Glittery Vinyl I found in my high school fabric stash turns out some pretty classy crafts

Apparently my parents house is the location of katie craft-tacular 2k9/2k10.
Today I was digging around in my closets here and found some delightful glittery vinyl that I bought for a project in high school. We had some assignment to make a purse that didn't look like a normal purse. So I made a glittery "toaster purse" with an attached "piece of toast" brown wool felt change purse. I thought it was awesome then, but I was only 15, so you can't really blame me that much.
So I was thinking, what can I do with glitter vinyl?
I thought my laptop sleeve was looking kinda shabby, so I started googling around for ideas for a cute new laptop sleeve design. I stumbled across this really great Lauren Merkin gold leather laptop envelope. I don't think they sell it anymore, as I couldn't find it on her site. Thank goodness for google images though, for revealing this gem.

So I see that gorgeous gold leather envelope and I have I a VOILA moment. Scallops are so cute, out of the ordinary and easy to just cut on the vinyl as the edges won't fray. That means no hems! WOO!

So I traced out the flap scallops on some newspaper, cut out the vinyl and pinked the inside edges edges and sewed one simple seam around the bottom three edges.

I think it turned out pretty well. It fits my laptop like a dream.

 I still need to add a little velcro to the bottom of the flap to keep it closed. I think that I'll sew it in on the very bottom scallop and cover the sewn part with a cute little button in a fun color on the outside of the sleeve.

Now I can tote my laptop in style!

Crafting when you're snowed in is the best!

I am currently at my parent's house in Kansas City for the Holidays. I was briefly stranded on the east coast due to snow, and just barely scooted out of Philly after a short stay with Colin before snow killed all the flights coming into the midwest.

We've been snowed in more or less since a white Christmas snow storm we had at the end of last week. Not as much snow as we got in Baltimore before I left, but enough to make driving to my families homes on Christmas problematic.

So, being cooped up at home this much has gotten me thinking about craft projects I could work on to stifle my cabin fever. I had a party to attend last night, so I whipped up a cute little headband to wear during the afternoon.

The party was a grade school reunion. It was strange, but super fun to hang out with people  that I grew up with but probably really haven't seen since high school at the earliest. Anyways...

I really like frilly headbands, but it seems like every time I would try one on, the flowers or bows always sit at a weird place on my head and look really silly. So making my own lets to control where the flowers and sticky outy bits on the headbands get to sit.

To make the headband I glued some grosgrain ribbon to a plastic headband and made two little rosettes out of some scraps of black lace my mom had snagged from my grandparents house a couple of weeks ago.

One genius trick for glueing on the ribbon is to use diamond glaze. It is a runny glue, but sets really fast, dries clear and clings to the plastic headbands like no other! I was using cheap dollar store thin plastic headbands intended for little girls, so I didn't really want the orange glittery headband to show through. You can check out Diamond Glaze here, but it is pretty readily available at most craft stores. I will totally be using for any headband projects in the future.

Here are the pictures:

I know you can't see the detail really at all in this, but I put it up to show you how I wore the headband...

I made my flowers by sort of gathering a skinny strip of the lace fabric and sewing it together at the bottom edge in a spiral shape. I have found some pretty good fabric flower tutorials though, if you want to make your own with more specific instructions. These headbands are such a quick fulfilling project. This one only took me about 20 minutes.

Links - 

Poppy Boutonnieres

Flowers for the toes of Slippers (but would look great on a headband or a pin too!)

DIY wedding Headbands (SO pretty!)

Fabric Roses and Peonies (peonies are my favorite flower, and this martha stewart site gives you templates to print)

This morning, the roads were beginning to look a little bit better, so I hit up a thrift store on my way home from a doctors appointment.

I must have floral fever, because I picked out this cute floral tin today. I think I will use it to store jewelry. I also scored a cute apricot colored cardi and a pair of nine west flats. All for $11! The thrifting here in the midwest really is the best!

<3

graceland!!!

My bestie, Morgan, convinced me to road trip back to school with her to Memphis, since this is sort of my last chance to ever see her school. Her boyfriend currently lives in Paris, so she's visiting him over spring break, which means now I get to visit her at the end of winter break. Anyways, the super fantastic wonderful part is...
SHE BOUGHT ME TICKETS TO GRACELAND!
I will certainly have pictures when we go. Look out for photos mid January.

Art Market cont'd and a blizzard in Baltimore!

Art Market photos finally. This is the printmaking department area. We had 8 tables all together I think.

