Like Clockwork

Jen here. Recycling and upcycling are two of my favorite ways to get material for my projects. At the last bead show I attended I bought a bag of watch parts and proceeded to play with them the second I got back to a work space. I had a few used gift cards around and figured I'd throw those into the mix, too.

Here is the random mix of parts before I started playing.

I started cutting shapes out of the gift cards and drilled holes in them. Hmmm, wonder where I got them... hee hee.


Here are some earrings I made with just findings and watch parts.


And the ones I paired with the gift card shapes and watch parts.


Watch parts and beads...

The most fun for me is spreading out all the random materials I collect and just start mixing and matching. Put stuff next to each other to see how materials interact visually. Basically, just play and see what happens. Playing without expectations is the surest way to break any creative block.

Hearts Afire

Jen here. Thought I'd share my latest project. I was sitting at my table during the Staple! show listening to my neighbor talk about how his friend modified one of those blank Munny's by cutting out it's chest and dangling a heart from the inside. Somehow that translated into this necklace idea.

I started with a sketch. The idea for the ring around the heart was modeled after a hose clamp, like the ones you find under the hood of your car. I wanted to add texture so I thought it would be nice to make the heart out of felt.

I had intended to use brass for the ring but couldn't find it due to my recent move so I finally cut into the silver sheets I've had laying around for years. It felt good being brave enough to use it.

So I cut into the silver, drilled holes at each end, shaped it around one of my mandrels and bent the ends. I took some wire, looped it and hung some chain from the center.

I cut out the felt heart...

... sewed the edges and stuffed it with cotton.

Add some chain and there is my necklace idea pretty much how I was imagining it. Which is a rare thing, but a pleasant surprise.

Creative Music Videos

In honor of SXSW, we thought we would share with you some artistic music videos that may inspire your next project!

PacoVolume Cookie Machine
What you'll find in this video: Stop Motion Animation (hereto refered to as "SMA") paper, typography, rotoscoping, perler beads, embroidery thread, nails, clay... I'm definitely leaving something out.

Wax Tailor featuring Charlie Winston I own you
What you'll find in this video: SMA paper cut outs that create an entire city, a fold out house, lots of typography.



Architecture in Helsinki Like it or Not
What you'll find in this video: ZOMG the whole thing is embroidered!


They Might Be Giants Why does the sun shine?
What you'll find in this video: SMA felt cats explain why the sun is so darn hot. Mmmm, crafts AND science!


Lisa Hannigan I don't know
What you'll find in this video: An empty room becomes filled with paper cut outs.


White Stripes Fell in Love with a Girl
What you'll find in this video: SMA Lego goodness. Michael Gondry goodness. And perhaps a weird memory of high school...


Ok Go This too Shall Pass
What you'll find in this video: An elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine. Legos make a cameo.





Smashing Pumpkins Tonight Tonight
What you'll find in this video: A creepy paper mache moon. More weird high school memories.



We can't have a post about music videos on Get Crafty with out Leslie and the Lys!
Leslie and the Lys Craft Talk
What you'll find in this video: A giant gem sweater. :D

*Warning!* Shameless Plug Ahead! If you have a love for Rock n Roll, my brother's band Night Horse is in from Los Angeles to play SXSW this year. Check them out if you dare!

It's Curtains...For My Bed

I've moved into a loft which is basically one open space, so I thought it would be nice to divide the space up a little. I wanted to create a separate space for my sleeping area as the rest of the space is a working/crafting area. I decided to make and install curtain and it gave me the chance to get a little creative...

Since there were no walls on which to install a run of the mill curtain rod, I had to find an alternative that would allow me to hang the rod by attaching it to one wall and suspending the other end some how. So here's what I came up with. The rod is actually a 10 foot galvanized plumbing pipe!


On the suspension side, I used a chain with a ring at the end of it suspended from the rafters. That little blue bit is painter's tape. Here's the part where I admit that I didn't do this perfectly. Since I didn't have a high enough ladder. I taped a hook to the end of my broom handle then hooked it to the rafter. I then tugged hard (maybe too hard) to pull the tape off...and not all of it came off. So I'm gonna need to borrow a ladder and do it right...lol.


The pipe also happens to be threaded on both ends so I used a plumbing floor flange, but installed it on the wall and simply screwed in the end.


