puppet play: diana schoenbrun guest post!

If you're anything like me, you have any number of stray socks and mittens lying around the house that have sadly lost their mates. In the new book Puppet Play: 20 Puppet Projects Made with Recycled Mittens, Towels, Socks, and More, author Diana Schoenbrun shows her readers how to make super cute and easy puppets from these and other recycled materials.

Since many crafters are interested in the creative process behind a craft book like this, Diana is here at the honeybee blog today to tell us how she came up with the inspiration for her book.

PS--if you'd like to try out a couple of sample projects from Puppet Play, including the quirky striped elephant puppet on the book cover, please visit the links below!

Crazy Cat Puppet
Betty the Elephant Puppet

From Diana Schoenbrun:

I came up with the idea for Puppet Play a few years ago.

I had taught a puppet and playwriting classes for children ages five to seven. They wrote a short play with characters and created puppets from materials found around the house. I enjoyed making puppets with the children and wanted to take this idea further. Why not use gloves, mittens, scarves, towels and other materials to build toy puppets for playtime? I wanted the materials to be easily accessible and found at home. I tried to incorporate found objects and repurpose other materials. Of course, it helps if you are a pack rat and save things for a rainy day.

Here’s some fun background information about the book. I used a green bandana from hiking trips for the frog puppet. Some cans from my leftover meals were used for a Robot puppet. The Roslyn Raccoon puppet is based on my sister. The original book title was “Take Those Stinky Socks Off!”

Check out the past blog tour stops below. Learn about how I store my supplies at Whip Up, check out how I came up with ideas at SewMamaSew, and how my mom influenced me at Oh My Handmade. Leave a message on my blog and Puppet Play Facebook page and I will choose one winner on May 27th to receive a free book.

Diana Schoenbrun is the author of Beasties: How to Make 22 Mischievous Monsters That Go Bump in the Night and Puppet Play: 20 Puppet Projects Made with Recycled Mittens, Towels, Socks, and More. Visit her online on her website, blog, and Facebook page.

Other stops on Diana's blog tour:

Luvinthemommyhood
Oh My! Handmade

Craft Sanity
Sew Mama Sew
Little Birdie Secrets
This Mama Makes Stuff
Roots and Wings
Whip UP
Fiskateers
Zakkalife
Prudent Baby
Make + Do 

Craft Test Dummies
Cute Everything
Schmancy
Progressive Pioneer
Pink and Green Mama
Craft Gossip

Photographs courtesy of Diana Schoenbrun and Andrews McMeel Publishing.

sophia allison

My friend Sophia Allison is a really talented artist. She works primarily with found objects and recycled materials, inspired by her childhood in the Blue Ridge Mountains and her current home in Los Angeles.

Her sculptures and sewn work have been featured in various solo and group exhibitions around the country and abroad, as well as in publications such as the L.A. Times and Art Scene. My favorite is this Make Magazine article on the amazing luchador capes and masks that she creates out of materials such as tea bags, Band-Aids, and even feminine products. Pretty cool stuff! I also love the delicate hanging sculptures she makes out of used coffee filters, as well as her paper-cutting installations.

As an established artist, her art usually fetches gallery pricing for the massively intricate work she does. But for a limited amount of time, she is offering to create small artwork for $25 on her blog. You can view all the details through the link, and commissions will be accepted through Saturday, February 12, 2011. She will also ship directly to those who are out of state. Please do contact her if you are interested! It's a great opportunity to acquire some eco-friendly artwork for a very reasonable price.

P.S. You might remember the hedgehog baby quilt I made last summer, which was for Sophia's daughter. Having seen her work, perhaps now you'll understand why I was a little nervous about giving it to her.

Visit Sophia online through her website and blog to keep up on her latest news and exhibitions. Photos courtesy of Sophia Allison.

modern top-down knitting: q & a + giveaway!

What if you were so inspired by a crafter you admired that you wrote her a letter...and to your great surprise, you received a mailed letter in response? And what if that correspondence developed into a relationship that led to the publication of your very first book?

