Update: Congratulations to Jill Browning – her number came up and she is the winner of a free copy of Cathy’s new book.When I was home in Kentucky recently, I of course rummaged around drawers in the kids’ bedrooms at Mom’s house mining for vintage. How about this? An American Pie needlepoint pillow top that I made — yes, me! — circa 1975, I’d guess. Clearly, I did not care much about needlepoint. Not only is the entire canvas askew, I missed stitches at the top, and never bothered to finish the project. I was a macrame girl, and sewed up a blue streak. How about you? Were you crafty when you were young? How about today?
Leave a comment and on Friday afternoon, I’ll random-pick one to win a copy of Cathy Callahan’s new book, Vintage Craft Workshop: Fresh Takes on Twenty-Four Classic Projects from the ’60s and ’70s
, provided courtesy of publisher Chronicle Books. U.S. residents only.
, provided courtesy of publisher Chronicle Books. U.S. residents only.
Vintage Craft Workshop: An interview with Cathy Callahan — Cathy of California 
Anne Taintor talks to us about her new cocktail book… Plus: Win a copy 
A vintage guest book history – Catherine’s entry 
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I used to do a lot of sewing. I made clothing for my children & myself, and curtains for the windows. I made several hand-stitched quilts. When Cabbage Patch kids came out and were so popular, I had a pattern & made about 30 of them to sell. That paid for our Christmas that year, and bought my first microwave, too.
I’ve also made a large dollhouse and needlepointed a little rug for the living room in the mini-mansion.
It’s part of “nesting” I think, wanting to make things with your own hands. I’m not there any more, so the only work-out the sewing machine gets these days is when something needs mending.
You should get your partially finished needlepoint framed, and hang it in your kitchen. Your grandchildren will fight over the darn thing!
oh the memories of sitting in my room for hours taking something and making it something else..who knew it’d now be called upcycling? Mom taught me to crochet and embroider so if I was sitting, hands were often moving. Anyone remember liquid embroidery? painting with a tube — that was a very popular activity in my household, we all loved it — mom, me and 2 of my brothers. You can still buy it today I have found out recently. Dad taught me to sew on an old black Singer, wish I still had it just for memories sake. That darn thing used to trip me up all the time with a difficult tension knob. Then of course, there was constant drawing going on by me, too. Macrame? yup, add that to the list. Wow, until I put it down here, I didn’t realize how much craftiness was going on while growing up.
I enjoyed your interview with her yesterday!
I think I’ve always liked the idea of being crafty, more than actually doing crafts. They’ll seem like a good idea at the time and then I tend to lose steam as the process rolls along. Worse, I tend to be a perfectionist and if I start a sewing project, I’ll drive myself insane trying to finish it in a day, perfectly, because I know if I stop, I won’t start again. My mom was the same way and we always cringed when she brought out the sewing machine because we knew she was going to be up at 3 a.m., muttering to herself. (One time my mom’s sewing frenzy produced this yellow and white gingham checked skirt complete with rickrack edging and a crooked hem. I had to wear it to church the next day. I wore it proudly because my mom had made it and I didn’t have the heart to tell her how awful it was after she’d worked all night on it.) I have material right now to start on a pillow project for the basement, so we’ll see how that goes… I loved the interview with Cathy, by the way. It was fun to read.
I took every art class I could in high school. Macrame was so popular at the time, a course in macrame was offered. I made quite a few cool belts, plant hangers and wall hangings. The piece I liked the most was a combination hanging plant holder / glass end table.
I love Pam’s American Pie needlepoint project! It reminded me of all of the patriotic crafts that were being created in honor of the Bicentennial in 1976. I remember one city wide art project that was so cool, you could adopt a fire hydrant and paint it. Each one was unique and so cute painted in red, white and blue. The great thing is they still exist today, wonder if anyone else remembers why we have so many unique fire hydrants in Albuquerque, NM?
We painted fire hydrants in Mesa, AZ as well.
