She's Crafty | Coloring Craze

Imagine you are on a much needed break at work. Or, you're at home and for once it's quiet. I know it might be hard to conjure an image of such an event, but give it a try.

You grab a coloring book filled with abstract animals and flip to a page with a bird and a lizard chilling in a tree.

From Animal Kingdom by Millie Marotta.

Then, with glee in your heart you grab some colored pencils and lose yourself in filling the little spaces on the pages with color.

Sounds nice, huh?

But you might be thinking, what is this coloring business?! You're a grown up now and you don't color in coloring books anymore. You have big people things to do, even during what is supposed to be your downtime.

You do have downtime, right? I sure hope so, your brain needs it.

Don't knock coloring. It's hot stuff right now. I just checked Amazon's bestseller list this morning and five of the top twenty bestselling books are coloring books! One of the titles, Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book by Johanna Basford tops the list at number three, right after What Pet Should I Get? by Dr. Seuss and Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee.


Popularity aside, coloring is simply a fun and easy way to relieve stress. For those who find it hard to let go of their worries, coloring can help you do it with ease. It doesn't need much set-up, it's not expensive, and there is no right or wrong way to do it.

If you need more convincing just poke around the internet a bit and you will see the world is enjoying a bit of coloring. Here are just a few of the articles I encountered online:

• The New Yorker, Why Adults are Buying Coloring Books (For Themselves) by Adrienne Raphael.

• Parade Magazine, 50 Shades of Happy: The New Joy of Coloring by Hillari Dowdle.

• Parade Magazine, How Should You Color Your New Grown-up Coloring Books? by Hillari Dowdle.

I currently own two coloring books. One is a collection of Mandalas, published by Dover and the other is Animal Kingdom by Millie Marotta. I eyed Animal Kingdom for a while and finally convinced myself that it would be beneficial for my brain health to buy a really pretty coloring book. Not to mention fun. 

From Animal Kingdom by Millie Marotta.

Now, coloring books are not an item you can typically checkout from the library (except for maybe this Anatomy Coloring Workbook) but with an internet connection, which you can access on a public computer at any branch in our system with a library card, you can find coloring sheets online.

Coloring Pages for Adults is a website devoted to offering free printable coloring pages. This website has a lot of content. It also has a lot of flashy ads, so just be aware of what you're clicking on when you've found a page you want to download and print. There's a lot of good stuff here, so definitely give it a visit.

Parade Magazine also has a list of free coloring sheets. Just visit this article to grab them up, Free Download: Coloring Pages from Popular Adult Coloring Books. 

Turn coloring into a fun group activity. Have a family or friend night without phones, tablets, consoles, or computers. All you need is a pile of coloring pages, and whatever tools you like to use to lay down some sweet color: crayons, color pencils, watercolor pencils, pastels, gel pens, highlighters, markers, soft colored chalk...

Before I go, let me share this hilarious picture book with you fine readers. This gem popped up during a catalog search for items related to coloring or coloring books:

Bad Day at Riverbend by Chris Van Allsburg follows Sheriff Ned Hardy and the people of a small village known as Riverbend. All of a sudden their peaceful lives are turned upside down by a bunch of mysterious and colorful streaks of slime.

THE HORROR!

And of course if you want to pair story time with a coloring event that includes little ones, grab a copy of Bad Day at Riverbend along with The Day the Crayons Quit and Red: A Crayons Story.

Have fun!


Malia

She's Crafty | You Are Awesome

As much as I can't stand the heat, Summer without a doubt makes me happy. The sun is out and spreading its rays of . Birds are chirping at all times of day. My cats are no longer restless from being cooped up all winter. And the cobwebs are clearing from my brain.

However, even just a few weeks ago I was battling a bout of lingering winter blues. In an effort to raise my spirits, I sat down one day and browsed the internet for books with fun little crafts, which is when I came across You Are Awesome: 21 Crafts to Make You Happy by Abbey Hendrickson. Sounds like the perfect medicine.