Also, in new news, Baltimore has been covered in 14 + inches of snow. This caused my flight home to the midwest to be cancelled yesterday. I am now flying out of Philly on Wednesday. Continential Airlines called it being reaccomodated. Here is proof of the snow.

Thats me standing in a driveway. This was to illustrate that the snow was up to my knees. Granted, my knees aren't really the highest thing from the ground (I'm only 5' 2"ish)... But still, we got a lot of snow.

finals are half done and I'm reading a boring book

Finals are not so fun. At least these are almost the last ones I ever have to take in undergrad.
I've all ready had two critques, which means I have two more and a paper to turn in. I am a busy bee.
I have a book project and some photos to put up once I get them back from my teacher Thursday night.

My schedule is as follows:
Today/Wednesday, 4 pm (thats in about an hour when I finally get to leave work)
- six hour environmental design crit
Today/Wednesday, 10pm
- finish book project for morning
Today/Wednesday, 12am
- finish another owl for commission for my friend Ainsley (all that is left is the embroidery and stuffing)
- bake apple bread for sanity and class in morning
Thursday, 9am
-critique for the book arts class I TA, present my independent project
Thursday, 12pm-7pm
- finish science paper/book report on the most boring book I have read in a very long time. Please reference picture below.
Thursday, 7pm
- turn in said paper
Thursday, 10pm
- going away party for a friend who is a December graduate
Friday, All day
- blissful sleep
Friday, 8pm
- ugly sweater party with colin
Saturday, 7pm
- colin's job's christmas dinner/party at a lebanese restaurant (so excited!)
Sunday, 10:30am
- depart baltimore for newark, nj for my layover
Sunday , 12:30pm
- depart newark for the land of beef brisket and bbq
Sunday, 3pm
- arrive home to do nothing and finally see my parents

finals finals finals

I sold 12 owls!
And made boat loads of money at Art Market!
Okay, not boat loads, unless it's a pretty small boat to fill. But I did make more than I do in my bi-monthly work study paychecks in the span of 4 days.
I have two owls left that someone never came to pick up. So I will be photographing them and listing them on etsy with some prints by the end of this coming week.
Finals are now in full swing. Since I conveniently took the ENTIRE weekend off to frantically make lots of owls and entertain all of my friends who came up from d.c., I now have lots and lots on my plate.
I have no free time until Thursday night.
I leave on an airplane, with a stop in newark, nj, to go home on Sunday. Then christmas is the Friday following that.
My bestie leaves me to visit her older, grad-program-attending-paris-living boyfriend the 26th through after New Years.
Then I drive back to Memphis with her, and fly to balty from there around the 13th.
Whirl wind of stuff to do if you ask me.
I have pictures of the Printmaking Department booth to post when I get Colin's camera cord.
And the owls that didn't sell to show you soon.

another owl done.

Here is wee little hoot number two. Maybe I an get another done before class at 7?

owls... i have lots of owls to make

I totally just finished one of my owls for artmarket. Now, to finish the other ten.

So here is my first owl plushie. I fully intend to list these on etsy over winter break, when I actually have time to make something that isn't related to my thesis.

Oh, and sorry I look like a CRAZY face in the picture. This is what making owls does to me?
I can't believe that this semester is really almost over. What am I gong to do with my life after art school?

This week through next week is a mess for me... just all work and no play basically.
My thesis final crit is on Monday. Which means I need to put my nose to the grind stone on some intaglio prints and book projects that are just not quite good enough yet.
Sunday I have to work all day on campus. MICA is hosting a National Portfolio Review day, so there will be 1200+ people on campus, and luck me admissions work study gets to help out. It's not that I don't like these events. I actually really like working our weekend events... It's just that with the thesis deadline breathing down my neck, missing out on most of Sunday as work time is a little stressful. Oh well, at least I get paid.
Then Wednesday of next week is Art Market. That means Wednesday - Saturday are fun filled days of me manically checking in every 4 or 5 hours to see if anything I had sold. I should have friends coming to visit from DC though, at the end of next week. If you are in the DC/Balty area, you should come down to MICA to get some affordable art and gifts. You know, you could even by an original print or owl friend made by me!

Haircut After!

After!

I really like it bobbed up like this. Thanks Anne at Sprout for making my hair cute and bouncy again.

Haircut

Today I get my hair cut again. It's been since June and it is, shall I say, no longer a style, but a hot mess of grown out-ness. Only the headband makes it look a little more classy because it sort of hides the grown out sides. I will stand for this no longer. In about an hour I will have my hair cut back up above my shoulders, with actual side swept bangs once again. This is the before:

Note my hair doesn't really look that bad at this length, but the layers at the bottom really need cleaning up, and I really have to do something with the bangs that are, shown above, held to the side with a headband.

