Summer Crafting

David, after MONTHS of you begging me to write a post on TheCollegeCrafter, I am finally doing this for you, and whoever else is weird enough to want to read it! I have been doing quite a bit of crafting over the last few months, so it's difficult to decide what I should actually write about.
Despite the summer weather, I've been crocheting a lot of mittens (I know, it's crazy!). My goal is to try to use up my existing mounds of yarn (it really is A LOT) before buying too much more, so by the end of summer I may have pictures of some very interesting multi-colored and textured mittens... That should be interesting!
I also made a pair of earrings recently that I'm pretty proud of. I've posted them to facebook, so you may have seen a picture there, but if not then here you go!

Using my handy Dremel, I drilled holes in these dice and added some gold wire to finish the look. At first my plan was to spray paint the dice black with white dots, but my sister convinced me not to because she thought the green was cool.  After seeing the final product, I'm glad I left them as is. Since they're pretty old, you can see wearing down and fading on the die, but I think it contrasts really well with the non-tarnishing shine of the gold wiring.  I'm very excited about these upcycled dice, and I definitely think I'll be making more with the rest that I have laying around :)
Thanks for reading TheCollegeCrafter!
-Savvy

'Claire Bears'

Hey guys!

So this post is a little different from normal, and I want to talk about a fundraiser that's coming up at the end of April to raise money for a little girl (named Claire) with cerebral palsy. I will have a craft booth at the fundraising carnival on April 28th, where I will be selling lots of handmade and unique items, including some 'Claire Bears' - I credit my mother with the clever name. This bear below is the first one I've made (hopefully of many!)

Each bear will be unique, slightly different in size and shape, and available in many different colors since I am creating my own patterns as I go!  Each bear will be approximately 7 inches tall when sitting down and have eyes sewn with yarn so there will be no choking hazards for young children if it becomes a play toy! I'm selling the 'Claire Bears' for $15 each, and $5 of that will go straight to Claire's Cause. Claire's parents are fundraising for important items, such as handicap renovations to their house, a handicap van, and a litegait to help her practice walking. Here is a link to the Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Claires-Cause/424910807597540

Purchasing a bear means supporting small businesses (aka, a poor college student) and helping a child get support she needs! It could make a great gift, toy, or decoration for a desk or bookshelf.  If you would like to purchase one or have any questions about it, you can message me on Facebook, or email me at savvystitchesnewengland@gmail.com  Not all colors will be available, because I am trying to work from the large amount of yarn I already own in order to save time and money! I am taking orders until the end of April, and will be happy to send the bear anywhere with a small shipping charge.  The bears may take up to a few weeks to ship, depending on how many orders I receive! If you are able to make it to the fundraising event on April 28th, the Happy Spring Carnival, then I can have  your bear set aside for you to pick up there.

I will continue to make 'Claire Bears' and post pictures to Facebook, and possibly here, so if you like one of the ones you see, you can just let me know.

Also, if you choose not to buy a bear, but would still like to make a donation, you can contact me and I will make sure your donation makes it to the right place!!!

Please don't feel like you have to buy anything or make donations, I just wanted to show you what I've been working on lately, and the fundraiser that I'm currently involved in!!  I'll be back with some other crafty blogs soon, including a new sea glass lamp if I can get working on it soon!

Tuft's Police

Well, it feels like it’s been forever since my last post, and I think the time has definitely come for another; I miss writing about crafts!! It’s been pretty busy lately, but now I have lots of crafts to talk about!

I had a hard time deciding which thing I should talk about first, but I’m gonna go with the sea glass mosaics on canvas again.  As I think I mentioned before, I wanted to coat my pictures in resin to give them a little shine and help protect them from the elements (and keep any glass pieces from being able to fall off).

So I bought some polyester resin and attempted it on my first pictures the other day.  The pictures were smaller than some of the other ones I’ve made, about 4 by 5 inches, so I didn’t need very much resin at all- about two tablespoons each.  So I followed the directions and mixed up the resin with the catalyst and poured it on the pictures (which were elevated using empty Gatorade bottles).  I was so impressed with the way they turned out!

But, I had no idea the resin would smell so bad.  I had the windows open and the fan on, but the room still smelled pretty terrible.  After awhile it didn’t seem so bad, and I was doing some pretty intense multitasking (reading/crocheting/watching a show) when the cop and David’s RA came in.  They informed me that the smell was bad all down the hall (whoops) and the RA had called tufts police because he thought I was burning something (which still doesn’t really make sense to me, because it smelled a lot like spray paint). 

I was complemented on my work by the cop, who thought the sea glass picture idea was really cool, but then informed that it would be best to do this outside next time.  Oh well, now I know! And to anyone out there thinking of experimenting with resin for paintings or jewelry, find a nice open space!!

