crafty mcgee

The kindness of random craft bloggers

It's a sign, I tell ya. I neither received a box, or received any recognition from the person I sent my box to (although the pictures showed up on flickr, so I know it was received).

However, I did receive this sweet little handmade Coraline and a nifty tree keychain - as well as a few other items in a very niftily decorated mailing box - from a random blogger just looking to do a nice thing. Thanks Karen (and Myra)!

My plan to open a shop on etsy has not disappeared, and I'm getting closer every day to bringing it to fruition. So keep a lazy eye on this space, I'll come back then.

Finished and Ready to Go

Here's the box with most of the stuff in it. I wanted to save a few surprises for the giftee. My bookbinding training came in handy for building a tray for the box. Although the directions specified red velvet or velour for the lining, the velvet was $22 bucks a yard (gulp), and the velour was in very unattractive and inappropriate colors, so I went for a nice brushed corduroy that was the perfect shade, and it is what the original box was lined with after all. So it looks even more mysterious that part of it is old and faded, and part of it is new. More pictures can be found here.

The embroidered piece in the tray is a map. This is what I used:

It's a drawing that my late dad did, probably 35 years ago or so. He was a civil engineer, and a coal contractor for at least part of his career. This is a preliminary plan for a clean coal facility. Now, I don't if this is the same clean coal that all the kids are talking about nowadays and my dad was prescient, or if it's something completely different, but I think it's cool. I dropped out all of the words, and printed it out on fabric for the base of the map.

My mom says she thinks that this drawing is of the same quarry where the classic zombie movie Night of the Living Dead was filmed. My dad was the guy who worked with director George Romero to get all of the location permits. My dad could have been a zombie extra(!) had he not been out of town the weekend the film was shot. Although my brothers disagree with me, as a film fanatic I think that it would have been a fantastic thing for my father to be in one of the most iconic monster movies ever. Oh well, it's enough that he was involved in some small way.

I found this drawing while spending a long weekend with my brother going through boxes of stuff in my mom's garage. I sent many treasures home to myself. If I decide to stick around, I'll post some of them from time to time. Although I try to avoid it, I guess that sometimes being a pack rat can be a good thing.

I'm in!

Here's the box - as I mentioned, it's perfect for this swap.
 

 

The top of the box is a mirror. There will be several additions, in addition to the items specified in the instructions. Stay tuned!

Back for at least a month

I decided I just had to sign up for my little mochi's Coraline box swap.  I've got the perfect box, and had some good ideas even before I saw the movie yesterday, now I'm a little overwhelmed. It's impossible not to love a film where, as the website says "everything you see is made by hand".  I had been a teeny-tiny bit skeptical - while I love Neil Gaiman's stories, I'm not a big fan of his writing style. Also, I love the version illustrated by Dave McKean (shown above - so eerie) and the film characters are nothing alike. But no worries - the film was fabulous, highly recommended, and I'm sure will inspire even more online projects than it already has. I hope I made the cutoff!

I suppose I should give a brief update of what I've been doing for the last six months. After successfully working to get President Obama elected (yaaay!) - all I can say is see my new tag line. I work for local government, and things are very unstable at the moment. I tend to veg when I'm worried. Vegging for me means listening to music almost constantly (thus the Pandora widget), or watching movies, or Lost, or  Battlestar Galactica, or the late, great, lamented Pushing Daisies. Oh well, I guess it's better than drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Still, I do have lots of ideas both crafty and non, and my tutorials bookmark list is longer than all of my other bookmarks combined. I'm going to plan on a new "combating panic through craft" strategy. Thanks for checking in!

echidna power!

Echidnas - like hedgehogs, but better, 'cause they have a funny nose! Like many goofy animals, they're Australian.

This fabric is just a test print of the stuff I'll have up in the shop. I managed to lose 9 yards of Kona cotton. It's somewhere around here, but I spent a day looking for it to no avail. Must be the leprechauns, because my house just isn't that big. The print above is on bleached muslin, which looks OK, but isn't the sturdiest fabric in the world for quilting and such.

I've got one more new fabric design to finish, and then I'll start into production for the shop. I also have another idea, but need to do some tests before I show it off.

Politics has been keeping me busy (or busier than usual, I guess). I didn't make it to the next delegate level, but given the fact that there were only 23 people chosen out of about 218 that wanted to speak for Obama, I can't say I'm surprised or particularly unhappy that I didn't get picked. Public speaking is not one of my strengths, and he'll be well represented by others. There's still plenty to do nevertheless.

I got a couple of solid working days in my garden, too, until - get this - it started to SNOW this weekend. Rassin' frassin' climate change...

Which is all just my roundabout way of saying thanks for stickin' around, there's more to come - and if it's not too timely, it's just because there are more things to do and ideas in my head than waking hours in the day. See ya soon!

taken with my iPhone!

