Recent projects, May

Recent projects, May, originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

Projects since mid-April–seven purses, an upsized Indian tunic (thanks H!), and a couple t-shirts made into a big scarf. The purses are selling pretty well, too!

Go Vote for My Purse!

Or whichever other project in Lisa’s Big Button Challenge you might fancy.  Voting closes next week, so head over right now.  Mine is #1, “Penny’s Bag.”

My Etsy shop is now open

The purses I’ve been making?  Now you can buy them.  I’ll probably add other non-purse items to the store as my whims dictate.

Don’t tempt me

No really…. even if you send me something as small as a button–if it’s a cool Polka Dot Creations button–I’m going to have to make a purse based on it.  The brown purse is from a thriftshop, great leather, clean inside (except there was a sample vial of perfume in one of the pockets). Before:

Brown purse, BEFORE

AFTER

The button is attached with thread, after I got Peter to drill holes in the leather.  There’s a lot of gesso, acrylic paints, sharpies, modpodge, krylon.  (See my altered purse tutorial here.) And that button.

DETAIL

Making, wrapping, shipping (pt. 2)

In 2007, I used a template I found in a thriftshop to make a bunch of individualized small boxy bags, exactly the size for giftcards.  The papers here are very random, some stamped, some punched, some scraps from other projects.

Gift Bags

More Gift Bags

Cute, and fun to make, but not particularly efficient for mailing purposes–best to stick to flat containers for the faraway giftees, I realized too late.

Making, wrapping, shipping (pt. 1)

I don’t make my own holiday cards.  I did, for years, when I was in grad school–usually with copier images and cut paper.  Now I order them from a graphic designer friend–they’re lovely, and it’s a whole lot faster.  That leaves me time to make other things for the holidays–so I’ve been crocheting hats for kids, and scarves for snow-dwellers, and ordering photo calendars, and every year I make gift-card holders for the in-law nieces and nephews (all teens and twenty-somethings, this year).  The 2006 card holders were cardstock envelopes, heavily collaged, with each kid’s initial incorporated somehow.  Here they are, front and back:

An Obama pin I made is posted on Daily Kos

I don’t know the diarist (tarheelian51), but he heard about the pin from Kevin, who I don’t know either; but Kevin and I have a mutual friend Christa.  Got that?   The story probably makes more sense at Daily Kos, except they have me living in Portland (where Christa lives).  Not that I’d mind living in Portland, of course…  All this came together through the Obama Craft Project, anyway.

New batch of Obama collage pins

New batch of Obama collage pins, originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

Most of these are heading for North Carolina tomorrow–a friend of a friend in Durham is coordinating volunteers for the Obama campaign, and he’s going to give them out to some of his most tireless folks, registering voters on campuses and employee lounges all over Durham and beyond.  Yeah!  More soon.

Hockey Mom for Obama

Hockey Mom for Obama, originally uploaded by pennylrichardsca.

Be careful what you say in my earshot in coming weeks. If you’re a friend of mine in a Red or contested state, say, a friend named Lisa W., and you happen to express a desire for a “Hockey Mom for Obama” button, I’m not going to be able to resist the temptation to make you one, immediately, from modpodge and paper scraps. This is podged onto an old pin. And I have a lot of old pins. They are suddenly looking very naked.  And contributing to the Obama Craft Project is very addictive.

Added later the same day:  Couldn’t resist the urge for long–made three more buttons this morning.  And I’ve already given one away, at school.  More soon….

Let California Ring

Well, California’s seldom in play for the presidential race, so we don’t get too many of those ads, but they’re usually kinda boring anyway. What we get instead are ads about the statewide propositions, and they can be more interesting. We’re loving this one, against Prop 8:

Same-sex marriage is legal right now in California (yeah!), and the polling looks good for it to stay legal after November (double yeah!), because folks are more likely to vote No on propositions than Yes, all things being equal. But I’ve heard there’s a Yes on 8 yardsign campaign coming September 22, so we’re ahead of the game–our “No on Prop 8″ sign is already in the front window.

[Update 9/28:  BWAHAHAHAHHAAAHAHAHA!]

In other political news, someone at school today asked “where did you get that cute Obama t-shirt you were wearing the other day?” Uh, I made it. She looked disappointed, she was hoping to get one for her mom, so I said to bring me two old t-shirts and I’ll make one for her too. Maybe I should throw a shirt-making party? (When I was looking up that link, I found this reverse-applique Obama tote, with tutorial–cool!)