On another note, I have some exciting news about the rock tumbler! I had to break down and buy grit, but finally I got some results. It took a little patience, leaving it in for almost a week, but the glass came out smooth around the edges and frosty white.  I found a couple of blue beer bottles in the bushes the other day, so I’m very excited to see how the next batch of glass does in the tumbler :)

If you have any questions about projects that you’re working on now, feel free to ask me below and I’ll see if I can help!

Panda Bear Mittens :)

I know it's probably a little late in the year to be making mittens because *hopefully* winter weather will be subsiding soon, but I can always save them for a fall craft fair!

I'm really excited about how these came out.  I worked on them both at the same time (working a row of one, then the other) so I would finish at the same time and make sure that they were identical in size.  Then I just estimated sizes of ears, eyes, and nose, and tried them out until I found ones I liked (which luckily didn't take too long).

I would have loved to show a picture of someone wearing them, but they're kid sized, and it's a little more difficult to find kids here than at home in Maine, where I could just go get my nieces!

I'm probably going to try a pair of penguins next. If you have an idea about another type (or questions), I would LOVE to hear it, just leave me a comment below :)

Bottle Caps!

Hey Guys!
As a result of my past attempts at rock tumbling bottles to make sea glass, I had a few of the bottle caps lying around, so I decided to give some earrings a try!

It was a fairly cheap project, I bought some spray paint for about $3 and Mod Podge for $5, which are both reusable for many projects. I already had some earrings that I wanted to recycle to make then, so then I just had to print out a picture that I liked that went with the black paint.

My Dremel came in handy for this little project, and it made a hole in the caps so easily.  I put a few coats of spray paint on each side, and after waiting awhile put the picture on and covered it in the Mod Podge. 

They came out pretty well for a first try, but I definitely need some practice! Some places of the paper darkened a little more than I would have liked.  I do have some ideas for bottle cap necklaces and magnets also, and I'm thinking about using my duct tape skills for some of the pictures, instead of using printing paper, to make it more unique. 

Did you notice that picture behind me in the first photo?? I didn't make it, my sister did, but I love it!  I asked her to make me a picture of an octopus hatching from an egg, and she did it! It's pretty much the first thing I see when I walk into my room.

Well I suppose that's it for now! If you have any thoughts or questions, leave me a comment :)

Pendants!

Happy Valentine's Day! (A few days ago...) As the best fiance ever I got David a pack of gum at the check out counter of a craft store...  Go me! Maybe next year I'll even spring for TWO packs, we'll see...
I have a lot of different crafts and ideas in the works right now, which hopefully means lots of posts in the near future! The last projects that I finished were awhile ago (and I've made some in the past). Here they are:

Just a few new wire-wrapped star pendants! So, if you feel so inclined to check them out on etsy, or tell a friend about them, here's a link;)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/123301398/wire-wrapped-sea-glass-star-pendant?ref=v1_other_2

And I'll be putting a few more up on etsy soon!

I love these little pendants because, not only are they one of the only pieces of jewelry I'll wear, but I feel so accomplished when I'm done making them. Almost every time I make one, (no matter how careful I try to be) I drop a tiny pieces of sea glass on the ground and have to spend five minutes feeling the rug until I find it.  To finally get it wrapped up and secured, knowing that I won't have to search the floor (at least for that particular piece) ever again... Well, that's an accomplishment!

My Dremel has come in handy for some of my recent crafts, including my work with bottle caps.  That, it so happens, will be the discussion of my next post, so stay tuned! :)

New Backpack

Guess what everyone!! I finished that backpack I was working on :) Turns out, I didn't have too much to worry about when using the dorm washing machines!

I put it in for two cycles, (but I might want to put it in one more time after I've fixed up a few things).  For one thing, the straps are way too long (as I expected they would be) because I knew it would be way easier to sew them to make them smaller than try to make them bigger!! I also want to sew on a magnetic snap and some buttons at some point.  There were a few places around the bottom of the bag that I wish had sealed up better while felting, but I don't see any reason this won't work as a backpack for me as long as I don't start carrying a hundred pounds of books... I'm very excited to finish it up and wear it to classes for the first time tomorrow, and this gives me hope about felting here in the future! (Though the paying for laundry thing still sucks).

Well, unfortunately I have a ton of reading and studying to do tonight. Despite the storm here in New England keeping me pretty much held up in my dorm, it didn't inspire me to do my homework any earlier. Instead, I did crafts until I ran out of materials, then watched movies! At least Billy Joel tells me that I don't think too much;)

"Should I try to be a straight 'A' student? If you are then you think too much." - It's Still Rock and Roll to Me

Starry Night

Happy Weekend to you all! No? Just me, the college student with the sweet schedule? Well, sorry, the weekend will come soon enough for the rest of you!! So yesterday on my day off (I promise, I do take 4 classes!) I spent most of the time gluing on small tumbled sea glass pieces to a 9" by 12" canvas.  I was a long process gluing piece by piece, and making sure everything was exactly where I wanted it, but finally I finished and can show you!

