A Statement of Truth

Chad is rad:

Am I right or am I right?

A Pinback for the Holidays

King Kong Donkey Kong

Florida

Texas

Missouri

BLUE FISH

Indiana

And now I'm gonna go watch Fringe.

Pinback Photos Go Kaput

I'm still learning all about my new-to-me garage sale light tent. I tell you this to explain the following photo shoot:

Forty-nine photos, none of them usable, all because of the stinkin' glare. I didn't have that problem at all when I shot my previous pirate pinbacks, so more thinking and practice and thinking again is clearly required.

I hope it's nice weather again tomorrow...

Pinback Prints on Pumpkin+Bear

I spent SIX HOURS thrifting today (more on that later), but look what else I did!

Clowns are Freakin' Scary

It's Okay to Destroy Stuff

Feedback is Welcome

Save the Planet

The photos are all 4"x6", which is perfect for greeting cards, postcards, wall frames, etc., and they're available in tiff, if you know what you're doing, or jpeg or pdf if you don't.

I spent WAAAAAY too long scanning pinbacks and making prints this week, so there are def more photos to come.

It Would Be Magical

In between the nightly tornado warnings that find us hanging out in the basement on an air mattress, watching movies on the portable DVD player, there's been a lot of swimming, rollerblading, lounging, reading, eating, experimenting, painting, etc.

Still inspired from Saturday's craft fair, and in the process of explaining to the girls about levers, I've been big into the button machine again lately. I made a ton more comic book pinbacks as an exuse to sit for a while and watch Bones on Netflix:

Pinbacks are notoriously hard to photograph. Since it's text, the camera's focus has to be perfectly sharp, and the plastic cover gives off a wicked glare. I have long wanted to sell prints of my pinbacks, however, since they're so awesome and all, so after tons of experimentation I've come up with a method that works well: (1) Scan, don't photograph. (2) Up the contrast and the clarity and the black level, but go easy on the sharpening. (3) Stick to a 4"x6", and even then don't try to fill up the frame with a single button.

The result:

I'm super-happy with the result. A 4"x6" is too small for Imagekind, where I usually sell my photographs, so I'll be putting some of these up on my pumpkinbear etsy shop as pdfs this week. Mostly, though, I have visions of notecards dancing in my head...

A Fair of the Arts in June

An early thunderstorm made sure that Saturday's craft fair won't go down in history as one of the all-time greatest craft fairs EVAH, but it still beat the hell out of the May fair, when it was inexplicably FREEZING.

And thus, a good-ish time was had by all:

Earlier in the day, this disaffected teen homeschool kid that I've chatted with at craft fairs for years slouched over with her disaffected teen homeschool buddies and bought up all my 1" comic book pinbacks that speak to the disaffected teen--"NO!" and "I hate you," and "You are nothing in my eyes," etc. So LATER in the day, this other bookish little teen homeschool kid that I have occasional bookish conversations with at the craft fair comes by and asks me if I can help her find any comic book pinbacks that have comebacks on them.

"Well," I say, "your buddies were by earlier and bought up just about anything that might help reflect their negative worldview."

"I know!" she said. "They were buying them about me!"

So I said, "Don't worry, kiddo. I always have a plan." The kiddo paid for five buttons, and then I gave her some Strathmore paper, a pen, and the one-inch hole punch, and instructed her to write her own comebacks and we'd make them into buttons for her.

While we were working, this other woman came up to get the 411 about being in the craft fair, on account of her group sells calendars. I told her that it's a juried fair, and apps for the season go out the previous winter, and the emphasis is on handicraft, prob not Kinko's calendars. So then, and this is a TOTAL pet peeve  since it happens all the time, most recently with a woman who wanted to rent half my booth from me to sell bellydancing swag, she goes ahead and gives me her entire spiel about why her group should totally be able to sell its calendars in the fair, like next month, and it's totally a handicraft. Fine by me, only I'm not, you know, actually in charge of anything, and when people get that frenzied look in their eyes while they're trying to make their case, it really creeps me out. Thank gawd Matt was there and smoothly segued a convo hand-off to himself, so I could devote all my attention to my VIP client there.

My kiddo made herself some AWESOME comeback buttons. Among the comebacks were "You went to LIE school," "I don't care," and "The feeling is mutual." She told me that she was especially proud of that latter button because when you say it, people don't know what it means and so they don't know if you're complimenting them or insulting them. So true, right?

