Just a quick poll of sorts:

Which style do you like better? The top one fits a business card-sized card, and the bottom one has a card that is slightly taller and less wide.

I want to make some sets like this, but I’m trying to decide which way to go.

We just had our March meeting of the South Bay Craft Group this week, and the workshop I taught went pretty well. I showed how to make the “quilted washi” cards I mentioned in my last post, based on a kit by Hanko Designs.

I brought a few examples that I’d made beforehand (see below), including a kimono card which I suggested people follow along with. There were some variations, including simplified hearts and gifts and such, but all of the resulting cards turned out pretty well.

 

I made up a quick worksheet for the class, and when I get a chance, I’m going to fix it up and post a PDF online somewhere. I have a few other info sheets for past workshops, including one on envelope-making, and I thought it might be worth sharing online if they’ll get people to try out a new craft or technique.

Towards the end of the meeting, I also did a brief “rerun” of the February workshop, which was on how to carve your own stamps. A few of our members had missed the original class, but definitely were interested in learning, so we might do a repeat of it at some point. The original class was pretty fun, since everyone got to choose their own image and take something home with them that they could reuse for other projects.

Besides preparing for craft workshops, I’ve been doing a few swaps via Swap-Bot, mostly just to keep myself making stuff, especially while dealing with a bunch of work and health things lately. It seems like most of the swaps are for small items, like the matchboxes that seem to be so popular lately. I can definitely understand why, since it’s so easy to decorate a small box like that, and if you don’t like how it turns out, you can just decorate another. I think the hard part is finding things small enough to fit inside.

These are two of the purely matchbox swaps I did, for a “kawaii” (cute in Japanese) one and a black and white one:

I’ve also made a few more of my matchbox pin sets, for both swaps and for selling on my Etsy shop. Here are the latest ones:

The first one was for a swap (following the blue and green theme for the March Coloriffic Swap-O-Rama), and the second two were posted to Etsy. My favorite of the three was the bunny one, since it’s very in tune with spring, which I’m really looking forward to, especially after having some warmer days teasing us with the chance of spring. Not surprisingly though, the bunny set sold within only two days of going up on my Etsy shop! I want to put a few more together this weekend, mostly because it’s fun to play with different color combinations, and the spring colors are really so nice right now.

Aside from teaching a workshop on stamp carving at last month’s South Bay Craft Group meeting, I haven’t been doing a great deal of crafting. I made a few stamps in preparation, using images from some new stamp books I bought (check My Library for the specific titles). And I created a few square collage postcards, including one for an upcoming color-themed swap, but nothing major otherwise.

However, I’ve been starting to prepare for next month’s workshop, which will be on “washi paper quilting,” based on these kits from Hanko Designs. I’ve done a few of these pieces before, but the idea is that you combine washi paper, cardboard, and thin sponge to create a padded or quilted effect. I’ve been trying to find a pattern that will be easy enough for a first-time project in a class format. I was looking at the Hanko Designs page and saw mention of “kimekomi,” which they said is a traditional Japanese art (or craft?) that inspired their kits, so I started searching for that online.

What I found about kimekomi seemed to mainly refer to 3-dimensional dolls that use fabric and padding, with many layers to add dimension (check out this site’s examples). They’re quite beautiful, but not entirely like the 2-dimensional pieces you can make with the kit. Then I remembered having seen some intricate 2D pieces like this in a local Japanese arts store, so I tried looking for that. Let me tell you, if you don’t know the exact term for something, using general but related terms takes awhile to get anywhere! But I eventually found what I was looking for.

Kurumie, or oshie, is another traditional Japanese art (or craft?) form that uses padded pieces of fabric or paper, but in 2D form. Some of them are quite intricate, like these kit examples, with many complex pieces and layering. The idea is still the same as the Hanko Design kits though. You start with a sturdy base, add some padding (cotton or sponge), and then wrap fabric or paper around it, finally assembling everything to create an overall picture. Some of them even have a bit of embroidery or painted areas on them, to add even more detail.

Anyway, I’ve been looking at so many web sites to find as much as I can about this art, but there isn’t a whole lot out there, especially about the history. It’s really great to discover things like this though, to see where certain creative forms come from and what from the past inspires people in the present. I’m going to continue to look into this as I work on my class examples, but I just wanted to share a bit of this in the meantime.

