Future Hits Flags

Okay, I know.  Enough with the flags.  This will be my last flag post for a while.  When I was at the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago a member of the Chicago based band Future Hits saw my flags and told me it was exactly what they were looking for as a sign for the band.  I was happy to oblige with a custom flag order.  Future Hits makes educational kid friendly songs.  They imbed creativity and culture into the classroom with fuzzy, poppy tunes that have spelling words, literacy themes, and social emotional learning outcomes engrained in the lyrics.  Give them a listen!

He wanted the flags to emulate the practice paper you use when learning to write.  He also wanted to have the letters written in cursive since cursive is being left in the dust and he wants to bring it back to the spotlight!  I really had to step up my cursive game since I probably haven't written in cursive since 5th grade when we were required to write papers by hand in cursive (kill me).  And signing your name doesn't count.

A really fun element that he wanted to add to the flags was to make the consonants and the vowels different colors so you could tell them apart and even by just looking at the flag you are LEARNING!! I made them all different shapes and sizes so they looked more mix and match-y and playful.  I even made a 'space' flag to avoid confusion with letter spacing since futurehits is not a word.  I even made it a different color so it would look different and also to not confuse it with a consonant/vowel because it is neither.

I added tabs on the flags so they would be able to easily hang them up and take them down for a show. It also makes them hang really even and looks like the flags could connect which I like a lot.

Total win! I can't wait for them to hang them up for their next show!  I hope they send me a picture.

Pop of Color/Vintage Feeling Treasuries

I get emails from Etsy every week that feature specific categories of items or new shops.  I'm always amazed that there are STILL new people making shops and joining etsy.  I can't even fathom how many people are on there selling handmade and vintage goods.  While of course everything won't be the best, coolest, or most well made items I certainly like digging through the listings to find the real gems.  I made two treasuries of some sweet stuff I found from some really cool shops so check it out!

I just love this little guy!  Too bad I don't eat mustard.

For the second treasury I was inspired by items with a more vintage feel even if the actual items weren't vintage:

 Some real winners in this list How cute is this little boy teapot?

And this Humpty Dumpty cardboard chip container? How has this not been snatched up yet?

Nautical Flag A-Z

I made some new flags.  Last time when I made flags for the Renegade Craft Fair Chicago everyone kept asking me what letters the flags stood for.  And while some of them were the correct letters, others I just made up because they looked cool.  This time I focused more on making actual letters so people could get their initials or spell out things but also tried to use a variety of colors instead of sticking with the original nautical flag colors.  They will be available at New York Comic Con October 11-14 at booth # 3211 in The BLOCK.

I also got some tags to use on the backs:

There are a LOT of flags and I attached a tag to each onto say what letter it stood for.

They look pretty sweet all stacked up, makes me think of The Princess and the Pea and makes me wish I were tiny so I could take a nap atop all of the flags.

I did a little print out drawing to show all of the letters and what they stand for because people were also asking me this a lot and I had to stall as I awkwardly looked it up on my phone every time.

What would your name look like spelled out?

Bears, Bears, Bears

After doing the concentric circle tutorial and all of those flags I wanted to apply the concentric circle technique in other applications.  It's fun to do sewn circles on a flat surface/object but it gets even more exciting when you take it to three dimensional elements.  Since I made the one patterned bear I've wanted to make more teddy bears but always put it off... until now!!!

I wanted to do different color bears; some a bit more neutral with pops of color in a coordinating fabric used in details on the bear while also using the sewn circles technique.

I was really excited to use one of my new patterns which I haven't even shown anyone! Surprise!!  I think it went really well with the brown linen bear.  I'll be using this fabric in other exciting products coming out this fall.

Work in progress

Detail shot

The circle on the white bear ended up looking a little bit like the Obama O which I totally didn't plan.  I guess I'm making topical crafts now (lol).

All of the bears hanging out on the couch!

All of the bears are available at Mokuyobi Threads and Zipper Teeth Etsy