Engagement!

Well, as some of you know, in February of this year John (the man I've been seeing for nearly five years now) proposed.  This statement does not do it justice.  I said yes (!) and so began our engagement.  Now, being crafty, I use this fact as another reason to be creative.  Recently, I put together a scrapbook for my future mother in law.  Scrapbooking is not one of the crafts I have much experience with, so I found it somewhat overwhelming.  I went to a cute little scrapbooking store in the same building as my studio space.  The Crop Shop is a little shop run by a very nice woman who was extremely helpful.  She put me at ease about the whole experience and I left with a kit for making an engagement themed scrapbook.  (Actually she is in the process of moving to a new street level space in the same building!)
My favorite part of this scrapbook is a decoupage wedding couple I put on the last page.

I made them from pieces cut out of magazines and made them to resemble us.  I love the way the wedding dress came out and I just hope my real dress is as elegant.

A close friend of mine, Jenn, took the pictures at the Highline Park in Chelsea.  I love them so much and my scrapbook is better consequentially.

Time Off

Well, I've been taking a break, but that doesn't mean I've been idle.  I have several things to share with you in the near future,  I'm just not ready to share them yet.

But here's a little sneak peak:

I've started my New York Comic Convention costume! Last year, I saw such awesome costumes, like this one, of my favorite sexy pilot:

This year, I am working on my own costume.  It starts with coveralls like these ones,

but that's all the hint you get.

Cards

When I was a kid, my dad had printing presses in the basement that he made all sorts of things on.  For example, he printed postcard announcements for all the seniors in town every month for their potluck lunch.  When I was about 12 he started making me business cards for babysitting, pet sitting, and pretty much every other odd job I could think of.  While those cards surely have sentimental value and a certain personal touch, when I decided to get some new cards, I thought maybe I would go with a professional company.  A friend told me about moo.com and I after some investigating, I bought a pack of cards.
I could not be more pleased with the result as many of you surely know.  I've been giving them out like candy.  The great thing about moo is that you can put your own images on the backs of the cards, which gave me yet another opportunity to display my crafts.  I chose 20 images and had 100 mini cards printed.  It's great!  Instead of just handing someone my card, I can let them choose for themselves from all my designs, and I know that when they get home they will want to follow up with me because of the cool experience they had getting my card.

The cards arrived in a neat little carrying box.

In case you can't read that, the asterisk says "OPEN THEM QUICK".  I feel like the box has the same enthusiasm for the cards as I have.

They look so elegant all lined up in the box.

The twenty images I chose reflect my current offerings, and I only got 100 cards, so when I add new crafts to my repertoire I can get new cards.  This way I won't be stuck with old designs for years.

I hope you are inspired by my experience, and I can't wait to put a card in your hand!

Pillow! (Part 2)

Hopefully everyone has seen and loves my pillows.  I certainly do, they bring a bit of sophistication to my bedroom and quite frankly make me grin every time I see them.  I've been working on some more and I have one complete to show you.

I found this rich red fabric at my favorite fabric store (Halsey Fabrics on Halsey Street in Newark NJ)  and fell in love immediately.  The combination of red and blue first occurred to me as a reference to autumn colors, but the completed project makes me think of dragon scales.

Or maybe that  is being 700 pages into A Dance with Dragons (which is great by the way).
Either way, I'm in love with my new completed pillow, but not so in love that it won't be available very soon on my etsy shop.

Also, send me a welcome shout-out on twitter.  I just got an account for the first time.  GriffinDryGoods.

New Success

A few months ago I got the idea to try out making a sourdough starter.  My fiance loves sourdough and, being a bread baker, I thought it should be easy and fun to make my own.  I was wrong.  My starter blew up and smelled awful.  It made a huge mess and I know that every bread book I have read and every person I've talked to says that sourdough is tough and if your starter doesn't work, you should just keep trying.  Unfortunately, when an attempt fails to the extent this one did, I feel disinclined to try again.  Luckily, I have a friend who makes fantastic sourdough.  While I was visiting in Oregon recently, my friend Nat showed me how he makes sourdough, and it is good.  He suggested I use a technique to start my sourdough I had never heard of.  Instead of using water in the starter, you use pineapple juice and it adjusts the pH to the ideal conditions for wild yeast.  I did some internet research and found a recipe I liked.  I used rye flour to begin with in the starter, and changed over to white flour after about a week.  I've been baking sourdough for several weeks now and every loaf is better than the last.

So my advice to you is if there is something you've been wishing you could do, try again, you just might end up with a delicious success.

The cake is (not) a lie

So this weekend was Fathers' Day, maybe you noticed.  Anyway, in honor of my Dad (see previous post), I made a cake.

When I was about 12, I started discovering boxes of cake mix at my place at the table when my father wanted cake.  He thought it was subtle.  Anyway, I started with those mixes (powder, water, oil, eggs) and a pot of duncan hines icing.
Since then, my cakes have gotten more complicated.  I worked in a professional bakery for almost a year in Ohio, and that honed my decorating skills.  One thing I had never done was a genuine Swiss Meringue  Buttercream from scratch, and so, that became my project for the weekend.  I found a great tutorial on Sweetapolita.  It worked wonderfully.  I made mine chocolate buttercream by adding ghiardelli to it, and put it on a beautiful vanilla yellow cake.

I didn't have any vanilla extract (sign of an over-vigorous baker) having run out a few days ago making cookies, so I had to pull out the vanilla beans (of which I had two).  I scraped them and added them to the cake batter, making the richest, vanilla-y cake I had ever had.  It also makes for a nice color texture when I cut the cake.

Thanks Sweetapolita!

I love old things

It all started with my dad.  Here he is in 1948:

Growing up with his stories, his lifestyle, I couldn't help but discover an appreciation for the way things used to be built.  He worked for the Singer sewing machine company for forty years, but he had been retired at least 10 years before I was born.  He loved everything Singer.  We had an old one when I was a kid that my mother still uses.  My father knew the ups and downs of that machine, and every machine Singer built while he worked there.  When I got a traveling machine from the 1950s, he looked it over for me.

It is because of him I find myself drawn to all sorts of vintage items.

A toy singer that was my mother's

My friend Karl's typewriter

So Happy Fathers' Day, Dad.
I love old things.  That means I love you.