NotYetSold

maybe I should change the name of my blog.. hmm... 

so the craft fair I had been working towards as my goal turned out to be on sunday, not saturday and I couldn't make it on sunday as we had planned to go to help with the rose parade float decorating stuff.  Bummer.

I emailed the person in charge to see if she had someone there that could sell my stuff and labeled it all w/prices - and then got back a relatively curt email stating she did not have anyone to sell my stuff unless I just wanted to donate it all and get nothing back OR I could ask Amy if she could sell.  Bottom line:  Amy got there a bit too late to actually sell anything but she did say that those that had a chance to look loved it - feedback is all good, so at least I did get something out of it.

now I'm going about setting up a store on etsy.com.  I've taken a bunch of pictures ; need to review their sell policy and upload.  I've also got a lead on a little boutique shop on Topanga Blvd that might sell my stuff.

I didn't start down this path to make a pile of stuff to sell, but now that I have a big pile I want to sell it so I can make more . What I would really like to do is get a bit more artsy and less craftsy and generate *art* interest - no clue how to go about that, still researching...

Comics R Phun and other things

I gleaned some inspiration the other day whilst staring at all the colours of the sunday times comic section, so I thought what the heck and started a box  from just the comic section.  I tweaked this box a bit from the original newspaper box, however - for one, I cut each sheet into 4 long quarters - the original one was just in half.  By doing that, I got a lot more newspaper for my bang, however I felt it might end up a bit flimsy so I also rolled 6 pieces to weave with.  Four of the rolls were used as corners and incorporated into the weaving with the piece next to it; the other two will be for stability along the top .

In addition, I thought it would be cool to make some kind of 'pattern' with the comics - it's not obvious in my pics, but I have laid them out whilst weaving so it will be very fun to look at after it's been varnished.

My other concern is that when I varnish it, the newspaper will garner some odd texturing from the 'wetness' of the varnish.  I've seen that in other boxes where the catalog paper was thinner - luckily it dried nicely but it's a concern.  To alleviate some of that issue, I have pre-varnished the inside bottom with the modge-podge like stuff.  This also helps with stability while I'm doing the actual weaving.

In addition to this new project, I finished 3 or 4 more boxes to take to this craft show on Saturday -  I think I'm up to a total of about 10 now.  The additions include another Victoria's Secret, delia catalog , Target Toys and Wildlife Federation.  They are very cool; I tried a few new things w/the design and I'm happy w/the outcome.  I did discover that I like glossy varnish better than matte when it comes to a catalog basket however.

The earrings are done and appear to be very popular amongst the 11-13yo crowd . 

My original plan was to varnish them but after talking to a friend who recommended against it, I went nekked :)  Each bird is hand-folded from a small square about 1 1/4" in length .  The paper is taken from bits of different catalogs I had lying around leftover from my baskets.  Some of the finished earrings have been finished with my construction paper beads as well.  I'm very happy with them and hope they do well at my sale.



From all the stuff I've been making I really like the baskets the best - they seem more like 'art' than 'craft' to me.  I am actually looking forward to trying out a bit of newspaper sculpture using the rolls, especially now that I have a little weaving under my belt and can do a much better job.

BBBB - Bags, Beads, Boxes, Birds

I had to take a little break from crocheting the bags because I pretty much cut the crap out of my index finger on my left hand from the plastic rubbing against it.  I've decided that wrapping the finger w/tape before I start crocheting is a good and fine thing, dutifully protecting that poor finger from any additional damage.

The latest bag is striped - very cool, although working hdc the entire bag gets very tiresome. I did, however, enjoy the change up in colour and I think it's probably my best bag yet.

The one really cool thing about using a beige or brown bag, especially one w/coloured letters, is that it looks exactly like rattan from a distance - I usually crochet whilst watching my girls' softball game, and I have people walking up to me all the time who just can't believe their eyes that they are looking at plastic grocery bags .

I have really dipped a deep dip in the foray of paper beads as well.  I started off using the leftover magazine bits from the boxes and making beads from long skinny triangles wrapped tightly around a toothpick.  Sounds gross, doesn't it?  But seriously, it is so kewl, I really liked them and proceeded to make dozens.. forgetting, as I did w/the magazine beads, that I wasn't done after creation - those little buggers each needed some individual attention from me in the way of lacquer, happy happy joy joy.  Blech.  