Such is the story behind Modern Top-Down Knitting, which is inspired by the techniques developed by knitting legend Barbara G. Walker and written by author Kristina McGowan. This method of knitting advocates knitting from, well, top to bottom, and eliminates unwieldy sewing construction.

McGowan brings this technique up to date with current fashion with her original patterns for dresses, skirts, sweaters, hats, arm warmers, and even a few jewelry items. The designs showcase a modern aesthetic that feels very timeless, and her use of color and flattering necklines and trim are especially striking.

The book features great photo tutorials as well as clear, concise writing by McGowan, who shows interesting techniques in working with elastic cord and reversing the knit to achieve a more fitted, feminine silhouette. She also shows how she customizes garments by dip-dyeing finished hats, creating decorative "seams" with crochet, and adding beautiful finishing touches such as velvet and silk ribbon trims. It's a really wonderful book with great projects, although it was a little unusual that many of the models are photographed with relatively neutral expressions--a cozy but flattering dress would definitely earn a much warmer smile, no matter how modern the woman might be! Nevertheless, the author's capable, friendly tone and well-written tutorials make this an easy and pleasant book for any knitter who wishes to tackle projects that are both classic and fashion-forward.

Kristy was kind enough to chat with me about her terrific new book, touching on her background as an artist as well as the many advantages she sees in using this "top-down" knitting technique.

Q & A with Kristina McGowan

When did you first learn to knit?
I was about ten years old when I first learned how to knit. I went to visit relatives in Austria and they taught me the basics. In later years, I learned from books.

Have you always been crafty?

I was fortunate to have very cool parents who always encouraged my twin sister and me to draw and paint and create things with wood and clay and paper.  All of my memories from childhood involve crafts of some kind. My father built a wooden corner cupboard for us that was filled with our supplies -- the magic cupboard! 

Even now, there are few things that make me feel more at peace than roaming around an art supply store. Last week, I took my twin to Blick Art Supply here in Manhattan – a huge, perfect store -- so she could buy paintbrushes. And as we stood in line, she laughed and told me that she felt like the dazed badger in the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox. And I completely knew what she meant. It’s just the joy and wonder of being able to create something – of having an idea in your head and finding just the right materials to see it realized. I find the whole process incredibly rewarding and comforting.

What are the advantages of knitting in the “top-down” style over traditional methods? 

Top-down knitting allows you to customize at every step and make sure that you’re getting the fit you want. You can try the items on at any point. Simply place your live stitches on a piece of waste yarn and try things on – and right then and there you can work additional increase rounds if you need to, or decrease as needed. The control you have over shaping is wonderful.  If you have long arms or a short waist – or whatever it is -- you can easily knit a bit more or less and make sure that everything is just right.

Can this book be used by a relatively new knitter? 

Yes, I think that it can --- the hats especially are quick and easy starter projects.

This book describes beautiful techniques such as creating seams or pintuck effects with simple crochet. 

Thank you! I spend quite a lot of time drawing things out ahead of time, creating swatches and contemplating, but one thing that I’ve learned is that less is always more. I know that’s cliché, but for me, it’s very true. Many times if I’m stuck on a piece or something just isn’t working, the solution has been to stop trying so hard – to allow just one element to be the focus, whether it’s the yarn, the color, or a simple stitch pattern. I understand the temptation to throw everything you can into a design and to show all that you can do – but for me, resisting that urge has always worked the best.

Have you seen your designs made and by other knitters yet? 

I have! That has truly been a lot of fun. When you meet a kind person from North Carolina who sends you a photo of a dress of yours that she’s just finished and she’s made it in this beautiful cocoa brown – a color you’d not thought of for it, but that works really well --  or a lady from Singapore makes a skirt and sends you stunning photos of it one morning -- or your editor sits next to you during a signing and makes one of your hats right in front of you – that is super exciting and feels really good.

What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

Ideally, it would be great if the book inspires knitters who haven’t already checked out Knitting from the Top to do so.  Designing your own pieces is a lot easier than people may think.

Win a copy of the book!

