my little mochi

80's Hair

I signed up for Pinku's hair accessories swap and it instantly brought back memories of making these hair barrettes. When I was 12 they were all the rage, and you weren't one of the cool kids if you didn't have a couple of them in  your hair. I remember going with my mom to Longs Drugs to buy the Goody barrettes and then to Flora-dec to buy the ribbon. I must have made at least a dozen in every possible color combination. Every morning I would spend an outrageous amount of time in front of the mirror trying to pin them just right so my head wouldn't look lopsided. I made these last night just for fun, because unless my swap partner is a pre-teen from the 80's she probably won't have much use for them in her hair.

Postcardpalooza

I had to shut my office door this morning when I opened my emails because of all my squealing and carrying-on. The postcards that are coming in are amazing! I am blown away by the cards I am seeing. I had to call Mr. T because I couldn't contain myself. "Works of art! All of them, works of art!"  And now I'm thinking, why didn't I sneak myself onto everyone's list? :)

I really want to post the album already so everyone can see them, but I don't want to ruin anyone's surprise, so I will wait till next week. But please feel free to post your cards or any cards you received on your sites. The deadline has passed in some parts of the world, but there's still time if you haven't got your cards out yet. Don't forget to take a picture or scan of your cards before you send them out and email it to me so I can add it to the album. Thank you again to everyone who participated, this has been so much fun!

Comes

About a week ago, Hillary posted some great links including one in particular that really intrigued me. I did a bit of sleuthing and discovered that the author of the book, "Book of Imaginary Books" ("Hon no Hon" in Japanese) - Junzo Terada produces a whole line of stuff under the name Comes Graphic. Comes has wonderful zakka goodies.

There's also stationary, brooches, calendars, diaries, mugs, fabric and I could go on and on. And I saw over at One Good Bumblebee that now you can use a shopping service if you can't live with out some of this Japanese goodness. However, if you happen to be making a trip to Osaka stop by the Comes store.

Card Carrying Member

Guess what I did last night?!! That's right, I Gocco'd for the first time! It was so much fun and I couldn't believe how easy it was. What was I thinking waiting this long to use this wonderful printing invention? Now I feel like Patrick Swayze has been standing over me for months saying, "Nobody puts Baby in the corner!", except my Gocco is "Baby" and there's no big dance finale. I'm sorry Gocco, I'll never neglect you like that again.

Once I got started I couldn't stop Gocco'ing. After I did my postcards I started Gocco'ing some cardstock, and then napkins, and then envelopes, if it wasn't so late I think I would've tried Gocco'ing Mochi the cat. It was just that amazing! Next I'm going to try doing some t-shirts with the Gocco cloth stamp kit. If you don't have a Gocco, run don't walk to your nearest Gocco selling store and get one for yourself. So, now I really am done with my postcards. No humble pie for me, but apple does sound good.

Postcard Scramble

The postcard swap mailing deadline is quickly approaching and I am so done. I drew up my design weeks ago, figured out how to use my Gocco, printed out my cards and mailed them out to everyone on my list. Ahem, well maybe not...

Eek! I am still not done! Why am I still not done?? I have done nothing but think about my card design for the last couple of weeks and have been congratulating myself for coming up with amazing "conceptual" designs in my head. Hah! Last night when it came time to finally put pen to paper, my brain and my hands would not cooperate and my conceptual ideas remain conceptual. Mr. T has been shaking his head at me saying, 'I can't believe you're not done yet, you're going to be eating humble pie soon."

Well, for those of you like me, we still have a couple days right? The official postmark deadline is Saturday April 30 so that gives me 4 more days. Pictures of completed postcards have been trickling into my email box and I'm in awe of all the wonderful stuff people are making! Don't forget to send me an email of yours when you're done. Thanks!

Not so simple flower

Here's another flower pin. When I saw the pattern and instructions, I thought it would be a snap to make. So last night I sat down and cut out petals from fabric for five different flowers thinking I could get a little flower factory going. Well, my factory should be shut down, and the foreman and workers should be fired, because the five flower quota for the night was not made. When the work end whistle blew at 11 pm this was all that was produced. Perhaps it was because I was out of chocolate and there was no worker incentive?

Five Things

I couldn't come up with a way to tie this post together so I'm just going to call it "Five things". And they're all craft related I promise:

1) I bought these wonderful fabrics (click for larger pic) when I snuck off to the fabric store on Saturday (don't tell Mr. T). I would have bought more but the power went off in the store and I took it as a sign it was time to go.

The middle one has the cutest little mice and it says "eek!" in teeny tiny letters. And I love the two farm prints, I think they are both from the Ollie and Me line from Monarch Fabrics and if you go to their site there are a ton of free downloadable quilt patterns.

2) A couple weeks back I did a mini felt trade with Amy and lookey what I got!

A sweet little felt needle case (much needed and appreciated) and my very first "hit" of 100% pure wool felt! This is the strong stuff, nothing squeaky about it! Thanks Amy, I love it!

3 & 4) A knitted hat for my birthday from my crafty cousin Amy (another amazing Amy) and a Japanese craft book (ISBN 4-8347-2244-9) that Amanda had that I've been wanting to buy for weeks.

Amanda was so nice to let me sneak preview a pattern from the book, thanks Amanda! It was so cute that I had to get a copy for myself. And check out the cute cute itty-bitty bunnies Amanda made from it. I'm working on a panda doll from the same pattern and it really is itty-bitty.

5) And lest you think I haven't been doing much actual crafting lately, here is a bag and matching tissue holder I made as part of a trade for Hannah.

There that's five! I also finished my design for the post card swap and another bag I've been working on last night so maybe that's seven? Now I just need to get some cardstock.

Happy Manapua

On Saturday I ran down to Chinatown to my favorite manapua shop, Royal Kitchen. Manapua, or char siu bao in Chinese, are meat filled pastries that are very popular in Hawaii. There are manapua shops all over the island, and you buy a box of manapua the way you buy a box of doughnuts from a bakery. The reason I love Royal Kitchen is because they sell baked, not steamed, manapua and they are one of the few shops that sell manapua with vegetarian fillings.

But probably the real reason I love Royal Kitchen is because of the happy face stamp they put on the vegetarian manapua. Who doesn't love food that smiles at you while you eat it?

Here's the legend they stamp on the top of the box:

Maminka

I have been ogling the wonderful stuff over at Maminka for quite a while now and finally decided I could not go a day longer with out having some Maminka of my very own. So using my rusty Japanese, I contacted Uehara-san and was able to order these amazingly cute postcards and buttons!

Uehara-san is a woman after my own heart. She paints, makes adorable stuffies and tole paints the most wonderful creations. Check out her doll gallery, her dolls are too cute for words! Oh, and she does tile work too! Thank you Uehara-san!

Start Swapping!

By now you should have received an email from me with the information of your 10 swap partners. Last night was a blur of flow charts, graphs, algorithms, chanting and lots of chocolate as I put together the swap partner lists. It  was a lot more involved than I thought it would be, but in the end I think everyone should end up with a nice mix of postcards coming your way from all around the globe!

So if you haven't already checked your email, go check um' ! And if you don't see an email from me with your swap partner information, please email me and I will resend. I've also created a separate site for the FAQ, guidelines, and details for the swap here.

I've really enjoyed putting this swap together. Judging by your blogs and emails, you are all really creative super women and I'm sure your postcards will reflect this. The swap is now out of my hands, so please get your postcards out and on time! Remember postmark your cards by April 30th, 2005. And thanks again to the wonderful Tania for so generously making the sweet sweet button for the swap!

Now back to our regularly scheduled crafting.