Month: May 2011

I am super excited to attend JapanLA‘s 5th Anniversary party and art show! I’m also super excited to be part of it! Normally, I would’ve made limited edition accessories, but I wanted to try something more along the lines of a “painting” with crochet. Whatever you would call this, I had fun with it!!! I titled it “Sweet ride, bro!” I asked Hairy if I would regret it later, and he said no …. In case someone asks “WTF is this?!” it’s 3 ice cream scoop-kitty cats sitting in a banana boat, rowing across on an ocean of hot fudge with their pink plastic spoon oars.     So if you are in LA this weekend, June 4, come and see it — and a bunch of other cool art — in person! Part of the proceeds from the art sales will go to “Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue & Support.”    

So Amy texted me the other day asking me for my address cuz she said she’d found something cute and bought one for both of us. I fancy Amy as a mischievous little devil so I asked her if this was actually a prank and something poo-related. Here is the video of me opening this surprise! CUTE, RIGHT?! Lo and behold, I think it was the next day that we saw each other and decided to wear our matching pjs. looooo3 and her mister were in town, so we met up with them, Amy, Kevin, Jessica, and Greg at Straw which is a new little carnival-themed restaurant that Tiffany told me about. They have all sorts of yummy foods that are bad for you, plus they have a cute tilt-a-whirl seat that we wanted to take a picture in, but then some peeps actually sat in it to eat, so no photo! Then we decided to be super fatties and have dessert at American Cupcake, and Tess also dropped by to say hi. This is when I decided that Amy and I needed to document our matching pjs. This is also when we remembered we are really awkward, and you should probably never hire us to do much of anything. Here’s the winning photo: I know you’ll want that as your wallpaper for EVERYTHING. And here’s a fancy animated gif I made of our epic awkward that made everyone else feel extremely uncomfortable. We should probably be drunk next time for this to work better. P.S. If you want to turn your night-time wear into day-time wear, follow these tips! Amy: PUT A BELT ON IT. Twinkie: PUT A CARDI OVER IT.

Okay, first up, after much internet hassle, I finally updated my ETSY SHOP! I’m running a sale on most items for one week! My favs are the t-bone steak scarf, cherry zipper pulls, fridgie food pinback set, and raspberry mousse pastry hair clip. All scarves are $65-$85 right now.  A few of them are already gone! On to Austin photos! I had no idea where I put my point-and-shoot camera, so all my photos are from the iPhone. I also stole some photos from other peeps. If we took a photo and you’d like me to post it, comment on this entry, and I will edit! Also let me know if you want me to link your blog or your shop or something!   Here are some photos of the booth. I was freaking out over fitting everything in a suitcase. My cardboard display risers are the bomb! Sadly, my scarf rack didn’t fit in my suitcase, but LUCKILY, my trusty crochet elf Rita was already in Austin and bought us a rack from Walmart! The other cool thing about the cardboard risers is that you can hide behind them to eat, PLUS, you can store food in there! And also hide your money box! Here’s me and a bunch of peeps who came to say hi! Me and hinkle1999 Me and Kristine Me and CraftyMinx. Check out her blog! I’m amazed by her granny-square-a-day project! Me and Moonmist from Ravelry. Me and Anya Me and a gal who said her friends in San Jose, CA had some of my scarves! I came back from the ladies room and Hairy was taking a picture of this dude. I was like, “Huh?” And Hairy said he wanted to capture a photo of a dude rocking one of my crocheted items. Awesome! Chain wallet charms! I met a bunch of other people but of course I don’t have any more photos! Here’s us getting doughnuts at Gourdough’s upon Rita’s recommendation. VERY YUMMY VERY INDULGENT!! We didn’t have a good camera. All the pics of the doughnuts look gross, so I’ll leave it to your imagination. Check out the menu, though! Here’s me and my friend Margaret in front of the Gourdough’s truck. I’ve known her since highschool. She got married and lives in Houston now, so she and her hubs drove to Austin to meet up and hang out! I heart them! So yeah, that pretty much wraps up what I got as far as photos. I had good times meeting Crab Apple Design, The Funky Skunk, grrfeisty, Katastrophic Designs (I bought this from her, it has GLOW IN THE DARK GLITTER STARS!), and Sweetie Pie Press. Also it is always lovely to see Heidi and her hubby from My Paper Crane, and we had random fun visits from Elsie and her new hubby Jeremy on their honeymoon!  