When I was a kid I was so much better with handwork! I learned how to crochet at the age of 10 and used to crochet little pouch necklaces to carry my rock collection in. I also used to do cross stitching! I have NO idea how I got into it, I think my mom bought a grab bag of sorts which included a cross stitching kit and I remember working on those and loving the challenge of figuring out what color thread and where each cross would go. I never finished any project, I would complete the picture but never finish the background, at the age of 12 I felt that it would take too much thread and time and wasn’t worth it to me if I didn’t see an image at the end of all that work! I wish I could find this unfinished images now, I would totally frame them and put them up in my my mom sewed when I was a kid and would make my barbie’s clothes which I hated because I wanted the store bought stuff. And I was COMPLETELY against learning how to sew, even refusing to take home ec in high school because of it (admittedly I was afraid of all that machinery! And those fat moving parts!!) Then years after college, I got it in my head that I wanted to sew on a machine and have been doing that ever since! It has made me lazy to do any handwork (I’m ‘allergic’ to hand sewing now!) because I know how much mire efficient using a machine is!
I love today’s upcycled craft/art fairs. We have a very active local group. Back then, I remember upcylced Christmas trees made out of Reader’s Digest, and Christmas wreaths made out of cards that were used in computers/data processing. My aunt always subscribed to several craft magazines and I loved looking at them. My other aunt send us some crazy stuff she made across the country….we never thought she’d remember what on her rare visits — but she asked me where one of the items was after seeing the same item on display at my other aunts house after we had thrown ours out. I flunked art in “junior high” (ot middle school) after I refused to make a second sand candle to hang from macrame – the first one was already destined for the trash. Who needed a candle with sand falling off of it? I’d love to see this book because of the business aspect.
haha, i love to hear about kids who flunked art because they defiantly refused to make another crappy sand candle!
Pam,
Your post today got me to thinking about all of the craft fads that I have done over the years. As a kid it was all about making pot holders on one of those metal looms. Gifts for everyone that year! As a teen in the 70′s it was pocket books made from our old jeans. Macrame came next, followed by latch hook rugs, painted embrodery (made a Keep on Truckin” jacket, remember, with the big thumb!). Crocheted granny square throws, Many, many set of curtains over the years. Fake stained glass with the plastic beads that you melted in the over. Wooden Christmas ornaments that you painted. My craft of choice now is stained glass. Real stained glass this time. I think I have found my passion – that is until the next great craft comes along. Thanks for the memories!
Forget about door stops made from Reader’d Digest. Christmas wreaths made from a clothes hanger and strips of gargabe bags And didn’t everyone have a try at making their own candles? This list may increase as the day goes on!
keep ‘em coming! hey, at mom’s i also found paint-by-numbers but they were on large pieces of wood, like 12″x15″ and they were of colonial folk. i was going to try and get them framed and hang them but ran out of time. hey, how about: those etching tools that you’d use to burn designs into wood? what did we make from those? jewelry boxes? i can’t remember exactly. but I can still smell the burning….
Ah, the fake stained glass. Love it!
And don’t forget about crafting with pasta! I happen to have some on my blog today and boy, I love it.
My mom was smart. She took my sister and I out of girl scouts for a few weeks for scabbling. Those were the weeks I would have gold spray painted a Macaroni Masterpiece for Christmas. I think Dad got one, but she didn’t.
I loved, and still love to mod podge ANYTHING. I’ve made a few lamp shades with fall leaves, and liven up old bottles of vinegar and oil that I get refilled. Its cheaper than buying, and I fulfill the need of having something cute.
When I was youg, we did a lot of those “stained glass” things, where the frame is bought and you drop crystals in the sections and then it is baked. My mom still uses the nativity scene we made every year.
This looks like a great book to share with my daughters! My youngest would especially like it since she loves anything vintage or vintage-like.
I loved to latch hook when I was a girl. Grandma also had us make the pot holders on the metal forms. She had a whole scrap bag for us. I learned how to embroider in home-ec and made a few things in that class. Shrinky-dinks, anyone rememer those? It was the rage to make a personal shrinky-dink and trade them around on homemade charm bracelets. I also loved counted cross-stich. I think I’d love to do that still, but it’s too small to see to count. Then I started doing scrapbooks, way before scrapbooking was a big deal. I haven’t don’t much crafting since my son was born, but when he’s old enough to understand “do not eat the craft stuff” I think we’ll start doing projects together. Finally, my grandmothers all had glass grapes on their coffee tables. They made them at a church craft activity in the late 60s. I always wanted to have some of those glass grapes on my table, but no one seems to know how they’re made anymore.
