More Wallpaper on the Wall

Buntings are on my mind for some reason. Here's my newest vintage wallpaper bunting in my pumpkinbear etsy shop, made with my much-treasured vintage wallpaper and my much-, much-treasured vintage beads:

While I'm on the subject, I also have in mind buntings made from comic books, buntings made from dictionary pages, buntings made from Shakespeare, and child-decorated buntings.

I like where this is going.

Tutorial: Beaded Ribbon Necklace for She of Little Patience

Beading a necklace is actually a bit of a commitment.

I have beads and the kiddos have beads (actually, some of their beads are better than my beads, but who compares Christmas presents?), and they often like to do stuff with their beads. Who wouldn't? They're colorful!

Gluing beads all over something is cool, but beading an entire necklace, especially a necklace long enough that they can slip over their heads in order to dress themselves independently, is along the lines of "death do you part" for the under-7 set.

But you know what they say--tantrums are the mother of invention. That's how I invented this project that will turn any amount whatsoever of beaded strand into a beautiful, wearable necklace.

You will need:

• beading cord. We use plain old fishing line.
• beads and baubles--anything with a hole in the middle
• ribbon
• super glue--we use E6000

1. Give each kid enough fishing line in case she strings enough beads for an entire necklace. Tie a bead firmly to one end of the length of line.

2. Let the kids string beads to their hearts' content. I give each of my girlies one of their compartmentalized plates to work on--it gives them a couple of compartments to sort beads, and the largest compartment generally catches the odd dropped bead, IF they work over it (big if, I know).

3. Once the kid gets bored, have her give you back the line with whatever amount of beads that she's strung. Measure out the length of line that she has unbeaded, minus two inches, and match that, plus two inches, with ribbon. You're adding four total inches to the necklace's measurement, do you get it?

4. Use that extra inch of line and extra inch of ribbon on each side of the lengths to tie the two together. Try to make your knot on each side snug against the beaded line--if you make it perfect, the necklace will actually look like the beads have been strung on the ribbon itself. Kinda cool-ish.

5. Trim the extra ribbon and line sticking out from each knot so that it looks neat and tidy.

6. For extra insurance, coat both knots with super glue, then let dry for a day.

Because she just wasn't enough of a fairy princess already?

How the Hands On Art Studio Stole My Heart

At the Hands On Art Studio in Door County, Wisconsin (post garage sale weekend and the day after the Beachfront Inn), Matt melted glass to make me some jewelry:
He did this all by his ownself:
(Eric, who is awesome enough to actually live in a trailer behind the welding studio, helped a little).

The girls fed the chickens, and enjoyed walking around while the flock parted like a prow through the ocean at their feet: Then they treated the mosaics barn like their own private candy shop: Sydney decorated a triceratops: Willow decorated a bunny:

They were gracious enough to let me assist once in a while:

We ran out of money before I could try fused glass, but the lampwork was for me, after all:

And thus we all ended up mightily pleased with ourselves:

If I, too, could someday find myself running a crazy DIY art studio with a farm attached, husband and kids in tow, I'd consider myself fixed up just about right.

Bead It for Love

Matt's parents were here this weekend, playing with the girls, taking us out to eat, and assigning themselves to random and very burdensome tasks around the house, so I had plenty of time to finish my denim quilt with heart appliques for my pumpkinbear etsy shop, to give up utterly on figuring out what material those vintage amber heart beads are made of and just post them, already, and to do a lot of work on my handmade Valentines. I wire-wrapped heart beads to the cards I'd punched holes in, and I think they look really fine:
My mother gave me those multi-colored heart beads for Christmas, and what is that vintage amber heart bead made of?

While I was searching etsy for beads similar to my amber ones (didn't find any), I did manage to fall in love with several other sets of vintage beads and baubles and buttons:

vintage aged brass heart charms by ellielantern

bag 0' red buttons by ric rac and buttons

I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy those brass charms, so don't you get there first.

In other news, even though Willow voted for McCain, we have been getting way amped up around here for the inauguration tomorrow. All weekend I've been blasting this four-CD set of modern reinterpretations of historical Americana songs--pre-Revolution on up--and so now Will's on board. Of course, she hates England now, but what can you do?

My favorite of Syd's photos from yesterday is entitled simply "Uncle Wiggley":

P.S. Check out my post about fun inauguration activities to do with kids over at Eco Child's Play. Except the comments? First this guy posts and chews me out for suggesting an activity that involves a paper plate and another that involves typing paper, so I had to post a pissy reply about how I clearly stated that you're supposed to use recycled cardboard instead of a paper plate and the backsides of used typing paper instead of new typing paper. Then? Some other person comments with a link to another web site that has educational quizzes for children on it, but I had to post another pissy reply that the site also has ads you have to watch before taking the quizzes and it lets you gamble for money.

WTF?

Heart Handmade: Some WIPs

Are you as stoked to ride the bus as my babies are? No? Well, then it probably wasn't as hell of a morning for you as it was for my babies, cause it was a hell of a morning for the babies this morning. Of course, we ride the bus something like every other day, so it's often a hell of a morning for them. Kids, you know?

