Kraken Crafts

Bathroom Refreshing

2012-01-03T13:16:00.000-08:00

The bathroom and the kitchen are the two rooms in our house that need kind of major stuff done to them and therefor have had pretty much nothing done to them since we moved in. The major stuff the bathroom needs are tile on the floor to replace the ugly linoleum, a new mirror, a new light fixture and a new tub. We still aren't quite ready to tackle any of these major things, but what we can do is paint. The cabinets were a light colored wood with peeling off varnish. There were no knobs on most of the cabinets (which contributed to the water stains and peeling varnish), except for the linen cabinet which had one broken handle. There was a medicine cabinet above the toilet, which must have been added later, because unlike the rest of the cabinets, it was white. The one thing we did like about our bathroom was the tile in the shower and sink back splash with the grey accent tiles. Here are some pictures from before we moved in.

We decided to paint the cabinets white (actually Valspar Betsy's Linen) to match the trim and the white medicine cabinet and we painted the walls grey to sort of match the accent tiles. As usual it was really hard to find the right color grey. The first one we got ended up looking purple on the walls. The one we ended up with was Valspar Notre Dame. It is a little lighter than the tiles so that it wouldn't be too dark for such a small bathroom.

We ended up finding the knobs on Amazon because I had this specific style in mind and neither Home Depot or Lowes had anything close.

We still need to tackle the major stuff, but for less than $150 I think we managed to make the bathroom feel fresh and much more cohesive.

Hanukah Party

2011-12-30T12:42:00.000-08:00

For the past few years Nate and I have been having a Hanukah party. This year I made latkes, applesauce, smoked salmon cream cheese spread and star of David sugar cookies. And Nate made "kosher" pigs in a blanket with Hebrew National hot dogs.

Lately Goodwill has been getting a bunch of the excess unsold seasonal items from Target. They had tons of 2010 Target Hanukah stuff at Goodwill and I managed to snag paper plates, napkins, a plastic plate, gift bags and dreidels. I made little party favors of a few pieces of chocolate gelt and a dreidel wrapped in fabric with tags with every possible spelling of Hanukah.

For decorations I made these felt circle garlands from this tutorial on the purl bee. They couldn't be simpler or cheeper. It only took about 4 sheets of felt which were less than a quarter a piece. You cut them into circles of varying sizes and then just run them through the sewing machine. I also used some of our left over wedding finger knit chains.

I also made lots and lots of six pointed paper snowflakes, but the cats managed to tear down any that were in their reach.

Rug Rearranging

2011-10-25T15:34:00.000-07:00

We love our new West Elm couch. It is super comfortable and great to both be able to stretch out while watching TV and not be super crowded. The only problem was that since it was a sectional it would slide on our wood floor and the couch part and the chaise part would end up sliding apart from each other. The reason this was happening was because despite that fact that the couch was almost 9' by 6' we had it sitting on our old less than 5' by 7' ikea rug. We had been looking for a new rug for a while. I found a bunch that I liked, like this one on ebay. But they were all a little too spendy. I actually really like a lot of ikea rugs, but they seem to have stopped making all the ones that I like that would be the right size. We ended up going to the West Elm store in Santa Monica so we could feel rug samples and found this one for only $229 for an 8' by 10' rug. It is kind of insanely cheep for that big of a rug.

Somehow, despite the fact that we measured, it is almost too big for the space. I think I will get used to it though.

We moved our old Ikea Alvin Triangle rug from under the couch to under the dining table. I was a little worried that the black and white triangles would be too much with the black and white ikea triangle fabric that I covered our dining chairs with. But I think it works.

The rug that had been under the dining table got moved to the barn. I got it for super cheep off ebay but it was too small for under the dining table and Keita managed to chew a hole in it, so I feel ok about relegating it to the barn. It looks nice with the black painted floors in there.

Get The Look

2011-10-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Our house was featured yesterday on the Etsy Blog in the Get The Look: Decor column. Check it out here.

Guest Room Update

2011-10-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

At our old house our bedroom was filled with all of the old blond wood ikea furniture that I had been toting around each time I moved since I have been in Southern California. When we bought our new house we got a new/old mid-century bed frame for our master bedroom and relegated the ikea stuff to our guest room. It looked fine in there, but we still really wanted to de-ikea the place eventually.

Flynn lounging on our old ikea bed

My aunt is in the process of moving from her main house to her guest house and has had to do some major downsizing. Since I am her only relative in Southern California, I got some family furniture from her that wouldn't fit in her new place. Both the marble top dresser and the drop leaf table had been at the farmhouse in Ohio where my mom and aunts grew up. I'm not sure how old they are exactly. I might have to do some research. I also got a set of Thonet or Thonet style chairs and a new bed and mattress. Most excitingly she gave me a Charlie Harper serigraph. It is perfect because one I love Charlie Harper, two I love puffins and three, there were already multiple puffins in that guest bedroom.

Home Brewing

2011-09-15T14:12:00.001-07:00

Since we bought our house, besides getting really handy, Nate has gotten really into home brewing. This has required buying lots of big expensive equipment, turning our garage fridge into a kegorator and hours of sleep lost worrying about his yeast.

I don't really understand the whole process that well. It involves lots of boiling and draining and waiting.

But, I don't really mind all the time and money it is costing, because I do love me some beer and supposedly it will end up being cost effective in the long run.

Besides drinking the beer, my favorite part is getting to help name and design the logos for the beers. For the first beer he made, back at the old house, I got to make labels for the bottles.

Now since he has the kegorator, he is just kegging the beer and not bottling it, so there is no need for labels. I discovered that you can just write on the fridge with a dry erase marker and it wipes off with a wet paper towel. That seemed like the perfect place to list the names of the beers and also draw logos for them.

Coming soon is a hopefully hoppy and tasty IPA that the pictures above were of Nate brewing. I named it Hoppiness is a Cool IPA, a take on the Charles Schulz book, Happiness is a Warm Puppy.

Right now we have Ongenaet Belgian Wit, named after Belgian and former Syracuse forward Kristof Ongenaet. Nate thinks it is appropriate that the beer turned out considerably weaker than it was supposed to, since I guess Ongenaet was overly hyped and turned out to be not super great of a player for Syracuse.

The logo of course is Otto the Orange and it is best drunk out of a Darwin's glass. Darwin's was a bar next to campus in Syracuse that has gone out of business since Nate stole the glass.

Lemon Cucumbers

2011-09-02T11:40:00.001-07:00

Lemon Cucumbers, a photo by krakencrafts on Flickr.

Lemon cucumbers sounded like a cool idea when I saw the plant at the nursery, but they have a really thick spiky skin and are hard to peel because of their shape. I think next year I will grow normal cucumbers.

I ordered a bunch of seeds for fall vegetables from seed savers exchange. Hopefully they will come soon so I can start planting.

Our Wedding Blogged on Ketuv.com

2011-09-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

For some reason after our wedding, I really wanted to try to get it or aspects of it featured on some of the wedding blogs that I read leading up to the wedding. It was confusing though with the rights to our pictures. I couldn't just submit the pictures without watermarks to blogs, blogs didn't want pictures with watermarks and our photographers seemed unenthusiastic about submitting pictures for me. So I kind of just gave up.

So I was very happy when the folks at ketuv.com wanted to use some pictures on their blog (taken by our guests and myself) of our huppah and ketubah/quaker wedding certificate. They coined the name quaker ketubah and I think I'm going to steal that term.

Morning Light in the Garden

2011-08-29T09:46:00.000-07:00

I've really been enjoying having actual dirt to plant things in at this house. There wasn't much planted here when we moved in, and a lot of what was here we pulled out. But things are finally starting to fill in. The nasturtiums are going crazy even though they have a horrible aphid problem. I guess they are supposed to attract the aphids away from your other plants, so maybe that is ok. The tomatoes are finally getting ripe. I'm starting to think about what fall vegetables I can plant in the planter box and am trying to get Nate to build more planter boxes for next year.

Puppy Playdate

2011-08-25T11:33:00.001-07:00

We had some friends over last week to finally test out the kamado smoker, drink some of Nate's newly completed home brew and have our puppies finally meet each other.

Ollie is a 7 month old miniature Australian shepherd and though still incredibly cute, was possibly the cutest puppy ever to exist when he was two or three months old.

I swear Keita and Ollie really loved each other and were playing very nicely despite how ferocious they look in the pictures.

After dinner (Nate made baby back ribs in the kamado) we used the fire pit for the first time and had some s'mores.

Keita Update

2011-08-18T15:56:00.000-07:00

Keita is four months old now and getting big, well not big, just bigger. When we adopted her the rescue group said that she was a labradoodle, but we are now pretty positive that there is neither lab or doodle in her. Probably she is some kind of terrier mix.

She is growing up so fast, so I thought I would post some puppy pictures of her in chronological order.

Here she is with Nate at 6 weeks, when we first went to look at her and her siblings. She was definitely the sweetest and cutest of the bunch.

Here she is with her brothers and sister and a tiny jack russell puppy. I think she is the one on the bottom left.

Here she is with me at 8 weeks the day we brought her home.

At 9 weeks.

Meeting Harris for the first time. You can kind of tell, even though it is blurry, that she definitely smaller than Harris.

At 10 weeks, back when she wasn't able to climb over the baby gates in the kitchen.

11 weeks and never sitting still long enough to get a clear picture.

13 weeks sitting with Nate on the couch.

She got spayed at 14 weeks and had to wear this dorky looking bib/smock for two weeks afterwards so she wouldn't chew at her stitches.

And just today, exhausted from her first trip to the dog park.

Wood Pests

2011-07-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have been in kind of a creative drought lately. Besides sewing some housewares for the new place, working on other projects around the house and a few hand made cards, I haven't really done much with my crafting since we moved. Nate has really been the creative one around here lately with all his wood working projects. (He's a writer so he is always being creative, but I mean more physically creative.)

I decided I needed to get back into making things, so I dug some of my art supplies out of the boxes they are still in and I painted these forest pests on a piece of scrap wood from Nate's shop. Hopefully this is just the start of more creativity to come.

Some of Nate's Woodworking Projects

2011-07-22T11:13:00.000-07:00

Since we bought this house Nate has gotten exponentially more handy. He bought a table saw and keeps trying to find projects to work on. Since we aren't ready to tackle any major interior projects, he has kept himself busy with outdoor stuff mostly.

I think either the first or one of the first things he built was this picnic table. It may have ended up costing more to build than one of those prefab ones from home depot, but it is really big and made out of pressurized lumber so it should last a long time.

We have gotten a lot of use out of it already. This was one of the first meals we had on it (turkey burgers with avocado and turkey bacon) and we have had countless more meals out there since then. I'm pretty sure we have sat down to eat a meal at the picnic table more times than we have at our dining room table.

I really wanted a fire pit for the back yard. My dream fire pit would have been the cast iron fire bowl from DWR but $465 was a little out of our price range. I also really liked the revolver solid base fire pit especially because it had a wooden top so you could use it as an outdoor coffee table when not in use as a fire pit. $250 was still a little more than we wanted to pay. So we ended up buying this square fire pit that still has a nice modern look to it, but was a little more in our price range. The only problem was, no wooden top. But Nate managed to make this top for it out of super cheep fence boards. It has two holes drilled through so you can lift it out.

