Prices range between $13-30.

xo
meg

>> make it pretty subscription club, $15/month

So by making them with shoe clip hardware, naturally, you can also buy two as shoe clips!

There are seven colors available in each style.

Bow Shoe Clips: $10
Baby Bow Ties: $5

These are for Meghan and Jhonson’s wedding (I’ll show you their flowers next week!) and they’re going in each centerpiece, flying over each table of birdhouses and beautiful foliage. I made a small flock of colorful birds native to California where they are getting married, inspired by sketches sent to me by Meghan’s stepmother Barbara. I also made some purple and pink fantasy birds in their wedding colors embellished with vintage crystals and pearls. They each took a long time to make, so I’m really proud of these little guys.

xo
meg

I interviewed Peter about his inspiration, what he’s learned, where he’s going, and his process when working with custom clients. Try working with a local independent furniture designer in your area–it’s such a cool way to go handmade.

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Q: What right now are you really excited about and inspired by, and how is it influencing your current projects?
Peter: I’m really inspired by the Kent Bellows Studio right now – especially the building and the sort of “living” sets Kent made for his paintings and drawings. I’ve been interested in exploring textures and opaque tones in the work I’ve been doing lately. I just scheduled my first solo show to take place at KBS next September. I’ve had the opportunity to work with the kids there on a weekly basis for much of the last year and I just feel a unique energy every time I walk into the space. The building – and my mentoring experience, the kids, the staff, the history – it’s all influencing the work I’m doing and pushing me to take chances and try new things with my work.

Q: Are you ever stuck on ideas? What do you do when you feel like you want to create something, but you don’t know where to begin?
Peter: I get stuck sometimes in the design process, but usually I know I only have a small window of time to effectively work with a client, so I try to push through those kinds of things. Typically, I’ll just start drawing shapes and individual elements until things start to click. I like to make things for people who are interested in the design or fabrication process, so I usually end up trying to incorporate details that directly relate to their story or life. Those tend to be pretty inspiring in terms of working through road blocks in the design process.

I’m notoriously guilty of starting projects without really knowing how they’re going to reach fruition. Usually I’ll get a mental image of a completed piece. And if I know it’s something I really feel strongly about and want to make, I’ll just work until the real things matches the picture in my mind. I’ve made some of my more interesting chairs, and developed some of my signature pieces by doing this – particularly my star tables and signature wooden hot air balloons. Sometimes I end up wasting material because I’ll get so far into something and realize the piece just isn’t working. But generally I like the freedom of doing things really intuitively.

Q: What do you love about where you live?
A: I love living in Omaha because of the opportunity here. I mean, I’m able to work and support myself (most of the time, anyway) by making stuff. Who wouldn’t want to do that? I don’t think I could do what I’m doing in many other places. Access is a big thing in my world. I’m talking access to a network of clients and supportive people, resources, affordable housing and workspace. Omaha seems unique in the sense that if you want to do something here in the arts world, you can just do it. You don’t have to jump through hoops or know the right people. You can just do stuff and have a chance to be successful. There are definitely some drawbacks, too. I think there are some cultural ceilings here and there certainly aren’t the markets here that exist on the coasts. But the opportunities far outweigh the limitations right now for me.

Q: What advice do you have for someone who wants to support a designer like you but has never ordered custom commissioned work before?
A: I have a sense that most people are nervous about inquiring about custom work. They either think it’s going to be really expensive or that I’m going to be weird or something. But custom work is sort of my bread and butter, and I’m used to working with people who have modest budgets. Most of my clients tend to be younger professionals who have a little money to spend and want something unique that they can’t get at Ikea or Nebraska Furniture Mart.