And last night, my first night teaching for the semester, Matt made this for dinner:

It's going to be a hell of a semester, I can tell.

When I haven't been pre-screening Gone with the Wind or answering stupid questions ("Do we really need to buy ALL of the required textbooks for this class?"), I've been happily crafting away to a Valentine theme. After having monopolized our big living room table for nearly a week (carpet picnic, anyone?), I've finally finished the papercrafting portion of my Valentine's Classroom Card Exhange swap over at Craftster. Here are a couple of little peekies:

Next comes the beadwork and the adding of Christmas clearance tinsel, and after that comes the making of envelopes from old magazine pages. And then I send them. And then, in return, I get 23 lovingly crafted handmade Valentines from all my swap buddies--squeal!

One of the fun things I've been anticipating about this project is trying out some beadwork with some of the absolutely terrific vintage beads I scored at a garage sale last summer. I bought most of them intending to sell them on etsy, but really they need a more positive identification of provenance and material, so while I'm waiting for the library to buy me , I'm setting aside a few that I'd like to try crafting with myself, primarily ones with less traditional bead shapes that I can dangle as pendants from my soldering work, like these hearts:Resin? Lucite? Beats me. They rock, though, right?

This afternoon while the girls carefully picked out every single dried blueberry from the peanut butter and dried blueberry sandwiches I'd made them (you see why I need a creative outlet?) I finished cutting out the pieces for the two denim quilts with heart appliques that I'm planning--I was doing this a couple of weeks ago, but had to set it aside when I ran out of denim, and last week at the Recycling Center I actually had a pair of denim overalls in my hands, when some guy, I swear to god, walked up to me, took them out of my hands, walked back to his truck, threw them in the back, then got in himself and drove away. I called Matt right there on the sidewalk, totally incoherent with fury, and like a man he's all, "What are you talking about? Why do you want overalls?" Barf.

Anyway, here are some of the heart appliques we're decorating for our lap quilt for the living room:

And seriously, that's not even all of the heart-y goodness! The scrappy heart pinbacks that I put up in my etsy shop made some people happy (and therefore me, as well), so I've been making more. These use some old songbook pages, and I take unmitigated pleasure in putting a definitive sequence of notes on each pin:

I've been so addicted that I inadvertently passed on my addiction to my girls, and they have spent so long painstakingly choosing the exact one-inch circle punched from scrapbook paper and the exact tiny heart punched from a different scrapbook paper for each of a thousand pins each and then "helping" me make their buttons--

--that I've been spending much of that time patiently assisting them and also kind of screaming inside my head.

But it is through these kinds of sacrifices that a future generation of crafty divas is trained.

P.S. Check out my post about how much I heart Craftster over at Crafting a Green World.

Beady Photos on Etsy

My favorite part of selling on etsy is taking the photos of my stuff. Just to be braggy, here are the photos from the first set of beads I unstrung, cleaned, and am helping into a bigger, better life:

Such bright, happy beads from such an ugly necklace. Wish them well, these beads, that they find the urban chic or boho or contemporary casual jewelry item they've just been dreaming of belonging to.

Garage Sale Beads

On Saturday, as soon as Kid #2 wakes up (whining for nursie, if she's younger, or just stumbling around groggily, if she's older) and joins Kid #1 (already nursing, if she's younger, or still stumbling around groggily, if she's older), I go in and beat my partner around the head with pillows until he, too, wakes up and makes me some &^(*@)(# coffee, already. Then, of course, we hit the road with all the other sleep-deprived parents and their bright-eyed little children for a morning of farmer's market, garage sales, and the YMCA.

This Saturday we walked nice and early over to a garage sale just around the corner from our house. Dishes, Christmas stuff, stuffed animals--yawn. And yet...over by the peony bush, all those organizers and plastic containers and toolboxes and baskets all over the table and on the grass around it--I wonder what's in those? VINTAGE JEWELRY, that's what! But how much are they selling it for, you ask? ONE DOLLAR EACH?!!? "Each" including the huge Ziploc bags full of jewelry, as well as individual necklaces and rings and bracelets.

Commence tunnel vision. I systematically worked my way through every single organizer and plastic container and toolbox and basket. Oh, the awesomeness. Gawdy 70s brooches and beaded necklaces in crayon colors. Chunky 80s plastic geometric beaded jewelry. Native-style dyed-wood beaded chokers and stones set in wrapped wire. Neo-Victorian-style ornate metal bracelets. At some point, Matt wandered over and asked if I was almost done. Without looking up, I told him to give me all his money and take the girls for a bike ride. I'm sure he stiffed me, though, because there was a long pause before he handed me all of twenty bucks. How did he know that there was at least eighty bucks worth of jewelry covetousness in my heart?

