In Which My Button Fancy Gets a Little Ridiculous

So you might remember that one of my ongoing projects is to incorporate some digital design into my product line--prints, perhaps, or digital collage elements, or even scrapbooking supplies. It seems like a better long-term crafting choice, since I can continue to get payback from the same piece of work over and over, along with the physical handicraft option of one payback for each piece of work that I craft.

Add to this the crazy amount of time that I've been spending lately rifling through my button collection, futzing around to make monograms and such (I'm also trying to reinvent the button ring--more on that later), and I've been thinking that likely the whole world would really pretty much enjoy digital access to all my beautiful physical buttons. I listened to this one episode of the some crafty podcast in which Maggie Taylor Carroll, who did this super-awesome digitally illustrated edition of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ( Other illustrated Wonderlands that I like are ) talked about how many elements of her work were made from actual stuff that she just threw on the scanner and scanned, and...
I'd title it "Button Porn," but when I titled a Crafting a Green World post Quilt Porn a few months ago, I got some weird traffic.

But see, that's not even porn-y enough for you, is it? I know that you're looking at the big scan, and you're thinking, "All those buttons make me so happy, but they're so small that I can't really see the detail in each button. Darn!"

Here you go, then:


So now instead of just futzily gluing and hand-sewing buttons to make each monogram, I can first futzily lay the buttons that I want to use out on the scanner and scan them, and then later I'll be able to futz around some more with the digital images of the buttons!

My summer is looking so fly, I tell you.

In other news, it's a rainy morning here. That means that instead of letting the girls run around outside for hours on end (they keep taking their pants off outside! What's UP with that?), we'll be spending a hoppin' few hours on...
You guessed it. Dinosaur Bingo.

Perspectives

From above:
From below:From above:From below:
Those kids remind me to change my perspective MANY times daily.

Luna? Not So Much.

Ominously, the first craft fair of the season was quite...eh.

Mind you, all the stuff was there. Quilts:
Pinback buttons: Gift Tags: And some new stuff that I've been making with these terrific upholstery remnants that I scored a few weeks ago:

There was even my own personal troll-girl who crouched under the table and played with stuff for five hours:

Customers, though? Not so much. And customers wishing to purchase things? Um, there were even fewer of those, at least for me--the hallway where we set up is kind of narrow, so vendors could have been making a killing just three tables down and I wouldn't have known. There wasn't so much being killed right near me.

The experience was educational, however. All of my sales were very small--I didn't sell any item that cost over $5--so that tells me that I'll likely need to bone up on a LOT of really small items for my craft fairs this summer. Of course, it's actually harder to make a good profit if you're selling really small items, because you obviously have to sell 60 $1 buttons to make the same amount of money as you can from one $60 T-shirt quilt, but whatever a girl's gotta do, I guess.

People seemed to like the belly dancers. Perhaps I could belly dance just inside my booth? Draw in the customers? Earn some extra singles?

Day in the Sun

It was the best sunny, warm, breezy, cloudless day yet! I know I was pretty stressed at times in the past few months (what odd freshman comp classes I've had this year...), but it must have been a harder winter than I thought, because I never remember being this ridiculously stoked for Spring!

But finally, finally, the lilac is in bloom right outside our front door:
And although I did spend much of the day at a cloth diapering class and the Montessori Garage Sale (I bought a lathe! A LATHE!!! For $15!!! I can't even let myself think about it until my semester's officially over, but I'm so excited), much more of the day was spent outside, at the park, in the sunny, cloudless, warm, breezy air.

I finished my last photo shoot for my book proposal:
One awesome kid permitted me to join her high, high up in her favorite climbing tree:
While the other kid stayed on the ground, enjoying some watercolors al fresco:
And now the babies are asleep, although the sun is barely down (thank you, day full of fresh air and tree climbing), and my Matt is at a Flight of the Conchords concert (I can't stand them, so thank you as well, small children in need of a mother's care), leaving me to happily blog away and craft a few last-minute things for tomorrow:

If only it wasn't Little 500 weekend, causing the emanations from my open windows to sound more like a zombie invasion (sirens, wordless screams, drumbeats, squealing tires) and less like a peaceful warm spring night...

Eh. As long as Matt makes it home tonight without getting a "walking drunk" violation, which my students tell me totally exists, but if you have $265 in cash you can pay your fine right then and avoid being sent to jail (what these kids are doing here without their mothers, I'll never know), it'll all be good.

P.S. Check out my post about crafting with wood over at Crafting a Green World.

In Between Teaching, Writing, and Parenting...

I sewed:
So refreshing.

