Being Original is Tough

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.

St. Patrick's Day Garland

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.

Still Life

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.