A Crafty Something from my Past

Once upon a time, about 25 years ago, I got the chance to work with a woman who made marionettes. It was part of a project through my county's gifted education program. I wrote a little script, and then we created the marionettes to go along with it. My script featured two girls who were going on a picnic and kept running into problems, like a skunk and a snake. Every Saturday, for several weeks, my mom drove me out to this woman's house, and I and another girl worked on our puppets.

It really was an amazing experience. I'd never worked with papier mache before, let alone made a cast of marionettes. It was fascinating to see these characters emerge from a bit of newspaper, fabric and wood. My favorite part was making the hair. We wound yarn onto knitting needles, got it wet and then baked them. It created absolutely perfect spiral curls.

My mom made the dresses for my girls, and my snake was made from a tube stuffed with empty thread spools. The skunk is made from faux fur, and I have to admit, he's definitely the scariest creation of the lot!

This afternoon, I was thinking about making plushies and other projects, and I remembered these four characters. I went down to my very scary basement and brought them up. I was amazed at the condition they are in! They look much like they did when I made them, other than a few broken strings. I was also kind of impressed with the fact that as a child I managed to create the faces on those girls. I'm not an artist and can't draw, but these little marionettes actually look like people!

Anyway, just thought I'd share a little something from my crafty past!

What I bought...

You know that little Fabric.com coupon code in my last post? Well, I couldn't resist taking a peek at their clearance section to see what appeared. And I found a treasure! Lil' Kay is a shark fanatic. We own more plastic and plush sharks than anyone I know. I snapped up eight yards of this stuff. My mom is going to make him a quilt with it, and I'm going to do a pillow case and who knows what else! Can't you see curtains and pillows and pajamas and toy bags? I have to admit, it was tempting to call them and see what an entire bolt would cost me! I'm sure Mr. Kay is grateful that I refrained.

Enabling

I've mentioned before that Fabric.com is my most favorite on-line source for fabric. Well, they very kindly have offered a $5 coupon code to my blog readers! The code is blogbec This is a one time coupon, but there is NO minimum order. How nice is that?

Go buy some fabric!!

Save Handmade Children's Products

I have been agonizing over this post for a very long time. I wasn't sure how to phrase my concerns and my thoughts, and, quite honestly, I still don't know what I'm going to say. I'm just going to throw some stuff out there and tell you how I feel.

CPSIA are five small letters that have me raving mad and frustrated these days. Of course, you all remember the recalls of last year. Millions of toys were recalled because they contained high levels of lead making them completely unsuitable for children to play with. The vast majority of these dangerous toys were made in China. As parents, we were peering anxiously at the bottoms of our children's toys matching code numbers with lists of recalled toys. In response to this, many parents chose to stop buying mass produced toys and sought out toys handmade by independent artists and crafters.

It was apparent that something needed to be done to protect our children from unsafe toys. So, our government passed the Consumer Protection Safety Improvement Act or CPSIA. The law goes into effect on February 10, 2009, and requires the makers of products for children, 12 and under, to have their items tested by a third party testing facility to insure that those items do not contain dangerous lead levels. Now, that sounds all well and good on the surface, but we all know that surface appearances can be very deceiving.

This law affects ALL makers of ALL products for children 12 and under. That means those handmade toys and dresses and other cuteness made by the stay-at-home mom in Michigan or the woodcarver in New York state who makes those fabulous wooden cars. Testing can run from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars per item! Let me assure you that most independent artists and crafters cannot afford that. Even if they could, that cost would certainly be passed on to the consumer. Can you imagine going to a craft show and not finding a single handmade item for your children? No toys, no clothes, nothing. And, keep in mind, it wasn't toys made by crafters in the United States, Canada and Europe that created the problem in the first place.

It gets worse. Ever shop at a second hand children's store? Buy books from a thrift store? Do you sell your kids' used clothes on Ebay? Technically, those items are all hazardous substances as of February 10.

What we have is a case of the government throwing out the baby with the bath water. And let's face it. Our economy is in the toilet at the moment. Families are already struggling. This law makes it even more difficult for them to find affordable quality products for their children. And, it even manages to take away part or all of the independent artist and crafter's income.

The stupidity of it all makes me want to bash my head against my keyboard everytime I think about it. I strongly encourage you to contact your state representatives and voice your concern about this law. Our hope is that they will make drastic changes to it before February 10.

Here is a fabulous pamphlet in a pdf format that you can print and distribute to anyone you know who may be concerned about this law. (And that should be everyone!) Send it to your entire email address list. Drop it off at the local children's boutiques. Wherever they'll let you!

A wonderful editorial in today's Wall Street Journal

And, if you're really brave, here' s the law itself!

Above all, I beg and implore you to go to change.org and vote to save handmade toys! This is so important!

As exciting as it sounds to open my own handmade toy speakeasy, it also sounds a bit exhausting. I'd much prefer to be able to sell and purchase handmade toys without the passwords, hand signals, trench coats and mechanisms to dump the goods when the toy police show up.

