Old shirts with an uncertain future

I've begun cutting up my old tees into thin strips.

Will they be woven? Knitted? Crocheted? Might they become fringe, or shag? Or just really fat embroidery thread? Only time will tell...

All I know for sure is that they were destined for the dustbin, and now they are raw materials again.

My first Yudu project: Shirts for Camille

If you are at all interested in screen printing, and you have not yet checked out the Yudu, it is definitely worth a google. (Or a Bing. Or maybe not...) The Yudu is a compact device that simplifies the process of printing with silk screens. (It's similar to the Japanese Gocco, which was recently discontinued, if you are familiar with that.)

I had my first big chance to Yudu some t-shirts this week. (I do not own one, but they have a bunch at the Urban Craft Center where I recently got a membership.) It started with an email from my friend Camille Cortinas. I had done some work for her band in the past, and she told me she had just been invited to perform solo on a tour of the East Coast. She wanted to sell t-shirts to promote her new ventures as a solo musician, but the tour was leaving in two weeks. It was a tight timeline, but we got it done!

The first step was, of course, to come up with a design. I went through several ideas before landing on this one:

We decided to do three styles – a women's crew, a tank top, and a men's crew – and I wanted to vary the colors and image placement on each. Here's how they turned out:

I would share detail images and pics of the process, but I didn't snap any... I was too busy trying print fifty shirts in two days to make the shipping deadline! The process of Yuduing is well documented in this video as well as in the videos on the Yudu site, so I wouldn't be adding much to that conversation anyway. But, as someone with a background in both traditional screen printing and Gocco, I do think I can contribute some useful tips by way of comparing the three techniques. I will soon do a full post dedicated to this subject, so stay tuned!

How to win three thousand dollars in a single moment

Yesterday I received two simultaneous messages from my Dallas gal pals Kim and Nicole about this exciting opportunity from Etsy (online marketplace for handmade goods):



It's a contest to make a commercial for Etsy with the theme "A Handmade Moment." (It's one of those where you have to get all your friends to pass around your video and get the most hits. Smart Etsy – a promotion within a promotion within a promotion...)

I noticed in the fine print that you can't enter if you are professionally employed in the advertising industry, which is a bit of a kicker for a bunch of my friends (including my Dallas gal pals)...boo! Good thing for me that I lost my job several months ago, huh? Heh, heh.

More details here.

Simple project: Key holder

I am currently in the planning stages of a decor project for our master bath, which I can't wait to share with you. In an effort to spend virtually no money on this project, I'm reusing a lot of the items from when we redid our bathroom in Dallas, before we moved to LA. There is one little shelf, though, which I know I won't be able to work into my new design. So, I decided to make it into a little key holder to hang by the front door.

Since I already happened to have four extra cup-hooks in our "random hardware drawer," this project was basically free and pretty much did itself! But the hooks only cost a few cents at the hardware store. And just about anything wooden that will hang on a wall could be turned into a project like this, just by screwing hooks into the bottom.

Here's a quick list of things that I can think of off-hand that would make cool door hooks, just by screwing cup-hooks to the bottom: a piece of dollhouse furniture; some wooden letter printing blocks (found at flea markets and antique malls – you could put several different ones together to make a word, and hang a hook on the bottom of each letter, or just use one huge initial with a few hooks across the bottom); a picture with a thick wooden frame; a mirror with a thick wooden frame (or a chalkboard or cork board...); a nice scrap of driftwood; or any number of the little oddities that turn up in old attics or estate sales.

Of course, ideas for stuff like this are easy to come by... it's actually setting aside the ten minutes to sit down and do them that requires the inspiration!