It's A Craftmas December!

The Rochester NY Etsy Street Team (RNEST) has a month-long party of handmade goodness planned for December! I'm at a loss for words when it comes to describing my joy about these events. This is going to be gooood!

Several months ago the RNEST team decided to rent a space for a month somewhere in Rochester to hold shows, workshops, and community building events. The Hungerford Building became available to us a few months ago, but something fell through with that. Instead that was a blessing in disguise as now we have the space for December and we can focus on holiday shows and winter fun.

The extra exciting, really cool thing is that Etsy gave our team a grant to do this. Yes! Etsy gave us money to put all of this together. How cool is that?!

We've met. We've talked. We've planned. Now it's time to reveal the crafty month-long RNEST party we have in store for you!

All events are located at The Hungerford Building, Door 8,
at 1115 East Main Street, Rochester, NY, 14609. 

Craftmas Events are on Facebook! Click the links below to RSVP, then share with your friends!



Craftmas: Etsy Style! First Friday Holiday Craft Sale
Friday, December 2nd at 5:00 pm - 9:00 pm 
Saturday, December 3rd at noon - 4:00 pm 

A Handmade Holiday hits the Hungerford Building! Come shop from a selection of quality items made by local artists. Give the gift of handmade this holiday season!


Clothing Swap 
Monday, December 5th at 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm 

It’s time to clean out that closet! Bring in your unwanted clothing and take home some new-to-you pieces for your wardrobe...all for free! RNEST artists will also be available to teach demos with techniques for altering and upcycling your clothes into fun, new items! *Any clothing left over at the end of the night will be donated. Nothing will go to waste!


Creative Play Session 
Saturday, December 10th at 7:00 pm - 8:30 pm 

Creativity boosting activities and exercises to spark your artistic inspiration and get out of a rut. Come with an open mind and leave with ideas for new projects! (For ages teen and up)


Open Craft Night: Etsy Style! 
Thursday, December 15th at 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm 

Demos: glass pendant soldering, knitting, bead weaving and MORE! Everyone is invited for a handmade, fun-filled evening of simple planned projects and unstructured time with RNEST artists. Bring your crafty works-in-progress, share our supplies, experiment with our tools, and ask us about tips and techniques. A small sampling of our works will also be available for sale.

I am part of the planning committee for Open Craft Night. We have a lot of cool projects lined up that are easy as well as more intermediate and low cost to make. No art experience required! Just watching all the demos alone will fill up the night. It's going to be awesome. I can't wait!!

Direct questions about any of these events to me at inmyheadstudios [at] gmail.com

We hope you can make it to at least one of these events! They will be a lot of fun simply because our team is a lot of fun!

What now? Head over to RNEST on Facebook to RSVP, then share the events with your friends! 

xoxo

- Vickie

A (Possible) New Gadget For My Old Baggage

I am ridiculously difficult to buy presents for… unless you are buying me art supplies. Then the list of possible gifts is endless and has been known to include power tools like compound miter saws.

I’m not a girly girl so jewelry, make-up, and most fashionable clothing is out. I can’t use lovely scented lotions because I’m allergic to so many unidentified things. I don’t really cook anymore so kitchen stuff is useless, not to mention my kitchen is already well stocked with cookware and gadgets.

I do not like other people spending money on me. I really truly do not like it. In fact, I really dislike spending money on myself, too. So when it comes time for Mr. M to ask me what I want for Christmas, I get hung up in The Spending Money (On Me) Spiral. He is spending money on me. But it’s OUR money. Therefore it’s partly my money being spent on me. Double whammy.

The double whammy causes me to be completely, totally, cripplingly indecisive if I happen to (rarely) want something that is a little expensive. This year’s indecisiveness is brought to you by our friends at Apple because I really want the new iPod Touch.

“But, Vickie,” you say. “You already have a perfectly good iPod Touch.” Yes, I do. I know. I love it. It works just fine. It has brought me countless hours of joy.

But last week my twin sister, Valerie, got an iPhone. This was the first time I had a chance to play with an iPhone. The screen is amazingly gorgeous. I can actually read tiny lettering on web pages on the iPhone that my failing eyesight can’t read on my Touch. Then I played with the camera, the video camera, FaceTime, and then all the other cool stuff that my Touch doesn’t have.

My brain began to scream, “WANT! WANT! WANT!” My brain began to show me in rapid fire succession all the fun projects that I could do with a new Touch like make stop motion animations, pepper Twitter with photos, make video tutorials, FaceTime with my sister and far away friends, and finally have access to things like VoiceOver so I can have the web and Twitter “read to me” when I need to rest my eyes or cannot tolerate light anymore.

