Get Inspired: Pinterest

I'd like to make the forecast that Pinterest is going to be the next big thing. I might be wrong, but I'm certainly enjoying 'wasting' a lot of time getting sucked down its rabbit hole. Honestly, I'm starting to look at it more than Facebook! The above image is from my "front page", all the ever changing goodies I see when I log in.

What is Pinterest? They describe it like this in the about section of Pinterest "Think of Pinterest as a virtual pinboard — a place where you can create collections of things you love and "follow" collections created by people with great taste." But for me its a cross between a visual twitter and a really pretty google image search meets google reader. The layout is great and the functionality is so easy. What I like best is that I don't have to open any new programs, or do anything special exactly, other than installing the little browser add-on which makes pinning something super simple. Without investing any time in learning to use it, I can just create inspiration boards, group products together, and keep track of the things I like and inspire me!
This image from Kim's "Ideas" board, one of my favorite boards.

Why am I telling all of you about it? Well, one of my favorite things to follow on Pinterest is the ever growing DIY segment. So many people have boards titled DIY and there are some really great ideas, how-tos, and of course more inspiration!
This from Jesyka's "I heart handmade quilts" board, also great.

And, the more people on Pinterest the wider the variety & quality of the stuff pinned thus making searching on Pinterest better and better. I just can't get enough of it! (While looking for images to use in this post, I again got sucked down the rabbit hole!)

Fabric Flowers Inspired by Roesen Painting

Severin Roesen (1815 or 1816—after 1872)
Still Life of Flowers and Fruit with a River Landscape in the Distance, 1867
oil on canvas; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Earlier this week Beth A & our fab new assistant, Marley, came over for a make day in preparation of our upcoming demo at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. We were invited to present a few handmade projects inspired by works in the museum's collection as part of their Crafting from the Collection series. We'll be road-tripping up to Ft. Worth for this funtastic event on February 3!

At the Carter Museum, we'll be demonstrating how to make pretty flowers from upcycled t-shirts, as inspired by the abundance of flowers in this gorgeous painting from the collection. We'll have 3 different types to show the museum guests who want to get crafty with us.




One type is made from stacking layers of clover-shaped fabric, resulting in a sweet flower with big, floppy petals. Marley models one she made, showing how cute it would be as an embellishment on her beret.

Another, slightly more involved, type is a really full flower made from circles of fabric that are first folded into wedges & strung together, then fluffed & sewn in place & fluffed some more until you get it just right.
 



The last type of flower we made was a super-simple rolled one. It works great with the hem of a shirt, especially if it has some fancy trim or stitching.



Here's all of our finished little pretties ready to be placed in an arrangement. I'll be attaching them to stems of some sort & arranging in a vase for their big debut in Ft. Worth.

We have two more art-inspired project examples we'll be taking with us to Ft. Worth as well. Stay tuned to see those in future posts!

Inspiring Places: The Blanton Museum of Art

Re-posted from Crafty Mishmash, 8/22/10.

I recently visited the Matisse as Printmaker exhibit at The Blanton and fell in love. I hadn't set foot in this lovely little gem of a museum on The University of Texas campus since I was an art student at UT, and I'm really glad I've rediscovered it.

This collection of etchings, lino-cuts, lithographs & other prints by Henri Matisse was phenomenal! I've been a big admirer of his work since I first saw his Woman in a Purple Coat at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on a high school field trip. Getting a long look at that wondrous painting up close & personal had a powerful effect on me and influenced my decision to pursue an art degree.

What has always astounded me about Matisse's work is his extremely adept handling of line. He had an uncanny ability to capture the essence of his subject matter with a few perfectly placed, wonderfully expressive lines. Matisse's magical way with line holds true for all of his artwork, be it a seemingly simple painting of lemons in a bowl or one of his colorful paper collages, but I find it especially lovely in the portraits he drew.

His Young Woman Contemplating a Goldfish Bowl (below), one of a series of etchings of women gazing at goldfish in a bowl, really knocked me out. I love the little details: the curls of hair, the overlapped hands and the way the ladies' chins rest on them, and of course the shapes of the goldfish themselves, all suggested by a few carefully observed lines. These lines by Matisse never seem over-worked. He placed them confidently & gracefully, without regard to perfection, which imparts so much energy and expressive character to his work.

