creative dribble

Thinking of Christmas on a 70-Degree Day

2011-10-24T12:36:00.000-05:00

This is summer's last hurrah. As I writing this, I'm sitting with tea in hand on my deck in Chicago, and it's about to be one of the last nice days of the year. The forecast says that it's going to be 70 degrees today and the next few days, so I intend to make the most of it. Which is why it's strange that I'm already thinking about Christmas.

Many of you already know that I put out a handmade Christmas card every year. Maybe you noticed that I hadn't posted about last year's card? Well, that's because I didn't start thinking about the darn thing until so late in the year that I was scrambling to get it done.

I originally had an idea that I wanted to do something with a sewn pattern, but I wasn't sure how to really create a nice looking line, how it might damage my sewing machine, or if I would even be able to execute it.

So I decided to stick to a technique I knew would work: good old-fashioned threading a yarn through a hole. I've done this before on one of my first cards but with ribbon. It's the card that's the second from the left in this picture.

So, I came up with the idea of stringing mittens on a clothesline for the theme. Frankly, I was running out of time, and I knew that I didn't have time to screw around with cutting out everything by hand this year. I typically like to buy materials before Thanksgiving and start the heavy construction work over the holiday, if not earlier. Even with the Thanksgiving start, depending on the level of labor, putting together the cards can stretch well into the week before Christmas. (Some people even get their cards around the new year.)

This past year, I didn't even start ideating until right before Thanksgiving, so I knew that I would have to make it simple. In prior years, I frequently cut out shapes by hand after printing them on paper. But I finally decided to join scrapbookers in the 20th century by making use of paper punches. I ordered a tiny mitten punch from some random craft website and hoped that it would turn out to be the right size when it arrived. Luckily, it was, so I proceeded to punch out hundreds of mittens from different pieces of scrap paper I had in my craft drawer.

I used some multicolored yarn and strung them on the card with a little "Happy Holidays" message on each end of the string.

One thing that I'm still not sure was the right decision was to leave the mittens loose on the string instead of knotting them to the string to prevent them from shifting around. How did they arrive in the mail? Were they all clumped or creased or funny-looking by the time they got to the recipients?

All in all, this was not my best card project, but I feel pretty good about how it turned out given time constraints. I have grander plans for this year's card. We'll see what happens. Maybe I'll even enter the Paper Source Holiday Card Contest.

Cocktail Collection

2011-09-25T09:48:00.002-05:00

Have you ever noticed that when you are searching for something specific that you can never find it? I've been looking for a set of beautiful vintage stemmed cocktail or martini glasses for quite a while now. It's not as if there aren't lots of beautiful modern glasses out there, but there is something incredibly cool about vintage barware and glassware.

I've been inspired by a lot of the traditional American cocktails that I've been drinking at a lot of lounges here in Chicago: The Violet Hour, Sable, and Le Bar all seem to have great traditional drinks with a little modern twist. Then, when I was at Boka earlier this summer, my friend Nora ordered this delicious drink in an even better looking glass.

It's a little tough to see how gorgeous it is, but it really inspired me to find a set of glassware with this same look and feel. I visited all the great shops in Andersonville - an area in Chicago that has the cutest little antique shops that are wonderfully curated - and searched for that perfect cocktail set with no luck. Barware is getting so popular that there are very few sets these days, and even fewer with the specific look you might be looking for.

On a recent trip to visit my parents in Ohio, we passed by a promising-looking antique store on our way to another attraction. I insisted that we leave whatever family activity that we were doing in time so that we make it back to the antique store before it closes. Man, that was a great move on my part.

Entering into Stagecoach Antiques in Akron was probably one of the more overwhelming shopping experiences I have had. China and glasses are everywhere, with shelves stuffed so full that you couldn't even see was stashed in the back.

Luckily, I'm a patient girl when it comes to shopping, so I was happy to spend an hour wading through glasses to find something perfect. But then it dawned on me: why settle for one style of beautiful glass when you can have several and still have it look like a set?

Few of the remaining cocktail glass sets had enough for even a small party, so I decided that I would get a variety of glasses and use them as a set. Plus, like the lady in the store said, if you break a glass, you can just go out an buy a gorgeous new one without having to match it.

So, here's the variety that I came up with. I'm starting with six glasses and will add to the collection whenever I find something that I love. I think this works for cocktail glasses and could also apply to other things that we buy in multiples. What do you think? Any suggestions on what other items are even more versatile when they're not in a totally matched set?

The Power of Flowers

2011-08-29T07:43:00.000-05:00

When I lived in San Francisco, I used to buy a bouquet flowers from the little florist in my office building every Friday. It was usually a sad little bunch, on sale because it was the end of the week, and it was better to sell it for 50% off instead of letting it die in the store. The blooms usually only lasted for a few days, but I loved having fresh flowers around our apartment.

After we moved to Chicago, I didn't have a real florist in such close proximity. (Well, maybe I did, but I just wasn't looking for one.) Plus, that 50% discount in San Francisco had been very motivating, and living on a student budget made purchasing flowers at full price less appealing. Even after I started working again, I had just gotten out of the habit of having flowers around.

But recently, I ran across this great article about flower arranging from the NY Times magazine and decided that I needed to start having flowers around again. All the prearranged bouquets I had ever purchased always looked a little sad. This article addressed what you can do with a cheap bunch of flowers with just a little trimming and arranging. I pulled out the article and put it in a little heap with some magazines, thinking that it would come in handy at some point.

A few weeks after reading this article, I was strolling through Whole Foods' floral section one day and saw a some gorgeous hydrangeas and peonies. I decided to give flower arranging a shot with these luscious looking buds. So, I bought the flowers and a few greens to get started.

I took everything home and started trimming wildly. Whenever I would bring home flowers before, I would hack all the stems off at one point on the stem and stuff them into the nearest vase. It was very efficient, but produced somewhat iffy results. Plus, I noticed that almost all the vases I have are meant for tall, traditional arrangements, but I like tighter, denser bouquets that sit a lower to the table. So this time, I tried to have a nice little bunch of flowers grouped low to the vase. I have to say that I like the results.

It was definitely a lot of fun trying to arrange the stems, and turned what was normally a five-minute activity into a half-hour long adventure. (The last 10 minutes of that half-hour were cleanup from the insane number of stems and leaves littering my counter, but it was part of the whole experience, I suppose.)

I ended up replicating this arrangement a few times because I liked it so much, and then peonies went out of season. (A very sad time in my summer.) I tried a different arrangement again a few weeks later with some spider mums and these weird purply prickly things.

I haven't gotten as many flowers recently because of a project that has eaten up my whole dining room table, but I plan on trying again soon. I'm pretty sure I won't have another gap like the one I had before after my SF-Chi move. That's too long to wait for something this pretty to show up on my dining table again.

New Life - Repurposing Old (Ikea!) Furniture - REDUX!

2011-08-21T07:22:00.000-05:00

Hang on. Repurposing old Ikea furniture again? Didn't we just go through this? It doesn't seem so long ago that I dreamed up this whole scheme to start this blog and repaint and old Ikea chest to make it new again. But now we're back in the same place.

See, we finally decided to redecorate our office. No more baby-boy-themed paint scheme with a mishmash of cheap furniture. Now we have a real desk, a cool paint color, fancy chairs, actual non-ugly light fixtures and table. New! That's all fine and dandy, but where are we going to put all those books we had accumulated over the years? There was no room left in our office for all our books. Our one tall and one short Billy bookcase from Ikea were still serving a very real purpose but didn't fit the space anymore. So, one bookcase got shuttled off to the attic, and one earned a place in our guest bedroom as a functional decorative piece.

