Beading is Back in Action

Hooray!!! We (Kahului, Maui) finally have a beading instructor... so starting this month we will be offering Beading Classes once again. Be sure to stop by the store for details & sign up today!!! Our instructor Danni Girl has been beading for years & she would love to show you the in & outs of beading!!!

*Also if you're interested, be sure to sign up for our Spring Craft Fair today!!!!

A hui hou.... Trina

MAKE 'n TAKE celebration!

Congratulations to our Grand Prize winner from the Market City Ben Franklin Make 'n Take Celebration this past Saturday. Congratulations to Kristie K. Congratulations to Brylin N., Violet M., Kelly T., Tomoko D., and Kanoa A. being our other winners...Thank you for coming and celebrating National Craft month with us. Here's a few pictures of the different things that we had going on...from Favor making with Cheryl M., note pad holder with Joy, glass etching with David, making cute monkeys with Waialae, card making with Violet, familar faces from Ben Franklin with glass blocks and alcohol inks with Jenny, vinyl with Caroline, and the Cinch and Big Shot with Gloria.

But don't forget we do have classes that you can sign up for from crochet and knitting with Huong and Baerbel...or maybe Kumihimo with Kathleen, Bling your thing with Eileen and of course, making lovely FIMO flowers with Luana.

Main thing is all of you had lots of fun this past weekend. Please look for our upcoming events, at our location as well as the other locations (hint hint, Enchanted Lake on April 16th -- Paint Party!)

LEI THE GRADUATE!

DELUXE BRAIDED RIBBON LEIS

Graduation is fast approaching and we're all getting ready to LEI THE GRADUATE ! We have a special guest joining us this season to demonstrate Deluxe Braided Ribbon Leis! Kalo creates beautiful leis with 4, 6, 8 and more ribbons! Keep it simple or change them into Money Leis! Join Kalo for a demonstration or for a small fee, sit & make one with her! Did you purchase our newest Lei Book, Volume IX? Check the Pearl City store calendar & join a class to create one of the beautiful leis....you may even be able to get your book autographed by one of the lei creators! We have classes and demonstrations scheduled for Straw Leis, Crochet Leis, Ribbon Leis and other Leis featured in our newest Lei Book!

Gloria

Easy Spray Paint

Our "Rock Your Block Party" is coming up on Saturday, April 16th from 10am-3pm and I wanted to give everyone a quick sneak peak at one of the fun projects we'll be doing that day. The party is focusing on outdoor crafts so we are highlighting spray painting and the urban art movement.

To do this extremely easy project on your own, all you need is some spray paint in cool colors, a couple of different sizes of masking tape, a stencil, and a black poster or mat board.



The first thing you need to do is make a cool background for your stencil. I started by taping off some trendy stripes using the masking tape.

Then using two different color blues and a little bit of metallic silver, I sprayed the poster board in a random pattern. After pulling off the masking tape, this is what my board looked like:

To finish off, I spray painted two layers of stencils. The first layer was a dull gray color and the second layer was a bright green. Here's my finished piece:

Simple right? The stencils make this awesome project so easy, I finished it in about 10 minutes. So if you're interested in trying out this technique, drop by our store for our "Rock Your Block Party" on Saturday, April 16th. We're going to be having a lot of fun with this project and a few other things like tye dieing, glass etching, alcohol inks, acrylic transfer...

Thanks for reading!

Puna @ Enchanted Lake

One Last Look

It's time to take one last look at our (Kahului, Maui) store front... starting this Sunday, we'll begin our renovation to give our store a fresh new look...

So when you pass by our store, take a moment to reminisce...


& stay tuned, 'cause we'll keep you updated on the transformation of our store front

A hui hou... Trina

Earring Demo @ The Bead Shop

Want a quick project for instant gratification? Earrings are the perfect choice and we are going to have a demo on Saturday in our Mapunapuna Bead Shop between 2 and 3 to show you a few things you can make.


One of the trends we've been seeing are feathered accessories. We've got a nice selection of feathers at BFC so you can make a variety of different styles yourself. Shari came up with this design and even a free worksheet! I love how she added some bling with rhinestones and beads, you know me...I'm all about the bling!



The next pair are interchangeable earring that can be worn in 3 different ways. We'll show you how to make this with wire, beads, and tools...no premade findings because we show you how to do it yourself! We are even going to show you how to make a little card to display your earrings for gift giving. We've been having a great time with our demos so I hope you can stop by.

See ya later!
Lynn @ The Mapunapuna Bead Shop

Spring Break....let's make some leis!

We are busy getting ready to make demos and workshops for all of you interested in learning to make leis this year... so check out the Market City calendar and watch for the different days that we have the demos and workshops to learn the different leis. For the month of March, our workshops have to do with Lei Book VIII and from next month we'll be focusing on Lei Book IX.

Packing Tape Transfer

Hooray for no Tsunamis 0r technical difficulties! (We hope everyone is doing OK, by the way.) I can finally do my blog again, so as promised I'm going to show you how I did that neat little label on my altered box. The technique is very simple and all you need is some clear packing tape, an image to transfer, and a spray bottle filled with water.



