This Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017 from 9pm until midnight (or later) it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Marshmallow Snow Person on a S’More!
$3 Donation Please
$4 Drink specials! Akbar: Promise them Everything, But Give them Akbar.
Can you FEEL the California winter? Jack Frost is having a field day, and all those who scoffed at El Niño’s 2016 tardiness are are like “Okay OKAY you made you’re point!” The clouds are doing their part, and the wind has been so very uppity, flipping the trees every which way, it would be charming if it wasn’t so pushy. So what do you do with all this nippy weather? Well, you brave the cold, go do things you have to do, and then come to CraftNight and enjoy a delicious cocktail that’ll warm your tootsies and your heart.
Our craft this week is an action figure of sorts, a marshmallow character that wears a winter hat with a pom-pom, posed upon a graham cracker chocolate sled, ready to slide down a hill of fresh powdery snow. It’s a kit that you assemble, put together, and gaze at endearingly. It’s darn tootin’ cute! It makes a great gift, or a favor to place on a winter birthday gift, or just to have for yourself when you need to experience winter cheer. After all, who is your winter self? Are you ready to slide down a hill at a moment’s notice like this marshmallow character? Or are you more apt to hang out at the ski lodge sipping cocoa and reading a book by the fire? I’ll have some extra foam pieces and bits for you to decide if you want to follow the kit’s directions, or build your own scenario/wardrobe for this ornamental tableau.
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain
Upcoming CraftNights and Bingo:
FEBRUARY 27th: Bet Yer Bottom BINGO!!!! 8pm to 10pm • Akbar • 50 Cents a Card • WIN!!!!
March 1st – Snow Bobble Photo Holder – It bobbles, it holds photos, it’ll keep those snapshots organized!
CRAFTIVISM MARCH 22nd: Say it with stickers! Stickers you color, or stickers you make yourself, we’re havin’ it all, the dissonance is adhesive!
MORE Things in Your Town:
FEBRUARY 23rd: sSISTERSs: An Experimental Musical – A new punk musical about three sisters who may or may not be witches. Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, they take on famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time that explores shifting ideas of sisterhood. Who gets to be seen as a sister, and why? With a live band, haunting three-part harmonies, and throwbacks to the secret rituals of girlhood, sSISTERSs explores memory, family, mortality, queer feminist identity, and the struggles of being a woman artist.
Written and Directed by Gina Young • Facebook Link!
Tags: action figure, marshmallow, smore, tableau, winter
This Wednesday, February 15th, 2017 from 9pm until midnight (or later) it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Snowflake Necklaces
$3 Donation Please
$4 Drink specials! Akbar: Witty. Confident. Devastatingly Queer.
Snowflakes!
Snowflakes are delicate, they melt easily, every snowflake is different! Snowflakes make snow! If you have enough snowflakes, you can make an AVALANCHE! It’s easy for a bully to make fun of one snowflake, it’s a cheap shot, and it’s based on the moment, not the future. Takes a long time for enough snowflakes to get together to form a strong and cohesive slab of mighty icy matter that is just waiting for the right moment to descent rapidly down a mountainside.
A bully may tread very carefully if threatened with the possibility of an avalanche that’s been building for weeks/months/years. If someone tries to insult you by calling you a snowflake, just think about that.
Anyway, I do like to keep with a theme, and it is winter, so here’s our project for this week.
I have snowflake jewelry. It’s not Nordstrom quality, it’s not even Nordstrom Rack quality… it’s not even Toy’s R’ Us quality! It’s some seriously basic snowflake accoutrement, it’s going to be up to you how ostentatious it is, because the kit I give you is just the start. From drab beginnings comes greatness, and then you’ll be wearing your winter bead regalia like a snowflake BOSS.
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain
Upcoming CraftNights and Bingo:
Feb 22nd – Snow Person Action Figure – Shredding down the mountainside on a melty S’more, no less!
FEBRUARY 27th: Bet Yer Bottom BINGO!!!! 8pm to 10pm • Akbar • 50 Cents a Card • WIN!!!!
March 1st – Snow Bobble Photo Holder – It bobbles, it holds photos, it’ll keep those snapshots organized!
CRAFTIVISM MARCH 22nd: Say it with stickers! Stickers you color, or stickers you make yourself, we’re havin’ it all, the dissonance is adhesive!