Unfortunately, the Matisse as Printmaker exhibit at The Blanton is now closed & will soon be heading up to Canada for a showing at the Art Gallery of Alberta. But The Blanton has tons more to offer! They have very impressive & renowned permanent collections as well as an ongoing variety of temporary exhibitions.

And get this, admission is free every Thursday! How great is that? Get on over to The Blanton & treat your eyes to some fabulous art! Find all the details on their Visit page.

Young Woman Contemplating a Goldfish Bowl

Craftrepreneurs: Rosalie Gale, Tara Gentile & Megan Auman

I've come across some very cool, helpful resources for indie craft biz owners recently & wanted to share. I am simply in awe of the brilliant ladies behind these organizations. Hope you find them as interesting & inspiring as I have! ~Beth H

First up is Rosalie Gale, founder of Unanimous Craft, a tagable, sortable index of resources for crafters, artists and indie business owners. Rosalie says,

"I was inspired to build Unanimous Craft after seeing a huge list of links to different resources that The House of Mouse posted in the Etsy forums. I wanted to make a tool that our community could use to get organized and share information.

It's sort of like Yelp for the crafty community. People can submit resources (great articles on Twitter, awesome magazines, online tools, accounting spreadsheets, inspirational blogs - whatever) and the community votes on the usefulness of each listing. Then, people can curate lists of resources that fall into a common theme like: 10 things you should do when you start your indie business, 500 ways to deal with Twitter, etc."

Pretty awesome, no? Rosalie recently added The WonderCraft to the index - check it out! We are honored! And we'd totally love it if you visited our listing & rated us, so that we might place high in the Popularity Contest. : )

Next up is Tara Gentile of Scoutie Girl fame. Tara has long been an involved & highly respected member of the crafting community through her work as the editor & head writer behind Scoutie Girl, "the blog with a penchant for the passionately handmade."

Now she's taking it up a notch with the launch of her awesome new Big Thinking for Small Businesses blog & a "big thinking" consulting biz. The gist of it:

"We specialize in web strategy, branding, product development, community building, and marketing to help build your small biz empire. Specifically, I work with creative entrepreneurs: those interested in building their businesses by breaking down convention and finding customers who think outside-the-box too.

To help you reach your goals, I have a wide range of products & services. Here you will find self-paced products, a la carte services, and full-fledged invasion packages to suit your needs no matter what stage your empire is in. I only ask that if you decide to work with me or buy my product, you are committed to your own success – regardless of fear, opposition, and self-doubt – as I am."

Sounds amazing; Tara really knows how to cut right to the heart of the matter for small biz owners. I've been very inspired by her writing on her blogs & just bought her "52 Weeks of Blogging Your Passion" e-book! I'm looking forward to getting re-energized about my creative work & revamping my own blog with Tara's wonderful advice.

And last, but certainly not least, Megan Auman, the genius behind Crafting an MBA. Her blog is filled with tons of great information & business advice for designers & makers. It runs the gamut from practical posts on making & manufacturing to extremely thought-provoking discussions on product development & growing your business. The blog covers everything in between & above & beyond these topics, too - it is a wealth of great information! 

You can even take part in the Crafting an MBA book club! Megan says, 

"One of my goals when starting this website was to create a community where designers and makers could come together and discuss business related books and concepts. Its partly selfish – I always find myself wanting to discuss what I’m reading with others. But I also want to help others read business books and figure out [how] to apply those principals to their own craft-based businesses."

I hope you'll check out these ladies' websites - they're all very engaging reads that inspire deep thinking about our field & offer many amazing resources for growing a small business.

Green Crafts to Honor Earth Day's 40th Anniversary

Happy Earth Day, everyone! What are you doing to celebrate? I've rounded up some awesome green crafting ideas from the blogosphere to share with you. I hope you find them inspiring!

First up, my absolute favorite idea: Jessica Wilson's Garden to Go tutorial, which she shared on the Craft blog. She made pretty little gift jars full of seeds from her garden, complete with costume jewelry-topped lids, to give to friends.

What a wonderful way to share plants & spread the gardening love! As an avid gardener myself, I'd love to receive a gift like this. I'm now thinking of which of my plants I can collect seeds from to make my own jars to give...

Another awesome garden-sharing idea is making your own seed tape. Amber of Giver's Log has put together a fab DIY seed tape tutorial (thanks to Rachel for sharing it on Craft!). Amber's how-to explains how to make the seed tape as well as how to turn it into a super-cute gift.