Hey, dudes! So Etsy has made some changes, and I can’t really queue up all my listings like I could before, so I’m slowly just adding and posting listings, and people are already making purchases. I probably still have a good hour of listing to do, but I thought I would give you a heads up! SHOP SHOP SHOP

I’m still working on the Etsy update. My internet connection has been really bad the last few days, so things are sort of stop and go! This morning when I woke up, I had to remind myself that I own clothing beyond tshirts and jeans. I just bought this cute dress from I’m Your Present and figured it was as good a time as any to wear it around the house. Bloggers like Elsie and Kaylah post such fun outfit photos that it kind of inspires me to play more with different colors and put different prints together. The tights are a bit loud for me, I think. I feel a bit too thigh-y in this get up. But it was fun to prance around in it a little bit at least for a photo! My urge is to put some freakin pants on! Sorry I don’t have much outfit info. I can’t even remember where I got the tights! 😛 I added the bow from another dress by Marjour.

Always put some eyeliner on before leaving the house … cuz you never know who you are going to run into at the grocery store! In real news: my first order of business is to pick up the craft room and the house a little. It exploded in the last few weeks or furious crafting. Then: I’ll shoot photos of the Renegade Craft Fair leftovers and put them on Etsy, with my usual post-craft-fair-week-long sale :).

Hey, Texas! Come visit me at my booth this weekend at Renegade Craft Fair :). If you’re back at home in SF, this weekend is also Maker Faire/Bazaar Bizarre! I probably won’t be blogging much this week due to being crazy with prep and travel! I also am making something for Japan LA‘s 5th Anniversary “Ice Cream & Kittens” art show and party which is due for shipping before I leave for Austin!! EEEP! I’ll leave ya with some snaps from my Instagram in case you don’t follow me there! 🙂

I shot some photos of this red sequin bow for Sugar Rush Couture on Etsy. Check out her cute shop for hair bows! I wore it with two of my own hair pieces: a pink crochet bow with pom poms, and the piece I lovingly refer to as a boobie cake, which was inspired by a raspberry cake! I added some glittery red icing swirls to try to make it look less breasty. I am bringing a TON of fun hair clips to Renegade Austin next weekend. EEP! I’m nervous and kind of a wreck about the logistics of it! The dress is I’m Your Present. It’s a bit big on me, but makes me feel like a princess! Also I’m trying out a Sephora cream lip stain. I’m not used to wearing such a dark lip, so I probably wouldn’t wear this a lot in real life, but it’s a nice change or photos! Have a great weekend! We are driving down to L.A. for a fun little project. I’ll tell ya all about it when it’s done!

Super adorable Pygmy Hippo Shoppe in L.A. is now carrying a few of my cupcake coffee cup cozies! Have a shop! I LOVE their site design!!

I decided to get my teeth whitened. I have been thinking about it for about a year, and then my dentist brought it up, so that seemed like a GO. My teeth aren’t TERRIBLE, but if I try to wear a lipstick instead of a lipgloss, I can super tell my teeth are not the right color… Also since I end up taking a lot of photos for work, I don’t want to offend the innocent public with my weirdnesses. I asked my dental hygienist, whom I LOVE AND ADORE (her sister also cleans my teeth and they are so nice and funny), to run down some options with me, with as much honesty as possible (as I know they would probably want to push the dentist’s offering which was bleach trays). Surprisingly, she told me that the home whitening strips’ “chemistry” was getting better and actually not a terrible option. However, they are probably only best for touch ups, and not for an initial whitening, as it’s difficult to obtain good coverage and you might get zebra stripes! She said the un-fitted trays you buy over the counter are fine, but you’ll get the goo all over your gums, and that’s not really where it’s supposed to go. My gums are already sensitive and testy, so that didn’t sound like an option for me. My bestie got the laser whitening a few years back, which sounds cool cuz it’s a one-time thing, but my hygienist said she’d seen a case where the lady got laser whitening and some of her tooth sheared off and she also needed like a kabillion root canals. Granted, that was probably a one in a million case, and maybe affected by other things, but…. I don’t need to go there. So bleach trays it is! Today I got my impressions done. WHICH SUCKS. I have a really sensitive gag reflex. I gag when I brush my teeth or try to pick popcorn out of my molars. If you have to get your impressions done for trays or a mouth guard or braces, here are a few tips I’ve been given. – Ask if they can mix the goo with warm or hot water. This apparently makes the goo set more quickly so it spends less time up in your mouth parts. – When they do the upper impression, which is the suckiest one, ask if you can lean forward instead of leaning back. This is so you don’t feel like all this crap is going to creep down your throat, plus any errant saliva can run forward and not back. I always feel like if I swallow, my gag reflex will go cray cray, so I’d rather drool all over myself onto some paper towels than wretch up some bile on the nice technician. – They always tell you to breathe through your nose. I also like to go into a meditative stare to try to go to my Happy Place. I have sensitive […]