Our house has this weird little wooden shelf on the front of the house under the window to my office with a frilly decorative lip on it. I'm assuming that it was intended to hold a planter box and it seemed pretty silly without one. So Nate built this planter box to fit the dimensions of the shelf. He drilled drainage holes in the bottom that matched up with the space in between the boards so water could drain directly into the planting area below.

I pained the box white to match the trim on the outside of the house (the former owners left a gazillion cans of paint in the garage and it is always a challenge figuring out what color goes to what part of the house). And I planted the planter box with potted succulent plants that I brought from our old house. Amazingly I didn't buy any succulents for this thing, I had way too many little pots filled with succulents.

Hopefully someday we will replace the frilly edge on this thing, or maybe eventually the succulents will get long enough that they will cover it.

More Living Room Updates

2011-07-13T09:29:00.001-07:00

New Wall Unit, a photo by krakencrafts on Flickr.

There is another new furniture piece in the living room. I found this Danish buffet/wall unit at the Salvation Army the same day the couch was delivered. Nate wasn't too keen on it at first. He thought it made the living room look too crowded, but I think he was just overwhelmed with multiple new pieces of furniture arriving the same day.

We picked up a free earthquake kit from Ikea and Nate managed to get the top piece properly attached to the bottom piece (it was missing its pegs). So I was finally able to unpack a bunch of my pottery and get it properly displayed.

New Couch

2011-07-12T16:21:00.000-07:00

We ordered a new couch from West Elm to finally replace to old, brown, cat scratched, ikea couch that I had been dragging around each time I moved since 2003. It is the lorimer sectional in charcoal faux-suede. Charcoal faux-suede was not the stock fabric for the couch, but we wanted it because it would be harder for the cats to get their claws into. West Elm said it would take 8-10 weeks to deliver the couch (which is already a crazy long time), but it actually took 11 weeks.

It was such a long time to wait. But it finally came on Friday.

We probably should have measured before we ordered it, because it might be a little too large for the space. If we were on "designed to sell" they would tell us it was making the living room look smaller than it is. But, it is so wonderful for both Nate and I and the two cats to be able to lay on the couch comfortably.

We had been waiting for the couch to come before we put up anything up on the walls in the living room, incase we needed to reposition the buffet that the TV sits on.

The living room is looking so much more like home with pictures on the walls.

We also put up some wedding pictures and our quaker wedding certificate/ketubah in the entryway. It is almost our one year anniversary and it's nice to be reminded of the wedding every time we walk by.

Also, Nate is getting really handy with his power tools. He built this little bench to use as a landing strip for my purse and to hide shoes under.

Cat Scratcher

2011-06-27T10:18:00.001-07:00

Nate made this cat scratching box for Harris and Flynn the other day. It is just a wooden frame that one of those corrugated cardboard cat scratchers slides into. It is mounted on the wall so that they can stand on their hind legs and scratch a vertical surface, which they love to do. We are supposed to be getting a new couch delivered from West Elm (though it is taking forever), so hopefully this will save the new couch some abuse. Then when the scratcher is thoroughly shredded, we can just slide it out and pop in another one.

Neither cat wanted to cooperate for the photo shoot this morning.

Here is Harris scratching on it before I painted over the mounting screw heads and before I trimmed the box so that it fit perfectly.

And here is Flynn. He was a little more interested in licking the cardboard that scratching it since it had catnip sprinkled on it.

Keita

2011-06-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

We got a new puppy yesterday. She is a labradoodle (or maybe labradoodle mixed with something else) puppy and about 8 weeks old. Her name is Keita after Baye Moussa Keita who is the freshman center for Syracuse. All of our animals have to be named after Syracuse basketball players. Our cats are Harris and Flynn after Paul Harris and Johnny Flynn, both former Syracuse players.

The cats seem to be adjusting ok. Flynn is always a little wary of new things and has been keeping his distance, but Harris seems to be doing good.

She is very sweet and loving and calm most of the time. But when she is in a playfull mood she can be extra silly.

Paint It, Black

2011-06-16T10:22:00.001-07:00

Despite my assertion in my earlier post, the barn was not complete. There was one nagging problem. The floor. The floor was previously covered in fugly peel and stick vinyl tiles. They wouldn't have been so bad if they were the black and white checkerboard ones but these were just really unattractive and they were starting to unstick completely.

Underneath the tiles was a plywood subfloor. On line I saw some examples and a few tutorials of painted subfloors. So we decided to just pull up the tiles and paint the plywood black.

We borrowed a friend's belt sander and sanded down the floors. There was quite a bit of stickyness from the old vinyl tiles which did not really all come off with the sanding. We decided that since this is the barn it doesn't have to be perfect. If we were doing this inside our house we would have been much more thorough and probably patched some screw holes and the gaps between the plywood sheets better.

Then, after taping, we primed the floor with grey tinted primer and then two coats of Valspar latex gloss porch and floor paint in dark kettle black.

It covered really well and it looks pretty great. The only problem is that it shows every speck of dirt and dust. Black was probably not the best choice for the floor of a building that you have to walk through grass to get to.

It has made me think that probably one of the reasons that natural wood floors are so common all over the world is because brown is close to the color of most dirt and dust.

The Patio Area is Looking Better

2011-06-12T11:24:00.000-07:00

The super cheep outdoor fabric I bought from SAS Fabric in Hawthorne wasn't quite enough to cover three giant pillows and two deck chairs. So I had to go back and try to find more. Luckily there was still tons of fabric on the bolt. I also managed to find some navy blue canvas in the stacks of folded fabric that was only $3.00 a yard. I'm not positive it is officially outdoor fabric so we will see how long it lasts without fading.

I bought this butterfly chair at the thrift store a while back for $5.00. I think the cover used to be red, but had faded to a lovely pink color. I had actually tried to dye it blue with RIT dye but somehow the dye didn't take at all. Maybe the fabric is actually some kind of polyester that doesn't take dye, but it really feels like cotton. So I'm really not sure what happened.

I used the old cover as a template to make this new cover out of the navy canvas. My sewing machine really didn't like the fabric. I think I broke 3 needles trying to sew it.

Other new additions to the patio are the fire pit and a new umbrella which you can't quite see the top of in this picture. It is green in case you were wondering.

And we bought a new bottom cushion for the faux outdoor couch.

My Office

2011-06-10T16:18:00.000-07:00

I already posted picture of "The Barn" which is Nate's office. My office is finally in fairly presentable shape. I took some pictures today because it probably will not stay this clean for very long.

At our old house my only work surface was the small faux wood veneer ikea desk in the corner. Since I work from home, my office is literally my office and also my craft and sewing room and I needed a set up for both my work computer and my personal computer. I wanted more work surface at the new house, so we found a old hollow core door at the habitat for humanity re-store thrift shop and set it on my two file cabinets. It was a little low, so Nate built some boxes out of 2x4s to sit on top of the file cabinets to raise up the desk level a little.

I found the old black anglepose lamp at a estate sale for two dollars.

I bought this Charlie Harper Alpine Northwest poster from the government printing office a really long time ago. Amazingly it only cost $12. The only problem was it is huge and a weird size so it was impossible to find a pre-made frame for it. Even with a 60% off coupon it was still ridiculously expensive to get it framed at Michael's, but I think it looks really great.

My office is kind of a modge podge of different pieces of furniture from our old place that don't really fit perfectly here and don't go that well together, especially in this corner.

It is working pretty well for now, and having so much more work surface has been great. I'm going to try to not stack piles of stuff all over every surface, at least for a while.

Deck Chairs Before & After

2011-06-05T11:15:00.001-07:00

Deck Chairs Before & After, a photo by krakencrafts on Flickr.

I found a random fabric store kind of near my house that was selling outdoor fabric for only $3.99 a yard. Most of the fabric they sell is shiny sequiny fabric for making quinceanera dresses. But I was pretty psyched about the cheep outdoor fabric. I recovered the pillows for the outdoor couch and one of these deck chairs that we got from Cost Plus many years ago. I'd don't quite have enough to do the second chair. I'll have to go back and get some more. Some day maybe we will refinish the chairs. The wood has definately seen better days.

The Barn is Complete

2011-05-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Now it's time for Barn after pictures.

One of my proudest contributions to the barn is "The Barn" pig sign. I originally bought a wood cookie from Michael's to make a "The Barn" sign out of but felt kind of ridiculous paying more than $9 for a slice of wood. I found this wooden pig plaque at an estate sale which I think is much cooler and I think only cost 25 cents. I carved out "the BARN" and then painted the carved out parts with left over barn paint. Nate is very proud that he strategically placed the screw holes to attach the sign to look like the pig's eye ball and anus.

Also notice the strange weather vane in the background in the neighbor's yard. The red on the weather vane perfectly matches the barn and it really adds to the barnyard feel.

The doors are now swinging freely. Hopefully they will stay that way for a while. We try to keep them closed most of the time since they are just so heavy that the hinges will probably eventually give out again.

Here is the completed cork wall. It is pretty huge. It will take a long time to fill that thing up. The cork tiles are still sticking surprisingly well. I was a little worried since the adhesive we used is normally for floors which have gravity working with them instead of against them in keeping the flooring attached to the floor. I think the tiles worked much better than a roll because the curling of a roll of cork would have been a problem in trying to get it to adhere to the wall.

Nate got some hooks from the music store and hung up his guitar and ukulele. This place is pretty much his man cave where he can not only work, but play music, drink beer from the kegerator and whatever else it is that men do.

We got this awesome mid-century massaging lounge chair off craigslist. It is ridiculously comfortable and sort of gives the barn a psychiatrists office feel.

Nate also got an office chair off craigslist. The built in desk is way higher than a normal desk, so he needed one that goes up and down. We were trying to find a vintage office chair, but most of the older ones only have one height setting. I think this one is a knockoff of the Eames Soft Pad Management Chair.

Please ignore all the wires. We need to do something about that, maybe drill a hole in the built in desk. Oh, we got the desk lamp from the Salvation Army on 40% off day.

I found this old pencil sharpener at a garage sale. It works so much better than my stupid electric pencil sharpener. Now I have to go out to the barn whenever I need to sharpen a pencil.

I really wanted a old wall mounted bottle opener somewhere in our back yard. Since the barn is kind of right in the middle of where people would hang out for a BBQ it seemed like the perfect place. I found this one from Prime Time Vintage Shop on etsy. It is an old advertising piece for Stegmaier Gold Medal Beer from Wilkes-Barre, PA.

Anyway, we are pretty proud of the barn. It may not be gorgeous, but it allows Nate to be able to write at home without being distracted by me or the cats. And it's also a pretty good man cave for him.

Barn Progress

2011-05-26T14:00:00.001-07:00

The first thing we did was tear off the planter box that was under the front window. It was completely rotted. So much so that there were actually worms living inside the wood. Then we primed and painted the barn.

We chose Valspar's La Fonda Antique Red for the paint color. I guess it is named after the La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe, NM, but we chose it because it is such a barn red color. It really makes the barn stand out while the beige made it kind of recede into the background.

The second major project we tackled was rehanging the barn doors. We didn't stop to take any pictures of that, but it was a major undertaking. We bought new much larger hinges. The old hinges were only screwed into the trim a lot of which was pretty rotten and causing the whole thing to sag about two inches. Eventually the bottom hinge for the bottom door just came off completely. We replaced some of the rotten trim and got much longer screws so that the door is attached to the wall and not just the trim. People say that hanging a door is one of the few home improvement things you should never DIY. They may be right. It didn't turn out perfect, but it is a vast improvement to the sagging/falling off mess it was before.

