Indie Crafts » Indie Crafts – General

Maker Faire: World Famous DIY Art, Craft and Tech Festival Now Accepting Craft Vendor Applications to Bazaar Bizarre!

Minnie — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 19:03:36 +0000

Applications Due on March 16th for Bazaar Bizarre Maker Faire

This is a two-day event being held on May 22nd and 23rd, 2010
Saturday 10am – 8pm and Sunday 10am – 6pm. (Not Memorial Day Weekend)

This Bazaar Bizarre event is happening as part of Make and Craftzine’s San Mateo Maker Faire 2010. The entire event takes place at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. Last year’s Maker Faire drew over 75,000 attendees. Please see http://makerfaire.com/ for more program information. The Bazaar Bizarre is held indoors. More details about the event will be available to you if you are accepted as a vendor.

Bazaar Bizarre supports artists and craftspeople that appeal to the aesthetic of the “indie art and craft scene” and have innovative approaches to traditional craft forms. There is a $10 application fee to apply. Full Vendor Fees collected AFTER Acceptance.

Apply Now!

“RAWR”, goes the the tinysaur

Minnie — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:57:29 +0000

Build Your Own Tinysaur Kit! Comes with glue, tweezers and laser cut parts all in a cute tin. All kits by EverythingTiny for sale in the Makers Market.

Cute packaging on a small budget

Minnie — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:26:30 +0000

Meylah looks like a pretty cute site. Here is the description of the site:

Here at Meylah, our goal is to help creative folks succeed in building their businesses online. We know it can be tough, but with our weekly entrepreneurial advice and social networking know-how, you’ll be one step closer to success.

I do love cute packaging and this is lovely and a nice tutorial for a pretty, eco and budget friendly packaging idea from Dionne Christiansen of Notes from Dionne. Here Etsy store is here.

Sôcôla Chocolates – A local Oakland company

Minnie — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 12:17:35 +0000

For Valentine’s Day I got a nice small box of these Sôcôla Chocolates. They were very yummy, cute and cutely packaged. I looked up the company just to see where they came from.

These chocolates are made by two sisters and can be purchased online.

One of their boxes of chocolates is called Beer and Bacon. Do not be frightened by the bacon chocolate. It’s very good!!! Here is the description:

guinness® — the nitrogen in the Irish guinness® stout smoothes the ganache into a velvety texture, marked with white rain

notorious H.O.G. — Niman Ranch® applewood smoked bacon with a dash of black Hawaiian sea salt

Overcoming creative block

Minnie — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:39:35 +0000

Writer’s block really means creative block. It happens to writers, crafters, artists and anyone in a creative position.

This article on ISO50 The Blog of Scott Hanson is really great. He interviews 25 artist’s on “What do you do to inspire your creativity when you find yourself in a rut?“. The answers are very interesting!

I would be interested to know what you crafty people do when they are feeling completely uncreative but yet either need or want to be up and doing.

DIY: wrap-turned-scarf by Trang Huyen of Seams To Me

Minnie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:31:25 +0000

This is a nice tutorial on how to take a yard of knit fabric to create a stylish sweater-y wrap thing. I didn’t use any of the pictures from her site for copyright reasons but you should go check it out.

The tutorial is also on The Stylist where she is apparently the America’s Most Stylish Blogger. Well, hot damn! Good for her!

Digby and Iona

Minnie — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:59:31 +0000

Right around Valentine’s day The jewelry design company Digby & Iona started offering their Stump Ring with carved initials on it. So cute! I’m not sure if that was just a Valentine’s Day promotion or if they will keep doing it.

The designs coming from this company are just so awesome. For instance, this working tiny telescope necklace.

Heather Ross for (herself!) and Spoonflower

Minnie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:11:48 +0000

Mushrooms and flowers and gnomes! Heather Ross’s new fabric designs are available on Spoonflower now.

Fashionary – A sketch book for fashion designers

Minnie — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:58:16 +0000

I’m a lurking member of the Flickr group What I Wore Today (drawings only!) and I saw people using this cute cute fashion sketchbook.

FASHIONARY is the 1st sketchbook tailor made for fashion designers.
The book is divided into 2 parts: Information & Templates.

Tons of information about designers, brands, measurements, textile info and more. The templates look they are are drawn in the typical fashion proportions that I think are like the nine or ten head superhero proportions instead of normal 8 head proportions. Maybe they will have a version that is normal people proportions someday.

Ypou can buy the nice bound book on Etsy here. Or you can go to their website and download the PDF’s of the figure and pattern templates to make your own book.

Little birds knitting pattern

Minnie — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:14:48 +0000

Suddenly I wish I could knit so that I could knit myself this sweet little sweater. The pattern is by Ysolda Teague and you can buy it here for $7.00.

Her blog is here and the more I look through it the more smitten I am with her patterns. They are gorgeous and fun.

I may have to learn to knit so I can make some of these. Although… I wonder how much it would cost to just have someone knit it for me?

Colette Patterns mini bloomers free sewing pattern

Minnie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:49:21 +0000

Colette Patterns mini bloomers free sewing pattern

Originally uploaded by saraicat

I’ve really been enjoying The Colette Patterns blogfree bloomer pattern on her blog right now. Very very cute but not a good style for me .

