Missbeecrafty’s latest crafty finds

I love me a good craft book. Sometimes I take them home just to drool over, and sometimes I actually make some of the things! In the last couple of months, I’ve found some really wonderful craft books, and I just had to share. Maybe you’ll find something to make too!

First up, is Felt Wee Folk by Salley Mavor. This book is full of adorable little figurines, with the sweetest faces, little acorn cup hats, and beautiful felt clothes. I really wanted to make some fairies for the Christmas Tree, and a Nativity, and maybe a winter scene, too. I found it before Christmas, and I really would have made some if I hadn’t discovered book number two just a week later…

Book number two is Happy Quilts! by Antonie Alexander. This book looked so bright and fun I couldn’t resist bringing it home, and as I pored over the cute projects, I realised that here was the perfect inspiration for the Young Lad’s homemade Christmas present. Even though this is a book of quilts, I didn’t make him a quilt (remember I took this book out just before Christmas, even I wouldn’t contemplate making a whole quilt with just three weeks to do it. I may be good, but I’m not that good!)

I thought about one of the soft toys, but the Young Lad has just turned eight, and I wasn’t sure how well a rag-doll would go down, even if it was a superhero rag-doll.  So I decided to use one of the robot quilt blocks, and make him a cushion. I had a lot of fun choosing colourful fabrics from my stash, and was really pleased that the only things I ended up buying was background fabric and buttons. The huge grin on his face, and the bear hug he gave the cushion when he opened it told me I’d chosen just the right thing to make!

The last book I want to tell you about is Wedding Jewelry by Sian Hamilton. I spied this book on the new books shelf and couldn’t stop myself from picking it up and flicking through. See, my little brother is getting married this year, and I want to make something for his fiancée. Even though the brides in the book all have rather pained expressions on their faces — according to Miss Missy, several of them look like they’ve just noticed bird poo on their shoulder — the instructions are really clear, and there are lots of interesting techniques. When I showed the book to my future SIL, we came up with a plan for me to make a beaded hair comb, and I’m really excited about getting started on it!

Have you discovered any great crafting books lately? If so, please tell me your finds!

Off the Shelf (4)

As followers of our blog will know, voracious reader Robyn has been sharing with us on a regular basis the titles that she has been adding to her For Later shelf. Here are some more titles that have recently graduated to her Completed shelf.

Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry

This truly is a beauty. The pieces are breath-taking but the very best thing about it is the chance to read about  women as designers and makers as well as consumers.

Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears by Thomas Dixon

Who knew that the British are actually quite emotional? Not me until I read this book. Turns out they’ve been giving free reign to their lachrymose tendencies for centuries, with a bit of time off for a more martial approach between 1870 and 1945. It’s full of fascinating facts such as Queen Elizabeth II crying in public (more accurately dabbing at the corners of her eyes) for the first time at the age of 71, when the royal yacht Britannia was  decommissioned . The author is the director of the Centre for the History of the Emotions at Queen Mary University of London so he knows what he’s talking about.

Industrial Vintage Interiors by Maria Eugenia Silva

A biggie and almost a beauty, this is probably one for the true enthusiasts who can pore over page after page of metal stools. It’s a world where your cat has to be grey to (mono) tone in with your colour scheme.

UFOs of the crafty kind

UFOs. How they do vex me! Don’t worry, I’m not one of those “I want to believe” people who sit around with tinfoil hats on their heads. I’m talking about crafting UFOs. Un-Finished Objects. You know, those projects you start with a hiss and a roar and all sorts of good intentions, but just never seem to get finished. After a lifetime of crafting, I’ve got a dossier full of them, let me tell you, and they “fool and confound me”* just like the flying saucer kind.

I promised myself a while ago not to start any new projects until I’d finished my UFOs. And I have been diligently working on the quilt for The Young Lad — I’d intended to have it made in time for his move from cot to big-boy-bed, but that was three years ago, and I’m still not half way done. But as for the clothes for myself, or the cushions and curtains for my sewing room… well, lets not even go there… And then, after making myself that promise, you know what I went and did? Only promised Grandpa a pair of hand-knitted socks for his birthday — which was in February, so they are rapidly becoming UFOs themselves.

