Lark Crafts

[This article was written by Chris Bryant last fall. We love it so much that we wanted to share it again this fall, timed perfectly for the chill autumn nights that are now visiting many of us in the northern hemisphere. Enjoy!]

Last fall Dorie Greenspan’s Stuffed Pumpkin With Everything Good recipe was drifting through the food world like a perfect fall leaf that suddenly draws everyone’s attention. Since then it has been embraced as a celebration of fall, of hearth & home, and cozy winter fare. Seasonal food celebrators and foodies took note and it became viral. I tracked it floating through the food universe from my favorite radio food shows to magazines to blog posts to radio interviews.

around my french table book cover

Dorie Greenspan is a cookbook author who lives in New York City, Connecticut, and Paris. I know, a wretched existence. Her 2010 cookbook, Around My French Table, came out last fall and the now famous stuffed pumpkin was its showcase recipe (although Greenspan and her fans were talking about it as far back as 2006).

There’s a really interesting story about a French family and pumpkins that inspired Greenspan to adopt and adapt the recipe. You should hear her tell the story and explain the recipe, which is actually not so much a recipe as “an art project” as Greenspan describes it. Here are two renditions, one is an NPR All Things Considered interview from host Michele Norris’s kitchen, another from KCRW’s Good Food with Evan Kleiman, my favorite radio food show and podcast. They are each about 6-7 minutes. If you don’t have time for both, catch the NPR interview.

Have you listened? If so you know the broad concept for how to make and bake a stuffed pumpkin. Doesn’t it sound simple? And interesting? I was immediately compelled to try and it will forever be in my repertoire of cold weather favorites.

Have you ever opened your cabinet only to be faced with unmarked packages of bulk from the grocery store? Small bags of oats, large bags of brown rice, and assorted dried fruits are all common sights. True, there’s plastic containers. But what fun is that?

One of the many projects in Stencil Me In has just the thing: custom mason jars! With contact paper and spray paint, you can create any design or marking you want. Or, if you want to make the ones with the symbols shown here, you can do that, too. Do the symbols really mean “rice” and “oats?” They do if you want them to!

I adore old Valentines; the kind you can find at antique shops in tin boxes. And so, just for you, I dug up some Valentines that you can download and print from your home computer. Inscribe a nice message for that special someone and you’ll get instant points. So easy! (What’s not to love?)

Here’s a pretty Valentine that you can easily customize. Use it as a framing device for a favorite photo of your friend or sweetie. It would make a great gift tag too. Download it here.

Why not list all the things you love about your sweetheart or friend in this charming hand-drawn Valentine? Or whip up a special menu for that meal you’ll cook for your Valentine. You can give it to them in advance or position it, just so, as a charming table setting. Download is here.

These images really make me smile. Note how the moon changes its expression based on the interaction between the characters in each shot. Create a humorous Valentine by adding some silly thought bubbles or an amusing phrase to any of these images, or create an entire story using each frame. It’s your time to show your love; get creative with it! (Click on the image for a better view and download the pdf here.)

These antique images are from Memories of a Lifetime: Romantic Illustrations — one of a series of books that comes with a CD so that you can download and print the artwork that speaks to you. And what you do with it is up to you! Card making, artful journaling, scrapbooking, fabric transfer; the possibilities are endless.

Happy Valentines Day!

xoxo

Jared Andrew Schorr is a super cool illustrator and paper artist with an Esty shop fittingly called Super Cool Spy Club and a website designed from his charming paper cut art (check it: www.jaredandrewschorr.com, it’s like walking into an old school movie theater made of paper!). He’s also one of the thirty artists included in PUSH Paper with pieces that showcase his use of bright color and great sense of humor.

A few months back I fell in love with one of Jared’s small, one-of-a-kind papercuts on his Etsy shop and snapped it up. As an extra special gesture, Jared sent us one of his original papercuts and a few additional goodies, and I’ve been saving them for a special holiday giveaway for our readers.

