Scribble Nation

Regarding my Last Post

So, what do you guys think? Should I contact the Feminist swap mod and call this lady a flake? Or should I let sleeping dogs lie? I don't relish the idea of giving someone a hard time or making anyone look bad - BUT if she gets good feedback from the swap she can just tottle off and do it again to someone else - or worse, again to me! The first 4 people to comment with their advice will get a copy of the mix I sent her. :) SOMEONE should appreciate it. If you don't want the CD please leave a comment anyway! (I'll just pass it down to the next in line).

***UPDATE***(I forgot to mention that my partner for this swap wasn't one of the 16 year old swappers in my rant below. She was a grown lady somewhere around my age. Just realized I never pointed that out. I swear I'm not trying to bust on teeny crafters!)

S is for Swap!

And this rant is about swaps. :)

OK, so as you may or may not know, I've had some bad past swap luck. This bad luck has been pretty much continuing recently. I don't think that the particular folks I am implicating are going to read my blog, so I'm going to go ahead and rant. First of all, you remember the Fosters swap Coco I made? And the pin cushion and dog coat... Well, my partner sent without a DCN# and now the package has mysteriously vanished in transit. Yup - that's my luck! I spent hours and hours on that swap. But what can you do - art is about the process, right? Not the result.

Next was the feminist swap. This was really a challenge. I didn't have a whole lot of info on my partner. She didn't have a blog, her answers to the swap questionaire were very concise, and she wasn't very communicative. So I did the best I could to try and make things I thought she might, personally, enjoy. The requirement was pretty big - 1 large item, 1 medium sized item, and 2 small items. Here is what I made her:

For a small item I made her a two disc mix of female musicians. I also put it in this swanky, quilted CD case. She loves Leonard Cohen, Ani Difranco and the Indigo Girls so I made a nice chunky granola, hairy legged woman mix with plenty of Cohen covers. Vienna Teng, Brandi Carlisle, Tori and more!

The second small item was a set of note cards, monogrammed and fitted with feminist quotes:

For a medium item I made her this "stone cold fox". She has a little Venus symbol on her scarf and since my partner was into organic gardening, I glitzed the piece up with some vintage floral jewelry.

I was really stuck for the large item. I ended up using a piece of embroidery that I had made some time ago. I added a feminist quote, cut it out, made a handbag, and appliqued it to the bag.

Phew! I wonder what I'll get?

This arrived on Thursday. It is a small wooden box, painted gold. There are sticky rhinestones on the top. (half of which fell off on the way here since they aren't even glued down)

The inside has fuzzy leopard foam placed inside it as a lining (I say "placed" because this is not attached either) It was filled with tampons and a bar of lush soap.

I'm thinking that this might constitute a flake - don't you think? We were supposed to make four crafted items, not one. And to boot, she had my stuff for over a week without ever saying a word. I finally emailed her to ask her if everything had arrived. Then she said yes and thanked me, but still never posted on the boards or ever took a picture! WTF?

ANYWAY, I was beginning to think that my swapping days were over. Obviously I am swap cursed and should just get over that fact and stop doing these stupid things. I was almost at that point when I saw Mary Frances's package in my mailbox. During this swap I asked specifically to be set up with another adult. I felt kind of like a jerk doing that, but I figured it might up my chances of not getting swap-screwed. No offense to 16-year-old America intended, but I REMEMBER being 16 and let me tell ya, I was not reliable. I was also not the crafter I was at 16. My skills are much improved. I know there must be legions of 16 year old craft prodigies out there - I don't mean you guys! But the rest of your age group don't make great swap partners, sorry.

But back to the point! My swap partner for the pin cushion swap has totally redeemed swapping for me by sending me this AMAZING pin cushion. Mary (her name is Mary too) actually went to my blog, learned about me, wrote to me, and thought about me when she made this project!! AND the project she made is so skillfully crafted and so creative that I am just totally and completely blown away. I was kissing it in the car on the way to the Scissor Squad's annual yarn swap. I showed every girl there my lovey little octi. They all agreed he was the bee's knees!

The detail on this piece is awesome! Mary even made custom pins from shrinky dink - 4 little Beatles faces, a blue meanie, a yellow Beatles character and a pretty sparrow!

And check out the suction cups!

Thank you SO much Mary!! You made my day and made up for lots of bad swaps all at once! This little guy is so thoughtful and well made, I love love love him!!

