Month: July 2019

make a wish.

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Yay! We had another crafty lady togetherness night (remember kumihimo crafty hour?). I brought a wish bracelet craft to share and friends brought additional supplies for friendship bracelet making. Spend your summer making these with all your besties! Wish Bracelets Materials: Hemp cord Seed beads size 6/0 Ruler Scissors Clipboard or tape to hold cord in place For 6 inch wrist/bracelet you’ll need: 3 strands of cord measured to 16 inches 8 beads (you can add less/more) Line up all three cord strands. Tie an overhand knot at one end, leaving 3 inches of lose cord. Braid cords until you have ~2 inches of braid. Continue to braid, this time adding beads as you braid. String on a bead after every left cord moves to the center and “lock” the bead in place with each right cord moved to the center. (Or the reverse.) Continue this pattern until you braid on all 8 beads. Continue to braid cord without beads until you have another 2 inches of braid. Tie off this end with another overhand …

tokyo farmers market.

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The Tokyo Coffee Festival we visited happened to be next to a farmers’ market, and you know how much I love farmers’ markets! This one was held at the United Nations University campus in Aoyama. There were a handful of vendors – lots of veggies and fruit, local honey, flowers and plants, and food trucks. Everything was perfectly packaged, neatly organized, and super adorable. Look at the carrots! Why are they so chubby and cartoon-like? Also spotted: wasabi! Yay, produce! Where are some of your favorite farmer’s markets? Share below!

block party.

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I was invited to lead a Make & Take station at the SF Block Party hosted by Civic Center Commons in partnership with my SF Etsy team! This was the first in their series of 1st Sunday block parties for the summer, and it was a special one because the Women’s World Cup Finals were happening (and they had a watch party near City Hall). I set up shop. Bonus – event staff set up all the tents for us. Easy breezy. I brought some sports pennants for the sporty occasion, plus surprise bags, flower crowns, more pennants, and wall hangings. Today’s best sellers: flower crowns and surprise bags! And here’s the Make & Take set-up: a paper pennant DIY to celebrate the sports – and a win for Team USA. There were also street soccer matches, games, food trucks, and music. Plus the farmers market across the street. The DIY was super popular and both little kids and big kids enjoyed creating flags. And since SF Etsy curated the vendors for the event, I …

head west.

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I headed west to the Head West Marketplace, a monthly marketplace by West Perro. The market was held at Hangar 1 in Alameda, but they also host events in Oakland and Berkeley. It was a beautiful day to be outside! There were makers, food and drink, music, and beautiful views! It’s so fun to be a shopper at these events. The vibe was calm, chill, and welcoming. And I appreciated the size of the event, too. It wasn’t overwhelming with the number of vendors, and I felt like I got to take my time strolling around. We had tea from the Steep Jeep – adorbs and delish! And pizza from Lucia’s. Look at the cute pizza oven on wheels! We took a peek inside the distillery, too. There’s a tasting room, bar, and retail space. What a lovely afternoon! I even picked up a free shirt at the Steep Jeep and some cards from my new crafty friend Regina of Doodles Ink. 🙂 PS Great news! I’m going to be a featured maker at the …

bike | bloom

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This is a simple post. It’s about Tokyo bikes and flowers. We visited in the Springtime so all the blooms were majorly beautiful, and I was fascinated by all the bikes parked outside without locks (it’s honest there). Here are a few snaps from our stroll through Taito City and Sumida City in Tokyo. Enjoy. Shoutout to the simple things in life! Do you stop to photograph flowers, too? 🙂

smudge.

