my work in Australian Homespun magazine

This was a lovely thing to come home to yesterday.

My wee sheep and mushrooms in Australia's Homespun magazine.

What a lovely magazine, too.  Chock-full of great content.

Thanks Homespun!

I did indeed find my peeps

I was very flattered to be featured in the new issue of Her Voice magazine, a seasonal insert in our local paper.  Her Voice is a magazine by women, for women, about women and it's always fun to look through and see what other women in our community are up to.  The article about me was written by Kathy Krueger, a freelance writer who I've gotten to know in the past few months through my job at The Crossing Arts Alliance, and she did a wonderful job.  She made me sound much more interesting than I actually am.

I was photographed by Joey Halvorson, another new friend from The Crossing.  Only for her would I pose with wool birds on my head.  Only for Joey.

In the article I talk about how much it meant to me to find the creative souls in our community (my peeps) and to be able to find a job working with so many of them.  I'm lucky in so many ways, friends.  Though my days are long and life is not always easy, I *am* so lucky to have found my peeps both in town and here in this blog.

Thank you for reading.  And for being my peeps.

interview on the Kanelstrand blog

Goose and I are featured on the Kanelstrand blog today.  If you don't know Sonya's blog, you should definitely stop by and have a read.  She's a great source for ideas on living a simple, meaningful, healthy life, and a talented photographer to boot.

Thank you, Sonya!

woo hoo!

It felt (no pun intended) pretty awesome to open up the new issue of Fiber Art Now and see some familiar lumpy, stitchy forms inside.

And the cover coordinates so nicely with the stone I'm working on.

My happy moment of the day.  Hope you get plenty of happy moments today too.

fall leaves in Family Fun

 

Happy news for me on a Monday, my leaf project from a few autumns ago has been featured in Family Fun magazine.

 

The new October issue has just hit stands and there is my little rainbow of leaves on page 18.  It's a really cute little magazine.  In thumbing through the pages looking for my contribution I've already spotted 3 different things I want to do with the kids and I haven't even looked through the whole thing yet.

Thanks Family Fun, for having me!

And happy Monday to you all.

Heart - Felt Holidays - a giveaway!

Heart-Felt Holidays: 40 Festive Felt Projects to Celebrate the Seasons

The name says it all!  I'm so excited to have been a small part of this book by the wonderful folks at Lark.  I've worked with them before and it's always such a pleasure.  This one is chock-full of cute projects (bowling elves? love it!) for Valentine's Day, Father's Day, Martin Luther King Day...they're all covered.

The book is arranged so that it starts with New Year's and ends with Kwanzaa (with Birthdays and Baby Showers too!).  There's a great variety of projects included and since working with felt is so fun (and forgiving) it should keep you busy and full of handmade happiness throughout the year.

I have contributed four projects to this book to celebrate Valentine's Day, Thanksgiving, and Teacher's Appreciation Day.  All of my projects work with felted garment wool, but they'd work just fine with regular sheet felt too.

And because they're awesome, Lark has given me an extra copy of the book to share.

This giveaway is now closed.

If you'd like a chance to win

please leave a comment on this post telling me what holiday you think would be fun to craft for.

My youngest helper will draw a winner on Monday April 30th.

One entry per person please.  Please be sure I have some way to contact you should you win.  I'll ship worldwide, so play along, one and all!

Just in case you're not feeling lucky, you can always buy your own copy.  It's under $10 on Amazon!  A steal!  Steal I say!

Good luck, everyone.

Birch bark bouttonieres in Brides Magazine!

Just sharing a bit of happy with you today.  One of my birch bark bouttonieres was featured in this month's Brides magazine.  You can see my "J" nestled there amongst some other fun and lovely handmade goodies.  Yay!

The bright and happy colors of this magazine page are just the antidote I needed for this grey and cloudy day.  Come on spring, I need ya!

Have a colorful Monday.

Calendar Girl

The Whipup 2011 Calendar is here and yours truly is the January calendar girl!  I am so flattered and excited to have been included.  Not only is Whipup one of my must-reads, but January is my birthday month so it makes it extra exciting to see my little mushrooms lined up on that page.

As you can see I'm in terrific company, not the least of which is my talented friend Sonia.

You can buy a PDF of this beautiful inspiring calendar for only $5 here which comes in three different formats for you to print.  You can also buy a pre-printed version through RedBubble. 

When you make your purchase you're not only getting a lovely calendar and showing your love for handmade, but you're also supporting Whipup's efforts to share the best original and exciting crafts around.  If you're not familiar with Whipup, please stop by and have a look.  It's a wonderful place to find inspiration and instruction.  I've found it to be very helpful while planning what gifts to make the kids this year, and I'm sure you'll love it too.

Wow! What A Week

Yeah, the title kind of covers it.  Wow.  What a week!  
Sometimes life hands you a sweet package and this week seemed to be just that for me.

Yesterday, Etsy ran an article about my wooden bowl collection.  This article was first run on the rikrak blog.  Thank you Kristal!  Thank you Etsy!  You are both amazing.

Jennie from Sweet Greens has a little interview with me (and my giant face) on her site and is offering a giveaway.  I'd love it if you'd stop by and enter.

The photo of my boy holding the dazed bird was Conservation Minnesota's photo of the week. 

I won a blog giveaway (ok, well I was the winner late last week but close enough) hosted by the uber sweet and talented Fringe whose work I have coveted for ages.  I get this gorgeous cowl you see below.  Big hooray!

I managed to do a quick shop update yesterday featuring some new work.  I'm especially proud of my newest mushroom sculpture.  It's pretty large and it feels very natural to me, as if I could bump into these on one of my mushroom hunts. 

And now, to top it off, I get to pick a winner of the recycled t-shirt scarf.  Thank you so much to everyone who entered and left such great comments. 

Here it goes, picked by the random number generator......  (drumroll please) .... the winner is

Sonia!!

You can visit Sonia's lovely blog here and her Etsy shop here.

Congratulations!  I hope you love it.

(Margie - go play the lottery.  Right. Now.)

For those of you that asked, here's a how-to.  Really, really simple.  The only thing I would add to the link's instructions is to look for t-shirts that don't side seams or printing on them.  That makes for an easier cut and a smoother finished product.  The thrift store always has t-shirts and if you don't like the color you can always dye them.  I added the leather loop to help keep the pieces from tangling and to add a little "me", but it isn't really neccessary.  

Don't discount little kid t-shirts either, they make a nice smaller scarflet or bracelet.

Thanks for sharing my week with me.  I hope you all have a fantastic weekend.   

Sweet Feature

A few weeks ago a few of my wool acorns went on an adventure to the twin cities to take part in a photo shoot for Mpls. St. Paul magazine. 

Shauna Younge of Shauna Younge Dessert Tables was doing an autumn-themed table and wanted to include my acorns in her design.  How cool!  The issue dropped yesterday and she was kind enough to share it with me.  Isn't it fabulous? 

I really love the colors she worked with and the natural elements and textures she included.  If you can tear your eyes away from all of the mouth-watering goodies and look closely you'll see my acorns adorning the favor bags. 

You'll also see some great faux bois cupcake toppers there too, and bonus!  Shauna recently posted the tutorial on her blog.  Check it out.

Thanks Shauna for including me in your work, it was fun and the table is gorgeous.

(now who else is craving cupcakes?)