#samarrakhaja

Did you catch it on Tuesday? The great folks at Spoonflower have just debuted their first-ever catalog (both in print and online) of wonderful custom fabric offerings. 

I designed this Chocolate Milk Tent project exclusively for the catalog debut and you can check it out in all its tasty goodness on page 41! 

Plus, my Hungry Monster Laundry Bags also show up on page 49! 

If you follow my IG feed, you know I initially designed a poster (the one on the orange background) for the Amplifier Foundation’s call for artwork for the upcoming Women’s March On Washington on January 21, 2017. 

I decided to make a few more just for kicks, and after hearing so much great feedback and requests to walk with my signs, I decided to make all four available for download. 

You can find each of them here:

• Peace Not Terror/ Light Not Fear

• Release Your Tax Returns Now

• Yuge Mistake

• Nasty Women Are Watching You Drumpf

They are each formatted to be 18″ x 24″ in size, so feel free to print them that large or size them down if needed. (Staples has an 18x24 poster printing option at their store, fyi.)

March far and wide with them, fine friends!! If you do walk with one of my signs, please take a photo of you with it at your local march and send it to me ([email protected]). I’d love to see it! Keep fighting the good fight! xo

******EDIT January 20, 2017:

Because of all your great support and my realizing that I wanted a few more options that punctuate and showcase female empowerment, I created these three NEW posters. Please note that the words are not my original idea (if you know who originated them, please let me know so I can credit them properly). The sentiments are all too good to pass up. 

I decided to ring in the 2020 holiday season by making what seems like the most fitting ornament to embody this mess of a year... 

Presenting The SK Commemorative 2020 Covid Ornament!

Sufficiently grumpy and full of all the 2020 feels, if I don’t say so myself...

I was planning on just posting a quick pic of it completed, but as some folks have requested a bit more information on how I made it, I’ll tell you basically how I did, so you can create your own!

I found a 2″ diameter styrofoam ball in my collection of craft things; I had gotten it in a bag of secondhand styrofoam balls at a thrift store last year. Overall, I’m not a big fan of buying styrofoam as it’s not a sustainable/environmentally-friendly material, but since I bought it secondhand, I got to avoid unintentionally signaling to styrofoam manufacturers to make more by buying new (recycling and reusing lowers that production potential!). If I hadn’t had it on hand, I would have likely used clay of some kind.

I also had a bunch of 1″ flat-head pins already in my supplies. I used 24 for them for my grumpy coronavirus. Also, I seem to possess an obscene amount of beads that mainly go unused, so I was very happy to put some to good use. 

Here’s the set of beads and sequins I used:

The two round beads (one hot pink, the other a garnet color) are each 1/8″ tall and the orange bugle bead is 1/4″ long. I threw in a couple of sequins (one clear flat iridescent one, one faceted silver one) for variety and to create an interesting capped shape for each tendril.

I started by painting the styrofoam ball with a custom mix of neon pink, orange and white acrylic paint. Before you choose those colors, it might be fun and worth noting that although illustrations of the coronavirus are often depicted in reds and sometimes greens, it turns out the pesky thing is actually clear and has no color at all. 

So that means, you can make it any color you like! Or a whole bonanza of multi-colored ones!

To make the face, I painted on two dabs of white paint, waited for them to dry, and then went back with a fine point black Sharpie to add the remaining facial details.

 For the backside, I used that same Sharpie and wrote the glorious “2020″ tramp stamp above Le Crack de Bum* with a red Sharpie. (This was an undeniably scrappy make, you can tell by the first “2″ having a couple of different pen treatments....but it’s 2020, so who cares.)

Once I sorted where the face and backside were going to be, I loaded up each pin with beads/sequins and stuck them in one by one all around the ball. 

The good news is that if you think you haven’t spread them out well enough, you can easily go back and rearrange them all, even while grumpy face watches you.

My final step was to put a pin in at the top of the coronavirus to hang it by.  That took a few tries as I was very particular about how it hung, but if it’s wonky, that’s even funnier in my estimation. 