So, low sales but high drama:

Good day, overall.

Pinback Buttons and Happy Faces

The biggest problem with the button machine is encouraging the girls NOT to make buttons all the time. I'm all, "Sweetie, you don't work at TGI Friday's. A girl only needs so much flair." Perhaps their pinbacks will get more use when we start homeschooling in a couple of months--before that, and I can't even imagine the conniption their teacher would have if they brought their pointy little accessories to school with them.

Of course, when they see me sitting at the table making some pinbacks myself (which I was doing for my pumpkinbear etsy shop yesterday)-- --it is GAME ON.

Willow and I have toyed off and on with the idea, for over a year now, of letting her make something on her own to sell at my craft fairs. I should have thought harder, because last year I really wasn't able to come up with anything that she could make that I thought would actually sell--one time at Strange Folk a sweet old lady did pay one dollar for four of the turf clods that Willow had wrapped with duct tape and put on a shelf, but she wouldn't actually take them. So that's not so much success. But as the girls worked, and worked, and worked on their buttons--

--they came up with an idea that turned out really cool:
Smiley faces! I traced a button circle template several times on artist's paper, and gave each kid, with MANY admonishments and advisories, my very nice, fine-tipped Sharpie and Micron pens, and away they went. The simplicity of their creation works well, and it's recognizable to the average person (unlike a lot of children's art), and it ends up looking very unique without looking too childish.
And in case you have doubts that the kids can actually MAKE the pinbacks by themselves, I present Willow:

And Sydney, complete with bonus sister-squabbling action:

It's a rainy day today, so even more pinbacks is not an impossibility.

Because What Etsy Needs is Another Pinback

Obviously, you've just been dying for me to tell you something else fun that I can do with my Cricut. Ooh, and if I can photograph it using selective focus, then all the better, right?

Um, right?

Here are some one-inch pinback buttons that I've been playing with, using my Cricut and various images cut at 3/4", backed with 1" circles punched from vintage dictionary pages. I gave some of these out for my five friends giveaway, and some others are up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop:

Tree without Leaves

Dinosaur
Skull and Crossbones

Butterfly

And those were just the cut-outs that I liked in that size from the Paper Dolls Dress-up Cartridge. Just wait until I try out a cartridge like Animal Kingdom, or 50 States.

In other news, my belly is currently full from homemade quesadilla (it's Sunday, so I had to talk Matt down from his personal little tradition of two cheap frozen pizzas, but it was worth the effort), and later I plan to hit Goodwill in search of vintage T-shirts. An awesome good day, right?

P.S. Check out my tutorial for a matching game made from your own artwork, over at Crafting a Green World.

My Pumpkinbear Etsy Shop is Presentable Again!

What with, you know, parenting and teaching freshman comp and cooking food and starting seeds and sewing presents for little-kid birthday parties and cleaning and writing my book proposal and making patterns for my book proposal and creating some Artist Trading Cards for my Craftster ATC WXY swap and blah blah blah, my pumpkinbear etsy shop was growing sadly neglected, and it was starting to make me feel antsy.

So off and on this weekend, in between the sewing and seed starting and stuff, I found some time to update. It didn't help that the weather turned (AGAIN!) and so all my photos are weirdly lit, but perfect lighting or not, they're up, and that's better than perfect lighting.

The fun thing is that I managed to update with a lot of really different stuff, some of which I've been sitting on for too long due to just doing other stuff. So I've got some vintage crafting stuff, like this crazy-awesome lap loom, with all its parts AND an instruction book, that I happened upon fortuitously one day:

Matt made his first digital collage sheet for me, just a simple one-inch set of the international breastfeeding symbol images that we use to make pinbacks, so that other crafty people with button machines can make their own fundraisers for their own natural birthing advocacy organizations: I sold off all my other comic book pinbacks and doily pinbacks, so I FINALLY relisted a set of each: I have to make some more of the black doily pinbacks before I can relist those, but I'm still on this random rainbow kick, and so I'm also absurdly stoked by my rainbow doily pinbacks.

And finally, now that I've gotten my T-shirt smock pattern all worked out to my satisfaction I'm thinking of changing it into a T-shirt apron for my book proposal (more gender neutral, don't you think maybe?), which pattern I'd also need to work out (pushing the proposal mailing back just a few more days, squidge squidge), but anyway, now that it's all worked out and happy I can enjoy sewing up some crazy-awesome fangeek T-shirt dresses out of my crazy-awesome fangeek T-shirt stash:

Captain America--such a nice guy. Too bad about Bucky.

