Squid Vicious

the first year i met ladi, we joined our love for crafting to make a mutual craft exchange. that was probably our first heart to heart craft experience. since then, trips to scrap, zine-making, knitting lessons, and a weekly tuesday night craft session have evolved through our friendship.


this year i decided to initiate another fall craft exchange. she hasn't decided what she wants yet, but i know i want a hat. i was searching ravelry and came across the most blazingly glorious hat i have ever seen in my entire life. i am desperate for it.

the giant squid hat.

Incidental Accessory

so I've been commissioned to make a backdrop for a USnaps.com photobooth. i was testing out my grommet setter - you know, for setting metal rings into fabric, vinyl, etc etc - on some scrap fabric to see whether the fabric was thick enough to hold a grommet. done and done. but then i had this five foot long piece of scrap fabric with grommets at either end of it. and you know, scrap fabric is always kind of tricky because apart from putting it aside to make yarn, a quilt, or patch up old clothes, it seems to be just a space-wasting nuisance to me. oh, but not this particular piece. i got to fooling around with it and made little old me a new necklace. wonk!

Charmed, I'm Sure

i found some old shrinky dink stuff that i made during a fit of creative boredom one afternoon in the suburbs at a friends house, long long ago. (okay, not that long. last year.) most of it was entirely useless for anything remotely interesting, with the exception of two little keys i made...
i figured i'd make them into dangling earrings for my friend ladi since she rocks the plastic earring look, and wears it well.

of course, once one little key was at the bottom of the earring, it looked sort of sad. alone. graceless. "let's give it friends!" was the general consensus, and ladi, being the ever-prepared crafter/thrifter/finder of random junk that she is, pointed me straight to a jar full of little plastic charms. a dream was born, and so were these earrings.

accessorize my fist!

...or any part of my body, really.

the problem with having worked with a jewelry designer for a year - being taken to trade shows and learning techniques in handcrafting high quality jewelry myself - is that i am now severely disappointed by most all 'handmade' jewelry in my price range. (ah, if ever i thought that the adage 'ignorance is bliss' wasn't true!)

my best jewelry score (and a tried and true conversation piece) are my Chee-Me-No earrings, made by Lisa Cimino. scored through a trade show. i'm sure they were expensive but i don't even remember how much they cost - it was worth the price! i'll never let these go. she even made the posts bigger to match my earlobe gauge. fabulous.

the other go-to piece of show-stopping jewelry is my jerry rigged cascading gold chain necklace, which i made by (cleverly!) stringing three gold chains together and creating multiple cascading layers.

i often fantasize about making my own accessories, about having a jewelry bench to sit at, with fire and soldering pick in hand, making all kind of adornment for myself. alas, with those expensive tools out of my reach at the moment, i will have to settle for what i can find from the meager offerings at bead stores in san francisco, dick blick, and jewelry suppliers online (without breaking the bank). hopefully what i come up will be as original and amazing as i'm convinced it will be. pictures to come.

first item on the wishlist: a hand saw! will have to pick that up tomorrow. it's great for making jump rings.