the great halloween lantern parade!

Each year around Halloween, Patterson Park is host to a colorful procession of homemade lanterns. Tons of dressed up Baltimorians show up for the event to witness the parade, or to proudly carry their own lantern. This event is truly a homage to creativity, and imagination during such a corporate holiday. I had never even heard of this event until this year when a friend mentioned it to me. My roomie and I decided to go, and although we missed the beginning of the parade, the festivities afterward were well worth the trip.

beware the jabberwock!

everyone dancing and havin a good ol fashion time

I really want to be in the parade next year. Apparently there is no sign ups or obligations, you just show up and your in!

Here is some info about Patterson Park, where the parade took place and where there are many more fun bmore events.

cuz rives bfk is the best!

Rives bfk is good for me!
(one of my most recent prints on my favorite eco-friendly paper:)

So I'm a print media major and I do a lot of screen printing. I've been screen printing for a few years now and I've found that I really like using a nice sturdy, smooth paper. Rives BFK is my favorite, but I got to wondering, is it eco-friendly? I had never really thought about it before and since I use so much of it, I decided to do a little research. If my search yielded bad results I felt I would have to find a new favorite :( . . .

Luckily for me and the environment Rives BFK as well as the slightly cheaper alternative Arches, are fairly eco-friendly! yeah!

Rives BFK and Arches paper companies proudly bear these three symbols

This symbol means that the paper mill does not use chlorine bleaching when producing their papers.
This symbol means the mill is ISO 14001 certified. I had to look it up to what that means, but basically it means that they comply to high qulaity environmental standards . This certification is supported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
This symbol means that no trees are used to create the paper, the pulp is made from 100% cotton.

Here are my research sources if you wanna check em out.
Legion Papers
Master Control

i want this!

Crafty Chica has a new awesome book coming out!




So Crafty Chica is kind of a hero of mine. I have one of her books, "Art de la Soul" and it's amazing!! All her crafts are so creative and colorful:) She has a few good recycling crafts (my favorite shows how to make an old book into a purse) and she really shows you how to utilize the materials around you and include some fun found objects. Also, her antecdotes are completely hilarious!

I love mexican culture and my family has recently begun celebrating Dia de los Muertos. We love the idea of getting together with family and celebrating our loved ones lives, not only to honor them since they have passed, but also remembering the happy times and making new happy memories because of our celebration. Her crafts reflect this celebration of life as well as her colorful and sparkly mexican flare. I love it!

Anyways, she has a new book coming out called "Crafty Chica's Artful Guide to Sewing". I cannot wait to buy it!!! I love sewing (even though im not so good with technical aspects such as threading a machine . . .) and I love working with colorful threads and fabrics. I think I'm more of an embellishment sewer and I love stitching by hand. I think the book will be really inspiring and already has got me thinking bout some altered book projects I'd been working on a while ago where I did a lot of decorative stitching and such. Anyways, Feb 17th is it's release date. Thats not too far away right?!?