Etsy GIVEAWAY - CleverHands Awesome Upcycled Journal BANDOLIER! CLOSED

AND THE WINNER IS : #217 GrayGirlStudios

True Random Number Generator

Min: 1
Max: 610
Result:
217

Clever Hands has set up a coupon code for EVERYONE for the next week - Add code OLIVEBITES to any order and get 10% off thru 2/15!!

Clever Hands is the awesome new shop of Emily in San Francisco who makes these amazingly genius and handy little bandoliers!

Originally from New York, Emily says she "misses snow" which convinces some people she is crazy.

(uhuh we get that ... the crazy part, not the snow part)

but she is crazy genius to create these modern and versatile little beauties!

[jour.nal ban.do.liers n.] - "straps fitted with small loops for carrying pens, pencils, and other handy tools wrapped around a journal, planner, or other book" - I love them!

We are lucky to have one of Emily's amazing bandoliers for this week's giveaway!

WHAT YOU GET:

One lucky winner will receive their choice of one of Clever Hands journal bandoliers!




HOW TO WIN:

It's easy, peasy - just leave your contact information below with 2 fabric choices (in case one is out of stock).

For additional entries:

(5) Twitter this post
(5) Blog about this contest; linking to this post
(5) Follow my blog

Let me know if you have done these things so I can give you additional entries. This contest is open to everyone.

DRAWING:
Enter by midnight, Sunday, February 6th! Good Luck! CLOSED

Make sure to bookmark Clever Hands for future purchases!

New Work in My Shops This Month - more cork and magnetic, recycled lockets!

Even though the holiday rush has left me a little burned out I have added a few new pieces to each shop this month - I also have some new artist sets that have just launched or are launching within the next week or so and will post about them soon!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone - don't forget to enter this week's giveaway (top left) ending on Sunday at midnight!

xo- Cat :)

this DECIDING thing is a pain in the a--

So, my very first decision this year

(well, maybe not my first decision, I guess my first decision was to make more decisions)

was to take better care of myself

and part of this take better care of myself thing is to cut way back on diet soda.

And this is a very hard thing for someone who has believed since high school that calories should not be wasted on beverages unless those beverages are chocolate milkshakes or wine coolers.

So, I am transitioning over to unsweetened tea and the "w" word and skim milk and trying to stay sane with a lowered caffeine intake all the while conjuring up images of myself doing backflips and benchpresses at 80 because I will have these amazing bones that will not have had all the calcium leached out of them from another few decades of diet pepsi.

I bought a beautiful glass pitcher to keep cold water in my studio - something about seeing that crystal clear water and the sound of the water as I pour it just makes me happy and makes me feel all healthy and grown up and very much a decision maker.

Now, this is a process

(I'm not exactly going cold turkey here - maybe more like warm chicken)

although I have crossed a little something off my mental checklist.

Don't worry though there are many, many more things for me to be working on like writing the great American mystery novel

(whose protagonist is a crafty mom whipping up recycled valentine's by day and solving the puzzling disappearance of the mailman between dinner and bedtime)

and learning how to make donuts like the girls of Madderroot and doing the laundry without tripping over it for a week first

(have I mentioned the laundry "room" - ie tiny little corridor holding the washer and dryer - is right outside my studio door - this seems like bad feng shui to me although it does come in handy when I get cold and need a sweater as long as I don't mind that the sweater has food stains and smells a little bit like wet dog ... which I don't)

but I'm up for the challenge. Life is short and moves fast, folks. And I have a lot of decisions to make this year ....

*here's the dilemma penguin by living feral

Upycled Rubberband Valentine Tutorial or when good tutorials go bad ... ah the heartbreak

Sometimes when crafting, the thing you end up with is not exactly the picture you had in your head when you started.

(and this is the beauty of handmade and I really truly believe this, even when things go ... well, kind of bad -

maybe not life in prison with no chance of parole kind of bad, but more like a couple weeks in county with a roommate named Ginger who really, really likes your hair -

not that this has happened to me)

So although this project has some problems with it I decided to post it anyway because - 1. perfection is highly overrated and 2. many of my mistakes you can avoid

Although I am giving you a step by step of what I did I will add a little instruction for the way I would do it if I was to do it again

(which I never, ever will, trust me on this)

