My Dear Friend Liz

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My dear friend Liz moved to Boston with her husband and daughter almost a year ago now.  We have been doing the old school pen pal thing, which is pretty fun.  A few months ago a made her a small mailable gift in honor of her birthday.

I have always wanted to make a matchbox shrine and I had saved these interesting matchboxes I got when I was in China, which was 5 years ago.  I really like them because they are longer than normal matchboxes.  So here is what I came up with.  I added a super strong magnet to the back so that it could be placed on a refrigerator.
Enjoy~

Art Car Part Deux

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Sorry for the snooze on my blog; however, I've been doing anything but snoozing lately, which is why there is such a gap between posts:)
I have a lot to share, but I will just start with the addition to the art car that I am going to continue to work on and create all summer.
I wanted to make a shrine like or mandalaish pattern on the hood.  One sunny day a month or so ago I ran to the car wash, came home and quickly added some sparkly vinyl and this wooden star pattern as the centerpiece that I had found in a free box about a year or so ago.
I had some vinyl leftover that I had cut out for the mandala so I added it like a border to the top.
This latest addition will hopefully keep things rolling and inspire me to work on it more this summer.  Don't worry, I have plenty of ideas and I will keep you posted with my progress.

New Do and Use of Plastic Flower Fascinators

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Happy Spring!
I was wanting to try a new do for the spring and so I checked out Bust's DIY Guide to Life, which has sorts of amazing things from gardening, cooking, beauty, crafts, hazards, biking, hiking, etc, etc...

Anyway, it's a great book.  I came across the hair style section and I really liked this one so I gave it a shot:

I really didn't have the perfect flower centerpiece, so I decided to try my fused plastic fascinators and was very pleased with the outcome.

My hair style might be a little more princess braids than Frida, but it was my first try.  I still love it.

The Beginnings of My Art Car

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Last summer I desperately wanted to turn my car into an art car.  I have always dreamed of having one and have worked on a few ideas and cars in the past.  Well, I thought I had some great ideas, but working out the logistics of them ultimately stopped me from achieving my dream.
This year I am going to start simple and just see where the art and the car take me.  So to keep me motivated and get the whole ball rolling I decided that my car needed the addition of pom-pom fringe on the inside. I mean, what car doesn't?
Here are a few photos and I will keep you posted on my progress.

Talented Friend and Collegue: Keri Piehl

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As you may know I have some very artistically talented and resourceful friends and Keri is definitely No. 1 when it comes to resourceful.  She is SCRAP's Education Director and I couldn't think of anyone better for the job.
She is an amazing woman making SCRAP an awesome place and she just keeps striving to make it more amazing.

So for my birthday that is long past --I have been pretty busing and not keeping up with my blog posts -- Keri made me the coolest necklace.  At first I didn't know what it was, but on the attached card it told me to check out SCRAP's blog to see how it was made.

Here is the blog so you can see how to make one of these for yourself:
http://scrappdx.org/news/news/colored-pencil-pendant-photo-tutorial/111/
Pretty sweet!  Thanks, Keri.

Happy Fat Tuesday

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Hello fellow crafters and crafistas!

You may not know this about me, but I am one of 50 some vendors at House of Vintage on Hawthorne in good ole' Portland, Oregon.  I have been there for nearly a year and I love it.  I have a great love for going to estate sales and flea markets and whatnot because there is just so much interesting stuff that has accumulated on this beautiful planet.  It's really unbelievable.  The most unbelievable thing to me is that we are still making more and people are still buying new items.  Oh, well.  At any rate I just love digging through it all.

This Saturday I came upon an interesting couple of items of which I am sure some of you are familiar with:  the infamous 1970s era crocheted beer can hat.  Now, I find this to be such an interesting craft project because of the juxtaposition of tasks and items.  I am sure that for the most part in the 1970s it was the women who were doing the crocheting, however, I am not sure if they were in large part drinking the canned beers.  Perhaps they were and this craft was just a sign that the times were a changing.  Who knows, maybe women were buying 12 packs of some cheap beer and getting together and crocheting whilst drinking it.  I am sure that would have been a sight to see.

I thought this would be the perfect item for the upcoming Mardi Gras festivities even though I am not sure that Portland is a huge Mardi Gras town.  I am sure these hats will appeal to somebody.  I know that I love them enough that I wanted to document the find and share it withe the world :)

Enjoy ~

P.S. - If you want to check out my store in House of Vintage, my store name is Fascinate Me and my number is 14.

Get Ready for Valentine's Day

Pin It Now! So I espied this flyer on Portland State University's bulletin board one morning and I couldn't resist taking a photo and then sharing it with the craft world.  If you happen to be a PSU student, you should stop by and check the valentine card making out.  I bet it's pretty fun.  Anyway, here you go: