Creative Forces Are Out To Get Me

Last weekend Sak, Friend-T and myself got to visit the Bay Area Maker Faire for the second year in a row!

If you think a DIY convention is amazing on it's own, just try going to one when you've got a permanent wedding-brain! It was overwhelming in a good way, full of crafts and projects and interesting ideas.

Plus, I got to meet Cricut, in person!
Sorry for the blur, this was taken half a second before someone from church bumped into Sak, causing him to try and hide his crafty interests in some sort of crazy embarrassed spasm.

Anyway, there were a lot of really amazing exhibits this year, but I'll pass on the pictures of the robotic drooling tongue and focus on the crafty stuff!

Provocraft had their cricut cake cutter out on demo, cutting some gum paste...

I thought the cakes they made with the designs were pretty cool, especially the one with the stars.



We made some tags (Eagggle!) with some brand new Cuttlebug folders. I really want the Asian-looking one on the right. On a side note, I didn't know you could emboss on thin metal!

We got to YUDU some more canvas bags...Because, you know - we didn't do enough of that already.. ;)

And then we also grabbed a bag from the Xyron table next door. There was a huge set-up where you could decorate the bag with scraps of this-and-that, after running it through giant Xyron machines. However, the place was teeming with little kids, and we slightly-bigger-kids were getting the move-it-old-person stare down.

One really cool thing that I totally fell in love with were these pin-brads:
A brad that looks like a pin! Imagine the paper potential for that! They have a bunch at Oriental Trading, in every sort of shape imaginable. Some tropical brads might be fun, I think.

There were tables teaching knitting and sewing and crochet, scrap booking booths galore, and yes - even letterpress! My conversation with the girl at the letterpress booth went like this:

*Penga looks at all the typwriterey-looking metal letters*
Me: Is this letterpress?
Girl: Yes, it is! What do you know about letterpress? *friendly smiles*
Me: I know it's expensive.
Girl: ...Oh, wedding invitations?
Me: Or lack thereof!

And that was the end of that. They let you try it out for free, but the set-up was 30 minutes to put in the words you wanted, and Sak was eager to get to the robots, so I didn't get to play. Next year, next year!

Adam Savage from Mythbusters was also there, and he gave a speech on how to solve problems. A lot of talk about remembering the big picture and making sure you set deadlines you can meet. Mmm. Any bride can relate to that.

But really, what I really need at my wedding is a fleet of these:
Artoo! They can serve us noodles and join the line dances with us!(They actually have a club for building realistic remote-controlled astromech droids, and Sak and I promised each other that we'd join someday when we have a garage and a lot of spending money.)

Anyway, I had a blast at the Faire, so anytime you get the chance to go to a hip & cool craft fair, I suggest you jump all over it!

What kind of cool craft fairs have you been to? Was anyone in San Mateo this last weekend?

Maybe you saw this whacko?