It's Valentine's Day?

So, it's Valentine's Day, better known as 'Single's Awareness Day'.  It's a commercial holiday designed to stimulate a frenzy of purchasing after the consumer's long January hibernation.  For many, it's a day to be spent with a significant other, doing 'romantic' things with flutes of champaigne.  For others, it's a time to lament spending yet another 'couple's holiday' sitting at home watching rom-coms and doubting themselves. 
Strangely enough, Valentine's day's tradition had nothing to do with couples.  It was supposed to be a feast day for Saint Valentinus, who performed marriages for soldiers, ministered to people under Roman rule, and healed sick children.  The tradition of the 'Valentine' comes from the way he used to sign his letters.   Somehow the modern era equates selfless acts with sexy gifts and boot-knockin'. 

WELL.  I'm not on board with any of that creepy stuff.  I don't think it's a day to aggressively assert the value of romance.  I'm actually a bit more fond of its original intended purpose: sharing your true feelings with ALL the people you care about with warm letter or- because we're so modern now- a phone call. 

In the meantime, want to look pretty, red, shiny things?

These key fobs are super cute.  I made a few, but I've only got one left.

This one's got a strong Victorian flavor.  Look up the language of fruit and flowers.

Just something cute and cliche.

An industrial styled wire wrapped pendant on leather cord...

Most of these are necro-posts of things I did before I had a blog, or things that I didn't feel like posting earlier.  Sorry about that. 

This one's got more of a masculine flavor...

A brooch!

Sexy Earrings with a little Chachacha.

I will probably spend the rest of today working on projects or, maybe hanging out with friends and family that I don't get to see that often.  The rest of you, stay away from that crotch floss they're marketing as Valentine's Day lingerie! Do something constructive! 

Ancient Historical Artifacts

I've been crafting for a long time.  It's in my blood.  For as long as I can remember, everyone in my household had hobbies and were eager to include other members of the family on it.  Of course, not everyone has the same taste in hobbies, so as the only child in the household, my crafting education was well-rounded.  I got to try tons of new things as I discovered which hobby set I was passionate about.  I had lots of successful and failed projects in both my preferred hobbies and in the ones I loathed (here's looking at you woodworking.). 

Do you remember any of your first projects?  I don't.   I don't even have any of the first things I ever made.  They were either given away or lost when we moved from my childhood home.  However, my mother, The Mahogany Stylist keeps a Ren-made artifact on her dresser.  It has been there so long that the string has yellowed and old school metal pony beads have lost much of their luster.  I'm going to show it to you.

I didn't polish all of the beads because I wanted to preserve the authenticity.

I can't, for the life of me remember why I made it.  However, I do remember the approximate time of year and the reasoning behind the pattern.  My father was always very into the Pan African Tribal motifs, designs and color patterns.  So, from the center of the necklace, it follows the pattern of the Pan African flag.  Red for the blood, Black for the people, and Green for the fields of Africa.  Since it's Black History Month, I felt that this is a perfect way to bring it in.

Christmas Hat

Working retail over the holidays kept me busy and tired, so I didn't go to many parties.  Let's face it, you're not going to be raising the roof with your girls if your feet hurt so bad you start thinking it might be better to live as an amputee.  No parties for me.
Knowing that I couldn't attend the Christmas shindigs or even stay in my own house to watch old Christmas movies really stung, so I was determined to make Christmas Eve fun for me- by making a hat.  An ostentatious, LED lit marvel of amateur hat-making science. 

This baby.

Let me start by first saying this: I had no idea what I was doing.  This hat is something made purely on a whim, with no prior experience besides making hair clips.  It also, very quickly, became an experiment to see how much stuff I could cram onto one small oval piece of felt without breaking my neck or having it fall off my head.  Despite this, I think it came out nicely.
I had no pattern to help in making this so I sort of followed my own mind.  It was actually fairly simple to make once I had assembled all the materials.  I'll include pictures of the less common ones.