Seed tape helps a lot when planting those extremely tiny little seeds. It allows you to create nice rows with the seeds evenly spaced. And what a great way to share the bounty of your garden & inspire others to grow their own!

Along with tending the earth in the form of gardening, being a good steward of our planet includes the three R's of course! This next idea helps you reduce the amount of plastic you send to the landfill: reusable food storage bags. Bells and Unicorns, a great Etsy shop with an even better name, stocks their shop with a plethora of reusable bags in lots of sizes & pretty fabrics. They have Velcro closures & a water-resistant nylon lining for easy cleanup. How cute is this "Give a Hoot" bag?!

There are also lots of opportunities to reduce & reuse in the ways we clean our homes. One of my favorite tools is my Swiffer, but I don't like the throw-away nature of the cloths. So I was super-excited to find The Quilting Mama, an Etsy shop that offers reusable cloth Swiffer covers (among lots of other great earth-friendly products).

I bought a set of these covers & I looooove them - I highly recommend them! You just throw 'em in your washer & they're good to go for tons more uses. Here's a tip, though: give them a quick rinse under the tap to remove major dust bunnies before throwing in the laundry; they'll come out of your washing machine a lot cleaner.

Etsy has tons of awesome, earth-friendly products, of course; way too many to list here. A search for "eco friendly" comes up with over 51,000 results!

And now for the grand finale, a masterpiece of recycling (or upcycling may be the more accurate term for these): reclaimed plastic horse sculptures by Sayaka Ganz (via Craft again).

Wowee-wow-wow! I can't get over these. So beautiful, and made from discarded spatulas & the like!

I hope these craftacular ideas inspire you to come up with your own ways of honoring Mother Nature today. Please leave any awesome green crafting ideas or links of your own in the comments - thanks for reading!

Not Your Average Neckwear!

Last night, The WonderCraft gals hosted a little party at our new space at The Art Pad as a trial-run for the fabulous Grand Opening celebration we're planning on Feb. 25th. Stay tuned for more details on that - you're gonna love it!

The theme of our GO party is "Tie One On" & we'll be doing techniques such as embroidery & screen-printing on thrifted, possibly super-ugly, neckties all night long. Here are some more pics from our experiments last night:

Our crafty pals from the EtsyAustin team, Samantha of Nepenthe's Bathtime, Cathie of Sweet Wolf & Camille of Diamonds and Guns, checking out the beautiful selection at Lapis Lane Beads.

Camille sported one of the pretty crystal-adorned fascinators she's making now - love it!





See all the pics from our pre-party in our Soft Grand Opening Flickr set. And be sure to mark your calendar for Thursday, February 25 so you can come out & embellish a necktie with us, enjoy fantastic local makers of handmade goods, tasty local food & drinks, plus lots more!

Craftiness is Genetic

When you ask crafters where they find inspiration you get the standard answers of nature, other crafters, family, etc, etc. Makes sense. We are products of our environment and what we surround ourselves with. Which is why I decided to focus on my grandmother as a source of inspiration this week. My grandmother just celebrated another birthday this past Sunday and I am continually amazed at how spry she is. Since I am trying to be a good grand-daughter, I won't mention her real age, but let's just say she was school age during the depression. I won't say which school *grin*.

This is as messy as her work area gets.

Anyway, she is such an active person. Still heads up a local group for women trying to lose weight or keep it off (I'm convinced she joined because they get to put on little plays at the larger gatherings and she is in charge of the putting together the script and the costumes), works with the volunteer fire department and takes care of my grandfather, who is somewhere in the range of 10 years younger. Every Christmas she makes ornaments for the entire family and custom makes boxes for each of them. For holidays she has been known to make Santa or Easter Bunny place card holders for the dinner table and has sewn curtains to match the custom made sheets for the beds. Yes, she can make fitted sheets. My favorite is the ginormous Last Suppers she crochets during the winters for family member who are getting married. They are large enough to cover a good sized wall. She also keeps scissors all over the house. There is always a pair just a step away. She made holders for them all using those cheap pot holders you can get anywhere. She folded them into a cone, sewed them up and used the existing loop to hang them by.


To me, she is summed up by looking in her spice cabinet. She makes labels for all the jar lids, has them on a tiered shelf and each row is alphabetized. This is my grandmother. Organized, neat, precise and just a little spicy.