OK, it wasn't a few days, but you have to admit it's more timely than three months! After hemming and hawing about it forever, I decide to get an iPhone with part of my tax refund. It's the first cell phone I've ever had (pretty amazing for a technology geek like me), and in about a month I'll take the final leap and dump my 15-year-old land line number. Yeehaw!

The picture isn't that great, of course, considering it was taken through a 1/8" lens, but it gives a good impression of the general fuzziness of the garden. I think my grandma made the little toadstool.

I was going to show the fabric design I was working on, but I decided to scrap it. It was birds, and I'm kind of birded out. I'm going to stick with under appreciated animals. I should have something by next week.

Thanks for all of the nice comments, it's good to be back!

the long winter

I find it very hard to believe that I completely missed the winter, but I have....

If you are visiting here, you are probably wondering what the heck happened. I stopped sleeping well sometime in late July/early August and by the time December rolled around I was in pretty bad shape physically, emotionally and mentally after getting only 3 or 4 hours of fitful sleep a night. My doctors (both alleopath and naturopath) could find neither reason or cure, so my naturopath ended up recommending acupuncture. Hallelujah, it worked!! After a couple of months of treatment, I've now had about 5 weeks of good, solid, normal sleep, and feeling about 75% back to my old self. Yay!

As of now I've got no interesting craftiness to show off, but I am working on some new drawings for fabric and hope to post them later this week. I still intend to open an etsy shop, and I'm aiming for a May 1 start date. I received a Gocco Arts for Christmas which should come in very handy. Speaking of gifts, the image above is from Mother Earth and Her Children: A Quilted Fairy Tale - an artistic interpretation of one of my favorite books from my son's childhood - that I got for my birthday. Here's a post with a little bio of the artist, some more close-up pictures of the Mother Earth quilt, and some other lovely quilts. I don't often feel envious of other artists work no matter how much I love it, but this really made me feel "dang, I wish I had made that".

So after bloggily missing Christmas, New Year's, Groundhog Day, Valentine's Day (which, believe it or not, I actually forgot about), Ira Glass' birthday (March 3), my birthday three days later (we were both born in '59), Saint Patrick's Day, and the first day of Spring, we get to today - Happy Easter Everyone!!

I have not been a complete slug. I've been working very hard for Barack Obama to get the Democratic nomination for President. In our caucus here in Washington, I was very pleased and proud - after a short "speech off" - to be picked as a delegate for the next level. So that's keeping me busy now and hopefully into the fall.

I'm going to try to post at least a couple times a week (I know, you've all heard that before) - even if I've got nothing to show except pictures of my messy garden - in order to get back into the habit. Thanks for checking in, and I'll talk to you soon!

the most wonderful day of the year

that's right, Pangolin Day is here again! Though I only received the usual number of comments for that post (I'm sorry to say I forgot about it last year), I received a whole bunch of emails from folks who'd seen my pangolin stuffie saying that pangolins were their favorite animal. Who knew? I guess that's why they have their own day .

I used non-gocco fabric inks for the first time on this print. (The gocco fabric ink color choices are extremely limited.) The Versatex (on the pangolins) worked fine, but the Pebeo ink on the leaves was too runny. I will print a better batch to sell in my etsy shop when I open in January - yes, you heard it here first!

Have a swell day, everyone. Reflect on the greatness of pangolins, and if you're in southeast Asia, perhaps you can take a neighborhood pangolin out for a nice meal.

extra bits

I have lots of fabric critters left over from the ornaments, due to the way I set up my gocco screen:

Being a big fan of fabric patches (one of these days I'm going to make something with my collection - stay tuned), I noticed a perfect opportunity when I saw it. I was going to do some plain circles, but when I saw Mimi's  tutorial on her ornaments (I'm getting one - yay!!), I decided to go freeform. I love the color combos. I also printed these tags:

I carved a nice eraser image, but it went a tad wonky when I tried to stamp it onto the tag. I should have carefully removed the wire, stamped, then even more carefully replaced the wire. Yes, that's definitely what I should have done. (If you listen closely, you can hear the voice in my brain saying "Ha! Fat chance!") They needed a little more hand-drawn embellishment than I planned, but I still think that they are not without charm.

my little forest

- with monkeys, of course. Here are the ornaments I made for this year's swaps (both Amy's and Cake & Pie's). I think I caught most of the critters in this picture. In addition to the monkey's, there are squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, owls and several other birds. They're gocco'd & embroidered, and are suitable for standing or hanging. Here's a shot of what the set-up pieces looked like:

I'm really happy with them. There's a close-up  on flicket. Since I made so many, there are two left over that are not spoken for. Let me know if you'd like to trade. Geez, you guys are speedy! I do have some unsewn blanks, so it is not out of the realm of possibility that I could stitch up a few more.