If you'd like to win a copy of Modern Top-Down Knitting, leave a comment on this post describing the best knitted gift you've ever made or received along with your email address. If you'd prefer not to leave your information here, you may also email your responses through my profile by clicking on "email me." One lucky winner will be chosen at the end of the day on Friday, December 10!

And if you'd like to try out a project from the book, you may also download a free Mulberry Hat pattern from the publisher's site, along with many other free handmade holiday projects (some of which will look very familiar to honeybee blog readers). Please also visit the other stops on Kristina's blog tour here. Happy crafting!

Photographs and review copy courtesy of STC Craft. 

featured artisan: hillary lang

Last week I reviewed the beautiful new book Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love. This week, Hillary Lang chats about her creative process, her cool job, and why it's super important for artisans to step away from the computer.

Your dolls are just lovely! Where do you find inspiration for your charming toys?
My children, their toys, the toys I had as a kid, vintage books and fabric. Anything and everything cute!

Please tell us how you became an artist.
I have always been crafty. I wish in retrospect I'd been arty too and pursued a degree in design or fine arts, but crafting has always kept me warm and happy.

Plushie makers all seem to go about creating their patterns in different ways. How do you create and test your patterns? How many prototypes do you typically go through before you have that "ah hah, she's perfect!" moment?
I start by drawing pattern pieces on paper, then transfer to muslin and sew them up. At this point I think if there was a Project Runway: the Soft Toys edition I could definitely hold my own. Most of the time I get it after one tweak, but sometimes there's a trouble-maker and I can be redrafting almost a dozen times before I get it right.

How did the Wee Wonderfuls book come about?
Well, after seeing so many of my friends write craft books I was starting to feel left out so I joined the club. It seemed to be the right time. I'd been avoiding the idea for awhile because, with two little kids, I was really overwhelmed by the idea of all that work. Also the idea had never been quite right. I'd spent a lot of time on book concepts that were not about toys. When I finally decided it could just be a book of toys I became so excited about the project.

The handmade movement has experienced quite a surge in the past few years. How important is it to your family to buy handmade? 
Pennies are tight around here and whenever I can I like to send my money to an Etsy shop or a handmade business. I hate when I can't afford handmade and have to spend my money making Target richer. I think a lot of people feel the same way, like they really want to support each other.

How do you balance your work life and your home life, being that you work from home?
I spend as much time being a mom as I need to obviously and then squeeze in business when/if I can. My husband and I both work a lot from home so it is difficult to separate home/hang out time from home/work time, but we really try to not be awful, perpetually distracted parents. Right now I'm very focused on the book and the shop, but hopefully soon I'll have some time to squeeze in new designs.

What is the most wonderful part about being able to craft for a living?
It is amazing to be essentially a working artist. I guess the best part is that I have to buy fabric and yarn for supplies and go to used book sales for inspiration. It's a luxury to have what you love be a priority.

Other than sewing and embroidery, what other crafts do you enjoy?
I love knitting. I can get behind some crazy event baking. And I really want to take a pottery class.

What is your most favorite thing you have ever made?
If the house was on fire the two projects I'd grab would be the quilts I made from the kids' baby clothes.

What's up next for Wee Wonderfuls?

Not sure. Fingers are always crossed that we can keep on keeping on. I have my eye on my next pattern project, I'm thinking about a quilt design with embroideries.

What is the best creative or business advice you've ever received, and what would be your advice for other artisans?
Take a break from the internet. Can I say that here, on the internet? I'm easily overloaded. I am always at my best creatively when I'm looking at the least amount of stuff.

Wee Wonderfuls: 24 Dolls to Sew and Love is available everywhere books are sold. To learn more about Hillary, visit her on the Wee Wonderfuls blog. You can also check out my review from last week, which includes links to some great WW projects to try out!

Photographs courtesy of STC Craft.

hannah stevenson

One of the nicest things about blogging and tweeting and trolling the Internet for interesting craft ideas is that you meet so many great people. If you'd told me two years ago that there was such a great community of creative people online who were so generous with their time and their friendship towards complete strangers, I wouldn't have believed you! But here we are, in a giant virtual community.

