90 year old hunchback

with arthritis too.

i've been in my own little world for the past while..
but i managed to spend a lot of the time alone with a crochet hook and some yarn.
i managed to produce a couple of hats, a cowl scarf (that i started months ago but never got to finish!) and another scarf using a stitch that i just learned.
all of which i am very happy with. each one i finished, i slightly wanted to keep, but the faces of the children who we are trying to build a school for reminded me that these items are for Le Petit Sourire!
all in all my friends, we're on our way! my once empty inventory baskets are filling up slowly!
so, truly.. i dont mind being a 90 year old hunchback with arthritic fingers because of all the crochet and knitting ive been doing ;)


next week, ill move on to making journals and sketchbooks from scratch and bookbinding them!

its super exciting.. seeing concrete things shaping up!

Thank you guys! for all the support and enthusiasm i've been getting :) it keeps me going.

--------------------------
if you just joined us, Le Petit Sourire is a project that includes making and selling crafts of all kinds, and hopefully raising enough money to build a school for children in some spot in the world! it's now in its production phase! :)

draw, draw, draw!

ink pen +india ink + paper = euphoria for a few good hours.
I've been sketching for the website for the past 2 days, and Im sure, at some point.. im going to need someone to take away my drawing equipment because I might just keep going and going.. SO much fun.

also finished, is the site map.. I'm sure my interactivity (aka interaction design, aka website design) instructor wouldn't approve of it, its slightly (or, highly..) indecipherable.. but! it makes sense in my head, I even color coded it. so its all good. As long as at the end of the day, the world wide web gets a website that works..

here are a few of the sketches ive been working on.They're just roughs and i plan to play around with them in photoshop/illustrator or with watercolors/gouache paints..they also might not even end up on the site... I have no idea how this website will look like at the end.. but In my head.. i see illustrations and drawings.. so shall it be! 

Click to open in new window, then click again to enlarge =)

step one, check.

I'm so grateful for the four walls surrounding my basement that shielded the eyes of passers by from the mess that was my basement. SO grateful. you literally couldn't walk from point A to point B (5 feet away from each other) without tripping over a tube of oil paint, book binding tools, old artwork, and fabric scraps.
Im not usually that messy. ok thats a blatant lie. im messy when it comes to art work, and i dont mind. I need a messy, yet somehow organized atmosphere to create.

So my goal for the past weekend was to arrange my basement and have it ready for Le Petit Sourire. the floors are now clear, desks, organizers, drawers and boxes have been added, all in all, creating workstations for the following: Sewing/fabric-related art station, illustrating/book making/ greeting cards station, lino cuts/stamp making station, jewelry making station and a final area for screen printing and fabric painting.

with that, we scratch STEP ONE from our to-do list!

now that my atelier is ready for business.. we move on to step 2, the website! i'll keep you posted on that one!

and so it begins..

Five months of summer..I cant contain my excitement!!
I plan to spend those 5 months immersed in my work on Le Petit Sourire (as well as other happenings), and I figured it would be kind of cool to let you guys in on whats going on, since you guys have been with me since the beginning- re: the name contest we had, which ultimately decided this project shall bear the name of Le Petit Sourire!


so for those of you joining us at this point, and are wondering what Le Petit Sourire is..

I have decided that all the crazy ideas in my head and the to-make lists that include accessories, hand made books/journals, crocheted/knitted scarves and hats, sewed anything and everything, screen printed/any kind of printed clothing/fabric crafts, painted/sprayed/sketched/..stuff could be made! and I shall make them for the world!

the jist of the project is this: I make all of the above and then some, you and the rest of the human population on the planet (or a tiny percentile of it..) will kindly purchase them for yourselves, loved ones, anyone! and 60% of what you give will go towards building a school in the world with Free The Children, and 40% goes back into the project for more materials and tools =)

I dont know how successful this will be, i might end up with boxes and boxes of my hand made crafts, or it might actually work and then we'll have a school somewhere for children whose basic human right is to get the education they deserve!

this project and all the effort and passion in me for a better world is and always will be inspired by the restless idealists who work everyday for a better world, and by the smiles on the faces of the children worldwide- particularly vivid in my mind are those smiles of the children of San Miguel de Pomachaca and Gulahuayco in Ecuador who kindly gave me a lifetime's worth of high fives!

join me in this journey! lets see where we end up!