Tape transfer works best with glossy magazine images but you can use almost anything including scrap booking paper or images printed with an ink jet or laser printer. For my image I used a Cartier ad out of a wedding magazine. First, you need to place the packing tape on the image. You're only working with about two inches of tape so choose your area carefully.









Next, I cut out the image to make it easier to work with and used a bone folder to burnish the tape to the image. Make sure to burnish the whole image and watch out for any air bubbles. If you end up with a crease in the tape the transfer will still work but you'll also be able to see the crease.

After your tape is nicely burnished, flip the image over and spray the back with water. Wait for a little while to let the water soak in, then gently rub the back of the image with your finger. This will start to take all the paper off of the tape while leaving the image on. When you've rubbed all the paper off the back, let the tape dry. Your image will end up being transparent with darker colors looking more opaque than lighter colors.

Here's my finished piece:

The rose at the bottom of the card is the image I transferred from the magazine ad, but I also used this technique to make the "thank you" wording at the top. I've found that this technique comes in handy for making personalized sentiments or for when you need another size for your wording, sort of like customizable rub-ons. It also works well for putting images to paper which may not be appropriate, or the right size, to send through the printer.

I hope everyone likes the idea, I've had a lot of fun playing around with it. I'm sure you'll see more of my upcoming projects using this technique, I seem to keep finding more and more applications for it.

Thanks for reading!

Puna @ Enchanted Lake

Tsunami

Hey there everyone... Sorry for the late start, but we (Kahului, Maui) are now officially open for the day. Luckily our mall didn't get flooded, but there were road closures all around us this morning. Here's a picture (thanks to my friend) of the receding water from Kihei, Maui this morning...

So if you're off of work or school today & are trying to figure out what to do... it's the perfect time to start a craft project 8-) so come over & visit us... be safe & have a good day

* our thoughts & prayers go out to the people & our partners in Japan

A hui hou..... Trina

TOWEL TREATS

Sweet Towel Treats!

Don't these look yummy? They are not just cute but look delicious! In the stores now, these are perfect favors or centerpieces for your Spring parties. Or you can use them as samples and create some yourself with colorful washcloths or dishtowels. Many of you may remember making the little bunnies by folding washcloths. Fold the washcloth into a triangle, roll up, add google eyes, a pompom nose, ribbon bow and you've got a cute bunny....insert a plastic egg filled with treats and you have your Spring favor!

See you soon!

Gloria @ Pearl City

"It's for the birds!"

Over here at Market City, we're not leaving it all up to the birds. Although we did have lots of fun since Girls Day making mochi with the microwave and making paper dolls.

Here's another great wood project but not just for the birds. You'll need a few supplies: wooden bird house, ceramcoat paints, grass punch, green cardstock, McGill punch, stylus and of course, birds.

Before we forget ... it's National Craft Month and to celebrate, here at Market City we'd like to personally invite you to our Make 'n Take Celebration on Saturday March 26 from 10am-2pm lots of demonstrations and make 'n takes (of course) a fun filled day, celebrating all the different crafts.

See ya 'all then.

Inspired by Coby K.
Posted by Chris

Don't know what to do with all of your keiki's artwork?

One of my daughter's favorite activities is drawing & coloring... so of course I have tons of artwork all over my house that are just filling up the refrigerator door & every wall space available. Finally I decided that I need to figure out different ways to display them.

Here's some of the ideas that I came up with...

I scanned the drawing into the computer & printed out in different sizes.

• The key chain was simple to make, just cut the image & pop it into the key chain.
• The post-it note holder is a bent acrylic frame with the image inserted & the post-it note adhered to the top.
• The magazine holder is an unfinished wood item that I painted & decoupaged the image to the front.

Now I can free up some of my wall space, but still be able to proudly display my daughter's artwork...


A hui hou....Trina

Lei Book

Our newest Lei book, Volume IX is available now at the stores! Just in time for Easter, Mother's Day and, of course...... Graduation! There are 16 lei making ideas for you to try; haku leis, crochet leis, ribbon leis and straw leis are in the book. And, new ideas to use a Kumihimo disk or a Hana-Ami loom to create more unique leis. Don't forget to make a cute pom-pom lei for that Kindergarten graduate! The stores will be demonstrating these leis, as well as leis from previous books, come and see! Want to sit and make one?....Pearl City store has lei making classes starting this month. There are crochet leis on Tuesdays, ribbon leis on Thursdays and lots of demonstrations.

Do you remember this Lei book? I can't find the publishing date but it must be one of our first! It contained fabric leis and rick rack leis which we don't do very much of now. Rick rack (do you remember them?) is so hard to find these days! And, the eyelash yarns make it so much easier than cutting and stripping fabric! Although the book cover is in color, the inside instructions are in black and white! What a difference from our latest book!

See you soon! Happy Lei Making!

Gloria

Cows that go "MOO"

Hi ya 'all... here's a cut cow project... that we did over at Market City. Made it for my "moo" me. We had so much fun with the wood burning that we look forward to doing more projects with the woods.You'll need a few items, like a wooden cow frame and a wood burning kit.

Then just make the "black" spots on the cow with the wood burning kit and add some raffia for the "hay" in the cow's mouth and you're set.

Posted by Chris