Here are pictures of the wire-wrapped sea glass jewelry I taught for a private class at Craft Akron this week.  The women were so much fun!  They go to Lake Erie together to collect sea glass & wanted to learn how to make it into jewelry.

My next investment is to buy diamond-tipped drill bits so I can drill holes in sea glass and teach classes on it.  As long as baby doesn’t come early, I’ll be at Monday’s Jewelry Guild meeting where the demonstration is “Drilling Beach Glass”.  And, If you want to learn wire-wrapping, I did a tutorial on how to make the earrings you see in the upper left picture.

If your green thumb is itching, it might be time to put some seeds in the ground. The first day the sun came out this year gave me the garden itch, and I didn’t want to start my seeds indoors. We’ve gotten a spell of unseasonably warm weather this week so I got out there and started planting. But our last frost day is way out in May so I have to plant carefully.

If you want to make a green house/ cold frame for just your potted plants this trick will work for you. After the tutorial I’ll show you some other cold frames I’m using this year.

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Well, because we Nesters have been busy Birds. Last night I played second fiddle for Colleen while she taught a super fun Sea Glass jewelry making class for 12 awesome women.  We had a blast. Plus, it was the first time since the Lehman’s Hardware demos that we’ve taught a class together. I forgot how much fun that is!

Plus, I’ve been sewing like a mad woman making an enormous amount of crafty goodness for the Medina County Baby Fair, which is on March 20th, where I’ll be vending with Jenn and Mary under the name “the Lollipop Guild.” These little bunny friends are made from cashmere and wool sweaters. Their soft and silkie ears are made with some crinkly polyester curtain samples I picked up at Zero Landfill. I’m also making baby shoes by the dozen from fabric sample books. Some are giraffe print and I want to keep them all, but then I’d have nothing to sell to all the new mommies at the Baby Fair. I need to share the wealth.

So if everything goes according to plan, there will be a tutorial tomorrow. If it rains (because this is a gardening tutorial) then you’ll have to wait until the next sunny day. And there is a pretty good chance for rain…

There have been a million times I have driven past a nasty run down lot in Akron and thought, “We should tear down that yucky house and build a garden here.” Well, the Akron Cooperative is doing just that! I was so excited to find them at the Akron Home and Garden show talking about keeping bees and Urban Chicken raising. They were even holding a raffle to give away a chicken coop (which I entered but did not win). I went to their website to find out more about them and found this:

Our Mission: to build a local food system that improves the health and economy of our community. Our approach is to use the valuable resources and productive traditions within our community by engaging youth and families to improve the conditions of our neighborhoods.

Our Goals: Focus on sustainable agriculture, nutrition education, entrepreneurship, and youth development to create change in our community. With that in mind, our five primary goals are to:

1. Educate residents about food systems, sustainable agriculture and healthy cooking. 

2. Provide access to appropriate and affordable locally-grown, healthy, nutritional and culturally-focused food.

3. Engage and train youth as leaders in the food system and their community.

4. Build self-reliance through employment, training and local business development.

5. Building the capacity to produce food locally through sustainable agriculture. 

How exciting! Find out more, if you are interested in helping out. I don’t know how helpful I can be to them this year with my little kiddos under foot, but next year I would love to put in some man hours in a community garden!  For more information you can follow this link to subscribe to their newsletter.

When a crafter sets forth on a mission, there is not much that can stop them as long as there are scissors around. The mission I have set upon is to run a “barefoot” half marathon in May. To run “barefoot” I am running in Vibram Five Fingers shoes to protect my soles on the roads from debris and other things. But this is Northeast Ohio, and it’s still essentially winter, so I need socks. This creates a problem when there are toe pockets. Even toe socks get bunched up in there. So I hacked a pair of wool athletic socks to be toeless, but still stay on my foot. I used a small stitch between my big toe and second toe to keep the sock from slipping. It works amazingly well, and once I’m running I have no idea they are there. My feet are warm, which is important. Sorry that my socks are a little dirty in the picture, I just came back from a run, I wanted to make sure that it worked before I posted it!

