I needed some sleep. The whole museum thing was just a little more than I should have done yesterday, and when we were all done it was pretty bad. I try not to ask for help in public, but we had breakfast at the museum cafe when we were done at the museum, and I needed Mike's help to get up.
Then the car didn't start. We knew the starter might go out, and sure enough it did. So Dad drove me to his house, and the kids walked from the museum back to dad's house.
It was worth it though.
See, Dad loves stuff like this, when we manage to drag him to it. The museum, the zoo, he's like a 12 yo you can't really discipline for saying totally the wrong things, but he does love it. This exhibit was one he actually indicated an interest in. Gold does the weird things in his brain it does in a lot of people's minds. Historically, it's wild that people get so entranced with the shiny. But tickets to the exhibit were expensive. It would have cost nearly 100 dollars for my family to go, and as much as he wanted to go, he wasn't willing to spring for tickets and didn't want us to spring for them. Well, Mike was offered tickets, and when he was, he asked for 5 since he knew Dad wanted to see it.
Dad loved it. There was a gambler's watch fob on display that was made with nuggets as big as my thumb, so very ostentatious and coins, bricks, ancient jewelry, and lots and lots of information. The kids were less entranced, but loved the interactive things.
Well, Mike and Dad called our mechanic, and after towing the car back to dad's house, it was repaired pretty handily. Mike tipped our mechanic a bit for the weekend housecall. Hey, now we don't have to worry about the starter, so Mike and I made tentative plans for next weekend assuming good weather.
As kids of a Crafty Mother, the teens were most interested in the embossed foil primitive ornaments for burial and jewelry, and with the room leafed in 3 oz. of gold leaf. *checks archives* Back in August 2006, I came up with a foil pendant pattern that was fairly easy to assemble with an inclusive bail for the kids to learn foil embossing with. So now back to the craft store for more foil, and I'll finalize the pattern design in a form I can post online and make more. For a leafing craft, we are going to decorate composition books. Cover the cover with black paint or black paper, then create a design over that in hot glue, and apply leafing to that, plus leafing some beads using inexpensive leaf. After the learn how to do leafing, they will both think of a project they want to use real gold leaf on, and design it, do a practice version with the cheap stuff, then get real gold leaf to do the real thing with.

Oh! I need to get a picture, Mike got me a gorgeous Bate Graphite Sculpture. It's a small piece shaped like bamboo. The pictures don't do these justice. It's a shiny dark gray that's cool and lovely to touch. I saw them, and just couldn't keep my hands off them. So satisfying on some many levels, the feel, the look of them, art writing implements. The frustrated artist in me and the writer in me just sung with the pretty of them. What would I write, draw, with such a thing? Just so beautiful. *spoiled*

Fairy wand project I was working on today, that's actually my second one.
Poor Mike. There is so much ambient glitter in the house it's pretty scary, but I can flit around the house and go abracadabra. Which was really the point.
Other then that, it was a nicely laid back weekend. The only semi-exciting thing there was.. we went to go see Transformers, which I loved. I'm easy. Effects, stuff goes boom, Shala is happy.

Plus Emily H. hooked me into Mafia Wars and recommended a couple authors to me which was wonderful too.

Chef Skull Embroidery pattern posted at my other blog.
E's had a thing about corsages lately. Wrist type corsages, and Michael's had a corsage project before Mother's Day, but it wasn't the sort E wanted to do. So I picked up supplies and showed her the basics, how to wrap silk stems with floral tape and that sort of thing.
( Making a Wrist Corsage )
Other than that? Read the first 2 Ember books finally yesterday. I enjoyed them and E's reading them now. I have Santa Olivia to read next, then back off the fiction to more how to type books. It's rainy and dreary. I like just sitting reading when it's like this. Right now my hair is greasy and dirty looking because I oiled it a lot to see how it did washing after oiling with my new shampoo bar.

Simply Sublime Bags: 30 No-Sew, Low-Sew Projects by Jodi Kahn was one of the other books William got me for my b-day.
It lives up to it's name, most of the projects in the book can be done without a sewing machine, and some of the most clever and cute purses are made fabric, duct tape, and a stapler. You can't get much simpler or lower sew than that. It's inspiring, and better than that? It's a great book to use with tweens and younger girls because there is a lot of room for personalizing and customizing in projects that are easily done, and quickly enough done not to bore.A lot of the projects are perfectly appropriate for gifts for grandmas and aunts. I do recommend for younger kids, you pick a project together and you read through the instructions and set everything up.

