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This week I haven’t much mojo in the creating department (only bits of crocheting) but the last couple of weeks I was doing well! First off, I made another photo pendant for Starr’s birthday, as I mentioned here. This is only the 2nd time I did a double pendant. I hope she will wear it and help test it out for me! I’m still not completely satisfied with the whole thing (process/outcome) but just have to keep at it in order to find a solution.

And here are some swaps. The Zakka Cherry Blossom swap was actually last month or so. I had such trouble with it! Turns out lots of people did and my partner enlarged her pattern! Wish I thought to do that! Mine came out bad and I was too frustrated with it to try again so I  felt bad for my partner and I included lots of other goodies for her. She has yet to rate me on this but I’m not pushing her since I know it was so bad!

Here it is shown closed and the inset photo shows the bottom. And here is what I received!

So much nicer!
Here’s another sewing swap for an Origami bag. While this came out better than the Zakka Cherry Blossom bag, I still wasn’t super happy with it! My partner likes mermaids.

I also made her a business card holder in matching fabric (which I want to make for myself as well but in different fabric!)

She gave me a heart and said she loved them! Whew! Here’s the one I received! Pretty cute!

And I hosted a crochet/knit potholder swap and this is what I sent to my partner. (I should be receiving mine soon!) My partner likes cats. I also included a dark green heart potholder that I did not take a photo of. Her fave color is dark green.

One of the bookmarks I made for a bookmark swap. This one is using crochet thread (you do not even want to see what I got in return! I swear, looks like it took her less than 5 minutes to do! So disappointing! UGH!)

And here are a couple of things I made for the Unbirthday swap #5. (Remember the stuff I got here?) My partner likes knights, Superman and Greenman.

And remember the owl stuffie I spoke about in exchange for doing the carved Geill stamps? Here it is! I am so in awe of these stuffies and have not ventured into doing one yet…

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The weekend before last I did some more carvings for 2 swaps. Well, one was for a tag on the Quality Crafts forum on swap-bot and one was a personal swap with Orit. Orit made some nice comments on my carves on flickr and when I went to check out her flickr stream, came across these delicious looking Israeli chocolates! A private swap was soon set up! I sent hers out on the 3rd of March and have not received word that she got them yet. I am pretty sure she doesn’t read my blog so will post the photos here.

She wanted something with either a bird or a tree. This was the first one I did. I finally tried out the PZ Kut. This is the A grade. I love it! I actually prefer the B grade, which is ever so slightly rougher surface, which I used for this stamp:

I just love how this one came out! I love the B grade so much, I placed another order! In my original order, I also ordered the A and B grade with the orange but have not tried it yet. I’ve read on other blogs that the orange gets a little blinding when you are carving.
Then on the swap-bot Quality Crafters forum, I joined in on a tag (someone lists a few items, you pick one you want and then you list a few items-I tagged someone for an owl stuffie, he will show up in a future post as he is just too adorable to leave out!) and someone tagged me for a personalized stamp carving. Her daughter’s name has a unique spelling, Geill (pronounced Jill), so you can imagine how hard it is to find personalized things! This is the first one I did (on grade A):

At the very last second, I slipped and made a tiny nick on the top of the G. I tried to ignore it but couldn’t so decided to carve another one (in a different font of course!). I did send both stamps anyway. This time I used grade B:

And because these blocks are thinner than the other ones I’ve used, I decided to mount them on some wood I’ve had for ages (for mounting rubber stamps before the invention of the acrylic blocks and EZ Mount).

A few weeks ago, at the last minute, on one of my ‘days’ off, I jetted out to midtown to check out a Japanese bookstore, Kinokuniya. It was such a last minute thing that I didn’t even tell Yves or my friend Pete, both of whom work within blocks of the bookstore (it was also a rainy and crappy day). I purchased 2 Japanese carving books and a carving block with images already printed on the block (I chose a frog for Sienna-I haven’t chosen to mar it yet!)

The 2 books is mostly just images to use for carving. Some are so cute! Here is my next carving venture, which I started yesterday. I think if I actually pull this through, it will be a miracle. I don’t know what I was thinking, there are so many details in it and tiny! Plus I’m not even a big fan of Marilyn Monroe! I just saw this image and it was screaming to be carved. Sigh….well, stay tuned! I’ll post the finished product sometime in the future!

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She’s lookiing right at me! Can she feel my craftiness?? LOL!

