Alicia de los Reyes

Posted on June 30, 2011March 9, 2015 by alicia — 6 Comments

Artist trading cards/crafty business cards

When I was making this website and designing the survey, I kept trying to think of ways to make a crafty connection to people. I wanted to give them something tangible, like a business card, that was also crafty. I also happened to have a ton of scraps left over from a quilt project, some place mat making, and my good old addiction to Jo-Ann’s. So, I decided to sew up scrappy business cards. I’ll be giving them out at the Portsmouth Open Market this Sunday. Can’t wait!

Here’s how I made them:

First, gather your scraps of fabric. I like to use a mix of different textures: corduroy, calico, denim, linen…

Then, dig up some InterFuse, which is thick, double-sided interfacing. You could also use plain fusible interfacing and glue it to both sides of a piece of thin cardboard. Find some plain fabric for the back, where your information will go.

Turn over the solid fabric so that the right side is touching your work surface. Lay the InterFuse on top (both sides are fusible). Then, lay out a fabric collage on top of the interfacing, making sure that all of the fusible stuff gets covered up with your scraps. Overlap the scrap edges by at least a quarter inch.

Iron the fabric-interfacing-fabric sandwich together on both sides.

You now have business card material. Scrappy business cardstock, if you will.

Next, hop on over to Design*Sponge’s sweet tutorial on how to put your information on everything using a customize-able stamp. I bought a stamp and stamp pad at Staples for around $25, and I plan to use it over and over and over…

Stamp the solid fabric side with your info, spaced about 1/2-3/4 of an inch apart. You could try different colors, but I just used plain black.

Up close:

While you’ve got the stamp out, stamp your/your blog/your company’s name on a few more scraps of plain, solid fabric. I stamped a tagline.

To decorate your cards and keep all those little fabric scraps together, sew back and forth around the printed side on your sewing machine.

Ta-da!

Finally, use a rotary cutter to slice the cards apart.

Repeat for the tagline/short title stamped fabric. Glue the taglines to the scrappy side of each card.

Fin!

I made these when I was taking a survey of 500 craft bloggers… you can read the results here. If you’d like to get updates about my other projects (like a guide to running your own DIY writing retreat!), please sign up here.

Posted on June 28, 2011June 28, 2011 by alicia — Leave a comment

Day 5

Thanks to Rachel at One Pretty Thing for tweeting about us! We’re up to 30 responses…high five to all you crafty bloggers!

I dug up this Twitter tutorial. Check out the sewing/bird-themed slideshow! Now that I’m looking for it, the diy look, the aesthetic, is everywhere. I wonder: is this because so many crafty people use Twitter? Is it just the trend (see Anthropologie‘s store decor)? Are new media–Twitter, Facebook, Ning, and all the rest–somehow inspiring or inspired by making stuff in real life?

What do you think?

Posted on June 24, 2011June 27, 2011 by alicia — Leave a comment

Day 1

We’ve passed the 10-survey mark–woohoo! Thank you very much to all the bloggers who participated. Super thank you to Christine for sharing and posting a link to the survey on the forums in Ravelry. Welcome, knit and crochet-bloggers!

A few questions have come up…first, is the survey intentionally US-focused, and second, what is the end product of all this?

So, here are a few answers: yes, the survey is intentionally US-focused (for now, at least!) because my goal is to write a book about the crafty/diy movement in the US. I received a grant from UNH, where I am a grad student, to conduct this survey in preparation for writing. I’m going to share the results here with everyone, of course, and I hope that they will be of use or interesting to you. I hope they spark plenty of conversation, too! Feel free to email me if you have any other questions.

Thanks again, crafters!

Posted on June 6, 2011August 9, 2011 by alicia — 5 Comments

What is the Craft Book Project?

The Craft Book Project is the home for the Craft Book Survey. If you are a craft blogger, please take the survey by clicking the tab at the top of the page! Whether you’ve been blogging for 3 months or 3 years, we want to hear from you. Whether you last posted this morning or sometime this year, we want to hear from you!

We believe that craft blogging is an economic and social revolution. The survey is helping to find out who is a craft blogger and how successful craft bloggers are, financially and in other ways. We will share our results with the world, including you. Thanks for stopping by!