Today I went to Craft Show School 101. The tuition was $25 and what an education! The institutional venue? Grace Lutheran Church in Elmwood Park. Yup, it was your Grandma’s Craft Show. Americana. My table was up in their hall-of-fame/library. My reason to do the show was to see what’s making crafters tick. I didn’t [...]

Arts, Opinion WANTED: Crafters Who Can Change the World There’s a revolution going on across America, one stitch at a time. International students from Saudi Arabia, China, Panama and Korea at The Little Bits Workshop created memory boxes to contain their American memories. I just read the book Handmade Nation by Faythe Levine and Courtney [...]

at oakpark.patch.com

…a trunk show at the Little Bits Workshop could generate enough funds to teach teens and young moms some classic skills which could in turn become cottage industries? What if “Hi-Crafts” could change lives? This would not be your Grannie’s craft show. I’m talking funky, functional, cool stuff… I’m throwing this idea out there on [...]

For years my friend Karen has been inviting us to come up to her cabin in the U.P. and we finally took her up on the offer. After we arrived it took Miika about 48 hours to stop whining about boredom and the fear of bears and wolves. The remedy? A bag of peanuts and [...]

We had so many magical moments at this week’s Building & Nature camp! Each day as we entered Thatcher Woods for our nature discovery, we were visited by beautiful butterflies: Mourning Clokes, Monarchs, Painted Ladies, Skippers, and a Summer Azure to name a few. We walked down a path following two bucks who tolerated us [...]

The weather was God-given today. I could not have asked for a more beautiful day. After yesterday’s storms and tornadoes, it was such a relief to wake up to sunshine and a cool breeze. Our much anticipated chalk mural went off without a hitch. The kids had so much fun and I was SO proud [...]

Butterflies, handmade games, learning about our heritage, multi-media….just a few of the activities that have filled our recent days at Little Bits Camp. We kicked of this week by visiting the butterfly exhibit at the Brookfield Zoo. Today, I was blown away by how beautiful the girls’ acrylic butterfly paintings came out. Each canvas was [...]

Today was day two of camp and we have a nice group of kids who are so eager to create and learn. We’re exploring our heritage, finding our countries on the map, making a book about we learn and listening to music from around the world. Kids are also learning to create handmade toys from [...]

Today kids from Sabina’s Daycare of Westchester came to the workshop and I think it’s fair to say that they all surprised themselves by creating such beautiful game boxes. From cereal boxes, buttons, wall paper samples and an upcycled cigar box, they created a game of checkers contained in a chalkboard box. The challenge was [...]