I made the curtains from liner because it was cheap and I didn't need any real thickness because these were just to divide space and I didn't want to lose much light anyway. I made very simple curtains by folding the top edge over twice and then I sewed about half an inch in from the top and a half an inch from the bottom of the folded edge...


and here's the part where the real sewers might want to close their eyes/shut their ears, I cut a slit every five and seven inches alternating and fed the pipe through (as you can see below). This is what gave the curtains a gathered look without having to do a proper gather. So if you look closely you can see the unfinished/frayed edges, but sigh, I am admittedly a quick and dirty crafter. Would be curious to hear ideas of how people might get around the fray. I thought about iron on ribbon...Any ideas?


I use ribbons to tie the curtains when I don't want them blocking the space. I will eventually install a hook on the side of the wall so I can sweep them to one side, if necessary.


I liked the look so well, that I decided to install it at the head of the bed as well. Ok, ok, it's also because I have commitment issues with putting artwork on walls and this was an easy way out. ;)

Get Crafty during SXSW!

Every year our town goes on overload during South by Southwest (SXSW) and there is something new and different to do every night of the week. I'm going to let ya'll know about some artsy & crafty events that are totally open to the public and should not be missed!

Kicking things off on Friday, March 11th, Up Collective is having their first ever gallery opening from 7-10pm at Starving Art Studios. The new collective consists of the artists we share quarters with at Starving Art, and they're planning some great programming all year, so stay tuned!


Artist in residence, Emily Mitchell is heading up the group and does amazing drawings of faces, as evidenced in her self portrait, above.On Saturday, March 12th, you'll have a couple options. First off, the folks from Etsy.com, headquartered in Brooklyn, are heading down and hosting two days of parties on Saturday and Sunday, 12pm-2am at 222 on 6th Street (Aces Lounge). The programming will include on site make and take crafts, DIY installations, an awesome showcase of local crafters put up by EtsyAustin (full disclosure, I'm the president of EtsyAustin), a fashion show from Burda Style, panel discussions from big names in the crafting industry, and of course face time with the peeps who make Etsy amazing! Visit the event page on Facebook for more details and to RSVP.

Also on Saturday the 12th, Friday the 18th and Sat. the 19th, Equinox Mish Mash goes down at Starving Art's backlot (Blue Starlite), featuring art, film and music. See their Facebook event pages for more details. Stella's will be open for business during these parties, so come on by and say hello!

Don't forget to visit South Congress both weekends to shop tons of local artists!

For those of you into music, I have to plug my hubs. His podcast, Active Listener, is set to release a series of SXSW favorites. He's listened to about half of the 2000 bands set to come, and will let you know his favorites and what not to miss in the music arena. Last year he had 13 mixes of different genres!

Hope your SXSW experience this year is awesome! Let us know what you're up to!

My Handmade Nursery

Today I was at last able to get some decent pictures of the nursery. Baby Orion was born way back on January 8th and almost everything in the nursery was ready for him. I know I've mentioned a few projects in previous posts so here they are, finally!

A few weeks ago in the post about the Martha Stewart Fabric Crafts book I mentioned that I used her tutorial to make a bumper for my crib. I didn't follow it exactly, and thus my bumper is more floppy than I'd like, and I definitely ran into a few crafty disasters, but I'm really happy with it. Kim and my mom helped me finish it in time, only a week before Orion's due date.
We did a patchwork of a bunch of lovely Echino fabrics I bought both here at the Stitch Lab and back in LA at Michael Levine. Getting the order of the patchwork just right was pretty complicated, especially since I've never done quilting!
I'm proud of the finished product and Orion loves to stare at it, especially the black buses. You can also see the signed crib sheet from my shower that I love to read for Orion.

Also from my Texas baby shower, the monster mobile! Now making that mobile was a lot more time consuming than I'd figured, below is the way I did the layout. I actually made two mobiles since I had so many monsters,the second one is for over the changing table, and he loves it!Some of you know the story of my crib, so I'll just tell a condensed version here. Long story short I couldn't find the crib that I'd fallen in love with available anywhere, so I ended up buying it on Craigslist from someone in Orange County, CA! Had it shipped out here and then I painted the ends gray to match the nursery better (they were originally a blue shade that I detested). I had specifically fallen in love with the slats with their little circles, and still, I'm in love with it!We also did a DIY changing table inside our old armoire. Aaron built a little slide out shelf for the pad to go on and it works like a charm. We ended up taking the doors off it though, cause it was annoying to always have to open them up when O needed a changing. Also above on the back of our glider, you can see this quilt a friend of mine's mom made, its pretty amazing!
Here is the opposite view of the room with our little fold out futon for guests, I have been meaning to get it reupholstered so for the pic I just tucked the fabric's on, you get the idea. The little owl guy there is a crocheted gift from a friend in LA who owns Peanut Butter Dynamite, she also made the crochet throw hanging on the side of the crib. And note my Vampire Weekend print I got last year at the SXSW flat stock show.