You are awesome combines a beautifully designed book with content that is whimsical, colorful, and quirky. The projects look fairly easy and seem to come together pretty quickly too.

Cardboard mailbox.

Ring toss!

Since I'm thoroughly in love with gems and geometric shapes at the moment, the "Faceted Necklace" project spoke to me loudly, saying, "Go ahead and make it for yourself. We both know you'll rock it."

Yes, yes I will.

This project uses polymer clay to simulate gems. In the book they use black clay and it ends up looking like shiny chunks of coal, which is pretty cool if you ask me! 

I wouldn't mind finding this necklace in my stocking!

Instead of black, I choose an assortment of neon and pastel colors. Narrowing down my color combinations and refining my palette instead of making hundreds of beads of every color possible ended up being the hardest part of the project. Once you get your clay and your colors all figured out, the rest is easy peasy. Roll some balls, skewer them to make beads, bake them and use a craft knife to shave of bits and pieces to make facets. My favorite part is shaving the facets into existence. In fact, this project fullfilled its creator's promise and made me happy.

Polymer clay in a few of my favorite colors.

Shaving the beads. I found this to be the funnest part.
Goes pretty quickly once you get the hang of it.

Wanted to keep the flakes but I made a deal with myself
that I could no longer save anything unless I
had a clear idea of what to do with it. Alas, I do not.

I call this my Wilma Flintstone necklace.

There's a w-i-d-e variety of things to do in this book. It's not just for kids or just for adults, or just for women, or just for men. These are rainy day crafts, last minute gifts to make for friends who appreciate a little handmade smile to brighten their day, crafts to spark the imagination and be silly, and crafts to fill a nice summer afternoon with fun and happiness.

Try these other books out for more quick, handmade happiness:

• Oh Joy! 60 Ways to Create and Give Joy
• Materially Crafted: A DIY Primer for the Design-Obsessed
• Make & Give: Simple and Modern Crafts to Brighten Every Day

Stay awesome!

Malia

She's Crafty | Defining Tailor's Tacks and Jodhpurs

Even though I have been around a sewing machine all my life and have heard a lot of sewing terms used by my mother, I am a complete newbie when it comes to sewing. I feel fortunate to have someone like my mother around who knows quite a bit about sewing and sewing terminology. However, since I'm a DIYer to my core, I've been seeking out the knowledge available in sewing dictionaries and reference sets. They're handy in a pinch and entertaining even when you are not actively sewing.

The Fashion Dictionary by Mary Brooks Picken is one such interesting read.

Although our copy is a reference
book available only at Cesar Chavez,
you can request a copy via Link+.

Speaking of growing up with sewing and fashion terms, whenever my mother and I went clothes shopping and tried on a pair of pants with excessive hip space my mom would say something like, "these look like I'm wearing jodhpurs!" At a young age, I gleaned from this exclamation and the subsequent laughter she would emit that a pair of pants that look like jodhpurs but were not meant to actually be jodhpurs was not a desirable pair of pants. Comical, yes, but not appealing in that "I'm gonna wear these in public" sort of way. She would then put her hands in the pants pockets and flap her hands around creating "wings" out of her extra hip space.

To my delight, a definition for jodhpurs appears in the Fashion Dictionary:

jodhpurs. Breeches cut full above the knee, closely fitted below, with cuff at ankle, sometimes with strap under foot; designed for horseback riding.

Reminds me of pants worn by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police...and Katherine Hepburn.

Royal Canadian Mountie.
Photo by Smudge 9000. Some Rights Reserved.

Fibula, pinafore, Battenburg lace (and all the other styles of lace known to humanity), flamefoil, and The Beatles (yes, the band), all have definitions in the Fashion Dictionary. You can even find a step-by-step illustration of how to properly wrap a sari!