Then I discovered the real joy of the fake modge podge I mistakenly bought for my boxes - If I used that stuff to stick the layers together instead of glue, I got glued auto-lacquered beads, all in one step, woo hoo!  Ok, it's an addition, I admit it - I first knew I had a problem when I was standing around my kitchen during a GS meeting last friday and could not allow any of the leftover construction paper to get thrown out - wouldn't you know it, I made beads out of that, dang, and they are really cool!

Yes indeed - a use for all those bits and pieces of construction paper you find lying around after some kid has blasted through your kitchen in the name of "mom i have this project for english class" - it's almost as good as having a dog lick up the crumbs off your floor.

Oh - I must mention; I did not give in to the calling of my addition alone - no, I dragged in any nearby adult that happen to be hanging at my meeting and got them engaged in the process of construction paper bit reuse.  At least I wasn't the only one still peeling the lacquer off my fingers at 10:30pm later that night...

There's also the boxes projects - I am getting pretty good at the square-edged boxes, but I want MORE!  I want to make round boxes, heart-shaped boxes, oval boxes... but I can't find a thing on the internet to help .  Woof. 

At any rate, I tried my hand today at another round basket - little more success w/this one.  It was a lot easier to weave than the original newspaper version, probably because I used less paper .  I used the continuous weave pattern, which worked pretty well, although I am not sure I like the base, so I will be experimenting w/that a bit more.

In process.  Easily finished w/in a few hours, however  







Here's the two baskets I made from the delia catalog sans lacquer - the delia catalog has the cutest stuff in their catalog, so probably a good thing I chopped it up instead of shopping :) 

The one of the left is the finished continuous weave basked; the one of the right was an experiment to see if I could make a round basket, swedish-style w/the basket weave pattern.  I think it came out nice, although there is plenty of

One last thing - I love origami.  Saw that someone was making earrings out of the peace bird, so of course I had to do something w/the little bits of leftover magazine crap that has since cluttered every spare inch of my kitchen island - hence, birds.  These guys are small, I really should have been wearing my husband's magnifying lens glasses , but I just did them adhoc.  The magazine I did them out of was pretty thick .  I think they are cool, but they still need lacquer and earring thingies.  Still - at $10 each, I could make these babies til the sun comes in whilst watching Dancing With the Stars... too bad that show is almost over or I'd be a millionaire!

Assembly line

So seems I have a goal - a friend's son's theatre group is doing a fundraiser where people create 'boutiques' of homemade/craft items to sell.  One half of the profit goes back to the theatre group, but there's no table charge.. at any rate I have been bamboozled into having a table there , so I have been madly crocheting and boxing as though the stuff was the hottest item to hit hollywood since Miley Sirus.

My fingers are sore - a suggestion:  if you are going to crochet the plastic bags, use a finger condom or something to protect that index finger holding the plarn.  My index finger has been chopped up into little pieces like raw hamburger and I've had to take a little break from crocheting - which is ok, since I have to make the plarn from the treasure trove of bags I snagged from Ralph's Market the other day.

On other fronts, I've finished 3 more boxes - Victoria's Secret, Target Toys and Musician's Friend.

here's a closeup of the decoupage'd drum kit I put inside the Musician's Friend box - I also put a guitar, keyboard and kettle drum on the outside, just for some fun. .

I know the decoupage is a little hard to see in the picture, but it's at the center top of the picture.  Looks better in person, especially since I went to some care to do a nice job cutting out the drum kit.









I've also been trying to get some of my newspaper beads painted - I tried tempura paints, but didn't like the results much, so I recently bought an acrylic paint set as an experiment.  The acrylics seem to work better than the tempura paints, but I guess I'll know the final word after I varnish them.  Here's what they looked like as of today:

Gosh - terrible picture; they are much better in person - if you look into the cup, however, you can see the other paper beads I'm working on which are rolled triangles, then varnished.  They will be much more interesting after I string them.

