Book recommendation

This week Liza and I are focusing on learning about art, so I checked some books out from the library to expand our repertoire of craft techniques. One of the books I'm most excited about is called Easy Art Fun, by Jill Frankel Hauser. This book is really designed for use in classrooms, but a lot of the projects lend themselves to home crafting, as well.

What I like best about the book is that it's designed to be used by early readers, so the format of each page is the same, and it's all really clearly spelled out. Each project fits on two page sides (which face each other, so there is no flipping back and forth to finish something), and each offers variations on the project to make it more complicated or with a different theme. There are sections that focus on coloring, cutting with scissors, making toys, making gifts, making things for pretend play, making music, and making wearable art.

Liza is not quite five, but she reads really well, and she was able to breeze through reading several of the projects to pick out one she wanted to do. The book is a great way to get kids some practice with real-life reading, rather than story reading - practical reading really does use a whole different subset of words and phrases that kids need to learn.

And the projects are quite nice, with several old favorites and quite a few that I've never seen before. Liza chose to make the Monster Mouth game, where you decorate a paper bag like a monster face and try to throw balls of paper into the open mouth. Personally, I want to make some bendy people (paper cutouts with baggy ties taped to the back to let you bend the dude into different positions) and a few other projects that are new to me.

Now I'm pimping out my dad, too

My very handsome and talented father has been carving for decades - actually, we can actually measure it in fractions of a century at this point - so it was no problem at all for him to whip up some shawl pins for me when I started whipping up shawls. They were so beautiful and functional that I encouraged him to make some extras to sell. And the owner of River Colors Studio in Lakewood agreed that they're awesome, so now you can buy them there!

Stop in and grab one before they're gone, because you never know when Lazy Dad will get sick of making these and then they'll be gone for good.

Shameless cross-promotion

One of my friends has an etsy shop that hasn't had its first sale yet, despite her attractive products and reasonable prices. Check her out, and if you buy something, tell her LazyMama sent you!

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5846926

Trying something new

I learned how to make these fabric bowls years ago, then promptly set that idea aside in favor of other crafts. I was looking through my stash recently, though, and I found a couple packs of hand-dyed fabrics that I thought would lend themselves to bowlage (bowling?). I think I was right:

I love these fabrics, which I purchased something like eight years ago when I was first getting into quilting. They were made by a small company in Alaska which appears to have gone out of business (or at least dropped off the Internets) since then, which is a shame. Because eventually I'm going to run out of fabric, probably before I run out of bowl ideas.

They're available in my etsy shop, of course, and would make - ahem - excellent holiday gifts. I'll have some in a purply-navy colorway coming in the weeks ahead, too, and possibly some other shapes, so let me know if there's something specific you're looking for.

Just in case anyone forgot

I do sell stuff online, you know, and the holiday shopping season is pretty much upon us.

If, like us, you celebrate the holidays really early with part of your family, FEAR NOT! I can still get stuff shipped to you before you leave for Thanksgiving ... or ship directly to wherever you'll be celebrating. Heck, tell me when you order and I'll even wrap the sucker for you!

So click on over from my sidebar and buy something already!

Or just tell me how awesome my stuff is, whichever you'd rather.

But the compliments aren't going to buy me a new computer next year, is all I'm saying.

Pimpin' my homies

http://www.clevelandhandmade.com/?page_id=70

The Cleveland Handmade etsy team has an orange-and-black challenge going, with voting continuing until Sunday, October 26, so stop by the site and pick your favorite. Sign up for the mailing list at the same time, and you're entered to win a gift certificate good at any of the participating shops. Just in time for holiday shopping!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, I do have an entry - the Halloween Hexagons quilt. Go forth and vote for me!

Fun at the lake

Went up to Lake Erie today for a photo shoot for my newest etsy merchandise, the mermaid tail and tiara costume set. It was windy, but I think things turned out pretty well. What do you think?




Not bad for someone whose modeling fee is an ice cream cone from Dairy Queen on the way home. She takes direction well, at least when she's well-rested and properly bribed. Thank god.

Mermaid tail for dress-up

Okay, when Liza spends all morning playing with her new imaginary friend, Alice the Mermaid, you can't expect me to refrain from busting out the sequins during naptime to make a mermaid tail, can you? Didn't think so.

So, moms and dads - what would you pay for a reversible, custom-sized mermaid tail for dress-up play? I'm thinking of making them for my etsy shop, but I want to make sure there's a decent profit margin to be had. The sparkly stuff can be up to $15 a yard, so my materials cost will probably be higher on this than on most of my other merchandise. I'm thinking like $30 for a kid-sized one, and closer to $50 for an adult one. Would you pay that for a gift for your kid, grandkid, niece, kid of a friend? And what colors would you like to see available? I was planning to go with just green or blue to start, with others available if somebody specifically requests one (and it's available locally).

You know you want one ... or two ... or four ...

Look, Mom! I finally found a use for the 400 zippers you gave me!

Get 'em while they last, only $9 each at my etsy shop.

Oh, and having a kid who stands still and moves her arm the direction I tell her to when posing for a picture - priceless. The kid's got a bright future as a hand model, don't you think?

ahem

wedding anniversary approaching ... appropriate plans should be set in motion now if they are to arrive in time.

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=9520846

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11217383

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11227309

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12240897

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=7864540

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12194658

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12236272

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12171832

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=12236240

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=10148108

http://www.porchswings.com/porch-swings/classic/hamiltonporchswing.cfm

http://www.porchswings.com/porch-swings/classic/richmondporchswing.cfm

http://www.porchswings.com/porch-swings/classic/ellsworthgarden5ftporchswing.cfm

Come, learn from me!