Oh, but Billy, you're kind of boring, and your natural finish doesn't match the room I'm putting you in. So let's hit those paint cans again. I have to be honest: even though the room is very clearly a homemade Holly Hobby piece, I'm totally in love with it. It's the only room in the house where I picked all the furniture, color, and decor myself, and I think of it as MY room. MY work in progress. The room is a deep grape color (crazy, I know) with black and white accents modern and baroque accents, so I wanted to keep with the theme and paint the bookshelf white with black accents.

To be as thrifty and environmentally friendly as possible, I used the same paint I had purchased from the last Ikea refinishing project two years ago. So, I dug out the old paint I used last time to paint my furniture and scraped off the icky solid layer of paint that kept the rest of it relatively fresh. After sanding and cleaning, I painted the craptastic chipboard veneer and even that terribly flimsy chipboard backing that slides into the grooves on the back of the shelves. You know, the one that actually you could pop out just by giving it a gentle nudge?

In my thriftiness, I didn't really calculate how much paint I would need. It was barely enough - I didn't even paint the underside of one of the shelves. (Yes, friends, if you come visit, I officially give you permission to inspect the shelf and mock me.)

Keeping with the modern baroque theme I'd already started going with in the room, I chose a stencil from Michael's that mimicked the pattern on the bedspread in the room:

I toyed with the idea of taking the design across the sides, top, and even the back of the shelf. However, I planned to put decorative items on top of the refinished pieces, so it didn't make sense to take all that time stenciling the top. Also, since I'm bad at editing my book collection, I figured that no one would ever see the back of the shelf. So, I just took the stencil up the side in black stencil paint.

Why is it off center, you ask? Well, in my brain, it made sense that it would be slightly closer to the front of the bookshelf so you can see it, and I thought it would look fine since there is a little divot on the back of the shelf to prevent it from tipping forward. Like I said, it made sense in my brain. Don't judge me too harshly

After finishing the stenciling, the paint took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to dry. The stencil paint I purchased had a dense, dry, powdery texture, which gave the stencil a nice antique-y look. However, the high-gloss paint that I used as the base probably extended the drying time by a lot. On the paint, it tells you to let it set for 24 hours. After 3 days, it was still rubbing off with a touch of the finger. I thought I was going to have to scrap the whole thing - and let me tell you how excited I would have been about that - but luckily, it finally set after almost an entire week.

Add a few vintage books, some adorable little foo dogs from west elm, and voila! A new decorative bookshelf is born. Okay, it's not that impressive, but at least it looks different from how it started and it matches the room. That's all I ask for.

Materials used in this project:

Old Billy bookshelf from Ikea
Gloss oil paint
Stencil from Michael's
Stencil brush
Masking tape
A place where the bookcase can dry for days on end since you can't move the stupid thing for fear of smudging the stencil.

Cheater, cheater, Chrysanthemum Eater

2011-08-14T10:24:00.002-05:00

I've spent the last few months buried up to my neck in... the New York Times Sunday Crossword! I'm obviously terrible, because I work on it for a while on Sunday and then gradually throughout the week. I'm almost about to break through, though - I've only got one little chunk left to solve from this past Sunday's puzzle. Hooray! Only one week later.

So, creative endeavors have taken a backseat lately. But a few weeks ago, I saw the front cover of the Paper Source catalog and decided that I HAD to have the chrysanthemum wreath featured on it.

So pretty, right?

Paper Source sells these kits that you can assemble yourself. The make it really easy to be creative. Actually, it's so easy, that it feels like cheating. All you have to do is punch the petals out of the pre-cut paper that they provide, curl the petals, and then stick everything together with the tape that they provide. Really, the only decisions you have to make are where to put the flowers and leaves when they are assembled.

That got me to thinking: so much of my creative activities are really just following directions that the real creative people give me? Most of us pull inspiration from elsewhere, but there comes a certain point where it crosses over from "drawing from" to "copying." Where is that line? I'm pretty sure this project is pretty deep into copying territory, but I loved the process (and the result) just the same.

Materials used in this project:

Paper Source Chrysanthemum kit
Bone folder

Summertime Is Bloggy Time - Candle Scandal

2011-07-04T17:05:00.000-05:00

Greetings! I've spent lots of time over the winter on creating fun new creative projects, I just couldn't manage to get them up on the web. So here's a start to it.

For one of my projects this winter, I decided I needed to maximize the life out of a candle I received as a gift from one of my friends. You see, I've always loved candles, but I have this hesitation to use them because I want them to last forever. Call me a bit of a candle hoarder. When I was younger, I would take any wax that had dripped off of a candle and stick it back in the still-burning flame to make sure I got every single bit of mileage out of it. Walk around my place, and you'll see little collections of candles everywhere - most started, but sitting dormant for years at a time.

So you can imagine my surprise and excitement when I finally made it to the bottom of this deliciously citrusy hunk of wax. This square Jo Malone candle was huge - about 5"x5" but had finally burned down to the very bottom. It is one of the first candles I've finished on my own - quite a feat considering its size and the fact that I never finish even the smallest votives. Now its empty shell was just sitting on my fireplace mantle collecting dust since it only had one wick - the thing probably had more than a third of its wax left even after it was done! Maybe I should send a note to the good folks at Jo Malone to help them rectify that.

So, being the little saver that I am, I decided to melt down the wax from the remainder of the candle and turn it into several smaller candles. I had several small vases I had received from two friends' wedding that needed to be put to good use, so I decided they would make good votive containers. I used kitchen twine to create the wicks. Never mind that you're supposed to do all this prep work to make an effective wick; I wanted to get this project done TODAY, so I just used the wicks as-is. Sure, they might not be totally straight, but whatever.

Meanwhile, I stuck the big hunk of wax into a smaller pot and boiled a pot of water underneath it. Instant double boiler! I didn't have the patience / courage to chop the giant block of wax into chunks, so I just left it in a chunk waited for it to melt.

Almost half an hour later, everything had melted, it was time to put the wax in its new vessels. I didn't really think through how I was going to get the melted wax into the vases, so I just had to wing it. Suffice it to say that using something that has a spout to pour, or at least a narrower mouth would have been better. Wax everywhere on the counter and placemats I had laid out, down the side of pot, on my hands, all over the vases.

But finally, all the wax was in the vases. Time to let it cool! This is where the project ends, right? Well, that lack of wick preparation finally caught up to me. The string was waving around like no one's business, creating a snakelike line through the wax. I kept trying to readjust their paths, but it was too late.

Also, It turns out that wax contracts when it cools, so I ended up with a strange hollow shape for the candles. The wax clung to the sides of the vases and the wick, but left a nice bundt-cake style gap in between. Oops.

If I were to do this again, I would figure out how to do this in two halves instead of pouring all at once. I tried to take little bits of wax that I had to peel off of my placemats and stick them into the gaps, but it doesn't really fill much of the space. So now, every time I start a new candle, I have to take it outside for a little starter burn. Since the wick is effectively too long for the amount of wax, I have to let it burn then trim, burn then trim... At least I get to spend a little time outside bathed in warm (and great-smelling) candlelight, right?

