The fantabulous Venus Zine out of Chicago just ran a review of The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girls Guide to Handmade Jewelry. Hooray they liked it!
Rock your own Secretary Chic Jennifer Perkins tackles publishing with the release of The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girl's Guide to Handmade Jewelry By Marilyn Perez Published: July 25th, 2008 | 11:10am
Here is the dilemma: You have this amazing retro-looking yellow-and-purple-polka-dot dress that you want to wear to the company picnic but you can't seem to find a funky-enough necklace to go with it. Have no fear, Naughty Secretary Club founder Jennifer Perkins is here! And she's bringing more jewelry ideas that will make your head pop!
Perkins shares her crafty knowledge on her blog (naughtysecretaryclub.blogspot.com), DIY Network shows Craft Lab and Stylelicious, and now with her new book, The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girl's Guide to Handmade Jewelry from North Light Books. This how-to book brings an unorthodox approach to creating jewelry and charms outside the box, or cubicle, if you will. It takes a special type to rock a "Hotel Key Necklace" or a "Tin Typewriter bracelet."
The former administrative assistant-turned-jewelry designer has been making jewelry since she was a little girl. Perkins developed a unique style that has been featured in Elle Girl, The New York Times, Teen Vogue, and much more. Her success comes from her ability to turn almost anything into a top-of-the-line coveted piece of chic jewelry. In her book, Perkins walks you through more than 50 fun projects while keeping her quirky, humorous, and upbeat voice.
The Working Girl's Guide comes in three difficulty levels or, as she refers to, "Job Skills." "First Day On The Job" is entry-level easy - snip this, glue that. Next is "You Deserve A Raise," where you have mastered the basics and are up for more of a challenge. Finally, you are "Running The Show" for those comfortable with resin, hammers, dremels, as well as a longer list of supplies. It's easy to follow along with the step-by-step instructions and great photos that accompany each project. Her personality jumps out of the book as she walks you through, giving out "hot tips" and including sidebars sharing music to listen to at the office, unique uses for a coffee filter, and addressing office romances.
Ultimately, it is all about the blingage and how to make great one-of-a-kind pieces for you or a lucky gift recipient. And don't worry, there are plenty of projects that call for bright, funky charms and beads to play with. It wouldn't be a Naughty Secretary Club book without them! The back of the book provides patterns to use and pictures to include in items like the "Secretary's Delight Bracelet & Ring" set, blog links, and other great resource listings.
Did I happen to mention that there are a couple of projects in The Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girls Guide to Handmade Jewelry that involves sewing? Well there are, heck there is even embroidery! Yesterday I headed up to one of my favorite Austin stores Craft-o-Rama to have my friend and the owner Hayley help me transform one of those sewing projects from the book, the Casual Friday Necklace, into an apron for me to wear to CHA. Craft-o-Rama is where I teach my jewelry and business classes and also where I am having my book release party Saturday August 30th! Anywhoodle sure I have a sewing machine, but Craft-o-Rama has fabric, trim, huge cutting spaces, hot irons ready and most importantly ball fringe! I of course brought my camera along with me to show you just how dang easy this apron was to make!
First of all I chose the fabric for my apron. The necklace is aqua and red so I thought a bright yellow and white polka dotted material would be fun. Next step I drew out a rough idea of what I had envisioned my apron looking like. I openly admit that Hope got every last art gene left in our family so don't hold the drawing against me. The point was I knew I wanted to use the necklace I already had made as the part of the apron that went over my head, I just need to design the body.
Luckily I had brought my favorite vintage apron with me to show Hayley the style I was thinking of. Hayley being a much better seamstress than I quickly decided that we would just use it as our pattern and it worked out perfectly. She laid the apron right on top of my fabric and cut away. We did fold the bottom of the apron over because I wanted it a bit shorter.