I have been going back and forth with “yes” and “no” to Mr. M on this for weeks, even before Valerie got her iPhone. He has not enjoyed my dance with The Spending Money (On Me) Spiral. Today he required an answer. I balked. I stammered. Both “yes” and “no” fought to come out of my mouth at the same time. So I completely gave the decision to him. Now it’s going to be a surprise if he buys it or not. I am quite sure he will buy it because he is so super nice to me and totally spoils me at Christmas all year. But I am not going to be disappointed if he doesn’t buy it either. Like I said, I have a perfectly good iPod Touch already.

So where lies the rub?? What is my damage?

This is not about the iPod Touch. This is not really about the money. This is about my self-hatred, which lately has been off the charts as I struggle to be productive through excruciating pain and fatigue trying to be “good enough” and never getting there.

Inside, I am being torn in half.

One side really wants the iPod Touch and is excited like a gleeful 6 year old about it. This side is jumping up and down inside my head and squealing right now about playing Angry Birds on that clear new screen.

The other side is just doom doom doom. “You don’t deserve it. Who do you think you are? You have a perfectly good iPod already. No one should ever buy you any gifts because you are a piece of doo doo. No nice things for you – especially nice things that will bring you untold, incalculable hours of fun and joy and let you spread untold, incalculable hours of fun and joy to the interwebs!”

I really need to work on this self-hatred problem. It’s sneaking its way into everything. I deny myself so much good because of it. I deny myself happiness, success, comfort, and the list could go on for quite some length. What ends up happening is that I am also denying you - my family and friends - the gifts I have been given to share because this self-hatred makes me isolate and not share my love/joy/art with anyone. This self-hatred makes me feel like no one could possibly ever want to see what I do or spend one second with me. I fight tooth and nail with it just to post what I do on the web, like this post for instance.

New iPod Touch or not, receiving gifts at Christmas taxes my self-hatred significantly. As the pile of gifts with my name on them grows, so does my anxiety. If these people really knew how horrible I am they would be giving me coal like I deserve!

This year I am going to make a conscious effort to pay attention to feeling good about receiving. I’m going to listen more to the gleeful 6 year old in me. I’m not going to listen to doom doom doom. Receiving a gift is about taking in the love from the gift giver. It’s not about me and my cr@p unless I choose to make it about me and my cr@p by listening to the doom. Doom, you shall have Christmas off! I’m going to keep reminding myself that if I really were as horrible as I think I am, then these wonderful people who love me might have noticed by now and wouldn’t be giving me any gifts at all.

As part of my plan for 2011, the word I have chosen to focus on is HEALING (more on this soon). Quite near the top of the list of things that need to be healed is my self-hatred. I think that might clean up some other messes lurking in my baggage, too.

If you are suffering from the “self-hatred doom doom doom” this holiday season let me know in the comments and we will pull each other through this together! If you have a case of the “I’m not good enough”s this year, I got your back, too! If these are things you have worked through and have some solutions to offer I welcome your thoughts!

Please have a happy and safe holiday!

Love,

- Vickie

xoxo

Merry Christmas!

I got this as a gift when I was born from a grandparent... not sure which one. My twin sister has one just like it with her name on it. This is one of my most treasured belongings. So that makes it about 35 years old! Yikes!

I nearly died last night when it wasn't in the ornament box as we decorated our tree (rather late, I might add). The box it was in somehow got separated from the Christmas boxes in the basement and it was well hidden in a seat bench. I couldn't find my ornament for about an hour. It was a horrible feeling, but I'm happy now that it is safely on the tree! When my nieces were born I made sure to get one for each of them. It made my sister cry.

These are what I've been working on today and this week.

This one is inspired by Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of Christmas 2009: Day 5. These little plastic charms are a product in his line. The images are glued to the backs with Glossy Accents. You can see these pictures bigger at flickr by clicking on them.

I made this tag this morning to give to my mom for Christmas. I really like gold embossing powder! And I cannot let a tag be with just one ribbon. It has to have lots of foofiness!

This tag is for my mom as a gift. She's a big fan of my work! Ha! Anyway, what says "I love you" better than handmade?

I hope you are having a very merry Christmas, if it's your thing! xoxo

New Product Launch – Altered Domino Christmas Ornaments

I’m so excited to be rolling out a new product line today! Aren’t you excited, too?! I can feel that you are!





Ta Da! Altered domino Christmas tree ornaments!

Several years ago I mentioned to my eternally-garage-sale-going grandmother that I needed some dominos to make art with. She promptly found about 700. What to do? Make lots of things with dominos.

Some of them are very very old. The wood ones are all vintage antiques. The bigger dominos are the plastic kind.

I’ve really enjoyed making these. I was hoping my canvas would be expanding from 1” x 1” to something bigger. But these are still about the same size only a slightly different orientation. For some reason I gravitate towards making things that are really small with tiny bits of paper. My eyesight isn’t going to tolerate this much longer!

I have about 20 of these made so keep watching my shop for new additions!