Art Supply Warehouse

I just got home from Art Supply Warehouse. ASW has a new line of wonderful beads to drool over and I couldn't resist getting some. The store is in Westminster CA. They've got a fun new billboard up and they've rearranged their store layout. My daughter and I ooohed and ahhhed around every bend.

Always on top of the trends, ASW has the latest tools for encaustic (wax) art, and a Strathmore sponsored Artist Trading Card (ATC)promotion going on. Their bookbinding section is well stocked. And they carry silkscreening and eraser stamp/linoleum block printing supplies. They also have a lot of DIY stuff.

So now my mind if full of even more creative ideas. Sometimes I feel like my head is going to explode.

Knit and Crochet

Even though I'm traveling, I'm still working on crafts. The crochet hat I was making my grandson was way too small so I started knitting a pumpkin hat instead. Knitting is so stretchy it should fit him for a long time.

The Beverly's remodeled and opened their upstairs again, so I went up there and found some great yarn for $1. a skein, as well as some colored wire and wooden beads for .25 a package. So once again, I'm going home with more stuff than I brought.

I also started a new wire basket while sitting in the garden area of Linnea's cafe yesterday. When I could sit still no longer, I went to watch The Secret Life of Bees at the movies. Good well done film but depressing, so take a box of tissues.

Well dinner is almost ready. We are having tri-tip, saffron rice and broccoli. Catch you all when I get back to Anaheim.

Little Red Hat

Well I made my train/bus trip from Anaheim to San Luis Obispo today and I'm none the worse for wear. There is always some character or another on the trip and today's prize had to go to a woman that was a compulsive hair twirler. She twirled her hair around her finger so many times, put it in and out of a pony tail over and over again, that I was beginning to wonder how she had any hair left to twirl. If she used that energy for knitting she'd have 100 sweaters by now.

I wrote a song on the bus (the lyrics) and I started crocheting a red hat for my new grandson. I just hope I made it the right size. I'll find out when I meet him tomorrow.

choker and basket

Yesterday at the archery workshop I worked on my wire basket. Wirework is hard on the hands but I got a good bit done before my hands conked out.
I also worked on my crochet choker and got a flower added to the band.

Create a Day Blog

There is a collaborative blog that I've spent a lot of time posting to called Create A Day. Like many, I've added so many posts and photos and videos there, and imagine my surprise when today the blog was just gone. I hope it's only temporary. Even if fewer and fewer people were participating, it still had a lot of useful information and well, heck, my friends were on there, and I don't know how to reach them now. Hmmm, you'd think they'd at least have sent out a group email saying 'I'm deleting the blog so if you want to stay in touch here's how. Or given someone else a chance to take over the management. Maybe it's a glitch and it will show up on my list again tomorrow.

Wreath and Gourd

Today was a busy day. I got the banner painted for the wreath. Acrylics worked just fine on the polyester ribbon as long as I kept the brush free of excess water.

Since I had black, white, and gold paint left over on the pallette, I painted a gourd mask with a skull for Day of the Dead. The two projects in juxtaposition was a little unnerving. The dark side of death and losing a loved one and the bright side with the way we laugh at death as having no power over us. I can't quite wrap my mind around that but anyway. That's what art does...helps us sort out our feelings and emotions.

Sympathy Wreath

I'm working on a sympathy wreath. I'm going to do everything but add the fresh flowers. I'll try to add those early Monday morning. I wish I'd thought to get some peacock feathers, because the funeral is in Arcadia, and they are big on peacocks there. I still have the weekend to pick up some of those. I still have to paint the banner, but for right now I'm resting my eyes. Tomorrow is another day.
The angel is removeable and will be for a keepsake for the family.

Driftwood

I sanded my favorite piece of driftwood. I always thought it looked rather like a horsehead, and here is what it looks like so far. But I can't quite decide what to do next.

New Logo

I spent many hours pondering what kind of logo I wanted and finally I got it finished tonight (I think). Going from a pencil sketch in my notebook to making it work with a computer graphics program proved to be challenging and I'm a little crosseyed but here it is.

Logo copyright Fayme Harper 2008

Make a witch costume

How to make your own fantastic witch costume and hat from Threadbangers. This is a labor intensive project, so plan ahead. But it's worth it just for the hat.

Welcome to my new followers and autumn crafting tips

Always happy to see that people are coming to my blog more than once.

