Beaded Flower Fatbook Page & Rad BOX!

Beaded a flower today for my fatbook! I used quite a few different layers. Beads on sequins on corduroy on mesh on batik! Whew! I love the look of hand beading, but man it takes so long...

Here it is on the back of my fatbook. I haven't finished the other side of this page yet, hence the no-picture.

On another awesome note, I had to kill some time this morning while waiting for something, so I went to the thrift store and found this gem for 75 cents! I saw it and automatically thought of the awesome Knickertwist's Valentine's Day matchbox shrine. My new box is a makeup box about 9.5'' x 5.5'', so it won't be as tiny and cute, but I'm so psyched to make this into some mini-shrine wall art! The lids presents a challenge.... It swings open and has a magnetic closure, and also has a 4x6 picture frame constructed into its front. I'm not sure how I'm going to play that, but I'll let you know.

My Tuesday was better than my Monday... I hope yours is too! (^_^)

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone! Boy oh boy, I had such a great vacation! Here's a belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. Man, I got home a few hours ago and it feels so nice to be back. To use my own towel, be in my own kitchen, sit on my own couch! My total travel time was from 7:45 pm PST til about 9:00 am PST... Way too long and way too uncomfortable. Airplane sleep is NEVER as good as real sleep. (You know, I think they aught to give you a hypersleep option.) I only got maybe 4 hours so I'm pretty tired.... But there's so much laundry to do. Blargh. This blogtime is my little break!

I'm totally going to brag about some of the highlights of all the awesome stuff I got this Christmas!!! First, I got most of these threads from my mother-in-law's stash (the rest I got for 55% off at Joann's sale, haha!) I can't wait to use all the awesome variegated threads to make some radical fabric bowls and things....

Next, I found these most excellent fleece remnants for 75% off at Joann's. Most of them are about 33" worth of material. Plenty to make some awesome little stuffies! My sweet husband let me shop for my present this year because I couldn't think of anything specific that I wanted and he wanted to be sure I liked what I got... Mmmmm....shopping money.....

Last but not least, (papercrafters and stampers prepare to drool), my mom bought me 9 new colorbox inkpad queues with six colors in each!!! SO GOOD! I srsly CANNOT wait to do some awesome stuff with them. Bobby was getting annoyed with me because I kept ducking away to my suitcase to pull them out and just sit there to look at the colory goodness.

Anyways, I think 2010 is going to be a pretty good year! I've got some changes in the works for the blog that I'm looking forward to rolling out in the next couple of months. Stay tuned! thank you so much for reading :D

Awesome Vintage Owl Fabric

Hey everyone! I know, it's been a while since my last post... Posts are still going to be pretty sparse this month until after Christmas. I'm visiting my family in Oregon! I got here yesterday evening and am already having fun.

We went for a little shopping today and I scored some AWESOME vintage fabric at the Goodwill. At least I think it's vintage. (It smells vintage :P) I got 3 yards for $1.99!

The pattern is little owls. How flippin' cute is that? I'm not sure yet what I'm going to make out of it, but I just really couldn't pass it up.

Hopefully I can post some projects soon. My sister brought some stuff I made for my nieces a while ago that I never blogged. They'll have to model and I can share! I hope everyone's December is going great so far. Mine is going pretty great :D

Flea Markets chase away the blues...

I woke up early this morning feeling pretty cruddy and down and disappointed. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I just parked it on the couch and browsed the internet, posted some junk of craftster, getting depressed and thinking miserable thoughts...That I'll never do a craft fair, I'll never have my own kiln, I'll never be a successful artist, I'll never be a mother... Blah blah blah.... Then I thought, Kira, why are you being so retarded? I am a woman, I feel emotions, but I have to realize that sometimes I go nuts and think silly things, and that's not me.

"GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!" said my brains... I had to obey or stay in the misery that is wallowing in self pity. I made the choice to go to the flea market and get some fresh air and some fresh goodies.

I spent an hour and a half browsing, making it a point to smile to myself (there wasnt anyone else there b/c it's so dang muggy out). I like to smile to myself when I find something I like... It's my way of telling myself, "Kira, you are so dang clever." It helps me feel better. I got this total lot for fifty cents. FIFTY CENTS!!! A beautifully aged, nearly destroyed hymnal, a funny lime green old book from the sixties for when I start a new art journal, these cool polaroid photo-frame cards, two handfuls of glass marbles, and a set of oooooooold measuring spoons.