I initially used a metal looped pin from my jewelry supply stuff (I threaded beads onto it and then pinned it in), but found that it wasn’t secure enough and wouldn’t hold the weight of everything. You could easily add a drop of glue to to that hole/pin to fix that, but I decided to just replace it with another of the 1″ flat-head pins I had. 

I got some white embroidery thread, folded it in half and tied the looped end around the pin before pressing it down all the way into the ball. After it was pushed in, I tied a knot at the opposite raw ends of the thread to create a hanging loop.

And that was it!

 Happy 2020 Holidays! xo-sk

Whoa, okay so it really must be the end of times because I’ve dusted off the ol’ blog! Turns out Coronavirus/Covid-19 calls for more free downloadable poster creations, this time in the form of friendly PSAs (please stay awesome). My hope is to add a nice little batch here (so keep checking back for more) for you to download and print at home, because SELF-ISOLATING TIMES, PEOPLE! If you were the only one in a Costco (hahahaha, when has that ever happened?), you could theoretically get these easily printed up as 18x20 posters but SOCIAL DISTANCING, FRIENDS, so do not even think you’re heading to the store (nope, nope not unless it’s 100% unavoidable) and just print these at home (I’m making them friendly to b/w printers) and tape ‘em to the fridge for now. Then wash those hands. Spread the word, not the virus. Big hugs, stay safe. xoxox-SK

We’re In This Together (Wash Your Hands):

Fresh new PSA No. 2, added 03/16/2020! 

Be A Boss (Manage That Stress & Anxiety):

03/19/2020: PSA Poster No. 3, now up and ready for download today!

Stay HOME My SWEET Stay HOME:

Added 03/22/2020, as a love letter to all the people on the frontlines...

Anatomy of a First Responder:

Today I’ll be instructing a roomful of kids on how to make their own recycled golfball eyeball pendants. I love creating crafts that don’t involve the purchase of single-use craft store materials (glitter, resins, plastics, excess packaging that will all end up in the trash) but rather focus on the reuse of other familiar materials/objects that have already lived one life and I get to give them at least one more before they hit that trash heap. 

For this project, we have a bunch of toilet and paper towel rolls that have been cut down to make mini easel stands for each golfball to sit on while the kids draw on them with permanent markers. I thrifted that giant roll of black cording at least a decade ago; I’ve used it for endless drawstring bags and today some of it will be cut into 20 necklace lengths. 

A friend gifted me a bag of used golfballs that her dad was done with and I cleaned each one off, drilled holes in them and attached screw eyes (because we have less than an hour), so they’re all ready to go. 

And lastly, to add in that nerd level I always desire for any project, I designed a handout that talks about iris muscles and illustrates many of the pupil shapes that exist in the world. Did you know that some frogs have HEART-SHAPED pupils?!?! Yep, exactly. Mind blown. Conscious crafting with some sweet, sweet knowledge on top. Oh, and we’ll talk about aerodynamics and how many dimples are on a golfball; I’m also bringing in a golfball my youngest and I cut in half so everyone can see what it’s made of. It’s going to be a long day!

If you’ve been following along with our Awkward Animal Portraits (AAP) quilt pattern series, you’ll know we’re now ready to humanely release our October creature, and in true nocturnal partying weekend style, a certain someone is oh-so-fashionably late, but as we know, better late than never.

So without further delay, please welcome our first Seasonal Special in the AAP series with a big round of wing flapping:  

This is BAT!

Here are some amazing BAT facts you should know: 

Bat is the only mammal that can fly. 

Bat can see with its ears. ITS EARS, we tell ya! 

Bat works hard to control pests.

Bat helps produce some of our favorite foods. 

Even though folks think Bat is more closely related to rodents, guess what? Bat is actually more closely related to humans. Yep, it’s true. 

Bat is also super cute, so in conclusion, kindly love Bat!

Finished size: 81” x 81”. PDF pattern available here.