Here’s what you’ll get if you win The Great Viking Holiday Giveaway (read on for a chance to enter):

* Jared’s original papercut Viking artwork, shown at the top of the post and below. (Oh, and check out the other artworks in this series, from Jared’s blog)

* A copy of PUSH Paper, featuring Jared and 29 other extraordinary paper artists

* An adorable pocket mirror with a print of one of Jared’s papercuts

To enter for a chance to win, leave a comment by 10 pm EST on Monday, December 19th. I’m curious to know what you’d like to see Jared cut from paper, or to hear your thoughts about PUSH Paper or even what paper arts you’re working on for the holidays. One winner will be selected at random and announced on Tuesday, December 20th. Click here for the official rules.

Good luck, and may your holidays be filled with warmth and cheer, to your viking!

Your holiday gift shopping just got a lot easier! Read on to see how you can enter to win the entire Lark Studio Series, eight books in all, and give the gift of art to the special people in your life. The hard part will be deciding who on your list gets which book–and whether you can bare to part with them at all! Each Lark Studio Series book is like a portable art gallery, offering over a hundred images on a given theme, as culled from our best-selling 500 series, on the topic of  Handmade Dolls, Ceramic Sculptures, Tables, Earrings, Handmade Books, Chairs, Pendants, or Art Tiles.

Here are some sneak peeks from a few of the books to get you excited. You can click on the images to take a closer look.

Lark Studio Series: Ceramic Sculptures

Hoping by Beverly Mayeri; Photo by Lee Fatherree

Focus: Reflections is the final installment of the six part Focus series of photography books. This volume curates over 240 stunning images from photographers in 28 countries. Both professionals and amateurs share their images centered around the theme of reflections.

“Similar to a camera lens, reflections filter the world back to us, offering an altered view of our surroundings. Their transformative surfaces recast forms, colors, and textures. Elicit a mood or feeling. Suggest things are more than they seem. And so it comes as no surprise that reflections are captivating and enticing to photographers. Whether it’s an inverted image of trees in a crystal clear puddle, a window on nature shimmering in a cup of coffee, or an abstract study in color and line distorted by the sun against a building’s façade, the artful reflections in this book are an invitation to view the seemingly ordinary with a fresh perspective.”

In celebration of the release of this gorgeous book, I took a walk and shot some of my own reflective images. I hope you enjoy them.

Would you like a FREE set of the ENTIRE FOCUS SERIES? In celebration of the last volume, WE ARE GIVING AWAY ALL SIX BOOKS to a lucky winner. Check out Nicole’s post from earlier this week for the details.

Yesterday I investigated the hows and whys of the sugar skull, the sweet, colorful staple of the Dia de los Muertos celebration. The popularity of the sugar skull adornment is very prevalent, showing up everywhere from street art, t-shirts and tattoos to name a few. Today I would like to present a collection of amazing etsy finds that use the graphic sugar skull adornment as inspiration for a host of handmade items. Check out each after the jump and visit their shops for more outstanding handmade goods.

The Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) has always fascinated me. It’s a colorful celebration and a festive way to remember loved ones who have passed. The elaborate offerings of food, sweets and flowers are beautiful, taking months of preparation. One of the centerpieces of such offerings are sugar skulls. I’ve seen these colorful creations and the various incarnations of the art adorning them, but never fully investigated their significance until now.

Do you eat them? How do you make them? If you are lucky enough to have a local celebration you can make and decorate your own skull, but if not, don’t worry, mexicansugarskull.com has you covered. Their site has everything you need to make your own sugar skulls. Ingredients, recipes, molds, how-tos and all manner of decorations and inspiration for your own Day of the Dead celebration can be found there.

“Sugar Skulls are a traditional folk art from Southern Mexico used to celebrate Day of the Dead. Mounds of colorful sugar skulls are sold by Indian vendors in open air village markets during the week preceding the holiday. Spirits of the dead are welcomed back to their homes with beautifully decorated altars made by their loved ones. Sugar skulls, marigolds, candles, incense and special foods adorn home altars.”

 HOW TO MAKE SUGAR SKULLS.

Continue for a sugar skull how-to video…