The last project was the cork wall. Nate is a writer and part of his process is listing out plot points on index cards, pinning them up and rearranging them. Since the barn was going to be his writing shed he wanted lots of space to pin up his index cards. Large framed cork boards are surprisingly expensive so he decided he wanted to just cork one entire wall of the barn. You can buy peel and stick cork squares, but those are also surprisingly expensive. I found a blog (which I can't find right now) where someone used cork underlayment which is usually used to go underneath wood floors to create a cork board wall in their kitchen. The underlayment is much cheeper and comes in either rolls or tiles and in different thicknesses. I found 1/4" tiles at widgetco.com.

We attached it to the wall with floor adhesive.

The walls were exactly 6' high so two 2' by 3' tiles fit perfectly. We did have to cut out a hole for the electrical outlet and cut the last two tiles to fit.

Barn Before

2011-05-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

The barn is completely done finally and Nate is using it as his office now. I wanted to post some before pictures before I post the after so you can see all the changes we made. It was really just a shed with electricity before. I'm not sure what the former owners used it for. There were two built in desks so maybe it was a home schooling room before.

You can kind of see in this picture that the barn door is hanging too low on the hinges. We had to lift the door up to close it and the lock was completely non functional. The lower door actually ended up falling off its hinges about a week ago.

The outside was very beige. It was actually the exact same color as the house which I kind of hate. But painting the whole exterior of our house is a much larger task than we want to tackle right now.

Next up are progress pictures, then the final result.

The Barn

2011-05-17T13:31:00.001-07:00

The Barn, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I was hoping at this point to post some before and after pictures of "The Barn", Nate's writing shed in our back yard. We thought we were just about done with it until we discovered that rehanging super heavy barn doors is more complicated than we originally thought.

So for the time being, I wanted to post this teaser picture of the sign I carved for the door.

Front Porch

2011-05-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Though the sprucing up the front porch area wasn't the first project on the house that we tackled it is the first one that I have some decent before and after pictures of.

Here is the before, it was kind of blah and kind of a mess.

The area between the porch and the driveway was completely bare before except for the jasmine plants winding up the porch posts. I had a rosemary and a lavender plant that had been living in pots forever that I transplanted into the front. I also transplanted a huge lavender plant that had seemed really happy in the planter box in the back yard, but I moved to make room for fruit trees. My old plants are pretty happy in the new space but the lavender from the back yard doesn't like it in front. I hope it ends up surviving.

I repotted a couple of cactuses and a hawthornia succulent into matching white Gainey Ceramics planters that I've collected.

All of the door hardware and the doorbell and light on the porch are brass. We aren't ready to replace all of that stuff so we wanted house numbers that kind of matched. It was really hard to find modern looking house numbers that came in a somewhat brasslike finish, but we managed to find these on Amazon. They were pretty tough to get mounted evenly on stucco, but I think even a little crooked they look better than the flowery tile house numbers that were up before.

Lastly, I found these chairs at an estate sale. They look kind of danish modernish, but I think the former owner may have made them himself because there were a whole pile of similar chairs, all in pieces and missing the bolts to fasten them together at the sale.

Overall, I think it is a big improvement to the curb appeal of the house. I can't wait to sit out on the porch, drink a beer, and watch the people walk by.

New House

2011-05-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

Nate and I closed on our first house about a month ago. Here are some of the pictures of the house from the online listing when some of the old owners' stuff was still there. We have done quite a few projects around the house already. Hopefully I will post some before and after shots soon.

Oystercatcher Vintage Goods

2011-02-16T10:06:00.000-08:00

I have finally reopened my etsy vintage shop called Oystercatcher Vintage Goods. I really didn't do too much with it when I started it, and then kind of abandoned it, along with my Kraken Crafts etsy site, while planning the wedding. After the wedding I really planned on getting back into posting things regularly on both sites. I figured, since I would no longer be occupied with constant crafting for the wedding, I would have so much free time that I would need to spend doing something. It turned out that after the wedding I was completely burnt out on crafting and also on keeping up with the vintage shop. I was still thrifting as if I was collecting stuff for a wedding, but somehow couldn't be bothered to try to sell anything. As a result, stuff has really started to pile up. Nate and I are trying to buy a house, and the thought of packing up and moving tons of stuff that I don't really need is kind of horrifying me. So, I have reopened the vintage shop and plan on posting stuff there regularly. Feel free to stop by and see if there is anything you are interested it. I also have slightly restocked the Kraken Crafts etsy shop, and plan on getting back into the crafting more at some point.

2010 Holiday Card

2010-12-09T15:01:00.001-08:00

2010 Holiday Card, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I realize that I never ended up posting any of our professional wedding pictures on this blog, despite the fact that I made our photographer send us a bunch of watermarked pictures so that I could share them here. Oh well. Maybe I'll get to that at some point.

Anyway, here is some craftyness that I have been up to more recently. For the third year in a row, I printed our holiday cards on the print gocco. I decided to use the gold ink that came with my machine but has never gotten any use. The sparklyness seemed appropriate for the holidays. The illustration in the center is supposed to be our cats, Harris and Flynn, snuggling.

Table Numbers 1-10

2010-09-24T08:33:00.001-07:00

Table Numbers 1-10, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I pulled all of the wedding table numbers out of the box they were in so I could take a picture of them all together. At the wedding we acutally only ended up having 8 tables so we hung numbers 9 and 10 on the wall of the reception venue. I think the table numbers were a hit at the wedding. Our friends ended up borrowing number 2 and some other wedding decorations after the wedding for their daughters second birthday party. I can't wait to see pictures of the decor in a completely different setting. It is nice that other people can get some use out of or decorations since it was a lot of work for just one day.

I actually entered the table number in another ruffled blog DIY contest. I think this one is going to have "experts" pick the best entries and only those ones will be posted and voted on by the public. So no guarantees they will be featured on the blog. I'll post an update and try to solicit votes if it is.

Wedding Odds and Ends Table

2010-08-19T13:33:00.001-07:00

Guestbook/Escort Card/Ketubah Table, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

First can I complain at how annoyed I am at the presence of this hideous tent. We arrived at the Oceanside Community Center the morning of the wedding to find this random ugly beige tent on the patio. There had been a birthday party there the night before so I figured maybe their rental company hadn't come by to pick it up yet and would be there shortly. I figured it would be out of our hair soon enough so there was no point in decorating it to try and make look half way decent. But no one ever came to pick it up. When our bartender finally arrived he told Nate that it was his and that he had used it for the birthday party the night before that he bar-tended and figured "why take it down, I'm sure the bride and groom will love having a ugly beige tent that they weren't planning on having when they designed the layout of the patio for their wedding". My uncle managed to get some lights strung up in there so it at least provided a place to hang some outdoor lights. Anyway, that is one of the things I was most bridezillay about.

Back to the table obscured by the ugly tent. The escort cards are arranged on a cork board we found in the trash covered in a sheet from the Salvation Army with twill tape strung on it. At thrift stores I found a unused vintage photo album somewhat in our wedding colors to use as a guest book, several polaroid cameras a bunch of this weird sticker polaroid film. It was very expired but I figured it might work and I found the right kind of camera for it for really cheep on ebay. I also bought some slightly less expired polaroid film on ebay that was not cheep. The sicker film did not work at all and the expensive polaroid film had quite a few pictures with odd blob monsters attacking our guests. They were interesting pictures though.

Recommendations for future brides and grooms.

1.) Don't buy expired polaroid film on ebay. Just wait until the new stuff they just started making again is more widely available or don't worry about polariods. It is a cute idea but definitely not a wedding necessity.

2.) If you are having a ketubah or wedding certificate and you want people to all sign it in the same black ink don't have sharpies for writing on polaroids on the same table. People will not read your nicely worded sign that says to please sign the thing in BLACK INK and you will have teal signatures on a document you spent either a lot of time or a lot of money on hanging in your house for the rest of your life.

One More Sign and Flip Flops

2010-08-18T08:23:00.001-07:00

Wedding Preview, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Here is one more sign I made from scrap wood. We set it up directly in front of the entrance to the beach to direct guests to our ceremony site.

I guess our permit actually said that we weren't allowed to erect any signs on state property, but I figured since it wasn't stapled to anything it was probably ok. There was another wedding going on earlier in the day on the same beach. We kept getting random guests wandering into the community center while we were setting up asking where they were supposed to go for the wedding. I would look at them and realize I didn't recognize them so they must be there for the other wedding. Maybe they were so lost because there was no signage for that wedding.

We also had the ubiquitous wedding flip flops. I figured since it was a beach wedding and people would be dancing later they would prove doubly useful. Only a couple of people took them though. I think we had warned people sufficiently about wearing comfortable shoes that people didn't need them. I also wrote a cheesy flip flop poem for the basket: "Flip Flops for walking in the sand and getting down to the band (I mean DJ)". We tried to get flip flops at the Old Navy $1 flip flop sale, but the check out line was wrapped completely around the store and we had to pick up my friend at the airport so we gave up. I ended up finding them for $1.50 at Michael's. The extra 50 cents a pair was definitely worth not waiting in that line. I found the basket at the Salvation Army. I thought it was the perfect shape to display the shoes.

Our Huppah

2010-08-12T14:42:00.001-07:00

Our Huppah, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Our huppah was built from branches Nate, my mom and I collected from the backyard of my childhood home in Portland when we were visiting last December, random batik fabric from the thrift store I fashioned into a square and hammered grommets into, wood boxes Nate and I built from wood the kid at Home Depot cut into not quite the right sizes, and cement Nate's brother and sister-in-law (I guess my brother-in-law and sister-in-law now) helped us pour on our wedding day. You may also notice a drill bit sticking out of one of the branches that Nate was unable to remove after trying to drill holes for the hooks for the canopy.

I think it turned out pretty great. Too bad my mom hauled off the branches and boxes to the dump after the wedding. I still have the canopy though and I'm sure I will come up with some project to use it for at some point. I also enjoy the random sun bathers in the background.

Ketubah/Quaker Wedding Certificate

2010-08-11T10:36:00.001-07:00

Ketubah/Quaker Wedding Certificate, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Though any talk of god was intentionally absent from out wedding (since I am an atheist and Nate is a fairly agnostic Jew), we still wanted to include some relgious traditions. We built a huppah, Nate broke a glass after the ceremony and we danced the horra. One of the other things we wanted to include was a wedding certificate. In Judaism, before the ceremony, the bride and groom sign a ketubah or wedding contract which is read out under the huppah during the ceremony. My mom and her aunts were raised quaker. In the quaker church, since there is no minister, the bride and groom marry themselves. At the end of the ceremony they sign a quaker wedding certificate which is then signed by the congregation as witnesses. We decided to kind of combine our family's religious traditions and make our own ketubah/quaker wedding certificate. It is really more like a quaker wedding certificate because of the wording and all of our friends and family who attended signed the certificate. But we like to pretend it is a combo.

Wedding Preview

2010-08-11T08:54:00.001-07:00

Wedding Preview, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

We are married. It all went by in a flash. It is amazing how much time and energy went into all the planning and crafting for something that went by so quickly. We don't have the professional pictures yet but lots of friends and family took some great pictures during the wedding and reception and during the set up process. I'm so thankful that my family and Nate's family helped us so much setting up the day of and the days leading up to the wedding. We couldn't have done it with out all of their help.