Materials:
Two sheets of craft felt
 Two Hair extension combs

Hair Extension Combs: Photo From Human Hair Extension Manufacturer.com

Beads   (Any will do)
Hem Tape

Garland

I used something similar to this

 LED tea light
Christmas Trimmings
Scissors
Wire

Instructions:
1.  Cut the felt into ovals.  They will be your hat base.
2.  Mark where you want to place the combs (it's important that they're opposite one another otherwise it will fall off your head)  Hand sew them to one of the felt ovals.
3.  Assemble your Christmas Trimmings (I got most of mine from the dollar store).  Determine the basic layout you want them in before sewing or gluing them down.
4.  Hand sew or glue (E6000 for the win!) your Christmas Trimmings to the other oval of felt. I wanted a light on my hat so I had to cut a hole so that I could reach the switch.  I also wired a little golden Christmas tree light cover to it so the naked LED bulb wasn't showing. 
5. Hand sew the two felt ovals to one another, making sure the combs and decorations aren't sandwiched between the felt layers.
6. Measure the perimeter of the felt ovals, and cut the wire to that length plus 2 inches.  Twist the ends of the wire over it to secure them so they don't poke you in the head, then shape it to fit in your felt ovals.
7. Hand sew one side of the hem tape to one side of your felt oval.  Fold the hem tape to the other side of the felt oval, tuck the wire in the fold, begin sewing the other side of the hem tape to your hat base, keeping the wire oval inside the pocket formed by the hem tape.  Complete a full circuit around your hat, knot the thread, tuck the end into a hidden spot under the hat and wear. 


It's just that easy.  Why don't you try it?

Club Holiday Party

(This is totally late, but don't say anything.)
One of my favorite things about the holidays are the parties.  Unfortunately for me, I ended up working retail again this holiday season and thus missed out on a lot of them.  But there was one I refused to miss.  My sewing club's holiday party/luncheon.  They only have three big luncheons each year.  One's in December, the second is the Fashion Show, and the third is in the Spring, just before we have summer break.  If you miss one, you miss all the fun!

And all the Turtle icecream cake.

Every year, the luncheon is located in one of the premier restaurants around the city of Chicago.  Alahambra, The culinary school of Chicago, and many many others.  The food is always great and the people even better.
This year, we had a new events coordinator and she organized some fun games and activities for us to participate in whilst chatting with other crafty ladies.  I was more than a little excited.  Especially for the White Elephant game.  That one's always a big hit at my friends' holiday parties because it invites people to alarm or pleasantly surprise people with random crap that they picked out of the back of their closet or the bargain bin at a store.
White Elephant is a chance to get closer to the people you call friend with a series of hearty WTF moments and then, if you see that someone's gotten something you'd prefer to have, you can trade!  It's everything that was great about lunchtime in grammar school.  Mysterious items from a mysterious benefactor, then trading for your preferred stock.  Everyone has fun.

To date the wildest random white elephant gifts I've seen have been:
A picture of someone else's kid
Tangled Christmas Lights
An Actual White Elephant statue
Prank Candy (It tasted like spoiled fish)
Harry Potter Bertie Botts Beans
A coat from a Thrift store- that turned out to have a $50 bill hiding in the lining of the pockets
A pickle
Soap that looked and smelled exactly like an Oreo (You know what happened with that one, don't you?)
A board game called 'What The F***'
A silver necklace featuring a ...well, it was a pendant... but let's say, I'm glad I didn't get that one.  But we had a lot of fun laugh with the poor embarrassed soul who did get it.

Well the day of the club's luncheon, one of the ladies decided that the white elephant should function more like...a weird grab bag and everyone should come up and explain why they gave what they gave.  It really threw off the groove for White Elephant.  Instead of being primarily silly and fun, it became awkward and uncomfortable.
Most people had taken about as much time in picking their gift as they do picking their fingerprints.  For me, the event became downright painful when the person who picked my little basket of embellishments, ribbon, faux leather, and lace blatantly yelled that she didn't want any more 'junk' in her house.  It almost made me wish I hadn't participated.  Thankfully, there was a silver lining.  When it was my turn to pick a gift, I ended up one of the cutest random gifts of all.  You know, because I like stuff that looks like other stuff.

Wow!  A giant spool of yarn!

NOPE!  It's a Linen scented candle

What a cute little hat!

Wait!  The bottom looks like sushi rolls!  It's not a hat at all!

My White Elephant pick came from Rhonda Buss who, apparently, is another person who appreciates the trend of having stuff that looks like other stuff.  I got a candle that looks like a giant spool of thread, has a great fresh scent and when the wax is all burned out, I can use it to tuck my pins and needles in.  The little hat, that looks alarmingly like a little hat I was eyeballing in the store the other day, is actually a pin cushion.  You can flip it over so that it looks like a box of sushi with a bow on the side.  I loved my gift.

Maybe next year, we can play a different holiday game that makes everyone as happy as I was by the end. 

Making Christmas, Making Christmas

La la la!

I'm making my list and checking it twice.  Gonna cross off who's naughty, not nice.  Raiding every discount bin in toooown.

