.  I'm not planning the painting project until the end of April, after Spring Bada-Bing is over.  Yep, Kristina and I got in the show, which means we have a lot of crafting to do these next few weeks, and that's good!  I've been missing the crafty part of myself lately. 

I'm an idiot

So, Max has been asking for an Artist's Smock for  a while now, and I actually got around to making one.  I made this a week or too ago, really, and it's pretty nice.  You know.  For a boy.  I used the pea green vintage sheet instead of the shabby, pink, rosey one.  And I trimmed it in blue binding, not mint green with Barby rick rack.  The pocket is rectangular.  I guess it's manly enough.  Max seems to like it, and he was happy to report that the pocket withstood the 138 crayons he loaded in it without ripping.  So.  Am I just an idiot for wanting a little girl sometimes?  You can say that there is  plenty of fun crap to sew for boys too, but it's not true.  Girls are boat-loads more fun in that department, always will be.  I guess I could sew girly things for the shop, but I doubt that would really scratch the itch, you know?  I guess I could have another kid, but Mike seems to think (in the grand, puffy-chested, misogynistic tradition) that it's just boys, boys, boys for us and nothing else.  Don't even try, it will just be triplet boys!  Then, I could live out my fantasy of turning into Lois from Malcolm in the Middle.  She's my hero.  (Oops, shoulda saved her for Friday.)

I completely winged the pattern for this.  I traced a basic neckline onto the fabric, cut it out and trimmed the entire thing in itty-bitty seam binding.  And THAT is, in fact,  why I'm an idiot.  (see the torture device below)

   

The story goes something like this, and it's always the same:

A random night, a few weeks ago.  It's about 10:30pm and I'm pretty tired.  I should go to sleep, lots to do the next day.  But wait, instead, maybe I should do something completely stupid and worthless.   I will  take out my miscellaneous bag of sewing machine attachments, and stay up till 3am trying to figure out how they all work.  When A:  I have no idea what most of them do,  B:  I have no instructions and refuse too get help, and C:  Most of the attachments were bought from yard sales and are probably broken anyway.

THAT is why I'm an idiot.  This was not an isolated incident either, I do this all of the time, wasting huge portions of my days and being horrifyingly inefficient.  (But, I have other redeemable qualities, so I try not to let it get me down.)  However,  I did dominate  this binder foot.  I kicked it's ass, actually.  Once you get in the groove, you can sew on the tiniest binding thisclose to the edge.  Perfectly.

That binding is only 1/4 wide!  Look how tight that is, and that was just a practice strip.  I'm trying to come up with more things to bind now, just to reign further triumph over that silly piece of scrap metal.

The ruffler foot?

I don't want to talk about it.

 

Anybody who's anybody in the crafty-blog-world knows that craft books are hot, but Asian craft books even hotter.  I've always been jealous of those Japanese craft books that everyone has, but I have yet to buy any.  (I can barely follow instructions when they are in English as it is.)  But then, last spring, I was contacted by someone about doing a tutorial for possible publication in a Chinese craft book! Oh I was SO excited!  I can't believe that it has been almost a year, and I've actually kept pretty tight-lipped about it on the blog.  Partly because I'd never done anything like this before and I didn't know the protocol for when you are supposed to blab the details, books take a long time to get made, I've realized.  Also, I was just submitting my work, there was no guarantee that it would be included in the book.  Now, the book has actually been published, and my tutorial is included, and I'm so very grateful!  The book is called I Love Handicraft, by Affa and Wing,  published by China Light Industry Press.  Here is what my pages basically look like, the tutorial is for a small, drawstring pouch with a felt flower detail:

Cute, right?  I'm so honored to be included in this book, and I can't wait to receive my copy!  I will scan and post better pictures then, too. I made/sold these little bags last spring on my webshop and in a couple of local craft shows.  Affa found my pictures on Flickr and contacted me about writing a tutorial.  The book features 56 crafters form all over the world, and you can meet some of the other contributors and find more info on how to order a copy for yourself over at their Flickr group.  It looks like Wing and Affa are already scouting projects for book number two, so if you are of a crafty nature, be sure to join the group, introduce yourself, and post some picks of your work!  The whole experience was so wonderful!  I was very nervous writing the tutorial and taking the pictures, it was all such new territory for me, but I'm glad I did it. Affa and Wing are my heroes, who would of thought that I would ever get to be published in an Asian craft book?!?!  I truly do love handicraft.  Truly. 

All the Rage

*First, I have to take a little side-bar here and do a "Thank You" speech.  I don't know what most people would consider "success" in the small on line business world.  I'm not sure how the little shops I run in my corner of the Internet would rate in the big scheme of things.  I do know though, that when I'm packing orders, and seeing the same names and familiar people over and over....it's very humbling.  So many repeat customers, I can hardly believe it.  Thank you.  I'm so grateful to able to do this, I can't really express it in words.  Being at home, doing something on my own and not completely failing at it.   Pretty amazing.  I also realize that a lot of my customers probably don't read my blog, so I have been brainstorming some special "thank you" gifts to add to outgoing orders.  I have some pretty good ideas, hopefully I'll have them ready in a few weeks. 

Alright, enough of the sap.  On to some photos of recent completed (or almost completed) projects:

I found a very pretty, vintage book with loads of flower illustrations, perfect for card and tag making.

 

Why not?  Everyone else is doing it.   I still think the circles should be a bit closer together, but when I do that they just look too cluttered to me.  Also, this picture isn't very good, you can't really see the scale of the space (the room has very tall ceilings.)

I've been saving that vintage pom pom trim just for these pillows.  Can you see that the curtains above are polka dotted?  I'm quite happy how this all turned out.  I assume that you are supposed to sew the band of trim inside the seam, but I liked it better having it on the outside, I thought it was more visually appealing.  (and they are my pillows, so I can make  them however I want, so there.)

Not even March yet and I'm already talking garden.  I can't help it, I'm so ready to get my hands in the dirt this year.  My 2006 garden was fabulous.  Last year?  Let's just say that I'm not the best multitasker.  I was completely over-scheduled with my business stuff, and the garden was severely neglected.  I don't think you could even call it a garden, it was more of a wildlife refuge.  NOT THIS YEAR.  And I'll say it again, NOT THIS YEAR!  I missed it so much, I can't let that happen again.  Mike made me these super neato cold frames out of old, salvaged windows we found on the side of the road.  Guess what's going in there in a few weeks?  Spinach and lettuce.  Oh yeah.  Maybe a few radishes, just because.   I can't wait.

Max is feeling much better this week.  I'm almost caught up with the laundry.  It will be Yard Sale season again soon.  Tom Petty is touring this Summer.

Things are looking up.