Next, I'll talk about the lighting. We got this sweet anemone light (I'd seen on the Project Nursery blog) from my awesome Mother-in-law, but when it arrived it was soooo heavy. Probably weighed like 50lbs and the screws were all but impossible to get in, so we had to rig up this system to perch it up against the ceiling and screw it in (mind you I was like super prego during this project and basically no help). You might be able to see in the pic, but we used a bunch of craft books to get the right height, haha!The other lights are an LED strand of lights from Ikea that I added the little balls on. I got the colored balls from Thailand when we were on our trip and hadn't figured out a use til now. I had to hot glue them onto the strand and they ended up working perfectly.

Down in the corner there you can see the octopus chair I designed for Babystyle when I worked there in 2006, a family friend had it as a hand-me-down and was so generous to give it to us!

And lastly, I sewed up these little owls from a kit I bought at the Tate Modern in London when I was there last year, they're puppets!

Visual Indulgence; Arranging Items by Color

Hello Crafters! I'd like to introduce myself! My name is Jesyka D'Itri Marés and I run my blog Visual Vocabulary and my small (but growing!) Etsy shop, in Flore. I'm also a freelance graphic designer and full time mom to one little (a girl version). Beth A and I are besties from High School, and she asked me to be a regular guest blogger here at Get Crafty! Beth mentioned me back in October when she made a post about her trip to So Cal. I'm so excited to be a small part of the awesomeness that is the wondercraft and all that I get to hear about it from way out in Los Angeles! I hope to be sharing part of the scene here in LA with you, hitting up some of our famous flea markets and some great shops that specialize in handmade, as well as sharing some of my own artistic endeavors or aesthetic musings. Today I'll be taking from a topic I have covered previously on my blog, arranging books by color.

When I was a child, I would spend hours arranging my things on a shelf. I would play until my ceramic figurines were just right, place my books in order from tallest to shortest, and in numerical order if in a series. This grew into a general love of the book as decorating device--I still think books are hands down the best things to decorate with.

I started organizing my closet by color when I was a teenager (and by what hanger they were on--luckily, I have only the black huggable hangers now, and I don't have to worry about the color of my hangers anymore. That was just too much!). After staring at a bookshelf that was thrown together pell-mell from a recent room re-arranging, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and thought to rearrange them by color. I also did this to my DVDs. Hell, I even arrange our cereal boxes by color, since they sit on an exposed shelf in the kitchen. Most people think I'm a bit crazy when they notice... usually I get "Who did that?!", and then "Well, that's silly... you have to remember the color of a book, instead of the title...". But I figure I'm looking at these books more than I'm looking for them, so having them beautifully arranged makes much more sense. Apparently, that's what the staff at Dwell think as well. Senior Editor Aaron Brit says "We organize our books by color here (not terribly efficient, I fear, though lovely to behold)". And isn't that the truth!

Bookshelf at Dwell Magazine's office

Bookshelf at Dwell Magazine's office

In the Dwell article about this little phenomenon, he goes on to describe how, while he can't find the book he's looking for (although he remembers it is yellow), he finds an essay in a back catalog of Design Observer by Rob Giampietro pondering arranging books by color. He confirms my idea; if you have to look at it, it should be pretty.

"Our bookshelves often take up a good deal of space in the places we live and work, and organizing them by color transforms them from a banal backdrop into a poppy, rainbow-colored focal point. Books organized by color are cool to look at."

The inspiration for this post came from my recent finding of the photoblog bookshelf porn. Imagine my delight to discover I am not alone (37k and counting) in my love of the visual splendor books and bookshelves. Even though arranging books by color doesn't make sense to most people who see it at my house, I am not alone!

... And while arranging books by color might be more about aesthetic than ease of finding, arranging other things by color can serve a very practical purpose. Often you don't see how materials could work together until you see them near other materials of a similar shade. Arranging by hue is something (that should be) important to all who make! Let's see how people organize a variety of stashes:

Anna Maria's fabric cupboard

rose hip's yarn stash

So, in-depth intellectual analysis and musings beside, how do you all organize your bookshelves? Beyond that, how do you organize your yarn stashes, your embroidery threads, your beads, and your fabric? Does it help you find new ways of using materials you already had? Share some pics with us if you have them!