In the end, I presented the little old lady who said that she used to collect jewelry but then stuck it all in storage for 20 years with exactly twenty items (a couple of them being the previously-mentioned Ziploc bags crammed with stuff) and handed her exactly twenty dollars. The joy, the joy, the joy in my heart cannot be expressed. Seriously, look what I scored:

Out of the 50+ pieces of jewelry I ended up with, 23 are super-tacky-enough and strung with such beautiful beads that I can de-string them and repurpose the beads in my own work and sell them as recycled supplies in my Pumpkin+Bear etsy shop. Look at the awesome wooden beads on this very ugly necklace:

There are also a ton of these 70s-era necklaces with their 70s-color chunky beads. I think these look like Jelly Beans:

These wire-wrapped stone necklaces will be especially cool, I think, unstrung and used a little less, um...exuberantly?

And then there were at least twenty or thirty other pieces that I handed over to the kids for craft projects and dress-up. We already used our newest favorite tool, the hot glue gun, to bling up the shelves over my work desk with some strung-bead swag, and here's what the kids have been doing at least twice a day every day since the garage sale:

Little Xsa-Xsas, aren't they? I like how even the kitty has been bedecked.

And amazingly, even with me being kind of about the butchest girl on the planet, I actually found three pieces of jewelry to make my own heart go pitter-pat--a brass chain to wear around my neck, a string of 70s orange beads, and this:

  

For one dollar! That there is the stuff that legends are made of.

The sweetest finds, though, were a couple of pieces of genuine jewelry for the kids. Just look:

The little one has the chunky, shiny, marbled beads, and the big one--can you see what I found for the big one? Yep, a delicate silver necklace, just her size, and the pendant is a W. Its whole life, that pendant has just waited for this moment, because it's finally where it was meant to be--nice when you can make destiny happen for only one dollar.

Bead It

The little kid has been taking these awesomely deep, long afternoon naps lately, giving me and the big kid time to work with materials that the little kid finds more pleasure in, um, tossing about while squealing with joy. Yesterday we strung beads on necklaces, but today we worked with Perler beads.

Perler beads are these crazy plastic beads that you arrange on a pegboard and then iron to fuse together, making flat and colorful shapes. When I first saw them I was pretty resistant to the idea of buying these new plastic materials in all the different colors you'd need, just to melt them, but the big kid worked with them on a visit to extended family and we acquired a large bucket of them there, and I bought the kids a small set on sale at Joann's for a treat one day, so somehow we're pretty well set anyway.

Obviously, what I want to make most from Perler beads is old-school Nintendo stuff,  like coasters or magnets or just the little figures that you could probably do a lot of stuff with. Old-school Nintendo and Atari images are extremely well-suited for crafts like beading or cross-stitching, because you can transfer the image pixel-by-pixel. Ah, 8-bit video! 

I haven't yet used my Michael's gift card plus 40% coupon to purchase one of these versatile large pegboards, however, so the big kid and I made ourselves a beautiful heart and star on the smaller pegboards. I thought the shapes, with coordinating colors, might make interesting decorations in the house--stars in the kids' bedroom, for instance, with the ceiling painted like a sky, or pink/purple shapes in the playroom, with its pink/lavender walls. These here are my first attempt, though, and I realize now after actually, you know, reading the instructions that I didn't iron well at all--you're supposed to only iron for 10 seconds and in a circular motion, whereas I ironed for more like 30 seconds, just bearing down hard, and I didn't flip the shapes over and iron the other side, which you're also supposed to do--and I'm not terribly pleased with the color choice in my creation, the heart, but the big kid's creation is awesome. Can you tell what it is? 

A turtle, of course! 

The big kid doesn't yet have near the manual dexterity to actually manipulate these teeny little beads (they do sell Big Beads for preschoolers, which would be cool if we ever found them at a garage sale or thrift store), so she mostly handed me beads and told me what to do with them and lost herself in bead reveries while pouring them through her hands like water, but you can clearly see the turtle's eyes, the color and placement of which she directed, and the legs and tail and shell and all. Such the artist.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, foster kitten antics, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Remaking Vintage Jewelry

I solder myself and the girls a lot of butch jewelry out of microscope glass and postage stamps, but I haven't yet gotten into beadwork. I read how-to books and arts and crafts books regardless of whether or not I practice that particular craft, however, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find, while reading by Lindsay Cain, a short how-to on remaking vintage jewelry. The most I've ever done with this was to replace a set of my Mama's handpainted yellow beads that Papa bought her in Italy during the war with fishing line instead of rotting thread, but the possibilities here seem pretty sweet. I've seen a lot of recycled jewelry on etsy, for instance, that uses other objects--pop tabs, dominoes, paperclips, keys, etc.--to make beautiful jewelry, but I think it's the same ethic as remaking clothing to take tacky jewelry and make it awesome.

Buzz Buzz Designs is one Web shop that does exactly this--the artist's work seems to be specifically informed by the recycling ethic, and utilizes vintage costume jewelry to make fine new things. I'm especially fond of this vintage Lucite sphere on a vintage aluminum chain.

I also like pequitobun's shop on etsy: this artist's stuff is partially vintage and can be pretty punk rock.

Femmegems itself also offers this really cool jewelry makeover service: you can ship your own vintage jewelry to them and they'll remake it for you into something awesome. Awesome.