Tag: craft

Upcoming Exhibition + P.O.S.T Event!

We are excited to be participating in Philadelphia Open Studio Tours again this year! We have some fun things that we have cooked up for you on October 3rd all day at Art Star (11-7pm)

1. Opening of “Tastes Like Broken Dreams” a solo show by Brooklyn based painter, Mauro Baiocco.

Mauro’s first solo exhibition at Art Star will feature a charming array of “Naughty but Nice” animal portraits. Yeah they may look cute and innocent on the surface but these cuddly animals have issues. The show will feature an all new collection of acrylic and ink paintings of Mauro’s cynical and bitter cast of furry friends. We will be celebrating the opening all day long during shop hours. Come ready to day drink with us, as we’ll have a boozy beverage or two to offer guests! Can’t make the opening? No worries, the show will be up in our gallery space through November 22nd.

2. Trunk Show / Make + Take with Christie Sommers of West Oak Design

Art Star artist and regular blog contributor, Christie Sommers of West Oak Design will be set up with a collection of her latest designs for you to shop. She will also be providing a FREE DIY Stamp Make + Take all day long!

Guests can make a wood block stamp perfect for hand printing fabric, or creating your own stationary. Cut your desired shape out of foam sheets and mount to wood blocks. A variety of paper + stamp pads will be on hand for testing out your creation. Christie will provide instructions and everything you need to make your own one-of-a-kind stamp that you can take home for free!

No registration is required. Just come on by and get to craftin’! Did I mention boozy day drinks?

3. Pop Up Studio with illustrator, Julia Lemyre
If you have stopped by our shop on a Saturday this summer, chances are you met our employee, Julia! Well, she is not only a super awesome shop helper, she is also an incredibly talented illustrator. She will be bringing along a selection of her original works and prints for you to peruse and shop.

Like I said, all this is FREE to attend and no registration is required. Bring some friends and come hang out with us! We will be open from 11-7 and can’t wait to see you!

September 8, 2015
Make This: Avocado Seed Pendant

Photos and Tutorial by Christie Sommers

If your household goes through as many avocados as mine, you may have thought “there must be something I can do with all these pits!” (cue exasperated infomercial actor). Well there is! In fact there are a few things you can can do with them. I will walk you through two options over the course of this,and my next, tutorial for Art Star. In this tutorial, I will show you how to make a hand carved pendant, and later this month I will show you one way to turn the carving scraps and pit skins into a natural dye. So save those scraps!

You will need:

*Hass avocado pits (at least two)

*Xacto blade or other carving tools. No experience necessary! I have no “official” carving training aside from a brief period of self taught printmaking. Just proceed with caution, these tools are sharp! You can get creative with items in your kitchen or toolbox. Use a Phillips head screwdriver for “x” shapes, metal skewers for dots, drag a fork for perfectly spaced lines…. you get the idea.

*a drill or Dremel for making holes

*a length of rope or string from which to hang your pendant (I used waxed cotton cord, hemp works well too)

You will need to allow your your seeds to dry out for at least 3 days before carving. No more than around 2 weeks or they will shrivel up and solidify, making them very difficult to carve.

Avocado seeds are dicots. Simply put, they are in two parts. You need to find the natural split that separates the two sides. If you don’t split them prior to carving, they will split on their own later.. most likely straight through your nice design. I learned this one the hard way.

After your seed has dried for a few days, peel the outer layer of skin away and set skin aside.

Pinch the seed between your thumb and forefinger until the natural split begins to appear.

You may need to stick a flat head screwdriver into the split to pry them apart, otherwise just get a finger in there to separate.

You now have two halves… two potential pendants.

Start by deciding where you would like to drill the hole for your string. Don’t go too close to edge if you want to avoid unwanted cracks.

Drill a hole through the seed being careful not to press too hard, let the drill do the work. Too much pressure may cause the seed to split where you don’t want. You may have to go through a few practice seeds to get a feel for it.

