Confessions of a Kawaii Addict

On Etsy:


Three books listed so far. Eight more to go, but I will continue listing them on Sunday. I'm photographing each book individually, so it takes a little time. And I'm feeling sleepy. ;)

More Zines on Etsy

Kawaii Zines

I’m in the midst of assembling 11 handmade books/zines about – and constructed from – cute Asian stationery. A lot of the stationery items included are rare and hard to find in the U.S. I created this zine last year for a swap and had enough to make extras, but I never got around to it until now. As soon as they’re finished, I’ll be adding them to my Etsy shop. And even though I made them for a zine swap, they're more like a handmade book.

Here are the 11 kawaii zines:



Five have covers constructed from Nyan Nyan Nyanko gift bags:


And six have covers constructed from Rilakkuma gift bags:


Here’s a preview of inside one of the zines:


These are only a few of the stickers that are going into these zines, one way or another:




I’m currently embellishing the pages with stickers. Then I’ll be stuffing stickers and mini memo sheets into the envelopes that are bound into each zine, stuffing more goodies into the back covers (they were originally gift bags after all), and lastly decorate the front covers. Phew. I better get busy.

Fabric Art Goodies!

I've been going through my art supplies to put together sets of goodies to go with each copy of FeltZine that I'll be putting up on Etsy. Above is a sample photo of one assortment of goodies. And below is an extra gift for my first Etsy sale, tied off with some vintage lace.

Meet Olive

This little cutie lives at my dad's house (over 700 miles away), so I don't get to see nearly enough of her. Olive is half Shih Tzu and half Scottish terrier - and part cat, part Tigger, but mostly Ninja. In this photo, the camera flash has washed her out a little (showing off her highlights), because her coat is actually a deep black. She's very good at sneaking up on people and hiding in dark rooms (she disguises herself as a shadow or another shoe). She loves to shake hands. Don't be fooled by Olive's meek expression; she's commonly referred to as "the attack puppy."

My Own Etsy Shop

Look! It's an Etsy widget on the right! Wow! I love how you don't have to know anything about how those things work to get them to appear on your blog.

Yes, after thinking about it for two years, I finally opened up a storefront on Etsy. A few zines are up so far; I'll be adding more over the next week. Check it out!

Yummy Art Yarn

This delicious handspun wool yarn arrived this week from the UK. I've had a project in mind for ages in which the greenery of a two-dimensional image "spills out" of the frame - this is the perfect yarn for it. I also picked up the purple-pink felted cord from the same Etsy seller, Alchemy Fibre Arts. Don't they look good together?

Voila!

I spent this afternoon finishing up my FAT book pages for the ZNE Convenzione keepsake book (they've titled the book "Zaftig" - it means "juicy"). The deadline isn't till August 1, so it feels nice to be able to send these off so early.

I lined up all 30 pages on my bookshelf to show off the embellishments. Take a look at the insanity:


And here are the pages laid out, looking rather like a quilt:


A few close-ups:



I'm so glad to be done. It was a fun project, but I've been working on nothing else (art-wise) the last few weekends. I want to get back to sewing.

Happy 4th of July!

Fabulous FAT Books

I'm working on a FAT book (a.k.a. chunky book) page for a ZNE Convenzione keepsake book. I love these. I participated in my first FAT book swap when I went to Artfest 2005. They make the best souvenirs. Here's a picture of that first FAT book:

When I returned to Artfest in 2006, I participated in two separate FAT books. The first one is also working with paper pages:

And then I heard about a fabric FAT book. I had to sign up, even though that meant over 15 original double sided fabric "pages."

I've been looking at these keepsake books a lot lately to consider the elements I like the best about some of the pages and incorporate that into mine. For instance, embellishing the right edge of the page obviously has a big impact to how each book looks - I love all the fibers, beads, tags, sunflowers, etc., spilling out of the books.

The FAT book for Convenzione is working with paper, so I was able to create a single original, scan it, print 30 copies, and now I'm embellishing each copy. Here are some of my pages:

And as you can see, the right edges are prepped for embellishments. I'll post another photo when I've finished them all. Here are some tags that will be added as well (coming out of the top of the page):

Once I started thinking up ways to add bulk and fun to my pages, I just couldn't stop. Wait until you see the photo of all 30 pages together. I only have 12 that are completed so far and they already make a huge impact. 30 are going to be insane.

New Moo Mini Cards!

My Moo mini cards arrived last night. I recently opened a Flickr account and couldn't resist checking out the products from a company called Moo. These are a fun, artsy take on business cards. And who better to show them off than Little Fantastic Alice? Seriously. She's excited to find something smaller than she is.

Moo has a great design interface set up on their site that makes it a lot of fun to create your own product. You can even go through the steps of designing and previewing a product without buying it, though it's too bad you can't "save" your designs for later. I also ordered a sticker book that was shipped separately - can't wait to see that! I love stickers. So does Fantastic Alice.