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Swapperific

March 31st, 2008 by Crumpet

I received my Ravelry Bag Lady swap package last week! Hooray!

annie3891, who doesn’t seem to have a blog, sent me a beautiful felted evening style bag made from some handspun yarn she’d bought. I love it, but it was a bitch to photograph. Especially at 10pm when it was raining and dark outside… here it is anyway making friends with my sketchbook.

My gorgeous new bag!

I also got Pocky (!), origami paper, a beautifully soft blue iPod cosy and some lovely lip balm! Thank you Annie!

Pocky!

I’m pretty sure my ‘target’ will get the package I sent today, so I’m happy to post pictures now.

Vertigo box 1

I have a bunch of old laser discs sitting at home waiting for a crafting opportunity. While my swap pal doesn’t like horror films so much, I decided that Vertigo was the best one to use, considering her profession. Every single office I’ve ever walked into that’s part of this particular business has had a Vertigo poster somewhere. And I figured my pal could do with a pencil box. Or a ‘whatever she wants to put in it’ box, really. I added some arty extras to the box, keeping in mind something that I read somewhere while stalking.

The Hitch Up Yr Pants Bag

Continuing on the Hitch theme, I sewed this bag. It’s made almost entirely from recycled materials (we had a $30 budget, and I’m doing Wardrobe Refashion, so I set recycling/upcycling/working from stash as a challenge for myself) — I used some op shop pants that once belonged to a very short, very round old man for the outer, and some unwanted handmade pants scavenged from Kym’s stash several years ago for the lining. The batting was also recycled from old manchester, and the pocket was made from some beautiful fabric that I received in exchange for some art years ago. The zipper was also recycled, and the magnetic snap was from stash. Hopefully it’s easy enough to guess which title sequence I was riffing off with the quilting…

Bag with bite.

I was originally going to put two pockets in the bag, but the construction method didn’t really allow for that, so I used the leftover fabric to make this cute little pouch. So easy, and now I want one for myself!

(What is boxy happening?)

And considering that the Bag Lady swap was happening on a knitting board, I obviously had to do some of that. This is the Saturday Market Bag from MagKnits, made from stash yarn (Lang Filo, I think) bought years ago for a buck a ball at Lincraft. It even matches the lining of the Hitch Up Yr Pants bag! :D Next time, though, I’ll figure out how to knit this in the round, then do a three-needle bind-off at the base. Teh Seaming SuXX0r3d.

Saturday Market Bag

So there you go, swap pal (if yr even reading…) — I hope it arrives soon, if it hasn’t already.

Vertigo box 6

Posted in photography, Geekery, Book making, Film, Swaps, Sewing, Knitting | | 3 Comments

(what is box happening…?)

March 26th, 2008 by Crumpet

(What is box happening?)

Putting together the last of my Ravelry ‘Bag Lady’ swap package… :)

Posted in Book making, Film, Swaps | | 1 Comments

Better late than never.

February 10th, 2008 by Crumpet

That’s a personal philosophy. One that I’m extremely good at following.

A couple of days ago I gave Vetti her birthday present.

rpophessagr #3

And while it was her birthday a couple of days ago (happy birthday!), this was actually the present I intended to give her last year…

rpophessagr #2

It’s an artist’s book made up from the proofs I made while creating my r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r etching in first year uni, based upon the poem by e.e.cummings.

rpophessagr #4

This year’s present is not finished yet. I had some technical difficulties the other day. I promise it won’t take me a year to resolve them this time around…

rpophessagr #6

In other, similar news, I think the philosophy of lateness is hereditary. My parents dropped by today with this (along with a bunch of stuff to help with the crappy cold I’m currently nursing). Our Christmas present from 2007 — a new DVD shelf hand made by my dad. I loves it. :)

The last of Christmas.

(Please note: since the photographing, the DVDs [this is the shelf for TV shows] have been arranged in their correct order, and the empty shelves have been prettyified. An important step.)

Posted in Geekery, Book making, General crafts, Whedon, Art | | 2 Comments

T is for Things

November 2nd, 2007 by Crumpet

Today's web 3

I walked into the front yard this morning to check the letterbox, and noticed that the stick that’s been poking out of the ground since we moved in has finally sprouted some leaves on one of it’s three tiny branches. Excited, I went over for a closer look and found a beautiful web in between forked branches at the top. So pretty. And what better way to introduce some of the work that I handed up on Wednesday!?!

"42 things" clamshell book

This is the book I made to house my 42 things work. 42 lithographic prints that I talked about in this post.

Lyre.

Silhouettes of different, somewhat random things, some obvious, some not so obvious, all of their descriptions dependent on your perspective. Why 42? Because it’s the answer, of course.