As most of you can guess, this is my own little version of 'Starry Night'.  What do you think?? And I promise it looks better in person when you can really see the textures!  I want to put this up on etsy.com soon, but I'm thinking about covering it in a resin first (which would create a clear, glossy finish to the piece). I'll let you know what I end up doing!


"We spend our whole lives in unconscious exercise of the art of expressing our thoughts with the help of words." -Vincent Van Gogh

(for more Van Gogh quotes, you can check out http://www.vangoghgallery.com/misc/quotes.html)

Felting!

So, I made myself a new backpack the other day.

Sure, it's a little too big- and pretty flimsy- now, but just you wait! I knitted this bag with about 7 balls of wool, and the yarn is doubled in a few places to try and give it a little more support. So now it's just a matter of getting it to look, and be as useful as, a backpack.  Which is where felting comes in!
This may be a bit of a challenge while at college for me, where I don't really have the convenience of a top-loading washer (not to mention one I can use for free...) or the ability to boil and put hot water into the washer when I want....

Maybe I should start with what felting is, for those that don't know.  It's when you put something made of wool into hot water and agitate it, which is best done in the washing machine.  The material then shrinks up the size of the item (in my case it's usually purses) and makes it thicker.  When I knit something and then felt it, the stitches aren't even seen in the final product.  For many people, felting is that annoying thing that happens when they accidentally put their favorite hat or sweater in the washing machine, and afterwards find it now fits better on their baby.  But for me, well, it's awesome.

It's a process that can take something and complete it by giving it the a whole new look and feel that knitting alone can't create.  And besides, my whole craft obsession was started after I felted my first purse, and then 'felt' the need to keep on experimenting... (Sorry for the awful pun, I just figured I should embrace it rather than try to find a different way to say that ;p)  Sure, I've had many problems with felting, and I have many stories if you ever need advice, but all in all it's a pretty great technique.

So, back to my current backpack and laundry room problems.  Usually I watch things that I felt all through the cycle, and actually use multiple cycles for bags sometimes.  This will be such an experiment for me, since I won't have any control over what's going on, or see it at all! I guess I'll just throw a few pairs of jeans in with it (hey, might as well get some laundry done too if I'm paying for it, right?!) and hope that nothing super crazy happens... I'm very interested to see how this will work, and I can't wait to show you all the finished piece!

I've also finished up something today that I made with sea glass. I really want to post it, but I want to  show David before the whole internet sees! I think it's pretty cool, but I'll have to see what you all think... I'll write again soon, so keep checking in ;)

Sea Glass!

Soooo, I just figured out I could title blog posts (I know, I'm dopey) so I'll have to start doing that.... Well, Happy Super Bowl Sunday everyone! Enjoy your piles of food, funny commercials, and time with some friends and family. Oh yeah, and that football part. And for those of you who don't give a crap about it, Happy Normal Sunday, make it a relaxing one!

As my first-ever title suggests, this post will be mostly about sea glass (duh). Let's start with my attempts to drill holes in sea glass with a Dremel (hand-held drill tool). Things I learned: 1. They are a little loud and annoying to listen to, so if you're in a dorm with lots of people in rooms nearby, make sure they don't hate you 2. Water is a MUST!! -I learned this the hard way. I attached one of my new diamond drill bits into the Dremel, and started to drill, only to literally burn the tip down, as well as snap the glass in half. Continually putting water on the glass will keep it from getting too hot 3. It takes awhile. It might take a few minutes to drill through a piece, even if it's fairly thin, so don't get discouraged that it's not working. In the end, I only drilled a hole in one piece, and I still need TONS of practice, but it still felt so good to finally be successful and see all that hard work accomplish something!

Another topic I wanted to talk about is the rock tumbler I have sitting in the middle of my dorm room that's been on for the last 2 days. Surprisingly, it's not very loud! It's like a white noise machine, and with a bucket over it, it's really easy to forget it's even on. Unfortunately, I have a feeling it'll need at least a few more days, it not more, to actually make sea glass from the broken bottles I put in there.  After a day I could definitely see that the edges were not sharp anymore, but other than that the process is sure taking its sweet time! I'm hoping (if it works) to start using my own tumbled sea glass to make items, since real sea glass tends to be very expensive.