Materials used in this project:

Kitchen twine
Glass vases
Chopsticks
Double boiler (also known as two pots)
A steady hand so you don't pour wax all over yourself

Birdsong

2010-07-04T12:39:00.006-05:00

A few weeks ago, I woke up to the song of a bird at my window. It was happily tweeting away for several minutes. It was a nice way to start the morning, except that it was even earlier than my 5:30 alarm. Nevertheless, I went to the window to see who my sunrise serenader was. As I stepped out onto the deck, I saw that the bird wasn't in the tree, but on the roof of my bedroom. I'm not sure who he was singing for, but he looked very impressive. Despite the fact that I couldn't immortalize his song, I feel like he deserves a little place on the web:

I was sad that after only three days, this little robin disappeared again. I hope he comes back to visit.

A Day in the Life

2010-05-02T21:35:00.000-05:00

After a whirlwind April that included visits from friends far and wide (including some two-year-old twins), I'm finally back on track with a new post. Hello again!

I feel like all girls my age kept a diary when they were younger. It was definitely the hip thing to do in middle school and high school. I occasionally would write entries in my own journal, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel emotionally connected to what I was writing. I jotted down the things that happened in my day, but it was usually pretty mundane. "I practiced piano today" and "I did my math homework" were pretty common entries and were even then only sporadically written. Despite the fact that I was a huge nerd and really self-conscious about it, there apparently wasn't a lot of angst that I needed to capture on paper.

Now, I'll occasionally go back and read journal entries and reminisce about things that happened to my younger self (like the field trip to DC in 8th grade when a few of my roommates decided it would be a good idea to give two 20-year-old military enlistees our hotel room keys). For the most part, though, I rely on pictures to bring back memories of the past. Like they probably do for everyone, my pictures remind me of things I've forgotten about or great times that I can't forget. Recently, my husband has taken to scanning pictures into the computer from all our old negatives. My favorites so far? One picture from my first big trip to Alaska with my mom when I was 5 and one of Chris and I standing on top of the World Trade Center when he took me to visit Manhattan. It's not that they're great photos, but they bring back memories I didn't even realize I had and stir up emotions that aren't even related to those specific events.

However, one thing that I dislike about my picture collection is that there are pretty much only photos of "special occasions" like holidays or weddings or vacations. But most of life actually consists of things that happen between those events. And I also think that posed pictures really capture what is happening at any given time. I mean, when is the last time you just looked up into the distance and just smiled for an imaginary photographer. It doesn't really happen unless you have a camera aimed at you.

So I decided to spend one day and capture the things that I saw that struck me. Most of them were mundane things, but were just happenings from everyday life that I decided to capture: going for a run, the beauty of flowers in spring, a delicious cupcake break, or just sunlight streaming through the window on a beautiful day.

You could argue that this images are still kind of fake constructs simply because of the fact that I stopped to look and take a picture, but I draw the line at wearing a camera strapped to my neck all day long. I'm hopeful that I'll look at these pictures in a year or two, or maybe even 20 years and have them conjure up things I can't even imagine right now.

Drag and Drop Movie Magic

2010-03-22T11:29:00.000-05:00

I've always loved nature television and watching animals. Big Cat Diary is an inspiration; Wild Kingdom has fascinated me. That's part of the reason we decided to go on our Galapagos trip this year. Tortoises! Sea lions! Boobies! (That last one is my favorite for many reasons.)

Since we just purchased a Mac late last year, I thought that I would make use of its iLife suite. That's why we got this thing in the first place, right? What good is a Mac unless you use the fun stuff? (It's certainly not because it has made working from home easier. I miss you, Excel!)

I have to say that it seemed like a daunting task to make a movie. I mean, this stuff is usually best left to the professionals. One of my friends is going to film school to study this, and I'm investing a few hours with footage from a Canon point and shoot to do this? Ridiculous. This iMovie stuff had better work miracles!

It turns out that iMovie is one of the easiest programs to use. It loads all your videos in from iPhoto, puts them into nice visual representations and lets you edit in little bite-sized chunks. Because all of the iLife software is totally integrated, there's even a little toolbar on the side where you can pull in your music and photos. It was amazing - literally drag and drop! It took a lot less time then I imagined to cobble together a brief video representation of the wildlife we saw.

But enough shilling for Apple. Check out the movie!

If you have a Mac, try iMovie. It was tons of fun to put together these clips.

Color On My Mind

2010-03-10T08:52:00.001-06:00

Despite the fact that I said that artwork is not my forte, I've been spending an awful lot of time blogging about artwork. I've started to spend more and more time on it, so I guess it's worth saying a few more words about it.

That said, I thought that I would talk a little more about color. A lot of you know that I really like color. When I was in high school, I had a pair of purple leather high tops and red suede shoes. I also had a bright rainbow stripe knit dress covered with little clear paillettes. Yikes. I've toned my clothing color down over the years with some coaching from some good friends (you know who you are), but I still love a pop of color.

Here's the irony in my artwork situation. I am so shy about applying bold strokes to paper that all my color looks totally washed out. Over the past eight art classes, I have noticed that everyone has artistic habits. One woman has a tendency to draw very hard outlines around her objects to define them; another has a very heavy hand when it comes to shadows. Me? Every image I draw is light. Almost ghostly. No one could accuse me of overcommitting to a line.

I started out thinking that this was a flaw. But I've come to feel that it might just be my artistic signature. For example, take this picture of pillows I drew in class last week. You could criticize it for being way too gray, but in a way, it creates a mood and intention. The background fabric was red, but I hated the color combination, so I made it a gray/white, which give the whole image a bit of a washed out look. Maybe you feel differently about it, but I like how sad the pillows look because of how pale they are and how gray the background is.

Next, over the weekend, I set up a still life in my own living room! Do you remember when I said that this whole drawing this is really messy? Ugh! I'm going to have to find a better solution. Anyway, I made a commitment that I was going to try to saturate my colors a little more. I think I achieved that goal, at least more so than I have in the past, and I achieved a pretty realistic look. However, does the picture says much other than here's a pile of pillows? I'm not sure. I like the image capture, and I love that I framed it a little differently by just showing the corners. But does the color say anything?

Lastly, here is the image we worked on in our second-to-last class. This is the first class in which I felt like I was able to really make use of my lack-of-coloring skills. Since we were working with black paper, the point was to really use the color of the background to greater effect. I used very little color to fill in the shape and color of the spools of yarn/thread, but I think despite the minimal line use, you can still tell what it is.

It was remarkable how different my image was from everyone else's. Overall, because I used so little pastel, it looks like the room is really dark. Everyone else drew spools that were 80% filled in, while I only filled in 20% of the spools. So far, this is my favorite drawing.

Obviously, because I have written so much about these pieces, I seem to be becoming kind of invested in this whole "drawing" thing. My last art class was last night (self portraits - scary!), but I think I'll be continuing to experiment a little more on my own. You'll be able to tell, I guess, if you see more posts in the future.

Reframing the Scene

2010-02-27T18:34:00.002-06:00

Hello, again! I've missed you, and I'm sure the five of you who read my blog have really missed me. :)

I've been a little lax with my posts lately because I was away on vacation last week in... the Galapagos! But this little jaunt was a great place to get some new fodder for the blog. I embarked on a project that has been bugging me for a while.

You see, I am not a good photographer. I get jealous of some of my friends' pictures that feature fantastic scenery or portraits that seem to capture spontaneous moments. My hallmark is a posed picture. Where everyone is standing dead center. Like this:

Exciting, no?