My mom made all of the deserts, my mom's cousins arranged flowers and made beautiful bouquets and boutonnieres from the flowers Nate, my mom and I picked on Sauvie Island two days before the wedding, my brother and sister-in-law helped us build our huppah and their kids laid the path of rocks for the aisle. And my aunts, uncle and cousin, Nate's mom and step-dad all the rest of the family helped set up everything for the reception and cocktail hour.

Everything turned out really beautiful and I think everyone had a great time. I am both happy and sad that it is over. It will nice to have a little more free time in the evenings now.

Wedding Sigage

2010-06-15T11:25:00.001-07:00

Wedding Sigage, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I had been collecting random pieces of scrap wood for making wedding directional signs for a while. I love the look of wood signs in all the beautiful wedding blog photos, but logistically it started to not make that much sense. Was I going to nail these signs to telephone poles in town? How was I going to cut the wood for these signs? The only saw we have is a hand saw.

Then I saw these really cute, non-wedding, directional signs on flickr and thought cardboard can be really attractive and is so much easier to cut into cute shapes than wood. So I made these direction signs and shuttle bus and shuttle bus stop signs for our rehearsal dinner. And I am pretty happy with how they turned out.

I did make this one wood sign for the front of our reception venue from salvaged wood and a salvaged door hinge.

Wedding Crafts Sneak Peek 2

2010-06-05T12:47:00.001-07:00

Wedding Crafts Sneak Peek, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Some escort cards without the table numbers (we still need to figure out the seating chart). I gocco printed the boarders on papersource escort card paper. I don't trust my handwriting so I printed out the peoples names on the computer and transfered them to the cards with carbon paper and then traced over them with blue ink.

Wedding Crafts Sneak Peek

2010-06-05T12:39:00.001-07:00

Wedding Crafts Sneak Peek, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I feel like I have been spending almost all my free time working on wedding crafts, but I've been trying not to post too many pictures before the wedding. Here are a few semi completed projects.

Chalkboards I made from a thrift store mirror and picture frame. I painted the frames and spray painted the glass with green chalkboard paint. I think they will be drink and or food menus.

Number 10

2010-04-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

Number 10, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I finished the last of the table numbers finally. I probably spent way too much time and energy on these, but I'm really happy with how they all turned out.

Whenever I am taking pictures the kittens have to try to get into the frame.

Voting Has Started

2010-04-05T10:50:00.001-07:00

Vintage/DIY Contest Entry, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Voting for the Ruffledblog.com Vintage/DIY contest actually started Friday, April 2nd and runs through Thursday April 8th. Here is the link to the voting.
ruffledblog.com/2010/04/diy-contest-time-to-vote/

Vintage/DIY Contest Entry

2010-03-23T11:31:00.001-07:00

Vintage/DIY Contest Entry, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I entered this contest on the wedding blog ruffledblog.com. They just posted my succulent/vintage planter centerpieces tutorial today. I would really appreciate it if you clicked back and voted for me to win starting March 29th.

Our Invitations

2010-03-09T09:17:00.001-08:00

We sent out our invitations already, and since we have started getting RSVPs back, I'm pretty sure that most of our guests, at least the ones in the US, have gotten them in the mail. It does seem a little bit early to be sending out invitations for a wedding at the end of July, but since it is a destination wedding for pretty much everyone, I don't think it hurts to send them out early. I really just wanted to get to check another thing off my list of wedding DIY projects. I got the card stock and envelopes from paper-source.com and designed and printed them myself with my print gocco. It took a long time and a bit of frustration, but I'm happy with how they turned out. I think they really set the tone for our wedding which will be very casual, DIY, and sea creature theme.

Polaroid

2010-03-04T10:35:00.001-08:00

Meet the Swinger, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I really want to have a polaroid camera at our wedding and have our guests take pictures of themselves for a photo guestbook, The only problem is that they stopped making polaroid film a couple of years ago and buying the old stuff on ebay is really expensive. Supposedly The Impossible Project has bought the old polaroid film factory and is going to start making the film again. It is unclear exactly when or where this film will be available, so I probably won't be able to get it in time for our wedding.

Anyway, I found this incredible polaroid swinger camera from the 60's with the original box at an estate sale. I really wish we could use this but it takes black and white polaroid roll film that they probably haven't made for 25 years or more.

Check out this adfor the polaroid swinger.

Family Pictures

2010-02-22T14:44:00.001-08:00

More Wedding Decorations
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

When I was home for Christmas, my mom and I picked out family pictures from my childhood and I had Nate's mom send me scanned pictures from Nate's childhood. I bought frames in different sizes from the thrift store and I pained them with the same paint samples from home depot that I used for the table number frames.

There is a mantle over the fireplace at our reception site that I think the pictures will be nice sitting on.

Planter Whale

2010-02-17T16:54:00.001-08:00

Planter Whale
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

For centerpieces for the wedding I have been collecting vintage pottery planters in blues and greens from thrift stores. I'm going to plant them with succulents and then if anyone wants to, they can take some home as favors. I've been collecting them for a while now and had a couple of boxes of them stored in the garage.

I pulled them all out today to count and see if I needed to keep looking for more. I swear I have more of them, actually I know I have more of them, I'm just not sure where I put them. Even with the missing ones, there are a lot fewer than I thought. I guess I still have an excuse for excessive thrift shopping.

For some reason I decided to arrange them in the shape of a whale. Now that I look at it I should have used that blue leaf shaped one for a spout.

Happy Meowintines Day

2010-02-15T10:35:00.001-08:00

Happy Meowintines Day
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

Nate doesn't believe in Valentines Day (whatever), so I made him a Meowintines Day card from our kittens Harris and Flynn. Very much inspired by Denise Holmes' insanely cute wedding suite for Alison and Chris .

Dream Wedding Dress

2010-01-15T13:27:00.001-08:00

I found my dream wedding dress the other day. Too bad it sold from this etsy shop a long time ago. It combines my love of fish motifs, mid-century illustration and short wedding dresses with straps. I know it was definitely not meant to be a wedding dress, but I think it would have worked for our wedding.

I received my actual wedding dress in the mail today nordstrom.com. I actually really like it and it fits pretty amazingly for a dress I didn't get to try on before I bought.

Wedding Straws

2010-01-15T12:45:00.001-08:00

Wedding Straws
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

I made a ton of these straws to use for cocktail hour at our wedding a long time ago, but just now got around to taking pictures of them. I bought both the straws and the origami paper at the Marukai 98 Cent Store. I carved the stamp with our initials from a speedball stamp block. I kind of think they might have looked better without the initials on them though. I totally stole this idea from multiple sources, my favorite being planetmithi's wedding flags. I think Grace from Design*Sponge made similar straws for her wedding too.

Possible Cake/Dessert Stand

2010-01-14T15:08:00.001-08:00

Possible Cake/Dessert Stand
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

Four my wedding, my mom is going to be baking several small cakes and some cookies and dessert bar kind of things. We are going to try to make some cake stands by gluing thrifted components together with epoxy. I think these Franciscan Coronado plates and sherbet cups would make either a good two tiered server or two separate small cake stands. Both plates are chipped underneath so I don't think its any big loss.

More Table Numbers

2009-12-19T16:06:00.001-08:00

More Table Numbers
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

I finished more wedding table numbers.

Table 3

2009-12-11T12:44:00.001-08:00

Table 3
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

I finished my first wedding table number. I bought a random wood picture frames from the thrift store and painted them with pain samples I got from home depot. The fish are water colored and outlined in ink. They are supposed to be surf perch, I forget which kind. Each table should have a different sea creature found in Oregon waters.

Succulent Wreath 2.0

2009-12-10T14:15:00.001-08:00

Succulent Wreath 2.0
Originally uploaded by krakencrafts

The succulent wreath I made two years ago had gotten really gross and scraggily looking, so I replanted it with new succulent cuttings. If it is still looking ok in July I may use it as part of my wedding decor.

Squirrely Christmas Cards

2009-12-10T14:06:00.001-08:00

Squirrely Christmas Cards, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

These are the Christmas cards I made this year using my gocco. I'm starting to really like using it. This is the first time I tried two colors and it worked pretty well even though I didn't have the ink blocking foam stuff.

Being Original is Tough

2009-12-01T16:27:00.001-08:00

I keep thinking I am coming up with these super original ideas for wedding crafts. Then as soon as I am set on definitely making something, I find almost the same thing on somebody's blog.

First I decided I was going to make screen printed grocery tote bags as wedding favors. I still haven't decided if I am going to put things in them or not. I've had my mom scouring Portland for reasonably priced roasted hazelnuts (or filberts as Oregonians like to call them) and trying to thing of other things that could fill up the bags. I'm kind of thinking empty bags folded and tied up nicely would probably be ok.

Anyway, first, on flickr, I saw these pictures of guessica's tote bag wedding favors that she gocco printed the cute tandem bike design from her invitations onto.

Then on guessica's blog Fig&Plum I saw she also goccoed coasters with her and her husband's faces on them for their wedding. I wasn't planning on putting Nate and my faces on coasters but I was going to print up coasters with my gocco.

Then today, I saw on the Oh So Beautiful Paper blog, pictures of the illustrator Julia Rothman's table numbers she made for her wedding. And guess what, they are very children's counting book inspired. Oh well. I swear I searched everywhere on the web to see if anyone else had come up with the same concept as me for table numbers. I saw a few counting book inspired ones with table letters instead of table numbers, as in A is for Apple and so on. But I couldn't find any like mine. Oh well, I guess all the stuff I do will be unique because I will be illustrating it. I was just surprised and excited that I had come up with a kind of obvious idea that I though no one else had thought of.

Table Numbers Concept

2009-11-09T10:08:00.001-08:00

Table Numbers Concept, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

If you've looked through my flickr page you can tell I really enjoy vintage children's books. ABC books and counting books are some of my favorites. I though wedding table numbers would be the perfect place to combine my love of sea creatures and children's books. This is my sketch for table 3. I will have the appropriate numbers of different sea creatures for each table.

I'm thinking I will do watercolors for the table numbers and then buy some pre-cut mats, tape two together and then put the whole thing in one of those place card holder things to stand it up.

Nate and I both really loved the table numbers at his friend's Jesse and Jenine's wedding. They were pictures of each of them at the age of the table number. We kind of wanted to steal their idea but I think I've convinced Nate it is better to have something unique.

Finished Save the Dates

2009-10-15T13:40:00.001-07:00

Finished Save the Dates, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I finished printing the fronts and backs of our save the date post cards with my gocco printer. The writing turned out surprisingly clear. I was worried the website address was in so small of font people wouldn't be able to read it. But it turned out ok. The solid areas didn't print as well as the writing and used a lot more ink. Over all I think they look pretty good for home made save the dates.

Save the Dates

2009-10-02T19:29:00.001-07:00

Save the Dates, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I finally started printing the save the dates for our wedding today. I've finished printing the front of the post cards. I'll print the back with more info after these dry.

It is a seagull squawking that we are getting married with the Three Arch Rocks in the background.

We are getting married in Oceanside, Oregon. The Three Arch Rocks National Wildlife Refuge is just about 1 mile off shore.

I'll post better pictures when I'm all done.

Thank You Cards

2009-09-29T10:50:00.001-07:00

Thank You Cards, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I have finally completed one wedding related project. I know it is really out of order but I made my wedding thank you note cards before I even made or sent out save the dates.

After seeing something's hiding in here's block printing demo video for urban outfitters I decided to buy the block printing press featured in the video from the UO website. It was only $80 and I was sick of block printing with a brayer.