All in all, sea glass and me haven't been getting along too well lately. But don't worry, I'm confident that'll change soon. I have some ideas in the works, and I'll be sure to share once it's done! Next post I'll be talking about felting (very exciting!) so make sure to check back in soon :)

Well, I promised another blog post today, so here I am at 11:55 pm starting it (and even though I won't finish by midnight, it totally counts).  I had one of those really productive days of actually going to class, getting some school work done, and doing some very necessary craft shopping at Michaels, so I'm pretty impressed with myself :) Of course, I ended up taking a long nap to ruin my day of productivity, and I just woke up!!  One thing I got today while shopping was buttons, to finish up some mittens I wanted to show you all.

 

 Ok, I know I've shown you a lot of turtle/tortoise stuff lately, so I promise my next post won't have anything to do with them, I know people love a variety! But I wanted to share these mittens, which I did create my own pattern for, and I'm thinking about putting up on Etsy to sell in the near future. I have a lot of mitten ideas (penguin, panda, sharks, etc.) that I think would look cute, so I want to start making a variety of sizes and types. Would there be any interest in something like this??

Lastly, I want to talk about a project I'm working on. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky said, "Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot remain in the cradle forever."  As a child, he was deafened by scarlet fever, and subsequently kicked out of school because of his difficulty in the school setting. Instead, by reading books and experimenting himself, he was able to teach himself everything he needed to know to later be named a Father of Rocketry.  Though he never went to space himself, he never stopped exploring the vast beauty that is out there.  

Like Tsiolkovsky, I want to appreciate the wonders of space.  But unlike him, I will not be spending my time catching up on new physics, chemistry, and mathematics topics in the library....  Though space exploration will not be a part of my future, it would be ridiculous to ignore it's impact in all of our lives. I think it's safe to say the world has left the cradle, and knows a hell of a lot more than they did in 1857, or 1946 when this first picture of Earth from space was taken-

http://www.airspacemag.com/space-exploration/FEATURE-FirstPhoto.html

Tsiolkovsky explored what he loved, and did it at a time in which many didn't respect deaf people. Of course, it's become something that impacts the lives of many all over the world. Now I'm not saying to go off and do something that'll impact billions of people tomorrow, but I do want to emphasize how important it is to get outta the cradle and do something you love.  I know it's hard when it feels like we don't have enough time or money (believe me, as an in debt college student, I know what that's like), but it is totally worth it. Start small. If you like to travel, maybe you can take a little road trip to a state you've never been to, then start saving up for that big trip to wherever else. 

I love to craft, and I can't imagine it never being a part of my life.  And maybe, just maybe, my passion will bring some joy to others- possibly through learning how to knit or crochet from me, or enjoying products that they've bought.  I'm inching my way out of the cradle, trying to make what I have into a real business, and contemplating the idea of really making this what I do with my life.  For now, I'll settle with just taking some time to make some new and unique items that will catch the eye of others and maybe make me a few bucks.  But who knows what's next!

Hello Everyone! Happy Thursday :)
It feels like such a long time since my last post, though I can't say I've done anything too productive since then unfortunately. One thing that I did accomplish last night (which I've been wanting to do for AWHILE) was make a key chain for my fiance, David.

 He loses his key all the time. Aaaaaaaall the time. I cannot emphasize that enough.  So I figure if there's a turtle attached to his key at all times, maybe he'll be able to find it easier. Or, even better, stop losing it in the first place! That would sure save ME a lot of time looking through pockets of clothes and messy desks...
On another note, I'm going to start taking piano lessons this weekend! I appreciate musicians so much, but it'll be a miracle if I can learn more than "twinkle twinkle little star." So wish me luck! I'm off to breakfast, but I will be posting again later today to share some of my other projects, so make sure to visit again:)

Hello All!
Other than cramming a weeks worth of reading into my Sunday night, I figured I should take some time out to write another post! I don't have too too much to say, but I do have a question for anyone who is reading this.... What is one (or more) thing you'd like to learn how to craft? Anything you can think of, because even if I don't know how to do it, I may be willing to learn! I'd love to do a tutorial sometime in the future of this blog, and want to know what would be most interesting for people :)

Welcome to TheCollegeCrafter! My name is Savannah, I'm a sophomore at Tufts University and I have my own small business, Savvy Stitches, that I'm hoping to grow throughout the next couple years while I'm in college. Before I go on anymore, I must admit- I'm not a great writer. But I'm going to try!
This blog will a way for me to post new photos and ideas about college life and crafting things, and maybe get some feedback! I'd love to hear anything you would like to share with me. I'm hoping to post at least 3 times a week, so please continue to check in and see what's going on with me in my cramped little dorm room!
I'll leave you with this cute little picture of my pet tortoise, Meh- named because he/she is the epitome of indifference, seriously.

I want to make some tortoise mittens soon, so I'll let you know how they turn out!