First Celebrity Client

I have my first celebrity client. Mindy Kaling who is a writer on the tv show The Office and also plays Kelly on the show bought one of my sweatshirts. My boyfriend works on the show so it's not like random famous people are approaching me wanting my stuff. I've actually sold stuff to other writers and production people on the show before too. My boyfriend is a very good model and sales person for the things I make since I give him way too many presents of things that I have crafted. It's possible that almost 50% of his t-shirts are ones that I printed for him.

Fish Purse

This whole new sewing machine thing is really addictive. I made another purse last night. I think I'm getting the hand of making bags finally after a couple ones that didn't turn out so great. I love this one. I'm way too proud of myself. The outside fabric is from a handkerchief that I got at the Marukai 98 cent store. They have a lot of towels and handkerchiefs made of really cute Japanese fabric. I have two more pieces of this fish fabric so I think I might make one for my etsy site. I want to save this one for me though.

Crow Wristlet

This is a wristlet bag that I sewed for myself yesterday using my fancy new sewing machine. I cut out the fabric and then screen printed the crow on the fabric then sewed the bag together. The polka dot fabric for the lining and the wrist strap are left over from my dinosaur hoodie halloween costume. Silly me sewed that entire thing by hand. It would be so much easier now with the sewing machine.

Salvation Army Pillowcase Circle Skirt

I decided it was finally time to buy a sewing machine. Of course I've had a actually two sewing machines for some time now. One was my grandma's but it broke when I was shipping it down to California and the other one is this really old singer sewing machine table that one of my friends wasn't using and gave me when she moved. That one didn't have an instruction manual so I was afraid of trying to figure out how to thread it. It makes a good table though. This is the first thing that I made besides a headband and a belt which were pretty simple. It is a circle skirt made out of a old pillowcase that I bought at the salvation army. It was involved for a first real sewing project but it wasn't that hard. You don't even need a pattern. I found a tutorial on line. Basically you just cut a giant donut out of a square piece of fabric and then add a waist band and hem it and you are done. I didn't have a zipper and the zipper foot for my sewing machine is still a little too advanced for me so I just sewed in a few snaps.

Strawberry Headband

When I was stuck in Idaho for three weeks this past summer there was a thrift store next to my hotel. On a back shelf they had tons of giant spools of ribbon from the seventies. I bought this strawberry ribbon plus one with flowers and one with very seventies looking mushrooms. I hand sewed this headband the other day because I'm still afraid of my sewing machine. I need to find more things to do with the ribbon because I have tons of it. I think I'll make a belt at some point.

Crows and Tree Hoodie

This is a hoodie that I made for the amazing hoodie swap on craftster. Its made using the same screens as the t-shirt with the crows and tree.

I also made another one for my boyfriend for Christmas but on a green sweatshirt instead of a brown one. I forgot to take any pictures of it before I gave it to him but here is an action shot.

Tidepool Screen Print

This is the last print I made in my screen printing class that just got over Tuesday night. It is a three color print using screen filler for the grey and red layers and photo emulsion for the black line drawing on top. The drawing I did was inspired by this painting that I saw a couple of years ago at an art gallery in Cannon Beach, OR. It was of tons of sea creatures all crammed together taking up every inch of the canvas with out overlapping each other. I loved it but it cost $300 which at the time seamed ridiculous. Of course now if I could find that painting or a similar one by that artist I'm sure I would pay more than that. If I had had more time I wanted to make the animals lots of different colors but I think the red works pretty well for most of them. I might make a relief print at some point of this drawing or draw a simpler one and then water color in the animals.

This is just the photo emulsion screen printed by its self. It's amazing how much it looks like the original line drawing.