Gift giving

I like to go a little crazy when I wrap gifts. I love doing it so much that one year one of my coworkers paid me to wrap all of her Christmas gifts on my lunch break. I had a lot of fun doing it, and she kept bringing me presents to say thank you.
My favorite presents to wrap are books, because you end up with a flat, thin-ish surface to work with. Making the wrapping a part of the gift just feels better, like I'm creating less waste. I also try to only use what I have around the house because buying pretty paper that's only going to be thrown away seems strange to me.
This one is a book about Bob Marley that I bought for my sister during the last Chronicle Books sale. First I wrapped it with a piece of drawing paper that had been sliced with an exacto knife on accident. It looked so tempting as a blank canvas that I had to rewrap it with a nice piece so I could draw on it.

I was listening to great music while I drew which gave me the coolest idea for the circle journal swap at Glitter, but more about that later.

I used a picture in an old embroidery book as inspiration- I think it came out pretty nicely.

This one was a copy of The Prophet for my friend Laura. I had to add all sorts of pretty stitches because I cut the ribbon to short and didn't have enough left over to fit around it either. The butterfly sticker is covering where I sewed the ribbon together. Then I decided that I couldn't just write her name on the wrapping, like I usually do, so I made the little butterfly tag out of origami paper.

Someday these will all be swapped

I made these pendants out of porcelain and fired them using various techniques- some are regular gazes fired to cone 10 and the shiny ones are raku fired. The plan is to use them for jewelry for swaps, but some of them I like to much to send away.

Birthday No. 27

I adore birthdays, both my own and other people's. I've never been one of those people who thinks of it as "just another day".
This year I had a very quiet birthday, which started with the perfect morning for sleeping in. Cloudy and cool- we don't get days like this in August very often.

For breakfast I made myself Special Gunpowder green tea in my favorite mug (my momma made it for me) and oatmeal with fruit. I ate it at my desk downstairs while listening to the best college radio station ever. After I ate I changed the sheets and enjoyed the quiet beauty and bliss of a freshly made bed. Someday when I'm rich (but not famous, because I don't want to be on TV or in People magazine like, ever) I'll have fresh sheets everyday.

Then I hit the thrift store and the magazine stand for some birthday goodies. The cards crack me up!


Later, while I was buying myself a flikr pro account with my b-day money from my parents, I heard something smacking against the window in my studio room. It was the biggest toad I've ever seen trapped down there. I don't know how they get down there, but in every window well we have a colony of toads and salamanders, and sometimes snakes. The toads jump up to catch bugs and thump the windows. They're cute, but it sounds so gross.

When the hubster got home, we got ready to go out to dinner at Hapa in Boulder. On the way we saw a rainbow and these clouds that looked a lot like a mushroom cloud. We couldn't decide if that was a good omen or a bad one.

Dinner was wonderful! I don't have any pictures of the sushi because it disappeared to quickly, and I don't have any pictures of us because I drank sake and cocktails and got really ah, well you know.

Then I spent the rest of the week in blissful laziness. I gave myself the gift of being forever 22 years old on the inside. So, while on the outside I'm now in my "late" twenties (oh eww) with a "real" job and plans to buy my very own house and finish grad school, on the inside I'm still the giant slacker who loves playing video games all day, drinking at all hours, and just doesn't care about silly things like bills and other people's opinions. Twenty seven is going to be a great year!

Cruel, cruel Summer

Beautiful morning
sun, I wish you wouldn't use
your power to melt

Oh, it's a sad morning here at the Copy Shop .

For work I have to cart my own supplies between 5 different schools. To keep the disaster in my car to a minimum I toss everything in a plastic crate in the back seat. When school ended last Spring I left the crate sitting under the window in my studio room until I needed it again. I have to make a lot of my own games and supplies and was planning on doing that this summer, but being a slacker I found "better" things to do with my time. I climbed trees, played hours of video games, went camping, slept in, watched the Tyra show and Starting Over (Shut up. It is real life. It's not just another stupid, whiney reality show. It's not!), and mostly ignored the fact that I'd have to go back to work in just 2 short months.Sadly, reality is setting in. Last night I realized that I'd better get my act together this weekend. So this morning I pulled out my crate of supplies to get ready for next week. And there, on top of the pile, was my plastic bag of crayons that the kids use. All melty and sad. No one will use these now! Look at them. The horror is almost unbearable.
I'm not a crafty sub-hero for nothing though! I'm gonna melt these babies down all the way and make some mini crayons to give as prizes for the little ones! I felt bad last year that I only used praise as a reward, so it will be nice to have some incentives. If only I could find a way to get the teens excited about high school.

But dang it, now I have to buy new crayons. Poop.

Professor Chaos!

Sometimes I think I need to put in for a crafty sub-hero name change. You can do that while you're still a sub-hero, you know. It's when you get the promotion to full time Hero that the paperwork is too overwhelming to deal with.

This is the current state of my sewing table, from craft project view. It's a HUGE mess, but I think I work the best when I'm surrounded by crafty bits and bobs. Current projects in the hopper: Hedwig and the Angry Inch Apron (I was going to make it for Tie One On, but uh, I didn't), Needle book, T shirt quilt, necklaces, sleep mask, and a way over the top planetary mobile. I think that last one will take years, as it's still in the planning stages and, like I said, way over the top.

Hopefully I'll finish something off this list so my WIP post tomorrow won't be so huge!
Of course, I might just go play Fable for the rest of the day. I am NOT watching any more news though. No water bottles on airplanes? Wow. I don't... just wow.