I think autumn is such a great time for crafting. Time to gather all those botanicals before they are covered by snow. Time to pick up and press autumn leaves and flowers to enjoy later in the winter months. Perfect time to make things for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Day of the Dead, and Christmas. Plus all those birthday cards. I need to make an inventory of birthday cards so they are ready to go. How many of you do that? Or do you find yourself constantly running to the store at the last minute. I find the trickiest part about cards is often the envelopes. So get the envelope first and design the card to fit inside. Or make your own envelope. Carefully take apart any existing envelope and use it as a pattern template. Find some big paper to trace it out on, or piece together glossy magazine pages until you get a piece big enough. Use brown paper, or heavy duty giftwrap. If money is an issue, check postal rates and sizes of envelopes first. They are a lot pickier than they used to be and have minimum sizes and so forth.
I imagine in this day and age most post offices have a website with that info on it if you poke around and look for it.

Don't forget to make Christmas projects like soap or glued items or paintings way ahead of time so they can cure properly.
The photo is my friend Aimee doing beadwork at one of our archery gatherings.

Patchwork

I worked on the strip quilt tonight. Soon I will have to lay it out on a cutting table and make sure I'm going in the right direction. I was just getting in the flow of it when my bobbin thread ran out. So I redid the bobbin, and somehow screwed up the threading and broke the thread 3 times. By the time I got that squared away my boyfriend was home with the groceries, so no more sewing tonight. At least I made some progress.

Inspiring articles for starving souls

Today I was posting an article on Hubpages about doing original art, and as I was posting it on DIGG, other similar articles popped up. And by sheer dumb luck I happened upon another Hubpage writer that writes all about pyrography and driftwood and doing art on the cheap by repurposing every day finds and beachcombing gleanings.
She does pyrography, which is also something I want to do more of.

So here is a link to my article as well as some of hers. So if you need some inspiration hop on over.

Creating a Lasting Message Through Artwork

http://hubpages.com/hub/Pyrography-and-Acrylic-on-Wooden-Shingles-Make-Holiday-Decorations-For-Fun-and-Profit

http://hubpages.com/hub/Woodburning--A-Handcrafted-Gift--

http://hubpages.com/hub/Woodburning-on-Plywood-and-Flat-Board-Surfaces

http://hubpages.com/hub/adriftartstudiopyrography

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Create-Artwork-Using-Pyrography--Driftwood-and-Other-Mixed-Media-

Yay a three day weekend

Some of you lucky dogs have a 3 day weekend for Columbus Day. So you should be able to fit crafts in there somewhere. I normally decorate for Halloween but I'm going to be out of town this Halloween so I'm not in much of a decorating mood. I mean I can't leave it unattended outside for a week, right?

I have gourds galore that need to be crafted upon. I like to do woodburning on them (pyrography) but I also like to paint them or do sinew weaving on them. Or even beadwork. There are so many things you can do with gourds. I have a quiver I started out of a snake gourd and there it sits while I decide exactly what to do with it. I have a lot of projects like that in various stages of completetion. Crafts requires a lot of decision making doesn't it? Sometimes it helps to have a theme like Day of the Dead or Fall Harvest.

Time to grab some breakfast. Have a productive weekend everyone.

Knit and Crochet Tube Top

I knitted this tube top a while back. It's basically a rectangle with straps. The straps are crocheted, but of course you could knit them as well.

6,000

Whee, my blog just passed the 6,000 independent views mark. :Does little happy dance.::
Thanks everyone for dropping in.

Prayer Shawl Update

I buckled down today and got four more rows done on the prayer shawl. Four rows doesn't sound like much, but remember this is a shawl, so each row gets progressively wider. I had a moment of panic when I picked up the project after it sat for a week and a half and I couldn't make heads nor tails of the directions. But I slowly puzzled it out. There are really only four rows that you repeat over and over again. But as you add to both ends it can get confusing. So word of wisdom, don't let your project sit too long.

Second Life

By an interesting twist of events, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to make a grapic arts shop on Etsy, and in the same conversation he told me about an online game called Second Life. And unlike most games that someone else built and you have zero control over the way it runs, Second Life lets you build and write scripts and design worlds and create a fantasy persona of your own choosing. So while I have fun playing the game, I'm also learning about scripting and costuming and art and all kinds of wonderful things. My brain hasn't quit running on overdrive in a week. In a way it's like paper dolls for adults. And it does have a PG version and an adult version, so if you are going to play, shoo your kids out of the room first until you get your bearings.

Baroque

Today I'm making a freeform crocheted necklace (choker) with DMC Baroque 100% crochet cotton in an ecru color. I may try dyeing some of this thread because it only comes in that one color. Or for once in my life I can make something that's all one color.

Spontaneous Scrap Quilt

I've been staring and staring at a stack of fabric scraps someone gave me a few months ago. Then today I could stand it no longer so I grabbed the bundle, which was mostly in shades of blue and started randomly sewing the strips together. It was so nice to be spontaneous and just get busy with no preplanned end result in mind. It got so hot today that I was only able to sew about an hour, but here are some photos I took.