Next I pinned bias tape from the start of neck of the apron where the necklace was down the sides to where it hit my waist. I left the extra bias tape long so that it could be what tied around my waist in the back. I did the same on both sides and then pinned more red bias tape as trim down the sides of the bottom half of my apron. This is of course after I ironed both the polka dotted fabric and the tape well. I hate the ironing part of sewing, barf. My definition of ironing is throwing my wrinkled clothes in the dryer with a wet towel. Anywhoodle I sewed the bias tape onto the apron and was sure to follow my stitch all the way down the lengths of the long pieces of bias tape that were going to tie in the back.
Hayley had whipped my up a cute pocket pattern and I picked some aqua and white polka dotted fabric out of their scrap bin. I ironed the fabric and folded it in half and cut out two pockets at once. We ironed the top seams over to make a little hem and then ran it through the machine with a zig zag stitch and red thread to hold it in place. From here I stood in the mirror and decided where I wanted my pockets to sit. I pinned more red bias tape around the pockets (the curve of the pockets was a bit tricky), then pinned the pockets to the apron then off to sew we go.
After the pockets were sewn into place it was time to attach the necklace. We used a red thread to sew the necklace into the neck of the apron. We followed the outline of the necklace with our stitches so that it did not take away from the design.
The very last step was ball fringe across the bottom, because you can never have too much ball fringe. I am pretty dang smitten on how it turned out and hope that it is a big hit next week at CHA. If you are going to be in Chicago for the convention stop by the Duncan booth, make some jewelry with me and check out the new apron in person!
Oh and you have to get a copy of The Naughty Secretary Club to learn how to make the necklace :) Don't forget you can pre-order now and it should be hitting book stores August 6th!
Can you believe it is less than one month until my book comes out! I am so super duper excited I can hardly stand it! I can't wait to put a copy on one of my book shelves (which I clearly also adorn with stuffed animals and old radios) I appreciate everyone who is putting one of my book banners on their blogs or My Space profiles to help me spread the word! Funky Town Inky Knits Giddy Girlie Miss Multiples Colores Joyce Kattalyne
I'll be emailing the 4 winners of the phone necklace today!
Feel like your blog or My Space page needs a little flair? Well I'd love you forever if you added one of my two book banners to your site. They are over in the left column. Leave me a comment here and let me know that you added the banner and I'll be sure to link to your blog in a post! I'll mail you a free piece of Naughty Secretary Club Jewelry if you do!
In preparation for Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girls Guide to Handmade Jewelry I have also started joining every book related social networking site that will except my application. If you too belong to any of these wouldn't it be neat if we were friends? We should add each other!
What seems to be the most popular of all the book related social networking sites is Good Reads. I like that they let me register as an author and that I can post reviews with HTML links. This is the site where I get the most friend requests and there seems to be the most action.
Aesthetically I am most attracted to the layout of Shelfari. I love the faux wooden book cases that the covers of the books I have reviewed and listed sit on. Shelfari is probably the first of all of these that I had heard of, though not the first I joined.
I discovered Library Thing while perusing the Random House website. It seems to have the least amount of action of all of the social networking sites for book worms, but I could not join all the others and not this one. Library Thing is also in beta so maybe that has something to do with it, they are working out the kinks.
Are there any that I am forgetting? Do you use a book related social networking site? What do you use it for? Promotion, book recommendations, meeting other book lovers? Just curious.