My mama is Type 2 Diabetic and has to really watch her sugar/carb intake. So for presents, I often try to bake her low carb/sugar-free goodies. Recently, Hairy and I went to a farmer’s market and bought some cookies that were gluten/flour-free with no butter and made with almond flour. I LOVED THEM. THEY WERE SO GOOD. I decided I wanted to try to make a sugar-free version of this using a sugar substitute for my mom. Becky once blogged about using Xylitol as a sugar substitute, so I decided to try to bake with that for the first time. The cookies turned out a bit wetter than I thought, which is good because they are moist, but I was hoping for a crispy outside and chewy inside. I’ve never made the recipe with regular sugar, so I’m sure the consistency would be different with that, too. Xylitol is supposedly a 1:1 ratio with regular sugar in recipes, but I felt that my cookies turned out too sweet for my taste, so I would probably cut back on the sugar. I’ve baked with Splenda in the past and there was a yucky aftertaste, but Xylitol has no yucky aftertaste at all! I got the recipe from this site, but if you are too lazy to click, here it is: Ingredients: * ½ C + 2T blanched* almond flour (meal) * ¼ C +2t granulated sugar* 1 large egg white * ¼ t vanilla extract * tiny pinch of salt I also got a small handful of pistachios to crush and sprinkle on the tops of the cookies after baking. Preheat the oven to 300º, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Or grease the baking sheet well. Since these don’t have any added fat, they tend to stick. I love using the parchment paper: they come off easily and cleanup is really easy.   In a separate bowl, beat the egg white, vanilla, and salt with an electric mixer until it forms soft peaks. This is pretty quick. Fold the egg white mixture into the almond/sugar mixture. Drop by spoonfuls onto the lined or greased baking sheet. They will spread some so be sure to leave about 2 inches between them. (Mine actually didn’t spread very much.) Bake for 30 minutes. If you don’t have an oven thermometer, and aren’t sure if the oven temperature is accurate, set your timer for 20 minutes. If they are getting brown the oven is too hot, and they’ll need less time. (Mine needed a little more than 30 minutes.) Remove the Italian almond cookies from baking sheets to a wire rack to cool. ** This recipe is super easy, super fast, and super yummy if you are an almond freak like me!

You may know today as Cinco de Mayo, but today is also a very special lady’s birthday. I tried to call her at work, but nobody picked up!

Sooooo, amongst a bunch of crazy biz-related Yummy You schtuff, I’m prepping, planning, and crafting for Renegade Austin (May 21-22). I’m really spazzed out cuz I’ve never traveled for a craft show before. Am I gonna ship boxes of stuff somewhere? Am I gonna fit it all in a few suitcases? Will my display be super ugly because I had to fit in in aforementioned two suitcases? I just don’t know! I figure a good strategy for planning is….. AVOIDING by crafting. I have been thinking of summer bbq’s and grilled meats. Texas likes its meat? Right? RIGHT!!! Hence, I resurrected the T-Bone Steak Scarf project. Back in 2009, I threw an eBay auction (I like to think of throwing auctions, like throwing parties!) for t-bone-steak themed stuff like a scarf, mittens, and cute-tility pack. I wanted to take the “gross” factor out of raw meat and tried to make the steaks look cute and cartoony, not necessarily realistic. For my newer version, I really wanted diagonal grill marks!! And I wanted to put more detail in the shape of the actual t-bone, notably at the top. I really like how it turned out! I’m not sure yet which style I prefer…raw or grilled! Also I kinda miss my short crazy hair!

Click to find out more info at the ModCloth Facebook page! ModCloth and BadgeBomb have teamed up to host a button design contest! You can all enter to win a $200 gift cert from ModCloth and 500 of your winning button design!! Click on the pic to find out all the deets! Contest ends May 10. The sooner you enter the better, cuz after you post your design, you have all your friends vote on it! Then me and Susie Ghahremani of boygirlparty and BadgeBomb will vote on the winner. Start doodling NOW!!!! There’s no theme, but the winning design should reflect the spirit of ModCloth. You have until May 10!

My amazing pal Chubby Bunny is throwing an art exhibition and fashion show and bday party at JapanLA this Saturday, May 7. I am so so so so sad to be missing it! So you should go and tell me all about it!! Check out the Chubby Bunny Blog for more info!! Contests, prizes, bunnies, bows. Really. You gotta go! Stay tuned tomorrow! I am gonna announce a super fun contest that you can enter!