Soap

It's that time of year, where Peter and I make soap (cold process)!  This time we're planning 2 projects, one is the base go-to soap that Peter loves (modification of this recipe), and the other will be something new (I get to pick)!  We did our usual soap first and it went well.  It's sitting on top of our fridge, setting up - just have to wait a few weeks before we can test it out.

What I wanted to share this time around was 1). what we use instead of fancy soap molds, and 2) where do you get lye in Vancouver?

1. I dream of a wooden loaf mold. But, we make soap once a year and we get by without it. And I have a zillion craft supplies, so I'm trying to refrain from buying this one (I do check craigslist for it every now and then though, shhh).  So, we just line boxes with freezer paper and fill those instead. Our favorite box is one of those ones you get from the dollar store. They're very sturdy and pretty too. :)

2. When we first wanted to make soap, we were drowning in oils (I had purchased someone's supply) and had no lye. I searched the internet and could not find where to buy lye in Vancouver. I think possibly you can't buy it in Vancouver proper - but we found two places in the surrounding area: Galloways in Richmond, and Cranberry Lane in Port Coquitlam & Richmond.  So there you go, if you're in Vancouver looking for lye - they have it!

Lip Balm, Finally

A while back I purchased (via craigslist) the soap & beauty making supply stash of someone who had had kids and sadly decided it was going to be a while before she had time and space to do things like make soap or anything else. At the time I was just looking for basic soap making supplies, but for a steal I got all that and a pile of essential oils and tons of other supplies. I actually had to research what some of this stuff was for. The huge quantity of beeswax, I soon learned, was for lip balms. So I've been meaning to try making some for ages. The internet says it's easy, which is nice.

Tonight I finally did it! I started with a base recipe and modified it slightly according to the general guide here.  I can't tell you if I like this product yet, but if I don't, I have enough supplies to make approximately 2853 pots of lip balm, so I can probably do another batch. I'll let you know.  And the internet was right - this was stupidly easy. Frankly, finding the lip balm pots was the hardest part! (Daiso)

White Yarn

Like most knitters/crocheters... I have a yarn stash. It's tucked away in a few different places so I never see it all at once and have to face that I have a problem. One thing that has nagged me about my stash are the batches of natural coloured yarns I have that I'm not interested in using. I picked a bunch up from a former weaver, but didn't use them in my weaving projects. I thought I might try dyeing some of it and Kalin (fellow Maked girl) suggested I do a test with kool-aid dyeing, to see if that would work (some of the fibres are of unknown content, and kool-aid dyeing works best on natural fibres like wool).

So I did! I read a tutorial on kool-aid dyeing, watched a youtube video tutorial, and did it. Easy peasy! And now I know one of my fibres takes kool-aid colouring super well, one takes it in a more pale way (soy/acrylic blend), one took it very pale (cotton, I think), and two others don't really take it at all (which means I need a different kind of yarn dye, or I need to donate the yarn to someone else who will use it).  And, as a bonus, my kitchen smells like cherry kool-aid.

In the next day or two I'm hoping I can find time to dye the large batch I have that sucked up the kool-aid colouring so well - it's a great yarn, from a thrift store sweater I unraveled! I'm excited at turning it into a colour and actually using it to make something finally!  (I used some of it, au natural, in a weaving project a while back. More photos here.)

Keeping it Simple

Most of my craft projects tend to be very detailed and intricate.  They can take months to finish. I don't know why I'm attracted to really lengthy projects that take forever to complete, perhaps because I feel like if I'm going to go to the trouble of making something by hand, I want it to be amazing and complicated/elaborate.  Still, every now and then I get the urge to make something quick and simple. Or I'll get an idea for something that is very plain and I can't bear to make it more fussy.

I've been missing my beads lately, what with all the other crafts, so that combined with some components I picked up at the store recently resulted in a few new necklaces that I'm very pleased with! Simple, unfussy necklaces - some with an sparkly industrial style even.  I know my style might not appeal to everyone, but that's another benefit of making stuff for yourself - it can be custom made to suit me! 