It's getting close to Christmas, folks.  With all this Holiday Bootcamp Hooplah eating my free time and the sad fact that my 'inventory bin' is ...running over now, I thought it was time to devote some thought to the reason for the creation season, Christmas.  It was then that I realized that my aunts kept sending me strange text messages about clothes and CDs and shoes, not because they're weirdos like me who enjoy learning about people for the sake of learning, but rather so they could either get me to obliviously drop hints about things I might want or ascertain what things I might like. 

Yes, I am often rather oblivious.  I go to conventions and marvel ecstatically at awesome cosplay of Marie Antoinette and Alichino or Malice Mizer conveniently forget WHY I took my camera out in the first place.. Furthermore, I am that scatterbrained person who lamented losing her wallet but then found it in the freezer when she went to console herself with icecream (Don't ask.  Please.)
So, it's perfectly normal for me to have my list of Christmas gifts for other people planned out down to the color of the wrapping paper, but to not have thought of a THING to give myself.  I even have a little schedule of who I'm going to handmake cards, cookies and trinkets for already lined up and waiting for Thanksgiving break.
Perhaps, you're not as strange and obsessive as me, so you don't have your gifts all plotted out.  I decided that it would be a good idea to toss together a sort of guide for people to go bargain or 'interesting find' hunting for their loved ones.  So, with that, I'll give you my pillars of buying for gifts.
Children under 10:  This is by far the easiest group to buy for.  They're wants are simple and usually they'll just tell you.  "I want Bratz."  "I want Bakugan toys" or the ever famous "I WANT TO BE A MAD SCIENTIST!!!!"  You can usually just go hunt in a toy store for these guys.  Keep it simple, make sure it's something that they consistently go for and wrap it up cute.

Kids 10+ and Tweens:  Kids over ten are a little harder to buy for. They're trying to be like teens, who are trying to be like adults, but they still have some of the affinities of younger children.  You can find a happy medium by going with something a little more grown up.  Instead of getting them hardcore jewelry, go for something cutesy in bright colors or an outfit like one of their TV idols (kiddie style, of course), or a video game.  Most kids in my family start getting their first bits of 'sleek and stylish' technology at this age.

Teens:  With the beginnings of more adult thoughts and the greater influx of emotions (and hormones) buying for teens will always be tricky.  They have cultures and subcultures, fads and phases, strange mixtures of likes and dislikes and opinions.  BOY!  Have teens got opinions!  But, they can still be bought for.  The easiest, no-thought gift you can get for a teen is something electronic, or better yet, one of those American Express or Visa giftcards.  It's money on a card they can use ANYWHERE!  If you have an idea of your teen's tastes, branching out into CDs, Clothing (Be very careful with this one.  They are picky little gremlins), and cool little odds and ends that either have great personal meaning or aid in their quest for self-expression.
One major thing to note about teens is that they have tastes and opinions all set in their minds, much like adults.  Unfortunately, they haven't quite acquired the finesse of social BSing that adults have.  So, if you buy a teen a glowing Jesus shaped lava lamp clock that belches out bible scriptures every hour on the hour, don't be surprised when all you get in return is a pained grin (read: Grimace).

Twenty and Thirty Somethings: Being among this group, I have a good idea of what they usually want.  This group, well, we usually want something fun and quirky.  Something snarky, or maybe something thought provoking or technologically savvy.  The best gifts for this group usually fall in the realm of private jokes, fond childhood memories, and current hobbies and obsessions.  My friend once bought me a riding crop.  It was a jibe at my former status as D&D Dungeon Mistress.  Even though that thing has brought up more uncomfortable questions and embarrassments than I care to remember, I still keep it in the closet near that fat binder full of D&D monsters and I even take it out for a good laugh every now and then.

Folks 40+:  Folks in this age group usually want something of quality, something that shows that they are mature, knowledgeable and still very sexy or funny or whatever they're known for.  Yep, the 40+ group has an eye for luxury, but the maturity to still appreciate simpler things.  For example, my father ADORES getting laundry detergent for Christmas.  I stopped trying to figure out why.  My grandfather has always been a coffee lover, so I always buy him the most luxurious coffee I can find and of course, something he'll find funny like a color changing coffee mug.  The point is, find their niche, get them something extraordinary, and make sure they know you appreciate their little idiosyncrasies (But don't call them idiosyncrasies.  Just...just call them character traits)

In short, Christmas shopping is about knowing the people that you're gifting with!  It doesn't take long to pop in and chat about what someone else loves and it's actually not that hard to give a thoughtful gift. 

My next post feature random cool crap everyone will love!