This was my first attempt at using the new press. It wasn't perfect but eventually I got it to work pretty well. It was so much quicker and took so much less energy than using the brayer.

I know etiquette probably dictates I'm not supposed to show things like this before the wedding but it is so long off.

Crab Card

2009-09-25T10:24:00.001-07:00

Crab Card, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I made this card for our friend's 30th birthday. Crabs may seem like a odd choice for a 30th birthday card, but the inside has some inappropriate "you mom" joke about crabs that Nate wrote.

That is how card giving works in our relationship. I make the cards and Nate writes something somewhat clever inside.

Hippo Birthday Card

2009-09-14T12:18:00.001-07:00

Hippo Birthday Card, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I went to my friend's daughter's first birthday party this weekend. It was the nicest first birthday party I've ever been to. Well actually it was probably the only first birthday party I've ever been to besides my own. But it was pretty fancy for any birthday.

I made her a veronica the hippo birthday card inspired by the incredible Roger Duvoisin book I got at an estate sale the other day.

Lobster Dishtowels

2009-09-10T09:51:00.003-07:00

Lobster Dishtowels, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

New screen printed lobster dishtowels with the lobster claw oven mitts that I made for Nate's Santa Claws Halloween outfit from last year.

Iorek Byrnison Shirt

2009-09-10T09:51:00.001-07:00

Iorek Byrnison Shirt, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Nate and I both recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman and became obsessed with it. I know the Golden Compass movie was supposed to be horrible (I still haven't seen it) but the books are amazing. They are like a more mature, darker version of Harry Potter. Our favorite character was Iorek Byrnison the king of the armored bears. I made this shirt for Nate and I made a matching one for myself. We are such dorks.

Maryland Blue Crab Dishtowel

2009-09-10T09:50:00.001-07:00

Maryland Blue Crab Dishtowel, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

A custom order for Maryland blue crab dishtowels, printed in red. At some point I'll print some of these in blue as well.

Salty Seagull

2009-09-10T09:48:00.001-07:00

Salty Seagull, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

Inspired by the logo on my Tony's Fish Market plate I made this print of a seagull fisherman.

Twins in Desert Bird Onesies

2009-09-10T09:47:00.001-07:00

Twins in Desert Bird Onesies, originally uploaded by krakencrafts.

I forgot to post this picture of my friend from work's twins in the onesies I screen printed for her baby shower.

They are too cute.

Flickr

2009-09-10T09:37:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing. I finally figured out how to transfer my flickr pictures directly to my blog. Now I really should be posting more often.

Engagement

2009-08-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

Nate and I got engaged last weekend!! Yeah!

It was really shocking. He was really good at pulling of the I'm just not ready to get married act so I was rather surprised. Supposedly my words when he pulled out the ring box were "Holy shit, are you serious?" I was ridiculously happy though, as you can see in these pictures.

He took me to the cove in Palos Verdes where we had our first date. He got the ring on etsy from LaurieSarahDesigns.etsy.com.

Funny the last time I posted to this blog was when I bought my print gocco machine. I bought it thinking someday I would use it to print wedding invitations and now I can. I'm going to attempt to post more often with wedding crafts. Maybe.

Christmas Cards

2008-11-30T12:11:00.000-08:00

I finally bought a print gocco machine a couple of months ago. It seem like they really are completely discontinuing them and they are really not available in any american online shops or brick and mortar stores anymore. I bought a used B6 machine from japan on ebay. I guess the B6 is the old version of the PG5 but is basically the same and was going for way less than new PG5's on ebay. Mine was $99 I think but I was seeing some PG5's go for more than $300. Anyway I figured this was my last chance to get a gocco so I went for it.

Mine was used so it was missing some screens and bulbs and I was afraid to waste what I had just playing around with it. The bulbs and screens are also being discontinued but I was able to find a US based art supply store that still had some so I stalked up a little bit.

The first thing that I printed were Christmas cards. I used this tutorial on the small object blog. It was one of the few ones I could find for the B6 model and my instructions were all in Japanese so I really needed it.

I thought I was all prepared. I had drawn a picture, photocopied and reduced it at work to the right size, and was ready to start printing. Then I red that if you use a photocopy you need to used the blue filter so you don't get too much carbon on the screen. I searched and searched but my used model didn't seem to still have the blue filter. There was another option though. I could use the carbon pen instead of a photocopy and then I wouldn't need the blue filter. So I retraced my picture with the carbon pen and tried out the machine. It worked sort of but some of the lines blured together and the solid black areas were splotchy. I also thought I had had red ink but didn't so I used green which turned out kind of odd. Here is the result.

I wasn't too happy but I was paranoid to waste another screen on the same christmas card if it still wasn't going to turn out. I did some research and found redid the image so that there weren't any more solid areas and the lines were spaced farther apart. I photocopied it again and decided to not worry about the blue filter.

It turned out much better. Not quite perfect but pretty good. I printed them in black and then water colored in the had and crab in red.

New Prints

2008-08-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

Wow, I really haven't updated my blog in a really really long time. I just wanted to share some screen prints that I have made since my last post. Some version of all of these are available in my etsy shop.

First is my newest which I'm kind of obsessed with the cuteness of right now. My platypus. I've made a couple of shirts so far but he is actually a little big for the dishtowels I usually use. I hope to print him on different dishtowels and possibly an apron soon.

Next is the love bugs. I made this print from a watercolor sketch I made actually several years ago. They are these cute true bugs that look like they have little hearts on their backsides.

These two I first made to print on these onesies for my friend who just had twins. She is kind of a country girl and lives way out in the high desert so I figured her boys needed something both cute and prickly. The first is a roadrunner with a prickly pear cactus and the second is a pygmy owl with a saguaro cactus.

I should really update more frequently. I've just gotten out of the habit. Possibly sometime soon I may post pictures of our new (rental) house. We are just about done unpacking and decorating and I have gotten a few good shots so far.

St. Patrick's Day Garland

2008-03-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Since we are having a BBQ the day before St. Patrick's Day I decided that our house needed some St. Patrick's Day decorations. Well maybe just one St. Patrick's Day decoration.

I made this garland by ironing two different types of green fabric (crabs and dragonflies) together with fusible interfacing. Then I cut the fabric into strips and folded it into squares. I cut out the clover pattern so that the leaves would connect and form a fabric paper chain. Then I sewed the shorter chains into one long chain. I also made one into a four leaf clover. Hum, now I'm thinking I should cut the four leaf clover out separately and have all the three leave clovers the same color and the four leaf the opposite.

I guess since I'm putting um St. Patty's Day decorations I should take down the paper chain garland I made for Nate for Valentine's day. It's cute though. I'll probably save it for next year.

Squid Fork

2008-02-26T15:39:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I bought myself a really cheep wood burning kit at Michael's hoping to make stuff in the vein of the beautiful sticks furniture I had seen at a couple of different art galleries and fell in love with. I tried a couple of things that didn't really turn out and then put it away and never really thought about it much. I was looking at craftster the other day though and saw this post by Annie-bleam of some really cool looking wood plaques, including one of a raven, she had wood burnt and then painted with acrylics. When I was at Ikea the other day I noticed these really plain sets of wood utensils and thought they would be the perfect useful but cheep thing to try wood burning on.

Here is my first result, a squid pasta fork. I still need to draw designs to fit on the spoon and that thing with the holes in it. I have no clue what that is called or what it's for.

Good Thrifting Luck

2008-02-13T15:43:00.000-08:00

For about one week, maybe a week and a half Nate and I had about the best thrifting/alley scrounging/garage sailing luck I've had since about 1997 when my mom and I found a Saarinen Tulip Armchair at a church rummage sale for $5. Supposedly that chair had been on the set of AM Northwest the local ABC station's morning talk show which I'm sure made it all the more valuable.

So our good luck started one morning when Nate called me at work to tell me that he had found an actual nice looking piece of furniture in the alley. There are frequently pieces of furniture in our alley but rarely are they any good. Usually they are old peed on couches or falling apart book cases. I am a great coinsurer of alley furniture but since we moved to Hermosa our alley hasn't produced anything worth scrounging except for a few plant pots and a cool stain glass window that is sitting in our garden because I still don't know what to do with it. Anyway I immediately told Nate to get it and put it in the yard, who cares if we don't have any room for it. If we can't find a place for it or I decide it's ugly we can just return it to the alley from whence it came.

We managed to move a few things around and find a good place for our new alley buffet. I made a runner for it from a couple of tenugui dish towels and I now have room for my formerly overcrowded dishes and for future thrifting finds.

Speaking of things to fill the new buffet with, at a thrift store in Solvang I found these saucers with the same pattern as a creamer I bought myself a couple of months ago at the local antique mall. I have no clue what the pattern is called or who the maker is but I love the Scandinavian looking stylized leaf pattern. These were only 50 cents a piece. I also found one of the elusive ceramic deer that I was looking for right before Christmas. I knew that cute ceramic deer would be all over the place once I wasn't looking for them anymore but I couldn't resist this one for only 25 cents.

Last but certainly not least Nate and I were walking back from the beach over the weekend (I guess this was actually the weekend before last) and I looked across the street and exclaimed "There's an Eames chair on the sidewalk!" It turns out it wasn't an actual Eames chair but a fake one made in the 70s by a company called Plycraft. Even these fake ones sell for a lot of money on eBay and we definitely got this one for a steal since the owners were moving to Ibiza, Spain and had to get rid of all their stuff quick. I won't tell you how much but it really wasn't much. Less than what I'm hoping to get for my old too big and not too comfortable Ikea chair that it is replacing.

The good luck definitely came to an end the day after with a couple of failed estate sale attempts (wrong address listed in the pennysaver) and another one last weekend that had the perfect coffee table but it was already sold. I think that like love great thrifting/alley scrounging/garage sailing finds really come when you are aren't really looking for them.

Paper Cut Valentines

2008-01-30T08:21:00.000-08:00

Even though Nate doesn't believe in Valentines Day and thinks it is an evil corporate holiday I decided I needed to make him something. These are papercut valentines made with pinking sheers and an exacto knife.

This one is of our imaginary future cats that are going to be named Peanut Butter and Anjelly.

And this one is of our imaginary future french bulldog named Zidane Cousteau. A combination of Nate's two favorite French people the soccer player Zinedine Zidane and Jaques Cousteau.

Aprons

2008-01-24T07:48:00.000-08:00

I've been making a lot of these aprons lately. I finally worked out a design that is fairly simple and easy to recreate but well made and I think really cute. I like that I can combine my screen printing and sewing and also use up my ridiculous stash of tenugui dish towels from the Marukai 98 cent store. Each apron uses exactly one tenugui for the pocket and the ties.

On the etsy storque page they have had a series of articles lately about improving your etsy shop. I've been trying to think of ways to make it look more visually consistent. I think one thing that would help is to sell the same item with different designs as well as different items with the same design. By this I mean I would sell say just aprons, t-shirts and bags each with either an octopus, blowfish or snails. That probably won't happen though, I'd get bored making the same things over and over.

Happy 2008

2008-01-03T08:40:00.000-08:00

Happy belated New Year. I was pretty sure I lost my camera on New Years Eve, but really just left it at home, so I didn't manage to upload any pictures of Christmas and New Years until today.

I wanted to show off the cute '08 pizza Nate made for the potluck New Years party we went to. It was a big hit and pretty tasty too even though it was a bit burnt on the bottom from being reheated in the oven at the party.

