My Christmas Ornament Collection

I finally have a kind of a collection of Christmas ornaments ready to sell on the Christmas poetry event i mentioned in previous posts. Above is a foam plastic ball covered with glittery yarn. Below are my handmade ornament sets. First two are made of carton and the other three are polymer clay.

In addition to Christmas ornaments i will be selling some handmade gifts.

My cell phone cozies:

Handmade fabric pins:

And some of my crochet doilies:

This is the first time i'll be selling my creations, so i am very excited. I am not planning to sell them all, but i hope somebody finds something they like among my lovelies.

Lots of little crafts and Christmas decorations

I've been making lots of small stuff recently, because I got a chance to actually show and sell some of my works. There's an annual Christmas poetry event we take part in (last year we did an installation and i always get to decorate the place). So this year i will also sell some of my handmade items there. I'm trying to prepare as much things as i can, so i've been busy with that a lot nowadays. I didn't bother taking proper pictures, because not everything is ready yet, but here are Instagram photos of some things i've made recently.

Lots of crochet doily coasters

Little crochet pouches (they still need buttons)

Fabric covered pins

And finally some Christmas stuff! Gingerbread-looking carton decorations

Fabric covered carton Christmas tree decorations.

Banana Pill tote bags

While waiting for the blank t-shirts to arrive, i've decided to also make some tote bags for the tour. They are cheaper and i don't need to order them. I just got them from the local craft shop Tiimari.

First i thought of getting the bags from a regular food store and i was worried they would be too white and boring. But i found these and i really like them, because they have more "dirty" natural white color.

I used different types of leaves, so each bag is unique. Will do the same for the t-shirt. Hopefully all the leaves won't fall off by the time the t-shirts arrive.

Banana Pill t-shirt

We go on tour with Banana Pill very soon. We'll tour Russia! And we've decided to make t-shirts to sell on the tour. As usually, i've started acting at the last moment. A couple of weeks before the tour i've made my test t-shirt. I went with a simple design, because it's my first time, and i used the same idea i had with leaves and watercolor, only this time with textile paint. So it is really autumn inspired. Here are some pictures of my process:

First of all i've collected some nice leaves on my way home from school. Then i've spent ages looking for a good font in Photoshop. When it was ready i printed it out on a sticker paper and cut the letters out.

Then i attached the paper to the t-shirt and painted over the letters.

I waited for a little while for the paint to dry and took the sticker paper off. Then i got one leaf, painted it over with another color and stamped it on a t-shirt. I waited again for about an hour and ironed the image through another piece of fabric.

I was quite happy with the result, so i ordered some new blank t-shirts online (this one was Mitya's old t-shirt). I hope the postage won't take too long and i will have time to finish them all before the tour.

For this project i got lot's of help from a tutorial on Maiorov DIY blog. He is really good at it! Without his tips i would have messed up several t-shirts before getting it right.

Sashash Ulz / кот кот split packaging

Four new tapes are out on Jozik records and it's time for me to share the packaging i've made for them.

For this tape i've been sewing fabric envelopes again. We found this beautiful fabric (it was actually a large skirt) at a second hand shop. The skirt was enough for exactly 49 copies, we were lucky with the size (we planned an edition of 50 copies first).

For an insert i got a new idea this time. I used textured craft paper, which i was lucky to get 50% off from Sinelli, it's really good to buy these things in summer when the sales are huge. I used label paper to print the info for the insert.

I am especially happy for the tape labels. I scanned the back side of the fabric and printed it on the labels. I think the color goes really good with white tapes. And i love how colored stickers look on matte opaque tapes.

You can check the description and sounds at Jozik records.

Olli Aarni / summerTales split

For this release i've decided to make fabric envelopes similar to the ones i did for our 4-way split. Actually i used exactly the same dimensions, the only difference was that these bags do not close. The fabric i chose was not as slippery as the one i used for the 4-ways split, so i saved some time by not attaching press studs to them. And this pretty fabric used to be old soviet curtains that were hanging in Mitya's kitchen in Petrozavodsk when he was a little kid.

For the insert i've scanned the fabric and printed the pattern adding all the info on the other side.

Since both splits came out at the same time, we kept the design matching by having white cassettes for both releases as well as making same kind of labels on the cassettes, just changing the text color.

Check the description and sounds on Jozik records.

DIY Xmas garland

Sorry i haven't been blogging for a long time. Most of this time i spent on our new release i wrote about in my last post as well as preparing some nice stuff for tonight's poetry evening which i'm gonna write about in my next post. I also had to find Xmas presents and other stuff for my relatives in Murmansk (we're going there for the Xmas holiday!!). In between those things i had time to decorate my apartment a little and make two nice Xmas garlands:

For these garlands i needed:

- strong white thread

- different wooden and/or shiny beads

- craft paper with nice patterns

- fabric with a nice pattern

- shapes for gingerbreads

- carton

- scissors

- liquid paper glue

- glitter

- all kinds of shiny stuff that can be added (golden stars, little bells etc)

I used gingerbread shapes to cut out animals, flowers, bells and angels out of carton, fabric and craft paper. Fabric shapes were glued on both sides of each carton shape. All the shapes were hung on the main thread with the help of the beads and normal white or red sewing thread. For the beads to stay in one place on the main thread, i've brought the thread twice through each bead. All the other glitter and shiny stuff was hanged in random order between the shapes.

This is the only Xmas decoration Notka cannot reach and ruin. She eats my Xmas tree and plays with the lights :)

4-way split on Jozik records

We've finally put out a 4-way split cassette on Jozik records. The artists on the split are Architeuthis Rex from Italy, Hobo Cubes from Canada, Mpala Garoo from Russia and our project Banana Pill. We've been waiting for this release for a long time. We even had to change one of the artists on the cassette. Originally there was supposed to be Summer Recreation Camp from Spain, but unfortunately he did not have time to record his material and we got Hobo Cubes on the split instead. I hope we manage to release something by Summer Recreation Camp some other time in the near future.

I've spent quite a lot of time creating the covers (i still have not finished them all), but i like them.

For the fabric envelopes i've bought a huge skirt from a second hand shop. We ordered orange tapes via e-bay from a very nice guy rainbowtapes. Even though shipping was a bit too expensive, the cassettes look good and the quality is good as well.

I did not want to make any stickers with artists' names for the cassettes, because the cassettes look good on their own. So i used a hole-puncher to make blue and green sticker dots to indicate the sides of the tape.

The tape can be ordered from Jozik records.