You might be wondering about the grid that appeared on my blog last night.  I taught a class for the last 3 weeks all about intro to fabric design.  Last night we were tackling seamless repeat patterns and needed a grid to work with in order to place all of our objects and motifs so they would repeat.  We have been working in an elementary school computer lab and they have a lot of the features of the computers disabled (so the kids can’t mess things up) and we were having a jump drive issue.  So uploaded our practice grid to my blog because everyone could get there to download it easily.  It was a GREAT class – one of the best I have ever had and I really hope that they keep working on their designs.

Our very first night of class we did this design as a group.  I didn’t tell them why we were drawing on little squares, but since our first class was just before Valentines day, we did a love theme.

We then scanned and made a repeat from this and printed it, so we each had a swatch of collaborative fabric to take home last night.

Valentine Grid repeat at Spoonflower. Collaborative class project.

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I took a fast flying trip to NC this week.  The weather was sublime (73 degrees compared to -6 at home!) and the people were lovely.  This was my second visit to Spoonflower and I am pretty sure that it is one of my very favorite “vacation” spots for a few days jam-packed with creativity.  (The reason for my visit is a blog post for another day.)

Here are a few snapshots of the office – views of the lobby, the gorgeous classroom/conference room space and the printers hard at work.  There is an energy and activity in the building that is hard to describe: friendly, focused, thoughtful, busy but not frantic, and above all a deep appreciation for the creative people that are all part of the community.

Stop reading right now and go back something up.  Don’t worry, I will wait.

Pick anything.  Your email, your photos, your phone, your jumpdrive, your whole computer.  Don’t know how to do it?  Google is your friend.  Go see a genius at Apple.  I highly recommend Crashplan.  Use Dropbox.  Burn it to a CD if you have to.  Just make sure you have a copy.

I have spent the last two weeks picking up pieces from several spectacular hardware failures.  Motherboards that literally burned out, hard drives that have failed, updates that didn’t update.  And all of them could have been made relatively painless if only there was a backup to restore to.  But there’s not.  So this is your new New Years resolution.  Look at what’s important to you and make sure that you can’t lose it completely.  You will thank me.  (Trust me, you don’t want to live this week.)

(For the record, I am a little paranoid about backups.  I have things backed up in several places.  I am not a “do what I say, not what I do” kind of girl.  These failures are all things that effect me but I am not directly responsible for.  I am making sure they are backed up from now on.)

These are some of the delightful batty gifts I found on Etsy for my dad.  Shouts out to these sellers for some stellar customer service and beautiful work.

First a bat puzzle from Puzzimals.  Beautifully made, lightning fast shipping, super detailed.  I also got a great dane for my friend Danielle from this same shop.

I also adore this artist trading card from OniOniOniArt.  It is even more charming in person.

Finally a hand carved stamp from SweetSpotStampShop.

We thought it might be fun to give you a peek in to what goes in to the making of the annual Halloween card.  So we saved a few of the set up photos and I will show you some of our secrets.

We set up this one in the basement.  This is our set up shot to make sure the scene is in the frame and we have everything where we want it.  This took us about an hour to figure out.  Then Andy spent a little time placing lights and setting flashes and marking where the tripod should be.  We borrowed some flashes and a “soft box” from a friend (thanks Jesse!)  We actually shot it in two pieces, one for each side of the image.  That way one of us could be behind the camera and we didn’t have to constantly run back and forth to do the self timer or try to hide a remote control.  We took about 100 photos in about 2 hours.

Then we go in to Photoshop.  We have learned that there is a balance between what needs to be “real” and what can be Photoshopped pretty easily.  I hate lipstick and I wasn’t about to go buy any for one photo, so photoshopping was the perfect choice.  Most of the Magic Mirror’s desk is deliberately lost in the shadows, so it didn’t need to be anything special.

My costume was made for the photo.  The pattern is a discontinued wedding dress pattern, which I modified.  It had the great neckline, I exaggerated the collar and a few other tweaks.  The collar, for those who are curious, has a double layer of interfacing inside and the seam up the back of the collar pieces is held together with magnetic necklace clasps.  Once you clip magnets on the seam closed, it stands up beautifully.  The Magic Mirror shirt is ink-jet iron on transfer paper.  The props all come from various places in the house.  We raided Andy’s computer junk drawer.  The skull candle holder came from my Uncle Lester and a turkey feather from my mom’s back yard.  The mask of the Magic Mirror was created this summer with friends over the course of several weekends.   Our friend Cy taught us all to make Italian style masks from carta lana (wool paper).  Andy’s mask got to be the magic mirror and you will see mine if you are on our Christmas card list.    We will write another blog post all about that mask making adventure soon!

Polyvinyl acetate aka the good stuff

I just finished ranting about hot glue and four year olds over on Facebook and I thought I should share with you at the blog.  We have a dye lab where I work, which is a super-cool-amazing classroom space that is set up for just about every kind of messy project out there AND you can rent it for the day and do all of your messy projects right there.  It has 4 ventilation hoods, it has safety equipment, it has washers and stainless steel counters.  It is seriously cool.

It is also the place where strange things go to die (and I don’t mean dye!)  Because it is a shared space, strange chemicals sometimes wander in and then don’t go back to their rightful homes.  About twice a year, I go through all of the shelves and boxes and sort out the mystery chemicals.  Sometimes it is things like laundry soap or salt, which are easy to get rid of, but sometimes it is things I don’t know what to do with, like glacial acetic acid or urea.  I don’t want to just dump things down the sink without neutralizing them or disposing of them safely.

So I always spend some time with MSDS sheets.  That stands for Materials Safety Data Sheet.  You can look up nearly any chemical and see what it is, what it does, what you should worry about and how to get rid of it.  Very useful.

So I looked up ethylene vinyl acetate, aka hot glue.

Hazardous decomposition products:  ACETIC ACID, TOXIC AND IRRITATING FUMES AT TEMPERATURES >204 °C.

Hmmm.  So I looked some more.  Hot glue melts between 250-380 degrees.  Easily hot enough to release bad fumes.  No other major red flags, but enough there to make me not want to use it with a classroom of kids without some good ventilation.  (And that’s ignoring the fact that it is hotter than boiling water and I don’t want anybody burning themselves.)

How to find them?  You can google “MSDS” with the name of the chemical.  ProChem (where we order a lot of the dye lab chemicals) has MSDS for all of their products posted right on their website.  Dharma does too.  End PSA.

Me and Kermit hanging at the Smithsonian.

“I really do believe that all of you are at the beginning of a wonderful journey.  As you start traveling down that road of life, remember this: There are never enough comfort stops. The places you’re going to are never on the map. And once you get that map out, you won’t be able to re-fold it no matter how smart you are.

So forget the map, roll down the windows, and whenever you can pull over and have picnic with a pig. And if you can help it never fly as cargo.”
― Jim Henson

I was supposed to have a class on Thursday but with nobody signed up right now it is looking pretty likely that I will have the evening free and get to go see the Yarn Harlot.  If you are not familiar with Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, you should go and read a bit of her blog.  It is one of my very favorites.

Wishing a very happy first day of school to all of my student and teacher friends!  Here’s hoping you find your way to all of your classes, everyone learns your name quickly and no one cries.  I will be enjoying my first day of no summer camps in a while.