Upcoming Craft Shows

Happy Mother's Day!

My wonderfully creative and crafty mom is the reason I love crafts so much to begin with....so thanks, Mom! If you and your mom, grandma, aunt, sister or other important women in your life enjoy crafting together here are some upcoming craft shows that you might enjoy:





The Eco-Chic Craftacular is sponsored by Etsy Team Columbus (Ohio) and takes place May 16 and 17, 2009. You can find more detailed information here on their website.









Brought to you by Etsy Dallas, the Spring Bash Craft Show happens on Saturday, May 16th, 2009. For more information, head to their website/blog.



New Yorkers can enjoy Bust Magazine's Spring Fling Craftacular on Sunday, May 17th. Admission is $2 and includes a raffle ticket. Find out more about the annual event here.












Orange County, CA is home to Patchwork, an indie arts and craft festival that will take place this year from 11am to 5pm on Sunday, May 17th. Their website has more information on the event.

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The Muse of Craft

Going to craft shows or browsing online craft sites can often leave buyers and crafters alike with the feeling that there are no new or unique ideas left. That's why when I accidentally stumbled across Creatrix Jane on the social networking site Facebook, I was immediately fascinated with her post showcasing her unique scarves.

Jane takes the hobby of tombstone rubbing and turns it on its head by using scarves and colorfast fabric crayons to capture the impressions on old grave markers. These scarves are part of her Dead Muses Tombstone Rubbing collection, which feature one-of-a-kind rubbings of the final resting places of those both young and old. Scarves measure 8" x 54," are made from Habotai silk and come with a story card. Check out her CreatrixJane shop on Etsy to pick up one of her creations.

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New May 2009 Craft Books

Spring is here and so are some great new craft books! Get out your craft supplies, because for these books you'll be using a variety of materials including paper, yarn, fabric and wool roving.

Knitty Gritty host and author Vickie Howell gives crochet a try in her newest book: Vickie Howell's Pop Goes Crochet!: 36 Projects Inspired by Icons of Popular Culture, which contains over 40 projects inspired by icons of popular culture. Patterns include jewelry, clothing and accessories.

Author Nikola Davidson shows all of the amazing things that can be made from felt in her book Feltique: Techniques and Projects for Wet Felting, Needle Felting, Fulling, and Working with Commercial Felt. She also teaches a variety of techniques including wet felting, needle felting and fulling (washing a knitted or crocheted item to shrink and make stronger). The more than 45 projects include a baby rattle, purses, jewelry, clothing and household items.

Delightful French craft magazine Marie Claire Idees publishes its first book in English, Paper Crafts with Style: Over 50 Designs Made with Cut, Folded, Pasted, and Stitched Paper. A variety of projects include coordinated candle holders, a paper lantern, wrapping paper, and stationery. If the book is anything like the magazine, expect beautiful photographs and unique ideas you haven't seen before.

Popular designer and new mother Lotta Jansdotter's new book Lotta Jansdotter's Simple Sewing for Baby: 20 Easy Projects for Newborns to Toddlers shares her techniques for making cute and simple projects for your favorite little one. Twenty-four different projects include bibs, a diaper bag built for the back of a stroller, hats, and a ribbon-tag blanket perfect for teething.

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Where Has the Time Gone?

Working full time, studying for the GRE, applying to grad schools . . . ack! Life can take a lot out of a girl. Where has the time gone?

But I have taken the time to set Craftophile up on one of my favorite sites, Goodreads! If you aren't familiar with Goodreads, it can be described as a sort of Facebook for book nerds. Goodreads is a social networking site where you can keep track of the books you have read, get and post book recommendations from people you know, and make a list of books that you want to read but just haven't gotten around to yet.

You can friend me or check out my reviews here: http://www.goodreads.com/craftophile

I plan to cross-post some of my Craftophile reviews on to Goodreads, so they can be seen at both places. I'll also be getting back to posting reviews of books, magazines, websites and products on this site on a more regular basis.

-Jodi

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A Few Changes

I haven't been posting a lot lately, but I have been working hard on this blog! I've decided that it's time Craftophile had a new look, something a bit more professional and streamlined. You may have already noticed some tweaking going on, so pardon my dust while I do a bit of remodeling. I'm not only working on a new template, but a new logo and color scheme as well. It should be premiering here in the next few days.

I've also been busy creating another craft-related blog, one that I feel fills a niche that I haven't seen filled anywhere else. I'll be introducing it soon as well!

Take care & keep crafting.

-Jodi
PS: Special thanks to Amanda and her wonderful easy-to-follow tutorials at Blogger Buster for helping me make my site better!

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A Very Amigurumi Holiday

The cuteness known as RoxyCraft (their fab slogan: "patterns that don't suck") has some great free amigurumi crochet patterns that are just perfect for the holidays. They'd make cute ornaments, gift tags or stocking stuffers. And did I mention they're free?

Crocheters have three different patterns to chose from: Bo the Snowman, complete with top hat; Santa Baby, who looks a bit surprised to be hanging off of someone's tree and Rory the Reindeer, who could be made into Rudolph with just a change of nose color. All the patterns use inexpensive acrylic worsted weight yarn, doll eyes and poly stuffing.

Other non-holiday patterns can be found on the RoxyCraft site as well, just look under the "Free Patterns" section.

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Some Inspiration From the Past....

The folks at Life magazine have published their wonderful photo archives online in partnership with the search engine Google. Famous historical pictures are included of course, but I admit that the photos that really catch my eye of those profiling the fashion, decor and popular culture of particular time periods.

Not only are the fashion/jewelry/decor of various decades great for inspiration, it's nice to see studio photos of women who aren't photoshopped, starved or siliconed into some warped fashion ideal. And look--they smile!

According to Google's blog, there are over 10 million photos, many of them never published before. About 20 percent of the collection is currently online with more being added every week.

The other great thing? You'll eventually be able to buy copies of the photos any of the photos that catch your eye.

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