I do love her other patterns. Particularly the Sencha and the Ceylon.

Check out the Colette Pattern pool on Flickr to see some of the wonderful things people are making!

If you make these bloomers add them to the flickr pool!

Kind Over Matter Mixtape #3 – Valentine’s Edition – plus a Freebie Printable CD Sleeve!

Minnie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:12:18 +0000

Kind Over Matter Mixtape #3 – Valentine’s Edition – plus a Freebie Printable CD Sleeve!

Originally uploaded by prettyfnmess

Cute free printable PDF CD sleeve!

“I want to be the B side to your A side”
Blogged here by Kind Over Matter.

Tape Illustration by PepperStiches
- offered as one of her many AWESOME free embroidery patterns!

Srsly nerdy Valentine’s Day cards

Minnie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:54:30 +0000

In the grocery store the other day the check out woman and the woman bagging groceries were discussing how they were celebrating “intentionally single day” which quickly digressed into where the heck st. Valentine’s Day originated.

Blame Chaucer (paper doll anyone?)! He’s the missing link!

The history of St Valentine’s Day, from its pre-Christian origins, involving nudity and whipping, to its present incarnation as a commercial free-for-all driving huge sales of chocolate, flowers and jewellery.

Ylou can find more nerdly Valentine’s Day cards at Ironic Sans

Links to yet more nerdy Valentine’s Day cards.

A most excellent Star Trek card from Able and Game’s Etsy shop!

Oh hai, I know it’s too late to order Valentine’s cards but whatever!

Someone make me a very wrong Valentine with this picture of Chaucer. Please?

Best iPhone apps for crafty, creative and artistic people

Minnie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:52:03 +0000

I’ve written about the best crafty iPhone apps before but it’s a subject that needs to be revisited because of the insane amount of iPhone apps being developed.

Last May I posted about quite a few apps aimed at knitters and you can find that here.

I really wanted more apps for crafty types but honestly couldn’t think of what! Here are some apps that I use and some that I have researched and read about!

Productivity and Organization
Moe’s Notes – This is essential to my productivity, organization and this could even go in the creativity section. Moe’s Notes is the best way to keep track and organize your thoughts. If you’re like me you might possibly have scattered moleskines, notebooks, scraps of paper and backs of evelopes with written notes, sketches, ideas and the like. And when it comes to recall having all your thoughts in various places, unsearchable is no fun! Moe’s notes changes all that. You create notes that can have audio, image, video, text, tag, date, and GPS data.

So an example of using this would be that I am at the fabric store and am overwhelmed with all the fabulous fabric. so I take a picture of some fabric, put it in a note and write a brief bit about what I would do with it and then I tag it ‘fabric’, ’sewing’, ‘idea’. Later I can access it by location. I know I was in that fabric store in Berkeley and I can find it on the map and access my note! Handy!

Fabric Stash – I have been using this to take pictures of my stash. That way, when I am out and I can figure out a coordinating fa bric or if I already have 3 kinds of plaid wool gabardine. It takes some time investment to photograph your whole stash!

Etsy Shop Tools – I have not used this one but it sounds like a good idea. This app allows you to access your shop to see hearts and create galleries and to surf Etsy. This is the only app out there for Etsy that is for an Etsy shop owner rather than someone who wants to buy stuff.

Creativity

Sketchbook This app from Autodesk seems to be the fanciest one out there! “SketchBook Mobile offers professional-grade painting and drawing tools in a streamlined and intuitive user interface. Use it to digitally capture your ideas as napkin sketches or produce artwork on-the-go.”

flickr and twitter Get free accounts and use them to hook up with other creative people.

Exploring Color: Color Expert - looks awesome but too expensive at 9.99! It lets you take a picture, choose a color from it and then it can show you various palettes based on a chosen color theory.
Palettes. – free and non free versions. another palette creating app. looks fairly powerful and allows you to export and inport palettes from Adobe products.

Some other ones: ColorSutra and cliqcliq colors

Phototgraphy
tilt shift – lets you apply a tilt shift to any photo. “Transform a scene into a miniature world.
This application simulates a tilt-shift lens that tricks your mind into viewing a photo as a miniature scene like a model railroad for example.”
hipstamatic – cute but clunky-ish interface. you only get a few lenses for free. very nice results “The Hipstamatic comes with the John S Lens, the Jimmy Lens, the Kaimal Mark II Lens, the Standard Flash, the Dreampop Flash, Ina’s 1969 Film, and Kodot Verichrome Film.”
dash of color
Camera Bag – lets you pretend your phone is an old stylee film camera. very fun!

Other
sherwin williams color snap I don’t know… I just like this one because I like fantasizing about picking out paint.

Etsy Addict – Not sure where this goes but what’s not to love about easy etsy shopping on the go?

Okay! That’s all I got right now. What creative iPhone apps do you use? What crafty iPhone apps do you WANT to see made?

Get Excited and Make Things!

Minnie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:42:21 +0000

Howdy! Here I am in my new T-shirt! Cute, ain’t it?

Available for purchase at the Feed Store.