I also wanted to finally post a picture of the Christmas cards I made this year. They were linoleum block prints that I initially started printing in oil based ink. I wanted to be able to paint the berries in watercolor without having them bleed. But after attempting to clean up after the I made the first batch of cards I realized that oil based ink is evil and I will only use it when absolutely necessary. The second batch of cards printed in water based in turned out just fine since the tiny area of the berries didn't really have much space to smear.

Anyway, I think they turned out pretty good. This one is not one of the better ones, just one of the few I had left over when I finally remembered to take pictures of them. I think I see a couple of thumb prints in the corner.

Paper Gnome Chains

2007-12-20T08:04:00.000-08:00

The other day at work I was admiring the cut paper designs on angry chicken’s blog and fell in love with this paper Christmas tree on the small object’s blog. I had been seeing a lot of paper cutting recently and decided that I needed to try it. I was in the office however with no exacto knife and not quite ready for such intricate things anyway. I started out slow with paper show flakes. These then progressed to paper doll chains, a somewhat failed attempt at a paper camel chain and my favorite, paper gnome chains. These are now covering our one tiny office window, that actually looks out into a hallway and not outside.

I liked the paper gnome chains so much I made more at home. Here is a garland strung over the mirror in the living room.

I think these are the last Christmas decorations I will be putting up. Christmas is in less than a week and we are leaving on Sunday to go back to Portland so it would be pretty silly to make anything else.

Speaking of paper cutting, I went to Giant Robot 2 on Sawtelle yesterday and saw the Jill Bliss and Saelle Oh collaboration, Hidden Habitats. I have always loved Jill Bliss’s work. She is one of the people in this new craft movement that I think has combined art and craft as well as business really really well. I had seen Saelee Oh’s work online before but in person the paper cutting stuff is just incredible. Anyway, it is a really cool exhibit that and it is running until January 9th. So if you live in LA you should definitely check it out.

Still Life

2007-12-10T08:39:00.000-08:00

The whole crafts on the internet thing still kind of amazes me. The idea that people from all over the world, that you would never have come into contact with without the Internet, can see your work and buy it just never stops being cool to me.

So recently I have actually had two different people contact me on etsy wanting to sell my stuff in their actual brick and mortar stores. The first was a girl who has a shop on Kauai who was interested in napkins and dishtowels. Sadly both of those are things I had been finding the raw materials for at big lots or similar stores and now can't find the kind of napkins or dish towels that I like anywhere. I need to get off my ass and find an Internet supplier or something but I've just been lazy.

The second was Kelly Malone. She is one of the founders of Mission Indie Mart which is a monthly craft fair featuring cheep beer, food and music held at 12 Galaxies in San Fransisco's Mission District. She just opened her own shop called Still Life which features hand selected vintage, local designers and the best of etsy. It is located at 835 Divisadero in San Francisco. Here are a couple links to info about the shop:
http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision/2007/11/still_life_for_your_hotness_li.html
http://www.thrillist.com/archives/2007/11/still_life_sf_san_francisco_gear_western_addition.html

I am consigning stuff there so hopefully it sells. I just sent her a few t-shirts and an apron to test it out. Depending on how those things do I might send more later. Here is the pile of stuff I sent her. Soon you will be able to see these things hanging in an actual store!

Oh, and I decided that if my stuff was going to be sold at a store I needed some kind of tag to identify it as mine. I would love to get some kind of fabric tags made up at some point but this is what I came up with as a last minute solution. I cut my business cards in half so they were just the kraken logo and attached them to the shirts with a ribbon and safety pin. I wrote the size and name of the shirt on the back. They actually turned out fairly professional looking. I may have to start doing that with all my things I sell on etsy.

Lastly I wanted to show the cute little deer I got at the Hermosa Beach Antique Mall. For some reason I got it into my head that I needed little ceramic forest creatures to go under the mini Christmas tree. I was picturing these ceramic deer that I swear I have seen many times at that antique mall when it isn't December. Someone must have come in and bought them all up because there were no ceramic deer to be found. Actually there were some really cute ceramic deer salt and pepper shakers but they cost $49!!! I settled on these much more affordable plastic ones. I also made another mushroom pincushion. My little Christmas area on the counter is getting a little cheerier.

Succulent Wreath (update on holiday crafts)

2007-12-03T08:47:00.001-08:00

I finally finished my succulent wreath. It took way more cuttings than I imagined. I really like the way it turned out though. I had it hung up on the door but some pieces were falling out if the door slammed too hard so I took it down to give it a little more time to root.

Here is the finished version. Hopefully the cuttings will take ok so it will keep looking this good or better in the future.

Here it is in progress. I filled it in as much as I could with cuttings from my own yard. Then I wandered the neighborhood discretely picking pieces off my neighbors plants. Don't worry, most of them were from communal areas or plants that were huge and overgrown. I did find some really nice plants along the Strand in front of a brand new giant multi-million dollar house that they had just put in the landscaping for. I'm sure the owners will never notice a few missing pieces of their plants.

I also figured out where I saw the tutorial for making wool felt puffballs. It was from bitter betty blogs. They are super quick and easy to make and I had a ton of wool felt sitting around that I hadn't done anything with for a long time.

I made this garland with the giant pile of puffballs that I had accumulated. Some how the colors of felt that I already had sitting around go really well together. It looks Christmassy but not too Christmassy and really brightens up my front window.

Holiday Crafts

2007-11-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

For some reason I've been feeling the need to make tons of holiday decorations. I don't have much in the way of Christmas decorations or any Hanukkah decorations so even though I'll be back in Portland for Christmas I feel like making a bunch of stuff.

This is about the extent of it. My cheep artificial x-mas tree with mainly purchased ornaments and Nate's menorah. I started making these felt puffballs that I saw a tutorial for on someones blog (I can't for the life of me figure out which one). I'm going to try to make a garland if I have enough felt but these are now making the counter space with the tree and menorah look a little less sparse.

I also made Nate a stocking which I didn't take a picture of yet. It's ok, not my greatest work.

What I've gotten most excited about making though is this succulent wreath. I decided on Monday at work that I absolutely had to make one of these living wreaths. If it does ok I can have it on the door year round. I managed to find all the supplies in one shopping plaza (Michael's and OSH). It just required a wire wreath frame, floral wire, peat moss, potting soil, rooting hormone and lots and lots of cuttings from succulents on my patio.

I cut all the succulents the day before I started to make the wreath so they had some time to callous over. I packet the wreath first with a layer of wet peat moss, then soil then more peat moss and then wrapped the whole thing with floral wire so it stayed attached to the wreath. I poked holes with a screwdriver and stuck the cuttings, dipped in rooting hormone, into the wreath. I thought I would have enough cuttings to go all around the wreath but didn't quite make it. I took some more cuttings last night and will hopefully be able to finish it tonight. It is mostly jade and what I think is Graptoveria. Its filled in with some donkey's tail, some mother of millions starts and some other random things. I'll take a picture once it's all done. Hopefully the cuttings will root ok.

My Favorite Extinct Animals Cards

2007-11-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

I've been going crazy lately printing linoleum block Christmas cards. I feel like I've printed so many of these but I probably still need to print about 20 more. At some point I will post a picture of them but maybe, possibly, hopefully, some people who I will be sending Christmas cards to actually read my blog so I won't spoil them for those few people.

Anyway after I printed a few of these I decided to distract my self by carving a few different blocks to make printed cards. These are inspired by some of my favorite animals to have gone extinct in the last 500 years. All of these animals are featured in the book A Gap in Nature. Which is a really nice coffee table type book with beautiful illustrations of 103 vertebrates that have become extinct since 1492.

This is the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis). It was a big flightless bird related to puffins and murres that was formerly native to the North Atlantic. It was last sited on July 3rd of 1844.

This one is Steller's Sea Cow (Hydrodamalis gigas). It was a 3 ton manatee like animal that in prehistoric times lived along the North Pacific coast. It was first seen by Europeans when the Russian explorer Vitus Bering's ship was ship wreaked on the Commander Islands in 1741. The crew found the animals quite tasty and easy to catch and by 1768 it was extinct.

The final one is the Stephens Island Wren (Xenicus lyalli). It was a small flightless wren native to Stephens Island, a small uninhabited island off New Zealand's South Island. A lighthouse was built on the island in 1894 and the entire species was supposedly wiped out by the lighthouse keeper's cat named Tibbles in that same year.

Jack-o-Lanternfish

2007-10-11T08:01:00.000-07:00

Since pumpkins rot so fast after you carve them in Southern California I usually wait until just before Halloween before I carve them. This year Nate and I are going to be in Uruguay over Halloween but I didn't want that to stop me from carving a pumpkin. I decided I should carve it early so that I could throw it away before we left and not feel bad about waisting it.

I was trying to think of something interesting to carve. As to be expected I wanted it to be some kind of animal or plant. I was trying to think of round sea creatures but the only thing I could think of was a sea urchin test and I wasn't too sure that would be recognisable. I decided to instead play up the lantern part of the jack-o-lantern and carved a lantern fish (or angler fish). It is kind of like the scene in Finding Nemo. Just part of the fish is illuminated by it's lure and the little fish are transfixed by the light.

Chickadee Purse and Matching Skirt

2007-10-10T08:13:00.000-07:00

These two projects I think may be some of my favorite that I have ever made. Sewing is still really frustrating sometimes and I still pull out a lot of stitches because I sew things backwards or other dumb things but I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I can imagine something in my head and translate it to fabric pretty faithfully.

I had been looking at the bags on homegrown skinny's etsy page thinking about buying one when I decided that I should just try to make a similar bag myself. I think that is a problem with selling handcrafted stuff at either crafts shows or online. A lot of the people who look at your work and really like it are far more likely to get inspiration from it or outright copy it than to buy it. If I want people to buy things from my etsy shop I should really start patronizing other peoples more often.

Anyway, I had last Friday off work so I made this bag. I actually started the embroidery earlier but I finished the rest all that day.

The main fabric and the wool that the bird is embroidered on came from a church thrift store in Glendale. The trees are fabric I bought from superbuzzy a long time ago and for some reason hadn't used yet and the birds are of course from Marukai 98 cents. Oh, the hedgehogs are also from superbuzzy. I made the bias tape from canvas I got in the "as is" section at Ikea. It was the first time I made my own bias tape from something other than ribbon. It worked out pretty well.

So I also had Monday off because it was Columbus day. I had a pretty unexciting four day weekend. On Monday I made this skirt from corduroy I got at the same church thrift store and more of the superbuzzy tree fabric. I absolutely love how it turned out. It seems very fally to me. Actually perfect for fall in LA that isn't actually much cooler than the summer.

Sorry the pictures aren't better. I tried to take pictures of myself with the timer because I don't think Nate will come home from work before dark ever and I didn't want to wait until the weekend.

This was my first attempt at doing French seams. I wanted to avoid all the strings that come with raw edges. It sort of worked. I didn't attempt it with the zipper. I didn't want to do anything that might hinder the zipper's ability to zip. I keep using these cheep Marukai 98 cent store zippers that keep breaking and pissing me off. That is one thing that that store isn't so good for.

Repotting Cacti

2007-10-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

I've been replanting lots of my cacti and succulents in cute super cheep pots that I got from the Marukai 98cent store. I swear 90% or maybe 98% or the non food purchases I make come from that store. They all cost about $1.50. Compared to nice glazed pots anywhere else that is really cheep.