Patchwork in crafts can come in many shapes and forms. The first thing that comes to mind is quilting. I remember when I was a teenager my friend Becky's mom made her a crazy quilt for her bed out of all these vintage fabric scraps she had. Becky secretly hated it, but I loved it. All I knew in the world of quilts were the family quilts my mother had lining the upstairs halls of her Victorian home. Lots of flowers, pastels and girls in bonnets. Becky's quilt was wild, colorful and well as the name implies crazy. I'm leaning towards scoring any number of the vintage quilts currently listed on Ebay. When I see handspun multi-colored yarn, it's enough to make me want to learn to knit. Venus Art is here in Austin and every time I am in Craft-o-Rama I eyeball her delicious yarn. The other yarn is by Folktale Fibers and is equally fabulous. Another idea for us non-knitters is to wrap a bracelet with it. There is an easy how-to at Craft Stylish with all the instructions. My favorite patchwork craft is collage. I love getting my fingers covered in Decoupage and sorting through fun papers to make jewelry. Some of my favorite papers to use are by Traci Bautista who has a very cool graffiti chic style. They are perfect for my jewelry and Traci keeps me well stocked on all her goodies. I even used her papers for a project in my book! I am so excited to also tell you that Traci has her own line of Decoupage called Collage Pauge coming out through Aleene's this summer! You can already snag some at JoAnn's and pretty soon I'll be able to wave to Traci at Hobby Lobby too! Shiny, matte or glittery - whoo-hoo! I can't wait to play with some at CHA this summer! Recently a fun craft company called Decopatch contacted me and asked if I was interested in trying out their product. Me say no to free craft supplies, ya you know me better than that. They sent over a stack of their fun papers and two little ponies for me to get crazy with. My first thought was that I was going to make bookends. I had seen the cutest pair of patchwork squirrels at Rose and Radish, but then I thought better of it. I asked Hope "do you think this is horse, is too big for a necklace?" she of course being a blood relative and one with very similar taste in giant tack-a-liscious jewelry said "no it would make an awesome necklace". So let it be written, so let it be done. The first thing I did was to tear the tissue thin paper into little arbitrary strips. Sure I could have used scissors, but that is way to precise for me. I just tore until I had a nice little pile and took my handy dandy decoupage and started going at that little pony. First I covered him in a solid floral print and then went in and added zebra skin accents. Once the Decoupage had completely dried I went back and added a layer of Triple Thick top coat just to make him nice and shiny. Once the little pony had dried over night it was time to bust out my handy dandy Dremel. Almost anything can be turned into a piece of jewelry as long as you have your trusty Dremel at your side. The paper mache pony was quite easy to drill and I put my bit to his little jugular and made a hole. I knew I would never be able to get it just right where the horse would hang centered so I decided to save myself a lot of heartache and make him intentionally hang with his head reared. Once the hole was in place I stacked up some vintage plastic flower petals on a head pin, grabbed my pliers and wrapped myself up a make shift bail. I love the blue plastic feather, now Mr. Pony looks like he could work in Vegas! There you have it. What was once intended as a book end became one of my new favorite necklaces. I had extra paper left over so I covered a plain bangle bracelet I had lying around to make a set. I also scored these weird wooden things at Michaels that I also covered in Decopatch and then glued to a bracelet blank. I taught a class on paper jewelry at Craft-o-Rama Tuesday night where we did some similar projects and I wanted to show you a picture of what everyone made. The Decopatch paper was a big hit. Some people brought their own things to use like foreign money and old greeting cards and speaking of cards someone made the picture on my business card into a necklace. She said she chewed a lot of bubble gum so it was perfect for her! Do you use patchwork in you crafting? Any other examples I am forgetting. I think what it boils down to is that I love as much color as I can get at one time and patchwork is perfect for that. The more color the better for me in fashion, home décor and in my crafts.
