|
« August 2008 |
Main
| October 2008 »
4 days Away~! And I have so so many things to do! In case you need some information about the fair, here is a bunch that I stole from their website:
The 5th Annual Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair is this Sunday, September 28th from 10am-5pm at the Marie Reed Learning Center in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of
Washington, DC.
Handmade Shopping Frenzy
Learn about awesome handmade goods and the people that make them on the Crafty Bastards blog or in the vendor gallery and use the festival map, which includes the complete vendor booth listing, to plan your shopping.
The best stuff goes fast, so arrive early. Plus, the first 5,000 shoppers get a FREE limited edition Crafty Bastards tote bag to help carry all their crafty purchases!
Crafty Bastards Twitter
Get special offers and announcements sent from the Crafty Bastards Twitter account the day of the festival. Follow these easy steps to join the fun
1. Follow Crafty Bastards on Twitter: twitter.com/craftybastards
2. Enable your account to receive posts on your mobile phone (standard text message rates apply): twitter.com/devices
3. Turn on device updates for Crafty Bastards and get Crafty posts delivered to your mobile phone.
4. Turn on your phone during the fair and get super awesome special secret messages.
Live Performances and the 4th Annual B-Boy Battle!
Stage MC - Ken Vegas
Crafty DJ - DJ Saggiatore
10:30am Taffety Punk Theatre Company
11:30am Rock 'n Romp featuring Fever
12:40pm Statehood
1:35pm The Chinese Martial Arts Institute
2:30pm B-Boy Battle hosted by Alloutparty.com
All Day - Crafty Mutiny Supply Swap
All Day - Free Bike Valet & Crafty Bike Contest hosted by Washington Area Bicyclist Association
Check out the full Entertainment line up.
Workshops and Demos All Day!
CRAFT: Zine Maker Square (#128 on the tennis courts)
All Day Make your very own button rings, paper beads and LED throwies. Hosted by CRAFT: Zine
Knitting Workshop Knit-A-Gogo Booth (#1).
10:30am-11:30am, 12:30pm-1:30pm Learn to Knit
3pm-4pm Entrelac Knitting Workshop
Get Crafty Ipso Crafto Booth (#7)
All Day, 10am-4pm*
Make felt pins and mini disco balls, design your own stamp, and have fun with Crafty Bastards paint-by-number.
*these workshops are free and while supplies last. Children may participate if accompanied the entire time by a parent or guardian
Bicycle Safety The Bike Rack Booth (#59)
10am, 2pm Basic Bike Maintenance
12pm Riding Your Bike Safely In The City (meet in front of the Maker Square Workshop Area)
Yoga Silk Road Yoga Booth (#106). All day.
Stop by the Silk Road Yoga booth to watch yoga demos by the experts.
Pottery Wheel Demos Hinckley Pottery Booth (#82). All day.
Check out the clay magicians of Hinckley Pottery who can transform lumps of clay into functi onal objects. Instructors from Hinckley Pottery's studio will use the potter's wheel to make cups, bowls, and other simple and complex forms.
Skateboarding Aplomb Clothing Booth (#147). All day. Fun box demos.
Check out the Aplomb Skate Team grind, slide and nollie at the mini-park in the tennis court.
Check out the little post about my new Alastair the Grumpy Gnome cards over at the Crafty Bastards blog.
I will have some of these at Crafty Bastards this upcoming Sunday, September 28th in Adams Morgan, DC at the Marie Reed Learning Center. I am in booth number 39, near the stage! I won't have many of these cards as they are still in product testing, so check it out!
Every time I work on this card it ends up saying, "Zombies Attack Satan". I actually mean Santa. My girls have been cringing away from this holiday card for the past two weeks as I work on it. I am hoping this isn't scaring them for life, but instead giving them a good sense of humor when it comes to hoping that monsters ruin the holidays. They are getting used to the bad zombie attacking Santa, so I guess it will be ok. The way I see it, a little fear of zombie attack is nothing compared to leaving them to be Vice President. So there!
Anyway! I cannot decide if these cards should use the word 'Cancelled' with two L's or one. Both are correct (according to a million references on the internets). I like it with two L's, but even this blog editor says that is wrong. Please help me grammar gods!