I try to approach this kind of work in a really personal way. I want my clients to feel comfortable with me, but I also want to feel comfortable with them. After all, my work – kind of a part of me, really – is going to be in their home forever. And they’re likely going to incorporate the piece into their day to day lives. So I really work hard to seek out clients who will appreciate the experience of working closely with me. I want to know peoples’ stories – what they’re like, what they’re interested in and how our aesthetics match up – before we even start talking about what kind of piece they’re interested in. But I invest a lot of time in the custom/commission process because it’s important and valuable to me. After all, this is how I’ve chosen to spend the majority of my time, so I want to really enjoy my work experience and feel fulfilled by it. Custom work is time consuming and definitely not as cost-effective as more streamlined things. I could make more money making simple cabinets or repetitive designs, but it’s more worthwhile to me to consistently enjoy my work than it is to make a little more money doing something I don’t enjoy.

Q: Is there anything that you haven’t done or learned that you’d like to try?
A: There are so many things I haven’t learned. I want to be a better craftsman. I think I have an unfounded reputation as some sort of great craftsman. I’m probably better than most people who don’t make furniture and art for a living, but I have a long way to go before I earn any sort of great title. I think everyone should continuously work toward perfecting their craft or whatever they’re passionate about doing. I also want to ride in a hot air balloon. I have a pretty terrible fear of heights, so even flying on an airplane kind of freaks me out usually, but someday I will take a balloon ride. I also want to be a guest on Fresh Air with Terri Gross someday. I want to go back to Southeast Asia too. There are loads of things I want to do. But mostly I just want to make something amazing and leave a significant legacy. That’s what it’s all about for me.

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One cool thing Peter is working on right now is a side project called Tiny Wooden Box, a limited-edition line of just that–small handcrafted wooden boxes–priced at $50 each. I think they’re adorable and you’ll have use for them for a long time. I visualize a man buying one to hold an engagement ring for his wife, his wife using it to store her favorite earrings and rings, and maybe using one to store locks of hair from a baby’s first haircut or teeth for the tooth fairy. What don’t you need a tiny wooden box for?!

Check out Peter Cales’s commissioned and gallery work on his website, Measure Cut Cut, and pick up a tiny wooden box for your treasures too.

xo
meg

I feel like it’s been at least eight months or a year since I uploaded a new range of embroidered felt flower pins to the shop. The pins are what started it all–in 2005 on Etsy I began selling embroidered pins and the felt flower bouquets that are my bread and butter now stemmed from that original pin design. This range in the shop now feature details like baker’s twine embroidery, dyed french netting, hand-cut flowers and vintage buttons from my favorite reserves.

I’m going to strive to keep my shop stocked up with lots of cool embroidered felt flower pins. They’re also a great way for me to practice new stitches and explore fun color combinations I’ve wanted to play with. Each pin is $30 and is backed with both a brooch pin and a hair clip for versatility.

Enjoy some more photos!

xo
meg

Click to shop!

An interview on Marketplace yesterday talked about how going over the top with your gift wrapping raises expectations about the gift inside. A Yale University study about how the wrapping of gifts influences the reactions of recipients showed that less is more when it comes to gift wrapping, and that the receivers of presents presented more simply were happier than those who got the same gift in more fancy packaging.

Brown kraft paper is my signature gift wrap–I use it for birthdays, for my Make it Pretty Monthly club (join! join!), and of course for Christmas! I think the message of Yale’s study about brown paper packages is completely true–give a great gift in a humble package. Being me, though, I still have to elevate the prettiness of the wrapping from the expected. Here’s how I make my brown paper gift bags in the same amount of time it takes to wrap a box:

Materials needed

♥ A roll of brown kraft paper–you can find this stuff in the mailing supply section of any big-box store. My 15-foot roll of paper was less than $3.
♥ A sewing machine
♥ Scissors

Step 1: Cut out a big rectangle of kraft paper. My standard size is about 30” x 15”, or the width of the roll by about half that length. As you make these and start wrapping gifts up, you will figure out which other sizes you need. I don’t measure, I just eyeball it. You just need lots of big rectangles of paper.

Step 2: Fold the paper in half loosely–don’t crease it at all–and sew the edge opposite the fold with a simple straight stitch. Long stitches are good. Just run it through the machine.