Finding such a gem at the library came at a perfect time since I just started a new sewing project a few days ago. It's only my second sewing project following a pattern and when I came face-to-face with a scattering of seemingly random circles on my pattern pieces, I vaguely remember my mother saying something about tailor's tacks in the past. These circles are not alien artifacts like crop circles, nor random decoration. In fact, they mean something that humans like my mother actually know about. So, I asked her again about these circles and tailor's tacks and she went over the concept as only a patient mother of a terminally forgetful offspring can--she's had about thirty-plus years of grueling practice!

Sewing patterns come with markings that need to be transferred from the paper pattern piece to the piece of fabric you will be cutting out. Sometimes these will be solid dots, open circles, or even squares. These markings refer to important areas that will be addressed in the pattern instructions at some point.

Most fabrics do well with marks made with a special fabric pen or pencil or a piece of fabric chalk. For heavier fabric and pieces cut on a fold (thus cutting through two layers of fabric) a tailor's tack is an easy way to get the most accurate marking on all layers in one movement. Sewers like my mom also prefer to use tailor's tacks to make all her marks since all you need is a needle and some thread.

The Fashion Dictionary and the Tailoring volume of the Singer Sewing Reference Library, both have an entry about tailor's tacks. Tailoring offers a step-by-step "How to Make Speed Tailor's Tacks" section with pictures.

Tailor's tacks or speed tacks in action. From Tailoring.

Elsewhere in the book, Tailoring also introduces readers to what is known as a tailor's ham. It actually looks like a fabric ham. A tailor's ham is used to press curved parts of apparel for a better fit.

From Wikipedia. Creative Commons License.

I'm telling you, these books are entertaining even if you're not actively panicking about what the next step in your pattern instructions mean by, "Baste stitch along the fly curve."

Malia

She's Crafty | More Fun With Felt

This cute little guy is Fred.

Say, "Hello!" Fred...

Fred the Fox is a new furry friend I needle felted with the aid of a kit. You can read more about Fred's origin story in this post, Needle Felting.

It took me quite a few pokes of my felting needle to get a feel for this technique and I am grateful that we had the book, Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts: Fuzzy Felted Friends by Saori Yamazaki available for checkout. Without Fuzzy Felted Friends, I would have had a tough time troubleshooting a few issues I faced while making Fred.

I also checked YouTube for some tips and tricks and found some really amazing tutorials there. The one below is a favorite. The YouTube channel Gypsy Felting has many great needle felting videos along with other felting techniques as well.

Needle felting is a lot of fun and there are a LOT of things you can make with this technique. I've seen needle felted scarves, hats, purses, paintings--yes paintings--really, anything goes.

Continuing the felt theme, let me tell you about felties or felt plushies.

A few years back I got into making hand-embroidered felt dolls, which a lot of crafters refer to as felties or in a more general sense as being a soft doll, plushies. They are incredibly cute and incredibly easy, or potentially incredibly easy, and the patterns are fairly easy to find. Most of the patterns I look for myself are really simple. For me, the simplicity of the design is part of the charm.

Dinosaur felties of the internet!

The felties I go nuts for making are fairly flat, with just a hint of three-dimensional shaping, if any. The shape that you cut out of your flat piece of felt is usually the entire outline of your doll. Contrasting thread is often, but not always, used to highlight the stitching instead of trying to hide it. Before the last few stitches are made, a bit of stuffing is added.

Meet Foxy and Raccoon. Photo by katejf. Some rights reserved.

Felt is one of my favorite mediums to play with. It's fairly cheap to purchase, easy to work with, and can do so many very cool things! Give felt a try in your next project. 

Here's a short list of what we have at the library having to do with the wonderful world of felt:

• Hand Felted Jewelry and Beads by Carol Huber Cypher
• Sewing With Felt by Buff McAllister
• Really Cool Felt Crafts by Peg Blanchette
• Fabulous Felt Crafts by Katherine Duncan-Aimone
• The Art of Feltmaking by Anne Einset Vickrey

Looky here, I even found a few books about making felties through Link+:

• Zodiac Felties by Nicola Tedman
• Zombie Felties also by Nicola Tedman

And this one you can get from one of our branches:

• The Cute Book by Aranzi Aronzo Inc.