This is a papercrafter's delight... there are like 75 pages of dingy, fragile, old, worn, beautiful sheet music! The print looks pretty darn old, too, but there was no cover or anything, so I have no clue as to exactly how old it is.

I got some junky old stainless measuring spoons for measuring out my resin. Can't use the good ones!!! Then, some marbles to make some excellent magnets out of. With my new quill and ink, I think I can make some really great tiny drawings that will be perfect for marble magnets.

And my dog wanted to show you all the polaroid photo frame card in action. Basically, the front of the cards have a double layer, all you have to do is slide in the photo (in my case, I'll slide in the artwork), then use a dab of glue to stick the two front panels together. There were about 10 of these babies in a moldy-looking box full of spiders and cobwebs. Cool huh?

Yeah, now I feel a bit better. I'm off to my craft room to watch some LOST and do some crafting. Results to follow, as per usual.

Motherlode of Buttons

After physical therapy this morning, I knew I had some good time to kill before my husband woke up. I thought, hey! Why not go to that thrift store? The last time I went, I found all those crafting mags, but didn't have ample time to peruse the rest of the store.

Bingo. There was a huge ziploc FULL of buttons for $2.00. Now, two bucks is on the high end of what I'll spend on a single find, mind you, but the sheer amount of buttons was breathtaking and irresistable.

This HAD to have been a seamstress' stash. I don't really have any immediate ideas as to what to do with them, but I know I'll figure SOMETHING out. If anyone reading this has any ideas, feel free to shout them out in a comment!

There were a lot of generic white pearl buttons, but these are my faves. There were even some teeny tiny buttons (next to the gold).

The thrift store bears FRUIT!

Went to a new thrift store today! I didn't have much time to look around, as I had to get home, BUT! I think this is going to be an excellent place for old books for papercrafting. Good book stock, and the book section is an absolute MESS. I feel devious thinking about it, because it's so horribly cluttered and exploded that I think it discourages many people from thorough browsing. That leaves more for me (BWahahaHAhahah!)

But hey! I found this generous stack of various crafting magazines for 25 cents each. I was delighted! When I got home, I immediately added up all the cover prices on the magazines (I've looked at these mags on the rack before and gawked at the prices, vowed never to pay that much... $5.99?! For a mag?!! Really?!) Well, cover prices, added up was close to $65.00!!! Fetch! I got this stack for flippin' $2.75! WHAT!!!

Then! Not as good of a deal, but still a find.... this set of wooden nesting boxes for $1.50. My mind was turning with so many ideas to alter these boxes! But I may keep one of them with the stupid kitty on the front because how weird is a baby cat with a little outfit on? With a balloon? Lol. Well, that's all. NO WAIT! I also bought a Pokedex for 25 cents :D

Loom-loom-loom! Lemme hear you say Wey-Oh! ( Wey-oh)

So, as previously posted, I found a rad weaving book complete with a loom at the flea market today and I just HAD to try it out.

Since I save all my odd ends and scraps, I had a bunch of stuff to work with(if hoarding crap is wrong, I don't want to be right). Here are a bunch of the different textures and colors I wove! I tried to keep similar shade-groups together and piece them so the colors transitioned relatively smoothly.

Since the piece was really long, and not too wide, all I could think of was to make a scarf. However, no offense to people who like that sort of thing, I thought it would be pretty tacky. Sooo.... I folded the piece in half, sewed down either side and made a monster stuffy! I should have paused and thought ahead, so I could add some arms and legs or something, but alas, error.

So here he is, I call him Bobo, the Benevolent Scrap Monster.

What the sweater?! Flea Market GOLD

AHA!!! So while my hubby was sound asleep this morning, I snuck off to the flea market!!! Tee hee!!!


