Serious Craft Blog

Yours truly is engaged!

After several years together now, from a 3,000 mile long distance relationship to living together under the same roof sharing the same bed, E and I have come to the conclusion that we never want to be apart.

We spent this past weekend down in San Diego for my cousin's wedding and my birthday. To my surprise (and I would want to be surprised), that's when the proposal took place. I was wearing my strapless dress from the Butterick pattern. It was sweet and charming.

I had to catch my breath for a few days since we came back up to LA on Sunday, after telling all our friends and family, and the constantly updating of facebook (haha), I'm back on the roll!

So what does it mean for Serious Craft?

DIY WEDDING of course!!! My brain juices and saliva have been flowing for a long time now thinking about all the kinds of crafts and handmaking that will be done for our wedding. There will no doubt be some Serious Crafting going on.

We will not only strive for our craft projects to be cost-effective, but also unique, not-cheap-looking, and beautiful.

That means expect an overflow of ideas and projects and documentation of the whole process of the creating here on Serious Craft! Starting with this post, there is now a "wedding" tag on the left sidebar so you can find all these posts easily.

Yay!

About the ring:

The ring is made of 100% recycled and completely re-refined platinum and contains conflict free diamonds from Canada. It does not support warfare and corruption in Africa. We feel good about it. It looks beautiful. It feels alive or like a working machine on my finger because it is very glittery. :)

Karen

I've decided to make a somewhat drastic movement to this blog here, by moving it over to its own domain. You're now at http://www.seriouscraft.com.

Why? Well for one, seriouscraft.com is a pretty sweet domain I luckily snatched up, haha. And the other reason is that, as I continue to populate the blog part of this site, I feel that more and more of my entries are, or going to be, focused on exploring different crafts and sharing with others skills I have gained through my explorations. Many of the entry ideas I have jotted down on my little notepad are tutorials, tips, and techie know-how that I want to share with you all. I realize, it doesn't really have much to do with the "business" of hyperart at all, nor is that really of much benefit to the general audience.

Essentially, I just want to share cool, new, or useful ways or tools of crafting. I want others to find as much joy as I have trying out different mediums, tools, and techniques. And in learning these new things, we get to hone our skills further and enrich our lives with new and beautiful handmade goodies.

So I think Serious Craft is a very appropriate name. If you'd like to find out more about Serious Craft, just head over to the about page for even more ramblings.

Serious Craft will make a slow but gradual transition into its own 'look and feel'. For now I think we can make a good start from here. :)

If you'd like to keep track of Serious Craft, feel free to subscribe to our feed, or sign up for the newsletter (on the right sidebar).

Happy handmaking!

Clasp frame purses are in a class of their own. So classy, yet so timeless—and oh so stylish! But aren't they just so hard to make?

NOT! They're actually quite easy. So easy you can easily make them as gifts and pass them off as expensive luxury gifts. Read on!

I recently picked up a mix of beautiful purse frames from 3DPatternPaper on Etsy (GREAT deals, btw):

• Some of which were the regular round-corner purse frames. To make bags with those, there's the very good de-facto tutorial over at U-Handblog.
• And then there were those rectangular ones where the fabric only attaches to the top bars of the frame. (see below) They seemed significantly harder to make at first. I was searching and searching and couldn't find any tutorials or good examples. So I made my own little design for it instead and I think it turned out really well. I love the bag!

So here are steps to share with you on how I did it. Keep in mind that's just the easiest way I figured to make it, but if there are better/other ways, I'd love to hear it!

If there's a "craft" I haven't done that I really want to do, it would have to be the lost wax process of making jewelry and 3d objects. I was browsing for some tutorials and found this really awesome on on Instructables. This guy went and carved his own engagement ring out of wax, and had a jeweler do the final casting in white gold and setting in beautiful human-cultured precious stones (without all the conflicts!).

Check it out!

Lots of exciting stuff has been happening!

For one, hyperart sewing patterns is now available through YouCanMakeThis.com. It was a long approval process to get in, but I'm glad we're in! YouCanMakeThis.com is a great retailer that sells "eBooks" for sewing, quilting, and various other crafts. Go check 'em out!

They were nice enough to feature me in their latest newsletter too.

Aside from that, I'm also working on a few new patterns, including that tote bag tute (harhar)l I've promised to offer free on the blog! So many ideas, so little time! Please continue to stay tuned.

On to other topics. Lately, E and I have been dealing with a lot of "life decisions". Good ones, but tough ones. It's consumed a lot of our thoughts lately. One of those decisions involved working with a great jeweler named Beth Cyr Jewelry. She makes simple, but elegant pieces that are well priced. She was lovely to work with and communicated with us well throughout the whole process, including our particular demands. Highly recommended, A+++!

Source: Beth Cyr Jewelry

Man I wish I had my own jewelry studio for doing the "real stuff". I've been dreaming about making jewelry a lot lately. Of course I can wirewrap and PMC and stuff, but that can only take me so far. I want to be a pro jeweler! That's one of my dreams. But for now, I can only dream, not until I can afford a studio and have my own garage!