It's not like I don't have practice taking pictures. When I was younger, my dad was already toting around some camera or another. He had a big fancy Nikon SLR, and there were always a few point-and-shoots hanging around his neck or wrist.

When I was in grade school, I was given my very own 110mm camera with a big red button that made a hearty "click!" when you took a picture and that you had to wind forward with every shot.
For my seventh grade trip to the UK, my dad let me use his 35MM Kodak S-Series with automatic winding and an awesome sliding lens cover feature. Sometime in high school, I upgraded to a nice automatic camera with a flip lens cover and flash built in. AND, it had a zoom! In 2002, Chris and I upgraded to digital, and we've had a nice series of Sony and Canon cameras ever since.

Finally, life came full circle when I bought Chris a Nikon digital SLR (the D90) particularly so he could use it on this trip to the Galapagos.

I wanted to challenge myself to put together more creative images in my photography. I love the way some photos allow to me to experience something I've never seen before or show a totally different view of something familiar. I don't get to use the awesome SLR when Chris and I on vacation together since it's ultimately his camera, so I'm doing the best I can with a little digital camera. Luckily, digital photography has made life easier with on-computer editing.

Here are the results of my endeavor. I took hundreds of pictures - most of them mediocre to bad - and these are the ones that rose to the top. I've edited every single one of them to hopefully capture a mood, feeling, or funny moment. They don't exactly capture the experience, but hopefully you get a flavor for what I was feeling when I took them.

Do these pictures make me look like I had a good time? Because other than the crazy vertigo that lasted for 5 days after I disembarked from the ship, I had a great time.

Finally, a few guest shots. The first is from Chris, who captured a fantastic sunset on our last day on the islands:

Finally, one shot from a fellow vacationer that simply captures the magic of the sea lions in the Galapagos:

Materials used for this project:

Canon PowerShot SD800
MacBook Pro and iPhoto
The Galapagos

Remnants to Romantic

2010-02-11T21:05:00.013-06:00

I've been wanting to buy a lot of jewelry lately. I think I have inherited my obsession with shiny things from my mother. Her jewelry collection is impressive, to say the least, but her collection is mostly in precious metals and gemstones. I have been the lucky beneficiary of her generosity - she buys new stuff for me, and also has bequeathed several things to me that she thinks she's too old to wear.

When I was little, and even now when I visit on vacation, we used to sit and she would tell me about the stories behind all her acquisitions. Some are mundane (QVC!) and some are incredibly meaningful (one of the only pieces my grandmother didn't sell off for cash before she moved from Taiwan).

And so, I think I may have developed a similar attachment to my own jewelry, even some of the cheapie pieces. I have been indulging in a few purchases lately to add to the repertoire. And when I say "indulge," I really mean that I have been spending $7.99 on cheap stuff at Forever 21. Then I suddenly realized that I already have quite a few items that would work in producing my own creation. Wouldn't that be an even better story to attach to a piece?

I'm a total romantic at heart, so this whole ribbons and bows trend in jewelry is completely irresistable to me. It's a good thing that those happen to be the materials I have at hand.

I had a bunch of beads left over from party decorations (from 2005!) that have just been sitting in my craft drawer...

...some black satiny ribbon that I intended to use in my latest holiday card...

...and a little inspiration from the blog psimadethis.com and this necklace from Ann Taylor:

At first I thought that I would just copy the Ann Taylor design, but I realized with such small beads, you would only see the ribbon, not the beads. So, I decided to alternating sections of 4 single beads with a little knot of ribbon in between each interspersed with 3 clusters of 3 beads each. I made it symmetrical, so there are 5 single bead sections and 4 cluster bead sections.

I was initially going to use the length of ribbon just to create a tie in the back, but I decided I needed a little heft to this necklace, so I went to Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft to pick up a metal chain and clasp. In order to keep it the necklace from being too hard-edged, I wove about 4 inches of the remaining ribbon at the ends through the chain and tied a knot to secure it. Then, using pliers, I got the chain to the length I wanted (leaving a little room at the end of the ring end so I can adjust the length).

What do you think? Does this look like I made it for less than $5? I wore it to work yesterday (Thursday) and didn't receive a reaction either way, potentially meaning that it looks super cheap...

Materials used for this project:

Plastic beads that look like crystal
1/4" black satiny ribbon
Packing tape
Metal chain
Clasp

P.S. Definitely check out this week's psimadethis.com. Talk about a romantic creation!

Mid-week Creative Droplet - Shopping Bag

2010-02-02T08:50:00.000-06:00

Well, my husband's birthday was on Sunday (for those in Chicago, Katsu was deliciously authentic - try the egg custard with unagi), and the whole weekend turned into a rather lazy one. Hence, my blog entry isn't quite complete yet.

However, here's a little mid-week artwork to keep the posting coming. In my art class last week, we started working on objects with a little more dimension - shading and the such.I have to say that I'm pretty happy with the fact that this think looks like it has dimension and creases. My favorite part? Check out the left front edge of the bag and how it goes from being defined by a white highlight at the top to a dark line at the bottom. Such a triumph! Yes, these are the things that excite me these days...

Lavender-licious

2010-01-24T09:15:00.003-06:00

I have long been a fan of lavender. What started as a vague liking of lavender has become a near obsession.

My college roommate bought me a lavender sachet as a gift from France - more than ten years later, it's still in my drawer, despite the fact that it really doesn't smell like much anymore.

I visited Matanzas Creek Winery winery when I was still living in San Francisco. Don't tell the authorities, but I snipped a little stem of lavender from a bush and stored it in a Krispy Kreme hat that sat in our car for 5 years.

I started a few lavender plants from seed this year, which yielded about 2 stems of flowers in total. I'm hoping 2010's crop will be a bit fuller.

So this week, I'm making a dessert dedicated to my favorite flower: rosemary cupcakes with lavender frosting. An odd combo? Perhaps. Lavender-licious? Definitely.

It seemed like it would be pretty straightforward. Find a standard cupcake recipe and frosting recipe and add some herbs and flowers. Easy, right? Eh, I may have hit a few bumps on the way.

I went to epicurious.com - my trusty go-to site for recipes - and found this recipe for a simple white cupcake. Decent reviews, and it looked pretty simple. I made the recipe as stated with a few modifications. I accidentally used more butter than the recipe called for - 5/6ths of a cup instead of the 2/3 of a cup that the recipe calls for. Oops #1. That is a lot of butter. Yum/yuck. For anyone who doesn't do a lot of baking, it's a little gross to see how much butter it takes to make a measly cupcake. Truthfully, I don't think that more butter really hurt anything except my waistline.

This is where things get craaazy! In place of the vanilla, I used 6 tsp of dried rosemary crushed into the smallest pieces I could muster with my bare hands. Oops #2. It turns out that spears of rosemary get a little bitter when you chew them. I recommend a mortar and pestle to get the pieces as small as possible. Then mix it in with the flour and milk.

Warning! This recipe produces a lot of cupcakes - 18 to be exact. I don't recommend making this many unless you have a planned outlet for them. Perhaps you can write a blog and distribute them to friends who read your blog?

I popped those bad boys in the oven and let them bake for a while. I must not be used to using my oven very much. Oops #3. At one point, instead of turning off my oven timer, I accidentally turned off the oven. No wonder the cupcakes seemed to stop baking at one point. They were a tiny bit crustier on top, but generally no worse for the wear.

