J. Karen Parker » Craftiness

A multi-media meme

karen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 01:28:58 +0000

I don’t usually participate in memes that make the rounds on facebook and blogs, but a couple people have tagged me for this album cover meme and I couldn’t resist the chance to practice some random creativity.

Here’s the deal:

Create your own RANDOM Band and Album cover!

1 – Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 – Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 – Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 – Use photoshop or similar to put it all together (I used Gimp).

5 – If you’re using Facebook, post your result with this text in the “caption” and TAG the friends you want to join in. If you’re not using facebookm do whatever the heck you want to tag people!

I’m going to tag some folks via Facebook, but if anyone else feels like posting this to their blog please meme away!

Circlecraft Christmas Market 2007

karen — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 17:09:05 +0000

Another backdated entry… tsk tsk, I know. But the weekend kinda got away from me!

It just wouldn’t be early November without the wonderful CircleCraft Christmas Market. I’ve made it out to the market every year I’ve lived in Vancouver – and twice even before I lived here, when I happened to be visiting town at the right time. It’s a huge, juried craft fair so it excels in both quantity and quality.

When I arrived with a friend around 6:45pm on Friday night I was surprised to see a HUGE line of people waiting to buy tickets. The line snaked its way out of the convention centre and around the corner outside! I’m not sure if the market was more popular than usual this year, or if my previous visits have just been during off-hours, because I’d never seen anything like it before. Luckily, the line moved very quickly and we were inside in about 15 minutes.

And how beautiful it was! There were lots of old favourite vendors, and some great new ones. I won’t go into detail about what I purchased because most things will be given as gifts to friends and family (who may or may not read my blog) this Christmas. However I will say that my favourite purchase was from the 3H CraftWorks booth. They had some lovely handmade christmas decorations, and my friend picked up a cat advent calendar, which featured little vinyl pockets in which to store a kitty treat for each day of advent!

Handmade Holidays

karen — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 22:10:14 +0000

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s sewing post comes yet another crafty entry. I’ve been collecting random craft tutorial links in my del.icio.us but when I came across Handmade Holidays today I decided it deserved its own post.
The folks over at Sew, Mama, Sew are posting handmade gift ideas all month, with a different theme every day. Today’s theme is baby blankets. Other themes include everything from tote bags to techie gifts. So if you’re a crafty person, or a wannabe-crafty person, keep watching the Sew Mama blog this month for some awesome gift tutorials.

Sew crazy

karen — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:28:27 +0000

For the past couple months I’ve been spending my Monday nights in the home economics room of a local high school. I had no interest in sewing when I was in my teens. In fact, I was likely to run from anything stereotypically “girly.” But in my 20′s I began to wish I’d learned some sewing skills. I saw awesome projects on sites like etsy and craftster and I wanted to be able to make them. So I signed up for a night school sewing course that seemed perfect – no machine required! I started with a basic drawstring skirt and have since moved onto pants and a shirt.

About halfway through the course my mother surprised me with the gift of my own sewing machine! So while I haven’t graduated beyond simple garments, I’m hoping to craft some kickass Christmas gifts this year – all manner of bags, tags, and acessories. Fellow crafters – keep watching my daily delicious links feed for some awesome crafty gift ideas. I’m trying to post a few every week.

A very lucrative Halloween

karen — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 05:46:04 +0000

Halloween has always been a favourite holiday of mine, but this year I decided to really go all out with my costume. Make Magazine published some great Halloween costume tutorials last year, and I was inspired by Nicole Magne’s awesome Headless Marie Antoinette tutorial. So I created a headless bust from paper mache and cobbled together some Value Village finds to approximate a dress.

I knew I had a good costume on my hands the Friday before Halloween. On my way to a party at UBC, people on the street kept stopping me to ask for photos! I ended up taking best costume at the party on Friday night, and also at my department’s Halloween party on Wednesday afternoon. But the best part was Wednesday night. I headed out to a bar in Yaletown in the hopes of bringing home the big prize – a trip to Vegas – and succeeded!

Though it turns out the grand prize is actually a $1000 travel voucher, so I think I may be taking a trip to Hawaii instead…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

karen — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:56:49 +0000

Well, it will be in a week or so anyhow, when I am relaxing at my parent’s house and worrying less about school and Christmas wrapping and baking and cooking!

I’ve had two purchases in my etsy store in the past 24 hours! Those cufflinks are selling like hotcakes. It’s inspired me to post some new listings. And I’ll probably be taking another trip to the button store tomorrow evening to pick up some more wares.
I’ll also be selling at a local craft fair this weekend:

Nick of Time @ Ayden Gallery, Tinseltown

Friday Dec. 15: 5 – 10 pm
Saturday Dec. 16: 2 – 8 pm
Sunday Dec. 17: 12 – 5 pm

I’ll be sharing a table with a few other etsy gals. Come buy our stuff!