My dad made those with 2 part epoxy resin…I don’t know if that stuff is even atainable anymore…It sure was stinky. You could tint the resin with these amazing jewel toned colors. To make the grapes you poured the resin into rubber ball shaped molds and embeded a piece of wire in the mold so you could wire the grapes into a bunch. Once the resin had cured you could just peel the rubber mold off of the grape. Maybe the molds were silicon, now that I think of it.
I grew up in a crafty home! My mom taught me everything – knitting, crocheting, embroidery, counted cross stitch, sewing, needlepoint, quilting. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I always sewed clothes for myself when I was young. I remember making those loom pot holders. For a high school art class project, I embroidered and appliqued a hanging banner with a Hindu “om” sign (ahh, remember the peace and love days?).
I still love to do sewing and crafts. I made pinch-pleat valances for my dining room with vintage bark cloth. I have a needlepoint bargello pillow kit waiting for me and just ordered a crewel embroidery alphabet sampler (from another blogger). I love sewing for my home! Working full-time I don’t always have the time, but still love it. I still enjoy crocheting, too, and made scarves and hats last year. I’d like to make an afghan sometime.
It’s too bad I didn’t have a daughter to hand-down my skills too. My son’s aren’t really interested, haha. Maybe I’ll have a daughter-in-law or granddaughter who will want to learn.
i was ALL about the beads. making necklaces and bracelets galore!! it was the best! i also made jewelry by braiding in all kinds of ways using embroidery thread mostly. good times!!
Beads! I forgot about those! We used to make strings and strings of those tiny “hippie” beads. My sister always added one striped bead as her “signature”. Hippie beads!!
I was artsy when I was younger, but not crafty. I didn’t start getting crafty until kids came into the picture. I’m just starting to do embroidery and I love it!
My mother was uber-crafty. She still is. When we were kids, she would have us do “projects” on rainy days when she couldn’t lock us out of the house. Because of my mom, I have embroidered, done counted-cross stitch, and learned some basic sewing skills. I’ve made pillows out of old jeans. We stained wood plaques and then decoupaged on them. We made felt Christmas ornaments (my favorites were the three wise men because we glued sequins all over their “gifts”).
We’ve also latch-hooked rugs, woven pot holders on a plastic loom and hand painted ceramics. Mom let me use all her sewing scraps to hand make clothes for my stuffed animals.
Today I crochet, make jewelry, scrapbook and decoupage old beat-up guitars (which makes me kind of a mixed media collage folk-artist, as I’ve had some displayed and commissioned).
Crafts have been a HUGE part of my life.
Send me a pic of your guitars, Laura – Mixed media collage is my favorite to-do these days!
I was a young kiddo in the early 70s and my first real joy was using the pot holder loom. I had another pot holder kit that I could make lemons and apples and the kit came with these funny iron on eyes and mouths to accent the pot holders.And I made a lot of paper mache stuff.
My favorite craft project was the paper mache snow white marionette that my grandma and I made together. We used clothes pins and string, paper mache, paint, and we made the lovely little blue dress and white pinafore (I still have it).
Crafty as a child? Yes! I have photos of a 5-year old me, standing in my parent’s craft booth at local art fairs back in the 70′s. I started early during this heyday of craftiness, making macrame hangers, ceramic mushrooms, beaded bracelets, windchimes and more. At home I would do the most low-brow of craft projects – latch hook, string art, candles, all that great 70′s stuff. Crafting got into my blood early, though I did not realize just how much until very recently when I started a new business and reflected back on how I came to be where I am today.
Even though I have a BFA in Theatre design, and even though I have spent the last 15 years running a retail mail-order business related to Hot Air Ballooning, I recently started my second business – Decorative Design Works, which is truly a culimination of all the years of crafting married with my design experience and my long-time love of all things vintage and retro. I just finished my first craft show on my own – and boy did it bring back memories! As a kid I used to set up a little table in the corner of my parent’s booth and sell my hand made crafts. Then when I was lucky enough that strangers thought I was adorable and would be things from me, I could put up a sign at the end of the day that said “Sorry – Sold Out!”. How funny is that?
I’m just so glad to be back doing things with my hands and exploring all kinds of vintage designs, going back to arts and craft fairs is like going home after 30 years of being away. I’m just getting started, so who knows where my crafting roots will take me? I can’t wait to find out! Callahan’s book sounds like the perfect bedside reader to me
Crafts are such a reflection of their times – Depression thriftiness, mid-century plastics, hippie macrame, Bicentennial Americanna heritage-styles, and contemporary recycling/repurposing. I guess we could use crafts as a window into cultural trends & values over time.
