The Urban Craft Center » Misc Crafts

Toadstool Contest Winners

the ucc team — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 00:34:39 +0000

We’ve had so much fun seeing all of the fabulous Toadstools entered for this contest – the first of it’s kind at The U.C.C!

Once voting began we realized how difficult it was going to be to select a winner. They are all so unique and wonderful! But in the end, a little competition can be fun. We also decided to split the contest into two categories; Adults and Crafty Kids. Winners were chosen based on: concept, technique, execution, and overall effect. U.C.C staff accounted for 50% of the vote and 50% was determined by a public vote in our store. Below you can see all of the contestants entries, along with their written statements about each piece.

Congratulations to all the winners!

Adult Category
1st place – $150 gift certificate to The U.C.C, Annual Bulky Weight Membership
2nd place – $50 gift certificate to The U.C.C, Annual Worsted Weight Membership
3rd place – $25 gift certificate to The U.C.C, Annual Lace Weight Membership

First Place – Magical Toadstool by Sophie Smits

Second Place – Love Lives Here by Birgitta

Third Place – Abby’s Fair Toadstool by Nikki Lee

Crafty Kids Category
1st place – $20 gift certificate to The U.C.C and a crafting goody bag.
2nd place – $10 gift certificate to The U.C.C and a crafting goody bag.
3rd place – $5 gift certificate to The U.C.C and a crafting goody bag

First Place – Spring Fungis by Jacqueline B.

Second Place – Toadstool & Bunny by Harriette B.

Third Place – Mushroom on Paper Plate – by Arielle A.

The Other Amazing Contestants:

Under the Wire by Linde Williston

Crochet Toadstool Box

Stamp Out the Negativity, Stick it to the Positive by Tam Premsrirath

Peach Fuzz Monkey by Sam B.

Toadstool Family by the Brambrough Family

Mother-Craft Fair

rhea — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 22:37:38 +0000

Bring your beloved mama’s to the Edgemar Courtyard this Mother’s Day! We are offering a variety of workshops and having a free craft fair featuring some of our favorite local vendors.

Workshops include:

Mommy & Me: Embroidery and Tea, 11am-2pm
Mothers and Kids Ages 4-7
Tea bags filled with organic teas and embroidered handkerchiefs create the perfect Mother’s Day treat. Led by special guest teacher Nicole Ichtertz, your child will delight in being able to create something you both can use together. Mom will enjoy combining organic rooibos, peppermint, chai and more to create a signature blend of hand crafted teas, delicately embellished with embroidered designs.
$65 per pair, 15% discount for members

Hand Sewn Plush Cuddlephants, 12-3pm
Join local plush toy designer Ashley Long this Mother’s Day to make one of nature’s most awesome animal mamas, the elephant! Work from the instructor’s provided pattern and then customize your felt and fleece creation with sequins, ribbon and other embellishments. We’ll be using basic, easy to pick up hand sewing techniques – all crafter levels welcome!
$55 per person, 15% discount for members

Woven Palm Roses, 1-3pm
Create a matching bouquet of hand woven roses for you and mom! Join mountain man Mike Metzger as he shares his knowledge of the outdoors and teaches this traditional craft that is both versatile and beautiful. Use our selection of ribbons, trims and dried flowers to personalize your creation.
$30 per person, 15% discount

Earth Day @ The U.C.C

rhea — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:38:32 +0000

Happy Earth Day everyone (or tomorrow if you read this on thursday)! Rather than feel guilty about the ways we are wasteful today, we’d like to encourage you to take a little time to create something reusable you can feel good about. Celebrate the earth we live on and the many opportunities we have to help it! Here are a few crafts you can make today and everyday. Enjoy!

Reusable Coffee Sleeves

Whenever I get a cardboard coffee sleeve from a coffee shop, I always feel a little bad that it gets tossed away so quickly. You can turn your old wool sweaters into reusable coffee sleeves and cast that green planet guilt aside for a little bit. :-) Kitschy Cosby sweaters or holiday sweaters are great for those looking for a mini conversation piece, or an earthy brown or rustic toned sweater can look nice and calm you down while you sip a warm cup of chamomile.

How to make it
Do what everyone tells you never to do, throw your wool sweater in the washing machine on hot, then put it in the dryer. This will felt your sweater. Using a cardboard sleeve as a template, cut your sweater. You can double check your size before you sew the ends closed by wrapping it around a standard to-go sized cup. It’s better to make it a little snug than loose since your material can stretch a bit.

Use the blanket stitch to sew the ends together with embroidery floss, then sew around the raw cut edges of your sweater. You can use a contrasting color since it’s a nice looking stitch, or a color that matches if you’d prefer it blend in. Embroidering a design or your name is also a nice touch.