BUT the library Gods smiled on me recently when Seed Bead Chic fell into my hands and gave me the inspiration I needed to finish a UFO that had been dogging my life for, oh, only about ten years already! This project was a necklace for a dear friend of mine. Not only did I keep changing my mind about what to use for the pendant, whenever I tried to work on it, nothing turned out at all the way I wanted it to, and I threw it aside in disgust.

Finally, it is a UFO no-longer. I actually, really and truly finished it! I even took a picture to prove it! What do you think?

I like it so much, I’m even thinking I’d like one myself. (Uh oh. Is that the sound of another UFO approaching?)

* To paraphrase Kevin D. Randle author of The UFO Dossier

Beauties

The lucky library crew who get to select the big books on the important things in life like clothes and  jewellery have been excelling themselves lately. Some true beauties have come through and I have been having a good guzzle of their gorgeousness. I hope there will always be books like this; books that you are excited to see, to hold  in your hands and feel their satisfying heft, to turn their pages looking at them really, really closely.

So you didn’t get to see the show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute – Schiaparelli and Prada: Imposssible Conversations is almost as good as being there.  Judith Thurman’s introductory essay is everything we expect after reading her in The New Yorker; really good writing about clothes, the people who make them and the people who wear them.  Then there are the photographs and the cunning little postcard-sized inserts of the imaginary conversations between these two Italian designers.

The New Jewelers has 800 illustrations of  “desirable, collectable, contemporary”  jewelery – enough to set off tragic dreams of winning Lotto or giving up coffee for the next twenty years to afford one of these pieces.

Coming into fashion: A Century of Photography at Conde Nast is a book of photographs of some of the most beautiful clothes from the last hundred years worn by some of the most beautiful women in some of the most preposterous poses. My standout is a model in a maillot standing on a beach holding a kangaroo by the paw.

Vogue:The editor’s eye gives an insight into the women who came up with these mad ideas. The women who said “let’s take Richard Avedon   and a bunch of models to Japan for five weeks for one photo shoot”.

The budgets may have shrunk since 1947 but the creativity hasn’t – just look at the Grace Coddington chapter.

Hollywood Costume is a celebration of 100 years of clothes in film and how they help create the identity of the characters who wear them. All the familiar images are here; Audrey Hepburn wearing Givenchy in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Vivien Leigh swathed in “Miz Ellen’s poteers” in Gone With the Wind and Elizabeth Taylor spectacularly historically incorrect in Cleopatra. Sometimes the words in books like this seem to be merely space fillers between the photographs but the essays here are really interesting – Meryl Streep describes herself as “a real pain in the ass for every costume designer” because she took her degree in costume design and wrote her thesis on it.

What’s your favourite big beautiful book?

Carter’s Price Guide to Antiques… and home of pretty shiny things!

I don’t consider myself to be a materialistic person, nor do I have expensive tastes. That is probably just as well as, despite a “higher” education, I have not found a pot of gold at the end of the “user pays” rainbow; in fact, it was more a cesspit of student debt that I am still paying back in my thirties! But I digress….

What has led me to despair at my own poverty was playing with a new electronic resource – Carter’s Price Guide to Antiques.  Amongst the colourful online pages of antiques and collectables are whole sections devoted to antique jewellery. What stories these pieces could tell! How did a “Georgian enamel and seed pearl mourning ring from the late 18th century” ever make it to Sotheby’s Australia? Why was an “Art Deco 18ct white gold necklace with a centrally oval solid white opal” sold at auction rather than being placed by some handsome Mr Darcy type of a man around my neck? Could it be the $AUD 7,000 that it sold for?

Most of my possessions are old and second-hand, so maybe if I look through this site I may spot something worth selling? Something that I could sell so I could get just one glittering jewel around my neck or on my finger? It could work for me or you, considering Carter’s is an Australian product with plenty of New Zealand content. Time to sort through dusty boxes and see if you can trade up to pretty shiny things!

You can use this online resource and another like minded one, Price it! through the library catalogue and at the Source using your library card number and PIN. Enjoy your fossicking!