Start carving! You can lightly scratch designs into the seed with a pencil first as a guide.

For this tutorial I carved one pendant with a little mountain landscape, one that was inspired by mud cloth designs, and lastly a pendant with a more simplistic organic shape. I tried to make the drilled hole an intentional part of the design.

String your new pendant onto your rope/string and tie in the back at your desired length.

If you’d like to give your pendant a nice finish, try wiping with a cloth that has been lightly dipped in mineral oil.

Now throw those seed shavings and skins into a ziplock bag and toss them in your freezer until next time when I share a way to turn those scraps into a natural dye.

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Christie Sommers is the designer and maker behind West Oak Design. She handcrafts small batch and one of a kind goods for home, women, and kids in her Wyndmoor, Pa studio.www.westoakdesign.com

July 9, 2015
Make This: Mini Knotted Planter

Tutorial and Photos by Christie Sommers

This mini planter is great for 3″ terracotta pots or even planted votive holders…no candles!!
It makes a great little handmade gift… quick & easy!

You will need:
*scissors
*yard stick or tape measure
*brass ring (can be purchased at AC Moore in the knitting/macrame section…OR you can just use a key ring.
*16 feet of rope. I am using parachute cord in this tutorial but hemp, cotton rope, or even twine works well.
*you will need something to provide resistance as you tie knots. Duct tape, a wall hook, a coat rack. You’ll see what I mean below.

Start by cutting the rope into 4 pieces, each 4′ long

Gather the 4 strands and fold in half.

Tie the rope to the ring with a larks head knot.

Tighten the larks head knot.

Tape down your ring. You will need a bit of resistance when you are tying your knots to simulate the weight of the plant. This will help you to line up your knots properly. You can also use a wall hook or even tie it to your shoe… if you are sitting down;)

Separate the strands into 4 groups of 2 as shown.

Working from left to right, measure down 6″ and tie your first two strands into a knot that falls 6″ from the larks head knot as shown.

Continue from left to right tying knots 6″ from top as shown.

Separate again into 4 as shown

You will now tie together one strand from 1 and one strand from 2
continue with 2 to 3, and then 3 to 4 (tie this row of knots about 3-4″ below the last row of knots)

You will notice that there is one untied strand at the beginning and end (1 and 4)
Tie these two together with the knot lining up with the last round to complete the circle.

Gather all strands again into one hand

Tie into one large knot

Pop a 3″ terracotta pot or any small pot/votive holder into your new knotted planter and enjoy!

PLANTS ONLY! NO FLAMES!
just had to say it….you never know these days;)

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Christie Sommers is the designer and maker behind West Oak Design. She handcrafts small batch and one of a kind goods for home, women, and kids in her Wyndmoor, Pa studio.www.westoakdesign.com

May 29, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor Aaron Powers of New Antlers Illustration

Thanks to both of my parents, I was born as someone with a compulsion in his blood to visually describe the world to others. There was always a story to tell in a meticulously rendered portrait or a quick accidental brush stroke resembling something familiar.

Playing to my strengths, I was focused by my teachers and honed by my years at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s illustration department. After college and the requisite years that a twenty-something guy spends in a van playing music with his friends, a series of events pointed me towards a job in New York City that evolved over years into a position at a better known apparel catalog as a head fashion photo retoucher/compositor. Though grateful for the experience over those years, there came a point where I realized I needed to spend the majority of my time creating rather than concealing. Although it was mildly rewarding to have a god-like command over reality through Photoshop, it felt unnatural to be largely defined by covering the tracks of others so that it seemed as if no work needed to be done in the first place.

Every night I would come home and scrub dried up pixels from my hands and try to squeeze a few minutes of drawing in before sleep takes over and the alarm resets the day. So when the corporate belts started tightening and heads needed to roll, I opted for the fresh air of Central Massachusetts so someone else could have my desk instead of an unemployment check.