I do feel strange showing these off as things I 'made' when I really just assembled components that other people/factories made.  It's not the kind of handmade I usually do!  Let's call this, necklaces I assembled.

First off - a very simple, classy snowflake necklace for winter.  It's got a bit of sparkle and I combined it with sterling silver chain and a pretty magnetic clasp I've been holding on to, waiting for the right project.



Next, does it get any easier than this? A cool bar component that is industrial + sparkly, paired with stainless steel neckwire. I thought about making this more complicated but love it too much as it is.


Last one - harder to assemble, but still keeping it simple & clean - a two bar necklace.

Sometimes it's good to do something different. It is also very nice to be able to finish several projects in one sitting for a change!

These may appear in the etsy shop one day - email me if you're interested.

Craft Fair Prep

Since getting the great news that Maked was accepted for the Holiday Got Craft fair, I've been using my bits and pieces of spare time to try and make stock.  A few soap pours here and there - including space invaders inspired soaps and jewel-themed soaps for the swag bags. 

I bought a lady's soap supply off her as she gave up her craft business - which means I got a huge quantity of soap base for a great price. Which means I have a HUGE quantity of soap base! I'm hoping to get a lot made for Got Craft, partly as a way to free up some space in my apartment, but also because they're great stocking stuffers and the Got Craft crowd seems to love them!

My personal favorite product we have at the moment are my reflective flower pins. These are made of the same reflective material as stripes on a runner's jacket so when light hits them directly they really shine! But in ordinary daylight I think they're still cute.  They do take a bit of time to make however, but it's good movie-watching crafting and I just joined Netflix so I've got lots of stuff to watch. :)

 
Less than 2 months to go, but I'm feeling pretty good about the stock I'll have on hand for the fair!

Knitting

I'm still quite new to knitting, but I generally always have a project on the go, even if it takes me forever to finish it. Finishing things is a milestone to be savored, not rushed.

My latest knitting project is the concentric squares blanket. I saw the version Kim made and knew I had to try it. As I'm trying to use yarn from my stash, I, of course, had to do some math to adjust the pattern to deal with my thinner choice of yarn - otherwise I'd end up with a kerchief instead of a blanket. The pattern author was kind enough to message me back and forth on Ravelry with help on how best to make adjustments. I finally did start and it does still look like the blanket is going to be tiny, but I'm sure I'll find a use for it.

In other news - I don't know if I've ever mentioned on here that one of my hobbies is dancing. My husband-like-person and I started taking ballroom/Latin lessons a few years ago and we love it! It's loads of fun. (PSA: It's key to find a really good studio that knows how to teach, otherwise it'll be super frustrating. Our first attempt to learn was at a cheap place and we just fought all the time, it was terrible.) I'm very excited because there are two summer dance series happening in downtown Vancouver over the summer (at Robson Square). Friday nights will be ballroom and Sunday afternoons will be salsa! I love the idea of just going for a walk downtown, stopping by a public square and dancing for a bit. If you need me this summer, that's where I'll be. Starts in July and I can't wait!

Baby Blanket 572

Apparently I need a hard deadline like a baby being born to get me to sit down a finish a project. Hence all the baby-related crafting lately.

There is other crafting going on, I'm sure of it, I just can't find the finished product to show you. ;)

This blanket might look familiar since it is my go-to favorite blanket to make and I'm sure I've posted other versions of it.


Here are the instructions if you want to see how simple it is.

It's not excessively fussy to make but I think it's cute (without being overly precious). I'm trying to stay away from cutesie baby fabrics, thinking parents might appreciate some relief from all the pastel colours, animal shapes, etc. This is for a summer baby so I used a thin fleece and some summer stripes cotton. A little rick rack trim for fun, and now I just need to pop it into the mail because the mom went into labour today!!

Baby blanket

One of the things I love most is to crochet baby blankets. They're just the right size of project - easy to get going and then great for working on when watching tv/movies, and they end before you start to hate them. Perfect!