Well, I hope you are enjoying your summer and keeping cool! Don't forget to come on down to your local branch and pick up your Every Hero Has a Story Summer Reading Challenge log, catch a program, find out what your town is doing for the summer, and find your next fantastic summer story to read. We want to help you have an awesome summer!

You can find out more information about the Summer Reading Challenge by clicking here.

Malia

She's Crafty | Needle felting

The last few days I've been taking a sharp, barbed needle and poking it into fluffs of unspun wool. I'm trying my hardest not to poke myself more than once, since it has already happened, but not exactly confident that it won't since the tip of the needle I'm using is so dang sneaky.

I got a needle felting kit as a gift and it will be my first time felting anything with a needle. I've wet-felted knit projects before with soap, water, and my own two mitts, but this will be the first time I poke wool with a sharp instrument to attach wool blobs together. When I'm done I hope to have what resembles a fox and not a unidentifiable mound of tri-color wool. Crossing fingers!

She's Crafty | The Steampunk User's Manual

Steampunk is a topic I can endlessly spend time thinking about...

Steampunk Time Contraption by Don Urban. Some rights reserved.

Pulled Crystal by Tracy B. Some rights reserved.

Steampunk novel, The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack
(Available through Link+) by Mark Hodder.

Can you really blame me? Even when I just get a glimpse of something remotely steampunk I start dreaming about fantastical gadgets, wondrous accessories, and mysterious characters who jump through time and invent the perfect tool for every job.

Imagine my delight when I came across The Steampunk User's Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-Futurist Dreams by Jeff VanderMeer and Desirina Boskovich! This beautiful tome is a comprehensive guide to the w-o-r-l-d of Steampunk, the whole shebang.

From steampunk two-dimensional art and jewelry accessories to chai cycles and robo-penguins; storytelling, music, and stage performance to large scale installations, architecture, and interior design. This book is an absolute feast for the eyes and mind. Not only does Steampunk User's Manual showcase magnificent work that will inspire and delight--you get an idea of what goes on behind the scenes of some of the featured pieces as artist's talk about creating their signature projects.

Though you do not need to be a DIYer to appreciate this book, those who are willing to push their craft to the next level or have a heavy DIY background can take inspiration from the User's Manual to help them create their own work.


More steampunk craft and art books:

• Steampunk: The Art of Victorian Futurism by Jay Strongman
• The Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer
• How to Draw Steampunk by Bob Berry
• The Art of Steampunk by Art Donovan
• 1000 Steampunk Creations by Dr. Grymm
• Steampunk-style Jewelry by Jean Campbell

Steampunk as a genre of fiction can be found in all age groups. What follows is merely a taste of what we have available for checkout and is by no means a complete bibliography of all our steampunk titles...

Picture books for children:

• Professor Whiskerton Presents Steampunk ABC by Lisa Falkenstern
• Mr. Tiger Goes Wild by Peter Brown
• The Boy Who Stopped Time by Anthony Taber

"P is for Periscope."

  Chapter books for children:

• The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon by Sarah Stewart Taylor.
• The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznik
• 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

Teen fiction is bursting with steampunk titles and series:

• The Book of Dead Days by Marcus Sedgwick
• Joe Golem and the Drowning City by Michael Mignola
• Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
• Leviathan, Behemoth, and Goliath by Scott Westerfeld.
• Fever Crumb, A Web of Air, and Scrivener's Moon by Philip Reeve.
• Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Don't even get me started on what's available for adults!

Okay, maybe just a few:

• Communion Town by Sam Thompson
• Phoenix Rising by Philippa Ballantine
• Perdido Street Station by China Miéville
• Clockwork Angels by Kevin Anderson
• Steampunk'd by Various
• Ghosts by Gaslight by Various
• The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger

Malia

She's Crafty | Papel Picado

El Día de los Niño, The Day of the Child, is this Thursday, April 30th.