P.S. Check out my expose on a big company that ripped off an indie crafter over at Crafting a Green World.

Doilies, The Day After

We've been happily integrating our newest purchases from the Goodwill Outlet Store into our daily lives. Two vintage puzzles, one of the entire world and one of the United States----have not left the living room carpet since they arrived, they're so fun. They're both crazy-intricate, with each tiny state its own tiny puzzle piece in the US puzzle and each tiny ocean its own piece in the world puzzle, although each big ocean is an awesomely big piece and each continent is its own piece, and? There's a compass built in!

I originally bought them for crafting because the world puzzle is missing a couple of its fiddly little oceans and the US puzzle is missing Kansas and Rhode Island, but the girls adore them (and actually I do, too), and Willow learned where California and Nevada live, so there you go.

I am a huge fan of divided plates (I would KILL for a set of elementary school cafeteria trays), so I'm all about these three orange divided plates that I found:
And do not worry, friends and family--Matt and I own these swab thingies that test for lead, and they're all-clear. Can you imagine, though? Instead of the CPSC bullying through that ridiculously overwrought CPSIA which will leave me without a job and without anyplace to buy stuff, they could just make lead swab test kits cheap and readily available, and we citizens could just handle our own shit, thank you very much.

The biggest hit of the day, however?

Paper doilies.

I almost didn't buy them because it was the day after Valentine's Day and doilies are kinda Valentine-y, don't you think, but then I was all, "Oh, they're going to cost like five cents and the girls will like them."

The girls do like them--negative space is fun space--but I think I may like them more. On account of look at the awesome stuff I made:

Goth doily pinbacks! I heart them crazy much. I like how they're partly fussy, but also all cool in their black-and-white at the party way, and I'm an especial fan of how the intricate and fancy doily pattern makes no sense in such a small scale.

And in yet another example (as if you needed another example) of how the girls inspire me and how all my work is collaborative work with them, blah blah, their interest in rainbows--drawing rainbows, reading about rainbows, having me pull up Google Image photos of rainbows, etc.--has led me to create, off and on in my sketchbook, an entire list of rainbow-themed crafts that I'm excited about doing. And when faced with doilies, a hole punch, and pretty paper, I made this:

I made a bunch for myself and my girlies, but I'll be putting these two sets up in my pumpkinbear etsy shop tomorrow. My pinbacks have been hitting the spot lately for some people, and I'm interested in seeing how these versions, which I like kind of crazy much, go over.

You can expect to see lots of frantic paper crafting out of me in the next few days, because Matt took my sewing machine to the repair shop (either it needs a new face plate, or the little girls need to stop touching it when I'm not looking), and the repair shop man said that we could expect it back in about 10 days.

He was just kidding, right?

Right?

Golden-Haired Girls Finally Earn their Keep

Y'all, my girls are finally gonna make me some money!

My sanity nearly cracked during the making of the very large amount of scrappy heart pinback buttons the other day--the girls, with painstaking care, chose combinations of hearts and backgrounds enough to make ample buttons for themselves, for whatever friends they choose to give Valentines to, for birthday parties yet to come...and still we have many buttons.

And that's when I had my inspiration--rather, the next time I had a shower, which is the only time I actually spend alone (usually), is when I had my inspiration, but stories that start "And so I was in the shower..." really only tell well to good friends, which you are, so, the truth for you.

Ahem. Yes, so what do I do when I make too much of something cool, which I do often, because I can't stop pattern-tweaking and such? Why, I sell the extra somethings on my etsy shop!

My girls could sell their extra buttons on my etsy shop!

And thus is born the Made by Golden Haired Girls section of my shop, so far populated by the girls' very own set of six scrappy heart pinback buttons. Here they lie all in a row:
And here's an example of one of my favorite things about the girls' work:
Pink and green! My color combos are much more staid--my girls', much more bold and creative.

Willow, at least, is pretty stoked about her intro to entrepreneurship, and has already suggested that she make some more things for the shop. And so now the search begins for projects a four-year-old can do and have the result not look like a four-year-old did it. Ya know?

Also for your consideration, my favorite of Sydney's photographs from yesterday:

my jeans as I'm wearing them

her sister, upside-down

P.S. Inspired by cake, check out my post about local businesses that teach kids practical skills on Eco Child's Play.

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.