a Litany of Crimes

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Oh man the Portland Mini Maker Faire at OMSI was so much fun, I'm only just beginning to recover, that and my bail money finally came through.  The number of cool things to see and do was astounding from indie computer games, 3-D printed toys, the 30 foot trebuchet, fractal designed copper furniture and chocolates you could shape yourself into exotic flowers. I spent a good portion of the weekend ducking arrows coming over the top of the Tracker's booth, thank goodness they'd replaced the steel tips with sponges!  Wire's Geek Dad blog has a great re-cap of the Faire  and Dale Dougherty founder of Make Magazine and Craft, and the brain child of Maker Faire gatherings was also in attendance, his blog post is here . Not to be left out of the making mayhem, I snuck into the OMSI parking lot and  and on the sly built my own stand,  offering "policing by proxy" inviting criminals and potential criminals the opportunity to confess their mis-deeds in a mock mug-shot-photo-booth.  I was shocked, shocked I tell you to see the number of young miscreants our city is manifesting, sure they may look cute now- but just wait until their feet can reach the gas pedal of the get-away car.

I've posted some of the more outstanding offenders here as well as a more complete listing on my flickr site I would advise using caution when approaching any of these individuals, clearly they are armed with a wicked sense of humor and several are confessed cereal killers and cookie thieves...

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%*#$ is About to Get Real

Alpine mock up

Oh man, I thought with summer winding down the Criminal Crafts hi-jinks would be coming to an end, not so my friends, not so.  The calendar is getting stuffed with devious fun workshops, cool give-aways, dangerous craft offs and Portland's very first Mini Maker Faire.  I'm so excited I could spit, but it isn't very lady like so I'll hold off. All the good stuff is getting added to my events page, check back when you can, as I keep adding to it and this awesomeness shouldn't be missed! First up, if you're cool enough to live near Cincinnati, you'll have to hot foot it over to the Contemporary Arts Center on Sept. 10th,  where I'll be in on a panel discussion about the resurgence of hand made arts, there's going to be an Iron Craft competition AND a bar.  Drinking, crafting and being competitive, Cincinnati gets me on a deep and fundamental level.  Will try to squeeze in some yarn bombing while I'm there, I hear it's the thing to do and if you get caught it's a much lighter sentence than what you'd serve than if was an actual bomb.

The following weekend, Sept. 15th and 16th is Portland's 1st ever Mini Maker Faire at OMSI.  A huge fun event for geeks, makers, Lego freaks, people who like giant trebuchets, 3-D printers and things that go boom. I'm in the process of building my space right now- aiming for mug shot photo booth and paper funerals to make and take, along with cool crafts  for sale, copies of the book and a special treat for people who read this blog.  More on this soon, but Stateline Bags has donated some of their very cool, small drawstring bags for an upcoming blog post and I'll be doing  give-aways based on that project.

As we sneak closer to fall, there's a whole slew of cool upcoming classes.  I'll be presenting a series of workshops to get ready for my favorite holiday Dia de los Muertos.  On Sept. 30th we'll be making sugar skulls a.k.a calaveras the next Sunday, October 7th, we'll be working on costumes, masks and skull make-up and a final workshop on altar or ofrenda building .  The classes are sponsored by SCRAP and will be held in their workshop space, for more info- check out my listings on Skilshare .

Speaking of SCRAP, the Rebel Craft Rumble is coming up and I'm itching for a good fight, they are taking applications now until August 31st and oh man, do I hope I make the cut, I've been training P90X training (not really)  since getting axed in the 1st round last year.  My ego is glue gunning for a re-match! Fight night is October 18th at the Hollywood Theater.

But wait, there's MORE can you BELIEVE IT??? Voodoo doll pincushions, two FREE  workshops October 24th at the St. Johns Library and October 30th at the Holgate Library . So friends and frenemies, I expect to see you soon.  And if you've made anything cool from the Criminal Crafts book, send me a photo, would love to add you to the gallery of rogues up on Facebook.