Post-mortem of Deceminate vending

That was pretty interesting. Unfortunately, my microphone wasn't working well enough for people in SF to hear me talking, but I could hear them, so between that and the IM client, I had some conversations with the other people at the craft fair. Andrea (another friend of mine who was there) took the laptop and webcam around to all the other booths at the fair, so I got to see a bunch of other neat things. It was an awful lot to ask of Sasen to vend for both of us, but Andrea being there to help vend for me made it a bit more reasonable. I need to think of a suitable thank-you present to give Sasen when she next visits!

Sales were not spectacular, perhaps because of the rain, but I didn't *lose* money, and I got to sort-of-meet some neat people, so I think that on balance, it was certainly worth it. Plus, it was good to see exactly what my production rate can theoretically be when under pressure, though I don't plan on working at quite that rate again in the near future.

Jewelry rebound

I think I am reacting to the pressure and craziness of putting together a bunch of jewelry on a deadline last week by gravitating towards fiber arts. I ordered a bunch of yarn (though not as much as I might have) from yarn.com, mostly for knitting a dual-tone Noro stripe scarf, but also some bamboo yarn for sculptural crochet. (Their Noro Silk Garden Chunky was almost half off! How could I resist?) And now I am drooling over pretty fabric remnants and reverse appliqué techniques. But I will be good and play with the fabrics I have now before flipping out and buying more.

I've discovered a style of T shirt that's a little more fitted than the boxy Hanes that I have so many of from college, but still really comfortable, and I'm thinking about buying several blank ones and doing cool things (like reverse appliqué, block printing, embroidery, etc.) to them. We'll see if this actually happens or not.

I'm currently crocheting a cloche style hat in Lamb's Pride yarn. I'll be felting it and then probably embellishing it with smaller crocheted things and/or embroidery (depending on whether I decide it's for me or for my mom).

Mailed a box to Deceminate!

Things that I hadn't previously photographed got photographed this morning and uploaded here.

This was a crazy, awesome, and tiring experience. I wish I had decided to be in the craft fair earlier so that I could have gotten more done without staying up so late. But I'm glad that I made so many things! Sometimes it was a fairly simple, mechanical process, and sometimes it was very creativity-filled and challenging.

Photographic highlights:



I had wanted to make some earrings that were one continuous piece--no break between ear wire and the rest of the main structure. These were a lot of fun (though the spirals were essentially shaped free-handedly, so it was a little tedious to make lots of them).



Labradorite is hard to photograph well--it's a grayish stone with iridescent fire in a variety of colors (blue, green, and yellow seem to be the most common). This pair of earrings has yellow fire that (I think) matches pretty well with the gold-toned gears.



Meanwhile, the highlights in these beads is a bluer color, matching the silvery gears.



These necklaces were fairly simple to make and turned out fairly interesting-looking.



The hanging purple droplets here make me happy :)



Bracelet made with typewriter hammers! I figured out a clasping mechanism: a magnet! The hammers are the right kind of metal for the magnet to stick to them.





Lots of OM NOM NOM bracelets...



Cute little bubble glass magnets! One issue I ran into with them was that the gears are sometimes magnetizeable, so they will drift around on the magnet while the glue is drying.

Virtually vending!

I'm going to be vending at Deceminate from across the country! Sasen will handle the in-person interactions, and I'll be using a webcam and chat to interact with customers. I'm mailing a big box of stuff to California next Monday. Having a deadline is great! I've done more crafting in the last week than in the last several months before. I'll take pictures as I'm boxing up everything on Sunday.

Things I am definitely selling:
-gearrings (earrings with gears)
-watch movement pendants (both plain and with silver decorations)
-OM NOM NOM bracelets
-a crocheted hat

Things I am probably selling, assuming I finish working on them:
-small glass magnets with gears sandwiched between the glass and the paper backing
-bracelets involving typewriter hammers (just need to work out a good clasp mechanism)
-linocut prints/bookmarks (still trying to come up with a design, but should be quick to carve and print up once I've done so)

Things I might sell:
-paint chip bracelets, if I decide they're not too time-consuming to make a few more of them
-gear-related rings?
-more complicated gear/watch movement assemblage necklaces, if I feel creative in that direction

Riven fangirl moment

Trying out linocut printing. My inking technique still needs work, but I think it's getting better. I'm planning on making postcards as part of an art contest/participation incentive at Mystcommunity.com.

Trying knitting again

I felt like making something out of a skein of Noro Matsuri yarn (it's a somewhat thin yarn made of a lot of smaller strands woven together rather than spun). I decided that the texture wasn't cut out for crochet, so I'm knitting with it instead. I've done a bit of knitting here and there, but consider myself a crochet fan for the most part. Knitting feels a bit like going from using Linux to using a Mac--like I've crossed over to the shiny, elegant dark side :)

Most recent thing

It is a bracelet that EATS YOU.

Also I want to play with acrylic paint some more.

Update

I haven't stopped crafting just because I haven't posted here in a while. I should be asleep, but here are some quick pictures/links.

Gift for some friends' commitment ceremony--doesn't photograph really well, but it's some sterling silver with tiny purple bells on an earring.

