Crafting for Valentine's Day

Next week I am giving four Valentine craft events so I am busy preparing samples and gathering supplies. Three of them are open to the public. All are in San Francisco, CA. Everyone of the events will be "green" using repurposed and found materials.

February 8, 2012 : Valentine Crafts at Ruth's Table from 1:00pm-3:00 pm. $15.00

February 11, 2012: Sunnyside Conservatory on Monterey Blvd from 2:00-4:00pm. We are having an Eco Valentine Card Party and it is FREE to the public. 

February 12, 2012:  I heart SCRAP fundraiser on Sunday from 1-4 pm. $10.00 donation. I will be volunteering for the event. We are going to have some great valentine craft stations. Come and check it out...and support SCRAP my favorite art supply source!

These Valentines were made using an old coffee bean bag,

wall paper and old math book and some twill tape.

These Valentines were made using a mason jar rubber stamp and 

a small heart punch. The jar give endless ideas of what

could be spilling out of it or be in the jar!

This last set of cards were made with made from pages of discarded books.

I just used scissors and glue and some twine. I looked for books with

different shades. The heart was from a very old dictionary

where the pages were brown from age and acidity.

Sisterhood of Creativity day

Last Saturday Dorothy Yuki and I drove to Sacramento to meet two of my sisters and six friends for an annual "Sisterhood of Creativity" day. Everyone is a crafter and we all  set out on a day long adventure. Our first stop was RAFT which is a teacher resource house. It is full of supplies and teacher kits and tons of stuff. My absolute favorite room was the surplus paper room where I picked up several reams of paper for bookmaking. I also picked up some supplies for two up coming Valentine workshops at SCRAP and The Sunnyside Conservatory. 

This is the paper room that I found all sorts of great stuff for the workshop

After leaving RAFT we headed out to a huge thrift store called Eco Thrift. I found some men's wool sweaters perfect for felting. We will turn these into felted flowers. We all found a bunch of stuff. My friend Kim found a set of pyrex bowls for 75% off and I found a color wheel for my sister and brother in laws  aluminum Christmas tree. 

My shopping cart with the color wheel and a stack of old rulers.

Back at my sister Melissa's house we had a show and tell session and then we gave a mini Paper Rose Project class to everyone since they couldn't attend the workshops. We topped it off with gourmet pizza and a birthday cake for Melissa.

We all headed home after a day of friendship, art, laughter ready to do it all over again.

This is Kim's show and tell- candle decorated with vintage dictionary pages and twine.

Dorothy demonstrating the Paper Rose techniques to everyone.

The final results!

Zipper Brooch workshop this weekend

I am giving a workshop at Fabmo this weekend in Mountain View with Dorothy Yuki. It is on Sunday January 29,2012. We are going to teach how to make brooches out of reclaimed zippers. It will be a lot of fun. Please check it out. 

Paper Rose Party #2

Last Friday on a cold and stormy night almost 50 people braved the storm and came to Ruth's Table to make beautiful paper roses. Tomoko Lipp from 3Rartfukuoka.blogspot.com once again was our teacher leading us all in spreading the words of reduce,reuse and recycle. This time she trained six of us to be teachers to help at the event. Look at the results. It was another workshop. Thank you Tomoko! 

This is a group photo of all the paper roses made that night.

Paper Rose Project returns

Friday night  January 20th Tomoko Lipp's Paper Rose returns to Ruth's Table due to the overwhelming response to the first one. Everyone loved the workshop.

Please register online- go to programs at Ruth's Table. 

Here is the paper rose I made at the teacher instruction session with Tomoko.

Here is  Kenan's rose that she made at the session.

I love that angled cut for center of the rose.

I hope to see you there. I will be one of the teacher volunteers helping the participants make their newspaper flowers.

Auction Craft Party

This past weekend I gathered with some former elementary school mom friends. Three of us hosted a flower making workshop. Three other mom's bought the craft party that we donated to the auction. It was a lot of fun. Here are the results. We made zipper flowers and felted flower brooches made from felted wool sweaters.

Here are some of the creations we made that afternoon.

Penny Ranch

This shop the Penny Ranch has been around for as long as I can remember in Chico, CA the town I grew up in. It is filled with coins, stamps and baseball cards and other collectibles. The last time I was in there the owner gave me a huge box of cancelled stamps to use in my workshops. It will good for mail art and for greeting cards. I love looking around the store.

I always think of my friend Jennie the mail artist when I come into this store. She would love all the postage stamps new and old.  Check out her blog at everyday should be a red letter day.