I awoke to a text yesterday from my friend Erin informing me that we were going to see Loretta Lynn in concert. It was as if she knew I would say yes and already bought the ticket. Was it the fact that I have seen Coal Miners Daughter so many times I can recite lines or the fact that she and I had already been to see Dolly Parton together that clued her in? When I got the text the first thing that ran through my head was what western themed outfit could I wear? My cowboy boots are hot as a firecracker and all my western shirts are long sleeved so those were out. I know a cowboy hat! Not a normal cowboy hat, a wee little baby one cocked on the side of my head for a comedic effect. I had to go to Michaels and Hobby Lobby yesterday for other craft supplies so why not hit the doll aisle while I was there. They have oodles of different doll hats so you can follow the instructions below and make yourself a headband hat out of cowboy hats, baseball caps or perhaps that little velvet sombrero someone brought you back from a trip to Mexico. Ole'
First up you want to gather your supplies 1 Small Doll Hat Glue (I'm a fan of Liquid Fusion) Headband Foam Board Scissors Ribbon Feather
I have to give my sister Hope credit for the next step. As I sat there perplexed about how I was going to get good gluing contact between the straw hat and the headband she suggested filing the hole with foam board. I don't know why I just so happened to have foam board in my studio, but I don't know why there are a lot of things here and I was just thankful. I found a little piece of wood I have been drilling on lately that fit inside the hat hole where the dolls head would go perfectly and traced it onto the foam board. From there I used plain scissors to cut the circle out and a whole lot of glue to hold that sucker into the hat.
Clearly I was not going to wear a plain old straw hat, me leave something under accessorized - sacrilege. I scored some feathers at the craft store and already had spools of thin ribbon at the house. First I measured my length of ribbon. I opted for red and white check because it felt the most country to me. I put a strand of glue around the hat and tacked my ribbon into place. After the ribbon was down I just stuck my feather between the ribbon and the hat with a large dollop of glue.
The next step is the trickiest part, gluing the hat to the headband. The key is a mother load of glue. I'm a firm believer that you can never have too much glue during these types of situations. The tricky part is making sure the hat, which is now slicker than a greased pig from the glue, does not skate all over your headband. You should put your headband on first, take a gander in the mirror and get an idea about where you want your hat to sit. Once you have made a life choice glue that baby down and set it up to dry. I put mine out in the garden hanging over a tomato cage in the sun. It was 100 degrees yesterday and I had like 3 hours until show time, I needed to help my glue drying time along.
The next step is sometimes the hardest. Put on your new headband and make sure that you really have the inner strength to pull this bad boy off. It's all fun and games when you are home alone in your studio making this, but your first step into a public place (mine was the 7-11 down the street) and the looks people will give you is where the line is drawn in the sand between the crafty girls and the crafty women. I was prepared and have worn way more obnoxious things in my time. Plus all night people complimented me on my hat and couldn't believe that I made it myself. Needless to say at a Loretta Lynn concert I was surrounded by real life cowboy hats. On top of that I had forgotten that the Austin Biker rally was this weekend. I feel like I have a whole new inner strength wearing a tiny little, I'll admit it - slightly redic cowboy hat in front of hundreds of tough guys on huge motorcycles. I only had make a crack about me heading down to the Copacabana later, but since I am a Barry Manillow fan I just smiled and took it in stride.
Beyond the hat the music and concert was amazing. We were outside at the amphitheatre at Stubbs BBQ which also means I got to have a chopped beef sandwich for dinner! I dusted off my First Ladies of Country Resin Bracelet (click here to learn how to make your own) because of course there is a picture of Loretta Lynn. Loretta was amazing and wore a full length lavender sequined gown, had her hair teased up and had a thicker accent than I do. She sang all the hits including "Fist City", "Honky Tonk Girl", "Coal Miners Daughter" and more. She was taking requests from the audience and bless her old as dirt heart sometimes she would forget the lyrics and the band would have to start singing for her to remember. It only happened a couple of times and it was hot and she was in long sleeves so I'll forgive her. I think one of my favorite parts of the night was the Color Me Country coloring book they were selling. For just $5 how could I not buy one? It is pretty much the most amazing thing I have bought in a good long while.
If you want more info on making your own adorned headband I have a couple of suggestions for you. You might remember the old cover of Naughty Secretary Club: The Working Girls Guide to Handmade Jewelry had a picture of the Quitting Time Headband. Yup there is a fun headband project in the new book! Also sometime on the DIY Network you might be able to catch an episode of Stylelicious called Putting it On where I show the girls how to make some wacky headbands with cupcake topper crowns and high heel shoes.