MORE Things in Your Town:
FEBRUARY 20th: PLANET QUEER: RISE UP! Now is the time to RISE UP and be heard! Art IS activism! Its a SPECIAL EVENING of interstellar QUEER performance hosted by gay centered performance activist IAN MACKINNON. Facebook Link!
FEBRUARY 23rd: sSISTERSs: An Experimental Musical – A new punk musical about three sisters who may or may not be witches. Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, they take on famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time that explores shifting ideas of sisterhood. Who gets to be seen as a sister, and why? With a live band, haunting three-part harmonies, and throwbacks to the secret rituals of girlhood, sSISTERSs explores memory, family, mortality, queer feminist identity, and the struggles of being a woman artist.
Written and Directed by Gina Young • Facebook Link!
Yesterday’s CraftNight was a HUGE SUCCESS with everyone coming in and making Valentines for Politicians!
These are valentines of yesteryear that have been outfitted with messages from today’s current political climate in mind! Some of you were unable to make it to CraftNight, and I think it’s important to put these in the hands of as many people as possible so that we may send them to capitol hill and make our voices heard!
So hear you go, download and mail!
Cut these out, paste them and send them to politicians you love, or politicians who are on the fence about issues you care about, or politicians you can’t stand, these are four pages of sassy scraps that tell it like it is!
Share this link with everyone, and tell your friends about CraftNight, we are a Los Angeles-based non-profit arts organization powered by YOU!
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NEW! 2-Page Downloadable PDF of where to send your valentines, CA politician info, National Politician info, and even more info after that!
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Tags: download, liberal, politicians, valentines
This Wednesday, February 8th, 2017 from 9pm until midnight (or later) it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Valentines for Politicians!
$3 Donation Please
$4 Drink specials! Akbar: The Spirit of Silverlake Style!
Usually we have the “CraftNight Love-In” and believe me, there will be LOTS Of love, but it’s a little different this year. Come in and make a valentine for someone you love… but also, if you want to, I’ve made a series of valentines for our elected officials. Because while some of them are doing their best to give Lady Liberty black eye after black eye in the name of greed and avarice, some of our politicians are doing their best to keep Ms. Freedom in the ring.
I’ll have addresses/info and valentine sample scripts for:
1.) Elected officials who have made a public and principled stand against the current administration’s dangerous and hateful policies – let’s tell ’em thank you.
2.) Politicians who can be wishy washy and need some reminders from us of what’s at stake – they need to wake up and fight for us.
3.) Those in power who have been proven to be overtly racist, homophobic, misogynist, rapacious, eugenicist, contemptible people – they must be called out, they must be taken to task.
ALL of these valentines are cute as the dickens… they just have um… different words attached to them, as seen here in this example I’ve posted. Some of the valentines are mean, but… you know, making sweeping general unconstitutional bans that strand desperate people at airports for over 20 hours without food, and then maybe later down the line cause them to lose their lives… well, that’s not just mean, that’s absence of human decency.
So, in between writing checks, making all the phone calls, getting into local politics, and stockpiling green beans in the basement and preparing crops for your apocalypse garden… come in and make a valentine. It’s your first amendment right to say what you want to say, exercise that free speech muscle!
Because this is Craftivism. We’re fighting for America with glue sticks, paper scraps, and sparkles, come in and make your voice heard, I’ve got stamps.
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain
Upcoming CraftNights:
Feb 15th – Snowflake Necklace – Are people calling you a sensitive snowflake? Let’s wear our winter jewelry, be snowflakes, and make an AVALANCHE to crush the alt-right menace!
Feb 22nd – Winter Wishes Keepsake Box – Who loves the sun? Not us, it’s still winter! Keep small treasures in this gorgeous lil’ box!
March 1st – Snow Person Action Figure – Sliding down the mountainside on a S’more, no less!
CRAFTIVISM APRIL: Protest Poster Painting Party #2 where we prepare for the TAX DAY DEMONSTRATION.