Oh. Em. Gee. I had time to look through the hoards and hoards of terrible flea market clothing and found some serious sweater gems. The patterns and textures were making me drool. For a buck-a-piece, I got these awesome size large knits. The zig-zaggy colorful one is mohair, the gray/black boxy one and blue cabled one are just acrylic, and the mint w/ pearls, red, and cabled pink are all 40% angora.... SUCH luxury.... They are so flipping huge and soft. I can't wait to make stuffies out of them. I am so pleased.... Seriously! ONE DOLLAR! That's a whole frick of a lot cheaper than buying 3 skeins of lace-weight angora yarn, then taking the 50 years it would take for me to knit it up into fabric. I think I'll make the pink into a piggy, the red into a monster, and the mint into...maybe a baby deer? I'm so psyched about this stuff, seriously.

Next! for 75 cents, I got this excellent kids book to learn to weave, and it includes a LOOM!!! How flippin sweet is that?! (Can you tell I'm excited?) The SRP on the back is $11.95 USD.... And I got it with no parts missing for $0.75. Guess who will be learning how to weave this week? (Answer: Me.)

Last, but not least, this generous stack of multi-colored copy paper I found in the book section in a nasty spider-filled box with a bunch of other crap. I asked the dude how much, and he said, "Oh that? Uh...No charge." GOOOOOOOOAL! I have no idea how many sheets it is, but there are 15 different colors, but it proves to me that it's generally worth it to take your sweet time at flea-markets and yard sales, because you can find some seriously epic crap.

Finds from the DIRT MALL

My sweet husband took me to this little flea market (i like to call them dirt malls) that I have been wanting to go to for a while now. Turns out, this place is junk heaven and much bigger than I thought. I didn't have a ton of time to look around, but I could have spent HOURS there. In addition to a pretty japanese dove mini-dish (for my favorite dipping sauce, ranchy-mustetchup) and a splendid little vintage lion ornament, I got these treasures:
(

I found a little baggie with 5 crochet hooks, a set of stitch markers, some needles & a bunch of emroidery thread bobbins, it was marked 75 cents. But the guy gave it to me for 50 cents. SCORE!

I've had my eye on this craftster thread for a while now, and wanted to join in the fun: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=248633.0
Basically, you choose an old book and turn it into an art journal by painting in it, drawing, pasting scraps, writing, pretty much whatever you want! I'm excited to get started on it. I found this awesome owl book published in 1954 for 50 cents.

It's mostly text pages, but every so often, there are some excellent black and white owl illustrations, or pictures of various woodland creatures (which I have been quite fond of as of late).

And my last find, but not the least! This hideous giant knit sweater for 50 cents! My husband gave me a grossed out look when I grabbed it and held onto it like I was ACTUALLY going to buy this monstrocity. I told him that I'm planning on making plushies and other things out of it, and he still gave me that "yuck" look. I told him, "You don't see it like I do, do you?" He said "I guess not, but I love you." and he let me buy it :) The colors on it are seriously wonderful..the picture doesn't do it justice. I can't wait to get some for fiberfill.... :D happy crafting for me!!!

What a glorious day

Goodwill Dresses

So ignore my HORRIBLY MESSY craftroom for a second and check out this ridiculous formal dress from the 70's or 80's. The story goes, that I have had my eye on these two particular sequined monstrocities for months now at the thrift store. I was there on Monday to browse, and had to ask, "Do y'all ever have sales?" to which the super-friendly cashier, Tina, responded that since they are so short staffed, they haven't been able to keep up cycling out the merchandise and clearancing stale goods, but asked me what I was looking for. I told her about me lurking these dresses for a while now, and she was SO NICE! She took the dresses aside and told me to call the store in the morning, she would ask her supervisor if she would mark them down. Apparently they had been on the rack since February.










LO! Behold! I called back, the dresses were marked down 50% off! I bought them for $7.50 each! My original purpose for these was to tear them down and reconstruct into multiple handbags with stitched-on felt designs. This dress, however, I think I love. Unfortunately, it does not zip fully, as the dress is a size 8, and my booty is decidedly still a size 12. I could be size 8 again if I lost a measly 15-20 lbs... Easier said than done. I love my eats. But I figure, it's hard to find a modest formal dress, and what if I need one some day, for a princess ball or (more likely) a cruise?!

No, I sha'nt be destroying THIS dress.

THIS one, however, will meet the scizzors. It's such a great color with such intense sequining. Ah, it would look so good on stage. My stage days are over, though, so be afraid, teal-sparkle-dress, be very afraid!

GRATUITOUS SEQUIN SHOT!!!! Wouldn't this look sooo good as a handbag wif mermaid or shark motif?!