I spent all summer here in Baltimore, and so I never really had time to book an appointment with my usual stylist at home in KC. So i ventured out on a limb and made an appointment with a salon here in Baltimore.

Sprout is an all natural salon (i.e. no chemicals! even in their dye!). The winner for me is that they give you a ten minute scalp massage with essential oil. So great. Afters to be posted around 2ish.

Smashed up car

Sorry again for the lack of posting. My boyfriend's car got smashed up by a hit and run on Friday night. The car was parked in front of his apartment on the street and around midnight someone swerved from the other side of the street and rammed his parked car. They even had the gaul to leave a note with a fake number. Why even bother to leave a note if you're just going to leave a fake number?!? Anyways, all weekend we've been dealing with getting rental cars and investigating his options in fixing/ replacing his poor station wagon. They smashed in the front wheel well so hard that it hit the curb- now the front wheels are bowed out in opposite directions. They also scraped the entire length of the wagon. Now all we can do is wait for the claims adjuster and hope the car is salvageable.

hurricane time

It's hurricane time in Baltimore. It's been gray and yucky and rain tastic for the last few days straight.
Good thing I get to spend my entire weekend in my studio.
Today I did spend a little time working up a proto-type for a plush animal for Art Market at MICA.
He's a little orange and yellow fox. Or, he will be a little yellow and orange fox when I find more time to finish him.
I'm sure I'll be posting more photos of prints or something tomorrow.

bunnies!

oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh

most adorable part of my day so far!

i cant stand how cute that is.

from here

PRINTMAKING!

Here is the print exchange print I promised.

Sorry its a crappy photo booth picture... but my camera is dead.

The print is called falling apart in the falling rain... you can't really see the detail, but it is intentionally mis register and over top there are lots of tiny raindrops in the same light blueish color. It was an edition of 23 prints on white Rives BFK. It is a six color screen print.

Also, tonight is a screening of Typeface, the movie on campus!

The film is about the Hamilton Wood type museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. More about that after I see the actual film.

Maybe also soon there will be pictures from NYC!

NYC trip, a new print and fish and chips prospects...

Boyfriend still fails with providing a better costume picture. So thats still on hold.
In other news:
I'm working on a screen print for a printmaking exchange within my department today. The theme for the exchange is 'falling'... so I made a little village with rain falling overhead. I'll show a quick shot of the films below. I want this print to be colorful and lively, as most of my work in mono tone in shades of black to white or navy to light blue. I have plans for yellows, purples and navy and maybe a little minty turquoise too. This is due monday, so I should have this done to show off by the end of the weekend.
Also, tomorrow boyfriend and I are hopping a bus to NYC. The IFPDA (International Fine Print Dealers Association) is having a huge print fair. Well actually, it's happening now, through the weekend, but we are going tomorrow. It's the place to see current print work, make professional connections in the field and network. It also is a venue to sell prints, so you can see tons of prints by old masters and famous print editions for sale. I am excited. Also, this means we get to go back to the chip shop I found in the west village over the summer!
It's called A Salt & Battery and it is SO SO delish. I love fish and chips, and boyfriend is an avowed anglophile (he's 1/4 Brit!) so we will totally be stopping for dinner there tomorrow.
The films, as promised, minus a few that would make this look confusing.

Now just imagine these one on top of the other, some of those houses filled in with lush colors, the clouds and rain being really transparent and metallic over the top and you can see EXACTLY what I'm printing. If you can't visualize, I should have them documented for my portfolio by Monday, so I'll post the finished print by then. Deadlines Deadlines.

Other stops on tomorrows day trip to the city from balty include, magnolia bakery, also in the village, one of the pinkberries (so mad there aren't any in baltimore!)  and Cooper Union to see a show that boyfriend's bosses have design work in.

Lot's of work to do for now, so I'm off!

Halloween weekend was a blur, and I don't have any good pictures to share yet...

Oh poor poor neglected blog. This Halloween weekend took all of my energy and left no time for me to post my costume. So here it is!
I decided to be the Very Hungry Caterpillar from, well, The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
A better picture is coming as soon as I get it off the boyfriends big fancy camera. It's a shot of the whole thing because my mom insisted on being emailed something nice and presentable. The picture below is sadly, not very complete... and it's pretty hard to even see that there are eyes and antenna on the hat at all. Just wait until the joyous moment later today when I have a nice looking picture to share, okay?

