A Wonderland Sort of Day

So this is what it looks like when you spend a few hours with Christine Rose Elle. Yes, she's an artist, a designer, a dog lover, a fancy crafty girl all around. And you just cannot be near her without feeling inspired and happy.

I met Christine in Italy, in a 500-year-old home perched on one of the precarious cobblestone streets in Cortona, where we were both staying while attending a fabulous weeklong workshop with the fantastic Sally Jean Alexander. I had been to Cortona before, so Stacey (the woman who organized the workshops, who created this amazing home in Cortona, who simply oozes creative powers) invited me to stay in her home to have a different experience (which included a ghostly sort of wake-up for me, but that's a different story for a different time). Christine was embarking on a new life, having just sold her home in Northern California to live in Rome for a year and study fashion design. She'd already worked with one of my fashion idols, Betsey Johnson, and was on a mission to learn and create and do. She was, as you can imagine, fabulous. Had loads of spiritual insight, a beautiful sense of color and a wit with her artwork... I was just totally intrigued.

A year or more later, I could not find her address. The Xmas card I'd sent to Rome had been returned and I just couldn't find her. And then the phone rang. She'd moved to Los Angeles, into a darling old Victorian near downtown, off the 110. She invited me to be a "guinea pig" for a crafting workshop she wanted to do on French beading. I couldn't believe my luck.

Since that time, I have fallen into a deep admiration for Christine, her work, her playful spirit, her insight, her dogs Shirley and Cricket, and her studio. You could really just dive in and get a sugary toothache, it's all so sweet. She is honing her skills with workshops that deal especially with flapper girls, Marie Antoinette, Jane Austen, Alice in Wonderland... It's all simply delightful.

Oh, and did I mention that she also bought me a taco from one of the old school Highland Park taco joints? Yeah, she's all that and a bag of chips.

Valentines Day "Craft Stew"

To counteract the testoterone content of the Super Bowl, my crafty friend suggested a pre-SB "craft stew," in which we glittered and glitzed our way through a few fun projects. I made these Valentine shadowboxes for my girls.

Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day. I do. It's not just a celebration of love, but of all things sparkly, red, tacky, feathery, glitzy, pink and gaudy. It's also my husband's birthday and thus, the day the love of my life was born.

To honor Valentine's Day, one must call on all the Muses and the Crafty Gods to create something suitably spectacular for loved ones. My own mother used to create treasure hunts for us when we were kids, so my brother and I would come home from school and have to dash from here to there (under couch cushions and in cabinets, under the sink and outside by a tree) to locate our valentines. I've done this with my own kids, too, and it was really fun during their "Dora the Explorer" fixation -- "First we go to the piano bench... next comes the guinea pig cage... and finally, the computer desk!" I also like treasure maps, but sometimes my inability to draw straight lines gets in the way.

I prefer to craft up a card or two for my kids instead, but sometimes even that seems to lack a little zazz. This year, I made shadowbox Valentines.