The other problem I have is wanting to use the Nike + iPod gizmo to track and share my runs. But since I am not using the Nike + shoes, how I needed a hack to keep my sensor on my shoe. I took some commercial vinyl fabric I got from Zero Landfill that matches my shoes and made a pouch for the sensor. There is an overlap for the in the opening flap so I don’t lose the sensor on a run, and there is a strap to loop over the velcro shoe closure on my shoe.  This sensor pouch could also slide over shoelaces if you plan to run with the Nike + thing but have a pair of trainers you really love, so it’s not just for us crazy Barefooters.

Today while getting dressed, I decided none of my necklaces were quite right for my outfit.  So I looked through my beads and came up with this quickie.  It was just what I needed to de-formalize my dressy shirt.

Here’s how I made it:  I put the coral bead & flower bead cap on a head pin and made a wrapped wire loop at the top.  I strung it on the string, then attached the clasp with crimp beads.

and a pile of possibility. I spent the afternoon carefully removing shirt pockets. And then carefully pinning them back to the shirt from which they came so that I can do some shirt rehab on Friday afternoon. I am planning to take them all up to The Market Path to see about consigning there. I chatted with one of the employees on Saturday at the Home and Garden show, and she encouraged me to stop in. Hopefully I have what they are looking to stock in their store.

It’s encouraging to me that there are so many people interested in handmade items right now that there is a greater outlet for displaying/selling them. It’s not just craft fairs and etsy, although I LOVE those venues, but even brick and mortar stores are interested in carrying one-of-a-kind handmade items in their shops.

In other news, Colleen and I have talked about slowing down on the tutorial frequency. Once a week  is a lot of crafting. And though we have a ton of ideas for how to repurpose things, we are running out of time to actually do them. Just today I spent two hours ( yikes! ) cleaning out my craft room because I only have time to work in there, and never have any time to clean up after myself. I still haven’t put everything away yet! So, look forward to 2 monthly tutorials from Clever Nesting in the future. We still love you, we just also love our sanity.

In this class, I’ll help you fix your broken jewelry & get it wearable again.  I’m teaching Thursday at Craft Akron.  Here are the details:

Fix your Broken Jewelry Class

$15 plus supplies fee of $5

Bring your broken jewelry stash to class & learn how to restring or resize beaded necklaces and bracelets, reattach missing clasps, or even reconfigure earrings that have lost pieces. Basic supplies included (such as beading wire, thread, ear wires, eye & head pins), but if you have a special clasp you want to use or must have sterling silver ear wires, bring them with you.

Also, if you have a jewelry project you’re stumped on, you’re welcome to bring it to class as well.

Please preregister by at least 24 hours before class at 330-865-1100 or info@craftakron.com.

I just wanted to say first off that this isn’t a sponsored ad. I met a woman at the Wild-erb booth while visiting the Akron Home and Flower Show this past weekend and told her about the horrible yeast diaper rash that Cressida has been having and how most creams were causing her pain when I applied them. We’ve been having this problem off and on for about a month now, and I have tried everything, including Nystatin cream. She showed me her Wild-erb Salve, which is formulated to be anti-fungal and anti-inflamatory and I bought two jars.

Within 12 hours of using the Salve with every diaper change we have had amazing improvements and no pain for my little Sweetie.

Ohio Valley Herbal Products are an Ohio company, and the herbs are actually collected from the Ohio wild. You can read about the company here, and if you are lucky enough to run into them at a fair, be prepared to talk to knowledgeable people who will diagnose you on the spot. You can bet that I will be purchasing from them again.

I made some soup for the Church potluck this Wednesday. It wasn’t until I was almost finished making the soup, and had announced on Facebook that  I planned to bring the soup, that I realized I had no way to transport hot soup without spilling it or letting it cool off.

Hense, the crockpot cozy. I had seen a casserole cozy on the interwebs somewhere (if anyone can remember, or was the maker of this please let me know because I didn’t bookmark it) and it came to mind as the perfect solution to the conundrum I was in.  It was also the perfect excuse to use my new serger because I needed to make it fast.

Essentially this is just a 22″ by 22″ un-quilted quilt, no binding, with over-locked edges. To make it all transportable I made some straps from upholstery weight fabric (over-locked again) and stitched them to the middle of the bottom of the cozy in an X. Then I folded up the corners of the cozy over my crockpot stoneware insert and tied the straps.

It’s machine washable, quick to make, very gift-able, and it kept my soup warm and unspilled all the way to the potluck!