DIY: potato prints

I was visiting my grandma this past weekend and she wanted to do some crafts. Gma has always been a master crafter. She can sew entire outfits from scratch in a few hours. She has made countless quilts, including one she made for my parents wedding that I now use in the warmer months. She was the one who taught me to sew and instilled my love for DIY.

Gma had a stroke about a year ago and her physical limitations have really frustrated her, she can no longer create and craft and garden and cook the way she used to. I was hoping that a stamping project would be something she could participate in. I thought about a book my mom gave me for Christmas a few years ago, Lotta Jansdotter's Lotta Prints. I think I had done potato printing before, but Lotta makes it an art. Anyway, we got some potatoes and dug up the acrylic paint from the basement where I also found some simple canvas. I drew a mushroom outline on some paper, cut it out, and stuck it to the halved potato, and carved out the negative space with an exacto knife (you could totally use a kitchen knife). Then I put some acrylic paint in a plastic plate and brushed it on the stamp with a paintbrush. I tried dipping it in the paint but that picked up too much paint and produced a messy outline. Then I just went to town stamping the borders of the canvas. I used the shorter length and sewed it up into a simple tote bag, using thick shoelaces for the handle, and used the long length as a table runner. Gma provided technical assistance on using her sewing machine and emotional support. We were all (me, mom, gma) very pleased with the results! 

Post-Christmas Decoration

In my house, Christmas isn't over til it's over, and by over, I mean May. So early in January I made this cute wreath (I think it's cute) out of random evergreen clippings which I likely found on the ground. The wire frame is leftover wire from the IKEA curtain hanging project, and I tied it on with dental floss. The rocks are from Lake Michigan, either the dunes or maybe from the Upper Peninsula, and I learned on a recent trip to the Field Museum that the holes are actually caused by small crustaceans slowly burrowing through! I strung them on library cord when I had that library job where I spent hours in chilly stacks shelving forgotten European dissertations and re-wrapping Indian books from the 70s.