Yesterday I went to a taping of the Martha Stewart show! Woohooo!! Pete was kind enough to take the day off and go with me. We had to be there at 8:30 (yawn!). Once we got inside, it seems to be moving pretty smoothly, I didn’t feel like I was waiting around a lot (it could have been because I was in the wonderful company of Pete). Once we got inside the studio, we had to stay seated. It was a live taping! I didn’t know that! Her guests that day were Marcia Gay Harden, a woman from the stem cell research foundation and the owner of a sausage place on the Upper East Side. I was a little disappointed that we only got a free t-shirt (from the stem cell research foundation) but I kept telling myself I wasn’t there to score free stuff! But it sure would have been nice to get a sample of her wurst sandwich! It was making me so hungry!

Me and Pete in the waiting room filling out the release forms

Joey Cola, the warm up guy

The set!!!!

so many lights!

Oops! I forgot I had the camera on zoom!

That’s better! At our seats.

Pete pointing out the water tower on her set

This truck was giving out free White Castle sliders and hot cocoa. Of course, I had to partake!

We ended up going to midtown so I can check out Book-Off, the Japanese book store. We met Joy for lunch and ended up going to Comfort Diner. It was a nice day!

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Just when I was moaning about disappointing swaps on my blog the other day, in comes some real gems in the mail! Woohooo!! If you haven’t figured out already, I LOVE GETTING MAIL (minus bills and junk mail of course)! Sometimes I wonder if I border on being obsessed with mail! When I was in grade school and even high school, I was always sending away for free stuff and writing for pen pals. I even had a book with offers to send away for! (This was pre-internet after all!) Some was junk ( I distinctively remember sending away for a portable little popcorn maker- it was a plastic ball that you put the kernals in and you’re supposed to shake it and I guess that was supposed to pop the popcorn! Needless to say, it didn’t work. I believe it was offered by Jiffy Pop or Orville too) and some was fun stuff like stickers. Then I got into rubber stamping and did a lot of mail art exchanges. And now there is swap-bot!

Anyway, back to my happy mail! First I received my Etsy order from Golden Supply co. They said not to expect orders to ship out until 7-10 days AFTER payment and since I just placed the order on the 20th, wasn’t expecting it so that was a nice surprise. I didn’t take a photo of the order since it’s supplies to make stuff (I’m sure you’ll see it in future posts).

Also in the same mail day, I received my partner’s eraser carving swap! Remember, this was what I sent to my partner! She packaged it so nicely and included some pretty papers and a retro fortune fish. She did a great job carving a monkey with a banana background and she also carved the heart. She read my profile!

And there’s more! In the same batch of mail I also got my swap for the High Stakes Etsy Favorites.  For this swap, you buy something from your partner’s Etsy favorites (mine is here) and my partner picked out the bunny embroidered stuff that was on mine. So cute! It’s a water bottle cozy (I guess I should have taken this off as I don’t even use water bottles anymore but it can fit on my Sigg bottle) and this super cute patch!

And then the ultimate package came on Saturday! A complete surprise and I actually thought it was a different swap than what it was. It turned out to be for the Unbirthday swap #5 from my partner thriftymermaid! Deadline to mail for that is March 17th so it was super early! What a fabulous swapper she is! (She also made me feel a lot better about sending out so many things for my partner in the Unbirthday swap #4). Look at all these goodies!

Let’s see…there are 2 kinds of fabrics, 2 balls each of 2 different cotton yarn, 2 crochet hooks, zippers, 2 different kinds of marking pens for sewing, calligraphy markers, a monkey pencil, 2 pocket size hand moisturizers, handmade earrings and all individually wrapped inside an awesome, colorful, bright quilted bag!!
Here’s a bit of a close up of the earrings but really, this photo doesn’t do it justice!

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Here are some recent carvings I did for a carve swap on swap-bot I mentioned in an earlier post. The requirements were to do 2 stamps, something from your partner’s profile and a background stamp. A heart will be earned if you carve a heart as well!

I started with this carving first, since it was the simpliest in design. I guess I used too much pressure in cleaning it between carvings as the last heart got a nick in it. I decided just to replicate the nick on the other side!

This was the second one I did and probably a bit more ambitious on my part. I’m relatively happy with it. It’s not perfect but I’m trying not to stare too hard at it!

This was the last one I did. My partner is really into Asian design so I thought she would like this chinese motif. I thought it would be the easiest of them all but it proved to be more difficult than I thought. I thought it would be easier because of the straight lines but that made it harder!

Here is another carviing I did before the above carvings for the Unbirthday swap I was in. I realized I did a DOY on this swap. You were required to send 3 items from their list of 10 items for this swap. I actually sent all ten items on my partner’s list and then some! DOY! I didn’t mind as I made most of the items and did not spend much on the other items. I’m just annoyed because the postage was more than I wanted it to be but mostly because that means I won’t be getting 10 items from my partner! GRRRR!