Woo woo swap

Shrine, originally uploaded by Pearliepie.

I finally finished it! I have been working on this shrine for a swap on glitter for a year. I am so excited that it will soon be in it's new home. Click the photo to go to my flickr photos, the shrine pictures are in the art projects set.

Now I have so many crafty ideas for myself that I don't know what to work on next! I still have a huge project to do list, so I'll just pick something off of it. I'm trying to finish up all of my UFOs laying around, because it's really bad Fung Shui to not finish things. So I'll put the new ideas in the sketchbook and finish something else up.

On Prayer

You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.

For what is prayer but the expansion of yourself into the living ether?
And if it is for your comfort to pour your darkness into space, it is also for your delight to pour forth the dawning of your heart.
And if you cannot but weep when your soul summons you to prayer, she should spur you again and yet again, though weeping, until you shall come laughing.
When you pray you rise to meet in the air those who are praying at that very hour, and whom save in prayer you may not meet.
Therefore let your visit to that temple invisible be for naught but ecstasy and sweet communion.
For if you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking you shall not receive:
And if you should enter into it to humble yourself you shall not be lifted:
Or even if you should enter into it to beg for the good of others you shall not be heard.
It is enough that you enter the temple invisible.

I cannot teach you how to pray in words.
God listens not to your words save when He Himself utters them through your lips.
And I cannot teach you the prayer of the seas and the forests and the mountains.
But you who are born of the mountains and the forests and the seas can find their prayer in your heart,
And if you but listen in the stillness of the night you shall hear them saying in silence,
"Our God, who art our winged self, it is thy will in us that willeth.
It is thy desire in us that desireth.
It is thy urge in us that would turn our nights, which are thine, into days which are thine also.
We cannot ask thee for aught, for thou knowest our needs before they are born in us:
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all."
~Kahlil Gibran


As I pray tonight, I give thanks for a very sweet and loving friend who allowed me to pour out all of my black thoughts and then comforted me even though she is miles and miles away. I was able to enter the temple invisible with gladness in my heart and a smile (and, I'll admit, some tears) on my face.

If you're a hippie and you know it,

Patch your pants!
I patched the knees of these (thrifted) work pants for the hubster while he read me an article out of National Geographic about the dire state of our environment.
It was sort of a pain because I had to rip out the side seam to get the pants onto the sewing machine, but they came out great. Of course, now I have to add some more patches because there are new holes up near the pockets, but I'd rather patch these until there isn't anything left than contribute to the destruction of the planet by buying a new pair.
Hooray for recycling!

swap preview

Just a preview picture I need to show someone.

It's for a swap, and I've been working on it forever. I feel so bad that I'm taking so long! I think from here on out I'm only going to swap things I've already finished so I don't have this problem anymore.

Walkin' in a spider web

DSCN0233, originally uploaded by Pearliepie.

EEEEE! Poor neglected blog! So much has been happening around here, and I haven't been updating at all.

Here's some of the things that are coming soon:
Botanic garden trip
Sewing room update
Projects I'm working on

Hmmm. There were some other things as well, but now I cannot remember.

Long road

Cleaning not only opened the crafty block, it let out a monster! I talked to our housemate, Whit, over the phone (she's out of town) and decided to totally redo the sewing room! It's really just the corner of the never used game room, which is part of the reason I never wanted to do any work in there. It's huge, messy, lonely, cold, and worst of all, dark.

Thankfully Whit was excited about the idea, and I let her pick the colors that I'll use, since she won't be here. So everything is going to be blue and purple, with a little bit of red and orange thrown in for fun.

I started with all the crap that's been laying around for months. That lead to cleaning out two closets, getting rid of stuff, packing stuff in boxes. Now I'm working on getting everything out of the room and washing the carpets.

If I ever finish the floors, I'm going to move everything back in and as soon as my sewing machine is set up work on stuff to make the room a nicer place to hang out. Maybe I'll have some company down there at night instead of being a hermit crafter! Here's some of what I planned:

1. Make a T shirt quilt for Whit to go in the room. We both had a huge pile of clothes to donate and I pulled out some shirts to make blankets with.
   
2. Make a blanket out of Dana's soft old polo shirts. (I also pulled these out of the donate pile)
3. Recover the 2 green plaid chairs down there. I really like the fabric they are covered with now, but it's very worn.
4. Recover the recliner. I think I'm just going to sew a thrifted sheet right to the upholstery that it has now, because I am way to lazy to make a fitted recliner cover. Eww.
5. Recover the reclining couch thing. This will be with sheets too, I'm sure.
   
6. Make a floor rug. Or thift one. I hope I can find one.
7. Make a flower thing for Whit's door.
8. Pillows! I'm gonna try some floor tuffets and such-like, and a little bed for Whit's dog. He hates the basement almsot as much as I do!
9. Some kind of quilty wall art thing.

I have some posters from my old office that will look great in there, and I'm going to hang this big trivet thing on the wall, just to be silly. And I'm getting lamps! Goodby gloom.

I'll post pictures as I go- I can't leave those messy pictures of my house up with no cleaner follow up shots!

All great truths begin as blasphemies

I've been fighting a craft block for weeks now. My brain is exploding with ideas, but I haven't been able to make anything. This morning I took a long hard look around and discovered (I hope) the cause of my problem.
Here's the "sewing" room:

And the "studio":

Now, I don't have these rooms to myself, so not all of this mess is mine. I'm still horrified at the state of these rooms. I guess that means that this weekend will be all cleaning. blah.