On this festive day, the Cesar Chavez branch will have a special program featuring a visit from local children's author Jennifer Torres. She will be reading from her new book, Finding the Music/En pos de la Musica and the celebration will continue with crafts after the story. So, come down to the Cesar Chavez branch this Thursday at 3:30 PM.

To help promote the program and give our branch some festive style, I made papel picado banners and fluffy paper flowers to hang near the entrance of our library and over the Children's library information desk.

According to the Papel Picado page on the Museum of International Folk Art website, papel picado translates to "punched" or "perforated paper." Artisans who make traditional papel picado make a large stack of tissue paper, top it with a template, and use a set of special sharpened chisels known as fierritos to punch out the design.

To make mine I followed a tutorial I found at the Happy Thought blog, which you can read here. Ellen Deakin & Harry Olden of Happy Thought also created a very handy video tutorial to show crafters how to make their style of papel picado, which is soo very fun and easy! To make the designs they feature on their page and the ones I used for my banner, you can download three templates at Happy Thought. Just a note, you do have to join their mailing list to get the templates. If you don't feel like doing that, do an internet search for "papel picado templates" or make your own.

The papel picado you make following the tutorial at Happy Thought is cut with scissors. You fold a stack of tissue paper in half and slide it into one of their symmetrical templates.

You only have to cut one side of the design, but since it's folded in half, you cut the whole thing. I found eight sheets of tissue paper just about right. I tried 16 at first but it was torture on my scissor hand!

Once you have all your sheets cut out, time to "string" them together. At Happy Thought, they have you lay long lengths of masking tape sticky side up. Then you lay a single cut sheet on half of the width of tape and fold the remaining half over, sandwiching the piece of tissue within the tape.

Masking tape makes quick work of putting the banner together and making it ready for hanging. I'm thoroughly infatuated with the idea!

I also found a great paper flower tutorial on Happy Thought: Mexican Paper Flowers Tutorial. There you learn how to make incredibly easy and fluffy tissue flowers that will brighten any space. And I can't stress enough how easy peasy these flowers are.

Give creating your own papel picado banner a try and let me know how it goes. After the program this Thursday, let me know how much fun you had making music and listening to Jennifer Torres tell the story of Reyna and her abuelito's vihuela from her book Finding the Music/En pos de la Musica. Don't know what a vihuela is? Well, you'll just have to come on down to Cesar Chavez to find out!

Malia

She's Crafty | Concrete Poetry

In honor of National Poetry Month, let's celebrate concrete poetry.

The Mouse's Tale by Lewis Carroll.

When you make concrete poetry you take the words of your poem and shape them into an image that reflects the subject of the poem in some way. When the Mouse from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland decides to tell his "long and sad tale," Alice is puzzled that he would refer to his tail as sad. Well, by the time Mouse begins his tale, Alice imagines the poem above in the shape of a mouse's tail. Lewis Carroll also illustrates Alice's diminishing attention by making the text smaller and smaller until you can no longer read the poem. All round, a very clever piece.

In A Dazzling Display of Dogs, poet Betsy Franco and illustrator Michael Wertz use concrete poetry to showcase Franco's poems about dogs. One of my favorites is "Emmet’s Ode to His Tennis Ball."

Franco's poems and Wertz's illustrations are a wonderful take on concrete poetry. The match of shaped poem and colorful illustrations is fantastic. It reminds me of a project I thought of doing in college where you combine minimal illustrations with text that is shaped to match the content. I was going to illustrate the lyrics to Bob Dylan's 115th Dream, but in the end I went with a different project. I think of it from time to time. Hmmm, perhaps I will revisit this project in honor of National Poetry Month.

There are different ways to play with concrete poetry. The simplest is to type or hand write a poem into a simple shape in a font with uniform size and color. 

XLV by E.E. Cummings. Photo, cummings_xlv,
uploaded by William Cromar. Some Rights Reserved.