On the swapping note, I think I need to stop joining so many swaps. There have been a couple of swaps that have bummed me out. I’m still waiting to get rated on quite a few swaps I’ve sent in the last few weeks, 2 of my send to partners have gotten suspended on swap-bot so I won’t get ratings from them and there was one particular swap where I really put some thought into what I sent and I feel I didn’t get the same treatment from the person that sent me the same swap. Sigh…I guess my expectations have gotten too high!

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I made this Morrissey onesie for Evan, a baby boy born in November to my friend Corinne in Canada. I met Corinne in 1997 when I went to the Smiths convention in California. She went with her friend Scott, who I set up to meet initially. I lost contact with Scott but still keep up in touch with Corinne, although sporadically the last few years. So I saw it fitting to make this for her baby! Never too early to introduce Morrissey to the little one! I used my Gocco so I made a shirt for Sienna too! The image of Moz was from a rubber stamp that I had gotten made ages ago from a drawing from another Morrissey fan. I had gotten permission from them to make this stamp and also made a stamp for that person as well (I can’t remember if it was a female or male Moz fan!) I planned to also use the screen to do up some notecards and hopefully I can get the paint off the screen as I did not clean it right away (bad Gocco owner! BAD!) I tried to pick a color that would work well with both the blue onesie and the orange shirt. Not sure how successful the green is but hey! It’s done now!

I decided to wear my commercially bought Morrissey shirt in solidarity! HA!

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I told you I was going crazy making these glass pendants!  I’m trying to perfect the technique plus it is fun to make these. I really, really  need to take more time to photograph them more nicely! They do look a lot better than these photos.

Sienna’s gorilla is sporting the newest Sienna pendant I made.

Here is one of Zack for Tammy

This is Chlóe, the newest addition to the Dombre/Black family, relations of Yves’.
This is Evan, born into the world in November 2008 to my friends Corinne and Thomas

Sienna’s cousins Eli and Maia for my sister in law, Liz

Pins for my mother in law to wear.

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My craft has been off the last week so I thought I would post some of the things I made in the beginning of the month when my craft was on. I was in a swap for 10 surprise items, could be store bought or hand made and I did a combination of both for my partner based on her profile. Some of the things she likes is chickens/roosters and the Old West. I knew right away I wanted to crochet a chicken potholder for her and was one of the first things I started back in December. Glad I did as I left plenty to do last minute! I decided to practice my carving and made her a name stamp with a chicken. I’m pretty proud of how it turned out! And just so everything wasn’t going to be fowl related, I made some “Old West” magnets with images from my clip art book.

The work in progress. I had a temporary brain fart and thought I needed the image to be reverse (top right). Good thing I realized I was wrong before I started carving.

I think it came out well so even joined a carving swap. Yikes!

I used Diamond Glaze on a couple of them and 3D Crystal Lacquer on the others. Definitely like 3D better for this (no air bubbles!)

I gave the chicken green eyes! ha!

So now I have become obsessed with making these glass pendants. I discovered these glass pendant kits from Annie Howes’ Etsy shop back in August and practically harassed Annie about when she was going to ship them to me. The kit comes with pretty papers to use under the glass but I knew I was going to use my own photos. Well, I finally got motivated to make one earlier this month (part of the delay was finding just the right photo!)

I loved how they turned out and made a few for some friends with pics of their newborns. I’m seriously considering selling these and also selling some using some of my holga shots. We’ll see!

I bought myself this stencil book for Christmas and made this shirt for Sienna. I bought this stuff to add to acrylic paint to make it fabric paint (altho I do have fabric paint for the Gocco and some leftover from my silkscreen class). It’s already been thru a few washes and still looks good! Wooo!! fun!

I tried to take a photo of us with me wearing the pendant and Sienna wearing her shirt. We look cute but you can’t really see us sporting my creations!

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I can’t remember when my watch strap broke, it’s been so long! After unsuccessfully trying to contact Paul Frank about buying a replacement strap, I tried using black tape to fix it temporarily but it would slide out within minutes. I had the idea to sew on a piece of fabric to replace that part of the strap. Actually doing it took some time! But I finally did it!! Woohoo! It didn’t come out quite perfect as I didn’t realize the metal part would be in the way when I sewed it but hey, at least I can wear it now and it hasn’t broken off (yet!)
I didn’t realize that the strap from the other side of the watch would cover the butterfly’s face but that’s ok because I also didn’t plan on sewing right across his face either!

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I made a pin!

I’m sending a couple to my in-laws. If I make it again, I think I will take out his name.

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