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Be sure to check back at the beginning of every month to see what Jessee and I have in store next in our intergalactically-renowned Awkward Animal Portraits quilt pattern series!

If you missed it the other day, I posted Part 1: Rollie Spiders, which is an alternative way to recycle these same plastic apple cartons I’ve been mildly obsessed with wanting to reuse. Suffice to say, I was very pleased to come up with not one but two ways to repurpose those darn things before they wind up in the landfill.

If you missed it, this is the plastic apple carton I’m referring to:

Here are some of the other things you’ll need to create your Rollie Bat:

• Hot glue gun and/or a glue stick • Black and white construction paper and/or recycled white bottle caps • Tissue paper or brightly colored recycled grocery bag • Long piece of string, thread, yarn or embroidery thread • Black permanent parker and white colored pencil • Scissors

As I mentioned before, you’ll be able to use 4 spheres from a 4w x 3 h carton to create your Rollie Bats. These are the only unobstructed spheres on the carton that don’t have additional weird shapes moulded into them:

Begin by cutting each half of your sphere out:

You’ll get two pieces that look like this:

Snap them together, and your sphere will look like this:

BAT WINGS:

Cut a piece of black construction paper to approx. 12″w x 4″w:

Fold the rectangle in half (the fold is on the left in the photo below) and draw a wing shape on it, like so:

Next, cut out your bat wings:

Unfold the paper and draw any sort of pattern you’d like on each wing, using a white colored pencil:

Once your wings are ready, place them inside your bat body to make sure they fit nicely; if they don’t, trim as needed:

Once you’re happy with your wings, stuff your recycled grocery bag or colored tissue paper evenly above and below the wings, securing them nicely within the center of the sphere:

Slide in some colorful string of your choice inside the top half of the sphere (and below the tissue paper inside, so it’s nicely hidden and secure) and tie a knot top. Chose any length for your string, as this is what you’ll hang your finished bat up with:

Hot-glue the two front corners of the plastic sphere together, like so:

BAT FACE:

Now that most of the body is complete, let’s switch over to creating the bat’s face. Using black construction paper, cut an oval out that’s approximately 3.25″w x 2.25″h.

For the eyes, you can do one of two things: Either cut out two 1.25″ diameter circles out of white construction paper –or– recycle two white bottle caps (I got mine from seltzer bottles). Using a black permanent marker, draw your pupils. 

Cut out two fangs out of white construction paper and glue them in place with a glue stick. Use a white colored pencil to draw the mouth:

 This next part will take some slow precision: use the hot glue gun to put a bead of glue all the way around the front oval opening edge. Go slow. You won’t need too much to ensure the face sticks on well. Don’t over-glue as it could start to melt the plastic:

Attach the face onto the center of this freshly glued edge, being careful not to burn yourself:

That’s it! Your recycle-proud Rollie Bat is complete!

Enjoy and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! And remember, be nice to bats because they actually do GREAT THINGS for us!!!

P.S. Make sure to check out my Rollie Spider tutorial, which also uses this same plastic apple carton!

It’s been a little while since my last batch of posters, so I figured it was time to make some new ones to share that focus on strength and positivity: two powerful quotes by Audre Lorde and James Baldwin; another by Fred Rogers for talking to children about horrible things that happen in the world; and lastly, a twist on a retro phrase that I’ve had stuck in my head for a while now....

Here they are:

1. Audre Lorde

2. James Baldwin

3. Fred Rogers

4. Rewind. Be Kind.

Same rules apply as with my other posters, which are all my original artwork and intellectual property:

Printing: They are each formatted to be 18″ x 24″ in size, so feel free to print them that large or size them down if needed. (Staples has an 18x24 poster printing option at their store, fyi.)

Usage: These posters are free for personal use only and not for resale or profit in anyway; use them in good faith and please credit me whenever possible.  If you do walk with one of my signs, please send me photos of you in action! (Email photos to: [email protected]).

I’d love to see pics and repost/share them! Be well and continue to spread love and strength.