My goal for the newspaper beads is to make them look like 'stones', so I've been mixing colours together - sort of works, but I think I will have to show them to someone not as critical, LOL.

Next:  I am almost done with a bag that I crocheted stripes in to - best one yet, should be done by end of day .  Pictures next time...

Finally.. a use for all those pretty full-colour catalogs...

I always know it's holiday time when I start getting massive amounts of those pretty full colour catalogs in the mail.  Sure - I receive my fair share of Victoria's Secret and Pottery Barn all the time, but now I'm getting The Paragon, Keepsake Quilting, LLBean, Land's End... you name it, I get it.

Between being annoyed at the kid for looking at the Teen Pottery Barn catalog when she's supposed to be doing her homework and being appalled at the total waste of time, $$$ and resources of sending out these lovely catalogs that end up in the round file at the end of the week, I decided I needed to find a good use for them.

Behold - Pottery Barn, Teen style:

I basically followed the same style as the newspaper one, except I folded the pages a little differently.  Instead of fold in half, then fold in half <2 more times til right size>, I made a fold mark down the middle.  I then folded the edges to the centers until I had the correct size - why?  This way I end up w/only one 'loose' part that I may need to add some glue to later on, instead of a 'fan' of loose folds .

Of course the Pottery Barn catalog isn't that wide, so I did have to glue the strips together to make a bigger box - I think this one is about 7" x 5" or so and note that it is only about 3" tall.  Instead of using a matte finish, like I did w/the newspaper, I used a shiny lacquer - good choice, it's really cool and really made the different colours in the catalog pop.

I also think that using Modge Podge may be a better choice than just glue + lacquer,  so a trip back to Michael's w/my newly minted coupons is in order for tomorrow am.  Modge Podge is usually used for decoupage, but I think a layer of Modge Podge before the lacquer will fix some of my glue issues.

Next?  Victoria's Secret.  I expect that box will be very popular ;)

Another kind of 'recycling'...

Last weekend we adopted two dogs from the border collie rescue orgs out in Phelan.

Gwyn:

She's a border collie mix, about one year old.  Gwyn was rescued by Border Collies in Need from a kill shelter in Kern County - now she lives the life of leisure at our house.  I can't believe anyone would willingly give up this dog; she is just about the most friendly, sweetest and well behaved dog I've ever seen.  Certainly she's not gonna be much of a watchdog, unless you count licking intruders to death...

Most of the time, Gwyn likes to keep herself busy chasing her new puppy buddy, Milly:

Milly is a rambunctious 12 week old girl.  She was the only female in a litter of 8 border collies - 7 brothers, so she's the bride, Milly <7 brides for 7 brothers...?   we didn't pick the name, just relating how she got it :)>.  Anyways, she was in a house w/6 adult dogs and the animal protection people were called in.  The owners had to give up all the puppies and 2 adults, which is where Border Collie Rescue of California came in.

We were really lucky; the day we went out to view Gwyn, both rescue organizations were there, so we got one dog from each one.  Unfortunately, it looks like one of them had a fire yesterday :  http://www.highdesert.com/news/animals-15300-vvdailypress-blaze-phelan.html  - Not 100% sure, but the pic sure looks like :(

So... what do my new puppies have to do w/NotYetTrash?  Well, it just seemed like only a bit of stretch to consider rescuing a puppy from "the trash", aka the shelter, and giving it a new home, as fitting my topic here.

Admittedly the little cute monsters have put my projects on the back burner a bit, although I have managed to get some of my beads done - here they are before painting.

I think they look a bit like turds here, but the girls thought they were cool.
Btw, done is relative, I have a few painted and I'm experimenting w/different things.


I also varnished the box and one of the weaved projects - very cool and thanks to my good friend Suzanne for suggesting a matte finish - it's great!  I can't wait to make another one; I have a few ideas on how to make it easier to weave next time.

Newspaper basket experiment....

So I finished two newspaper baskets.  For both, I created 'sticks' of newspapers by rolling them around skinny things.  The first skinny thing I tried was a wooden stick, but that didn't work well because it got stuck when I tried to pull it out.