Someone I met recently online was Hannah Stevenson, the artist behind the storybook paper dolls. Her work was just enchanting to me, as you might expect since she illustrates outfits inspired by girls in literature. What I didn't expect was that she would be such warm and interesting person to chat with as well. Read more about Hannah and her creative inspiration, in which I talk to her about her future plans for the dolls for Handmade News.

Personally, I'd love to see interesting backdrops for the dolls, perhaps in the style of a puppet theater. And other girls I'd love to see? Sara Crewe. Sleeping Beauty. Maybe even Nancy Drew or Betsy Ray or Ramona Quimby or  Harriet the Spy. Ooo, or a Somewhat Wicked Girls line! Nellie Oleson, I think someone's calling your name.

 

Photographs courtesy of Dana Willard and Hannah Stevenson.

storybook paper dolls

I've always liked the idea of old-fashioned paper dolls. There's something about their simplicity that's very appealing, and it's a good reminder of how few material items children really need to stimulate imagination and play. 

The first time I ever read about paper dolls was in All-of-a-Kind Family, when the girls' Papa, who is a peddler on the lower east side of New York in the early 1900s, receives an unexpected load of books. He allows his daughters to pick out whatever they'd like, and they are delighted to find a storybook that was illustrated with paper dolls and outfits to cut out. 

It was wonderful! Enchanting! It seemed like a bit of Fairyland come to life. They might have dreamed about such a book but they had not known that one like it even existed.

This is just how I felt when I came across Lily and Thistle MiniMe paper doll boutique recently. Hannah Stevenson customizes each doll she creates with skin tone, hairstyle, eye color, freckles, glasses, etc. so each girl resembles your little girl--or, well, you. The illustrations themselves are utterly charming, but what made me go absolutely crazy over them were the two special clothing lines she had created: a girls in literature outfit line and a fairy tale outfit line. I had to order a set immediately.

When I received the dolls themselves just one short week after an email consultation with Hannah, I was beside myself with excitement. The doll is incredibly sweet, with lovely watercolor-y shading and beautifully shaped features. I also like that she looks like a real girl, not like a flat stick figure or an exaggerated or unrealistic depiction of what a girl should look like. The six modern-day outfits she comes with are fun, ranging from sun dresses to shorts and leggings, but what I was obviously rapturous over were the two storybook lines.

  

I can't even begin to describe how beautiful the clothing is. The dress patterns are minutely detailed, with warm, vibrant colors that somehow look subtly textured. I love the tiny birds and roses in Gretel's skirt, the soft cottony bloom in the Princess and the Pea's nightdress, the scarlet of Red Riding Hood's flowing cloak, the relaxed wool sweater worn by Lucy Pevensie, and the iridescent seashell colors in the Little Mermaid's tail.  Each outfit transforms the doll completely--somehow she has a more upright carriage when she wears Velvet's riding habit and boots, or looks more demure in Cinderella's elegant ballgown, or is ready to take flight with Tinkerbell's wings. 

I can't say enough about how incredibly lovely this whole collection is--and how reasonably priced they are. You may buy a doll (and outfits) printed on high quality cream-colored card stock, and presented in packaging suitable for gift-giving--which also comes with a cd with the images so you can reprint them if you need to! How amazing is that? Hannah also offers printable download option if you'd like to print them up yourself. The dolls come with a sticky strip, but I decided to laminate my dolls and find magnetic strips for them so they'd last a little bit longer.

If there is an imaginative girl in your life, I can't imagine she won't enjoy these lovely playthings. This is truly the most beautiful collection of paper dolls I've ever seen, and these charming, timeless girls are ones I know I'll treasure for a lifetime.

If you'd like to learn more about paper dolls, you may read more about their long history here. Hannah also has a wonderful blog which offers tutorials, free downloadable outfits, and more.

scherenschnitte: the art of papercutting

The art of scherenschnitte, or "scissor cutting," has been around for hundreds of years. Artisans in Europe, Asia, Mexico, and the Middle East have produced beautiful works of art for centuries armed with nothing more than a leaf of paper and a pair of scissors or knife. 

