Missy Diggs

I finished chemo a couple of weeks ago (yee-haw!) and while I am feeling quite a bit better I am still not quite up to par. I took the Vivid Girl on her class end-of-year field trip extravaganza the other day (boat ride on Ladybird Lake, then swimming and lunch at Deep Eddy Pool), which was immediately followed by Trophy Day at gymnastics…. and now it’s three days later and I’m still not back in full swing.

Meanwhile I have been taking a fabulous Artist’s Way workshop, based on the book by Julia Cameron, and it has stirred up some creative energy that I had lost touch with for awhile. Unfortunately, I am still at a point where I have more energy to dream up things to do than to actually do them.

So my list of Virtual Crafts (crafts I don’t actually do, but which I investigate on the Internet) is growing and growing. And I am doing a lot of pretend online shopping too, in which my wishlists grow longer and longer.

Here are some of my favorites right now:

Go to Etsy.com and do a search on “steampunk.” Thousands of fabulous items will appear! Including this awesome Kraken necklace and this gorgeous and lavishly priced dress!
Also this lovely journal and this awesome magnifying lens that clips onto your glasses and makes you look like a mad scientist.

I have also been spending a lot of time looking at the Retro & Mod fabrics on fabric.com and imagining myself spending the summer looking cool and crisp in swirly dresses.

Of course, that means I have to go back and read all the archives at A Dress A Day.

And sometimes I have to watch old movies with great dresses for inspiration. A recent fave: How to Steal a Million with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. You can Watch It Now on netflix.

Yesterday, we welcomed our new Saturday babysitter into our life (the Vivid Girl is so happy to have a babysitter again she wanted to throw confetti to welcome her!) and Mr. B and I went to the Blanton (WARNING: JAZZ! or try this link) to see the Birth of the Cool exhibit. It was good, though not quite as extensive as I had hoped. In particular, there were no clothes and not enough pictures of clothes. I also would have liked more furniture and objects of a household usefulness. More of everything! There was an awesome birdbath and some great architecture photography. We also popped upstairs and enjoyed looking at the fabulous Antiquities and Modern/Contemporary Art (some of which we thought was crazy though someone obviously loves it and some of which we loved though other patrons clearly thought it was crazy).

After that, we hopped on over to the east side to check out the book store Domy. It was awesome, and we both want to go back and spend more time there. The people working there were super nice and helpful as well. They had the kidrobot Luckies zipper pulls designed by Friendswithyou so we got some and mine was a cute little swirly piece of candy which I immediately put on my new puffy night vest. They also had the new book What It Is by Lynda Barry and Mr. B bought it for me as a gift. He said there was so much stuff he wanted in the store that he couldn’t narrow it down to what he wanted the most so he will have to budget some money and go back with time to decide. The store sells gift cards so I think we know what Mr. B is getting for his birthday (coming up on June 5)!

And now I am tired of doing the links and I just took my chicken out of the oven (Sunday dinner!) so I am going to say bye y’all! and I hope to be back soon!

One of our freezers is full of old coffee cans, which in turn are full of water (now ice). Mr. B has plans to make some robot face luminarias following this method:

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/ca_crafts_projects/article/0,2041,DIY_13721_2269907,00.html

Poor guy, I don’t know when he will ever get a chance to make them! I just hope the cans of ice have a shorter stay in the freezer than Vivi’s placenta (five years and counting…..)!

As we get to this most craftiest time of the year, I am busy making lists of crafts I want to do. Of course, I have to add all these new craft ideas to my list from last year… which was added to the list from the year before that…  It’s turtles all the way down.

My biggest priority this year is to get an advent calendar made for the Vivid Girl before December 1. Here are some of the advent calendars I find inspiring:

magnetic advent calendar from love, joleen

Tiny Christmas Tree Advent Calendar from Scribbit

the classic felt tree Advent Calendar, this one from Kaboose.com

this gorgeous advent calendar from Craftster

the adorable Stocking Advent Calendar from Soule Mama

And there are more. Many, many more. In one dream (the one in which I have a differently-themed Christmas tree in every room of the house, natch) I have advent calendars all over the place. Maybe I can make one a year and soon they will definitely add up.

Last week I went through all our books and picked out the best holiday choices. I put them in a basket and stashed them away. I want to make sure I have 24 good holiday books so I can wrap them, put them in the basket, and use them for an advent calendar like this one:

Charlotte Mason Advent Book Box

Of course, I haven’t even gotten started on the Advent Calendar and I am already looking around at other adorable crafts. The Vivid Girl and I got all stocked up on the stuff to make these cinnamon dough glitter birds from Martha Stewart, but the dough recipe didn’t turn out on our first try (too sticky to work with, then the glue started to dry) and we haven’t had time to try again. Looks like there are some good troubleshooting ideas in the comments.

The next thing I want to work on is a wreath for the front door. After lugging around a box of wreath making supplies for years, but never getting the darn thing made, I realize I need to choose a different kind of wreath to make. Something easy and fast. My favorite is the gumdrop wreath from Kiddley via Martha Stewart, but Mr. B (perhaps wisely) is not too excited about all that candy hanging at the Vivid Girl’s eye level. Still, so pretty!