The next skinny thing I tried was a metal bbq skewer thingy - that worked great because I could 'screw' it into the newspaper and get nicely even 'sticks' with out quite the same effort.  I made a pile of sticks and got to work.

Immediately I realized - OMG, my sticks are too thick .  Whilst I like the look of the thick sticks, they were totally hard to work with . 

I created the first basket by making a 'weave' of the sticks in a flat fashion, then bending them up and weaving in new sticks to create the sides.  I could not make a tighter weave; the sticks were just too darn thick and even squashing them a bit didn't help much.  The other thing that was difficult was that no where in the directions did it say how to do the first round of weaved stuff, once you start working on the side!  I eventually ended up taping the start piece and working my way around - seemed to work ok.  To end the piece, I took the long bits and folded them over, then tucked them into the chunks in the rung below, tacking them w/a little bit of tacky glue.  Sound confusing?  It was, LOL.  Despite the drama getting the weave done, tho, I do like the end result.  Still needs some kind of shellac to fortify the newspaper - I'm totally scared one of my kids is gonna accidently splash water on it.

The second basket was done by creating a wheel-spoke like thing, gluing the ends of 13 newspaper sticks together.  It took a long time to get the glue to dry and have them stick, so I need to find a better way to make that work BUT once I got them to stick, it was much easier construction.  Kind of cool, but again, the sticks are way too thick and it was hard to get a nice weave.  The bottom is also kind of precarious and un-flat, so it's tippy.  My GF suggested starting w/a disk, so I'm thinking maybe a cardboard disk w/the sticks glued as a wheel would work better - certainly it would have a more stable base.  Thinner sticks would be way better as well and it still needs shellac - thinking about painting it, but I do kind of like the fact that you can read bits and pieces of the newspaper print so I would use a clear paint, if any colour.

Haven't finished the third basket yet, but it will be a more traditional kind of longerberger-type basket made w/flat sticks of newspaper instead of rolled things.  Seems to be going together better, although I fear it will end up looking like a 5th-grade mother's day project instead of some kewl artsy-fartsy re-do of trash stuff.  Time will tell and if nothing else, at least it's not trash.. today.

What unemployed engineers do in their spare time...

I was RIF'd from my job of almost 12 years in June, 2009 - that means I have been prematurely sent off to retirement mode via a company-wide layoff.  Since I've been working basically full time since I was 17yo,  it's been a bit of a shock to the soul.  Sure, I could go find another engineering job and according to the EDD, that's just what I'm doing - looking for work, but since I find myself in this pisspot of an economy, there's just not a lot going on out there.  I also find myself completely and utterly burned out, leaving me in a disinterested state of even considering the idea that creating something new in C++ might be interesting or even fun.

Instead I find myself looking for other new, creative ways to keep the brain working - and hence, the look to trash and creating stuff, especially interesting to create beauty from trash.

So I've started this blog to document my ideas for reuse and abuse of ordinary trash items.  Seems to me that as a community, we create a lot of trash and no seems to notice... sure, we have recycling programs on board - blue bins, green bins - but where does it all go and do we use them properly?


So far I've found some pretty good uses for those annoying plastic bags you get every time you buy something at the store - gads, you even get them when you buy things with handles, what's with that??  It's got a friggin handle, do I really need a BAG for it?  Looking around, there are some cool patterns on the web at http://www.myrecycledbags.com so I've been going to town making plarn items - so cool, in fact, that my girls have been arguing over who gets which one and I've been invited to sell them for profit.  Not bad for trash.



Next - a friend sent me a picture of a basket that was lovely - made entirely from rolled up old newspapers and some glue.  A little bit of research led me to a site that sells these baskets made by ladies in Nicargua (a community, btw, that does not let a single thing go to waste if at all possible).  http://www.lavidaverde.com/Baskets/newspaperbaskts.htm   SinceI know nothing about basket weaving, so my first attempt is, well, not the prettiest of things, LOL - I'm going to experiment today w/skinnier reeds and see if that makes a difference.  I don't want it to look like a girl scout project gone bad.


Anyways, if you ask "why trash", go visit a landfill sometime - especially on a windy day.