Paper Rose Project coming (again)!

The Paper Rose Project is coming back to Ruth's Table in the San Francisco's Mission District. Tomoko Lipp from 3rartfukuoka.blogspot.com will be teaching the paper rose made out of newspaper. It will be January 20th from 6:30-8:30. Please go to Ruth's Table and click on programs to register for this FREE event. We had a huge crowd last time so register for a seat!

more party crafts

My friend Ria Pope made this great party hat for my sister Tracy's 50th and check out the gift bag. She adapted the Paper Rose project into a large rose to decorate her gift bag!
Both came out great! Ria is super creative and I just love the bag!

Ria made a paper rose out of a newspaper using some of the same techniques at Tomoko Lipp's Paper Rose Project.

Birthday banner

My "Happy 50 Birthday Tracy banner" at the party.

My sister Tracy turned 50 this week and there was a big party for her. I decided to make a birthday banner for her. I had only a little time to do it. I got out my Sizzix Big Kick machine and used the scallop die to make the base of the banner. The material I used was all discarded material and was in the free bin at SCRAP. That included some red paper and a lot of dark green legal file folders. I used my sizzix alphabet and started cutting away to say the greeting. I made some paper flowers by using a thin paper bag and cutting scallops.

Here is my Sizzix Big Kick that I use all the time. It is a great die cutter that will cut fabric,
paper and cardboard. It easily cut through the file folders.

I cut scallops out of a thin paper bag to make flowers. Cut about six and put a little glue in the center
and wait for it to dry and "fluff" the flower. Glue gun the flower to the scallop circle.

I cut out the Sizzix letters and used a glue stick to adhere the letters to the scallop circles. I didn't have a lot of time since it was already 10:00 pm and I was leaving at 7:00 am the next day so I used my stapler I bought at Swan and Shears on Etsy. It is a European stapler  that uses tiny brass staples.  I simple stapled the scallop circles to the long white cloth ribbon.

First CRAFT workshop of 2012

Join me this Sunday  from 2:30- 4:30 on January 8th at Ruth's Table in San Francisco's Mission District. I am the Artist in Residence there and our first workshop of 2012 will be an Eco Card making workshop.  We will be making cards for all occasions using reclaimed, new and repurposed materials. We  are also going to make an accordion folder to store the cards for future use. It will be a lot of fun and productive too!    Click on the link above and go to Programs for more information on the class.

Here are some cards made from old discarded books. Cut and paste and you have a card!

Craft #1 for 2012

I came across some bingo cards and I decided to make a book for my first craft of 2012. I tried two different bindings. One with a machine and the other just a punch and rings. The inside of the books are blank pages repurposed from a stack of old letter heads. I just chopped off the address and cut to size. I rounded the corners of the paper since the bingo cards are rounded. I am perfecting the book and then I am going to give some of these away for presents.

I bound this Bingo book using a wire binding machince I bought used. I have been wanting to try it out for a long time.

Bingo Book # 1 with wire binding with blank pages inside. I put an orange sheet on the front page.

This Bingo Book #2 was made without anything but a few punches. I used the cropadile tool to punch through the bingo card and the recycled paper.  I "bound" it with small binder clips. This makes it easy to remove the pages and add more pages as needed as well. 

Sweet Treats keep coming

Tom and Ann's box of cookies from 122 Street Kitchen in New York City.

My friend Leslie hosted her annual Cookie Exchange right before Christmas. The participants bake their favorite holiday treats. We walk around the room and fill our boxes with a wonderful assortment of holiday treats. I made my favorite candy- caramel.  It took several attempts to make it right but I ended up with soft tasty candy. The caramel was made without corn syrup and I made plain, salted and pecan caramels. I have always wanted to learn how to make them and this was the perfect excuse to try.

My basket full of caramels. I felt like Lucy in the candy factory wrapping them. (see the Lucy magnet beside my description of my candy)

Shortly after the cookie exchange a UPS truck arrived at our door. What a wonderful surprise to receive cookies from my longtime  friends in NYC. Tom Walker and Ann Stratton's 122 Street Kitchen box of cookies arrived right in time for Christmas! I love their cookies and my personal favorite is the Joule vanilla macadamia. I have even wanted to hide them from my everyone. I don't want to share them and I am being very serious.  Check out their website and their story about their company.

The box of cookies sent to us by Ann and Tom. 

I am going to have to order some more of the vanilla joules. The bag is getting close to empty....