sorry for leaving. in return, here's a quality nailed it.

OOPS.
so i accidentally went and finished my phd and in the midst of that i forgot to post anything here at all.

but luckily, i'm back (now as DR. KATHAYOON) and i have lots of crafts and style observations to share. in lieu of doing a massive brain spill where i convey everything i've thought and made in the past eight months, i'll take things slow and start with a craft i did recently! ready? let's begin.

yesterday i embarked on the task of concrete heart necklaces. i got the directions from here but true to form, i only sort of followed them and did a lot of things my own way. let's begin.

first, i gathered my materials. these included:
- a plastic knife
- really old petroleum jelly
- leftover concrete from our house remodel
- water
- three paper cups
- a fondant mold in the shape of the pendant (a heart)

the fondant mold i got was clutch because it has a spring mechanism so you can push the concrete out without messing it up. so first, i lined the mold with some petroleum jelly:

next, my dad helped me mix some concrete. just a little bit because it hardens pretty quickly. and not too watery - the perfect consistency was like that of cold butter. 

then, i used the knife to fill the mold with the concrete and level it off. we really packed it in there to make sure there were no air bubbles or holes. 

removing the concrete too quickly ended up messing up the pendant, so i let each one set for as much time as it takes to play one game of candy crush.

then, i removed the pendant from the mold by pressing the little trigger at the bottom of the mold and set it on a bag (smeared with more jelly) to set in the sun. i made about 10 of these. 

on some of the pendants, i used a small stick/piece of wire once the stick broke to make a little hole for hanging. i didn't do it to all of them because i wasn't sure i was going to like it when it was dry. 

after the pendants dried (i left them overnight because the drain from our air conditioner maliciously sprayed them all with water, preventing them from drying in the normal amount of time), i sprayed them all with a touch of gold spray paint. i thought about being more adventurous with my painting, but i kind of like the look of the raw concrete, with just a little bit of sparkle.

now here's the part where things get tricky.

at first, i followed the directions from the site and flattened out some bails to stick to the back. i used jump rings and hot glue to fix everything up and ended up with a necklace that looks like this:

pretty okay, you might say. except gluing the fixture to the back of the pendant caused it to lean forward annoyingly. so i took that off. and then i used hot clue to stick just the jump ring to the top of the heart:

this looks much better! i made a whole bunch of them:

then i took my prototype to my bff and it broke in about 10 seconds. hot glue was not the right choice. so this is where we're at right now - i used gorilla glue to set one of them in the same way. i've taped the jump ring to the pendant to allow the glue to set. we have about one more hour of that before i can say if it's the right choice or not. if gorilla glue doesn't work, i'm going to hop out and get some epoxy or superglue. STANDBY.

but otherwise, so fun! modifications for the future include sticking a headpin into the heart while it's still wet to avoid this whole glue fiasco. and also adding shiny things like glitter or crystals while it's wet to add a little pizzazz!

aren't you glad we're back?! next time i'll either post something about making my own birch coasters, or spray paint. or something else that's a surprise!! unknowable. 

the season of wishlists is upon us

allow me to interrupt your endless refreshing of 538 for just a minute to share with you some of my new favorite things.

with halloween soundly (and sadly) behind us, it's now time to focus on the fact that love actually season is just a moment away. i'll probably be doing a lot of entries centered on gift ideas (particularly useful if you're buying a gift for me) because gift giving is both an art and a challenge. i don't want to pull you away from looking at instagrammed pictures of peoples' ballots for too long, though, so here are some of my favorite things right now:

first off, i have to draw attention to the beautiful jewelry of abacus row. each piece is hand-made by my dear friend, christine. her designs are simple, elegant, and eye-catching. this blue bracelet is one of my favorites.

glamour.com

second, kate spade has partnered with keds to release a new line of completely amazing (and comfortable) canvas flats. these won't be coming out in time for christmas (they're due out in february), but i'm obsessed already.

beardowear.ca

speaking of obsessed, i must have these. i'm usually pretty impartial to moustache-themed things, but this is genius and i love it.

wearableplanter.com

and last but not least, i am highly intrigued by this new wearable greenery trend. i like the idea of a lapel pin better than a necklace or earrings, which i feel like would swing around too much. but how great is this? it's a little tiny planter. my only question - hypothetically speaking, say i have the opposite of a green thumb and can pretty much kill plants just by looking at them wrong. how quickly will my lapel plants die? because while wearing live plants is adorable, wearing dead plants is weird and creepy.

okay - i am going back to ignoring facebook and trying to do actual work and not think about the election. bisoux!

laser cut earrings!

warning: this is going to be the worst how-to ever because i'm going to share with you a really cool and exciting thing, and you probably won't be able to copy it because it requires the use of a $18,000 piece of equipment. now you know. i apologize in advance.

you're probably heard a little bit about a project i've been involved with, sparktruck.well, sparktruck came to portland this week and before they left we took advantage of the amazing equipment to make some new jewelry.

step one: design the jewelry! i used adobe illustrator, but this is a picture of zoe designing her earrings on adobe ideas, on the ipad.

next, we made the designs laser-cutter friendly on illustrator. this is a mix of magic and computer nerdery. 

next, we pressed the little green button and let the laser cutter do it's job! this is an action shot of the laser-cutter etching the ginkgo leaves. 

then, voila!! we popped the designs out of the wood and punched out the in-between parts. this is how they looked! this was an extremely exciting moment.

after being cut out, it was time to snazz things up...i used copper wire to string the wood onto earring backs. then, i used watercolors to paint them pretty colors! i went a little overboard on the bubbles pair, so i need to deal with that somehow. these turned out well though!

needless to say, i'm pretty proud of these. they're also super light, so even though they're big, they don't weigh down my ears. if you have access to a laser cutter, you should definitely try this out. if i had more dependable access to one, i may never do anything else ever again. but in the absence of your own laser cutter, you can just admire my creations. so cool!