If you ever meet E, you'll notice she's carrying a bag of some sort. She switches purses regularly, and uses lots of things for purses. She has used lunch boxes, polly pocket boxes, duct tape bags, duct tape covered notebooks with handles and pockets for extras, embellished totes and her current favorite is a cheap shopping bag from HT. One of the Music=Life ones that's a great size for comics.I see a lot more bags in our future, and I'm looking forward to seeing what new ideas those inspire.

I'm in a lot of pain today so it's sort of hard to focus on what I meant to get done.
Updated Beadwork at BellaOnline with a sort of silly thing, instructions for converting a peyote pattern to a regular graph. It's a joke, since people keep asking how to like there is this quick and easy way to convert graphs.
School Needlework at Vintage Sewing Info, a ton of information on hand sewing and darning. (Darning socks, not the kind of darn that takes you straight to heck.)
Build a table top loom, which is very nifty, but fairly involved. (pdf)
More fun and something you can set up to do with younger kids, or have older kids help you build?
Thread Banger has this great weaving project.(youtube) It's a great use for scraps and such and the technique would work well with selvages.

Well.. more later. Time to go try to be productive.
I hope you all had a day with a lot of laughter.

And oh yeah.. me? Without coffee?? I think my family would start sneaking it into fruit juice or something.. too scary to contemplate.

Sorry about not updating in a few days. I wish I had a good excuse, but I really really don't. I was reading books, and spending time with my family.

Today the vague plan is that we will make little paper mache ball type covers for an led light string. Think jack'o'lanterns, skulls and eyeballs. The shortest strand I could find locally was 50 lights, so that's how many we have to make.
Other then that, I'm really not sure what we plan today. It's a very chilly 27° F out.

I made smoothies for the kids yesterday. I forgot how much I enjoy them. I gave myself brain freeze! I used frozen oj concentrate, ice cubes, yogurt and a banana. Yum yum!
More later. You know, after I do something productive. I've been really unproductive for the last few days! Yesterday, the only creative thing I did was make a 20 inch wide x 16 inch tall Jolly Roger wall decal to put in my bedroom wall. I think I've decided this week at least, repositionable spray adhesive like 3M's Repostitionable 75 or spray mount is not only one of my favorite things for cut and pastes, but it's also wonderful for home decorating. I think I'm going to play with Rasterbator and make some big posters soon.

To start with, because it's the prettiest to me.. check out this entry from men_in_full about Sumo.
E is totally into steampunk lately. I'm not sure if it's because a lot of her favorite movies and books have that feel, or because of ThreadBanger's series about steampunk fashion, but she is.
You can buy aluminum foil tape in the hardware section of most places that have a hardware section, and we've used before for crafts, and after seeing this tutorial it occurred to me, I've got a lot of pill bottles. I can't make myself throw them away because hey.. plastic! and they might be useful for something.. and my pharmacy uses a computerized filling system and refilling old bottles isn't easy for them since they don't fill by hand unless the machine is broken.
( more information and a picture behind the cut )
I was trying to think of other things I can do with the bottles. Some I've turned into mini-purses in the past, and I'll probably do that with some, and I was also thinking maybe advent ornaments for our Christmas tree, but another idea I think would be fun is to use them as a block for stamps made with silicone caulking, this idea just makes me happy. We can make a bunch of mini stamps that fit the lid, and keep them in the bottle itself, then stick them on the lid to stamp with. I think we will have to separate them in the bottle with parchment paper to keep them from sticking to each other, and then using some sort of repositionable glue on the backs of them to attach them to the lid, but I think it will work. We can stamp paper and glue/tape it around the bottle to decorate it.
And I really have a lot of pill bottles. Do you have any ideas?
Aviary is a lot of fun. I drew this a couple days ago in Peacock. Peacock is a pattern maker with different "hubs" you use to build pictures out of. Way fun. I still have invites if anyone wants one.

By Request semi-repost
I'm afraid I don't have any pictures right now to offer, but this is a method my daughter and I have used with great success to dye/paint silk shawls. She was 5 at the time, so it's a really simple process with some pretty surprisingly good results.

You'll need a silk shawl/scarf, E and I used 44x44 inch blanks, but next time we do it, I want to try fringed blanks.
Other then that, you'll need acrylic paint, the dollar a bottle stuff from the craft store is just fine. It's what we use. Brushes, foam brushes are fine, pretty much anything you can paint with.
Cups to put the paint in.
Newspaper
Water to mix into the paint and to clean brushes.