You will need: rubberbands (now, maybe there is a reason stringart is done with actual string, but I had a bag of rubberbands in my kitchen drawer that were just screaming Valentine's Day at me - use your own judgement on this), nails, cork, a back board (I used a second piece of cork flooring under the first tile which proved to not be strong enough for the rubberbands which wanted to pull everything inward so I would recommend the wood backboard the pattern suggests - ugh), a hammer (I started out with my trusty mallet, but soon had to switch to the slimmer hammer head), the pattern, a calculator and lots of patience

1. Lay out your pattern and hammer in 80 little nails, yes I said 80
2. Tear out the pattern center (the instructions say to remove the entire pattern at this point, but I don't see how this project is possible to do without the numbers, so leave the numbers)
3. Follow pattern section 1 (this one is easy peasy)
4. Follow pattern section 2 (good luck with this one, maybe remove small children from your immediate vicinity because your language is going to be rough - also pour yourself a drink)
5. Pull out the little pieces of paper with tweezers
6. I cut my cork to fit in an embroidery hoop, but this would look just as cool on a clipboard or something simple

<----Now, I admit I did not end up with anything nearly as amazing as this and you may have to squint a little bit to see my heart, but as I tell my family sometimes when I am accused of heartlessness, it's in there, trust me.

Also my pattern went wayward when I tracked on the right side and I didn't quite manage the gorgeous circular fold with my heart - not sure if this is a result of the rubberbands or my own placement mistakes - and my nails, without the solid backboard and because of the rubberband pressure, have gone a little wonky - but I will just keep everyone 5-10 feet away from it and don't think anyone will notice the flaws.

(I find this is good advice for most things)

Happy MLK Day - wishing everyone the time to slow down and think about his lessons of peace, brotherhood and forgiveness

When his home was bombed as his wife and four young children slept, Dr. King could have held it up to the world as an example of the kind of barbarism that is fueled by irrationality and extremism. He chose instead to practice the forgiveness he so often preached.

“Love has within it a redemptive power,” Dr. King said. “And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Love your enemies. Because if you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. ... there’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive.”

why the teacher doesn't always eat apples and carry a ruler ...

when the student is ready, the teacher appears - Buddhist Proverb

I love this proverb, but truly always imagined this teacher to have some human form or voice or written word attached to him or her -

like a certain someone would pop into my life just when I needed them to and I would hear just the thing I needed to hear at exactly the right time and this has actually happened to me

(and all of us, I am sure)

a couple times -

and I have to admit that I love to play the teacher at times and offer unsolicited advice that the other person will quickly dispense with by saying "that's easy for you to say" to which I always counter "exactly, that's why I'm saying it", which always makes them rethink whatever genius thing I am saying and gives me a guru-like seriousness, kind of like Forrest when he came to the end of his run -

but more often than not what actually happens when I am "ready" is that this "teacher" appears in the form of a lesson or obstacle or something that doesn't look anything like the solemn faced Mr. Miyagi I am expecting.




(and you don't get life lessons like "wax on, wax off" just anywhere you know)





So, when I am ready to

(ie desperately need to)

learn patience for example - life sends me an opportunity to learn patience by practicing patience - in other words - delays, traffic situations, time spent waiting - you get the picture.

This learning by practicing thing is why I never ask the universe to give me strength or courage or anything like that (unless I am in the middle of a crisis already) because I know the best way for me to learn these things is through something that requires me to be strong and courageous and with my luck who knows what kind of calamity will be sent to me as my 'teacher'.

So anyhoo, I have decided to see if there is a little kink in this universal system that I can use to my advantage - a little way to cheat the system - a little life lessons for dummies cheat sheet.

I have determined that what I really need to learn is to be a little more grateful and now things that I am very grateful for should start to move into my life to teach me about gratitude. Do you think this can work?

Like I am grateful for my little Nook that I am totally addicted to

(who has one and what books can we trade ?? warning I have purchased alot of detective fiction and nonfiction, but if you have a Nook and want to borrow/lend, let's chat- no clue how we do this, but we will figure this out together)

and all the books that have been flowing my way.

(my next lesson may involve my dwindling bank account balance since this little marvel has a very simple "2 quick clicks to purchase" feature that makes books very hard to resist)

I will let you know if this lesson of gratitude allows many things for me to be grateful for to flow into my life and if this works we can all be walking around muttering "damn, I wish I was a more grateful person" and see what kind of teacher appears to us - this could be the real law of attraction and remember you heard it here first folks.

(of course, if we really do get Mr. Miyagi and a jar of turtle wax, well, then, we will be at least be grateful that we have a very shiny car ... and we may also have a very tired arm, but at least with the Nook there are no pesky pages to turn)

*math class photograph by D. Hunting