This one is a cactus I bought at the California Cactus Center. I couldn't remember what it's called but Kristin our botanist at work just looked it up. It is a pink lace cactus (Echinocereus sp.). I love the pink spines that are arranged kind of like eye lashes.

Here are some litops that I got at a cactus and succulent show in Golden Gate Park when Nate and I went to San Francisco.

These were cheep cacti that Nate bought at Ikea a long time ago and had in his room in his old house and never repotted. For some reason they weren't planted in soil. Instead the pots were filled with this weird hard white stuff. I don't know how the plant's survived it that. The roots couldn't grow out into it.

Here they are all replanted in one of the Marukai pots. Don't they look so much more happy.

These are some of my old cacti from Ikea. The other weekend when it was pouring down rain I decided that Nate and I needed to go to the beach in Palos Verdes to get cool flat rocks for my plant pots. By the time we got there it had stopped raining and was gorgeous out. I probably shouldn't have made Nate hike up and down a really steep hill since it was Yom Kippur and Nate was fasting and couldn't drink any water. He was fine though.

Quilt Blocks

2007-09-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I finally bought myself a rotary fabric cutter. I had been cutting things so crookedly with my scissors for so long that I decided it was time to get a rotary cutter. When I bought it at the fabric store the girl at the counter asked me if I was making a quilt. I said, no, I'm just going to be making random patchwork things. She said that I should because it's really addictive. Making a quilt just seems like it would take way too long and that I would get bored with it long before I got anywheres near to making something that could cover a bed.

When I got home I took out my bag of little fabric scraps and started finding patterns that went well together. Amazingly I had all these fabrics that went so well together. It didn't take terribly long to piece together this little square. I was so proud of myself and really wanted to make another one for some reason.

I made this blue one the next day. It doesn't go with the red and green one at all but I have way more blue fabric scraps than red/green/yellow ones.

Then I made this other mushroomy red/green one. It really is strangely addictive. I have no idea what I'm going to do with these. I know that however fun it has been to make a couple of squares there is no way I can continue to be entertained by making more than 70 of them. I'll probably make 6 of them and make a pillow cover or something. I need to find other good uses for quilt squares. A lot of people make really cute doll quilts that are of a manageable size but I don't see any use for that. Anyway. This may be the beginning of a fun new project.

Ikea Animal Print

2007-09-27T08:22:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago my car decided to overheat on the freeway on the way home from work. While I was waiting for it to get checked out at Pep Boys I walked across the street to entertain myself at Ikea. Ikea has some pretty cool fabrics. I've looked at them a bunch of times but never bought any there partially because there is never a person manning the cutting table and partially because they are mostly decorating fabrics that are pretty expensive. That day they had all these children's fabrics that they were selling whole bolts of for only $6. Well there were smaller than a normal bolt but it was still a really good deal.

I got this fabric because it was very colorful and cute and had lots of different animals on it. I'm a sucker for animal prints. Of course when I brought it home Nate immediately said that he didn't like it because it was too kiddie and that I should definitely not make a dress out of it. I agreed that it might be a little overwhelming for a dress so I made this skirt instead.

I'm not sure where I will wear it but I like it a lot. I posted it on craftster a couple of days ago and I think I got the most responses I've ever gotten for a post. I even made it into the hot new topics.

Finished Fish Print

2007-09-24T16:21:00.000-07:00

It sort of worked to watercolor over the fish print even though it was water based block printing ink and not oil based. I tried to paint in between the lines and didn't use too much water which kind of prevented the black from smearing. If I print more of these I will definitely buy some oil based ink first. I started painting another one of these with just two colors of fish but I think I like this one better.

I was also thinking that I might attempt to carve two additional blocks, one for the fishes and one for the background and block print them instead of filling in the fish with water colors. It would end up looking kind of like my tidepool print that I screen printed in my screen printing class I took at Angel's Gate last year. Actually I could do a reduction where I printed a solid background in a light color first and then carve out all the negative space and print the fish in a darker color and then use this block to print the details of the fish in black.

Fish Print

2007-09-19T07:19:00.000-07:00

I feel like I've been working on this project forever. I guess it was just since last week but I'm still not done yet. I wanted to show pictures of the process though, I think it's kind of interesting.

It is a relief print of a menagerie of fish that I'm going to print in black and then color in with watercolors.

I started with this drawing. I think I found pictures of all these fish in my Coastal Fishes of California field guide but I drew them all freehand. At some point I'll make a diagram with the names of all the fish on it but right now I really can't remember what most of the fish are.

Then I transferred the fish onto a piece of linoleum with carbon paper and carved them out. This is what took a really really long time. I've been sitting in front of the TV after work every evening working on this and making a complete mess of my living room. It is best not to be watching anything you are really interested in because it's pretty dangerous. I ended up stabbing myself in the tip of my finger pretty bad when Nate and I were catching up on last season's Heroes. It's pretty much healed now but I'll probably have a scar on my finger for a while.

This is a picture of it all carved out and inked and ready to be printed. At some point, I think before I moved, I had bought oil based black relief printing ink for the purpose of doing projects like this where the outlines are in black and the images are filled in with watercolors. Using oil based ink makes sure that there is no chance that the black image will get smugged when I use the watercolors on top. Of course yesterday searched all over my house and couldn't find that ink so I just printed it with water based ink. It probably won't turn out but I can always print more with the correct ink later.

I printed the fish on watercolor paper which wasn't quite as big as it should have been. I think if I go buy more ink at the art supply store I'll get some nice big sheets of printmaking paper too. I used my barren which is this big round circle with a handle that you press the paper onto the linoleum block with. This takes a lot of arm strength so my right arm is kind of sore today. I kept pressing until I could see the image of the fish embossed in the back of the paper.

One problem with using the barren instead of a printing press is that while pressing the paper down sometimes it shifts and you get a double image like this one. It kind of makes me dizzy.

This is one of the better prints. I think it turned out pretty well. Maybe tonight I'll attempt to do the watercolors. I'll probably test it out on one of the not so good copies and I'll post pictures if it turns out ok.

Fish Scale Dress

2007-09-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

I made another dress. It's kind of amazing how not all that terribly difficult it is getting now. Again I didn't use a pattern. Just kind of winged it. Mainly using the same design as the last dress but with a few adjustments. Nate doesn't like it. He claims he doesn't like the colors, that it reminds him of Belle from Beauty and the Beast (which doesn't make sense at all, I swear her dress was yellow) but I think it's really because it's not as tight as the blowfish dress was. It is way more comfortable though.

I'm really bad at modeling the clothes that I make so sorry about the boring poses.

Blowfish Dress

2007-09-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here is my finally completed blowfish dress. It is the first dress that I have sewn and finished into completely wearable form. I didn't use a pattern at all because I'm still scared of and confused by patterns. The skirt is made from the same muslin as the tote bag in my previous post but printed with blowfish and grunions instead of just blowfish. The top is part is made from Japanese star patterned fabric pieces from the Marukai 98 cent store and the waist band is just blue broadcloth.

Since I didn't use a pattern I had a hard time getting it to fit properly. It is still a little tight in the chest. I might still adjust it a little bit to make it looser.

The hardest part was sewing the zipper in with out having it show too much. I had a different zipper at first that was kind of light blue but it showed really badly. When I tried to get it not to show I somehow got it stuck and ended up breaking the zipper trying to get it up. It took forever to rip out the old zipper but I managed to get this dark blue one in without it showing too much. Still not perfect, especially at the bottom, but much better.

Blowfish Tote Bag

2007-08-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

I got tons of this really cheep unbleached muslin from the discount fabric store (M&L) in Anaheim. It makes really good plain fabric for screen printing. I've started printing repeating designs on this fabric and then sewing it into other things.

Here is the beginning of blowfish fabric. I printed it in a checkerboard pattern so I wouldn't smudge the design.

Here is the finished fabric with lighter and darker blue blowfish.

And the finished bag. I just copied the size and design of a Trader Joe's bag to make a tote bag. I also made this really cool dress with blowfish/grunion fabric for the skirt but I somehow managed to break the zipper before I could get pictures of it. Once I buy and new zipper and put it in I'll make Nate take pictures of me in it and post them.

Plant Cans

2007-07-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

So as I mentioned in my last post Nate and I have this giant outdoor patio space at our new apartment. Most of the apartments I have lived in in the past have had just a small balcony that barely had enough space for my potted plants or no outdoor space at all. The new place has very little actual dirt that I could plant things in but lots of space for pots. So I'm kind of going overboard with potting up cuttings from friends plants or pieces I've pinched off succulents as I walk around the neighborhood. The only problem is what to plant all these things in. I'm trying to get away from having so many ugly plastic pots but terracotta pots are spendy and kind of boring.

A few months ago I went to this store called pot-ted in Attwater village right next to India Sweets and Spices. Pot-ted is a very expensive exterior decorating store. It has lots of really cute succulents and cacti in really interesting containers that they charge ridiculous amounts of money for. They were using all sorts of old found objects at plant pots: tea cups, bowls, ceramic elephants. The only problem with these things is getting a drainage hole drilled in the bottom without cracking the thing. Too scary for me. The items that seemed most promising as future plant pots were the metal containers. They had all these antique coffee cans, cookie tins and even a metal crayola crayon box. These you could easily just pound a few holes in with a nail for drainage.

A few weeks later as I was walking around a Chinese grocery store I was noticing all the cool looking cans of vegetables, seafood and meat that had the labels just printed directly onto the can instead of a glued on paper label. It took me lot of searching but I finally found a giant can of Australian corned beef that had an interesting label and would be large enough for this cactus that I bought when I was in San Francisco and happened to stumble across the Botanical Gardens cactus and succulent show.

Nate and I have been eating a lot of sweet potato/corn beef hash lately and I think I'm still going to have to throw out most of the corn beef. It would have been better to use left over cans of things that I would eat anyway but I'm not normally a huge fan of canned meats.

I ended up buying this can of Korean salmon for this project as well as a can of Japanese crab meat. I didn't realized how many bones they put in canned salmon. It's kind of gross. I planted this succulents that I got from one of my coworkers in it. hopefully it will grow and end up filling the can. I still haven't come up with a way to use the crab meat yet but it has a very cute can that I'm sure one of my plants would be very happy in it.

Oh, here is a picture of the drainage holes that I hammered into the can. It seems to work pretty well.

Pillow Covers Finally

2007-07-20T07:23:00.000-07:00

Nate and my new apartment is pretty tiny at least on the inside. But we have a huge patio with really nice landscaping that our landlord put in. We pretty much turned the patio into an outdoor living room that makes our apartment seem much larger. For an outdoor couch we bought a outdoor lounge chair from ikea an pushed it up against the wall with some giant throw pillows Nate already had, which of course were also from ikea, to make a makeshift couch.

It was pretty comfortable and looked pretty good except the pillows were getting kind of filthy from being outside all the time. Nate kept bugging me to make pillow cases so that we could take them off and wash them when they got dirty. This was odd since he rarely encourages me to take on large sewing projects that will mean scraps of fabric all over the floor and pins potentially lost in the carpet for him to step on.

Anyway, here is the finished product. Patchwork, screen printed and embroidered pillow cases.

And close ups of each one.

I like the gnome one, but it doesn't really match the others. I may end up making a different pillow case for that pillow and keep the gnome one as an extra.