This isn't like using real silk paints and resists to create gorgeous works of art, this method leads to soft water color edges, and has a lovely tie dyed appearance, the colors are washed and soft.
The trick to success is using colors all from one part of a color wheel, like blue/purple/pink, colors that mix together well without getting muddy.
Spread out newspaper on your working surface, if you want a fairly symmetrical design, fold your scarf in half.
Mix your paint with water in the cups until it's thin and inky.Then start painting. Big shapes or even just randomly putting on colors works best. The color will soak through both layers so you'll have a matching design, and the silk wicks the color so it spreads, and blends the colors at the edges of your designs.
When you have it painted the way you like it, spread it all out on newspapers to dry, then put it in your dryer at medium heat for 10 minutes. The heat sets the color and softens the silk.

Yeah.. it's *really* that easy. If you want to add a beaded fringe, or embroidery, or anything like that you can. Just remember to take that into consideration when you're washing it. I wash my scarves painted that way on gentle cycle/cool water, and dry on gentle cycle, and I've never had a problem with color coming off them. If you get the fringed ones, you have to be a bit more careful. I haven't tried them yet.

I think it's a great project with little kids for presents for Grandmas, because the results are nice, and it's something that can be used and shown off. As an adult doing them, it means fast pretty shawls made to match outfits, plus it's a nice technique for paint lightweight breezy silk handkerchief hem skirts, you could paint a sunset colored skirt!

A friend of mine got me a bunch of craft books, and I'm going to be putting up reviews for them in case anyone is looking for good craft books.I think I also need to add book review to the zine and indie books I've reviewed in here in the past.
Simple Screenprinting : Basic Techniques & Creative Projects
I've been reading a lot about screenprinting and wanting to try it, but the part that always baffled me was how best, at home, to do photo emulsion stencils. This book explained it really well with photos and lists of easy to get equipment to do it at home. It took the intimidation out of it for me.
The projects in it are great. I would have liked more cloth projects, but even with that, the ideas were good, and the explanations for how to do layered prints were really well written and easy to understand.

Recycled Crafts Box
A friend got this for my daughter and I, and a lot of the projects in it are really suited better for parents with younger children, that being said, we loved it.
My daughter is almost 13 years old, and while a lot of the projects were a lot easier then she likes, they gave her ideas for doing similar things with a bit more complexity. The cardboard castle is a favorite, and she's got big plans for building her brother a dice tower now.
The other thing the book had that we both liked was a lot of information about how things are recycled, and a timeline of disposable manufacturing, so we both learned from it. It's good without being overly preachy, and since it's recycled crafts, the crafts are very inexpensive to make. I liked it a lot.

While I was working on more printables, (I'm to cards now! Yay!) E was making nice things out of duct tape and the box from her dinner last night. She had Winnie the Pooh cheddar filled ravioli because she thinks my spaghetti sauce is gross (all those vegetables and meat, she thinks spaghetti sauce should be just a plain smooth red sauce).
( come see what she made )
She seems to be having much more fun then me today. :) But we are henna-ing later.

Would have completely freaked me out if I hadn't already done my big thing for the day.
They changed user images,mine is Kirk Cameron from the 80s, complete with a Miami Vice turquoise shirt and white jacket.

I posted this article at Beadwork at Bellaonline.

What is it? A new stone cab? Something I made playing with filters? A crayon gone crazy from the heat?
( well.. )
E is starting a blog, I'll create a feed once she starts posting. Let me know if you're interested. Still trying to convince Mike that every time he says "Dear Bloggy Blog" he proves he has something to blog and should start. Seriously. Because there are moments of silliness I'm too prissy to talk about. He would have people laughing so hard. He needs to share his cynical view and humor with the world.

Remember my recycled packaging mini matchbooks? I decided the small scale was the perfect thing to try the aluminum foil thing I want to do on comp books with the kids.
( shiny shiny )
I just have to say, I *love* this camera for taking nice close up shots!

Because you know, I'm prone to boasting. *laughs*
But I told E I'd pick her up breakfast, and with the time crunch.. that wound up being a burrito from the convenience store. And she acted like beans and cheese were geniunely what she wanted first thing in the morning.
W offered me a plastic spider, and said "I'm sure you can do something crafty with this."
Oh yeah, and both kids are being very patient with the sheets of aluminum foil in the sink that need to be "cleaned" for crafting. Since you know, using new aluminum foil would be too easy and wasteful when we do use it occasionally for covering things in the oven and fridge.