It’s been an exciting year since then, from teaching myself the craft of screen printing to publicly displaying my work for the first time. The din of a midtown office has been replaced by the sounds of migrating birds and the echoes of my past professors/peers while considering my compositions.

In addition to my personal work, there have been the opportunities to produce hand-printed gig posters, music packaging, greeting cards, and entire suites of custom wedding invitations as well as the chance to teach youth printing workshops.

I find inspiration in old friends and new strangers, and in the varying levels of connections we all have with nature, technology and each other. These prints are a blend of vectors and gestures, flora and fauna, and the coping with (and preparing for) equal parts of both happiness and loss. Even though my back is sore and the hours are long, it’s now ink I’m washing off my hands every night and it still feels like I’m getting away with something. Thank you for taking a moment to visit the Art Star blog and I look forward to meeting passers-by at the New Antlers booth #54 at this weekend’s Art Star Craft Bazaar.

May 8, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor sPACYcLOUD!

sPACYcLOUd was born in DC, from the mind of designer Tatiana Kolina (AKA Tati) with a focus towards the sui generis spirit that lives in all of us. The ethical core of sPACYcLOUd is built on self expression, love, and positivity. Its visual aesthetic breathes from the world of break dancers, hip hop artists, street artists, skaters, and motorcycle riders. Those whose wardrobe exists in a state of counter-culture, carving through life to the rhythm of their own choosing. sPACYcLOUd reflects political and social currents though clothing, artwork, and attitude.

sPACYcLOUd ‘s jackets are made of custom printed fabric using Tati’s and other artists’ art work. From the choice of commonly overlooked fabrics to the colorfully designed prints displayed on each garment, sPACYcLOUd is a social rebellion of creativity. sPACYcLOUd life and street styles are imbued with movement: biking, skating, evolving, but also creative, rebellious, musical and artistic lifestyles.

Leftover jacket fabrics are used for patches on T-Shirts, string bags, hoodies patches, skirts, and other apparel. No fabric is being wasted. Tati is also using a screen printing technique to design her own collection of skateboards and mini cruisers.

Tati’s journey is a testament to her spirit. Born in the Soviet Union, she was without a mother and father after age 7, she grew up with her grandmother, often times taking care of herself. While a teenager, she joined a number of tusovkas (street groups) to survive. The group which affected her life the most was “farsovshiki.” It was a group of kids, the first wave of black marketers in Soviet Union, who ran around big cities (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kiev, Tallinn, etc.) and traded Levi’s jeans, t-shirts, gum, etc. for matreshkas, black caviar, and KGB paraphernalia with American tourists. Doing her best to avoid the attention of undercover militia and the street mafia, Tati spent time in Russian jail several times for possession of foreign currency and talking to foreigners.

In the Summer of 1990, her life changed dramatically. Meeting an American family in St. Petersburg, she sold them two lacquer boxes with Russian fairy tales depicted on them. Touched, they took her contact information, later sending her an invitation to come to the US. It took some time and convincing before she made one of the biggest decisions of her life.

In January of 1991, she landed in San Francisco with no money, a tiny backpack, and a present for her new family, a cuckoo clock. More important than the room and board she received was the love and support, that echoes in her spirit to this day. One day Tati was moved to ask her host father, “How can I ever pay back for all you have done for me?” His answer was simple, “You pay back by helping others when you have an opportunity.”

The sPACYcLOUd family has been proud to have organized and participated in a number of events and groups that share a spirit of creativity and alacrity. Always with an eye to the future, sPACYcLOUd moves to involve and inspire the younger generation through surf and snowboarding camps, longboarding rides, internships, and skate events. From celebrating local heroes like Maryland Stunt Rider Alonzo and local DC Skater Angelina to BBoy Atomic Goofball, sPACYcLOUd moves to reflect what’s happening now.

Tati launched Skate Girls Tribe after being inspired by Skatistan, realizing that skateboarding, and action sports overall, can be used to build communities and help building confidence in girls, free from the limitations society tries to hinder them with.