Welcome to a New Year at purse-onality

Long time, no blog, huh? I've been busy. Busy with family, Christmas, stuff... Okay, those are excuses. I'm just plain lazy. Which is also the reason my Christmas tree is still up which wouldn't be so bad, if Lil' Kay didn't insist on turning on the lights every evening...

We got Lil' Kay a great gift for Christmas this year. A medium sized hermit crab whom he named Pinchy. Because I find it entertaining to put the cart before the horse (the horse gets the most confused look on his face!), I bought the hermit crab, before I did any research on hermit crabs. Once I started looking into them, I discovered they are fascinating little buggers! And, I found out the pet store gave me all sorts of misinformation.

After visiting Hermit-crabs.com and The Hermit Crab Association and The Crabbage Patch, I discovered that Pinchy needed a bigger tank, more sand, different food and FRIENDS!!! I was totally hooked. As soon as Christmas was over, I went to work to give Pinchy a better home.

Now, I know some of you are looking at that picture and thinking, "Huh, looks like a shell." That's bascially what my Dad said the last time he visited. Let me assure you that hermit crabs are a hoot. They dig and climb and knock stuff over. They're really interesting to watch.

This may be Lil' Kay's pet, but it's my obsession. And, Pinchy has been joined by Godzilla who totally lived up to his name by kicking Pinchy out of the house and terrorizing the tank before he settled in. And, then there's Mothra who is tiny and immediately dug under the sand and hasn't been seen since. My hope is that she's molting. I've never even seen her. She was underground before I even got home the day Mr. Kay brought them home.

So, you see, I've been spending my non-blogging period educating myself about another species. Completely valuable.

Christmas Gift

I bought this super cute little monster patch from auntifranni last week! Lil' Kay is way into Godzilla, and I thought this would be a fun (and inexpensive) way to customize a pair of jeans for him. Over my lunch hour yesterday, I went out to the kids' clothing store and bought a pair of jeans specifically for this patch.

Now, I've never sewn on a patch, so I asked some of my dear Etsy friends how to do it without sewing the leg of the pants together. My sewing goddess friend goodkarma told me to rip open the seam, sew on the patch and then sew the seam back together. Obviously, she has much more faith in my sewing abilities than I do. Fortunately, since I decided to place it under the front pocket, it wasn't necessary to rip out any seams, however, thanks to goodkarma and SeamsVictorian's encouragement, I think I could have done it if I'd had to. (Thank God, I didn't have to!)

Anyhoo, I'm really excited about the way they turned out. I can't wait for Lil' Kay to open them on Christmas morning. Of course, I don't really expect him to appreciate them immediately. I mean, what kid wants clothes for Christmas, but I bet they'll become one of his favorite things to wear! He'll be the coolest kid in kindergarten...

Twilight

I know the movie has been out for several weeks already, but I've been meaning to write this blog entry for a while. Mr. Kay and I went and saw it on opening weekend. As we were standing in line waiting to go into the theater, I told him, "Hey! I think you're the only guy in this line!" That wasn't exactly true. There were other men, but not many.



Having read all four books and totally loving them, I was prepared to be very disappointed in the movie. There is just no way that an hour and a half movie can even begin to develop the characters and emotional attachment that a book can. (Yes, I'm an English major and avid book reader, so I might be biased, but you know I'm right about this!) I'm pretty realistic when it comes to movie adaptations of books. I understand that they can't fit everything in, but there are some movie/book things that you want just right. When the first cast photos started to come out (months ago!) I was even more nervous. I was not thrilled with the way Edward looked.



However, once the movie started, I was totally hooked. Didn't look at my watch even once! Amazing, since I'm not really a huge movie goer. Without a doubt, there were some parts that made me groan, because "that's not how it happened in the book", but overall, it wasn't too bad. I really missed the character development of the other Cullens. Hopefully, that will play out more in the future moveies. And, let me tell you, there are some lines that read in your head much better than they sound out loud!



The casting, actually, was just about perfect! Robert Pattinson as Edward is definitely sexy, although sometimes he was wearing a bit too much lipstick and his hair was bigger than his head. Bella is dead-on. Couldn't have been any better. I adored Carlisle. I really wondered how his character would play on the big screen. This is a guy who is hundreds of years old, but looks like he's in his 20s, and he's a doctor! He was perfect. The bad guy vampires were awesome! Totally menacing and scary and sexy. The only character I had a problem with was Jasper, and it wasn't so much the actor as it was the fact that he walked around all the time with a weird Edward Scissorhands look on his face.



So, that's my take on the movie. I really liked it and will definitely be in line to see the next installment next November.



For months, I've been eyeballing all the very cool Twilight inspired items that have been popping up on Etsy. The quote bracelets from JackandElla are one of my most favorites, but I don't know how I'd even begin to choose a favorite quote! The book covers from this series have become so iconic, and love the way Eastweststudios has incorporated them into scrabble tile pendants! Simplybitten has lots of cool quote type items including window decals. And, I am very enamored with these resin "Be Safe" pendants from bethtastic! They're nice and subtle and so pretty!

So, if you haven't yet, read the books, go see the movie and buy cool Twilight stuff on Etsy!