So now I am all about the button wreath. There are so many different possibilities! And it will allow me to dig into my button stash: about 20 years ago I bought two antique jars full of vintage beads from a junk store in Attica, Indiana, and I have been slowly working my way through them ever since. The Vivid Girl, of course, has gotten her hands on them and she is working through them much more quickly! Which means that to make the wreath I see in my mind, I will probably need more buttons. And this is where I may need help, because I have started bidding on buttons on eBay. Oh yes! Wonderful buttons, in beautiful materials and Christmas colors! I hope I will find the time to work on the projects I have in mind for these buttons, because right now I am very excited about them. But it does often seem that I am very excited when I buy the materials, and then… something happens.

Here are some links for buttony inspiration:

Button Wreath from CraftStylish

Button Flower Wreath from In the Treetop

A Button Wreath Tutorial on flickr

the button wreath ornament

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a couple of crafty little projects. I was wearing some super comfortable but super scruffy plain brown shoes one day and I thought, “If only I could make these shoes look as awesome as they feel!” So of course I headed straight for the handy dandy Internet and did some research and found out that there are people out there who paint their shoes to look however they want.

I decided that I wanted my shoes to look pastel, and metallic, and to have kitties on them. And for one to say “Good Kitty” and one to say “Bad Kitty.” So I ordered the extra special shoe paint from Dharma Trading Co., and when the box came I immediately broke it open and got to work.

Here is the result of that endeavor:

The back of the Bad Kitty shoe says “Is it Caturday yet?” and the back of the Good Kitty shoe says “Everyday is Caturday!”

Here is a link to the true spirit of Caturday.

While I was at it, I decided to do something about my favorite black boots, which were in such terrible shape that Mr. B was always suggesting maybe it was time for some new boots. But new boots cost money, and in my size (11WW, isn’t it terrible?) are not that easy to find, and anyway these boots still ARE great, they just didn’t LOOK great.

So I mixed up some bronze acrylic paint with some of this paint medium stuff that turns it into a more flexible paint suitable for fabric. Then I painted both boots totally bronze, with some help from the Vivid Girl. I wish I had taken a picture at that point, because they looked like grown-up bronzed baby booties and were pretty darn cool.

then I stuck star stickers all over them. I do have a picture of one of the boots at this stage:

then I painted all over the boots, stickers and all, with Neopaque black. Two coats.

When the second coat was all dry, I carefully pulled off the stickers. I was hoping this would give me “reverse stencil” effect, with sharp outlines on all the bronze stars peeking out through the black paint.

It worked a little, but two things went wrong: first, the corners of the stickers tended to lift up a bit, so black paint got under them, so the outlines were not that sharp. Second, when I pulled off the stickers the black paint sometimes pulled off with it from around the edges of the star. So I mixed up some more bronze paint and used a tiny paintbrush to sharpen up the points and fill in the middles of the stars. It was a lot of steps, but it turned out looking pretty good, and I can’t wait to wear them!

We also got possession of a pair of shoes that were too small for our friend Clarissa so we were going to pass them on to our friend Honorae. (Our house is often a hand-me-up/hand-me-down warehouse, which I love) But these shoes had some little pink leather flowers on the straps that were looking pretty sad and tired, and the toes were very scuffed up. So I painted over the pink flowers with new mardi gras colors, and painted flowers in the same colors across the scuffed up part of the toe. Pretty cute, I think.

In all cases, I sprayed the shoes generously with clear acrylic gloss when they were all finished, and let them dry for 24 hours. I’m hoping this will protect the paint and keep the shoes looking fresh.

Of course, I am pretty hard on shoes so I may have to paint these babies again someday. Which would not be all bad.

This has been one helluva week or so.

But first, let me introduce you to a storytelling technique that I learned from a play I saw on PBS many years ago. I think it starred Dick van Dyke and Cloris Leachman (But I could be wrong) as an older married couple who were broadcasting their last radio show after many years. It was called something like “Breakfast with Les and Bess” and I thought it was really good at the time. In particular, the actress who played the ditzy daughter was awesome. Details later if I bother to look it up. (It had Shaun Cassidy! How did I forget that?)

Anyway, the storytelling thing goes like this: the person telling the story starts out with an exciting, positive line, and everyone listening goes, “Yay!” Then a more unfortunate detail follows, and everyone goes, “Awww.” And it alternates like this for awhile, with your hopes rising and falling until finally…. well, I don’t know what finally happens. Maybe you just tell the story and keep piling up details until everyone is sick of listening to it and going “yay” and “aww” and then you deliver some sappy punchline. I don’t remember, and I’m not promising anything about how this post is going to go either. But if you want to play along, here we go.

About ten days ago, I had my very last chemotherapy treatment. (yay!)

And then I felt really bad for about 8 or 9 days. (aww!)

but I managed to have some fun anyway. (yay!)

But also I couldn’t really sleep or eat much and I was having the worst. ever. hot flashes. (aww!)

On Sunday we went to the Craft: magazine release party at the WorkShop, and it was really fun. (yay!)

