Hippy of Doom on Etsy has some nice altered shoes. I love these hummingbird shoes.

There is also an entire book about altering shoes and I bet it has great tips on the kinds of paint to use, etc. The book is called Altered Shoes: A Step-By-Step Guide To Making Your Footwear Fabulous and was written by Marty Stevens-Heebner. Marty looks very interesting and is, I think, the creator if ReBagz, a line of handbags made from upcycled materials. you can read about them here.

I’m shocked that there is not an altered shoes flickr group! I have a few altered shoes stories from recently myself, although, does it count if the altering was done my my most excellent local cobbler?

I saw this on Zombiegrrrl’s parenting blog.

If I didn’t already have a hand-me-down frog costume for Jack I would totally do one of these. The Shark would be my pick!

I saw this link over on Rookiemoms.com

I want this “Keep Calm and Sew Stuff” patch from Urban Threads but I’m suddenly confused by the website. Do I have to have an embroidery machine? Am I just buying the design or can I buy the already made patch? I fear, for me who has no embroidery machine, that I can only buy the design. Ugh! Darn it! Now I need a serger AND an embroidery machine.

This is what Etsy Alchemy is for!

Let’s start with the new Michael Miller Flower Garden line. What’s in a flower garden? GNOMES, of course! There are three new gnome fabrics and all of them are cracking me up.

More from Michael Miller: Doughnuts and tea. You can’t go wrong and I’m pretty sure my brain has decided to go get doughnuts tomorrow. I guess I’ll go along with it.

Robert Kaufman has some new fabrics designed by Robin Pickens called Deco Park. Her color choices are amazing and these remind me of stained glass windows.

The Apple line designed by Alice Kennedy for Timeless Treasures. Whoo! The Cream Orchard Owls fabric, Dotted Daisy and Fashion Apples all are great fabrics with a vintagey 70’s feel.

The ampersand necklace is very pretty and all is quite affordable!

You can find other Isette creations on Ponoko and Etsy

I love tiny things and I love surprises. I am a huge spy fan and I wish I could work with Q and outfit James Bond agent 007 with neat little gadgets. I often wonder to myself, what would MacGyver do? What tools would he love to have on hand? I love miniaturizing useful tools and wear them unsuspectingly. If something is useful to me, I will try to find it or make it as small as I can and put it on a necklace or ring.

I like the mini salt and pepper earrings, the levels and the Mini Working Harmonica Necklace with Tiny Music Stand and Ity Bity Sheet Music

Underdog Ink is owned and operated by Lisa Solomon, a Bay Area artist and crafter. After looking through some of her links it turns out she is the artist behind the most recent Mix Tape, a great craft zine, cover which I have been particularly admiring ever since I received it in the mail a few weeks ago.

Lauren Venell of Sweet Meats recently turned me on to this great project called Project 95: Fabric Shoppers Unite—Shop Independents is a worldwide network of independent quilt and fabric shops, that have joined forces to promote shopping independents.

I occasionally shop at chain crafts stores like Joann’s and Michael’s but mostly prefer the smaller local shops, they have a higher quality of product, more knowledgeable staff and best of all it helps people in my community.

Project 95 and your local craft shops need your help!
The first thing you can do is to help Project 95 keep their database up to date. ( I have to say that the techie in me is cringing a bit at how they are going about this. But I’m not judging!) Email their tech person at sarah.moon@fabshopnet.com with a list of the name of all your local shops.
Second, tell all your crafty friends to do the same.
Third, check out their database to find a local shop! Shop local!

My sister gave me Voroidae and I have been swooning with the sheer nerdy fantasticness ever since. I’d like to see some plushies to go with this book!

This otter card is even cuter and if thy had this in the retail show I would have bought it.

This adorable owl wearing a belt screen printed onto a birch notecard is by Night Owl Paper Goods. I was in a local paper shop recently and came across these beautiful cards screened onto a thin piece of birch wood. The wood is Eco-friendly sustainably harvested yellow birch and has a lovely smooth sturdy feel to it. Here’s what they have to say about the wood they use:

Wood is sliced thin to produce a large number of unique products from a small amount of raw material. In turn, no water & very little power are used.
Birch trees are replanted each spring.

Night Owl Paper Goods also makes custom birch business cards and wedding invites. These would work really well as a lovely keepsake wedding invite or wedding place cards. Place cards would be better I think. Other people probably won’t clutter up their house holding on to your wedding invite but if these cards were printed up with each guests name and a pretty image people would want to keep them.

Please to look at this outrageously cute cuckoo clock and donkey fabric panel hand printed in Australia by Kristin Doran of Cheeky Beaks. You can buy it and some other really beautiful designs in her shop.

I love tattoos and the delicacy of lace (have you ever seen someone making real lace? It’s amazing!) and I like it when one form of art work transmutes into another and they get all wrapped up and sweaty in the covers with some other kind of art/craft and they make babies that come out weirdly different but the same.

Here is how she describes her process:

This series of work utilizes a sewing technique that I have created and developed over the past two years. Most of the designs and images are based on vintage tattoo imagery. My designs are made in the similar labor intense way that a tattoo is made, using only a needle to draw with, but instead of ink on skin, my medium is only thread on thread.

Each labor-intensive piece is made completely from thread and takes about two weeks to complete. I build up layers upon layers of sewing thread in a circular, web-like pattern. The result is a realistic image rendered into a lace-like material.

Plus she has some lace eyes in her etsy shop and I have a thing for the ‘lover’s eye’ concept. I’m not sure that’s what she was going for but it’s how I see it.

This is a great idea. I know I’m not the only one who has started a project and then realized that I don’t have all the equipment I needed and ended up at the craft store spending WAY too much money just to get one measly project done. I think her price is reasonable for the amount of work she has to do to have this business but at the end of a years worth of monthly fees I really might as well have purchased my own supplies.

I would like to see something like this locally. If I could stop by my local craft lending library, like the tool lending libraries in Berkeley, it would be more worth my while.

Either way, I applaud this craft lending library! She has a great selection of books, DVD’s, cutting and measuring supplies, quilting, stamping and a whole range of other things.