Lessons Learned and all that other craft: Part I

Lesson 1: Good looking pictures are hard work!

Last night I spent lots of hours taking pictures.  I bought a nifty light box setup and realized, I just don't have enough light.  Period.  Surprisingly, I also learned that the pictures looked a whole lot better on the computer than on the camera.  Good to know.  Here's a few....

 

Lesson 2: Ruffles are easy to apply to a circle skirt that is not yet seamed all the way up the back.

I spent hours cursing about putting ruffles on my can-can skirt. Even now, I only have 4 rows completed. The realization struck me at work, sewing flat would have been a bazillion times easier! Next time I have to do lots of ruffles, I will not finish the seam and sew flat.

There's so much to learn and I know I'll have more.  Here's the first two though!  Stay tuned as I learn.

Absentee Landord

Seems I am starting a trend.  Starting and then waiting a few months to post again.  I'll call this being an absentee landlord.  However, I am hoping to rectify this situation!  I will apologize for the quality of the pictures, they are from my phone.

January was a month o' crafts.  Maybe not all that productive in the craft creation, but certainly in the acquisition realm it was!  First weekend was a nice relaxing one.  I decided to go to a bead show hosted by the Baltimore Bead Society.  I was pleasantly surprised!  Not only were there plenty of fun shinies, but there were some really good quality jewelry makers.  Including a bunch who sold kits!  What a great way to learn a new craft, a small project with all the pieces!

Here's one kit, called a Halloween Dragonfly!

 This is my completed dragonfly.  I was a little unhappy with the quality, but probably just need some practice!

 

 

 Next my wonderful father delivered the sewing table he made for me!  It's a wonderfully cherry behemoth! Look at this glorious beast!

This is the cabinet closed.

This is the cabinet open!

Do you see that?  It's huge and made of glorious Pennsylvania cherry!  There's tons of drawers with room for my sewing machine and serger.  But, do you see the best part?  There's a hydraulic lift!  It is set to lock in two positions, one for my machine bed to be flush with the table and one for the machine to sit right on top of the table.  This just makes me happy.

I signed up for another class at the Patuxent Lapidary Guild (it's like an addiction to try all the stuff they have).  I'm learning to fling hot metal into a mold, aka casting.  This was a two part class and we made two rings in Argentium silver.  My first ring didn't turn out well, I have to quite a bit of clean up to do.  We are guessing the investment set up faster than it could make it all the way around the wax.  This caused some really funky problems.  The other ring was nice, the band needs some smoothing.  I'll post pictures later.

Final pieces of creativeness for January are working on pieces for the Patuxent Lapidary Guild sale in February and working on my Wicked Faire costumer.  First up is the jewelry (mostly cause there's pretty pictures).  I didn't end up making much really, but was I stressed out because of it.  Is it bad when your hobbies stress you out?

This is a test run of a wrap for a glass pendant made by one of the Guild members.  

I can't figure out the bail.

I call this Victorian Fire.

Finally, I've been trying to work on my Wicked Faire costume.  Part of it was practicing ruffling on my serger, which works GREAT for lighter fabric, but SUCKS for my heavy fabric

See, it looks great.  Not so with the other fabric.

I also made the bodice, but apparently did something wrong with the lining.  It was all puckered wrong.  I'm contemplating doing a rolled hem on it and just calling it a day.  I'll have to do a test run to see how it looks.

Well, if you made it this way, I'm impressed!  Hope to talk to you sooner than a month!

2011: A Look Back

2011 was a year of "Meh".  Nothing really stands out as super exciting or super heinous.  Though the last two months did drag down the rest of the year to "Not great."  Some highlights of the year, I learned to chainmail, I learned silver filigree and soldering, I learned wire wrapping and all sorts of cool tricks with that.  I also learned how to make copper cuffs and how very much I hated it the whole time.  I helped the Patuxent Lapidary Guild sell during our holiday sales.  I made my first sales (two specifically).  Finally, I started my Etsy shop.  Lot's of learning, but not so much being productive.

The last two months of 2011 were a mixed bag.  We made a surprising discovery that I was pregnant, surprising for the fact that there was trying at some level for the past 3 years.  This was right before Thanksgiving and really boosted the month of November.  It was exciting and very very scary.  I was constantly nauseous, but had to eat all the time or I'd get even more nauseous.  December held the first sonogram and the crappy news of the year.  There would be no baby, it had not developed and I was going to have a miscarriage (if you saw/read Marley and Me, it was the same news they received).  It was a sad moment, but I didn't get depressed (which is a triumph on its own).  I understand it can happen, the hardest part was losing the idea of having a kid.  Physically, the miscarriage sucked.  It was very unpleasant and I hope never ever to go through it again.  The thing that bothered me the most was having to tell the people we told about the pregnancy that it was no more.  I was completely embarrassed we had said anything in the first place.  Rational?  Probably, not, but it was certainly not something I wanted to tell them in person or on the phone.  E-mail was my friend. 

So, what's in the year ahead?  I'm looking forward to making more time for my crafts.  I have two sewing projects in the works for Wicked.  One is a steam punk/victorian costume, the pattern is by Simplicity.  The other is a Can-Can Skirt from Truly Victorian.  I've purchased my first ever corsets to go along with these.  I hope they turn out well.  In addition, January holds another sewing day, which I love because I always learn something during these! I'd also like to grow my jewelry making abilities.  I have a class on casting coming up and another on PMC.  So I'll be learning more.  I'd also like to work on my design of wire wrapped stuffs.  I find I get stuck in a particular type of wrap.  Which really limits.  There will be lots of surfing for ideas in my future.

Certainly, not a pretty picture post, but I'm really hoping to get better about documenting my crafting efforts!

Welcome to the Verse!

Hi!  I'm DivergentCrafts, aka Karina. Since I found blogging I've gone through a couple identities.  Each matched my obsession at the given time.  So, why is this different? Maybe it's not, but, let's get started.

The ONE thing I'm looking for in this blog is to get feedback.  I'm building my crafting repertoire and would really like to hear from those who read it (even if it's just my mom) what they think of my projects.  Honest opinions!  Hate it?  Say so, but tell me why.  Love it? What do you like?  What could be improved?  Better colors?  Better materials? 

Knitting.....is the gateway craft.  I started knitting about 8 years ago.  The obsession built slowly, unlike my yarn collection.  I find it very relaxing, but I'm the worlds slowest knitter...if there was a category for that.

Next, came sewing.  I tried to learn back when I was a kid and HATED it. But last year (or maybe it was two years ago), I decided I wanted to  make some stuff to fit me.  I started on my own and then joined a friend taking lessons from a seamstress.  After making a costume for Wicked Faire 2011, I was hooked.  Once I get my craft area set up in the new house, my sewing machine will be running again!

Then, a few months ago, I found a class at a local Lapidary guild about rubber ring chain mail!  I was excited to take this and it was the kick I needed to start looking into making jewelry.  I took the class with a friend and both of us now "ooh" and "aaah" over pretty colored metal and rubber rings.

Finally, I'm taking on the adventure of learning to wire wrap.  I found an excellent book that teaches the more structured form of wrapping.  At least that's what I consider it.  In addition, I'm teaching myself (with the help of the internet) a more free form version of wire wrapping.

So, that's all my crafts for now. I'm sure there will be more.  I very much want to post my process and thoughts, hopefully you all enjoy!