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Thank you Tati for sharing your incredible story with us! Shop her collection online here and visit her in booth #50 at this weekend’s Art Star Craft Bazaar at Penn’s Landing Great Plaza!

May 6, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor, S. Casey of Desarc by Susan Casey!

I am so happy to introduce Desarc, and myself to the Art Star Craft Bazaar this year. I’ll be offering jewelry, accent lights, and decorative mirrors for sale. My objective as a designer-maker is to produce useful objects that are attractive, meaningful, and well-made.

I earned my BFA from the Tyler School of Art in 2010, with a concentration in jewelry and metals. The variety of ways I learned to work metal gave me the flexibility to explore object design and craft in many directions. Making functional objects like jewelry gives me a sense of purpose when making creative decisions. I love how jewelry intrinsically deals with concepts of identity. My current line, Resist, is an expression of personal introspection. The balance between the bold and the delicate elements in the collection celebrates feminine strength in an industrial aesthetic.

In addition to jewelry, I have fallen in love with making objects for living spaces. I created the Echoes line of light fixtures (and now mirrors!) years after a summer trip to England where I saw Stonehenge and many other ancient artifacts in London’s museums. Being close to the large monuments, watching the shadow play in and off the slabs of rock, and knowing our ancestors were so compelled to respond to their world, made me feel connected with humanity and craftsmanship in a new way. The Echoes collection is my homage to mankind’s commitment to shape our world like a river though rock.

I cannot wait to see you all on Saturday and Sunday to show you more of my work, but until then you can see behind the scenes photos of my progress on Instagram @desarcbysc or on my Facebook page Desarc by Susan Casey. I also have other lines and more photos of these collections on my website: desarc.carbonmade.com.

Come check me out at booth #69!

May 4, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor Samantha Skelton!

Samantha Skelton Jewelry Design is a one-woman jewelry machine located in Fairview Pennsylvania. I design, create, market and sell all of the work featured in my jewelry collection; however I wasn’t always interested in jewelry. My collection has grown from my love of metal, the form of each element in this collection has been directly influenced by industrial sculptures which I both studied and created.

I studied both graphic design and metalsmithing in undergrad at Edinboro University, choosing to follow metalsmithing into graduate school at Miami University, I focused on large scale copper sculptures. The sculptures I created had an industrial aesthetic and a sense of balance and symmetry, all hand forged and kinetic. Along side my sculptures I found myself making smaller sculptural jewelry, almost as a sketch for larger pieces. It allowed me to play with form in a much faster and more direct way.

Choosing to pursue jewelry full time following graduate school has allowed me to continue connecting form with function. My sculpture and jewelry continue to reflect each other;
I want the wearer to feel the visual impact of the jewelry without being overwhelmed by the physical and visual weight of the metal.

Along with making jewelry and traveling for shows and exhibitions I also teach jewelry workshops at craft schools and universities both locally and internationally.

Visit Samantha Skelton Jewelry in Booth #62 at our Art Star Craft Bazaar on May 9th + 10th and visit her online at http://www.samanthaskelton.com/

May 2, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor, Emiko Shinozaki!

After a lifetime of playing and teaching, I put down my violin for the last time in 2006. I felt I was finished with the musical chapter of my life, but I had always made a living working with my hands. I felt a need to explore what I could do with them next.

An immediate change in life ensued—A program to Italy to study fashion design through Fashion Institute of Technology, Accessories and Jewelry classes upon my return…

It wasn’t until I started working with brass, silver, fire, hammer, file and wax that the instruments of my future began coming to life before my eyes. I had transitioned from the ephemera of musical performance to the permanence of metals, and it was intoxicating. I could hold my creations in my hands. I could wear what I imagined. I was in love again.