MORE Things:
FEBRUARY 8th: CRUISE at The Eagle – Just down the street from Akbar and CraftNight is another watering hole you’ll want to visit! There’ll be lip-syncing contest hosted by Tony Soto • Spankings and play from Backroom Mistresses, Bootblackers, DJ tunes, maybe take a friend a homemade political craftivism valentine made at CraftNight! >>>Facebook Link
FEBRUARY 10th: QUEER PROM at the Sweat Spot! – We could all use a little more LOVE right about now given the current political climate and walking into an unknown future. Join us at Queer Prom to raise spirits, glasses & money for a local charity we will choose as a community. $15 Tickets
Tickets available at: http://queerpromla.brownpapertickets.com/
FEBRUARY 23rd: sSISTERSs: An Experimental Musical – A new punk musical about three sisters who may or may not be witches. Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, they take on famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time that explores shifting ideas of sisterhood. Who gets to be seen as a sister, and why? With a live band, haunting three-part harmonies, and throwbacks to the secret rituals of girlhood, sSISTERSs explores memory, family, mortality, queer feminist identity, and the struggles of being a woman artist.
Written and Directed by Gina Young • Facebook Link!
Tags: first amendment, freedom, Love, politicians, speaking out, valentines
This Wednesday, February 1st, 2017 from 9pm until midnight (or later) it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Sno S’more Character!
$3 Donation Please
$4 Drink specials! Akbar: Living Unboring!
Today I’m just gonna write something that CNN, The NY Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, NPR, or the Wall Street Journal didn’t. You can read this, and know that it’s got nothing to do with all those other things you might’ve been scrolling with red worried eyeballs for the last week and a half. Far from sticking my head in the sand about current events, there is such a thing as burnout, so last week and this week, we’re having mellow self care craft projects for our CraftNights.
It’s going to be Valentines Day soon, and on the 8th (see below) we’re going to do some political Craftivism, so I thought you might want this week for some mellow “Conversation Caterpillar” time. It comes with conversation hearts, hence it’s provocative name. Whether it’s fake or real or invented by Hallmark or wolves or corporations or nuns, Valentine’s Day is a holiday about LOVE so who cares where it came from! Get out of your own way and make a keepsake for someone cool, like the hat-wearing burrito lady, or the polite mumbly dude who always sells you your daily coffee beverage.
I don’t care if they think you’re in love with them when you’re not, just skip away emphatically if they try to smooch you. There are people suffering from far more things than drudgery in this world, if you can make just one person feel special, treated with respect, and like they matter… that’s just the thing that can fuel the momentum to help a person gain the vim and vigor to go do the things they’ve got to do.
A Conversation Caterpillar, (though it may fill you with anxiety for fear of causing inundation with a human being that might try to become your life partner after receiving one from you) is an opportunity to let other people sharing the earth with you know that they are valued and appreciated. We need more of that, and less selfish churlish bloviating.
This craft may have parts that are a genuine pain-in-the-ass to glue together, it might take awhile for parts to dry. This is good, because your irritation will be about that and not about other external factors swirling around in your periphery. Working out frustrations on a craft will enable you to focus on getting a good night’s sleep, and then you’ll wake up, and go kick some ass the next day.
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain
Upcoming Craftivism:
February 8th: The Annual CraftNIght Love-In!!! Help send valentines to Jerry Brown and other politicians fighting for the issues we care about, and also help us send Mike Pence some really kinky sexy valentines that are really glittery and queer!
April: Protest Poster Painting Party #2 where we prepare for the TAX DAY MARCH.
MORE Things:
FEBRUARY 8th: CRUISE at The Eagle – Just down the street from Akbar and CraftNight is another watering hole you’ll want to visit! There’ll be lip-syncing contest hosted by Tony Soto • Spankings and play from Backroom Mistresses, Bootblackers, DJ tunes, maybe take your bartender a Conversation Caterpillar made at CraftNight! >>>Facebook Link
FEBRUARY 10th: QUEER PROM at the Sweat Spot! – We could all use a little more LOVE right about now given the current political climate and walking into an unknown future. Join us at Queer Prom to raise spirits, glasses & money for a local charity we will choose as a community. $15 Tickets
Tickets available at: http://queerpromla.brownpapertickets.com/
FEBRUARY 23rd: sSISTERSs: An Experimental Musical – A new punk musical about three sisters who may or may not be witches. Trapped in the drawing room of an old Victorian house, they take on famous triads in a psychedelic, stream-of-consciousness trip through time that explores shifting ideas of sisterhood. Who gets to be seen as a sister, and why? With a live band, haunting three-part harmonies, and throwbacks to the secret rituals of girlhood, sSISTERSs explores memory, family, mortality, queer feminist identity, and the struggles of being a woman artist.
Written and Directed by Gina Young • Facebook Link!
Tags: caterpillar, conversation
