Whisker Graphics

On Saturday my family and I went to Maker Faire in San Mateo. This is our third time going and each visit is a different experience. This year I was excited to meet some web friends in person. It was such a pleasure to meet Danni of Oh Hello Friend and Patti of The Tinted Mint. I made a point to see the ever-crafty Cathe Holden of Just Something I Made demo-ing how to turn vintage books into your own custom notebook. She did a great job! She’s doing a Give Away on her blog until May 28th for 2 of the notebooks she created. Click HERE to enter.

This year at the show my daughter and I discovered needle felting. Nifer Fahrion of NifNaks was beyond nice and patient and gave us a 15 minute demo on how to needle felt. Then we came across Moxie of HiFiberKits who had a cool velvet couch and a bunch of chairs around a coffee table piled with wool. You could sit for as long as you like and needle felt to your heart’s content. So we did. We both love it! We bought a starter kit from NifNaks and my daughter spent the evening at home making all sorts of little fuzzy friends.

Fuzzy Felted Friends by Little Cat A, age 11

We had a lovely time at Maker Faire last Saturday. The weather was perfect and there were loads of cool stuff to see. If I had an extra $300 to drop, one of these might come live at my house. But, one of the coolest things I learned on Saturday was to make Shrinky Dink art from #6 recyclable clamshells.

You can take this:

And make this:

image from www.skiptomylou.org

Here are two great tutorials at: Skip To My Lou and Dabbled

In our neighborhood we can recycle #1-5  and #7 plastics, but no #6, so it’s nice to be able to have a use for these. Keeps the kids busy, adds some beauty in our lives and keeps trash out of the land fill. It’s a win-win-win.