As for the frosting recipe - personally, my favorite part of a cupcake - it was a no-brainer. I used Sprinkles' recipe for its famed vanilla buttercream frosting. I then mixed in 9tsp of whole lavender flowers (easily found at my Jewel's spice section). I think this was maybe Oops #4. Similar to rosemary, I think the essence of the lavender would have been a little better if I had just crushed the buds a bit more with a mortar and pestle. Also, Chris made me add more lavender to the recipe because he didn't think the flavor was strong enough. I think you could get away with 6tsp and still be in good shape.

Again, this frosting involves a lot of butter and a lot of sugar. 18 cupcakes = 4 sticks of butter in total. Sprinkles tells you that this is enough frosting for 12 cupcakes, but I frosted 18 cupcakes and still had some left.

I used an offset spatula to frost the cupcakes, and voila! Lavender-licious.

So, in the end, how did these cupcakes turn out? Not too shabby! I would definitely make these again as a unique alternative with the modifications I stated above. If you're interested, try it out for yourself. It was fun and weird to toss ingredients in to my cooking that I wouldn't normally use.

Happy baking!

(Recommended) materials used for this project:

Cupcakes

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups unsalted butter, softened
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups whole milk
6 tsps rosemary, crushed with mortar and pestle

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare cupcake tins as directed as directed in the recipe you are following.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl.
In a separate, larger bowl, cream the butter. Gradually add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy.
Add the eggs one at a time, and beat well after each addition.
In a small bowl, combine the milk and vanilla.
To the butter mixture, add about one quarter of the flour mixture and rosemary and mix well. Add about one quarter of the milk mixture and mix well. Continue alternating the flour mixture and milk mixture, beating after each addition until smooth.
Pour the batter into the cupcake tins. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cake springs back when touched.
Remove from oven and let cool for about 10 minutes, then turn the cupcakes out of the tins and onto a rack to finish cooling completely.

Frosting

1 cup butter, softened
3 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
9 teaspoons lavender, crushed with mortar and pestle

In a bowl combine butter, sugar and salt. Beat till blended.
Add the milk and vanilla and beat for an additional 3 to 5 minutes or until smooth and creamy.

Hike Up That Skirt

2010-01-17T17:01:00.071-06:00

My mother told me when I was younger that learning to sew would be an essential life skill. As a wife, I would be responsible for taking care of all the housework and ensuring that my husband's pants were properly hemmed. It turns out that my mothers' sewing mini-courses didn't really stick with me over time, so my skills are a little sub par. Luckily, I had a pretty strong backup by going to college, finishing grad school, and having a career.

Still, I can't deny that knowing how to sew is a useful skill. This week, I've tried to put my skills to use - not on my husband's clothes, but on my own. It is an experiment in how I can improve my current wardrobe. No, I'm not extremely petite. I'm actually 5'4", which is the height of the average American woman. Unfortunately, clothing manufacturers seem to think that we're all Glamazons with 45-in inseams.

I protest! But in the meantime, I have to make do with what I have. Short legs, meet long skirt:

I've had this skirt for a few years now, and every time I wear it, I feel like it makes me even more of a midget than I already am. My legs shrink and become stumpy, and not even the highest heels can rescue the look (as evidenced by the photo above). Short girls, you know what I mean!

As a side note, I've discovered that shopping at teen-oriented stores (like Forever 21) can actually be a better bet than the petites section at a chain store like Banana Republic because of the skirt length and variety of styles. Apparently teenagers like their skirts shorter. And their quality lower.

Anyhow, I decided to take on the gargantuan task of figuring out how to hem a circular hem. If any of you have tried this before, you know that it's not totally easy to create a circular hem that's even and attractive. So, I took advantage of the layered construction of the skirt and decided to make the part that I was hemming invisible by showing only the fluffy crepe layer (the shiny one that's not currently at the bottom):

So, rip, rip, cut, snip, off come 6 inches of skirt! It was pretty easy to get all that fabric off because of all the seams on the back of the skirt, and there was even enough fabric to leave room for a hem that I could hide underneath the bottom layer.

Using my mom's trusty old sewing machine, I did the best I could to shore up my loose end.

I have to admit that I wasn't being that careful with the hem since I knew it would be mostly hidden, but my hem was REALLY crooked. Plus, when I got to the side seams, there was a fair bit of shortcutting required to make it all join together.

Still, I think that you can't really tell from three feet away - I can just tell that I have knees again!

So, what do you think? An improvement? Creative? Ruined? It's the right time to be thinking about performance reviews, so I'll be wearing the skirt to work next week to get some face-to-face feedback.

Materials used for this project:

A skirt that's too long
Scissors
Seam ripper
Black thread
A sewing machine

Trying My (Blackened) Hand at Drawing

2010-01-10T19:30:00.017-06:00

To continue my holiday theme, I want to tell you about the fantastic Christmas gift my husband purchased for me this year. I have to say that among ideas he has come up with, this was a pretty good one - a course of art classes at Lillstreet Art Center. Nice work, Chris! I forgive you for the L.L. Bean moccasin debacle.

Despite my mother pressuring me to take jewelry making (I mean, really? What am I going to do with learning how to texture metal, Mom?!), I decided to go with Beginning Drawing.

So, I told you in my first blog post that I'm not the best artist. I was constantly ruining my GPA with stupid B's in art class. Luckily, I no longer have a 5th-grade straight-A streak to maintain, so there's a little less pressure on doing well in this class.

It's a good thing, too. My weak drawing skills didn't totally fail me, but I definitely was not as skilled of an artist as the other 5 people in the class. And people, that includes drawing circles.

We used vine charcoal and some compressed charcoal for this class. For those that know me really well, this whole art class is kind of an issue for me because I hate getting my hands dirty. I'm the girl who only uses four fingers to eat ribs. The other six are up in the air as if I'm drinking two incredibly tiny cups of tea. And for someone who hates messes, damn, I had no idea how messy charcoal could really be. There was dust everywhere - under my fingernails, in every crease of my hand, smudges on my face... I felt like I needed to be wearing a smock and sweatpants that I never want to wear again. I digress.

We started off slowly by literally drawing circles; then we upgraded to spheres:

Not so creative. But then, we started learning more about shading techniques, sizing, and positioning of an object on the page to manipulate how the object is perceived. We drew an apple:

...and an orange with a vase:

Personally, the apple was my favorite object of the evening. (Do you like the little shine on the top left?). However, the orange picture is the only one in which I made an artistic decision. That table actually ends another foot and a half to the left and another foot in front of those items. But I wanted to keep the focus on the orange and vase.

We learned that realistic depictions of things aren't the goal in drawing and artwork. It's about manipulating the artistic scene or setting so that you show your viewer what you want them to see. For someone who tends to get caught up in telling the truth about everything and in trying to depict how things ARE, this is a pretty freeing revelation. I can actually lie to you about how I saw things, enhance your experience, and not get into legal trouble! (Marketers, you know what I'm talking about!)

Stay tuned for future projects. I look forward to sharing more lies with you.

5 Years in the Making - Longest Project Ever!

2009-12-30T10:36:00.015-06:00

It's not that I'm a procrastinator. I have deadlines and I meet them at work (that's for you, Ms. Manager!); I get my Christmas cards done almost completely on time; I'm typically on time to parties even after a rigorous hair routine. So why did this darn project me so long to finish?