I first read about the art of papercutting a few years ago, and went so far as to contact a few artists with the intention to write a story on the art for a website I used to edit. The story didn't end up happening since I left as an editor last year, but since this art form has popped up as a trending topic in the crafting community recently, I thought I'd share some of the resources I gathered at the time. I spoke with several artists about their work in papercutting, and I've featured three of my favorites below.

The delightful Elsa Mora is well-known in the scherenschnitte circles for her delicate, intricate designs. I love the intelligence and thought that is behind each of her pieces, as well as the minute, feathery details and suggestion of movement in each one. This California-based artist's wonderful blog The Heart of Papercutting is full of generous links and resources for anyone who might want to try out papercutting for themselves, and it was her work that inspired me to try my hand at it. 

I attempted to cut two of the storybook children she designed (as pictured above) with a craft knife and self-healing mat, and surprised myself by finishing within a matter of hours with each one. Though my Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan have sadly slightly misshapen hands and are a bit rough in spots here and there, I think they turned out pretty well for a first attempt, and it was a really satisfying project to try. I finally got around to mounting the two children this week, and put them in wooden frames that I painted a slightly pearlescent grey.

Along with prints of her work, Elsita now also carries simple patterns in her Etsy shop for beginner papercutting enthusiasts, which is a much easier way to learn this beautiful craft than the way I went about it. She also offers her original papercuts for sale through Three Graces Gallery, and the complexity and subtle mystery in her work is truly unforgettable.

Su Blackwell is another scherenschnitte artist whose ethereal artwork makes me catch my breath. This UK-based artist creates dreamy three dimensional works, as with While You Were Sleeping above, and specializes in artwork cut from vintage books. Her 12 Dancing Princesses is just one of her many pieces inspired by fairy tales, although she also does fantastic commercial work for magazines and retailers as well.

Su alerted me last year that her artwork would be included in a Slash: Under the Knife, a group exhibition at Museum of Arts and Design in New York, and I popped in to see it last fall when I was visiting friends. The exhibit was really wonderful (even if I blanched at the admission price to the museum...oh, New York!) and I was glad to see some of Su's work in person. The exhibit just closed this spring, but you can view more of her work on her website or on her blog.

Cindy Ferguson is a graphic designer and artist who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah. She says, "I have always loved drawing. When I went to Europe a few years ago, I visited my grandparent's farm in Germany. In their sitting room, there was an old scherenschnitt on the wall. It was so intricate and beautiful. I thought I would like to try my hand at the art and have become quite obsessed with it."

Cindy's Scherenschnitte blog is updated frequently with updates on her most recent projects, as well as with tutorials and free templates to download. Cindy also accepts commissions for custom silhouettes and artwork through her cindymindypindy Etsy site. My very favorite of her creations happens to be her custom piece for a man who wanted a papercut for his wife, whose favorite film is Pride and Prejudice. It features the moving quote featured in a pivotal point, "It taught me to hope," said he, "as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before." I can't even imagine the amount of discipline and fine motor control that Cindy had to use in order to carve out the lovely text. I love all the details in this papercut, from the stripes in the Elizabeth's skirt to the hands in motion to the perfect frame provided by the trees.

Please do visit all three artists online for papercutting inspiration and beauty--the patience and artistry required for each complex work of art is incredible..and perhaps you'll even be inspired to try out this beautiful craft on your own. Photographs courtesy of  the individual artists.

As I was editing this post, I realized that all three of the artisans featured have created artwork centered around books and fairy tales--no wonder I was drawn to them! (Incidentally, Hans Christian Andersen was also very well known for traveling around and telling stories to children while snipping away with scissors to create instant papercuts while he was spinning tales. The book The Amazing Papercuts of Hans Christian Andersen features many of his papercuts, and if you're a fan of his writing, it's nice to learn more about this lesser-known talent.) Two things I really love, books and craft, come together in perfect harmony.