Flock of Flamingos

2007-07-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

I finally got my pictures of the flamingo mobile I made for the craftster.org "found item mobile/windchime swap." I spent a good amount of time working on this mobile. I really like making them but it gets kind of tedious cutting out the birds with an exacto knife. Having to do that with the swap deadline looming made me not enjoy making this mobile as much as a should have. Despite that I really like how it ended up turning out.

As usual photos of my mobiles never really do them justice. It's so hard to get all three birds in the same frame. Here are a few attempts.

Tenugui

2007-06-26T16:25:00.000-07:00

I have gotten really obsessed with tenugui lately. Tenugui are Japanese cotton hand towels that are typically 35 by 90 cm and often printed with really cute interesting patterns. I became obsessed with them by shopping at the Marukai 98 cent store where they sell some cheep (made in China instead of Japan) but still cute tenugui. Here are some dish towels that I made by piecing together different tenugui that I got at Marukai 98 cents.

But then I found this book at a Japanese book store in Torrance and became really obsessed with the patterns on the tenugui that mostly can only be found in Japan.

It's just ridiculous how cute some of the patterns are. Anything from fruits and vegetables, to any kind of animal, to weird stuff like test tubes and beakers. There is one place that I have found in LA though that sells the really nice tenugui, tortoise in Venice. The only problem is they are $12 a piece. I'm starting to think they might be worth it. Check out this owl one they sell there.

I've made a good number of random things with the Marukai tenugui. Like this bag.

And my favorite this apron.

I just realized that I posted pictures of this apron in two blog entries in a row. I just really really like how it turned out.

Owl Swap

2007-06-21T16:19:00.000-07:00

I keep doing these craftster.org swaps. They are strangely addicting. It is so hard to pass them up when the theme is some sort of cute animal. Anyway these are the things that I made for the owl swap that just got over.

First is a dish towel with my happy owls printed on it.

Then a wristlet made from really cute Japanese owl fabric that I got at this tiny Japanese fabric store in Gardena called Towa Fabrics. I also embroidered little owls in the corner.

This is a stuffie/pincushion that my swap partner has since named owlfred and decided that no pins are allowed to pierce his flesh

This is my absolute favorite. For some reason it took a really long time to get partners matched up for this swap so I got really antsy waiting to start crafting. I had just done the last apron swap so I was kind of in an aprony mood and decided to make an apron using the owl tea towel fabric from Marukai 98cents, my vintage mushroom ribbon from Idaho and plain broadcloth printed with the happy little owls. I made it and loved it so much I decided I couldn't give it away so I made this one, with green fabric instead of yellow, for the swap.

The next swap I'm doing is a mobile/windchime swap of which I will definitely have to post pictures of the finished product. After that I am swearing off swaps for a bit. I'm going to try to concentrate on making stuff for my etsy shop.

Mother's Day Present

2007-05-01T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I never gave my mom a link to my blog so I think it's ok to post pictures of one of her presents before mother's day.

My boyfriend and I have finally unpacked everything and I've set up my crafting stuff in our new apartment (I actually organized my fabrics in kind of an interesting way that I may post pictures of later). So I decided it was time to start crafting again. I finished this bag last night that I had actually been working on for a few days.

I printed the whales on the outside fabric that was used for both the front and the back. Somehow in the process of sewing up the bag the whales got kind of off center but I don't think it's that noticeable. I might be more careful about their placement if I made another of these bags.

I really like the way the lime green zipper looks on it. At first I had been looking for a dark blue zipper that I swear I had but couldn't find but used this one instead.

Aprons

2007-04-25T12:18:00.000-07:00

I have been strangely uncrafty lately. I guess it is because I just moved. Before I moved I packed up my craft stuff pretty early and I still haven't completely unpacked it in my new place. The last two things that I made before I moved were both aprons. Aprons are kind of weird. Most of the aprons that people make are really cute detailed things that you wouldn't want to get dirty but the reason you would wear an apron is to protect your clothes underneath from getting dirty. Also people make really cute aprons that you would want to wear and show off but I still feel weird about wearing an apron outside walking around.

Anyway the first apron I made was for my friend's wedding shower. I decided that since she is getting married she needed a cute housewifey apron. This is the only picture I have of it which is from the shower when she is wearing all sorts of other things people made for her. (I edited the post to include a better picture) The fabric is japanese fabric from superbuzzy.com that has clovers and ladybugs (her favorite) and the tie is the strawberry ribbon I got in Idaho last summer at a thrift store. I embroidered "Mrs. Morishita" on the pocket so it would seem even more housewifey.

The second one was for a craftster.org apron swap. I figured that since I had made that one apron that this would be an easy swap. You were supposed to just make one apron and not send anything else. It seemed so simple. I made a pretty simple apron but it was a lot more difficult than I though it would be. My swap partner, kaiser sissorhands, wanted a full apron with tons of pockets. That wasn't too difficult but for some reason I decided I wanted to use bias tape. That was way harder than I though it would be. By the time I finished the apron I realized that I had been sewing on the bias tape all wrong. I was supposed to unfold it and sew it on the back side first then fold it over and sew it on the front side. I had been trying to pin it on the edge of the fabric and sew both sides at once, folded over. It ended up turning out pretty ok anyway.

After I figured out the bias tape I decided I wanted to add bias tape to my friends wedding shower apron and unsewed her's and redid the whole thing. It was much easier doing it the proper way and it made her apron much cuter. I don't have any before pictures but trust me.

So I think I'm going to start using aprons both when cooking and when crafting. I got a cute one in the apron swap but I think I need to make another one for myself. Maybe I'll even be daring enough to wear an apron outside of the house.

Screen Printed T-Shrits

2007-03-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

I'd been getting a decent amount of requests from people for American Apparel screen printed t-shirts or sweatshirts. I really like American Apparel shirts and they are great for screen printing, the only problem is that they are ridiculously expensive retail. At one time I had attempted to get a wholesale account from them which reduces the price of women's t-shirts from $16 to about $6. But I guess since I live in California and they are also in California I would need a California resale licence which costs like $500 a year or something. Since that wasn't really an option I had been going out to the local stores each time to find very specific things that people requested and having to charge people a ton just so I could make a tiny bit of profit.

The other way to get American Apparel stuff cheep is to drive up to the Camarillo outlet mall which is almost all the way to Oxnard. I used to go up there regularly when I had a different job that sent me to Pt. Huneme about once every couple of weeks. It was just a few miles from the outlet mall and I would just take my lunch there. The Amreican Apparel outlet has tons of shirts and sweatshirts, most for just a little bit above wholesale prices. It's kind of hit or miss though. It's hard to go there looking for a specific thing. They do usually have a bunch of basic women's t-shirts in a variety of colors and sizes. I drove up there on my day off last Friday and bought 10 women's shirts for about $75. Pretty good.

Here are a couple that I screen printed already and posted on etsy.com.

They both look about the same color in the pictures but the whales are really printed in dark blue on a really light blue shirt and the moa is printed in dark grey on a really light grey shirt. I have a bunch of cool brightly colored shirts too but I kind of want to see what designs might be popular before I print a bunch of stuff.

Oh yeah the moa is an extinct flightless bird that got up to 12 feet tall from New Zealand. I'm making a series of extinct flightless birds. I made a dodo screen print earlier and then this one and next I think I'll make a great auk.

Wristlet from the cutest elephant fabric ever (and other bags I've made recently)

2007-03-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

So again I have been slacking at posting pictures of what I have been making on here. This first bag is made from ridiculously cute fabric from superbuzzy.com. I really can't resist their fabrics. Even though they are more expensive than I would like they are always just so cute. They also have a lot of kind of medium weight prints that are really good for making bags.

This is the same clutch I've been making a bunch of. It's addapted from a tutorial by stacysaurus on craftster.org. Of course I never really read tutorials I just kind of look at bags and try to figure out how they are constructed. So my version isn't quite as nice and formal looking as her's but I like it anyway. You can actually carry a lot in these bags. I was carrying the hedgehog one all this weekend and managed to fit my overstuffed wallet, phone, sunglasses and tons of keys in it just fine.

This is the button/snap closure. This button was the extra button from a sweater I got at Anthropology. I think the fact that the sweater came with an extra one of these buttons really influenced me a little more than it should have to buy it. It's ok, it was on sale. The button kind of matches the lining fabric too which is yellow.

Here is a close up of the fabric. Don't they just look so happy.

Finally the actual purse. I always forget that the pictures on blogger load backwards so these are kind of out of order.

I bought the fabric at this purse at the Cotton Shop in Redondo Beach for I think only two or three dollars a yard. It was on sale because their stuff normally is pretty expensive. Anyway, I was going to make a circle skirt out of it. The last time I made a circle skirt I used some random tutorial I found on the web because craftster was down but this time used the circle skirt tutorial on craftster.org. Either that tutorial is written wrong or I am very bad a reading directions (it's probably the later) because I ended up making the waist twice as big as it should be. When you make a circle skirt you cut a hole in the center of the fabric that should have the radius of your waist. Instead I cut a hole that had the radius of twice my waist. I think I forgot to divide by two somewhere.
So I kind of fixed the skirt with a ton of pleats but I was left with this giant circle of scrap fabric. I decided to cut the circle in half and pleat it and it ended up looking kind of like a hobo bag.

Here is a close up of the fabrics. Little plum blossoms.

And the button sewn over the snap closure. This one was really cool. A giant oversized shell button from my grandma's button box.

Ever since I bought my sewing machine I've been afraid of zippers. I guess it's because one of my good friends who is a really great sewer and has been sewing forever hates putting in zippers and the fact that the sewing machine comes with a separate "zipper foot." It just sounds intimidating. I had bought all these really cheep crazy colored zippers at the Marukai 98cent store though and wanted to use them. I decided to try it with some random scrap fabric and it really wasn't so bad. I didn't even use the zipper foot. I can see how it might be helpful though because the sewing machine foot didn't want to get a close to the zipper as I would have liked.

This is what I made with random bits of scrap fabric (polka dots, owls and kittys). It makes a good pencil case. The zipper is a little bit wonky but it was my first zipper.

Here are the kittys on the inside.

The other thing I had been meaning to try was machine applique. I used to hand sew a lot of little pouches out of felt with felt animals sewn on. It was easy since felt doesn't unravel I didn't need to quilt it or anything. I could just hand sew them on. My mom had suggested machine applique to me because she had done a ton of it when I was little to make me this fabric baby book that taught you how to button and zip and lace things. For this whale I ironed fusible interfacing onto the blue fabric and cut out the shape of the whale. Then I pinned it down and zigzaged around the outside. I probably should have chosen an easier shape like say a circle for my first machine applique but it turned out pretty well. Then I hand embroidered the mouth, eye and little spout that you can't really see.

I thought the japanese fabric looked kind of like waves.

This zipper turned out better than the first one. I'm kind of getting the hang of it.

Here is the whole pouch. It's kind of an odd shape but it turned out pretty cute.

Moth and Stars Bag

2007-03-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything that I've made in a while but I've still been making stuff constantly. I made this bag last night. It's the first time that I made a bag pleated that wasn't a wristlet. I think it turned out pretty good.

I decided that by making my screen prints into pockets in contrasting colors I could use patterned fabric for the outside of the bag not just the inside. It makes it more interesting looking I think than just having a solid fabric with one screen print in the corner for the whole outside of the bag.

I don't know what else to say about it. I really love this traditional Japanese star patterned fabric. I was walking around my apartment last night holding it up in the mirror trying to think of something to do with it. I think I might make some sort of clothing item for myself with the rest of it. It's just such a pretty indigo color.