I've been doing counted cross-stitch since I was in grade school. My mother would take me to Jo-Ann Fabric stores, and while she would pick out notions for some sewing project, I would wander the craft aisles looking for something more interesting than bolts of clown-printed fabric.I started with small counted cross-stitch projects (stamped cross-stitch is for babies!) that involved cats, or trite sayings, or small holiday images, eventually graduating to larger-scale photo-realistic projects.

Despite the fact that I don't even like most of the traditional American country/old lady images that are used in cross-stitch, I still continue to do it. Yes, the process of repeated movements is soothing, but there's just a certain sense of accomplishment and attachment to a physical piece of product that you spend so much time making. Once, I had my heart broken because someone literally ripped to shreds a little angel sampler that I had made as a gift. Ten years later, I've mostly gotten over it (mostly), but I no longer give gifts like that to people who might deliberately destroy them.

That said, I thought that a complex cross-stitch sampler would be an amazing gift for someone like my mom. Since she has done a fair bit of needlework in her day, I knew she would appreciate the work that it takes to pull something like that together. I chose a floral lily design with a lot of subtle shading and extremely small stitching detail. I always anticipated that this cross-stitch project would take a pretty lengthy amount of time. So, I budgeted a year or two so that I wouldn't have to work on it every waking hour of the day. Surprise! It took me five years.

My original plan was to go to give the finished piece to my mom - aptly named Lily - for Christmas or her birthday a few years after starting the project. Once that deadline blew by and I was still less than half finished, why not her big xxth birthday? (She would kill me if I put her age for everyone to see.) Well, that came and went, and I toiled to get it done for her birthday this year. I'm talking entire evenings, weekend mornings, and lost sleep to pull this thing together.

Well, May crept up on me, and I couldn't quite finish in time. I literally only had another week or two of work to do, so I decided that Christmas might be the magical day for the gift. A few borders and tassels later, things were wrapped up. And taa dah!:

That's my mom holding her fantastic birthday/Christmas gift. Doesn't she look happy?

So, is this really a creative project? No, not really. It's fuddy-duddy counted cross-stitch from a pattern that merely takes time; not creative juices. But given how much time I devoted to this project, I thought it was worth documenting.

Materials used for this project:

"Gold Collection" Exquisite Lily Sampler in Counted Cross Stitch from Dimensions
An eternity

Below are a few more photos for posterity:

The package:

The unbelievably detailed instructions (measuring about 24" x 36"):

The thread and stupid grid of 27 colors I kept having referring back to to figure out exactly which shade of thread I needed to use. It is VERY difficult to tell the difference between light yellow green and plain old yellow green, so threads were separated into three different bunches:

Finally, the finished product. Check out the detailed lilies-of-the-valley in the middle! 28 of those tiny x's per linear inch. That's 784 x's per square inch. I almost went blind:

I hope everyone has had a fantastic start to the new year. See you next week!

Ho, ho, ho! - Back After a Hiatus!

2009-12-28T13:35:00.028-06:00

Hello, again! It seems that I have gotten lazy over the past few months. My creative juices ran dry after only 5 posts... in June?!

Not really. Let me explain and offer some advice. Never take on a large project in something in which you have no confidence. For me, that's writing fiction. I thought it would be fun to try taking on a new version of a chapter of Pride and Prejudice written in a modern tone. Except that I had forgotten how bad I was at writing fiction. Three weeks later, and totally burned out, I was left with a sucky version of HALF of the chapter and had been sapped of any desire to do something creative. For those interested in the text - too bad. That crap will never see the light of day. Working with physical objects is more my speed.

So, I'm back now, doing the things I enjoy! I've been occupying myself for the last month or two with my all-consuming annual project: handmade holiday cards! Typically, this involves a lot of paper, scissors, and glue - and this year hasn't been any different.

First, the design. This is inevitably the most maddening part of the process. Searching for ideas doesn't always work. I usually look through my little card making book, catalogs, magazines... Usually the idea just comes to me: a flash of inspiration (eureka!) in the middle of the day when I'm working on something totally unrelated to greeting cards.

Having been obsessed with Mad Men (including a theme party earlier this year), I drew inspiration from the show and AMC's "Mad Men Yourself" application. I figured that a little 60's style would be fun for my holiday cards. Who doesn't want a Gimlet, skinny tie, or house frock to brighten up the holiday season?

So, I made pictures of a male and female figure with the suit and dress that I liked:

Then I printed those images out on white paper and then cut out the clothing only so I could get a clean silhouette without the other body parts. I scanned the images back onto the computer so I could print them en masse from Powerpoint directly onto the red paper I was using. (This year's card was designed to be made mostly from leftover paper from previous years. If any of you do arts and crafts, you know what I mean. I am sick of having random paper scraps lying around the house!)

Snip, snip! Dresses and suits in red!

I used organdy ribbon to create a ruffle at the bottom of the dress. Despite my horrific freehand sewing skills, I gathered the organdy ribbon with a needle and thread to make a bunch of little ribbon lengths. I then sewed them onto the bottom of each dress to create a raised "hem." It's surprisingly difficult to create a length of ribbon the same length as a piece of paper unless you're measuring against it every second.

Cut velvet ribbon was used for the trim around the red suit jacket. I glued the ribbon to the jacket and then trimmed with scissors for a custom tailor job. Santa needs to look as slim for the big night!

I freehand drew some Santa hats. I have to tell you that Santa hats can look weird if you don't get the droopiness just right.

Sticking everything to the card and finishing it off with a "Merry Christmas" stamp is where the relief sets in for me. Sadly, I was a little indecisive this year about how I wanted things positioned, so there were a few versions as I have shown below, a few versions where the couple look like they are toasting each other, and a few versions with crooked stamp placement. (I should add that the stamp is totally optional in the case of non-religious friends. Unfortunately, I may have already offended with the Santa theme. Oh, well.)

Voila! It's a swingin' 60's Santa with his Mrs. Claus. Times 40 cards. Equals a lot of time devoted to cards instead of holiday shopping.

This year's design is definitely not my favorite. Aren't we always our own harshest critics? Below is a lineup of my work over the years. I loooove my paper.

The bottom three are "Christmas Surprises:"

Materials used for this project:

Clothing design from "Mad Men Yourself"
Needle and thread
White organdy ribbon
White velvet ribbon
White pompons
Sharp paper scissors
Paper, A2 and A4 cards and envelopes from Paper Source
Glue

Final note: Until I put together the full lineup, I didn't realize that I have been making these cards for the past eight holiday seasons. Time flies, as evidenced by my long absence. I hope that everyone out there has had a great 2009; cheers to an even better, more creative 2010!

Cover Up!

2009-06-28T09:23:00.000-05:00

As it may be becoming clear, I am sometimes reluctant to spend money on furniture. Especially if I'm not convinced that I like something, I tend to look for the cheapest solution. Sometimes, I'm stuck in a state of limbo since I assume I'll upgrade in the future; I just don't want to upgrade right now.

This week, it's yet another piece of IKEA furniture that I'm trying to cover up. This time, it's really a cover up. Literally.

I have a television in my bedroom that I would love to get rid of. It's insanely heavy (Sony likes to make 'em solid) and kind of unsightly compared to sleek new LCDs and plasmas. The only problem? It still works great, it's bulky, and it needs something to sit on. Enter the IKEA side table as TV stand:

Blech. Double blech to all the crap that is on the shelves underneath the TV. Crappy DVD player, essential but ugly DVR, old N64 for MarioKart entertainment, and sewing basket for all my stupid odds and ends. Messy, no?

