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Monthly Archives: June 2014

Necklace Envy • Camp CraftNight • June 25th, 2014

June 25

capsulecamaro

This Wednesday, June 25th, 2014 from 9pm until midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Necklace Envy 
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink Special: “The Lyla” • Do what tastes right. 
**** Special Note: Wanna sell some ART at the SparkleBlob Art Action? Make a little dough and support CraftNight, along with SparkleBlob’s other programs! Now accepting submissions through July 15th!

Ahhhh Summer is HERE!

RIGHT NOW we have a plan for you to look fahhhhhhbulous with your new necklace you’ll make here at CraftNight. We have cocktails, we have air conditioning, we have music and fun and enough artsy fartsy necklace supplies to make your mind explode. If you’re going to be wearing that summer dress or that hawt muscle shirt, you’ve got to accessorize! As part of our summer program, Camp CraftNight is here to help you with your summer couture. Once you start attending those summer pool parties with your home made necklace, you’ll be the envy of the crowds, and maybe someone will purchase a piña colada in your honor, just for you.

Summertime means it’s time to get that bizarre suntan on your face from wearing sunglasses! It’s time to chase down the popsicle truck at 8:30 at night! The arrival of summer solstice means that EVERYONE is wearing sandals! Skimpy outfits are everywhere, and everything smells like BO, skin, deodorant, sunscreen, bay rum, or fruity body wash!

It’s time for fruit and tiny little pretzel sticks and salads and endless snacking, and margaritas, and forgetting what time it is because the days are so long! It’s time for grilled veggies, beaches, bonfires, time for baseball games, fireworks, iced  coffee and banana creme pie. It is officially the season of leisure, and even though some of you are working too hard, please try to find us, we are your oasis. 

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

www.akbarsilverlake.com
www.crafthead.com

 

Posted by on June 25, 2014 in Assembly Craft, Painting Craft

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Jigsaw Puzzle and Creativity Hacks for Outside CraftNight • June 18th, 2014

June 17

getting_things_done

This Wednesday, June 18th, 2014 from 9pm until midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Jigsaw Puzzle Shuffle! 
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink Special: “The Lyla” • LYLA: The sassiest four letter word on heels!

This week’s craft is an exciting BLANK jigsaw puzzle for you to play with! You can write a secret message on it on one side, paint a picture on the other side and send it to someone special! You can paint the pieces, punch holes in ’em and make a necklace! You can build a pictorial mosaic using the pieces to build an entirely different visual experience! You can turn each individual puzzle piece into a trippy googly-eyed space monster! I love this project, hope you’ll come in and try it!

CraftNight is kind of the mini-masters degree in art you always wanted, except tuition is only $2!
NOTHING costs $2!
In fact, if two bucks blew out of your wallet across the street, you’d probably just watch it blow away. It’s not even worth typing this much about $2 to get you to understand what an incredible value two dollars is when a gallon of gas is almost five dollars.

Last week I told you how to let your brain be more free at CraftNight. In my continuing quest to eschew the 148-character-obsessed culture, I shall now give you another long-winded set of helpful tips for Creativity outside of CraftNight. These concepts are great for home and office!

1.) CARVE OUT THE TIME
If you lament that there is no time to make things and do stuff, you are right!  It won’t happen unless you make it a priority. Schedule creative time like it’s an appointment. All those unfinished awesome projects on the shelves aren’t going to magically pop up and start making themselves.

2.) GUARD THE TIME
The more seriously you take the time you scheduled, the more your brain can chill out and know it has a place to rest and experiment. It’s like taking your brain to the dog park, except it’s a brain park. Or imagine you have “a class every Monday night” and make sure you don’t let in any interruptions like Facebook, Cell Phones, or Game of Thrones.

3.) DO IT EVERY WEEK
Or do it every night, or every 20 minutes of every morning, you catch my drift? Make a practice of this time, whether it’s writing, sculpting, playing the banjo, doodling, learning code, make it a routine, and you’ll really start to like it.

4.) TELL YOUR PALS
You’ll be surprised when you tell your friends/family that you’re doing this, they’ll almost always support your endeavors and ask you about it from time to time. That kind of stuff helps bolster the commitment you have to your creative time, and it also could open the door to creative collaboration.

5.) JUST START ALREADY
Sure, clear some space to work, and a little procrastination is fine, but don’t over-clean, over-buy, over-prepare yourself into thinking you need to be “ready” to create. You don’t need a NEW guitar or a bunch of different oil paints or a pristine working environment, you are ready NOW.

