August 7, 2012

In Motion

I've never participated as a seller at an art or craft fair. I fear my natural tendency to introversion (OK, OK, I'd make a great hermit actually) might make it difficult. Which is why sharing space with a friend makes the prospect much less intimidating. Roya (RoCoKo, jewelry design) and I are both craft show newbies. We'll muddle through together. In the meantime - LESS THAN SIX WEEKS! - there is a lot of prep to do. To that end I pulled out my bin of old t-shirts and rummaged through my surplus and sample upholstery stash for ingredients to make a bunch of trinket keepers. (Clever, eh? Roya is going to sell jewelry, and among my wares I will sell jewelry accessories.) 
In short order, every available surface is covered with fabric and t-shirts. Including the washing machine and ironing board in the laundry room adjacent to my little studio.
And then I put on the brakes. I shouldn't start production of trinket keepers until I receive the custom stamp I ordered. I hope to use the stamp to make small fabric tags to attach to my soft goods. As I don't know how the stamp will work on fabric and don't know what fabric I will use for tags nor how or where I will place them on the trinket keepers, I naturally move on to other projects.
This is what a fitted sheet looks like spread out on my kitchen floor after removing the elastic and the 4 corner seams. It's a huge rectangle with the corners cut out. This is after ironing it. Really, it is. I filled the iron 3 times during the ironing session. I am rubbish at ironing. If I had realized how much of sewing is actually ironing, I might have given it a pass altogether. I don't bother ironing my clothes. They look just as bad after 2 minutes of wear as they did before ironing, so why bother?
See? This was the sheet before ironing. I'd like to think my efforts improved it somewhat.
This little sheet dismantling project became hand torn fabric ribbon for gift wrap embellishment. This is what the ribbon looks like after laundering, drying in the sun, ironing (sigh), and wrapping around the flattened cardboard core from toilet paper rolls.
And this is the sheet draped over the couch in the living room, an attempt to keep it (somewhat) wrinkle-free while the two experiment ribbons were whirling away in the washing machine. For those of you not keeping track, I have now managed to colonize not only the studio and the laundry room with Odd Bird Studio projects and paraphernalia, but the kitchen floor and the living room as well.
Lest the kitchen table get jealous, it is covered with my PA enterprise registration form (which I am unclear as to whether I need to fill out or not), instructions for making hypertufa planters that I mean to mail to my mother-in-law, pages from a deaccessioned library book (fantastic heavyweight pages from an old animal encyclopedia with a broken binding that, curiously, had several blank pages that missed being printed) that will become both origami gift boxes and gift tags, and the box in the background contains my new camera! Which I have yet to unpack. I haven't had the calmness nor clarity of mind to deal with it.
A sampling of gift tags cut from the encyclopedia.
The long view of the kitchen. Remnants and tools from the sheet dismantling are there to the left and to the right is my new Rotatrim. How I managed without one of these since 1995 is a mystery. Precision cuts and a self-sharpening blade. Most fantastic.
Back to the studio to fold some origami boxes. (A few short hours ago the counter was clear of all debris, patiently waiting for trinket keeper construction.)
Oh yes, another project set in motion spilled out to the porch. The catnip I processed for drying was secluded in the laundry room closet. It feels dry, but the weather has been quite humid until now. So, to be safe, the 3 paper bags and one body bag (blue sheet hanging in the background) of catnip are airing in the dry breeze.

Meanwhile, back in my office I began to make a design for the neglected reverse side of my business cards. Up to this point I have been printing them on my office printer and cutting them out by hand. But I found an inexpensive online printer that is greener than what I can produce, [CORRECTION: I had the wrong name for the printer, the correct one is) greenerprinter.com. They use 100% recycled paper stock and vegetable-based, low voc inks. I'll let you know how the cards turn out.

Right, with the entire ground floor of the house put to service, I should perhaps get back to it.

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