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OOoOo somebody snagged a bunch of extra plant goodies from the Plant Potions class! Thank you to Tracy for letting me take home some unused plants from the tablescape! I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making smudge sticks so this was the perfect opportunity. I brought home (from left to right) sagebrush / desert sage, lavender, purple sage, and rosemary. Another friend just so happened to gift me an abalone shell, perfect for smudge stick holding because in smudge stick practice it connects you to the sea. Additional materials for smudge stick making: cotton cord, scissors, and garden shears To create: Trim plants to desired height. Create bundles. I had enough plant life to create three small bundles. Cut cord to about 6x the length of your bundles (can be more or less depending on how many times you wrap each bundle and how thick your cord is). I doubled up the cord when I wrapped since it was relatively thin. Tie a knot at the bottom, leaving enough of a tail to …

plant potions.

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I’ve taught classes at Rare Bird but can you believe I’ve never taken a class here until recently? What? I know! I signed up for Plant Potions with Tracy Chocholousek, co-owner of Rare Bird and founder of White Sage Wellness. It was so fun to join class here as a student. And Hubby joined me, too! The space was set up with a beautiful plantscape. It looked like we were going to sit down for a multi-course meal with wine pairings. Yum. Tracy started class with a brief lesson in scents and we participated in an herbal ally meditation. I enjoyed this – we had to experience a plant, it’s scent, how the scent made us feel, and what it tasted like. I chose rose geranium – the leaves had a subtle sweet smell and made me feel calm. After the exercise, we got to smelling! We smelled all the essentials oils available for mixing, working our way through scent groups and taking notes on if we liked the scents or not. Tracy had a …

coffee, tea, treats.

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For someone who doesn’t drink coffee I had my share in Japan. The coffee scene is on fiah and the attention to detail makes the experience so much more special. A few coffee (and tea!) explorations to follow. My favorites were the spots with coordinating tiny treats. & Coffee by Maison Kayser was one of our first stops. Hubby had an espresso; I had a lavender milk tea. We also ordered a pain du chocolate and our beverages came with little chocolate treats. It was quiet when we arrived (before 8AM on a Saturday). This was our in-between spot after sushi breakfast and before Itoya shopping. We heard about the Toyko Coffee Festival from a local magazine ~ I like to pick those up from airports; sometimes you get lucky with ideas. En route, we ran into a cousin-in-law who at the time lived in San Diego – so random! So we all tasted cups of brew together. There were over a dozen coffee vendors, mostly from the Tokyo/Kyoto area, but also a few international …

ggc.

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I kicked off my Feed the Fish co. summer crafty events with the Girl Gang Craft June Market. There were over 120 makers, a live DJ, food trucks, and a raffle. This venue though. The event was held at the Oakland Scottish Rite Center. I’ve attended some work conferences here so I was a little familiar with the space and how grand it is, but I didn’t realize how many vendors you could fit in there! Some images from set up… My booth! I was super excited that I got assigned to a corner booth with a wall! Double special. I brought a new sign holder (my letterboard has been knocked down too many times) for my felt flower crown bar sign and we were allowed to hang things on the wall with painter’s tape so hang I did. It all came together nicely. It was a long show (six hours!). My squad brought me snacks to keep me alive. Spicy tuna bowl and shrimp nachos from Bonito Poke (Thanks, Hubby!), iced chai by Bhakti …

gouache.

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I’ve been so curious about gouache paint, but hadn’t come across a short workshop until recently. How do you use it? Is it watercolor or is it acrylic? How do you even pronounce gouache? I had so many questions. Lucky for me, Cleo Papanikolas (painter, author, and illustrator!) taught a three-hour gouache techniques class at Handcraft Studio School. (This was my first class in the ‘new’ studio!) Also lucky for me, the class focused on paining flowers and I’m all about nature painting! Our stations were filled with Cleo’s painting diagrams, little floral bouquets, a paint palette, water, a selection of papers to test, brushes, a fan to help dry our paintings, and a water spray bottle to rehydrate our paints as needed. Also, her business card is a travel-sized paint palette; there’s paint on the inside and it comes with a brush – so clever, so cute! Cleo walked us through different gouache (like squash!) techniques and we dove in. We used Miya brand gouache paints, which she says are the best ‘cheap’ paints …