Crane Hana

I make books, many of them out of cloth. Making a needle book is something that had never occurred to me before last weekend. This is the result: a 7×4.5×1.75″ vintage-inspired fabric needle book.

Shabby chic edges will look even better as they fray. Don’t worry, there’s heavy zigzag stitching under the edge bindings.

Needle books are a popular trend among the craft and home-sewing crowd.…

Dieselpunk Valkyrie cap now finished

Finished! Inspired by Tarnhelm legends, the myths of Hermes, and the Celtic (not Viking) winged helmet, this wearable art cap softly shimmers with bronze ribbon and metallic bead accents.

I had a few false starts with the beadwork, and I’ll be getting a clearer picture of the front. But in general, I’m really happy with this piece.

It’s excellent hall costume/festival wear. Because the cap…

First look: Dieselpunk Valkyrie

I live near a fairly affluent area with generations of rich teenagers and retirees. This means that Good Stuff appears in my local thrift stores. For the past few years, I’ve been collecting interesting fabric hats, with an eye to adapting them into gonzo wearable art pieces.

The second* fiber art project of 2019 involves an olive-green cotton engineer cap (Goodwill, $2, a year or two ago),…

2018 Book Arts & Text-Based Art

I didn’t stop making book art sculptures in 2018. I just held off documenting them on this blog for a while, mostly for time constraints.

Rocketship 1 -5  2.75×1.75×1.5”

See more here: http://www.cranehanabooks.com/blog/2017/12/18/rocketship-fiber-art-books/

This edition of five accordion-fold books celebrates the (first?) Space Race, that of the 1950s and 1960s. Six pages, with title…

Tempe Festival of the Arts: Fall 2018

This amazing show turns 50 years old this season.

A cornerstone of Tempe civic pride since 1968, the Tempe Festival of the Arts has had all the usual ups, downs, and sideways distractions of big regional art fairs. If you’re in the Tempe AZ area this upcoming weekend (Nov 30-Dec 2, 2018), stop by Mill Avenue and the surrounding streets. It’s worth the traffic!

Twice a year since 2010, I’ve worked…

Art On A Kitchen Table

How many times have we heard ‘Money doesn’t buy happiness’? At best that’s a warning to value the non-financial things in life. At worst, it’s a ploy to convince poor people to be content with their lot.

Money *can* buy opportunity, or the chance to maximize opportunity. It can buy time.

Fox mouthpieces mockedAlexandra Ocasio-Cortez for being too poor to afford an apartment in Washington DC until…

A GoFundMe For Mueller?

Matthew Whitaker, the new Acting Attorney General, may act on his threat to stop the Mueller investigation by bleeding off its funding.

Whitaker has been chasing a state judicial appointment since Trump got into office, and doing it by dangling himself coyly on TV and social media so that The Orange One will ‘notice’ him as a Trump defender.

So if that becomes ‘a slow moving Saturday Night…

Two Amazing Podcasts For Writers

Well, podcasts, videos, websites, merch, etc.

I’ve added two sites to my Links sidebar under ‘Webcomics & Podcasts’: ‘Stuff To Blow Your Mind’ and ‘Overly Sarcastic Productions’.

‘Stuff‘ is a deeply nerdy and affectionate podcast look at fiction, history, and myth…through a scientific and scholarly lens. It’s great for any fiction writer wanting to get into their own worldbuilding (or just learn…

This single strand necklace:

Just became this multi-strand freeform necklace, with the addition of two more chains interwoven with the first.

There might be some more orange beaded flowers, but it’s mostly finished. Maybe. This is what happens when I don’t get rid of art projects: they get rebooted.

Happy Halloween!

On an amble through an Arizona art cooperative, I found an emerging artist’s gallery offering hand-embroidered clothing.

‘Cool!’ I thought, stepping close enough to see details. I am a sucker for embroidered clothes.

‘Awww, dammit,’ I thought next.

The stitches were large and roughly spaced, an effect probably meant to be charming and rustic to the casual observer. To someone with even a passing…

Free Press, Gaslighting, and Fear

What a month it has been, my readers.

First: the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the direction of the current Saudi crown prince. I’m no big fan of the Turkish government, and I know they have blood on their hands as well. But they are at least keeping the Saudi government reeling off-balance and desperate to spin version after version of lies about Khashoggi’s disappearance.

Infrastructu…

A Dress For Kathleen: a stitched memorial

This falls under ‘book arts and text-based art’, so I’m including here. It’s one of the loveliest and most wistful art pieces I’ve seen recently. It also launches me into an art rant, so be forewarned.

Irish fabric artist and writer Heather Richardson memorializes  Kathleen Hutchinson, the aunt she never met, who died as a teenager in the late 1930s. Richardson’s two-year project led to research…

Book Art: Copper Star

A new pretty done in record time (for me): just a little over a month from concept, research, design, and sewing. This, while dealing with a health issue in my family and a new job. Just put the last beads on the tassels and edges today!

This book measures 5″x5″x2″, with eight double-sided fabric pages of pieced and appliqued fabric, digitally printed and gel-transferred text, and lots of glass…

Alexander Hatband (in progress)

I’m making a hatband for a friend who just moved back to New Zealand this year. The hatband is going onto a very nice black felt cowboy hat said friend found in Goodwill.

If I were demented enough to make more of these, I’d charge around $300 for the finished product. I am being paid for this one, but it’s very much a labor of love. I miss my friend and hope he’s doing well. I also wanted to…

Book and Jewelry Giveaway Winners!

Thanks to the wonders of random number generators, we have our winners for the book and jewelry giveaway, celebrating the debut month of my fantasy novel THE PURIST.

The two formal runners-up are Green Dragon Artist and Stephanie D. You get a choice of THE PURIST in the ebook formats of Mobi or EPub. (If you’ve already bought it, I can send you either a copy of the related-but-not-quite book…

Jewelry & Book Giveaway Now Closed

September 7th has arrived and left. That means I’ve now closed the jewelry and book giveaway I started a month ago. I’ll be turning the entries into numbers tomorrow, then letting a random number generator do its thing.

I’ll post the results on this blog and get in touch with the winners soon!

Thank you for hanging around during the debut month for my odd fantasy novel THE PURIST.

Sales have been…

I’m vain enough to be really happy about this review of my book art. Especially when *someone else* gets why I make art in the first place.

Especially when this comes from ASU, which has an incredible group of book artists.

Here’s a bigger shot of ‘Twilight Arc’.