A Little Glassy Eyed

I have a new personal mission in life: to answer the new (must use shrill and whiny voice) question, "what can I possibly do with $13 extra dollar."  So, now I'm on a crusade to list all of the ways I can think of to spend your $13.

The first way you can spend your $13 is by visiting colorfusionart.com either on the web or in person.  You can either buy something extraordinary or save up your $13 for a few weeks and take a class and make some things on your own.  Jessica Lewis, the proprietor, is big on two things: safety and creativity.  Once you take a class that introduces you to the basics, the world is your oyster.  Yes, there are some serious safety considerations, like these safety glasses, but during the basics class you will do more than learn the rules like: cut glass and complete a project.

You cut and create and then Jess puts your project in the kiln for a nice long bake.  It goes through the fusion process and then, if you choose to have your object made into a dish or another shape, once it has cooled it goes back into the kiln over a mold to be "slumped."  The end result is a bowl, a plate, a dish etc.  Once it has gone through all of these processes the glass is remarkably sturdy and completely out of the ordinary.

Glass fusion is fun.  I'm even going to come straight with "funner" to describe the process. In this strangled economy, how can you not love taking a piece of glass and breaking the crap out of it and then putting things together in a cohesive way to make art? 

I listed some of my projects in my Etsy shop but if you're local to Boise, you should go into the shop and take a look at some of the ready made items available for purchase.  The stuff in the shop is extraordinary and is way beyond those melted wine bottles we've been subjected to at craft fairs. 

Making Cents

I've always been cheap but I'm using the economy as my excuse to clip coupons without feeling like a nerd hauling around my mass of coupons.  I'm no novice at this coupon thing either.  Before I shop, I go out to coupon sites and grab all of the coupons I can use.  I know where Fred Meyer keeps their extra coupons and then an extra extra flyer.  I even weigh the benefits of buying a second Sunday paper for extra savings.

So what's my beef this week?  I've been hauling my coupons around in an old envelope in my purse.  The envelope split open and I've been losing coupons for weeks.  Enough already!

So, I needed something to contain the coupons but the project needed to use scraps, needed minimal time to complete and needed to be replicable, just in case.  I like to call it the Cache Stash.  I made mine out of (2) 10" x 15" scraps with double fusible inferfacing between.  The whole thing was ironed together and then folded together as an envelope and ironed again.  As a "no sew" option I could have just stapled the sides together but I decided to sew the sides together and then finish the edges with a top stitch.'

The same could be constructed with a number of materials including cardboard with holes punched and then sewn together with yarn.  Old school style.

This should contain the mess of coupons for another day and I will no longer whip this thing out in shame at the store.

Special Olympics World Winter Games 2009

Michael Phelps smoked pot.  A-Rod used steroids.  The nation is obsessed by these negative stories.  Particularly in the case of A-Rod, is anybody particularly surprised?  The thing I am surprised about this week is the glaring lack of American media attention on the Special Olympics 2009 World Winter Games held in Idaho.  

The Dutch are making fun of us because we're spending an inordinate amount of time covering A-Rod and a two-month old photo of Michael Phelps smoking pot but there are few American news outlets covering the Special Olympics.  The Dutch are making fun of us.

How is this not a very competitive sporting event?  There are 79 countries represented.  The events are just as rigorous as the Olympics.  The athletes are just as committed and if you're watching online or lucky enough to be watching here in Idaho, the show is just as spectacular.

It's a sad statement about Americans if the demand is for more A-Rod, Phelps and pictures of the controversial octuplets than for some of the greatest athletic talent we have seen in America since the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.  Here's hoping the media just misjudged the American's appetite for a really great athletic event.

If you're local to Boise, there are a number of great events around town including the free festival downtown in the Grove.  I for one am trying to get down to see the curling event.  Check our specialolympics.org for the schedule.

It's incredible to watch Olympians stretch themselves beyond human limits to compete but watching the Special Olympics and watching these Olympians stretch themselves beyond human limits DESPITE limits they were born with, well that's a cause for Hope and Celebration.  I'd challenge anybody else to watch these events and not walk away thinking, yeah, I can't do that.

Finger Exercises

Growing up my parents called it doing your finger exercises.  Did you do your finger exercises?  The translation: did you turn off the lights in your room?  Here is a monitor after their own hearts: It's the new Blue Line Innovations PowerCost Monitor, Model # BLI-24000.  For $271.99 you can hook a device up to your utility meter and gauge how much electricity you're using.  There is a handheld device so you can walk around your house and show your kids how much money you're spending every minute their lights, computer, games etc. are running and then show them how much money you save when you turn it off.  My parents would love this device.  This is one of those items that really can pay for itself and show you where you can save money by just unplugging a cell phone charger that isn't even charging a cell phone or unplugging the microwave when it isn't being used.  You'll save money and the environment at the same time.

You can find this device at Amazon.com and some other retailers.  The move to eliminate "power sucks" from the home may seem trivial but you would be surprised how much money you can save by doing things that you would probably do anyway if you were aware they were draining energy and costing you money, like unplugging your cell phone charger from the wall.  This is a good investment and might be one that you can share with your neighbors if you don't want to cough up the $271.99 on your own.