I grew up surrounded by crafty men & women – everyone always had something going on – no one sat down that they didn’t have something in their hands. Idel hands were the work of the devile and that’s a direct reflection of my grandparents religion.
One of my childhood crafts puzzles me today cause I’m not sure what it was or why we did it. My grandfather would hammer several nails into the end of a wooden spool around the center hole. My grandmother would string it up with some yarn then hand it to us with a crochet hook or some hook made from a piece of wire hanger. We’d loop the yarn around and pull over the yarn on the nail and voila – the spool would poop out this knitted rope. We’d make these all summer, but for the life of me I don’t know what we did with these colorful ropes – belts? headbands? coil them into trivets? And what is this craft called? I guess it doesn’t matter since it kept us from having idle hands.
Gawd, what craft have I NOT tried?! My first crafting memories are from my childhood, when I was probably about 7 or 8 and I hand sewed purses from old Levis (don’t judge me ~ it was the ’70′s!). Since then, I’ve tried just about everything, from hand quilting, embroidery, sewing, upcycling vintage china into cake/dessert pedestals, various building projects, you name it! So in love with crafting I am, that I quit the “corporate” world and launched my own business 18 months ago. I’m now in heaven, doing what I love every day!
Thank you for this great giveaway and for the interesting interview with Cathy:)
~Cindy
http://www.RetroRevivalBiz.blogspot.com
I have always loved crafts, and still do today! At least once a month I convince friends to come over for Craft Day and we will decoupage…or paint frames…or make cards. This love came from my mom who has always made “stuff’, too! Hmmm…most unusual? Let’s see – who else remembers angels made from Reader’s Digest magazines – with the pages folded and then sprayed gold? Santa’s sleigh made from the turkey carcass? In Girl Scouts we boiled and cracked marbles and made jewelry! When I was pregnant with my first daughter I made so many crocheted blankets that my ex dreamed that the doctor said that crochet was “bad for babies”! (see why I divorced him?!?)
On the more beautiful and noteworthy side, I do have some gorgeous beaded flowers my mom took hours to make. My grandmother stitched needlepoint pillows that could win awards. I could go on and on and on because, yes, I’m “hooked” on making stuff!
Let’s not forget paper flowers made out of tissue paper.
OH MY GOSH! How could I have forgotten! My husband is into crafts, too! For our 3rd anniversary he MADE me a leather purse using a kit from the TANDY leather company. It’s amazing…it has flowers on it – and our names, and the date we got married. So many many guys who see it say it brings make memories of Boy Scout Camp.
Tandy!! Is that still around? There was a Tandy leather on Woodward Ave. in downtown Detroit when I was a kid (1960s). We used to make special trips there and buy kits to make wallets and coin purses. My brother came up with this craft where he took leather (from Tandy) and cut it into bracelet-length strips and put snaps on. Then he made two length-wise cuts in the leather and somehow twisted the end through the cuts and it became a leather braid bracelet. I still have the one he made me. Leather hippy bracelets!
I am pretty sure that crafting is in my blood. I love it! My grandmas, my momma, my sisters and I, we all love making things and sharing them. I get such a thrill out of making something and giving it away to my loved ones. There’s something about making someone’s day with a little “I love you” gift that lights up their face that just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.
The family felines were famous for bringing us presents of recently deceased anole lizards. I’d cover their dessicated remains in textile paint and press them onto t-shirts. The detail you could achieve was amazing. I doubt that immortalizing lizards counts as a craft, but it was fun and always amuzed. I’d like to’ve done fish prints.
Now, there’s that collage thing you’ve gotten me into, Pam……..
I remember some kind of fad tool for crochet (probably marketed via direct-response TV–anyone remember what it was called?) that was far more complicated than a regular crochet hook. Neither my mother nor I could figure it out, I ended up using it to make endless chains. Then when I learned how to crochet with a conventional hook, I couldn’t figure out why my fabric “looked funny,” and became frustrated. As an adult, I realized what I had been doing “wrong” was an actual stitch, just not the one I was trying to learn at the time.
Wow! This is bringing back tons of memories…
I’m still crafty, but life gets in the way more than it used to. I love that there’s the “upcycling” term for what folks have always done, I think. My aunties used to tell me about getting friends together for “surgery” on their hats, shoes, and purses…cut off trim and trade it around til everyone has something looking new.