The idea is to use it to cover notebooks, with holes cut out to make "bezels" for cast resin cabs, so stuff that's wrinkly will be more interesting once we use the acrylic paint to bring out details.
Of course, this would work better if I had the slightest clue where my spray adhesive was. I know where my repositional spray is. And where my acrylic clear spray is. And a bunch of cans of spray paint. But not my spray adhesive. But how cool would a plastic bat encased in resin look on the cover of a notebook covered with crinkly foil? Hopefully, very cool. I'll let you know.

Working out today was hard, but since I'm over my excitement, I was able to pinpoint exactly which exercise made me ache last time. Chest press. Yep. Definately not my favorite. I've never really weight trained before. I had this awful nightmare I was all ripply with muscles. *shudders* Yeah.. definately going for high reps, low weights. Because ick. Really. My trainer added a new exercise today to work on my triceps. And today I counted. What she said was 12 reps was actually more like 16. It's a sneaky plot isn't it? Make people do more then they think they can. New shoes though. I did enjoy the new pumas. We exchanged ideas for places for good deals on clothes, I guess her kids were into Abercrombie and Fitch, which is another thing that makes my kids wonderful. So not brand conscious. Both kids love garage sales and thrift stores, and E actually gets a major thrill out of it, finding cool stuff to work into her very unique warddrobe. E's favorite current item of clothing though is a corduroy jumper I got her in Hell for 12.00, she loves it so much and it's such a basic item of clothing I went back and got her 3 more. She gets compliments on her jumpers and teeshirt combos whenever she wears them. Usually from older people who just seem shocked to see a 12 yo girl look like a 12 yo girl instead of like a miniature woman.
I got this *great* knitting with beads book to review, and one of projects is this lovely vintage-y looking cap I think I want to replicate the shape of for E for the ren faire next year.
Of course, right this minute, I'd embrace anything that wasn't single crochet in the back loop with dark blue wool. BORING.

( A barrette Emily and I just finished )
Fun fun!! I'm thinking maybe a henna-ish design for mine, but I'm not sure yet.
For another barrette project I posted ages ago to Bella Online, click here
-Shala

I decided I needed a pseudosphere too, so I started that this evening.
The other day when Emily and I were hanging at the library, I picked up two cheap little plastic spring toys with a specific purpose in mind. You know the mini ones aren't a lot of fun to play with, they aren't like the metal ones were even the tiny ones do interesting things, but what they *are* is an idea waiting to happen.
So today I pulled them out of my purse, and said "So Emily, what can we do with these?"
She was game. She said "A mobile or decorations would be neat" and she open one up and met the ends of it. I told her "Superglue works best on plastic" (then completely forgot to pick up any today. I'll have to do that tomorrow)
Then asked her to pick her favorite, and handed her that one, and snipped 3 coils off the other one, and said "What could this be used for?" And she said "What?" and I slipped it over the pages of my book. "It's a bookmark!" and then I snipped off individual links, and showed her how to link them to make a chain.
She was off and running with ideas. She wants to try a remove a link advent calender among other things. She counted the rings on hers and got suddenly conservative with her ideas, I handed her the one I was playing with, and told her "We are going back to the library this week, I'll grab you a couple more" and she was happy and creating.
Mike had her in stitches with one link, he slipped it on his ear which made her laugh and tell him she didn't like earrings on men. Then he put it on his eyebrow and said "Am I cool?" and after that on his nose.
Not bad for 2 50¢ plastic spring toys. I know it's silly, but I felt my mom in that moment. I told Mike "Mom wanted me to learn to think around corners about how things could be used."
We got the stuff for rice krispy treats today, so we will make them tonight. After sharing that one with Mike and Emily at the bookstore the other day I promised Emily we would make some soon. Homemade is always best. Do any of the cooks on my flist know how well they mail? Everyone who is friends with Mel who does make them occasionally should send her some when they do make them. She doesn't make them for fear of eating a whole pan which would be an issue for me too if I didn't have kids and Mike.

Also tomorrow.. melted bead goodness with Emily. In between other things, I got some black paperclay that was clearance marked at the store, and I want to try making things that Wm and Emily can glue to their journals. William who has a couple of those plain black covered black books and STILL uses my duct tape angel journal for everything. Darnit all. I'm never getting it back.

I've got a bead knitted pendant bag going right now, and I keep wondering why with all the amazing knitters I know so many of them are hesitant to try them. I learned how to knit to make them.