R is for the Return of The Daughter of Rocket Babe

The Tea Towel Swap continues and I again, found myself stitching one of my pin ups! I think that this one translated a little better than Suzy Submarine did. What do you think? Am I getting any better? The eyes are still a bit out of control. Third times a charm, right?

Here she is in her original picture form:

Here she is in stitches:

Answering Questions

MaryEllen asked:
Since you made the lovely Art doll Button I need to ask an art doll question. Do you still make art dolls? Just making them in your head counts as sometimes, thats all I get to do.

My Answer: Ah, art dolls! There is something that could challenge my patience like nobody's business! They totally intrigue me, and I am dying to try again. My last attempts were a little lack-luster, which is why noone ever saw them on this blog. They actually ended up getting thrown out. :( So far, the only successful art dolls I have made have been needle felted. Here I have the lovely She-Yeti and the charming, Ice  Fairy.

I was really proud of the Ice Fairy since she was completely needle felted. My She Yeti is also cool, but she was felted to a pre-made muslin base. The base is actually exactly what stumps me. BUT with my sewing skills sharpening up I'm going to give it another go - soon!

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Sarah asked: Where did you get that doll head?  It's going to haunt my dreams.  It looks like it may be a good story.

My Answer: Well, Sarah, I picked up this charming lady at a local flea market called the Elephant's Trunk. It is a massive, weekly flea that is held in nearby New Milford, CT every Sunday through the summer and fall. If you are ever in the area on a Sunday morning you have to go! There are hundreds of vendors selling everything from antiques to Chinese surplus! It's amazing. You can see what else I got on my latest spree here.
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Fuzzy Turtle asked: Pirates or ninjas?

My answer: Why not both? Now THERE would be a blockbuster. Kung Fu of the Carribean.
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Alison asked: Money/time no object, what would your ultimate craft project be?

My Answer: Oh baby, I am SO prepared for this question. My ultimate craft project is something that I dream about every day. I would like to, one day, open a craft center that worked similarly to a gym. People could buy monthly memberships or day passes to come in and use the equipment in an open studio atmosphere! Pottery wheels, ceramic and glass kilns, sewing machines, surgers, and other awesome gear would be available to anyone! I would even like to incorporate some hardcore craftiness by having blowtorches and metal smithing equipment available to people (after prerequisite courses probably). We could have workshops and classes, like any craft center, but the focus would be on creating a place for people to come and be creative without being limited by what they can afford to buy and keep in their home. I would love for it to be a not for profit center so that every penny possible could go back into building it up. We could have a "school store" to purchase supplies and a boutique that crafters could consign their work in. AND bake sales, cook offs and a million other fun ways to raise moolah. <sigh> That's my day dream!

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So that's it for questions so far - go and check out these ladies' respective blogs for my questions to them!

Q is for Questions

Thought I was done with this alphabet nonsense, didn't you? No such luck. We still have 9 more letters to go after this!

Anyway, Q is for questions. Any and all questions. Relevant, irrelevant, cheeky, silly, serious or just plain sick. I'm an open door, and someone lost the key a while back. I'd like to invite any and all guests, lurkers or passers-by to ask me a question. I'll do my best to answer anything you come up with. PLUS - I'll go to your blog (if you have one) and ask you a question of my own. So come on! Let's play tag!

I Think I LIKE Getting Older

Looking back on my teenage years I remember how terrified I was of getting old. Not, geriatric old, that kind of appealed to me as a saucy adolescent. The idea of dying my hair blue, wearing psychadelic house coats and terrorizing children sounded great! It was really the middle that freaked me out. I imagined adulthood as a horrible void in which I was bound to lose my identity in a sea of minivans and paperwork. As many of you know, I lived my teenage years as if they were my last years left on earth. I wanted to make sure I got to live to the fullest before I was sentenced to the grim realities of adulthood.

Later on, when my parents moved to Florida and I was flung out into the world I made a lot of mistakes. I burned bridges, wasted opportunities and more or less freaked out a number of times. Somewhere along the way I stopped searching for my identity and for a while I was really lost in the shuffle of learning how to make a living while trying not to lose my life. (Not literally, of course.) My early twenties were a roller coaster of emotion, but I learned quite a lot about myself and about how transient everything in life can be. I learned that even the people you love the most can become strangers if you don't take the time to get to know who they've become. I learned that no amount of talent will ever get you anywhere without an equal amount of work. I learned that noone can take away you're ability to appreciate life but you. If you open your mind you can find beauty even in paperwork.

