Saturday, February 7, 2009

Calling All Crafty Mamas...

I love This Book.
Do you have This Book?
Go get This Book.

Two weeks ago a friend showed me This Book, which she had just bought the day before. She seemed quite excited about it, so as we chatted I flipped it open to take a look. Suddenly, there it was, on page 197. My friend saw the look on my face and immediately asked, "Which one?"

"Which one?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said. "Which project are you looking at? There are about a million cool ideas in there, and I can’t decide which to do first."

My inner Crafty Self became giddy, and as I continued to flip through This Book the most delightful words floated out at me; words like, "glass blob", "schmancy", and, "whaddya know?" True, the first two words of This Book’s title are "Crafty Mama" --which should have been my first clue that the Mama who wrote it was my kind of Mama-- but I could tell rather quickly that This Book was also my kind of clever, and that it quite possibly held the secrets to Absolute Craftiness.

For four long days I thought about This Book. I simply had to make the project I saw on page 197, but recreating what I saw based on my own intuition wasn’t enough; I wanted to experience this project the way the author did, to know how she had dreamed up this project. I wanted to know what happens on pages 198 and 199. I had to buy this book.

It was the best fifteen dollars and ninety-five cents, minus Borders rewards points, minus fifteen percent coupon, plus California state tax that I have ever spent in my life. As it turns out, there are 254 other pages in this book! Forty-eight of these pages introduce fast & clever projects equally as awesome as the one on page 197, and the remaining ones offer insider Crafty Mama tips, easy-(for-tired-brains) to-follow instructions, and a ton of clever uses for your new mad skills.

Months before, I had felt my inner Crafty Self starting to fight for stretching room, and now I had finally found the ultimate instruction manual to make that happen. Ladies, Mama has a new favorite tool: a glue gun. Oh, and forty-eight more projects to make...

5 comments:

  1. What do you think -- if my youngest child is already three, will I still find enough cool stuff to do in there to justify buying it? Is any of the stuff easy enough that I could do it with just a little bit of extra time (maybe an hour at night) and not a lot of space to store craft supplies?

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  2. I think so, yes! As far as craft supply fallout is concerned, each project is either a one-to-two hour quickie project, or an easy-to-put-down-and-pick-up-again project. I keep all of my "general" crafty supplies in a plastic shoe box, and in another I keep the supplies specific to the project I'm working on; only once did a project spill into a small laundry basket.

    If you are a veteran Crafty Mama, these may not be new techniques to you but they will most certainly be clever applications of old standards. I have a 3 year old daughter, and I can foresee making a lot of these things in various forms until she's at least 7--I actually look forward to doing some WITH her, once she's older. A few of the projects are baby-specific (like bibs, for example), but most projects in the book will be in our repertoire for awhile. I would say that I will use 80% of the project ideas as shower gifts or first birthday gifts, 75% to decorate my DD (or her room), and actually about 20% for personalized gifts for grown-up Mama friends.

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  3. Do you think I am crafty enough to make the stuff in it?? If so I am soooo buying this!!

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  4. Absolutely, yes! The projects are explained very clearly but also in a highly entertaining and "approachable" manner; if you consider yourself a Newbie Crafter then rest assured you won't be overwhelmed.

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  5. kristin! i gotta fire my publicist and hire YOU (wait, i need a publicist first!)
    i wrote this book when i had a baby so i made all of the crafts myself with my not-so-crafty-but-fun-to-be-with-and-open-to-new-things-friends. but...as my baby got older...we started crafting together...making tu-tus and hats and blinging out wipe boxes! sometimes it's more about her sorting rhinestones or picking out patterns and helping me spray the sale fabric with her purple squirty bottle so i can iron it...and sometimes she flat out makes the project by herself. either way, we're bonding and in the end...she thinks she made it HERSELF (tee hee!) i hope you guys like it! kristin. you. are. amazing!

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