Working on that made me realize, hey, sterling silver is NEAT. I made this with the leftovers from the present and an old watch movement from my steampunk-ish stash of stuff:


Then I bought more silver on the internet (from monsterslayer.com). So far I've made one more thing, and hope to make many more:

(I'm not sure if this picture shows it very well, but the color of the hanging pearls really echo the color of the watch movement jewels, which makes me happy.)

I was helping a friend pick out colors to paint his room with, and was inspired by the paint chips:

(these are bangle-style bracelets, in case it's not easy to tell.)

I'm also working on a new version of a hat I made a while ago. It will probably end up on etsy. I love the yummy colors Noro yarns have! I wish this blue and green one had changed a little more quickly--it will just be green on the very top. But I think it will still be cute. I was carrying it around as a fidgeting-thing to social stuff this weekend, but I think I'll mostly just work on it on the subway now. I think this hat was prompted by Susannah's mom needing me to make her a hat to wear to her trip to the Netherlands--I finished it in just a few days (but sadly forgot to take pictures--I will when they return).

OK, that's it for now. Sleep for me.

More stuff

OK, I lied about not being as excited about polymer clay. I bought this awesome pasta machine device.

And lo, it is awesome, and makes sheets and tiles of clay an easy thing. I made some dinosaur scale pendant thingies. Interference powder is neat! It makes things shiny! The first set had the interference powder brushed on before baking, and then I added a clear acrylic glaze. For the second set, I mixed interference powder and translucent liquid Sculpey and painted it on before baking. It seems to have turned out slightly less glossy.

So, sewing. I got out my Singer and played with a silk shirt from dollar-a-pound. I was kind of fixated on making gathers. This was annoying when the thread decided to break and stuff, and I got kind of frustrated with my early attempts. (Though the frustrated/screwed up fabric looks kind of cool in retrospect, and maybe will be used for something else later). Then I realized that silk + water = wrinkles.



I sewed a few lines of running stitches, gathered with them, ran the whole thing under water, and twisted it as much as possible and let it dry. Then I pulled out the gather stitches altogether, leaving tiny holes and lots of pretty wrinkles. I folded up the ends around some ribbon to make a pretty, modern-looking choker thingy (which doesn't look good on me, but would look amazing on someone with a long, graceful neck). I think I'm proud enough of it that I'll add it to my etsy shop later this weekend.

Because I'm totally not that distracta--oo, look, a shiny!

Thinking about smaller fabric projects too. Sort of tempted to get some silk remnants and some pearls and combine them in interesting ways to make some kind of ruff/choker or something. But I think I will play with the shinies I have first.

Edited to add: found an unwanted bracelet of peacock-colored freshwater pearls that I'd made a year or so ago. Cannibalized! And I think I have a couple of silk shirts in one of my bags of Dollar-A-Pound finds... too bad it's bedtime now :/

...yep. Totally a new crush.

I keep squeeing over Gibbous and this amazing German website and thinking about the fabric. I think the activation energy for this project is going to mostly be related to putting the foundation layer/waistband area together. That feels a little bit like work (which is why I haven't started tonight, along with the fact that my sewing machine is loud and it might not be nice to run it when our upstairs neighbors might want to be asleep). The other ideas I'm having, though, just feel like play. Draping and patching and collaging fabric to attach to the base in an interesting way. And I know there will be frustrating moments and mistakes, but my ideas don't require perfection.

...Um, yeah, I don't think I have a point beyond "this project idea is shiny and I'm being obsessive about it. *end of post*

Status

Stuff I've been working on in the last month or two:

Watch part jewelry

Fimo tile jewelry

My crush on polymer clay seems to have been much shorter-lived than I'd expected, and my crush on wire-wrapping/linking/gluing watch parts has lasted longer than expected (which is good, because I'm not nearly close to using up all the parts I've gotten from ebay).

One thing that can stop a crush on a medium for me is finishing a particular type of ambitious project. I always feel like my next piece should be better than the one before it. So if I make something that is really amazing, but also takes a lot of work or special materials that I don't have any more of, I go through a period of trying to top it and failing, which can be demoralizing. For a while, it looked like Fringes might have had that effect on watch part jewelry for me. But I spent a few days away from it, not thinking too much about watch parts, and then came back and worked on some simple pieces. Then I worked on Orbits and Strange Device. I'm quite happy with both of them, and now instead of feeling like I have to clear some impossibly high hurdle to match the awesomeness of a single fluke, I feel like I'm getting better at what I'm doing. Yay.

Crush on the horizon: Gibbous Fashions and other reconstructed/elaborate sewing. I'll be going to a party in early May that some people traditionally make elaborate, alternative-looking costumes for, and I think something in this vein would be perfect. But with more draped bits and tassels and all the yummy elements I love in skirts, combined into one! I went to Dollar-A-Pound yesterday and gathered a bunch of white and wine-red fabric, and I'm starting to form A Plan in my head. I'm hoping to get started this weekend! If so, I'll post pictures of my progress :)

Welcome to Crushes on Crafts!

I like crafts. Like, a lot. But I'm a jack-of-all-trades. I fiddle with something for a while, then move on to something else. I realized that instead of feeling guilty about my capricious crushes on various forms of crafts, I could celebrate the joy that discovering new media brings to me and document my exciting artistic flings. I'll talk about previous craft-crushes, show off my current and recently-finished projects, and bounce about the various nifty things I'm hoping to play with in the future.