Most importantly, I learned patience. I've been working on some projects recently that really made me realize how patient I have become. I have always been the kind of crafter who needed instant gratification. If I couldn't finish a project in one sitting I would never EVER finish it. If I wasn't instantly good at something I would lose all inclination to learn. Basically, I was a spoiled rotten brat when it came to creativity. I would especially become daunted with projects that involved planning. I like to freestyle. I just didn't have the ability when I was younger to create patterns with paper before sewing them. That limited me to making projects that were inevitably lack luster. Now I am free to make anything because I am armed with the patience and confidence to methodically think through these challenges.

Now, I know I still have a long way to go on the road of perfect patience. For instance, I don't think I'm ready to come back to knitting. My attention span is still WAY to short for hundreds of rows of knitting and purling. I also need to get over my severe inability to follow patterns and directions. The good news is that I'm bound to improve!! The older I get, the more patient I am. By the time I become the aged old blue haired kook of the future I should just be a crafty zen master!

Fruits of my elderly patience

I joined a pin cushion swap on Craftster.org and this is what I made my partner. (who is also named Mary.) She received already so I think its safe to post on here. I've been joining a lot of swaps because I want to sharpen up my sewing skills. This cushion was the hardest pattern I could think up. I made 9 little banana shaped wedges and then sewed them together (like an orange). Then I made a small, stuffed sic and sewed it to the top. I glued on a vintage kitty figurine and embellished it with plastic flowers. THEN I glued vintage lucite flower beads to pin heads to make custom pins. Phew. I hope she likes it! (There is no way in HELL that teenage me could have made this thing.)

My Dad came to visit over the weekend. He had just come back from Tokyo. While he was there I asked him if he could bring me back some cool Japanese fabric. Apparently, there are no fabric shops in downtown Tokyo, so my dad and his co-worker, Kako, traveled all the way into the suburbs just to find me some swanky threads! And boy, did he deliver. I'll post some pictures of all the loot. In the meantime, check out the cool puffer fish I made from my favorite of the fabric he brought. (That's right, folks! I can sew in 3D now! Hooray for grown up patience!)

Lock up Yo' Sons!

 

  This Page is Rated

  NC-17

  scribblenation.typepad.com 

That's right, baby. This shit is uncut, uncensored, filth! The crafting is just an excuse for me to curse like a sailor and make crude innuendo's. Mmmm.... innuendo.
 

The Lazy Girls Guide to Refinishing a Freecycle Dresser

(-OR- "Spray Me Gently")

1. Respond to Freecycle listing promising two matching "antique" dressers. Oo la la! That's worth driving 30 miles for, right?
2. Drive 30 miles away and load two big old scratched up partially particle board "antique" dressers onto the big old busted truck and drive back home with severely irritated boyfriend.
3. Leave the dressers outside for a few days to "ripen" while you think of how on earth you'll cover up all of that sunburst veneer.
4. On the following Sunday buy lots and lots of spray paint. Don't forget the spray paint "primer". It may be useless but you'll have a lot more ammunition when you explain this to your severely irritated boyfriend later on.
5. Remove all of the drawers from the dressers. Well, MOST of the drawers. One or two are bound to be stuck and apparently unable to open at all. Aren't surprises super?
6. Take the drawers into the driveway and remove the hardware.
7. Remember you need new hardware! Get in the car to take a drive back to the local hardware store. Better get more spraypaint too.
8. Run over drawers with your car.

    

9. Also pick up Gorilla Glue at the hardware store.
10. Attempt to drag the dressers from the patio to the driveway. Give up pretty quickly and content yourself with dragging only the smaller dresser over. (The other one has a drawer that has been run over anyway. Who needs it?)
11. Try your hand at Gorilla Gluing the drawer you ran over back together again. Succeed only in gluing hands together and creating some kind of weird art sculpture that resembles a drawer. (Kind of.)
12. Stop for beer.
13. Now prime all of your drawers and the smaller dresser. If you're worried that this seems to be doing nothing, refer back to step 4. It's the thought that counts when it comes to spraypaint primer.
    