6.) EVERYONE IS CREATIVE AND SO ARE YOU
You don’t have to be an alcoholic slut-wagon drama queen manic depressive to be creative. You don’t have to be a calendar-carrying, schedule freak, 16-hour-a-day work ethic, ambition-hog to be creative. You don’t have to wear a beret, grow scraggly facial hair or stay up until 3am in Paris. You can be all or none of it! Stereotypes are just that: oversimplified fixed formulas. If you don’t feel like being creative, that’s also something that creative people do. There’s no way to be except to just begin.

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

www.akbarsilverlake.com
www.crafthead.com

 

Posted by on June 17, 2014 in Painting Craft

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FlatPak Animals and 5 CraftNight Brain Hacks • June 11th, 2014

June 10

trailer_love

This Wednesday, June 11th, 2014 from 9pm until midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: FlatPack Wooden Animals: Paint and Decorate! 
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink Special: “The Lyla” • The Proud Cocktail with the Whiskey and the Bubbles… 

What’s a flatpak animal, you’re asking? This is when the little facsimile of the animal itself has been laser cut from a flat piece of wood into pieces that assemble said animal. The pieces are popped out of their framing and put together to make an elephant or something like that. There will be paint, there will be wooden animals, there will be music, fun and friends!

5 WAYS TO LET YOUR MIND BE FREE AT CRAFTNIGHT (and other creative pursuits): 

1.) STOP THE VOICES – Remove the voice of your little sister, or your big brother, or the well-meaning cousin, or the cranky teacher/lover/friend who said something a long time ago about what you made and gave their opinion on how it could be improved. Remove your own voice, the voice of practicality, the voice of perfection, the voice of “real adult concerns” just… shut ’em up. Critical voices have no place when you want to let your brain wander.

2.) EXPERTS ARE NOT ALLOWED – If anyone decides to start telling you what your project needs or could use without your asking, tell them that all paths to art are different, and ignore their critique. Sometimes the most wrong thing is the very best.

3.) FAILURE IS AWESOME – Popsicle sticks take at least 5 minutes to dry when you glue them together, and sometimes that doesn’t work, and when stuff doesn’t work, you try new approaches. When you try new approaches, you use your brain, and your brain grows. Yay failure, the teacher in disguise!

4.) CRAFTNIGHT MAKES NO SENSE – We’re told ALL THE TIME that stuff needs to make sense. We’re also told that stuff needs to be necessary, useful and good. CraftNight tears down that scaffolding every week. One crafter’s “necessary” is another crafter’s “superfluous” and it’s all labels and constructs anyway. The truth is that we just don’t get to know everything all the time, and some things shall forever remain without answers, definitions or levels of merit.

5.) YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT – There are a million ways to craft. You can’t do it “wrong” so if you feel your confidence slipping, we’re here to catch it, and hand it right back to you. Self-doubt is natural and even healthy, but if you’re scared of messing up macaroni crafts, well, that’s a little too much worry for any one person to handle. Instead of thinking in terms of “CAN” and “CAN’T” think of it in terms of “TRIED IT” or “HAVEN’T TRIED IT” as the world is your buffet, inviting you to try everything! Enjoy the smorgasbord! 

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

www.akbarsilverlake.com
www.crafthead.com

 

Posted by on June 10, 2014 in Uncategorized

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Gay Pride Sparkle Visor Easy Listening Dance Basement • June 4th, 2014

June 04


This Wednesday, June 4th, 2014 from 9pm until midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Sparkle Visors! 
$2 Processing fee, please
$4 Drink Special: “The Lyla” • A hanka for a hunka Lyla! 

We’re celebrating Gay Pride all over the map, and just because we’re such flagrant homos over here, the thing to wear is a sparkly glittery visor shining brightly with flashes of summertime light!
I only have 24 of them, so get here early if you want to make one, otherwise, the rest of you will get to explore CraftNight “GRAB BAG” who knows what you’ll get! 

ALSO: BASEMENT DANCE PARTY!!! Easy Listening Style!!! 

Remember being a kid and thinking that adults were sooo weird? Remember how all they’d want to do is stand around, have drinks and TALK?!? Sometimes they’d dance a little, but not much. Other times they might invite each other over and have food… that part always seemed to make sense. But now you can be your own weird adult, and do whatever you want. 
Anyway, I’ve put together a special summertime mix of tracks for you to sway and dance to, channel your inner Stevie Nicks, your Steely Dan, your Kim Carnes, your Linda Ronstadt… I could go on… 

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

www.akbarsilverlake.com
www.crafthead.com

GAY PRIDE, GAY PLANS 

Dyke Day LA at Barnsdall Park! 

Lavender Menace Celebration of Women 

First Elders 

 

Posted by on June 4, 2014 in Uncategorized

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