Step 3: Now you have a roll of paper with a sewn seam. Position the seam in the center and flatten the roll of paper into a rectangle, centering the seam. Fold up the bottom edge one inch, and one inch again. Sew that edge shut.

Step 4: Now you have a bag! Put a gift inside and sew the top closed.

Tips and Tricks:

♥ I like to cut up a roll of paper in one sitting into rectangles of various sizes and sew all of the bags assembly-line style. It’s just a little cutting and sewing two seams per bag over and over, and you’ll save a ton of time.
♥ These sewn packages are SO fun to open. Consider leaving a tail of thread on the top seam that the recipient can rip open!
♥ It’s easy to get creative when you start with a brown paper package. Tie twine or cord around the center.
♥ Let your kids draw on the packages or cover them in stickers.
♥ Create another thick paper band to go around the middle where you can slip in a card.
♥ Upload finished pictures of your embroidery projects to Princess Lasertron’s Flickr stream, Make it Pretty!

xo
meg

For this tutorial, I embroidered my mom’s initial on a canvas envelope template (you can see the tutorial for my felt gift envelopes here on Rock N Roll Bride) to fill with some of her favorite goodies and tie on top of a gift. You could embroider an initial on anything–a patch to sew on a bag, a pillowcase, towels, a wine gift bag…it’s a really versatile technique, and once you have a few staple supplies on hand it’s easy to whip one up for any gift throughout the whole year.

With just two different simple stitches, I can finish one of these monograms in about 20 minutes if I focus. It’s just a little bit of time for a nice personalized touch.

Materials needed:

♥ a set of alphabet stamps (or just buy the letter stamp you want individually)
♥ a stamp pad (fabric-safe is better, like Staz-On, but if you don’t have fabric ink you can just be careful and it’ll work fine)
♥ something to embroider (a napkin, a pillowcase, a towel, your underwear, whatever)
♥ embroidery thread
♥ needle
♥ iron-on stabilizer (if the thing you are embroidering is a little bit loosely woven or thin)
♥ embroidery hoop (it’s optional, but it helps)

Step 1: Lightly ink your letter stamp–less is more, here–and press it down firmly onto the surface where you want to embroider your letter. The idea is just to get the outline visible so you can see where to trace the letter with your thread.

Step 2: If your fabric is thinner or with a looser weave and you want to stabilize it for stitching, iron on a little bit of interfacing to the back of your fabric where you will be sewing. This step isn’t necessary if you stitch carefully (or if you’re just impatient), but it can help make the finished product look a bit neater.

Step 3: Put the fabric in an embroidery hoop, if you want. Thread a needle and sew long backstitches around the outline of the letter. If you’ve never done a backstitch before, PurlBee.com has a great little how-to. Once you master this stitch, I’m sure you will use it all the time–it’s great to have in your arsenal of skills!

Step 4: Next, fill in the letter with a satin stitch. The best way to describe a satin stitch is that it’s analogous to scribbling back and forth with a marker, but with thread. You’re creating a solid field of thread by running single long stitches back and forth just outside the letter outline. Bring your needle up through the fabric just outside of an outline stitch and put the needle back down through the fabric across the letter outside the other side of the outline. Make a parallel stitch as close to the first stitch as possible, just going back and forth across the letter until it is all filled in. Depending on the size of the letter, this can take a lot of thread, but luckily it’s quite an easy process once you get the hang of it. Just the same stitch over and over, filling in the letter.

Step 4: Tie a knot in the thread, give it a snip, and you’re done! If you lightly press the thread with an iron, it can help “set” it on the fabric a bit.