     

14. Spray paint two coats of white paint onto the dresser and drawers.
15. Run out spray paint and start cursing the freecycle reject for looking like a foggy day despite layer upon layer of paint.
16. Get over it. Screw on new hardware and wait for your severely irritated boyfriend to carry it into the house three days later.
17. Argue with severely irritated boyfriend about why you didn't just use regular paint which would have been a) cheaper b) better looking c) less painful.
18. Ice arms for the following three days to soothe the pain of holding down 6 cans of spray with one sad little finger.

    

The large dressers sans drawers. (Well, sans MOST drawers. See that little bastard in the bottom left corner? Ass cocker.)

Here are the drawers just before the "incident". Poor bastards. They don't even know what's coming.

Bad Jeep! Bad! How could you do that? Look at him. He knows what he did.

Gorilla glue to the rescue? I think not. Apparently you need to have some kind of rocket science degree to keep from sticking your hands together and ruining a drawer by opening the cap. I ought to write them a letter. Bastards!

And there she is! I wish I had taken a real "before" picture. I assure you, it was a lot uglier than what you see here. And YES, severely irritated boyfriend, it WOULD have looked nicer with real paint. But NO, I will not be painting it again. To tell you the truth, I don't care much for it. It's crappy. It doesn't actually smell, but I THINK it smells, which is just as bad. Not to mention that it is poorly made and poorly designed. (And poorly decorated.) The drawers don't glide as much as they grind.

Stupid freecycle.

The saddest part of this whole dresser debacle is that I've decided to keep the bedroom furniture wood and go with an "autumn forest" color scheme. This dumb thing won't even look good in there! (Not that it will really look GOOD anywhere.) I think we'll put it in Scott's room/the guest room. That can be blue & white. :)

Corn Dog

Hmm.. I was going to embed this awesome slideshow, but it's not working. You can still go and see it here though!

P is for Phone Books

An open letter to the phone book companies:

Dear Phone Book Giver-Outer,

Please stop leaving piles of phone books on my door step. It's not that I don't appreciate your generosity. I know it takes a lot of care and hard work to create the endless listings that compose a phone book. To repeat the process six more times just so that I could be sure of having at least one phone book for every room in the house? What thankless generosity!

But seriously, this has got to stop. To be honest, I don't really ever use phone books. If I need a phone number I just  Google the damned thing. Believe it or not, it's actually QUICKER than: locating which of the 6 books is most likely to have the correct information, figuring out which room that particular book is in (remember we are supposed to have one book for every room in the house), thumbing through the book looking for the applicable category, THEN sliding my finger down the neatly alphabetized list until I reach the actual number. I realize that there are plenty of people who prefer phone books or do not have online access. That's all well and good for them, but why not limit your phone book patrol to those residents? Or leave a pile at the grocery store for willing people to pick them up? Why leave piles of phone books on every porch in the world every single year only to have them all discarded one year later? (IF they make it that long?) It seems awfully wasteful to me.

Phone Book Giver-Outer, I'm beginning to think you have an ulterior motive. Could it be that you are wasting the trees, energy, space and time of the world only to make a quick buck on advertising? Now don't get me wrong. I'm all for quick bucks, money-making schemes, and good honest business, but consider this:

-On average, 1 ton of 100% virgin (non-recycled) newsprint uses 12 trees
-One phone book weighs about 5 pounds. I received 5 books this year, totaling 16 pounds of book.
-In my small town, the population in 2006 was: 26,985 - Lets assume that an average home has 3 people.
-That would give Newtown, CT about 8,995 homes.
-This would mean that 143, 920 pounds of phone books were delivered in one town alone, this year.
-That's almost 72 tons of paper equaling 864 trees.

The massive amount of resources that go into leaving PILES of phone books on EVERY porch in my small town alone is just ridiculous. Imagine these numbers on a city scale? And remember, this happens EVERY year. Seeing the giant dumpsters overflowing with phone books from the previous year just makes me sick. There is no reason that a company that has everyone's phone number can't take a telephone poll for people who WANT a phone book. Or, as I suggested earlier, phone books could be made available in grocery stores or libraries for people to pick up. It is completely sick for massive resources to be spent on the creation and destruction of obsolete telephone directories on a yearly basis. And every year the number of phone books that they send gets higher!! How many blasted phone books does one home need? I can't imagine that the number of phone books in a household has any reason to exceed the number of people!

Stop sending me phone books!

Yours Truly,
Mary Helen