Architecture, music as math, chemistry, and symmetry–all my old flames– inexorably find their way into my work. I spend hours soldering and chasing flux through the narrow channels between my hexagons. Days fly by as I work out the kinks of an intricate piece of casting. Every method has its advantages and demands. To cast or not to cast? Precision soldering and cleanup versus casting and yet more cleanup?

Doing things the hard way has its rewards. I handcraft each and every piece of jewelry myself for Emiko Shinozaki Jewelry and I don’t do e-commerce. Why? Because I want each piece to be unique, and I enjoy meeting the people who will ultimately wear my pieces. What that means is that I don’t really have a complete ’system ’ in place for manufacture or distribution. The exciting part is that I’m still learning with each piece I make and every client I come in contact with. I continue my tradition of teaching and learning, this time with family and colleagues, as it’s the best way I know how to enjoy life.

I have an unending attraction to the physical changes that brass undergoes when thousands of degrees hit it. My necklace creations have intrinsic “torch marks” that deepen with age, lending depth and 3-dimensionality to an otherwise humble material. One of my necklaces can have upwards of 100 solder connections, sometimes less, sometimes more. As I’ve expanded my offerings, I’ve found the best 18K gold-platers in NYC and learned to make molds & cast silver with the lost-wax method. Each silver or brass Alt-triangle bracelet is hand formed, filed and finished, taking many careful hours from start to finish.

There are no easy answers but, so far, keeping things fresh makes me very happy. Every method has its advantages and difficulties, but the end result is always gratifying. Mistakes are humbling, yet I’ve also come to appreciate these impromptu lessons. I think I was a pretty good violin teacher… I sometimes see an old student interviewed on TV, image impossibly large on the Times Square Jumbotron…

These days I look at my hands and wonder at what jewelry-making has yet to teach me.

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Visit Emiko Shinozaki and her incredible line of jewelry at the Spring Art Star Craft Bazaar (booth # ) on May 9th and 10th at Penn’s Landing Great Plaza. http://emikoshinozaki.com/

April 29, 2015
Meet New ASCB Vendor, Julia Walther!

Well hello there! I’m Julia Walther and I make pottery in Washington, DC.

My journey with pottery began nearly six years ago during my senior year of college when my ceramics professor told us that clay can do anything, you just have to ask it at the right time. That mix of constraints and possibilities is a large part of why I’m so in love with ceramics.

I throw almost all of my work on the wheel using a porcelaneous stoneware that’s a beautiful creamy color when fired. I then spend most of my time decorating those pieces with slips and colored underglazes and carving back through the layers to reveal the bare clay underneath. In the midst of those decorative choices, I’m constantly surprised by threads of ideas that can lead my work down completely new paths.

The cacti decorations have come out of my appreciation of papercutting, and other folk crafts that use abstracted shapes to convey stories and show evidence of the human hand. I also really enjoy carving out the spikes!

After the glaze firing, I’ll choose a few pieces to which I’ll apply metallic luster accents and do another firing specifically for that. So your pot may have had a trial by fire three times before it ends up in your hands.

I work alongside about twenty artists working at Red Dirt Studio, a repurposed firehouse just outside Washington, DC. I love the community we’ve established through weekly seminar meetings and by sharing the building. It’s easy to accidentally isolate yourself as an artist, so I’m glad to have this flow of interesting people around my studio space.

At the same time, this is also the first instance in my career where I’ve had freedom to call nearly all the shots. I want to spend the precious time I have in the studio actually making work and taking care of my body to prevent injuries from overwork. In the last year, that has meant switching to a commercially produced pre-mixed clay, and changing the firing temperature of my work so I can use electric kilns, which tend to be more compatible with an urban environment. Additionally, for the past three years I’ve been throwing standing up, which will hopefully prevent future back issues related to sitting and leaning forward (the worst possible position for your back!).

Pots are special because they can be both a sculpture and a canvas. I’ve found a lot of joy in scribbling on the surfaces of my pots, freezing the movement of a hand in time. I’m excited about creating those juicy points of interest that ask you to turn the pot in your hands to soak up the details while you eat your meal or admire your flowers or engage with the piece in any other way. The last step of making pottery is getting it into the hands of the user, and that’s where a new adventure begins.