You can step it up by playing around with shaped letters, font size, and colors to add more complexity and reinforce your image. Like in, "Emmet's Ode to His Tennis Ball," up above uses shaped letters to help make the curve of the ball well-defined and fit the words together tight to help the impression of a solid object.

2013-07-04 13.41.32 by trevor.patt. Some Rights Reserved.

For the concrete poem project brewing in my head, I'm definitely inspired by Dazzling Display of Dogs. I'm itching to get some bright papers and collage a fun background. Then, I'll either create my concrete poem by hand-lettering the passage directly onto my background or by scanning my collage into the computer and digitally setting the type. Actually, I might try this with the Bob Dylan song. Yeahhh...

Well, feeling like giving concrete poetry a try? I hope you do. And I hope you get a chance to checkout Dazzling Display of Dogs. It's such a great book to look at, and would be great for story time. And before Dazzling Dogs, Betsy Franco came out with A Curious Collection of Cats (available through Link+), also featuring concrete poems.

In fact, here's a list of Betsy Franco poem books we have at our SSJCPL branches featuring her poetry or the poetry of others:

• Falling hard: 100 Love Poems by Teenagers
• Bees, Snails, & Peacock Tails : Patterns and Shapes--Naturally 
• Counting Our Way to the 100th Day: 100 Poems 
• Mathematickles! Poems 
• Things I Have to Tell You: Poems and Writing by Teenage Girls 
• You Hear Me? Poems and Writing by Teenage Boys

Malia

She's Crafty | From seeds to flowers...

Tiny beads, also known as seed beads, can be combined to create all sorts of amazing objects. From an endless array of beaded earrings and other accessories to beaded sculptures and full flower arrangements. If you have ever beaded anything, chances are you have come into contact with a seed bead or two.

Various sizes and colors of seed beads with tubular bugle beads.
Beads! Photo by April. Some Rights Reserved.

Huichol beaded reptile. Photo by Leonora Enking. Some Rights Reserved.

603-08, Twisty Turvey. Photo and beadwork by Dini Alves. Some Rights Reserved.

Since we are firmly into Spring, it's a perfect time to look into the art of beaded flowers.

A few years back my mother found The Flowers of Venice by Giovanna Poggi Marchesi. This big beautiful book introduced her to the art of Venetian beaded flowers and the conterie, or glass seed beads, which have been made in Venice for hundreds of years. My mother was inspired to make her own beaded flowers.

My mother dug deep into the tutorials and books pertaining to beaded flowers and found a tutorial that guided her step-by-step to create a life-size beaded orchid with leaves and a bud from wire and glass seed beads.

She created this beauty a few years ago but unfortunately it stands alone as she did not make more flowers. She describes making beaded flowers as easy work but incredibly tedious; the hardest part is having the patience to string all the little seed beads onto thin wire. I remember traveling with her to find tools like bead stringing bowls that would help her with the stringing, but the one we finally settled on didn't work well with wire. After a while she just went on to her next craft adventure and stored all the books and tutorials she collected away, hoping one day to revisit the craft. 

Which may be sooner than later...

Recently I was grabbing stuff from around the house to put in an I Spy Spring display and spied her blue orchid. I gave it a good cleaning and though I have always admired its beauty, the time spent cleaning its petals and looking at the way the seed beads come together to create a flower, gave me a chance to admire the beauty in which it was constructed and how easy it really is to make.

Also, it made me think I should finally try my hand at beaded flowers. Imagining beaded plumerias in my hair helped a bit too. So now we're on the hunt for good stringing tools and various colors of seed beads. I feel a trip to the bead store is in my future.

If you're interested in creating your very own beaded creations, I came across two books available for check out that would help you bead-ify your world.

The Beaded Object: Making Gorgeous Flowers & Other Decorative Accents by Mary Jo Hiney.

Beads in Bloom : The Art of Making French Beaded Flowers by Arlene baker.

-Malia