Plastic Bags the War

We all know about my ongoing campaign against the plastic grocery store bag.  They are terrible for the environment and few people recycle them.  I'm driving the bandwagon for the eco-friendly shopping bags because I'm SO bad about remembering to bring the plastic bags back to the store to be recycled.  I can't possibly throw them away so what to do with them?  I bought one of those metal things that you put up and then stuff the bags in them and take them out.  Well, we had so many bags stuffed under the kitchen sink that the thing soon became completely full and you couldn't get anything in OR out of the thing.  The solution, of course, is to not bring home any of the plastic bags but what to do with them if you do bring home a plastic bag and don't want to buy an expensive and unnecessary gadget for housing plastic bags?  A checker at a grocery store said that in lieu of the gadget, his mom uses kleenex boxes.  She then puts the bags in the kleenex box and then when she's ready to use a bag she takes the bag out of the box like a kleenex.  If she wants to take the bags back to the store to recycle it's a lot easier to pack up a kleenex box and take it to the store than one of those silly metal gadgets.

This also begs the question, maybe I should stop talking to so many strangers?

A Crafty Little Christmas Part II

As I reflect on A Crafty Little Christmas, I'm now searching for shortcuts to the gifts.  For Whisking you a Merry Little Christmas, rather than coming up with your own cookie mix just go to the store and buy a pre-mixed cookie or brownie mix.  You could do cocoa with mugs as well.

Have Yourself a Crafty Little Christmas/Chanukah

So the economy is in the stinker.  I can't help but wear my accidental environmentalist and cheapskate-ness on my sleeve.  If you're near and dear to me, stop reading, or this will be a Christmas Day spoiler.

My siblings and I have had a $50 limit for a while but this year I'm going to make my $50 stretch as far as it will go by recycling and using things around the house.  It's more of an experiment to see just how much quality stuff I can get out of my $50.  Christmas should be about giving things that people wouldn't normally buy or make because they don't have time or the ability.  The commercial aspect of Christmas has really driven the heart part underground so when I say "things around the house" that sounds cheap and crappy but there are some pretty cool things you can do and A LOT of them for under $50.

I've had crafty little Christmas' before and if you're looking at this list hoping for inspiration the night before Christmas, be prepared for a long night.  I started my prep for Crafty Little Christmas back in July and have started putting things together lately.  Today is November 14, if you're reading this today, "git 'er done".

Here is my workshop list:

1.  Stick it in Your Ear:  This Year's Soundtrack; I'm making a cd of the top 15 tunes I've listened to all year.  I listen to NPR in the car, downloaded tunes and pod casts every where else and the only time I hear anything new is at a movie or in a trendy shop where I probably don't fit in anyway so I would love to hear what other people are listening to.  A mixed tape would be an awesome gift.  Don't think too hard about what the recipient would like, give them your top 15!  Don't even think about buying a new CD jewel case!  Make your own origami cd case or take two pieces of fabric, sew together, turn right side out and hem for a quick cd case.

2.  A whisk, a wooden spoon, an old spaghetti sauce jar and the dry fixings for cookies with your cookie recipe.  Oh yea, tag it with "Whisking you a Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukah".

3.  I'm making my own notebooks out of recycled paper, using the comb binder I now own and unique things for notebook covers like cereal boxes, VHS boxes, cake mix boxes etc.  You get the idea.

4.  Bath mitts.  For the kids I bought NEW towels and I'm making them into bath mitts with eyes and fins.  I'm sure Martha can help you embellish but very simply, just trace your hand onto a towel, give yourself about an inch for seam allowance and to make it ridiculously big for bath tub scrubbing.

5.  Tree ornaments.  I'm using scraps of fabric to make all sorts of new ornaments for people's trees but in fabric that is trendy/decorator/suits their fancy.  My sister in-law really likes Mickey so guess what she's getting?

6.  Sweater buddies.  For $1 or $2 at a thrift store, you can pick up a nice, shrunken sweater that can be easily dismantled and turned into a stuffed animal.  Martha (of course) has the instructions: www.marthastewart.com (tip: search for one of a kind woolen gifts).

7.  Yeah, people will probably get shopping bags from me this year.  Go green or go home.

8.  iPod cozies.  Take the stuff you didn't use off the shrunken sweater from your sweater buddy in #6 and make a cozy to keep iPods safe.

9.  Pre-made scrap book pages.  I'll be the first to admit that it's not that I don't enjoy my family and it's not that I don't like scrap booking, I'm just not very good at it.  I would love somebody to commandeer my pictures or just give me pages and say "here, put your pictures in here".

10.  New stockings.  I'm making new stockings and resisting all temptations to put names and years on the stockings.  The thing about Christmas stockings is that some people cling to their sock with great sentimentality and some of us want to shake it up a little bit every year.  Why not give a stocking that can be given away as a re-gift for the next year or handed down to a child?

11.  Frozen dinners.  Don't grimace.  I love this.  Make a huge batch of chili and save off two nights in containers as a gift for somebody.  It kind of sounds lame, unless of course you have kids and a full time job and then it sounds like a little piece of Heaven.

12.  Hand shaped cookies.  Back in my magnetism posts I went over what grandparents go "Wow!" over.  If you thought they liked junior on the fridge, just wait until you trace his/her hand onto a piece of paper and then use that as a template for sugar cookies.  Give grandparents little hands they really can nibble on and you will have a winner for sure.

And that exhausts my creative list.  Somebody is going to have to come up with a list for me to work off next year.  As soon as I have pictures, I'll start posting.  In the meantime, people, please add to the list!