American Craft Council Show

Hi!

Baltimore just has so many great craft shows!!  A nice couple that did the Under Armour Yoga Challenge in February with me told me about a big show called the American Craft Council that comes to Baltimore every year.  Later on, I saw that Charm City Craft Mafia posted on their Facebook page that they were giving away a bunch of pairs of tickets!  I entered, of course, and won a pair!  Yay!  I was so excited that Alex and I could go!  

It was two Saturdays ago - the day of the crazy snow storm - and since we knew the weather was supposed to be bad later in the day, we rode the Charm City Circulator (the free bus) to the Convention Center.  Alex and I had been there before, but never together.  He took the Bar Exam there in July and Grace and I did our Zumba certification there in October!

The craft show was enormous!  It reminded me of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.



There were over 650 vendors there and it didn't even take up the whole convention center!  Upstairs we walked by an All-State Band thing :)

We definitely didn't see every booth, but we tried!  We were there for probably three hours and there were so many cool things to look at and do!  I saw some vendors that I've seen at other events, some that were local that I had never seen in person, and tons from out of the city/state.  There was everything - paintings, clocks made from books, baby hats, stuffed animals, furniture, giant yard sculptures, jewelry, clothing, ceramics...pretty much anything you could think of.  They had an awesome hands-on area with a bunch of stations where you could watch a 3D printer make things, make a mug out of clay, weave, spin yarn, and more.

I made this cool leather keychain at the Almanac Industries booth!



We chose the pattern of leather that we wanted, wet it, and then hammered in letters or designs!

I also did embroidery on an old black and white picture.  They kept them to put up on the walls, but I did the one with the record on it!

They brought tons of old picture duplicates from the American Craft Council files for people to decorate!

There was another booth where they hammered in the metal ring onto this keychain.

And I did some papercutting with Janelle from Washington Cuts!  The booth was her's and Annie's from Bmore Papercuts, but Annie had gone on vacation.



It was so fun to cut one of Janelle's templates!  



She's so nice and we chatted while we cut.

Make Tribe was giving out cute matte buttons!  I put one of them on my Thirty-One bag where I've been keeping my calligraphy supplies :)

We ate lunch about halfway through our visit, and then walked around even more.

Here are the things we bought!

An adorable "Lovebellie" from MightShop.

Here she is sitting with the two glove stuffed animals I made!

This booth had so many cute stuffed animals, pillows, and art for sale.  I had such a hard time deciding which one to get because there were so many colors and shapes, but this was the first one I picked up and of course the best one because it's orange!  Alex helped me decide :)

We also got this sweet wooden eighth note made by Jerry Krider of Claywood Creations.

This man had so many different tiny things that he carved out of wood!  He even had super tiny puzzles that were so cool.

I got this really cute ring dish with mushrooms on it made by Tasha McKelvey!  I love it so much!  I have been putting my rings on it every night!

There are no windows where we were in the convention center, but we knew it was supposed to start snowing sometime that afternoon.  Luckily we dressed for it and planned not to drive, because it had already snowed a TON when we went outside to leave!  We couldn't believe how much snow was on the ground!  We bundled up and walked to the closest bus stop and got on.  After sitting there for a few minutes, they told us that they were shutting down the buses so we got off and walked home!





It's almost a mile and a half from there to our apartment and it was snowing so much!  But it really wasn't that bad because it wasn't very cold or windy.  Because there was hardly any traffic, it was super quiet, too!  It was actually a pretty nice walk!  We were just so glad that we wore our boots!

I'm so happy we got to go to the craft show!  Tickets are normally $16 each, so I'm really glad that we won a pair of tickets from Charm City Craft Mafia!  That way we both could go, and we could buy a few things!  

Thanks for reading!

Paper Cutting

Hi!

About a month ago I took a paper cutting workshop from Bmore Papercuts.  It was so much fun and ever since then I've been wanting to try more!  For my birthday I got a set of x-acto knives and a cutting mat, so that was perfect!

The other day I cut up some kraft card stock into 4x6 cards and decided to just start cutting.  I had found some cute (short!) quotes on Pinterest so I tried using what I had learned at the workshop to cut some cute stuff!  And I did!

I can't post pictures of most of them yet, but here's one I did with some lyrics from a Sondre Lerche song that I love called Modern Nature :)

I practiced doing negative and positive space with the lettering.  Writing backwards is a little hard but I got pretty good at it since I did so many that day :)

Here's one that I made for Alex for Christmas!  Don't worry, I already gave it to him!

I need to get a frame for it and put some colored paper behind it, and we'll be good to go!

I had so much fun and I'm getting lots of ideas of things I want to try.  When I went to the Last Stop Hops-n-Shop show the other night, I looked closely at Annie's papercuts (from Bmore Papercuts) that were for sale to get some ideas, too!  She does such small details and all of her cuts look so smooth!  I need to practice a ton!

Thanks for reading!

Paper Cutting Workshop!

Hi!

The exciting workshop that I went to tonight was a paper cutting workshop with Annie Howe of Bmore Papercuts!

It was so fun!!  It was a two-hour workshop at Artifact Coffee, which is such a cute place!  Alex and I need to go there soon for coffee.  There were probably about 25 people there and when I got there I checked in and got a goodie bag with a personalized name tag!

There was one of these adorable tea towels with a paper cut print on it in each bag!!  So pretty :)

Each seat had a cutting board, an x-acto knife, a cute little bag of candy, and an envelope with instructions, etc. in it.  The tables were decorated with candles in blue jars and flowers, too!

Annie demonstrated how to cut the templates she provided (there were four that she designed) and then we got to choose one and start working!  I picked a template with cute mushrooms on it, but they were all adorable!  She showed us how to add our own details, like words, and how to cut the letters in negative and positive space.  Annie is so nice and she and the woman helping her were so helpful throughout the whole workshop!

It was harder than I thought it would be!  Especially cutting the really tiny details.  It's important to cut out the little shapes first so the paper doesn't move around (which it does when the larger parts are cut out).  To do anything with letters, you write them backwards since you end up turning the paper over when you frame it.  I added "Home is wherever I'm with you" to my template.  It was hard to do the letters but I'm so glad I did!  I finished my paper cut right at the last second!  We got to pick the color of paper for the background and they put them in frames for us!  We also got to take an extra template home with us to try later.  

Look how cute it turned out!!

I love it so much and I can't wait to hang it up!  I'm going to buy an x-acto knife and cutting board soon so I can make my own at home!

I'm so glad I took this workshop!  Everyone that I met there was so nice and it was in such a neat place!!

Thanks for reading!