Spindle.

I’m really happy with the clamshell box that I made to house the prints. It was a lot of work, but was definitely worth it… and I only made one major mistake, which I managed to disguise quite well… If anyone is interested, I followed an excellent tutorial that I found online to make it, minus the fancy measuring and cutting tools…

And despite the fact that they’re packaged up so beautifully in the box, I will be selling the prints individually in my Etsy store — I’ll add them gradually over the next couple of weeks. Unless, of course, one of you wants to make me an offer I can’t refuse on the whole set… (no, really — I could very much do with an offer I can’t refuse right now…)

Posted in Etsy, Alphabet, photography, Book making, Whedon, Art | | 1 Comments

It is done.

August 21st, 2007 by Crumpet

Steve came by and collected his prize (and wideangle lens… le cry) tonight.

I’m so glad I stuffed up the first one — the second version is much better (although the black paper I used turned out to be a little stiff — won’t be using that sort again.)

Front cover detail:
Alphabet Shoot Prize — Front Cover

Back cover detail:
Alphabet Shoot Prize — Back Cover

Inside:
Alphabet Shoot Prize — Endpapers

I likes it.

(Also, this brings my total of handmade books for the year to 21! You probably don’t recall, but one of my Resolutions was to make a book every week. This wasn’t going so well. Of course, I’m still 14 weeks behind with that pledge, but the whack of prizes that I made recently definitely helped up the total. The only book that you can’t see in my Flickr bookmaking set is the wedding gift album that I made for my sister and brother-in-law, complete with about 70 photos that Mr Crumpet took at the ceremony. I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of that. Except we drilled it a bit wonkily, so it’s probably good that I didn’t…)

Posted in Alphabet, photography, Book making | | 3 Comments

H is for Handmade

August 18th, 2007 by Crumpet

I get pleasure from making things by hand. Partly because it allows me the time to drift off and think about life, and partly because I get something beautiful at the end.

Except sometimes I stuff up.

I made a boo boo.

See those two holes in the bottom book cover board where the black on the spine meets the coloured paper?

Close-up of stuff up.

They shouldn’t be there.

It was the very last step in making this book, which Steve, the winner of our Alphabet Shoot photography competition has been waiting for since May, and I stuffed it up. I need to remake the covers, but I have Monday off. The good thing about this is that I wasn’t very happy with the spines anyway, because I originally made a different mistake that I managed to patch up enough so that they were passable, but I was never completely satisfied with them. So Steve, apologies that you have to wait a few extra days, but I promise that it will be totally schmick when it’s finished…

As for the other prizes?

Kate, this one’s for you.

Second Prize

It’s a small blank journal sewn together and bound with a spine. The endpapers are abstractified solvent transfers of a couple of your photos. I stuffed up slightly with this as well by not making the endpapers stretch all the way across the first and last pages of the book, but I’ve fixed that since taking the photos. ;)

Second Prize

And the Secret, Special, Magic Prizes? I picked a few winners, then decided that I couldn’t possibly leave anyone who contributed regularly out (…at least, I hope I didn’t leave anyone out!)

Prizes galore.

iwishmynamewasmarsha, Junior, okac, divadea, everything is free, mk.carroll, seanavin and Michelle — you all get a mini concertina notebook with solvent transfers of your artwork on the covers.

Unfortunately, Mr C seems to have accidentally deleted me as admin for the Alphabet Shoot group. And I’m too lazy to rejoin right now to post this again there. If you could all contact with an address I can send your book to, that would be great. I hope you like them as much as I liked all your photos. :)

Posted in Alphabet, photography, Book making | | 2 Comments

G is for Golden Orb

August 17th, 2007 by Crumpet

Our first assignment this semester was to make an edition of 20* 20×20cm prints for a swap. They could be any medium, and I was originally going to use lithography, but it seems I’m learning, as I ended up choosing the medium that best suited my idea instead.

Before we get to the actual print, I made a folio book to house all the prints from the swap. Check out Bling Folio!

Bling folio.

Less bling, more shmick here…

Opening.

And finally, the finished print.

Golden Orb, L'Field, July 2007

I wanted to play with ideas of truth, specifically the line of thought that a photograph shows something real. I coupled this with the “theories of the universe” diagrams I used in my work last semester and my notion of using spider webs as a metaphor for the universe.

I photographed the Golden Orb spiders at Litchfield National Park in the Northern Territory during my break. They’re so incredible — the webs are huge and beautiful, and while the size of the spiders was a little intimidating, I never really felt scared or threatened by them. They’re just amazing.

*Actually, it’s officially an edition of 18 with two Artist’s Proofs.

Posted in ZOMG! We're on holiday!, Book making, Art | | 2 Comments

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