If you’re interested, I’ve bookmarked a bunch of kurumie links and I would highly recommend the Hanko Designs kits (and their other items) if you want to try your hand at it.

I’ve been on a bit of a color kick this morning.

It all started when I was reading through my news feeds and clicked on a link to view Sally’s blog. I don’t normally view her site directly, so I hadn’t seen the design of it in awhile, including the gorgeous aqua color she was using for header text and links (sadly, it’s gone now). I became so enamored with this color that I started thinking of what it would combine well with, beyond the white, yellow, and gray on her site.

I kept thinking about these color combinations on my way to work, noting how colors I saw along the way might work or not work with the aqua. I thought about ways I could play with these combinations, either with paper, paint, or digitally. The last method made me think of a Flickr color tool I’d seen awhile ago.

When I got to work, I couldn’t find the exact tool, but I did find another that was rather fun to play with. The Flickr Color Selector lets you choose a color, and then it loads Flickr images that contain that color. It’s really quite fun to play with and I came across some really lovely photos, including some simple but beautiful ones by tomooka, a photographer in Japan.

I kept following this color kick, eventually coming across a few more color tools that are intended for creating schemes. First, the “kuler” site by Adobe lets you create schemes by starting with a base color and applying a bit of color theory to them, or by making your own custom combinations. If you use any of the Adobe CS2 programs, you can even download the schemes and use them there.

I also found a program called Color Schemer, which lets you do about the same on your own desktop. You can export the results to another program and even share them in their web gallery.

I poked around a bit to find some color wheel posters, but most were based on red, blue, and yellow. When I took a class about color last year, we focused on cyan, magenta, and yellow as the primaries, and I’m a bit fond of these instead. I couldn’t find a full poster, but I did find a nice CMY color wheel I’ll probably order soon.

I’m really quite fond of and sensitive to color, and this was a fun start to realizing its appeal yet again. I’ve been in a bit of a creative lull, but I’m hoping that this will get the juices flowing again. And all because of a single color!

After my preparations for the craft fair, I sort of lost interest in crafting for a bit, possibly from having cranked out so many cards and things in such a short time. I decided not to push it initially, though eventually I thought I’d jumpstart things with a cross-stitch project. Unfortunately, that didn’t get too far.

I felt like I wanted to work with similar materials, but on a larger scale, possibly with yarn. I remembered the vintage “Weave-It” loom that I bought a few months ago, so I dug that out and started reading up on how to use it.

I messed up my first two squares, but then I figured out what I’d done wrong and have the hang of it now. It’s not too hard to do, especially since there’s only one long strand to wind around, rather than having several threads going each way. I’ve got a small pile of woven squares now, each just under 4 inches on each side. I’m not entirely sure what I’ll do with them yet, but you can sew them together to make larger pieces. On their own, they’re about the size of a nice coaster, so there’s one idea.

The weaving itself is a nice process, without too much thought required. The fun part though is choosing the yarn and seeing how it’ll turn out. The variegated ones are best, since the changing colors create nice combinations when you’re done, but the textured yarns are nice to try as well, since I’m still learning what kinds work best.

Of course, the yarns I had to begin with weren’t that varied, so I’ve been doing a bit of shopping at a few local yarns stores. I’d heard about a few of them before, but hadn’t ever been in a single one, seeing that I don’t really knit or crochet or anything. It’s really great to see what they have, especially compared to what I’m used to seeing at the chain craft stores. The local yarn shops may carry more expensive yarns, but they’re definitely a lot higher quality, so it’s usually worth it. I’m even thinking about trying to learn how to knit and/or crochet again, but no promises.

For what it’s worth, the loom I’m using is called a “Weave-It” and I happened across it in a local crafters’ mall, sitting among some older craft supplies. They’re no longer manufactured by the company that created them, but you can find some older ones on eBay. Another company is actually making a new version called Weavette, and there was a feature about them in Martha Stewart Magazine a few months ago. They’re definitely not like the hardcore looms you think of when you talk about weaving, but it’s not a bad place to start.