This will be my first year at the Art Star Craft Bazaar, and I’m so looking forward to the show! I’d love it if you stopped on by Booth #59 and said hello.

April 28, 2015
Meet ASCB Vendor Sammi Nguyen of Group Hug Quilts

I’m Sammi Nguyen, the hands and brains of a little operation called Group Hug Quilts. My working process is not always the most photogenic, what with piles of fabric scraps towering ever higher around me and loose threads always getting caught in my hair and stuck to my socks, but I’ve cleaned up my act for a few photos to show you how I make a baby quilt.

For my baby quilts, I most often take my inspiration from animals. I sketch critters in my sketchbook, until I alight on one in just the right attitude for the quilt of the moment. (The rest of this post shows me making an elephant quilt, but this cat sketch was nicer than the elephant sketch.)

My studio is filled with overflowing shelves of fabric, which I source from all four corners of the earth, but especially from New York’s fabric district, which is a short trip by subway from where I live and work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Fabrics are an additional source of inspiration, whether they are solid or patterned, new or vintage. I work almost exclusively with natural fibers like linen, silk, denim, and cotton, with the exception of the occasional too-intriguing-to-pass-up piece of vintage polyester.

After I have chosen a charming member of the animal kingdom, I comb through my fabrics until I settle on a basic color scheme and textures. For this elephant quilt, I chose a muted orange linen for the quilt top and an oatmeal linen for the back and border, feeling that they suggested a dusty savannah environment that would be a suitable home for a leathery pachyderm.

The subtlety of an animal’s shape makes a huge difference to the finished piece, and it often takes a while to get the drawing of the quilt’s subject just right, even if it is a fairly simple silhouette. From the finished drawing, I make pattern pieces out of tracing paper and trace and cut each piece individually, which leads to a lot of subtle variation from quilt to quilt.

While I usually start with a picture in my head and a small thumbnail sketch on paper, each piece really takes shape directly in fabric. This allows me to experiment with the composition of the quilt top and see things closer to how they will look in finished form. During this part of the process, there is a lot of cutting, arranging, pinning, adding bits that don’t work to the scrap bin, resizing, shifting, and more cutting, rearranging, and pinning. It always creates a glorious mess on my studio floor.

Once the composition of the quilt top is finalized, it’s time to sew all the pieces together. I still do all of my sewing on the Viking sewing machine my parents so generously gave to their wannabe fashion designer daughter on her twelfth birthday. This machine is a workhorse, and hasn’t let me down yet, despite all the weird, bulky piles of fabric I send under its needle.

For all of my pictorial pieces, I use a satin stitch, a heavy back and forth stitch that traps and sews down the raw edges of each piece of fabric and adds an important design element in the form of colored outlines. When I first started sewing this way, my work was painfully slow and pretty clunky, with lots of missed stitches and bunched fabrics, but after many years of practice, my stitch work has gotten finer and finer. The technique allows me to forego traditional piecing and applique styles for a more spontaneous collage-like approach to image-making.

When a quilt top is finished, I sandwich it with cotton batting and a solid piece of fabric for backing. To join all three layers together, I quilt freehand on my industrial quilting machine, which lets me move fabric freely underneath the needle, kind of like drawing but in reverse. Being a free-spirited lady, I don’t draw my quilting patterns beforehand; I choose a simple motif, like a flower or a star, and just start sewing, creating a satisfying but not too uniform quilted texture. After quilting, I finish the edges, trim off extra threads, and hand-stitch my initials in the corner.

I know you can’t see the finished quilt very well in this picture, but you can see my beautiful baby nephew enjoying it, and I figured including it in this post wouldn’t hurt my chances of luring you to come see me at Booth #17 at the Bazaar.

April 24, 2015