Community Crafting Party TODAY in Downtown Fresno

The Craft for Community – Fresno Etsy Craft Party will bring crafters together to share skills and enrich the community. It is a chance to learn art skills, meet artists, make crafty friends, do feel-good stuff, and win prizes! This event is open to all, artists and art lovers of all ages welcome.

**New** – “Puppets and Pie” – A separate event being held by First Pres. at the same time as ours. This will feature a children’s puppet show (6:30pm), face painting and animal balloons (starts at 5pm). BYO Pie.

Artist Demonstrations/Skill Sharing Schedule:

• 5:30pm – Jewelry Wire-Wrapping Skil Share
• 6:00pm – Making Stained Glass Art Demonstration
• 6:30pm – Stamping and Scrapbooking Demonstration
• 7:00pm – Metalworking Demonstration
• 7:30pm – Making Stained Glass Art Demonstration
• 8:00pm – Painting/Sketching Demonstration
• 8:30pm – Metalworking or Metal Stamping Demonstration
• 8:45pm – Prize Drawing for Crafting Volunteers (Starbucks & Michaels gift cards, jewelry and more).
• 3 more tables available for artist demos, let us know if you want to participate.

Crafters and visitors are welcome to be part of our group project of making paper flowers to decorate several women’s shelters and making paper pinwheels as gifts for shelter children and other inner city kids. If you have the skill and desire to do Oragami or other paper crafts, we’d love that too. Craft supply donations are also welcome. Non-crafty friends and family who would like to help make gifts are encouraged to participate, no crafting experience necessary!

The craft party will be held on Thursday, June 20th at First Presbyterian Church in Fresno, in the Common Grounds meeting room, at 1540 M St  Fresno, CA 93721 from 4:30-9:30 p.m. Several artists have show their work here during Fresno Art Hop events held by the Fresno Arts Council. Anyone can drop in during the event and help with crafts … stay half hour or all evening, as your schedule allows. Children are welcome. Older kids can help make gifts. We will provide crayons or paints/glue for younger children so they can make something for themselves and stay entertained.

If you would like help make gifts, display your work, share a skill or donate art or art supplies (craft paper, scissors, glue, etc.) for a good cause, please contact the organizer.

Please follow the organizer for updates on the event:

Elise G.

FB – http://www.facebook.com/pages/Artsygenius-Jewelry/355743747870301?

Twitter – https://twitter.com/artsygenius

Stained glass art by Hector Alvarez

Sodalite ring by Volunds Forge Studio

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Etsy is a website for handmade and vintage items, sold by artisans located all over the world. For more info on Etsy, please go to http://www.etsy.com

Etsy Craft Party 2013:Craft for Community,
is a global celebration of meeting and making, by the community of Etsy members. This year’s theme focuses on using your creative powers to make your hometown even better.

For more information on Etsy’s Craft Party, check out this article:https://www.etsy.com/craft-party

Helping One Woman… at a time

I have a passion for connecting and for helping others. Today I had the great fortune to do both. I met a woman at a lunch networking event, who mentioned that she was going to another event that evening, and that the purpose of that group was to help women. That’s all I knew about H.O.W. in that moment, because the woman left before I got the chance to talk to her. I had the name of a restaurant, and a time. I ran with it.

The organizers of the dinner were confused by me because I was carrying my jewelry box under my arm (I hate to leave shiny things in my car), and I was very confused by them, but after clearing up the fact that I wasn’t there to sell, or to eat dinner (because I’d already eaten), I stayed. The purpose of the group, I learned shortly afterwards, is to make a difference in the life of a woman that has suffered a great loss or tragedy. The means to help these women is very simple; a monthly dinner in which all attendees donate to a fund, which is then given to the chosen recipient. The recipients are chosen by drawing, from nomination slips filled out the previous month by those attendees. The recipient this month was a woman named Gail. Her husband had suffered a heart attack, that led to surgeries that resulted in brain damage. It was truly touching.

Aside from my wallet, I opened my treasure box. People with big problems need beauty in their lives, so I decided to give some away. Gail has a lovely daughter about to graduate from high school, who I could tell even at a distance, was a big fan of all things blue. So I dug into my stash of bracelets and found a couple blue ones to choose from. The happy smile on her face and the big hug she gave me were worth more than what I would have received in money. And to top it off, I met a fabulous woman named Cassandra, who has just moved to town and will hopefully become a real friend.

I highly encourage you to join your local chapter, or start one, or make a donation to the organization, regardless of your gender. We may not be able to help everyone, but we can indeed help one woman at a time.

Please visit their site at: http://www.helpingonewoman.org/

GET A JOB.

I’ve been a 9-5er for most of my life, pursuing my artistic passions on the side. The value of a paycheck can’t actually be measured in money, funny that! Conversely, the key to not losing your soul while “working for the man” is to keep your values. Don’t become so obsessed with dollars that you forget to stop and smell the roses (travel, go to concerts, take a painting class, etc.) Most of the people that surrounded me during my years in the tech industry spent their life sitting behind a desk and cashing in their vacations instead of taking them. Now many of those people are sad because the big house they bought is underwater. But my year living in Africa, no one can take that away from me. And if I’d been a starving artist all my life, I wouldn’t have that year to look back on. I am rich in experience, and it was getting a job that gave me the ability to afford the experience. So yeah, get a job!

Fire and Air

A stable one. 9-to-5. With health insurance and a 401k. GET IT NOW.

Stop angsting over whether your Art or your Muse will survive Selling Out. Stop saying that your delicate artistic expressiveness can’t cope with an office job. Stop being allergic to money and then wondering why you can’t make rent and your lights are always being turned off.

Please understand that I’m not angry, and I’m not yelling. I’m Italian, and it’s how we talk when we get passionate. We get loud, and we curse, and it’s okay.

You can’t hack a “soul-killing” office job? You know what’s soul-killing? Having to sell your instrument or live out of your car. Believe me, the logic that office jobs and Working For The Man ruin one’s artistic creativity is a fiction created by idiotic trust fund kids with big ol’ safety nets beneath them, or people with rich spouses who…

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