Archive for February, 2010
I always love seeing what our students and customers do with the skills and products they pick up here at the shop. One of the most rewarding classes in this regard has been Elinor Nissley‘s Hand-Carved Stamps class.
One of our former students, Tracy, used her newfound stamp-carving skills to create these beautifully designed tee-shirts. The proceeds from each shirt go directly to non-profit organizations helping with the devastation in Haiti.
The shirts will be up for sale on Velvet soon, and Tracy promises to keep everyone posted. (Don’t you love that she stamped up some hangtags too?)
Please join us this Saturday for Round #2 of our new monthly bake sale initiative, entitled Bark at the Spoon! From 11am – 7pm we’ll be offering up all kinds of delicious home-baked treats, all to benefit The Mutt Scouts, a wonderful Los Angeles animal rescue organization. There were some truly tasty items available last month and it looks like this week’s sale will be just as amazing. We’ll have Nigella Lawson’s Chocolate-Guinness Cake available by the slice, The Barefoot Contessa’s PB+J bars, cupcakes of all kinds, cookies, and more. The sale lasts all day (or until we run out) so come on down!
If anyone reading this would like to volunteer to help at the sale, we could use folks to hang out and help price items and check people out. If this is you, leave a comment or send an e-mail letting us know when you’re available.
Feel free to re-post this info, or click here to print out a flyer to hang at your work or fave coffee shop. Thanks everyone!
I always get embarrassingly eager and overly excited when I sell knitting supplies to a guy, or teach a man to sew in one of our classes. It’s just so refreshing to see men embrace their creativity without worrying about treading in areas traditionally considered to be all womanly-like. So naturally I’m psyched to see this new (to me!) blog pop up called Man Made: Creativity and the Handmade Life for the Postmodern Male. Really, really loving the content as well as the design. Awesome job, dudes! (And get a load of the killer poster they designed above, available as a downloadable PDF on their site. Totally printing one of these out to hang at the shop.)
Hand-Carved Stamps is a fairly new class in our roster. We’ve done two sessions so far and it has proven so popular we’ve had to add a third one in March. With results like the ones pictured in this post, it’s pretty easy to understand why! The instructor, Elinor Nissley of Krank Press, shows students how to create their own rubber stamps using X-Acto knives and linoleum cutters, and shares advice and examples regarding different stamping techniques and how to utilize them. Students practice stamping fabric and paper, manila gift tags, whatever they like.
I’ve fallen hard for these two examples from the latest session– which happened to be packed with three fellow Home Ec. instructors who wanted to experiment with ways to incorporate stamping into their own work(s). The top photo from our garment sewing teacher Christine Haynes is a gorgeous example of how to create use simple shapes to create impressive all-over patterns. I can’t wait to see how she incorporates stamped fabric into her clothing designs! The bottom pic, from our amigurumi teacher Cheryl Cambras, perfectly illustrates the beauty of stamping– I love the varied opacity of the flower petals, which gives the fabric real dimension.
Awesome work, everyone! To see more photos from this class and others, check out the Home Ec. Flickr pool.