The Vivid Girl won a door prize, which was a super-cool snappy pouch sewn together from fused plastic bags and line with cute fabric, made by Future Craft Collective. (yay!)

And I made a fairly cute button bracelet. (yay!)

And the next day, the divine Mr. B surprised me by revealing that he had submitted my Barbie project to the Craft: blog, and they had posted about it. (yay!)

And somebody left a comment saying that putting my own hair into my child’s doll was creepy and weird. (aww! or maybe Yay!)

And other people left comments saying that they thought it was cool. (yay!)

The Vivid Girl spent her own allowance this week on a sewing kit, which made me swell with pride. (yay!)

And I had a fabulous acupuncture treatment from the amazing Dr. Wang, and I could literally feel the weird hot flash energy leaving my body during the treatment, and I haven’t had a hot flash since. (yay!)

Though I still couldn’t really sleep last night. (aww!)

but I feel a lot better anyway. (yay!)

and now I am done with this post. (yay!)

except, my camera is out of batteries so I cannot post any pix now. (awww!)

I will post them later. (yay!)

It started like this: the Vivid Girl used her allowance to buy a Barbie at the thrift store, and when she got her home she realized that some other kid had already given Barbie a haircut, and she didn’t like it.

Or maybe it started like this: I got diagnosed with cancer, and when I started chemo I decided that, rather than wait for my hair to start falling out I would just shave it all off right away, and the Vivid Girl very bravely helped with the shaving. We kept my hair in a plastic bowl, just knowing it would come in handy some day.

Well, anyway, no matter how it got started, when these two events combined in my brain I knew there was only one thing to do. So I turned to the Internet, of course, and within 20 minutes I knew almost everything I needed to know about how to get Barbie’s bad hair off her head and put my good hair onto it.

The first thing you have to do is crop Barbie’s head close to the scalp, taking care not to nip or scar the vinyl while you’re doing it.

Here’s what Barbie looked like at that point:

Oops, but I forgot to mention, after you cut the hair really short you have to take the head off. Now, with today’s Barbies, who have swivelly necks, this is not as easy as it used to be. Also, even in the old days Barbie’s head would sometimes tear a bit if you popped it off too often or with too much force. But I learned this handy trick on the Internet: submerge Barbie, head first, into boiling water. This will soften up the vinyl and make the head pop right off.

All right, so once the hair is short and the head is off, there are a few way to proceed. I chose to use a teeny tiny crochet hook to scrape the inside of Barbie’s head to get all the hair out. It came out in clumps of red fuzzy knots.

Once the hair was all out, I followed the instructions in this amazing animated how-to to put the new hair in:

http://www.modcolors.com/modbarbiecare/reroot3.htm

I am under the impression that this may not be the “best” way to re-root Barbie hair, but it was definitely the best how-to I found, and I decided to follow the directions I could actually understand. Here is Barbie with her first lock of my old hair:

It took a couple of weeks (and many episodes of Grey’s Anatomy on Netflix) but Barbie finally has a whole new (to her) head of hair:

I put Barbie’s head back on for pictures, but now I have to plunge her back into the boiling water so I can take her head off again so I can apply glue inside to make sure the hair stays where I so painstakingly put it. According to the Internet, the best glue to use is Gem-Tac, but second choice is E6000, and I actually have that (I think) so that’s what I’m planning to use. We’ll see what a dunk in hot water does to her crazy hairstyle. I actually think the hair is so big and bushy because I put too much hair in each hole. I’m going to try to do some styling, and possibly cutting, to see if I can get it to look more like regular Barbie hair. There may be a trip to Sally Beauty Supply for “setting lotion” and other old school styling aids in my future.

I’ll keep you posted.

But now you know what I’ve been doing with myself during my most recent down time. I was working on Barbie’s head when the Vivid Girl did her play therapy last week, and the counselor thought it would be a great idea to make dolls using the hair of kids who have to cut off their hair during cancer treatment. I definitely have to think about the best way to do it. I think it might have to be a mail-order service, because I would hate to think of parents having to spend their time working on such a tedious project. But maybe something where the family sends in the kid’s hair and specifies some preferences on the type of doll, and then crafty volunteers use the kid’s hair to re-root the doll’s head? I would have to get better at it before I would be comfortable offering my services, but it’s worth thinking about. As my Internet research shows, there are plenty of people out there who know how to do this. I certainly never thought I would be one of them!

The Breast Cancer Resource Center of Austin recently held Graphic II, their second annual bra auction and fundraiser extravaganza. The event raised $25,000 for the organization, which provides information and support for Austinites affected by breast cancer. They are the group that run the (free!) support groups I have been attending, so I was eager to give something back by donating a couple of bras. So one afternoon when I was sitting at home resting I pulled out a couple of thrift store bras, my glue gun, and a bunch of silk flowers, fabric scraps, ribbons, and doo-dads and whipped up these two beauties.

I don’t know whether these two sold, or for how much, but the pirate bra was featured in the photo shoot so I have high hopes of its appearing in next year’s calendar. They had the model wear hoop earrings and put a little stuffed parrot on one shoulder; it was very cute.