That not quite peace sign with the flag motif is really evocative, Pam. And wow-the Bicentennial Crafts-guilty as charged over here. My best bud and I did a lot of 4-H crafty stuff then. We sewed our little calico dresses, aprons and mobcaps, and would demonstrate making soap with a kettle over a fire, corn dollies, and other stuff I don’t remember. Got a picture of us somewhere.
But we were more likely to be making tote bags by covering BaskinRobbins cardboard drums with fabric, and Indian Beading was HUGE. My friend actually made a full-size Betsy Ross flag with seed beads-and the fair stapled it to the wall and broke it! Many tears ensued.
I so remember liquid embroidery, painting ceramics while listening to CB radio ( 10-4 Good Buddy!) and the one that I could never master was the glass cutter. You were supposed to take old bottles, cut and sand them and then etch them to make cute classes. Did anyone ever get that one to work??
Oh-I am so going to have to find Cathy’s book. Thanks for the trip down crafty lane….
Boy am I in the right place, (we called it Spool knitting, ginny. I used them for Barbie legwarmers). Started knitting and crochet thanks to Mom and Grandmother. I still love to wear the sweater I made at 16 every winter. Also embroidery, macrame, tatting, quilting, rug making, latch hook… not sure what we didn’t do. If we could make it we did. My sister and I were always in competion in these things, as well as school events. Sewing my clothes started in 7th grade, later on made my wedding gown, and landed me a stint making draperies for a designer a few years when my son was very young.
Being from a very small town there were not loads of activities for us to do as kids. My mother had been an art major and had fun stuff for us to try. We had a cupboard full of constuction paper, paints, fabric, yarn, old magazines, glue and my favorite…scotch tape. We were encouraged to be creative. My brother did model airplanes etc. of course we girls did plastic model birds, horses what ever we could find when we went to the big towns to shop.
Lots of crafts from kits then to choose from. String art, pom pom pictures, pom pom pets, paint by number, pot holder looms, knitting looms, clay, beads…. the tiny glass ones you make on a loom for and then stitch them to western belts. Recently ran across my Barbie and Honey West dolls. The only outfits in the box were the ones they came with, the rest were home made.
Don’t do sewing much now, burned out on the drapery work. I like to crochet doilies but, have trouble with my vision with such small work. So I still knit lots. and love to make my own patterns. I make gloves, socks, mittens, hats, sweaters, scarves and throws.
Keeps the hands busy and the mind sharp.
That is freaking awesome! I hope I win!
I’ve always loved crafts and made many, many different things as a kid…these comments have reminded me of the things I had forgotten! Pom-pom pets, “stained glass” window decorations, latch-hook rugs…the list goes on and on.
Currently, I love to sew- one of my signature gifts is cloth napkins. It seems no one can have enough of those. I also make curtains, tablecloths, quilts, picnic blankets, hats, skirts and I guess too many things to list. It’s certainly not a money-saver anymore- I just love making something that is unique and obviously not mass-produced. It’s so encouraging that hand-made items are being appreciated again!
Love both embroidery and plastic canvas (it’s needlepoint in 3-D!). I don’t think anyone plastic canvases anymore.
I still have a fly swatter someone made with the plastic canvas.
I come from a long line of crafty women (and handy men), but never really had the confidence to make anything myself until recently. I can’t wait to share this book with my Mom and aunt, hoping their talents and drive will bridge any gaps in my artistic abilities. I’m addicted to cathy of california — just bought her flower loom on etsy also!
Hi Pam, I remember all sorts of fun crafts, some more “vintage” than others. Sewing was #1 in my book, and I remember doing some macramé, in fact my mom *still* uses the purple keychain I made her 28 years ago, the wood beads all broke long ago but the rayon rope has held up amazingly. I also loved the crafts that are, now that I think of it, pretty dated. We made pictures on pieces of stained plywood using a yarn outline and filling the area inside with crushed glass in different colors, it was all recycled glass and this guy at church made a contraption to crush bottles without making a mess or endangering us. Another I remember was making string art pictures, I didn’t ever finish mine but I sure marveled at the older kids complex ones (I was 10). My daughter found one at the thrift store made with copper wire and thought it was the coolest thing ever, we bought it and had it on the piano for years, she has a serious love of all things mid-century.