The costume was all pretty easy. I bought a cotton dress and leggings online and tie dyed them, attached some felt legs to the dress, and put felt eyes and antenna on the hat. My weekend has been so full of Halloween, that it's a little strange that it's all ready November and I have lots lots lots of work to do for school. I have a print exchange coming up next monday, so pictures of that print are coming soon.

I was sick, and now I'm better, but I didn't get a whole lot done this weekend...

I'm still alive, I'm just always working!
For proof, here is an update on that etching plate I showed you before...

Also, I got some nasty bug from my boyfriend. I made him chicken noodle soup on Wednesday night, had a cough by Thursday and then it all went downhill from there. Friday I tried to stick it out, but by dinner, I was miserable. I spent all of Saturday with several boxes of tissues and my butt firmly planted on the couch feeling gross. Sunday was a little more productive, but i still feel like I lost a lot of valuable work time.

In other news, KCUR is on itunes radio!!!!! Woo! I'm pretty sure they probably have been for a while, but I just discovered this today... So even in Baltimore I can listen to NPR from home in Kansas City. What is also great about KCUR, they don't carry the Diane Rehm show. Not to dump on Miss Rehm, she's a wonderful talk show host, it's just that Baltimore and dc NPR affiliates carry her show for TWO whole hours in the middle of the day. Usually when I am free to listen. So there is no mixing up what you hear every single day... Even though Diane Rehm is out for three weeks for a cruise with NPR listeners or something. See, I listen to her everyday because I have to... because I love NPR.

 So, thanks KCUR! You brightened my day by being on Itunes!

doing lots of work and making ramblings about pretty things

Woah! Last week really got away from me!
This weekend + Monday (today) and Tuesday are fall break, and I haven't been doing much by way of taking a break. A friend did come to visit from sunny Los Angeles, so we've been around the DC Baltimore area a bit, but other than that, I've been working like a busy little bee. No update photos on the etchings yet (the plates are all in their acid baths now! They're a work in progress!) but there will be soon. So today I will leave you with some beautiful things I've found today that I'm coveting...

graham and green

anthropologie

anthropologie - just got this yesterday!!

anthropologie

anthropologie

design*sponge

camille soulayrol

booxx

shelter pop

Halloween Costume for this year

I spent most of the day, when I wasn't really busy at work, trying to think of a clever costume idea for Halloween. Last year I waited till the very last minute and my costume was not so hot. So I just purchased everything I need online for something I hope will be cute, nostalgic and clever as my costume for this year. I won't tell you what I'm going to be just yet, so you'll have to wait until the end of the month for pictures. I will tell you that I'm going as a character from one of my favorite books as a child... I feel obligated to have something good. I mean,  I do go to art school, and clever Halloween costumes are like a badge of honor here...

These two ladies are so classy!

Plush House and Pumpkin Patch

Sunday was a busy day for me. I spent most of the early afternoon on a group outing and all of the evening until pretty late last night making my plush house.
I do get a little bit of a break this morning though.
Open studios are today on campus, so I'm catching up on blogging in my studio as it's all clean for visitors and I don't want to muss it with making things. I'm trying to enjoy the quiet and be un-obtrusive to my visitors.

This is my plush model house. The line work is all embroidered on natural muslin with three strands of a really dark navy color embroidery floss. I wanted the house to have a similar line weight and feeling as my prints do. Hopefully I achieved that at least a little. It's about 15 inches long x 8 inches wide x 6 inches tall. I really love it, and I hope I can make more soon. I have plans for different types of plush model houses if I can only find the time to create more!

Also as promised, here are pumpkin patch pictures!

In total, seven of us went. We got pretty medium to small sized pumpkins (We all live in row homes, so where do you put a jack o lantern? On your fire escape?). I'm excited for our carving party this week... I'm also excited for roasting the seeds. Delish!

What a great Sunday.

Killing time productively with Flickr!

I was brain storming today, thinking of things I could make to supplement my print work for my thesis. I was also killing a little time because my right ring finger has a huge blister on it from carving a wood block, and I needed a little recoup time.
So I was trolling through flickr, and found a couple of AMAZING home structures. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do.
Just to tempt you, tomorrow will be an update with pictures from a group trip I'm taking with friends to a pumpkin patch (same farm as the apple picking!) and hopefully some adorable plushy houses I'm working on.

Back to the flickr finds:

verhext's flickr

anonymous angle's flickr

anonymous angle's flickr

pyramis' flickr

this house is just blocks from my parents house in kansas city! look at those windows!

from moderns_r_us flickr