love forever

A few things

photo by Jennifer Causey, styled by me
 

The winner of Lauren Haupt's beautiful necklace is....Sarah! Congrats! You are a very lucky lady.

Also, I started a flickr group for my book. If you have made a project from the book or even inspired by the book, please join and upload some pics!

Oh, and have a wonderful New Year!!! I'm going to take a day or two off and you should too.

Ornament Making for Crafty Tree Trimmings

 

A few weeks ago, I posted about the e-book Crafty Tree Trimmings, that I contributed an ornament project to. What a fun bunch of people I got a chance to work with! Well, we all loved the project so much that we each decided to make one other contributor’s ornament. 

 

And what a happy coincidence: I got a chance to spend an afternoon making ornaments with two of the other contributors, Susan Beal and Diane Gileland. I made Susan’s ornament, a sparkly retro number using beads, buttons and plastic canvas (borrowed from her amazing craft stash-thanks Susan!). I don’t think we are going to have a tree this year (all this traveling makes it hard to care for a plant!) so I decided to make the ornament into a brooch so I can enjoy it all year long.

 

By the way, Betz White made my ornament: isn’t it cute?!

If you would like to order the e-book head over to Diane's shop here. And hurry; it's only available until December 31st!

All Done and a Plea for the Crafters

(a few of my Craft Stylish projects over the last year)

Last week was my last post as a regular contributor to Craft Stylish. If you follow craft gossip (yes it exists, believe me!) you may have heard that Craft Stylish has restructured the nature of the site (you can read about it here) and all the regular contributors were let go. This is another unfortunate blow to the crafty publishing world. 

More and more people are picking up crafting as a hobby every year and yet, it's really hard for craft magazines and websites to stay in business. Some of this is just part of the flailing economy; the publishing industry is doing fairing pretty poorly across the board right now. Also, people are really used to getting everything online for free. The only model for money-making online right now is ad-based. What happens when no one is buying ads?

And what else can be done? I wrote about this a few months ago when the print component of CRAFT folded but I do think that people who love crafts need to put their money where their mouths are. Nowadays, it's so easy to find free craft tutorials and projects online that a lot of people don't even bother to pay for a magazine or a book but crafters need to make a living too! Sure a lot of what we do is for love but love doesn't pay the rent.

Craft is all too often undervalued: crafters underprice their wares and buyers often think, "well I can get this cheaper at Target or Wal-mart (and no, I'm not linking to them). But you can't get the same thing. Handmade items have soul, they have heart, someone made it by hand for you. The same goes for a handmade tutorial. They take time to do right: not only do you need a great idea put you need to write clear instructions and take well-lit, well-styled photos. Writing a good tutorial is a craft in and of itself which is why people who are good at this should get paid a decent, fair wage. 

So I beg of you, if you love beautifully made crafts, support your favorite crafters! Buy their books (and I'm not just saying this because I have a book coming out!), shop at craft fairs, appreciate the value of something the is made by hand. Think about the possibility of paying a subscription for an online craft magazine. Buy fewer but more well-made things. Really think about where your money is going. I'm going to try to do that too and maybe we can make this better together.

Time for Plan B?

This isn't usually what I talk about but it's like a big elephant in the room that I keep trying to ignore:
So Craft is moving online, Domino is gone, O at Home is gone, Readymade is close and the list keeps growing. Honestly, I am thrilled that Craft is at least sticking around online; if they disappeared completely it would be a huge blow to the craft world.
Everyone is talking about how blogs are the new magazine but blogs often don't have original content, we are inspired by magazines, and most importantly, we often work for free. No one is paying me to write what I write (not that I wouldn't accept a donation!)here. Most bloggers write out of the kindness of their hearts, the love of the blog community and the vague concept of "publicity".
But people don't make a living on kindness. I am worried that real magazines with big budgets will be replaced by this "working for free" model. On behalf of all the freelancers out there, I ask all online magazines out there to figure out a way to pay writers well. Your budgets will still be smaller no matter what.
And although I love writing online, I am incredibly inspired by magazines and their content. If they were gone, I wouldn't have as much to write about. I love having a magazine in my hands, studying the pages, ripping them out to put them in my inspiration book. I think that blogs can't live without magazines and vice versa: it's a symbiotic relationship not a competitive one.
Holly tweeted about this article in the New York Times a couple of days ago about figuring out your Plan B. It's been a terrifying couple of months: watching magazines I used to work for fold and getting told over and over again that "we're just not hiring freelancers right now".
It's not totally time for Plan B for me and, honestly I'm not sure if I have one, but it's definitely time for a change in my behavior. Like most New Yorkers, I spend a lot of money on going out, buying dresses, taking cabs. Or I did until this year. If I had known last year what i know now, I would probably have a lot more in my savings. That dang hindsight, being 20/20 and all.
What do you think about magazines and blogs? Are you ok with getting all your inspiration online or will you miss the touch of the magazine page?