I can thank Girl Scouts for giving me an appreciation for crafting, as my mother was way too busy to craft. I made a scarf and embroidered a ‘Smiley Face’ in yellow on it as that was popular in the 70′s.
My favorite craft when I was young was making potholders using a metal frame and some sort of stretchy loopy fabric that came in packages.The potholders were small, probably 5in x5in, but I always enjoyed the process.Every time I see one in an antique store, it makes me smile!
Hi Pam, I think I’ve done just about every craft that everyone has mentioned and more. Never decoupaged a guitar, though, I love that idea. Now, I just buy other peoples handywork at thrift stores.
My grandmother had a Christmas tree she made with costume jewelry on a framed piece of blue velvet. Hung in the dining room every year. We all used my mother’s potters wheel — still remember clay splattered everywhere in the garage! But give me a hammer and saw when I was a kid and I was in heaven. Made a car out of plywood and wooden fruit boxes that fit onto my wagon. Had a trunk and headlights out of tuna cans.
I started sewing doll clothes for my pre-Barbie fashion doll. Ioved to take scraps of material from my mom’s sewing projects and using them to design and create something beautiful. The best thing is, doll clothes sew up FAST! I progressed to sewing my own clothes, embroidery of many kinds, latch hook and a tiny version of latch hook that makes really cool textured pictures. I forget what that one is called. I also loved to do Indian beadwork, the kind that is woven on a loom.
These days, when I work with any fiber longer than about six inches, I get horrible knots. Is it the way the make thread these days, or just lack of practice. Grrr, I’m blaming the thread!
Oh, I forgot woodburning. I made special boxes for Christmas one year. I used the blank boxes from a craft store and designed my own pictures. I also made my own design quilted pictures for padded tops for more boxes. I loved helping my grandma lay out quilts and then tie them when they were all sewed. I think the quilt pictures is my favorite of them all.
I love all the mid-century crafts – every once in a while, I’ll find an old set of instructions and try something again. My grandmother and I always made the coat hanger Christmas wreaths, too, but we used strips from dry-cleaner bags (I don’t remember us having any plastic garbage bags back then). And paint-by-number was a favorite, too. I love Cathy Callahan’s work, too, so I’m sure the book’s great!
I think I tried just about every craft that was popular in the late 60s and early 70s. I sewed (pink seersucker elephant pants, peasant dresses, you name it), embroidered on my jeans and everything else, crocheted huge granny squares, knitted, macramed, tie-dyed, wove (remember inkle looms), decoupaged, made sand candles and probably more. More recently I have quilted, knitted some more, made Ukrainian eggs, beaded and crocheted some more.
Cathy’s book looks like a lot of fun.
Woodburning! I forgot how much fun that was!
Also, does anyone else remember a liquid dip that you used to use on wire forms to make things like flowers, that ended up with a colored, plastic-y translucent fill inside your wire shapes? I can’t remember what this is called, but I loved it as a kid.
I also had a bunch of paper weaving supplies that were brilliant colors, and I recall an awesome knitting machine where you could turn a crank on this plastic knitting contraption and out would come this ridiculous circular knitted blob. I thought was so cool. I must have been a real nerd.
Yes, Tamara, i now remember those plastic-dipping wire crafts. We too made flowers in different colors. Wow -I’d completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it. I have no idea what it was called.
I was crafty as a kid. I grew up in “retro craft” days and remember making crepe paper flowers, dipping wire flowers in that bizarre jar stuff that made plastic flowers, and Fun Flowers with the Thingmaker. I do some needlework now and love retro crafting!!!
I love to knit and crochet, and I am hoping to soon learn how to sew! My grandmother gave me her sewing machine a couple of years ago, but I’m afraid.
I LOVE that pillow, Pam! You should totally finish it. You could maybe give it out as a retrorenovation prize!
I think it would be great to have books like these to get kids into making stuff. It seems like today everything is a “kit” and designed to be more of an expensive, packaged, one-time toy than a hobby.
Crafty? Not so much. Pack-ratty is more like it. I couldn’t bear to part with my fabulous collection of accessories from days gone by so I created the “1980′s Earring Museum”. The collection includes, among others: ‘Danglem Purpura’, ‘Wastum Asymetricus’, and ‘Excessentium Fashionistas’.
I’m not crafty, or fashionable as it turns out, but clearly I have a talent for mangling Latin.