This one has been in the making for a while, using some wool yarn from my stash (pat on back for using stash yarn). I usually avoid making baby stuff out of wool because I assume all baby stuff has to be machine washable given how messy babies are. But I was told that parents have 'special occasion blankets' that don't face the same abuse as everyday blankets.

Also, the mom I had in mind for this is a knitter herself, so I figured she, if anyone, would appreciate the natural fibre and would know how to care for it. I hope it's useful to them. It's the only 100% wool in my stash - I imagine I'll be sticking to washable fibres in the future - they're just more practical.


I used this free pattern that was simple but created a lovely texture and a nice, cushy blanket. I do like that crochet makes nice, thick blankets.

On to the next baby! This time I'm trying a knit blanket - wish me and my rudimentary knitting skills luck!

For the Animals

Kim and I were so inspired by our trip to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in November (read about it here: part 1, part 2, part 3), we really wanted a way to help out and spread the word about the awesome things that animal shelters everywhere do for homeless pets.... and so we concocted a scheme which launched today: For the Animals! .

The webpage Kim made for it explains - but the idea is that all you crafty people use up some of your stash to make blankets and beds for animal shelters (Best Friends, or your local shelter).

. It's helpful for animals to have some warm and snuggly things in their shelter spaces (shelters are stressful places) and it helps brighten the appearance of shelters so they aren't so dreary for visitors. .

Often shelters will send adopted animals home with their blankets so they have a familiar item in their new place, making it less scary. .

We're hoping people really get excited about crafting for a good cause and post about it, send photos of the stuff they make, send the link to the website around, etc. We want to create a wave a hand-crafted snuggly things landing on shelters. And we want people to talk about how important and wonderful it is to adopt pets rather than buy them (puppy mills = very very very bad) .

The best part is that pet beds aren't huge projects, they can be quite simple and quick and a great way to use up odds and ends of yarn or fabric! .

Everyone can make a rectangle, right? Just double up your machine-washable yarn, grab a crochet hook, pick your favorite stitch and go to town! .

In anticipation of launching this project I made a few blankets and cushy pet beds to ship to Best Friends. I crocheted a bunch - I even made a circular poof of sorts. It was fun to experiment a bit with patterns and techniques I've been wanting to try (like a 2 colour spiral hexagon). .

I also pulled out my sewing machine and made some mats with batting. Two of them got made from leftover minky fabric - some cats are going to get very lucky! .

Kitty tried a few out gave them her stamp of approval. . I hope to make a few more soon to take to the local SPCA. .

It would be great if more crafty people could get involved and help spread the word! Here's the link: http://kimwerker.com/animals Tell everyone! .

I'm off to smother my (adopted) cats with love, the thought of all the poor animals waiting in shelters to be adopted makes me sad. I'm a sap that way.

UPDATE - there is now a Ravelry group For the Animals - if you're on Ravelry, please join us there!

I Yudid it!

Way back in May I was super lucky and won a Yudu screenprinting system from Got Craft (my favorite craft fair in Vancouver because it's full of awesome).

I had a lot of ideas for it but struggled to find a big chunk of time to learn and get it going and make a disaster of the apartment. There was one idea I wanted to pull off in time for Christmas, so I finally got to work on it once my holiday vacation started.

My plan was to customize a set of cloth napkins for my Polish in-laws with the Polish word for "cheers/good eating": smacznego! I had a transparancy printed at Staples with my image on it. Besides "smazcego", I put on some additional images that I wanted to use to customize some handkerchiefs - to maximize my use of the screen.

I followed the step by step instructions that came with the Yudu and burned the screen without any problems. Easy peasy.

Then on to the fun part - the printing!





I taped off all the images except the one I wanted, flooded the screen with ink and did my first impression.







It turned out perfectly! I was really pleased with all of the prints, actually.

I think it helped that I had done some screenprinting before (although burning the screen was new to me) - it can take a bit of practice to get a good impression. I did the set of 8 napkins super quickly and cleaned off the screen so I could untape the other images and print those too.