Since all the other wooden furniture in the bedroom is black, I thought covering it up in black fabric might be a good way to make it blend a little better. (Yes, the image above already has the fabric covering on it. The TV was too heavy just to move for the picture.)

I measured the table and bought a length of black duck cloth that covered the entire circumference of the unit plus a little extra for the top. From past experience, I made myself a little diagram to ensure that I didn't screw up the measurements too much:

Then, I marked the cloth with a dressmaker's pencil and cut the cloth along the lines I had marked using a good sharp pair of sewing scissors.

Now comes the hard part for those of us who weren't raised to make clothes for ourselves. I hemmed the bottom and side edges of the cloth with a 3/4" hem by finishing the edge with a zigzag stitch and then hemming a straight stitch hem. Then, I sewed the top cover piece to the side covering leaving one end open. A key move here was basting the fabric. The four images below all show the top fabric basted to the side fabric.

Lastly, I sewed on snaps to fasten the front flap to the overhang I left. I am bad with snaps. See my key lessons below for more on that topic.

The end result doesn't look fantastic, but it looks better than having all my crap exposed:

Plus, there was a huge bonus feature! I built in the snaps because I assumed that I would have to unsnap the cover every time I wanted to use the satellite box/DVR. It turns out that the duck cloth is a loose enough weave that I don't need to unfasten the fabric to use the equipment. Woo!

A few lessons learned on this particular project:

Always give yourself a little extra room when working with fabric. It tends to scoot around on you.
Basting fabric (pinning two pieces together where you want to sew them) prior to committing needle to fabric is critical. If I hadn't done that, I would have had one very uneven cover since I would have run out of fabric before everything was covered.
Snaps are easy to screw up, even though they look simple. Make sure you match up what goes where before you start sewing, because there are a multitude of ways to screw up the orientation. I didn't do this and literally had to resew snaps 6 times. (Quite a feat considering I only had 4 snaps to sew.)
Account for the fact that there will be gaps in the fabric unless you plan to cover them up somehow. That's why all shirts are designed with overlap where fabrics connect. I don't why, but I assumed that if every fabric seam was straight, there wouldn't be any wood peeking through. Oops.

Materials used for this project:

Tape Measure
Black duck cloth: 2 yards
Dressmaker's pencil
Sewing Scissors (sharp ones)
Sewing Machine
Black Thread
Needle
Snaps

Profile Picture

2009-06-18T16:31:00.013-05:00

As I may have mentioned, I am not the greatest artist. I like being creative, but it's not like I was getting A's in art class. (The blog is called creative dribble, not artistic dribble.)

Once, I sketched a sculpture of a woman at the Art Institute in Chicago. Everything was basically fine until I got to the feet. Picture a 6 foot tall lady with size 3 feet. Proportions are tough!

That's why I love technology, which allows even the worst freehand drawer to achieve a level of accuracy on nose size, eye placement, and lip fullness that may have been completely out of reach before.

This week's project is a project for my guest bathroom. Again, I got my inspiration from that same Martha Stewart Living article that inspired my bench project. There was a small picture above a couch with their silhouettes cut out. A very cute way to illustrate their small family tree:

I loved the idea of the "love sihouette," so I decided to make one of myself and Chris for our guest bathroom. You start by taking a digital picture of your profile against a light background, like so:

Then, I took the intermediate next step of importing the image into MS Paint so I could color in the body of the photo and white out the background to get a preliminary read on what the silhouette would look like. I think that this step is a little unnecessary if you are confident in your profile decisions, but it was helpful for me in order to get the details of exactly how a chin or nose should look, or how the strands of hair should stand on the head.

Then, in order to get the cutout details just right, I cut out a smaller model of the silhouette so I could figure out exactly how the details would cut prior to the final version. Again, probably an extraneous step, but for those who lack confidence, it works pretty well:

Then, I used my scanner and powerpoint to blow up the image to the actual size I wanted:

Finally, I taped the silhouette to a black sheet of paper (from Paper Source, of course) and traced the silhouette to the back of the paper with a pencil. I had to be careful here to make sure the faces would be facing each other when I traced the picture, so I had to tape the sihouette on backwards for one of the images because we were both facing the same way when I took the picture.

I determined the size in part by the space I wanted to fill on the wall. It was tough to imagine life-sized floating heads on the wall, but anything smaller just didn't take up enough room. I found these great 12" x 12" LP album frames at CB2 that were just the right size and simple profile for what I wanted. They also had the advantage of having a glass back so I could have a floating image if I wanted it.

Now, for the mounting. I originally wanted to use a white or very light colored background for the backing, but when I got to the store, a lot of the papers I found were too "cute" or modern. I was looking for a bit more of a retro modern (modernized Victorian?) feel to the bathroom to match the bedroom. I finally found this cool transparent film with a silver damask-like pattern that provided the right feel, and would even let the pink wall behind it show through.

I glued the silhouette to the front of the transparent paper, and here is the final result:

Voila! Silhouette for the drawing challenged. They're no longer just the domain of the artists at Disney. It's a much easier project than I imagined. Give it a try if you have the chance!

Materials used for this project:

A willing participant
Digital camera
Small craft scissors - sharp ones!
Pencil
Scanner
Crate and Barrel LP Album Frame
8.5" x 11" text weight black paper from Paper Source
12" x 12" background paper - transparent with brocade design
Glue

A Personal Touch

2009-06-12T15:58:00.008-05:00

It's never good when you have to start a conversation with your husband, "Okay, don't be mad." Especially when it's your anniversary.

Some of you may know that I design my own greeting cards. This week, I decided to create a card for my dearest husband. We have been married for 5 years, and in addition to the delicious cookie bouquet from Cookies by Design, I wanted to do something a little personal.

My biggest project is holiday greeting cards, and I usually start planning in early to mid-October in order to have everything to created by the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I only had about an hour for this project.

I decided to create a card for Chris that celebrates our five years together with the traditional materials for each of the years. I don't think anyone actually know these things offhand, so I went to look them up on Wikipedia:

1st anniversary: Paper
2nd anniversary: Cotton
3rd anniversary: Leather
4th anniversary: Linen / Silk
5th anniversary: Wood

Luckily, I basically had all these materials on hand. I used the a piece of white copy paper, a little piece of a cotton square, the trimming from a double-sided leather belt of Chris that needed to be sized down, and a tiny piece of mulch. "What about the linen or silk?" you ask...

I thought I had a little piece of leftover silk from a dress that I had tailored. It turns out that you should never count on finding something that you haven't seen in about a year.

What to do?!

I took Chris' favorite pair of linen pants and cut a tiny bit out of the seam. Eek! I'm sure he'll never even notice.

I used a purple card that I had leftover from a prior batch of greeting cards. I pasted all 5 items on the cover of the card to represent the 5 years we've been together.

I made a little engagement and wedding ring for decoration of the inside of the card along with the anniversary wishes.

Lastly, the magic ingredient that gave it a personal touch was the red and gold paper I used for the little plus and equal signs in my design. I used scraps from the paper we used for the escort cards at our wedding.

