Feather leather

What do you do with a suede skirt that's worn and torn? Turn it in to earrings! Just one skirt can produce at least 20 pairs. Anyway, that's what I did.


Add a few feathers and some acrylic paint, and you're set, presents for all your friends for a year!

You can also add odd beads or medallions you might find at street sales, or re-purpose parts of other earrings.

For these ones, I also reused earring backs I had from old earrings I no longer wanted. I Just soak them in rubbing alcohol or vinegar and you're ready to go.

Bootie for Baby

Making gifts for grown-ups is rewarding and all, but baby gifts are different. You get to choose themes you might otherwise deem cheesy, and indulge in your own, forgotten childhood fancies. Sure you want to appeal to the parents to some degree, but there's more space to experiment. At the end of the day, the baby will forgive you your mistakes and undoubtedly make the gift look cute no matter what. So, here are a few baby gifts I've made.

This sailboat pillow and matching onesie was made for a brand new baby who lives out at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. The pillow was made from an old pillow case I found at the White Elephant Sale and the onesie was found at a garage sale. The anchor is a hand-made stamp and the words were painted by hand with textile paint.

These "applique" sweaters were made for two toddler brothers who live in Chicago. The one loves cars more than most anything, and the other is too young to have clearly defined preferences, so I got to choose! I found the sweaters at Thrift Town and the felt came from Scrap.

A Card by Any Other Name ...

I've been making handmade greeting cards since I was a child and it's always been a source of pleasure. Cards can be versatile and quick; either allowing for the exploration of a single theme or for an ever-changing evolution of ideas. Some of my favorite greeting cards were made by Margret & H.A. Rey, the creators of Curious George. I recently saw they're exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum of San Francisco.

Most of my cards were made with found supplies, including old magazines, books and sheet music, in addition to gauche, pen and ink, and water color.