Join us tomorrow for the event in the Edgemar Courtyard, Friday April 22nd from 10am-1pm and try it out for free!

Recycled Cereal Box Journal

I’m sure a lot of you have been to or frequent a local Trader Joe’s market with their crowded mini parking lots and delicious name brand goodies. Perhaps you also have a collection of their stylish paper bags that you’ve been waiting to use for….something. I’m a fan of Joe’s Os myself and turned one of the cereal boxes and a shopping bag into a this little recycled journal to make my shopping lists inside. We’ve been making a lot of these in the studio lately!

How to make it:

1) Use an Xacto knife to cut the cereal box into the size you’d like for the cover. Then cut your desired number of pages out of your paper bag or bags. You’ll want to make the pages a little smaller in width than the cover in order to fit nicely in your journal. I decided to include some of the artwork on the bag into my journal too!

2) An awl and a Japanese screw punch are two great bookbinding tools to create precise holes through your layers of material. Be careful – this is sharp stuff! I cut three holes through the spine of my book and pages; one in the center and two on the sides about 3/4 of an inch from either end.

3) Used some waxed linen bookbinding thread to make a pamphlet stitch to hold the pages together. After it’s put together, you can decorate the pages and cover with paint, glitter, decoupage, even fabric!

Plastic Bag PomPom Garlands

I recently heard that Santa Monica will be banning plastic bags from most or all of the retail stores and restaurants in the city! They’re wasteful and abundant, but with a little thought, this soon to be contraband material can transform into a lovely decoration in your home.

We have these great little pom pom makers in the store, from small to jumbo in size. You may have made them using cardboard circles when you were kids! I made them in different sizes, out of plastic bags and yarn, then strung them together using baker’s twine.

Super Mario Bros Quilt at the Urban Craft Center

Miranda — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:32:38 +0000

Three years ago I decided to make an Item Block pillow for my friend Devin. We were discussing the pillow and agreed that to be a proper item block, something needs to come out of it.

“Quillows” are quilts that fold into a pillow. When it’s a quilt, there’s a pocket on the back for your toesies, and when it’s a pillow the quilt is safely tucked away.

I can’t really resist pixel art. It’s just too cool. So I went a little bit crazy and decided to make a screen shot wall hanging as well. it’s about 60″ wide and 50″ tall. (Check out my little printout in the lower corner – I found a screenshot from the game and used Paint on my computer to make a map of all of the pixels.)

The bricks, bridge and axe are made up of 1/4″ pixels, and then Mario, Bowser, the fire ball, the hammers, and the lava are all 1/2″ pixels. (For the quilting nerds out there, the grey bricks and the bridge are all pieced and the lava, characters and weapons are all appliqued using Wonder Under.)

The one crucial Mario element that I couldn’t fit on the quilt was Bowser’s fireball, which was just too long to really sit happily anywhere on the quilt. So I went to Spoonflower.com, this incredible web site where you can upload images from your computer and they will print it out on fabric. I uploaded some tiny Bowser fireballs and used the fabric as the binding around the outside edge of the quilt, and as a sleeve on the back so that it can be hung on a wall.

In the process of making the screenshot wall hanging, I accidentally made a backwards Mario who was running away from Bowser, so I put him on a pillowcase with a green pipe on the back. I put the pillowcase zipper right on top of the green pipe so that you can take the pillow out of the pipe when you want to wash the pillowcase.

Frolic in the roving…

amy — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 03:37:41 +0000

Whenever new roving comes in I just can’t wait to pile into it just like the scene in E.T. when he’s hiding in all them stuffed animals. A shout out to all the sheep for sharing their fur with us to be dyed, sculpted (needle felted of course) and loved. Thank you sheep!

Zine Club

rhea — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:59:09 +0000

This month – try out our button maker for free! Buttons are a great way to get your ziney messages across with a single inch or two. Try out our one inch and two and a quarter inch button maker out and make one of each size for free – don’t forget to bring your zines!

Zines are small, low budget, self-published and self-distributed publications, written by authors outside the mainstream who are motivated to share thoughts or skills with a community rather than to make money or get famous. In a word, zines are awesome. We’ll be working on our own zines are well as collaborative projects, have zine swaps and lots of examples to peruse through.

