belle epoque

Ok, *so* exciting. My contributor copies of Bead Simple arrived in the mail just a few days ago, and goodness, this book is gorgeous

My mom (who just left yesterday, wahhh!) was also blown away and kept thumbing through it saying “Oh! This book is so beautiful!”

I was so honored to be a contributor, and it is such fun to see the amazing photos they took of my version of Susan’s Duo Earrings

I had so much fun making them, and all of the other projects in the book are so inspiring too!

The beauty of the book is that all of the different takes on each project show you how to use whatever materials you have to make something wonderful. To celebrate the release of the book on March 25th, I made yet another version of the duo earring that I’d like to give away! I’m almost all out of beachy charms, so these ones are made with antique glass leaf and flower pendants that I got in Venice many years ago

Just leave a comment on this post and I’ll pick a winner on the book’s release date, March 25th. In the meantime, you can preorder the book at Taunton, Amazon or your favorite bookstore! And if you’re in the Portland, OR area, be sure to mark your calendar for Susan’s reading at downtown Powell’s on April 7th at 7:30pm!

I got to spend a super-fun morning with Natalie and Lulu yesterday, filming today’s CRAFT:Video Pattern Podcast. In it I demonstrate a super easy and quick zipper pouch made out of the leg of an old pair of jeans, based on a project in my book Jeaneology! I know many of you are advanced seamsters, but please go check it out (if nothing else, you might get a laugh from my goofy facial expressions), and perhaps send it along to a sewing novice you think might enjoy it! If you’ve come here from CRAFT:, welcome and thank you so much for visiting!

Without further ado, I’d like to announce that the winner of the Bead Simple Giveaway is Cindy! Cindy, I don’t think you have a blog (you didn’t enter one in your comment), but I’ve e-mailed you to get your mailing address. If you happen to check back here today, congratulations! And please e-mail me your address at belleepoquewhimsy [!at!] gmail [!dot!] com (omitting the brackets etc).

And because you are all so fun for playing, I also pulled a runner up who will get some other little goodies– congratulations Stacey! I’ve e-mailed you for an address too, but if you see this first, please drop me a line and tell me where to mail your goodies.

Thank you all so much for entering! In my opinion you are ALL winners, who, not too long from now will have Susan’s book in your hands and get to enjoy pages and pages of stylish bead inspiration.

p.s. To make the clean-out of my studio more fun, I’ll be doing a few more giveaways in the coming weeks(fabric, paper, etc) so stay tuned.

I hope you’ve already heard that the divine Susan Beal has a book coming out in March. It is called Bead Simple, and it is chock full of original, creative projects. Susan designed all of the pieces and then got a ton of cool crafty people to do their own spin on each one (full disclosure: I was absolutely tickled to try my hand at one of them too, and it is in there).

I got a sneak peek at the book in person recently and people, it is BEAUTIFUL. It is encyclopedic in scope, and artistic in presentation. I’ve seen a lot of beading books and I have to say, this one blows them all out of the water. Click on the image above to go to the Bead Simple site for more details and serious eye candy.

Now that we’ve established that you need this book (really, you do), I’m going to attempt to make it even sweeter. I’ve been doing a major de-stash of my crafty space, and I have a passel of beads to pass on to a fellow crafter. Pop over to Amazon or Taunton and pre-order Bead Simple, then come back here and comment, and one week from today I shall randomly pick a name from the comments and send her (or him!) this grab-bag assortment of beads, all packed into a priority mail box (’cause these babies are heavy!):

You don’t get my glass jar of lavender or my cake stand, just the assortment of beads (which will arrive in the boxes and cylinders you see them in). They are mostly seed beads, but there are some findings and other surprises in there too. I might even tuck a bit of other handmade goodness into the box if there’s room.

To make it even more exciting, Susan has generously offered to send the winner a beautiful Bead Simple Vintagesque Necklace Kit

AND some fantastic vintage lucite beads too!

So, let’s re-cap: you preorder the amazing Bead Simple, you comment here by February 6th, and you get the chance to win all the loot you see above. And really, you win no matter what, ’cause you’ll be one of the first people to enjoy Susan’s awesome book as soon as it is released! Yay!

*Misc Details: In case you’re wondering, I am not currently an Amazon affiliate and do not receive a penny if you click over there from here and order the book- it is just a convenient place to send you! I will not ask to see your e-receipt for the pre-order if you win, but please do play fair and order the book before entering. And I’m sorry to say I can only send within the U.S. Because of how heavy the beads are I’m afraid the shipping would be egregious to send them elsewhere! Any questions? Leave ‘em in the comments and I’ll update this post with the answers.

First the pig:

Despite everything else I have to do before Friday, I just *had* to make one of these pigs on wheels from the lovely free pattern over at Wee Wonderfuls . As a child, one of my favorite Christmas ornaments was a wheeled cow, so it seems appropriate we have a wheeled farm animal for our tree too.