Really the biggest problem with screenprinting is that it is best for printing large quantities of things.... and how often do you need large quantities of stuff printed with the same image? I usually only need 3 -4 copies of something.

All in all, the Yudu is pretty neat - for those of us who don't have workshops to get messy with normal screenprinting - it's a compact, tidy way to do it.

I live in a 600sqft apartment, so having the screen-burning + drying rack + printing surface all in one makes it doable. If you've got more space, you can probably screenprint the normal way for less.

In the end I didn't make nearly as big a mess as I thought I would - it also didn't take as long as I thought; I burned the screen on one day and did the printing the next day - which gave the screen loads of time to dry and made it all seem less daunting somehow. :)

These napkins turned out so well, my brain is off thinking up new projects!

Thank you Got Craft? and Yudu!!

Weaving!

There is weaving in progress again, finally!

This is my first weaving project that actually takes advantage of all 4 shafts of my loom and had a complicated threading pattern. So far everything is going okay.... it's taking me a while to select a weft yarn that I like - I've decided to go monochrome and use the warp thread for the weft. I feel the diamond pattern is quite busy and having it in contrasting colours is too much for me.

Now that I've actually made that decision - this will probably go pretty fast!

Puff

I remember when I first discovered Lush. It wasn't available in my town so I had to hunt it out whenever I was traveling. I loved their stuff, the unusual scents, the amazing handmade products (this was before the handmade movement busted out, now it's wonderfully easy to find local handmade soaps). I recall walking down the street in Glasgow, Scotland on vacation and stopping, sniffing, and saying to Peter - "there's a Lush nearby", we turned the corner and there it was! It can be overwhelming, walking into a Lush store (in an olfactory sense), it's not for everyone but I still love it.

I have some of their dusting powders but don't use them much because they come in these odd shaker cans and I never could get used to the idea of shaking dusting powder on me like salt. I hunted around sporadically for a nice dusting powder puff. I knew they existed, Mom had one for her Chanel powder, a nice big one in a lovely container. I couldn't find anything! Crazy!

I finally got tired of lamenting the lack of puff available for purchase and grabbed some scrap materials I had handy and made one for myself - this is the joy of being a crafter, after all, being able to just make whatever you need! It's just a random bit of faux fur, cotton fabric, ribbon, and batting sewn into a rectangle. So easy, should have done it ages ago. Now I just need a nice container. In the meantime, I can shake the powder on my poof and apply it with dignity.

If you want one and aren't interested in making it, I did finally find some much nicer ones on etsy.....

This one from Soapalaya Soaps

This vintage can (with powder) from Pursimonia

Notepad Vice

You may recall a few months back I posted about making notepads out of the scrap paper from my office so it could be re-used before being recycled.... I've been doing this for a while now and decided that I needed a better system if I was going to continue.

So I went to the hardware store, got myself some wood, bolts, and wing nuts. I drew up a plan that would create a vice for a variety of notepad sizes. Just a simple device to hold the paper together while the glue dries. I made some measurements, drilled a few holes, and bob's your uncle, I had a notepad vice. No more stacking textbooks on top of my pads as they dry! I just put the paper in the vice, tighten it up, slather on a few coats of elmer's and it's good to go. The large bolts will allow me to do a big stack of notebooks at once too.

The next step is to get some real padding compound (already ordered it) - the stuff the pros use. The elmer's glue works, it's just very thin so it takes a few coats which is annoying. I'm already loving the process more now and think the end product is more professional looking. Can't wait to get my hands on the padding compound!

Beaded Tank

Continuing in the theme of finishing projects I started a really long time ago.... I've got this green tank top that I did a little funky bead embroidery on ages ago. It's one of my favorite summer tops because it's casual and comfortable but has a little unique detail on it. Nothing fancy, just a bit of personality.

I liked the finished product enough that I went to the store and got 2 more tank tops to do up. One I ended up wearing plain - I needed a shirt and didn't have time to wait for me to get around to crafting it up (I can be so slow!).

