Reeds in the Back Bay Fens

The Back Bay Fens is a beautiful park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead to be part of Boston’s Emerald Necklace park system. Olmstead turned saltwater marshes and swamp into a beautiful green park that surrounds meandering Muddy River.

In many areas of the park, the river banks are overgrown with reeds. While plans exist to remove these non-native, invasive phragmites next year, today they are still swinging high in the wind, providing refuge for a variety of birds, animals, and occasionally homeless people.

Green in spring and golden in the fall, they whisper gently in the wind and always shine brightly against the sky. I realize that they need to be removed, but still I find them majestic.

A few greeting cards with my attempts to capture the beauty of these tall grasses are now available in my Etsy store.

Trees

I decided to explore silk screen printing. As a first attempt, I cut out a little tree design from regular paper, and taped the paper to the screen. Then I screen printed a few greeting cards.


Lessons learned:

• Regular printer paper is too thin--the paint started seeping through it very quickly. Next time I will use freezer paper instead.
• I really should have fixed the placement of the screen on the card (just a few pencil marks would have been enough) before I started printing. Centering the screen on paper was very difficult.

Little Flower Cards

Last weekend I stumbled across some blank card stock still left over from our wedding stationery. Oh, the beautiful soft textured deckle-edged Fabriano paper--I just could not let it go to waste. So I printed the cards using a small linoblock I cut back in December. I decided that these single cards would make perfect Thank You notes for all the gifts I received during the holidays. Coming soon to my Etsh shop.

Hand Decorated Christmas Tree Ornaments

I lament the end of the holiday season. To help me (and you) transition into the regular work week, here are photos of some of the ornaments my super-talented cousin-in-law, Britney Drumheller, made for everyone in the family. Britney also designs clothing and jewelry.





Thanks, Britney!

Everything Handmade News

I recently learned of Boston Handmade, a group of local artists, artisans and craftspeople. Boston has granted them a temporary storefront in Downtown Crossing (505 Washington Street). They are open November 28 through December 28, Thursdays through Sundays, 11am till 7pm. If you are in the Boston area, check them out. I stopped by the store today, and it was busy busy busy. It was nice to see Tactile Baby items at the store, since I met the artist at the MathWorks craft fair.

My Vasilek Peacock card received a positive and rather encouraging review in the Modern Sentiment blog. The blog is written by a fellow Etsy shop keeper, who makes a variety of items including cards, clothing accessories, and handbags, which you can find in her Modern Sentiment shop.

Last but not least, my friend just started a new Etsy shop, selling the cutest hand knit items.

The Craft Fair Report

Thank you to all of you who stopped by my table at the craft fair yesterday. I received tremendous support and lots of encouragement from coworkers and other crafters at the fair. So the fair was a success in every way.

Here are some quick stats for those of you who are curious: I started out with 101 cards (89 + 12 seconds), and sold 56 (52 + 4 seconds).

The snowflake was the top seller by only by one card. Nick and I expected that it to be a runaway winner. More surprising was the fact that people seemed to be more attracted by non-blue snowflakes—the golden/orange/red ones that I made more as an experiment rather then for public consumption. The close second was the peacock card. I think people liked the fact that this card comes with a printed envelope.

Thanks to my friend Helen who watched my table for awhile, I got to walk around and check out other tables at the fair. A lady next to me was selling super cute handmade wooden toys as well as other baby items. A fellow MathWorker was selling great looking handmade tote bags. Another lady was selling necklaces handmade by women in Uganda. (All the proceeds from her sales were going back to these women and the villages they were from.) The individual beads in these necklaces were handmade from recycled magazines!

Of course I cannot list all the tasty and beautiful things sold at the MathWorks fair, but it was great to see what "artsy and craftsy" things my coworkers do in their spare time.