Oh! You can pre-order these cards now! I am doing this because I really don't know how many I will need. So, $5 off of 20 when you order this week and they will ship at the end of the month. Pretty good deal, less than $1 per card.
Order here!
And thanks to Lolageek for ordering the first set! I heart you! You always let me know my ideas aren't crazy. :)
I am having some domain troubles and I Like Seamonsters as a domain name will be going away for 5 days or so. The blog will still be here, but please use www.tinaseamonster.com for a next week or so. Those domain people are greedy and slow and not helpful. Anyway... don't worry, I will still be here.
Anya just got really excited about an idea. She said, "Let's make teddies out of old clothes. We can make them with our hands. And me can mail them to someone else and they would send us something in return."
I say, "But I don't have a sewing machine."
She says, "It would be better to make them with our hands."
Sadly, the price of Gocco supplies seems to be going up. I am also having a hard time getting some of the supplies. I am working on an article about this for the Crafty Blog, but thought I would mention it here. If you use a Gocco you might want to stock up on supplies. Two of my suppliers are currently out of bulbs!
Seeing this means that I will have to raise my prices until I get the for real silk screening down. That said, my prices on Gocco printed cards and shirts will all go up on 9/25. :(
My preparations and blogging and tweeting and press releasing and goccoing and sewing for Crafty Bastards is starting to overwhelm me. I feel like I am on a rollercoaster that I can't get off of and I will be going down a huge hill for two weeks. Yes, this seems to be starting earlier than last time. Crafty Bastards is two weeks away! And I have so far experienced two set backs with the product development of the new gnome cards. Poo!
Anyway, I have made over 70 ornaments and a new card in which Zombies attack Santa! More updates coming soon!
We will be having another Crafty Mutiny Supply Swap at the fair, so get your unused and unwanted arts and crafts supplies ready to swap! (more coming on this too!)
Check out the Crafty Bastards Blog for lots of stuff by me including this From Dabbler to series in which I talk to indie crafters about how they develop product lines. First up is the amazing Block Party Press.
Crafty Bastards is September 28th at the Marie Reed Learning Center in Adams Morgan, Washington, DC. I am booth #39!
Can you see why I have no time for vampires?
I have been spending an insane amount of time reading. And yes, surprisingly, I am reading the Twilight series. Vampire romances. Very unlike me to be reading these books. But I have to say that I am completely fascinated. I don't really think the books are particularly great, but they are captivating. Sometimes they feel like a perfect mistake, a beautiful train wreck, a necessary evil. And sometimes they are just pure fun and completely engrossing.
They tap into this thing with me, this weird nightmare that I have had on and off for my whole life. A vampire nightmare that started when I was about 7. Always running, I was as a little girl, from the vampires. My heart pounding in my chest as I ran and ran. I think the nightmares started right after I saved my sister and I from being kidnapped. Kidnapped by a dark haired man in an old purple car. We ran and ran that day, through our neighbors back yards and across streets. She was too little to understand what was going on, so I had to pick her up and toss her over low fences and hope that we would escape. It sounds so dramatic, but I am sure it was only about 5 or so minutes of my life, this great escape. I often wonder if I dreamed it up. But no, my sister affirms the story. Us in our matching terry cloth jackets, walking one street away from our house as the purple car began to follow us and the tall thin man got out and started walking toward us.
So then the nightmares began and I endured them and sometimes Andy and Barney from Mayberry were also vampires and they also chased me down the street, them in black and white and me in color. So strange. But mostly, it was a version of the typical pre-Buffy vampire that provided me with the terror. Then one day, at maybe 12 or so, I decided in the dream that I wouldn't be chased anymore. I would just stop and let him catch me.
"Screw this," I thought looking down at a black and white checkered dream floor, "You've got me." And this is what Stephenie Meyer's books kinda tap into with me. The giving up and letting the monster catch you because you can't and don't want to run anymore. And frankly because you are kinda interested in what he wants anyway. (To be honest, this might have been how I felt about my high school boyfriend. And if you know me, you know which one I am talking about.) The heroine in her novels does just this and it of course goes terribly wrong. But what is better, being chased by the vampires your whole life or just giving up, really? In the end, I don't think it is the best message for young girls, but I can understand the appeal. The surrender, the want to be more than you are, to be superhuman, to be loved forever.