♡ What Says Love More ♥ Than a Handmade Card??? ♡

the ucc team — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:51:42 +0000

We are opening up our studio space this weekend for Handmade Valentine cards. No reservation is necessary. We will have on-hand for you to use:

Different Kinds of Paper

Lots of Buttons

Gold & Rose Decals

For the cost of $10 you can use our supplies such as die cutters, glue, scissors, cardboard and hot glue. Plus as our special Valentine’s Day gift to you, the cost of $10 will also give you access to our studio all day!!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

With love,

The UCC Team

Slinging some Scooters

Miranda — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:50:54 +0000

When my old purse died last year, my crafty conscience demanded I make myself a new one. I chose a fabric and a pattern that I had been eyeing for a while, and got this fabulous sling bag!

The super awesome thing I discovered while making this bag is that old plastic grocery bags are perfect for tracing your sewing patterns onto. I used a sharpie and an old Target bag, and now have pattern pieces which stand up to pin pricks and still fold up very nicely for going back into the envelope. I know other people who swear by freezer paper, and I believe them, but I’m pretty excited about my upcycled plastic bags.

Check out both the pattern and the fabric on our web store!

Scooters in Natural from Echino Catalina Sling Pattern from Pink Sand Beach Designs

Kids Winter Craft Camp

Victoria — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 01:00:15 +0000

Thinking back to our Kid’s Camp over summer, I can’t wait for this time around! I’m hoping we’ll see some familiar faces from last time, and new friends too, of course! Even though the week was a sticky vortex of glitter, glue, and googly eyes, I know I speak for all of us at The UCC when I say it was one of our favorite endeavors to date. There are few things cooler than seeing kids genuinely excited about making things. It’s inspiring to have students so eager to learn what we’re teaching, and to see how their imaginations make it their own. The crafts we’ll be doing with the kids this month are some of my personal favorites, and I can’t wait to see the kids creations and learn a thing or two from them in the process. If you’d like more information about the day camp, you can download our December class schedule or simply give us a call. Happy Holidays, stay crafty!

Craft Camp Ages 4-7 Just Added!

rhea — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 20:48:20 +0000

Lil’ Craft Camp
Level: Beginners ages 4-7
Monday, December 20th – Thursday, December 23rd, 11am-2pm
Four session class, materials included.
$245 for the week

Monday: Hand-crafted Nature Wands, Pressed Flower Necklaces, & Finger-knitting
Using slender sticks of sycamore and willow we will create our own bubble-making wands from copper wire wrapped with beautiful yarns. (Includes making your own bubble solution and decorating it’s container)
We will also read the beautifully illustrated children’s story “The Willow Maiden” and then create necklaces from willow wood, pressed flowers, ferns, and hemp string. Children will take home their wands and necklaces in beautiful handmade linen bags which they will finger knit straps for.

Tuesday: Candle-making and Children’s Tibetan Prayer Flags
Using sheets of beeswax in natural shades made from plant-based colorants, children will create a set of their own candles embellished with beautiful designs. (*No flame, heat, or melting is involved.)
Then using merino wool felt wool, children will design, sew, and embellish their own “prayer flags”. This activity is loosely based on elements found in traditional Tibetan prayer flags, touching upon the idea that the “Wind Horse” will carry the images and messages on the flags (centered around peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom) into the surrounding space and to all beings. Thich Nat Hanh’s beautiful children’s book “Hermit and the Well” will accompany this activity.

Wednesday: Soap & Mold Making
Children will experience the excitement, joy, and satisfaction of making their own soaps! First we will create our own molds by pressing an array of materials into a flexible re-usable putty. Then using a melt and pour goat’s milk base, we will create all-natural delicious smelling soaps using organic herbs and spices, cosmetic grade french clays, and plant-based colorants. Each child will create one mold and 2-3 bars of soap, as well as wrapping and labeling their soaps. (*As the soap base is a melt and pour one, no lye or other harsh chemicals are being used or handled and there will be adult assistance in pouring the melted soap base into molds.)

Thursday: Vietnamese Spring Rolls
Using Vietnamese rice paper, and an array of colorful vegetables and herbs, we will make our own Vietnamese spring rolls, complete with dipping sauce. Children will enjoy the sculptural feel of the rice paper as it soaks in warm water, smelling the aromatic herbs, tearing and cutting the brightly-colored veggies, and tasting the fruits of their labor! They will also decorate a set of reusable chopsticks, and a carrying container for their finished spring rolls. (*No cooking is involved and the ingredients are all vegetarian. There is an option for sweet and sour sauce in case of peanut allergies. The children will use butter knives to cut the veggies.)

Meet the Instructor: Nicole Ichtertz
Nicole was trained as an artist and has been teaching art to children for the past 3 years. She lives in Redondo Beach, and is a volunteer handwork assistant at two local Waldorf schools. She currently teaches knitting, weaving, and embroidery to children ages 4-11. Through a friend, she discovered the art of soap making and has taught workshops to children and adults to create uniquely beautiful molds and soaps using objects from nature.