And now for the publicity!
1. The wonderful Susan, wrote up a very kind review and mini-interview about my book on the Adorn blog. My very nice publisher has sent Adorn copies to give away to five commenters, so if you’d like to be in the running for one, pop over there and comment. If you’re coming from there, welcome and thanks for visiting! Thanks also to the CRAFT blog for mentioning the post too!

2. I will be teaching a sewing demo at Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco this Saturday!
Saturday, December 15
12:30-1:30
Click here for more information and to reserve a spot (no stress about that, though–as there aren’t materials involved, really as long as you can fit in the room you can come). I hope to see you there!

p.s. If you can’t make it, I’ll be posting a pattern and tutorial here early next week so don’t worry.

How did it get to be November? I had so many grand plans for handmade holiday gifts, and maybe even making a few items to put up in my (gasp! empty!) etsy shop, but how is Christmas less than two months away already?! Thankfully, there are some super-organized crafty types who’ve got my back (and yours if you’re in the same predicament). The lovely folks at both Cotton Spice and Sew,Mama, Sew have put together round-ups of handmade holiday gift tutorials for nearly every day of November.

At Cotton Spice’s Last Minute Gift Countdown a brand new design by a different crafter will be featured every day. Mine will be up on November 14th. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I can tell you it is super quick (no need to bust out the sewing machine) and costs less than $10 to make.

At Sew, Mama, Sew they have compiled Handmade Holidays: 30 Days of Gifts to Sew featuring a different item, or category of items, each day and providing links to favorite tutorials for those items. I’m very honored that they’ve chosen to link to my Bias Tape Bag tutorial. I think on November 17th for the purse category (but it could possibly be in the tote category tomorrow– we’ll see!).

Even more than being excited and flattered to be included, I’m thrilled about the masses of inspiration provided by the fabulous tutorials they’ve compiled. Surely I can find something to make for every person on my list. The next mission is finding the time and organizational energy to make them all! Especially because November also means NaNoWriMo, and this year marks the third time I’ll be participating in the writing madness! Which also explains the lack of spanking new crafty images in this post, though I promise that will not become a habit.

The CRAFT Magazine Last Minute Halloween Costumes for Kids segment ran on the CBS Early Show this morning and it was just great! You can find pictures and detailed costume how-tos here And I’m not sure how long the link will work, but you can find a video of the segment here. Voila my niece in the pirate costume that I made:

There was also an awesome monkey by Susan Beal, a super-cool bee by Cathy Callahan (I’m thinking this might be the perfect costume-in a larger size, of course-for my pregnant belly, which is very bumble-appropriate), and neat lego and sushi costumes by Diana Eng.

The tiny models, as styled by Jenny, were adorable (go Serena!), and Natalie was poised and fabulous on camera. I am so proud to have been a part of this project. Thank you to Natalie, Jenny and CRAFT for including me!

Yay! I’ve just gotten word that I can tell you about the exciting project I’ve been working on this week. The lovely and talented Natalie will be on the CBS Early Show on Saturday talking about quick and easy halloween costumes for kids, and a costume I made will be featured on the show along with crazy-awesome costumes from the likes of the divine Susan Beal, Cathy Callahan, and project runway veteran Diana Eng!

I’m not going to spoil the surprise of what exactly my costume is, but you can catch the segment on CBS at 7:45am Eastern live, and I’d imagine sometime around then in other timezones too, though probably pre-taped as they do (my DVR is set to catch the whole show from 5-7am here in CA). For more details (and detailed how-tos for all the costumes), head over to the CBS Early Show site, or the CRAFT blog on Saturday!

My lovely friend Lauren ordered this for me and the bean a few weeks ago

So in addition to being brilliant, she is clearly also psychic! They told us today that baby belleepoque is most likely a wee girl. Let the pink explosion begin! Kidding, don’t worry- I will be an equal opportunity color-user in my baby crafts. I promise this is the last baby-centric post for awhile, but while I’m at it, I’ll share a little picture of the bean’s tiny face (it is a close-up, her face is to the top right of the frame and her little hand is to the left).

Regularly scheduled craftiness will return shortly!

I’m usually pretty superstitious about sharing works in progress. Mostly because I’m never totally confident that things will get done to my satisfaction, if at all. But it is time to spill the beans on the most ambitious project I’ve ever attempted:

In case you aren’t quite sure what you’re seeing there, I’m in the process of making an actual human being! That picture was from very early on. By current estimates, it should be done the first week of March sometime, and we find out what variety of human being it is this week! Moondoggie and I are super excited, for all obvious reasons. And of course I’m also excited for crafty reasons (explaining, if you were wondering, the rash of softies around here, and the lack of wardrobe refashions, though I do plan to make myself some skirts with jersey waistbands).

So that’s my big news! Around here there will, of course, be continued crafty items for small people, like Peanut (after Hillary Lang’s pattern in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts)

but I haven’t forgotten about new tutorials and other goodies for those of you not necessarily into baby crafts. I’ll be doing a sewing workshop at the SF Bazaar Bizarre in December, and I’m participating in a couple other fun holiday craft projects that I’ll let you know about as they come up!