I will have more to say on this when I complete the final book, but for now, I am both completely engrossed and completely appalled by these books and their message. And yet I feel like I have been there, in a dream world long ago, that I understand the impulse. Meyer has tapped into something really interesting and I didn't expect I would be remotely interested.
If you thought I was brave for being honest in the past in this blog, I totally just admitted to reading a set of vampire romances. Awesome.
I am always amazed that I made these children. Grew their organs and hands and small noses. And every night before they sleep, Anya asks to hear about the day she was born. And Anya asks me to tell her about how I had one egg that wanted to be two. I am glad she loves this story. It always reminds me of the initial fears about having twins. And I realize how crazy and young those fears were. The best moment of my entire life was when that egg decided it wanted to be two. And I tell Anya that. And she giggles with delight. And Rachel says, "You got two girls. Twins. Mama, you have two girls," as if she needs to explain it to all of us. I nod and tell them the story again.
The DCAC Wall Mountables show is over and I just found out that I don't have to go and pick up my art because it all sold! All 5 pieces. This is awesome, but also I am sad to see it go. Here is a picture of the show.
In this photo of the show, the arrows are pointing to two of my pieces. And it looks like one person is either laughing at my vampire piece or maybe just sneezing. I am hoping laughing at it. :) I got two good reviews of my stuff at this show and it was awesome to be picked out of over 100 artists.
One review here.
Tina Seamonster needs some sort of award for best nom de plume (we assume). Seamonster's sliced and varnished log sections resemble some sort of bad kitsch souvenir from the 50s that would read "Home is where you hang your hat." Only these cutting pieces have weird observations and sayings on them, such as, "Being a vampire must be such a drag, it just goes on and on and on ..." or "Sometimes I hate that time is linear. I want it to be a swirly wobble..." It's hard not to love stuff like this.
And this one from the Washington Post.
I was totally entertained by Tina Seamonster's works, which looked like discs sliced from a tree trunk that revealed strangely hilarious messages. One ruminated on the result of a box office battle between John Cusack today and the John Cusack of the '80s.
This has totally encouraged me to make more stuff, but first I have to sell half a tree's worth of pieces that are in my room. I will have them all at Crafty Bastards on September 28th. There are a few still in my Etsy shop, though.
I wrote a cool piece about Steve Strawn's awesome robot photos for the Crafty Bastards blog. Crafty Bastards is September 28th!
Obviously Sara Palin has not found the work/like balance that people think she has. Proving this are the reports that her 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant. What a gigantic failure as a parent to let your 17 year old daughter find herself pregnant. Of course you cannot be with/guarding your teenager at all times. But of course you could teach them to be safe. Nope, Palin believes in abstinence. Awesome. That really seemed to work. You would think that knowing that this doesn't work in her own home would change her views on the topic. Nope! She just marries her daughter off and is excited to be a grandma. Awesome. Smart. Go God!
Let's review. You have just given birth to a baby at 44 who has Down's Syndrome. This child is going to need you more than any other of your 5 children has ever needed you. Your 17 year old is pregnant. You are letting your 19 year old go to war. And you have two other young daughters. What should you do next? How about accept the nomination for Vice President!? You've got a few minutes a day on your hands. Why not? Oh wait, maybe because it will be all over the media that your unwed teenager is pregnant? Wouldn't that be enough, the need to protect your child from the American Media? Nope.
Sorry. Sara Palin is a bad mom. She puts herself first, her ego, her "god" and her "country". I don't want anyone like this going near my daughters much less serving as a role model. And I am shocked that the Republican party doesn't get it. And I am shocked that the media thinks she is awesome and that it isn't ok to ask these questions. Just because women CAN be anything in this world doesn't mean that they can also forget their roles as mothers.
And to the people who say that I am being sexist, if Palin were a man, I would say the same thing. Any man with 5 children, including a new special needs baby and a pregnant teenager would need to get their own houses in order before thinking he can run the country.
TVZ returns with a discussion of AMC's critically acclaimed 1960's advertising agency soap opera, Mad Men, and Chris explains how it's actually a science fiction show. Also, the start dates of five new shows, the news of the week and commentary by Preston of Cornish Sci-fi Supplement.
Click here to download the episode.
|
Copyright © 2005, Tina Henry-Barrus, all rights reserved.
Design by Jeff Barrus, 2005. |
|
|