I'm NOT a good knitter. Really truly. But it's garter stitch with no increases/decreases. Which means it's something I can manage. What I did was I figured out I wanted 5 columns of beads, so I drew 5 lines on a piece of paper
| | | | |
Then I figure out about how wide I wanted it, and figure out how many stitches I'd need to make it that wide at the top. Which wound up being
4|3|3|3|3|4 = 20

Using hank beads, I strung my size 8 perle cotton with about half the hank- all of them that spilled all over the place. I was sitting cross legged on my favorite chair in the living room, my leg was *blinged* Scrap up the spilled ones, and put them in the bag to use to trim it with.
To make stringing the beads easy, you pull loose a strand from the hank, and tie the end of it in a knot around the perle cotton, and slide them down. I'll try to draw a sketch of what I mean later. It's easier then stringing them all on from loose beads, but there will be spills. Especially if your watching Steve Martin receiving the Mark Twain award with bits and pieces from his career. He's a wild and crazy guy and wild and crazy things happen to your beads.
I could give this whole formula for figuring out how many beads you need, but the truth is, I'm lazy, I didn't do the math, I just strung about half the hank. I know it will be more then I need.

So with your handy dandy size 0000 needles which I'm sure you all have. They are like long steel toothpicks. It made me wonder if I could knit a mini bag on toothpicks,leave a tail long enough to stitch up a side. Figure 10 inches. Which will probably actually be too much.Cast on 20 stitches, knit the first row.
rows 2-7 (that's six rows) knit 4, slide a bead down, knit 3, slide a bead down, knit 3, bead, knit 3, bead,knit 3, bead, knit 4.
8-17 (10 rows) knit 4, slide 2 beads down, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 4.
18-27 (yep. 10 rows again) knit 4, slide 3 beads down, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 4.
28-37 (I see a pattern forming) knit 4, slide 4 beads down, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 4.
38-57 (20 rows!) knit 4, slide 5 beads down, knit 3, 5 beads, knit 3, 5 beads, knit 3, 5 beads, knit 3, 5 beads, knit 4. (this is where I'm at now)
58-67 (back to 10) knit 4, slide 4 beads down, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 3, 4 beads, knit 4.
68-77 knit 4, slide 3 beads down, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 3, 3 beads, knit 4.
78-87 knit 4, slide 2 beads down, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 3, 2 beads, knit 4.
rows 88-94 (that's six rows) knit 4, slide a bead down, knit 3, slide a bead down, knit 3, bead, knit 3, bead,knit 3, bead, knit 4.
knit a row, bind off.

So it seems like a lot, but it's less then a 100 rows of knitting with 20 stitches each. Really not intimidating. Even for me, and I can't knit really.
Then you fold it in half, and stitch up the sides. Ta-da! It's a swanky swagged victorian beaded bag. I still need to finish this one and I'm not sure I've ever taken a picture of one I've made before, because it doesn't *seem* like anything that amazing. You know me. I tend not to take pictures of things that seem too easy until someone like Rosemary says "Even if it's easy, I want to see it" Thank Rosemary and Becka for the fact I take pictures of some of my crocheting now. They nagged me. They are good at that in the way friends are.

I'll get a picture of this one when it's done and explain how I did the strap/decorations after I decide how I'm going to do them.

So are you curious what colors I'm using? I'm using a dark red cotton and s/l dark grey size 10 Czech beads that from a decent amount of distance look similar to steel cuts (decent amount of distance= about how far you have to be away from my chest so Mike doesn't hit you if your male)
I actually got the red to make Kim a choker with before she colored her hair red. I'd show you a picture, but for whatever reason, the only picture I have of the choker style I was going to use is cropped weirdly.
http://shala.addr.com/beads/gallery/crochetedchoker.jpg It's missing a piece. Darnit all, I don't have the original anymore.

So on the subject of crochet, I got Emily one of those "weave a scarf kits". It bites. Seriously, it's awful. I was thinking, it would be really easy to crochet a mesh that's similar in chains and singles to make a weave a scarf project to do with kids. You crochet the mesh, they weave the scarf. So I'll play with that later. I *know* you can do it with doubles and chains, filet style. Becka made my son one like that. I'm going to go through my scrap piles and figure out what Emily and I can use for a project we combine talents on. She likes weaving but crochet frankly doesn't interest her except as far as "Mommy, can you make me.. " But oh my.. can you imagine Emily's free-ness with color in a fringed purse? I crochet the basic mesh purse, and tell her *how* to weave it, then give her the materials to weave it with. Rems of fabrics, strands of sequin, leftover yarn from my stash..

So imagine you have a pair of 8 eyelet pretty light pink doc martens that are just outstandingly plain and a little too light a color for you to be completely comfortable with.. how do you decorate them? I'm going to decorate these, I'm just not sure how yet. Except it will involve glitter.