The other shirt got started and promptly shoved in a workbox. I pulled it out recently and decided the bead colour was all wrong (blue on white) - that's what caused me to hit a wall with it. So I took out the beadwork that had been started and I went with something more subtle this time. I've been working at it a bit here and there this week. I think a few more squiggly turns and it will be done.

Those who know me, know that doing random, organic/flowy things is very difficult for me. I prefer lines and patterns and things planned out in advance. Just winging it is not my forte!

But, it's good to break out of your box every now and then and do something that challenges your natural tendencies.

Screenprinting

Wednesday night Megan and I did a marathon screenprinting session to finish off our 2 new product lines for Got Craft.... and everything looks awesome, if I may say so myself.

We've got organic cotton tote bags which are strong enough to carry your goods, but light enough to squish up nice and small and not take up much space in your purse - you can always have it with you!

And, we've got thick, super long jersey scarves. I wore mine today, and good thing because Vancouver has decided to revert back to January temperatures! But I was snug as a bug with my super cute scarf.

We had a lot of fun working out the images for these, and hope they'll be really popular at the fair! (Whatever doesn't sell at the fair will eventually make its way into our Etsy shop.)

We did our screenprinting at a place in Vancouver called Blim, which is a great resource - they are a Community Based Art Resource Center which facilitates screen-printing, button making, drawing, knitting, local underground audio, film screenings, animation, video, dance, spoken word, visual art, creative workshops, and crafts in the independent field. You can take workshops to learn everything you need to know about screenprinting, and you can book time in their studio space. For us urbanites living in apartments, it's perfect- we can do all the messy stuff at Blim! Definitely a place to check out if you're local and wanting to learn about screenprinting.

Got Craft? We sure do!

We were very excited to find out recently that we've been selected as a vendor at our favorite craft fair in Vancouver: Got Craft? This was the first craft fair we ever did as Maked - so it has a special place in our hearts. It also happens to be THE BEST fair there is in town. It's been getting bigger every time as word gets out about its awesomeness. It's a great collection of indie vendors selling ridiculously creative and unique products. It always has a great vibe as a result of putting so many creative people in one room for a day.

It's also becoming legendary for another reason.... the first 30 people through the door in the morning get a swag bag filled with product samples and promotional items. Every year these swag bags get better. We're always kind of bummed that we can't stand in line for them! But, as more and more vendors apply for tables at the fair, we're very happy to have a spot even if we miss out on swag. =)

Hope all you Vancouver peeps will come out and see the awesomeness! It's May 3, 2009, 11am - 5pm at 2205 commercial Dr. Vancouver, BC To check out the list of vendors that will be there - go to the Got Craft Vendor Page.

Here's Megan and Rhiannon, hard at work making fabulous stuff for our table at Got Craft:

The Missing 'R'

I had an epiphany recently. In my ever on-going quest to reduce my impact on the environment, I remembered the old R-R-R they taught me in elementary school.... and I realized, we've all been glossing over the first and second 'R's. Reduce - Reuse - Recycle. Be honest now, how many people kind of skip right to recycle and gloss over the whole reduce and reuse parts? Especially 'reuse'?

This was highlighted to me at my office where people are really good at recycling waste paper... except a lot of it is blank on one side. So, I've started collecting the reusable paper to cut up and turn into notepads. People will now reuse the scrap paper and then recycle it. Maybe the notepads will also help remind everyone about the other poor, forgotten Rs.

Here's the proper tutorial that inspired me, over on an awesome blog on The Small Object. But I couldn't find any padding compound locally and I heard school glue works just as well so that's what I used. (It works okay, I think padding compound might be better. I have to do a few coats of school glue to get good coverage.)

I cut the paper on a paper cutter to roughly the same size, paint some glue on my stack of paper (I'll split this up into thinner pads when its dry), stack some books on top to keep it all in place, and wait for it to try. Stupid easy project. Give it a try!




While you're waiting for the glue to dry - try to think up other ways you can Reduce and Reuse to lighten our load on the planet!