Love for Heart Handmade

Have you been reading Heart Handmade, the blog dedicated to all things DIY? Yes, there are a million handmade blogs right now but this one really rises above all the bloggy noise. It's quickly becoming one of my favorite reads.
I love their fresh approach and creative tips for shop owners, crafters, buyers and everyone in between. Often, non-crafters don't have a real understanding of the time and work that goes into making things so I  am a huge fan of their behind-the-scenes reports.

Pledge Handmade

1379 crafty people have signed the Handmade Pledge so far. You should be next!

Eight major players in the independent craft and design community, including Etsy, Craft Magazine and Burdastyle recently joined together to form the Handmade Consortium to encourage people to buy handmade this holiday season. Over the next few weeks, the website will be updated with tips for holiday shopping and documenting pledges personal accounts of how they buy handmade and stay away from the chains.

By signing the handmade pledge, you solemnly swear to "buy handmade this holiday season and request that others do the same for me".

Handmade gifts are filled with the kind of love, heart and soul that mass produced junk can't even dream of. What's more, you're supporting a local artist or designer come a little bit closer to fulfilling her dream of supporting herself by making things. It's really a win-win situation.

PS- If you want to get a little headstart, head on over to the Rwanda Knits auction on Ebay. Founded in 2003, the Rwanda Knits project provides hand-operated, American-made knitting machines plus technical and business training to low income women in Rwanda to enable them to earn a living through knitting. A needlefelted scarf I made for Adorn is up for auction here!

New to me.

The fruits of a recent Ebay fabric splurge are pouring in. I got these gorgeous vintage cotton fabrics in the mail this afternoon. They arrived heavy and shining with starch so I threw them in my new Wonderwash. Now they are soft and whisper thin and blowing in the breeze on the line.
By the way, the Wonderwash is a small handcrank washing machine that uses 90% less water and detergent than traditional washing machines and it is amazing! Normally when I get new fabric I wait to wash it until I go to the laundromat but now it can get laundered right away and I can throw in a few tee shirts and some socks too!

Design for the Other 90%

On Saturay, I had a chance to see the Design for the Other 90% show at the Cooper-Hewitt Musuem, a really cool exhibit of designs that have been created to improve the lives of people throughout the world. Of the world's total population of 6.5 billion, 5.8 billion or 90% have little or no access to products and design that most of us take for granted. Design for the Other 90% is an exhibit of thirty projects reflecting a growing movement to address the needs of these people.
From the show catalogue:
"Ninety-five percent of the world's designers focus all of their efforts on developping products and services exclusively for the richest ten percent of the world's customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other ninety percent."

The Big Boda Load-Carrying Bicycle is able to carry hundreds of pounds of cargo or two additional passengers (if you take all the crates off!) at a much lower cost than other forms of human-powered utility vehicles.

The Q Drum, an ingenious design for carrying large amounts of water from a water source back to a town or village. The donut shape, with a rope in the center, makes it very easy for even a child to pull large amounts of potable water long distances.

A church pew from the Katrina Furniture Project, an organization that trains displaced Gulf Coast workrs to build furniture, much of which is used to replace church furniture destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. In addition, a lot of the wood used in the furniture making process is recycled from houses and other buildings that were destroyed.

I think that the future of design depends upon more designers addressing the needs of the world's population, (and I'm not talking about designers creating cheap lines for Target and Wal-mart). A lot of the designs came from a simple solution to help a very complicated problem. Obviously, design alone is not going to change the world but it is a very big start.

Paper Goose

I am so excited to announce the launch of Patty Sechi's (aka mom) graphic design and consulting business.

With over twenty years of design under her belt and a fantastically cool aesthetic (don't you love that goose?) Patty is a great choice for any design needs.
Give her a call, won't you?

Feedsacks

It's no secret that I adore patterns (sometimes I like nothing better than to stare lovingly at my fabric collection) so you can imagine how excited I was to score these vintage feedsack fabrics on Ebay.

I started buying feedsack fabrics a few years ago because I love the texture of the cotton and the crisp, clean and colorful patterns but I had no idea what the term actually meant. It turns out cotton feedsacks of flour, sugar and animal feed were recycled by generations of ingenious women who transformed mundane consumer packaging into clothing, quilts, curtains and more.
Between 1840 and 1890, cotton feedsacks started to replace barrels as packaging for farm and food packaging. Initially these feedsacks were plain cotton except for the stamp of the logo of the company and women had to soak the fabric in lye or bleach to get rid of the labels.
By the 1920s, manufacturers realized that women were re-using the fabrics for their sewing projects and started printing patterns on the fabric, even pasted paper labels to thee for easier removal. Women continued to make things out of feedsack fabrics into the 50's, which explains the range of patterns of feedsack fabrics you can find today, from romantic florals, to deco geometrics to atomic 1950's patterns.
Women have been making beautiful things out of trash for generations so let's take a cue from them: this is your grandma's craft and we should celebrate that!
Oh, and times have changed guys so you get sewing too.

To find out more about feedsack fabrics, you can check out these resources:
All about Feedsacks
Feed Sack Quilt History: Feedsacks, Frugal and Fun
Feedbags: From Rags to Riches

You can usually find scraps of feedsack fabrics on ebay and at thrift stores and flea markets. Just don't try to outbid me!