Tips and other suggestions:

♥ Fill in your letter with a different stitch–the chain stitch is a great filler stitch, I love filling outlines with french knots, and you can even backstitch the inside of each letter.
♥ Many craft stores have letter stamps and small alphabet stamp packs in the dollar bins, or near the checkout.
♥ Instead of using a stamp, try hand-drawing a block letter to embroider.
♥ Make an embroidered pillow case with the initials of your child to send on sleepovers.
♥ Upload finished pictures of your embroidery projects to Princess Lasertron’s Flickr stream, Make it Pretty!

xo
meg

Every year I get so many beautiful Christmas and holiday cards from my friends, and I keep them all. It’s so fun to know people who care enough about you to hand write a note, put a stamp on an envelope, and send a nice thought your way. We write so few letters during the year that you must take advantage of the holiday season as the perfect time of year to make some extra effort to reach out to those you love by sending some snail mail!

When I want to make something, I like to get it done NOW. I don’t like to go all over town looking for materials or printing out templates or ordering things, so I look for the easy, time-saving,(but pretty) way out whenever possible. So when I wanted to create some nice little handmade Christmas cards, I looked around my studio to see what I had to work with. You can make so many of these if you just give yourself an hour! Read on to make your own quick ‘n dirty holiday cards.

materials needed

♥ a relatively high-res photo file (or several) of you, your family, your cat, whatever you want to share
♥ some photo paper to print your pictures (packs of 6×4” photo paper are great to just have on hand near your printer for many projects)
♥ 8.5×11” sticker paper (another important office staple to always have on hand.)
♥ decorative washi tape
♥ a gold paint pen
♥ black Sharpie
♥ scissors
♥ this printable 6×4” postcard back

step 1:

First, sit down at the computer for a moment. Print 6×4” of your favorite photo for each card you want to send. Also print as many copies on sticker paper (I get two to a page) of the printable postcard template which you can download here. Or by all means, create your own!

step 2:

Trim those postcard stickers and photos up so they’re all the same size. Peel off the sticker backing and adhere each postcard sticker to the back of each photo, being careful not to allow any air bubbles.

step 3:

This is the fun part where you can be a bit artistic. To reproduce what I did, draw with the paint pen a little flag banner on the front of the postcard in the background of the photo. I used small cut triangles of polka dot washi tape (you could also use masking tape, or stickers) and outlined them with my gold paint pen and black Sharpie for a little flashiness. I wrote “2011″ on the banner. You could also write directly on the photo “Happy Holidays,” “Merry Christmas,” “Happy Hanukkah,” “Frohe Weihnachten,” whatever floats your boat. The paint pens and Sharpies are awesome for doodling on photos, and the washi tape flag banner is just a cute detail.

step 4:

Write a personalized note on the back, slap on a stamp, and send it!

If you do create this project, I’d love to see photos in my Make it Pretty Flickr group, or you share them with me on Twitter! And if you’re sending out lots of cards and you feel so inclined–especially if you use some of the ideas from this tutorial–I’d love to receive one! I’ll put it up on my wall. Send me anything at Princess Lasertron / 1111 N 13th St Suite 119 / Omaha, NE 68102.

xo
meg

In the meantime, I’ve been making headbands for babies by popular demand! I don’t like a lot of baby headbands and Alice won’t wear them, so they have never really been on my radar as far as a product that I identified my brand with. But the requests kept coming and I decided to challenge myself–what does a Princess Lasertron baby wear? Here’s what I came up with–just these four at first:

bee baby headband - $35

drew baby headband - $40

sasha baby headband - $35

lucille baby headband

All of these little beauties are available at shop.princesslasertron.com now! I also uploaded a few new embroidered flower pins, so check those out too.

Today I had a great photoshoot with Daniel Muller and the girls who are planning Lovestruck 2012 with me–I haven’t said much about that yet because I like to wait until the website is up for things like that, but I’m working with Candace Kalasky and Lesley Pick to bring a nontraditional wedding fair-type event to the Midwest here in Omaha. In the next few weeks we will launch the website so I’m sure I’ll say more then. In fact, I’m sure you’ll get sick of hearing me say more.

As always is the case.
Thanks for reading and make it pretty!
meg