Blim Craft Fair!

TODAY!

197 E17th (@ Main St), Vancouver BC

It's free and there will be music and lots of awesome, edgy crafty stuff. It's outside in the sunshine too, yay!

Ideas

Sometimes the creative bug bites me hard. I get an idea and can't stop thinking about it. Doesn't matter what I'm doing, thoughts related to the new idea will pop up and I'll get all distracted, mentally working out details, trying to figure out when I'll have time to sit down and play around, test things out. It's hard not to talk about it with everyone. I'm chatting with a coworker and suddenly have an urge to explain my idea so they can get excited with me. (Fortunately I am usually able to contain myself - most people wouldn't actually find these crafty ideas as thrilling as I do!)

I have one of those ideas now. It circles around and around in my head and I will the clock to move faster so I can finish my regular day and get home so I can craft! I don't want to spill the beans here yet, I want to test the idea out, work up some prototypes, see if it's as awesome as I think it will be.... then I'll share. But I know that other crafty people will totally understand the torment I'm in - being all abuzz with an idea and eager to work on it and having regular life get in the way!

Japanese Book

Megan brought me back an awesome book from Japan - one that teaches you how to wrap everything ( and I mean everything) in beautiful fabric.

Forget carrying ugly bags around with you - carry a beautiful bit of fabric and apparently you'll be set to carry anything! It's awesome. And like most Japanese books, the instructions are visual so my inability to read Japanese won't matter. Though I do wonder what the title of this book is.... the subtitle awesomely says "The furoshiki is functional and stylish. Your life becomes happy if you use it every day."

Here's the cover:




















Here's how you can wrap up your honey jar:

Your badminton rackets:
But really - there are some fantastic instructions in here on how to make beautiful packages that are easy to carry and look quite secure. I can't wait to try some out!

Visual instructions:

For those who are interested in trying to track down the book, its ISBN # is 978-4-416-80662-3 and the website on the book jacket is: http://www.seibundo-net.co.jp/

Megan's Back!

The 4th member of our group, Megan, has been off living in Japan for the past year. We've definately missed her crafty-genius self and are super happy now because.... she's BACK!

Kalin and I met up with her today and spent a lovely day in the beautiful sunny, summery weather Vancouver is suddenly enjoying (so welcome after such a long, miserable winter and spring).

Expect all sorts of new crafty awesomeness as we get down to Maked business with Megan!

I Might Be Very Lucky

So this weekend I'm headed down to Portland with the hubby and some friends. This was already exciting because I haven't been to Portland in ages and it's so full of wonderful things. Hubs is especially looking forward to all the coffee and bike shops, all of us can't wait to get our grubby little paws on the books in Powell's, we're trying to figure out how to visit 12 brew pubs a night . . . but more than anything I'm looking forward to the crafty shopping. I mean yarnia anyone? How cool does this place look? Very cool. I'm actually quite overwhelmed. I even found a google map that just fills the whole city of Portland up with this little arrows pointing out all the fun places I'll never make it to. So, already I've decided I'll have to go back every weekend.

Then as I'm poking about the internet I start hearing about a quilt market/trade show thing.

Rhiannon's train of thought:
1.Oh, that sounds kind of neat, I should look into it.
2.HOLY CRAP this sounds awesome.
3. Boo, it's all officially trade and not open to the general public.
4. Wait a minute, I work for a company that deals in embroidery thread. Hmmmm....

So today at work I very casually bring it up with my boss.

Me:"Umm, Fran, any chance I could photocopy some credentially like stuff off of you to swindle my way into this trade show."
Boss/Fran: "Oh, our American division is a vendor at that show. I'll have them put aside a pass for you."
Me: "Yeah, sure, whatever, no worries."
Me in my head: Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

I'm actually really nervous about posting this because I feel like it's a little to good to be true. So for now I'll just say that when I get back from Portland you will all at least get breakdown of how it all went horribly wrong.

The Etsy Shop Returns!

We've started listing stuff in our etsy shop again!

Yay! Listings will increase once we get photos of more of our new products. In the meantime, to celebrate the awesomeness of etsy - here's a link to my latest etsy find:



















This is the fabulous work of Sea Glass Designs - a fellow Dartmouthian who takes sea glass that washes up on shore and turns it into super stylish jewelry. Her work is stunning. The piece shown at left is unlike any seaglass I've ever seen before - I love it. My other favorite piece is this one.

Fair Day

We had a great time on Sunday at the Got Craft fair - hanging out with so many great crafty people and people who love to buy great crafty stuff (us included!)!

ThugFairy was there selling these fabulous bits of fancy for your hair made out of amazing feathers (fascinators, I think they'd be called) and it became the norm for the day to see people walking around with feathers in their hair, because so many people had purchased their creations! It's a trend I'd love to see on the streets.

I'll leave you with a few pictures from our table at the fair...

Excitement!

I have more pictures from our Crafty Sunday that I wanted to post but the internet has been down since Monday.

Monday is significant because it was monday at about 6:00 that the huge cedar tree in my front yard was hit but lightening. Seriously. my house and two others have broken windows from wood flying all over the place and we have three holes in our roof. Here's some pictures:




(Can you rotate pictures in html?)

But I saw this idea for using a quilt as a headboard in my Martha Stewart newsletter and I really quite like it. I just might adapt it for my own bed.



Also, you might be able to see at at another craft fair this coming month. We'll post the details when it gets confirmed.

Off working

More frequent posts should resume shortly... we're off working, getting ready for Got Craft on May 4!

Product, packed in the vintage suitcase, ready to roll:

Mini-Preview

We all met at my place on Tuesday night so we wanted to post a few pictures.

First, soap! We're doing some new soaps and some ones we've done before. Here's our re-formatted Grapefruit Loofah soap while still in the mold:



Second, as Lisa mentioned the first 30 people in the door at Got Craft will be getting swag bags. One of our new items this year are sets of fabric covered buttons and magnets as inspired by the amazing ones Megan sent us from Japan. So, we decided the swag we're contributing are fabric buttons.



Last, is a new item that I will be making. They are reusable cup cozies. I used to drink coffee or tea every morning so I used to bring a reusable cup. But now I only have it sometimes so I don't carry a cup with me like I used to. This is a small way I can reduce my waste. Plus they're cute. We'll have them in an assortment of fabrics.