I tend to have a lot of irons in the fire, with a lot of plans for far more irons, so it's easy for me to let myself get really panicky about all that I have to do, and all that I haven't yet done, if I'm not careful:

• LOTS of homework papers that I *should* grade and alphabetize to pass back to my students on Wednesday. It will give me less to do when I'm trying to grade and record final papers, and my students will appreciate knowing their grades up to the final--of course, it will also give them more scope for pestering me with whining...
• LOTS of things that I *should* craft for Luna Fest on Sunday--one set of button alphabets to finish and another that I could sell as a set; several sets of crayon rolls, marker rolls, and colored pencil rolls, allowing me to sell them individually or as gift sets; melted crayons; doily pinbacks, etc.
• A couple of last tutorials, some photos, and a LOT of proofreading and design work on my book proposal, and then having it copied and bound and sending it--I really, really wanted to send it this week. Sigh.
• How great would it be to write a couple of pattern zines to have ready at Luna Fest, and also for my pumpkinbear etsy shop? Wouldn't you totally want a hip, indie zine that would tell you how to make a superhero T-shirt dress?
• If I don't post regularly on Crafting a Green World and Eco Child's Play, then I don't earn my craft supplies budget for the next month. No craft supplies=suckage.
• The Montessori Parents' Library, for whom I am the Parents' Library librarian, could use a Wish List, written self check-out instructions, signage, and CD copies of all the expert lectures that are on--ugh--cassette tapes.
• Speaking of...when did I last update my pumpkinbear etsy shop?

On the plus side, the kiddos are happy and engaged (barring some minor drama with Music Day--how did I manage to convince Will's teachers that I am some kind of rabid stage mom, when the truth is that I don't give a flying flip whether or not she performs the bumblebee song in front of her classmates and parents?), with a mama who helps them put together the velociraptor puzzle and reads the dinosaur encyclopedia to them for one solid hour and makes gluten-free brownies with them in the morning.

Come to think of it, did I eat anything today other than a butt-load of gluten-free brownies? Maybe that explains it...

P.S. Check out my list of eco-crafting tutorials for Earth Day over at Crafting a Green World.

I Can't Be Your Partner in Crime

The girls and I spent the day up in Indianapolis on Friday. We hit all my favorites--the Goodwill Outlet Store (I'm saving the INCREDIBLE puppet theater I scored for another post), the opening season of the butterfly exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo--

--and the Indianapolis Art Museum:
As I was shooting this photo of Willow in the contemporary gallery, and Sydney was happily stomping on the floor just behind me, with another photographer shooting another exhibit in a little niche just behind her, all of a sudden this huge guard starts running towards me, screaming at me to stop right now!

I'm all, "What? The baby can't stomp on the floor?"

And he's all, "You CANNOT take photos in this gallery!"

Without thinking, the first thing I do is whip around, point with my entire arm straight at that other guy taking some pictures in the nook, and shout, "But HE'S taking photos!"

The guard turned around and started shouting at the other guy, so I grabbed both the girls' hands and said, "We gotta go." Then we hightailed it.

Two minutes later, safely down the elevator, I stopped to think about it and I thought, "Really, Julie? You seriously sold out a stranger over a 'no photo' policy?" I can't believe that my instinctual reaction was to throw the blame and then flee. I mean, what kind of person does that?

I actually saw the guy a few minutes later and of course I apologized. He, of course, said it was no big deal, because, you know, it's just a "no photo" policy, not a criminal act, which makes it just even more ridiculous that I sold out a stranger and then ran.

Painting on the grass in the museum gardens was much more relaxing:
Although now I wonder--I hope there wasn't a rule about not being on the grass...

Our New Bible

I am totally wiped after spending the day working on the marketing section of my book proposal (I have one more project tutorial to photograph, but the rain! The rain! It thwarts me!), but Matt was at the library with the girls this afternoon (See? THIRD time this week!)--this was after he had to rush over to Montessori because I, hunched over my computer tapping away about speaker engagements and family-friendly workshops, suddenly had the heart-rending revelation that Willow! We missed her parent/teacher conference! It was half an hour ago!...

...anyway, AFTER the parent/teacher conference (don't worry friends, we have a strategy for Music Day, and the teachers are considering changing the entire format of Speaker's Rug just to slyly trick Willow, who is the only child in the history of the program to have gone two years without speaking once, because she is my baby and she is stubborn, into feeling comfortable enough to speak. It's like Baby Toastmasters in that class), Matt took the girls to the library so I could miserably tap away some more (Writers don't actually like to write, you know. Writers only like to have written), and as he was scanning a shelf of new non-fiction titles, Will pulled a random book off of a nearby shelf and said, "Daddy, I really want you to check this out."

"Oh, yeah?" said Matt, and turned around to see:
Smart kid. They probably have a whole chapter in there about how you aren't supposed to ditch your kid's parent/teacher conferences.