I'm now in the official online catalog:

http://www.datasponsor.com/boaf/classes.htm

Class - MoYo Throw, June 22 and 29 2008

The lovely folks at Birds of a Feather in Avon, Ohio, have graciously invited me to teach a class based on my MoYo Throw pattern. The MoYo Throw features yo-yos that are almost 5" across, made from fabric from the Benartex line "Gilded Opulence." I am in love with that line, and I think you will be too when you see it in real life.


I'll be covering the whole quilt from start to finish - the only out-of-class work will be the initial cutting and maybe some of the hand-gathering on the yo-yos. It should be a lot of fun, and the quilts should be showstoppers when we're done.

Liz is selling kits for the project in two different color ways - one lime/fuschia like my sample, the other a more muted one based on the red/gold colorway for the yo-yos. Kits are available either as part of the class, or separately if you don't feel like being social while you work on the project. I understand. Just remember, though - where I go, chocolate follows, so you might want to think about that class after all :)

Anyhow, if you're in the area and interested, I'll be teaching the 2-session class on June 22 and June 29 from 1-3pm each day. Contact Birds of a Feather at 440-934-2374 to register or to order a kit.

Hope to see you there!

Milking the system

Yesterday I put into place the first part of my plan to mooch as much free cash out of my purchases as I can. It was easy - I went to the grocery store and bought a combined $100 in gift cards to other stores where I was planning to shop.

My grocery store shopper's club keeps track of your purchases, and every $50 you spend gets you $0.10 off per gallon of gas at their stations. Given how expensive groceries are now, it doesn't take much to whack quite a bit off the price of a fill-up ... especially since the gift cards count as double points toward my gas discount. So $100 = $0.80 off per gallon, which if I wait until I'm on fumes and almost fill my gas tank translates to as much as $12.

And I paid for the cards with a credit card that gives me cash back on my purchases ... where I earn twice as much for grocery purchases. That means I earned about $2 from the credit card company.

And when I made my purchases today, anything in excess of the amount of cards I purchased went onto the same credit card, which is the one linked to my UPromise account. I earn UPromise money at Bed Bath and Beyond for any purchases made with that credit card, so that's another $1 or so. And I get the cash back on the credit card purchase, too, which is another $1 or so.

So basically it boils down to this: Buying the gift cards at the grocery instead of just paying with the credit card at the store earned me up to an extra $13, in addition to the $3 I would have earned if I just used the credit card linked to the UPromise account. Not too shabby, considering I was at the grocery store anyway, and I was going to buy the same stuff at the same stores whether I had gift cards or not.

Now, I know why the companies offer their cards for sale at the grocery. They're hoping that if you spend $25 on a gift card from Bath and Body Works, and your total comes to $22, you'll throw in an extra purchase so you won't have to carry around a piece of plastic that only has $3 left on it. If you buy one extra thing in addition to what you would have bought if you weren't using the gift card, they're making money off of you. But if you have the willpower (and purse space) to walk away from the extra purchases, gift cards that earn you extra grocery store credit can be a very deal.

Now I plan to go clean the store out of Home Depot cards so I can buy a new sink for our bathroom ... bwahahahahahahaha!

Children's book recommendations

Liza and I were running errands this morning and my attempt at rewarding her good behavior with a trip to the pet store went horribly, horribly wrong when the pet store was - horrors! - closed for remodeling. In an attempt to staunch the flow of tears and snot, we stopped by the Borders outlet store next door, where I promised her we could at least look at pictures of puppies, since the real ones were unavailable.

Thirty minutes of her banging tunelessly on a Little People xylophone book at least allowed me some time to browse through children's books that don't require a home equity line of credit to purchase. And I found two that I just love, love, love, and Liza does, too.


The first one is The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. Basically, it's about a girl who tells her art teacher she's no good at art, and the teacher inspires her to create a different kind of art, and at the end the girl passes that on to another kid. The whole thing is really simple - a sentence or two per page, with watercolor illustrations throughout. But it's got a great message about how art doesn't have to be a realistic drawing or sculpture, and the illustrations are so nifty I want to frame them and hang them all over my studio. Really, use the online reader tool on Amazon and browse through them ... I just love how this book looks. Anyhow, this would be great for kids who are just getting started with art or for older kids who have been getting frustrated because they can't duplicate the art they see around them.

Same theme, same author, different book: Ish, by Peter H. Reynolds. This time, it's a boy whose brother laughs at his drawings because they don't look exactly like what he's trying to draw, and the boy wants to give up drawing, but his sister shows him that looking "Vase-ish" is fine, and it lets the boy explore a whole different style of art. Again, great for young artists or those who are frustrated perfectionists, because the "ish" paintings are really cool despite not being photographically realistic portrayals of the objects.

One thing that I like about both of these books is that the characters aren't rich white kids - the girl in The Dot is named Vashti, and the boy in Ish is Ramon. There's nothing particularly multicultural beyond the names and the less-than-albino skin color, but it's still nice to see in a kids' book.

I recognized this author's work from the book Someday, which he coauthored with Alison McGhee and which my mother-in-law gave us at Thanksgiving. It's a beautiful book in the same vein as The Giving Tree, in that it makes me bawl like a baby if I read it to the kid during certain days of the month. Mother has hopes for her little girl, who grows up and moves away and remembers her mother when she's an old woman ... blah blah blah sniff bawl. Liza loves it, and I do too, except for the bawling involved, so I was glad to find some new books by the same illustrator so I can enjoy his paintings without dripping on them.

Anyhoo, The Dot and Ish are available at Borders outlet stores for about $4 in hardback.