Photos courtesy of RedwoodWillow
Shortly after her boyfriend gifted her a cheap set of watercolors, Josie professional life took off in a whole new direction. A curious woman with DIY tendencies, Josie – who studied graphic design and video production in college – was soon buying ingredients and experimenting with her own watercolor paint recipes. While her earliest batches were not instant hits, she soon was creating quality watercolors and had more than she could use herself.
On this episode of the podcast we’ll go behind the scenes of the fascinating art career of Drew Sheneman, a nationally syndicated political cartoonist who started writing and illustrating children’s picture books a couple years ago.
Today, after recording a podcast interview and before editing student work and picking up my daughters from school, I grabbed my purse, keys and hopped in my van for a quick skip to the 12:20 p.m. showing of “Lady Bird.”
This solo trip to see a seriously good film written and directed by Greta Gerwig was the first in what I hope will be a weekly movie outing for me.
I’m a mom and for the last 13+ years this has meant that I didn’t get out much. But I’m changing that. While I won’t be swinging from the chandelier with gal pals, I will be going to (and crying at) a whole lot of movies by myself.
Why?
I’ve been doing a lot of mini tapestry weaving lately and realized early on that although I have a boatload of yarn, I didn’t have as much color variety in my yarn stash as my projects required.
That’s when I stumbled upon all the colorful yarn cakes that are popping up in the yarn sections at my local big box craft stores. In and effort to build my color palette without breaking the bank or filling my house with more yarn I don’t have room for, I decide to buy a few of these colorful cakes and deconstruct them. I found that I could get about 12 colors out of each nearly 600-yard skein.
Happy New Year!
While some were living it up on New Year’s Eve, my husband Jeff and I were shooting a couple more very low budget, one-take wonder CraftSanity weaving tutorials. If they seem a bit rough, please consider the fact that the ball actually dropping while we were recording and kindly cut us a little slack. Ha!
Oh, and please don’t believe me when I say something in the bracelet video about how I’m usually doing other things when I weave. The true part is that I do watch streaming videos while I weave, but I do not drive while weaving as my comment ridiculously implies. I meant to say that I weave while riding in the car on the passenger side, but I think I said that I weave while driving in the car which sounds like I’m some kind of careless, wacko extreme weaver who endangers people. I want to be clear that I would never want to weave behind the wheel because that would be absolute foolishness and completely dangerous. The only reason I didn’t remove the comment is because I couldn’t bring myself to ask my husband to re-edit the video after he spent New Years Eve with his arms cramping up while he patiently shot these tutorials. I figured you guys would realize it was one of my classic verbal flubs, but we’ll see. So far, no one is calling me out on it. I figured it would be best to get out in front of this ridiculousness just in case.
Phew. Now that I’ve explained all this stuff probably no one cares about, I think I might be able to sleep.
Oh, and I should probably include a bit about the new videos – the whole point of this post. You can watch my tutorial on how to weave on the CraftSanity Circular Looms above and the tutorial that covers CraftSanity Bracelet Weaving techniques (and my outlandish comment about weaving in cars) is below. And if you just can’t get enough, you can watch more than a dozen more of my weaving videos in this collection and check out my whole DIY video tutorial archive here. The full line of CraftSanity looms are available in the CraftSanity Etsy shop.
Have a suggestion for a new video tutorial? Email jennifer@craftsanity.com.
Happy waeaving!
Last night I took a break from weaving, printmaking and loom building to chat with Bethany Nixon owner of Reware Vintage and co-organizer of the upcoming Detroit Urban Craft Fair (DUCF) at the Masonic Temple where we will both be vending Dec. 1-3.
On this episode we discuss last-minute tips for handmade business owners who are vending this holiday season and talk about what it takes to produce a large-scale craft fair like DUCF which is celebrating its 12th year.
We also talk about the cool and slightly controversial earrings that Bethany makes out of up-cycled records. Tune in to hear us laugh through our sleep deprivation.
Before I rush back to printing CraftSanity loom bags in my print studio, I’d direct to you to the Detroit Urban Craft Fair vendor list. I also want to show you a photo of Bethany with her cool, new pink hair so you can easily spot her this year’s show.
And here’s a preview of some of the items I’ll be featuring in my booth this weekend. I’m hosting a make & take in my booth from 6-9 p.m. Friday (Dec. 1) and I’m really looking forward to weaving with all the kindred spirits who stop by the CraftSanty booth. : )
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