Here's the result:

Yes, it's pretty amateur looking and obviously homemade. It's certainly not my best design, and I wouldn't even really call it good looking. The plus signs look like they were made by a first-grader, especially since they didn't even end up as the same size! (I can't tell you how difficult it is to cut right angles with plus signs that small.) But I love the fact that I was able to make something for Chris and make it really personal. Maybe he was just lying, but he said that it was his favorite card that I've made. He didn't even mind that his pants were missing a tiny chunk. Mission accomplished.

Materials used for this project:

Lavender A4 card and pearlized envelope from Paper Source
Silver paper from Paper Source
Vellum (for the engagement ring)
Office Paper
Cotton Square
Leather Belt
Linen Pants
Mulch
Scissors
A quarter, nickel, and penny to trace the outlines for the rings

New Life - Repurposing Old (IKEA!) Furniture

2009-06-06T12:22:00.019-05:00

One of the first projects that arose from my new creative spring was to solve a practical problem.

My condo in Chicago is on the 3rd floor with a landing on the 2nd floor. I love having this second floor area because it gives a little rest stop on the way up the stairs and a place to take off my shoes. (Being Asian, I don't wear shoes inside the house.) However, for 3 years, this created a crazy mess of shoes on my landing, and there was nowhere to sit. Disaster.

So, I decided to clean up my act. I stored my shoes in a separate location upstairs. Great! Check!

Now, all I had to do was find a bench that would fit the landing area. You've all gone furniture shopping, right? I browsed a LOT of different online stores, and they were all too big, not the right color, or just downright expensive.

Then I discovered that the solution was right in front of me. I had an old chest from IKEA that I used as my first coffee table right after college that was sitting unused in my office. It turned out to be the perfect size to fit in that area. It didn't really match the area since it's just a plain IKEA maple-colored finish, and honestly, I found it pretty ugly, but it certainly was more appealing than paying $300 for a new bench that still didn't really match.

Then, I thought that maybe since I wasn't paying squat for the item itself, I could just repaint it to suit my color scheme. I happened to have the paints from when I moved in three years ago (a Tiffany blue door with white walls), so I figured I could get my local paint provider to mix some new paint in order to refinish the furniture. But I still had to choose a design.

I combed websites for ideas, but everything I came upon seemed too complicated for a first-time furniture painter (Martha Stewart) or just not quite right for that area (floral stencils). But as I was looking through an old Martha Stewart Living that boasted 75 "Pretty and Practical Decorating Ideas," I came across this image from a woman's home in NYC.

I loved the pattern in what appears to be some sort of fireplace grate replacement. So I decided to replicate that design on my bench.

First, I went and bought the paint. Two quarts of Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo Alkyd Low Lustre Enamel set me back $50. (The guy at the store told me that oil-based was the only way to go for high-traffic areas.) I bought some 3M masking tape knowing that masking off the grid would be easiest way to recreate the look. They had two types of tape - normal blue painter's tape and painter's tape for delicate surfaces. Despite the fact that it was only available in the 1" width (I had wanted 0.75" for a smaller, more delicate grid), I went with the delicate surfaces tape since it was less likely to pucker and allow paint to seep under it.

Next, a prototype of the pattern. If you look closely at the image, the block pattern is a square that repeats. I created a half-scale version of the pattern in order to make sure I could recreate it and so the measurements would be easier when I masked the actual furniture. Each square would be 13" wide, which allowed for 3 repeats of the pattern on the top of the bench, and 2 plus a little extra on the front.

Finally, I started working with the actual furniture. I lightly sanded the furniture to give the paint something to stick to. This was messy - I recommend doing this outside or in a garage or somewhere that's very easy to clean. The dust was really fine and looked kind of like baby powder.

I painted the chest with three coats of paint. I didn't use any primer, which is probably why it took three coats to cover the wood color. For anyone who doesn't paint a lot, a quart goes a REALLY long way, so there was plenty to spare. I didn't sand between coats, which didn't seem to make a difference. I used cheap brushes and didn't clean them with thinner or mineral spirits between coats. That was probably a mistake. Every time I started a new coat, the old, dried paint from the brush would flake off in tiny pieces and screwed up the smooth surface of the paint. Oops. There were two important lessons in here for me:

Don't start with the side that is most visible.
Things will never be perfect when you do them the first time. Especially if you're impatient. But usually, it turns out okay anyway.

Next, I masked off the pattern onto the bench. This was harder than it looked. I screwed it up a few times because I calculated the number of inches incorrectly when I put three of the squares together. It only took one coat of the blue because the white served as a nice base. Plus, I daubed it on pretty thickly. The "don't start with the visible side" lesson also applies here. I forgot to really push down on the tape to seal it the first time.

8 hours later, I peeled off the masking tape to reveal the painted pattern.

Lastly, I used a tiny 8 ounce can of Minwax clear gloss polyurethane to protect the paint job since it's in a high-traffic area. Plus, since a bunch of stuff I own has metal in it, I think this will help with any of those stupid gray marks that always seem to appear when metal and paint come within half an inch of each other. I applied two coats. Now it's super shiny.

Here's the final result in its new home:

So, maybe the size wasn't perfect. It's a little deeper than I anticipated, meaning that my front door won't open all the way. (Good thing that the carpet prevents it from doing that anyway.) It also makes for a pretty narrow area to get up the stairs - you are forced to use the skinny inner part of the spiral staircase. (Good thing there's a banister right there.) But now I have a place to sit and even a little shoe storage space right at my front door.

Stuff used for this project:

Old IKEA chest/coffee table
Sandpaper
1 quart Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo Alkyd Low Lustre Enamel paint for the base color
1 quart Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo Alkyd Low Lustre Enamel paint for the highlight color (use less if you can - some brands sell sample sizes of paint)
3 paint brushes (or fewer if you're willing to clean them off)
Masking Tape
Something to protect your floors/walls when you're painting (newspapers, paper grocery bags, whatever)
Ruler (for the details)
Tape measure (for the big picture)
Pencil (for marking off distances on the paint - it erases off)
Minwax semi-gloss polyurethane (8 oz)

-pinkpop

Puddles

2009-06-04T19:39:00.002-05:00

I'm starting this blog as a symbol of my reclaimed life.

For the past year, I have been chained to my desk at work, spending more hours in front of my crappy Dell laptop than I care to admit.

No more!

This marks the beginning of a renewed interest in myself, not just my career. I have always longed to be a creative type. When I was young, I sang, I danced, and I poured my tiny soul into my art classes. But sadly, the only recognition I ever got was that my 7th grade artwork was chosen as one of four patterns featured on the annual Madrigal program. But I've moved on to other creative outlets that aren't necessarily within the bounds of traditional grade school education. There's nothing earth shattering about what I do, but I enjoy it so much that I'm challenging myself to do it much more often.

This is the mantra of one of my favorite retailers, Paper Source:

Every day is a bit much for me, but I'm thinking that once a week is perfectly achievable. With that in mind, I'm starting this blog to share my commitment with anyone who wants to listen.

Challenge: DO SOMETHING CREATIVE EVERY WEEK.

Besides just helping me fulfill this challenge, this blog, I hope, will also inspire a others who want to do creative stuff to take up those scissors and get to work. Plus, I'll share all my sources and any learnings for anyone who can benefit from them.

And now, a few ground rules for my personal challenge:

My creative endeavor has to be documented on this blog.
The creative thing has to be finished within the week (not just partially complete).
"Something creative" is a loose definition. You'll see what I mean when I start posting.

My first project is a bit of a cheat. I started a furniture painting project three weeks ago and am putting the finishing touches on it this weekend. See you on Sunday!

*pinkpop