As a Camp Fire Girl I earned wooden “crafts beads” for doing things like this. One of the things my group did was make paper beads out of long triangular strips cut from colorful magazine pages. You roll the paper, starting at the wide end, over heavy wire which formed the threading hole. I don’t remember if we brushed the strip with glue as we rolled or if we coated the completed bead with something that held it together.
Every now and then I get a brief urge to make a granny square afghan with real wool knitting yarn (more colorful and comfortable than synthetic). There was a Woman’s Day pattern, probably early 70s, that started with red, then added two rounds each of orange, yellow, green, blue, and red again. I’d like to do that one someday for the sheer joy of working with the colors.
I had to smile yesterday when I saw the photo of the Mod Podge (so, how many of your friends said ‘Modge Podge”?) I bought my first bottle and grabbed an empty 7-up bottle, and then turned to anything and everything. A number of crafts I picked up on my own (crocheting, mosiac tiles, latch-hooking, cross stich, etc.) and some where learned in my brief stint as a girl scout. But the one that stuck with me all these years has been sewing. My mom lied about my age to get me into a junior high summer class in which a single ‘garment’ would be made (usually a skirt or simple ‘shift’), but I ended up with a whole wardrobe. My mom has tagged her 1950′s Singer portable for me when she ‘goes.’ She knows I’ve been eyeing it – we both learned to sew on it, so it’s very special to me.
“My mom lied about my age to get me into a junior high summer class…”
You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?
My thing is resin. I love the permanence of it.
My Grandpa was a bug guy, he did Entomology for Orange County back in the 50s. So I learned about the joys of Resin, he’d preserve bug specimens in it. I just remember seeing the bug specimens forever preserved in the resin and thinking that was the most amazing thing ever.
I wanted to do bug specimens, but my Mom thought that was ooky, so instead we made those big Resin Grape Clusters you used to see in everyone’s living room way back when. We’d take old Christmas Ball Ornaments, mix the resin up, and pour it on in. I always thought it was fun getting them out, you had to break the glass balls (over a trash can of course) to get ‘em out and it was satisfying to hear the little tinkle of the balls smashing. Then you’d arrange ‘em on driftwood with artificial leaves and give ‘em as gifts or sell ‘em at the school craft fair or whatever. It was fun.
When I got older in Girl Scout Camp, my resin knowledge earned me a job making little necklaces with the younger girls using pictures from Tiger Beat magazine. I think one summer I must’ve made about 100 necklaces with pics of Scott Baio, Andy Gibb and various other heartthrobs.
I love resin and I still make stuff to this day for myself, my family and friends. It’s just a fun medium with a lot of good memories for me.
The Tiger Beat story = HILARIOUS! I sure would love to see one of those necklaces. Your stories remind me: My brother actually took taxidermy classes for a while. I will have to ask him about that!
I was completely uncrafty as a kid but love it today! I’m making up for lost time! : )
I was and am. My aunt put a needle and thread and a bag of fabric scraps in my hands when I was five and I took to sewing right away. As well as whatever other type of project caught my fancy. Lots of Christmas ornaments of various kinds, I remember.
Okay, I’m sorry I have to post again, but I love this thread!
What about Gimp keychains? I used to make lots of those. When I was a kid and used to hang out at the neighborhood park in the summer, the teenage “park director” would have a Gimp day once a week and we could buy the colorful plastic strands and they would teach us the different patterns and make keychains.
And did anyone do ceramics? My mom signed me up for ceramics classes on Saturdays at a little shop near our house. I would pick out an unfinished (newly molded) vase or statue or whatever, and then scrape the seam off and make sure it was smooth, then pick out a glaze – paint it – and they would “fire” it and I would get it the next week. I made my mom a beautiful white Christmas Tree that I put colored beads on all the limbs (after cutting holes where they would go) and put an electric light inside and it was very pretty all lit up. I’ve seen them sell at stores for a lot of money now.
Bead looming! I did every 70′s craft there was, but my passion was bead looming. I made copies of some pretty serious American Indian works of art as well as tons of fun and funky stuff. At the time, i learned tie dye, but didn’t really get into it until about 10 years ago. Now I have a serious rep for tie dye. Love crafts!
I was a full-fledged macrame-er, crocheted a skirt (come on, I was 12) and painted ceramics. Yeah, we were having a good time then. I collect the old BH&G books for Christmas inspirations. It was way more fun then!
This is the perfect book for me! I would love to do all of the crafts in this book!