Photos By Brittanie Shey

A Houston company is making DIY projects and crafting easier than ever with a subscription service that delivers a grab-bag of instructions and supplies to your doorstep each and every month.

Whimseybox is the brainchild of Alicia DiRago, founder of the crafting blog Dismount Creative. The company is just over a year old, and grew from the connections and crafting community DiRago developed online after moving to Houston from Chicago about three years ago.

A self-descried "recovering chemical engineer," DiRago was at a loss of what to do with herself after moving to Houston with her husband for his job.

"I was an engineer. I thought for sure I'd find a job in Houston. But when the time came to look for work I just did not have it in me."

Instead, DiRago set about trying to make new friends. But that wasn't easy at first either.

"There were classes or events in Chicago where people would get together and make jewelry or craft. but I couldn't find anything like that in Houston," she said.

Not long after the move, she started Dismount Creative, and began to hold classes and events as a way to meet creative types in Houston.

"I think people are more open in a class situation as opposed to just an event at a bar," she said. "I'm a class junky -- I'll take a class on anything. (Like engineering) it's all related to my love of making things."

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Photo by Abby Koenig

The First Folk Market at AvantGarden

This Sunday marked the first Folk Market at AvantGarden, which will be a monthly event held on the third Sunday of each month. The Folk Market is the brain child of Brittany Bly who also created Pop Shop Houston. Each month, Bly will coordinate with 20 or so vendors to bring their goods to the parking lot of the Westheimer bar and art venue.

Bly, who is a crafter herself, wanted to make sure that The Folk Market matched the DIY sensibility of Pop Shop. All vendors must be indies, meaning no chains stores. While the inaugural Folk Market was comprised of sellers specifically from Houston and the surrounding areas, Bly isn't making that a requirement.

"Out of towners are welcome," Bly says, "they just have to be independent sellers."

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When school kids come back to the dreaded schoolhouse in a few days for the spring semester, they have something less lame and like, dumb and stuff, to look forward to. The Vans shoe company is once again opening its Vans Custom Culture competition to high school art classes all over the country. This will be the fourth year that Vans has held the contest.

Geared toward getting kids excited about design and art, the competition searches for the best shoe designs, with the winning school earning $50,000. In these days of declining funding for art programs -- among other depressing cuts in school spending -- I am sure that $50K would be a huge shot in the arm for your average high school art program.

Kids love Vans as it is, so this is also a good way for them to use their Vans fandom for the betterment of their school. Yes, I am sure that sounds yucky to high schoolers.

From the press release:

Each school will be tasked with customizing four favorite Vans styles: the Old Skool, 106 Vulcanized, Sk8-Hi and Classic Slip-On. Students are charged with designing each pair of shoes to fit within one of three themes representing the Vans lifestyle, including action sports, art and music and then also a fourth "local flavor" theme reflecting regional inspiration.

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Pen Morrison, WHAM artist

Christmas is coming early for all you art lovers out there - the 7th Annual Winter Holiday Art Market (WHAM) is just around the corner. The annual holiday market, filled with wares from local artists, takes place November 16 through 18 at the Winter Street Studios and it's not just a shopping experience; it's a party.

WHAM is a product of art purveyors Fresh Arts. As the story goes, WHAM's original iteration was that of a student art sale hosted by the Glassell School of Art. When Glassell decided to stop producing the sale, it was handed over to Winter Street, which is when Fresh Arts, then Spacetaker, took it on. Tying into the start of the holiday season, Fresh Arts have been producing this celebration of art since 2006.

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Each year thousands of people gather together in Houston with one common love: Quilts! This weekend marked the annual International Quilt Festival. The Houston festival is the largest in the country, and last year's attendance broke records with more than 60,000 attendees.

This year's fest was nothing to shrug at. The George R. Brown was taken over with what felt like miles and miles of quilts. Much of the festival was vendors who came from all over the country to sell their quilt-related wares. Bolts of fabric, notions, buttons and all the latest quilt gadgets tantalized potential buyers.

This is a quilt!

Sewing machine company Bernina was on hand with its ten-foot sewers. The machines are computerized, which means you pick a design from the computer's collection of images and presto! The machine will stitch your quilt for you. When I was watching, the machine was making little Christmas trees like it was nothing.

Down the aisle from Bernina was another set of machines, by A-1 Quilting. These machines, while just as large, required you to take charge and sew yourself (oh, the horror). The ladies of A-1, Trish and Janice, had a lot to say about the newfangled computerized machines, noting, "It's like sending your quilt out to be sewn for you."

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Photo by Simon Gentry

"Christa Monster" at work at The Photo Booth on Montrose

You may have seen Christa Havican shaking cocktails at Kata Robata or competing in local cocktail competitions, but that's not all she does. She's also the artist known as "Christa Monster" in-residence at The Photobooth on Montrose, a combination photo studio, art gallery and performance space established by photographer Simon Gentry.

Photo by Christa Havican

One of several "spirit creatures" that are available for bidding

Over the past few weeks, Christa has been working on an installation called "Once We Were Wild--A Spirit Animal Series", a selection of ridiculously cute creatures on two legs and garbed in people-clothes. If you see "The Monster is In" sign on the door, it means Christa is creating more of the little beasts.

How did a bartender end up with a dual career as an artist? "I began dabbling with art as early as I can remember," said Christa. "I would always bring home stacks of paintings and drawings from school, and when asked what I wanted to be when I got older, my response was an artist or performer. Everyone in my family is involved in some form of art, so it has always been a part of me--so much so that I decided to continue my education in fine art from University of Houston.

Photo by Christa Havican

The very fashionable Ms. Fox will be available at Friday's reception

Christa hopes that the Shrinky Dink®-like creatures will demonstrate that some art is meant to be interactive and fun, for adults and children alike. The cute creatures are touchable and durable.

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Photo by Flickr user Gatis Gribusts

This week's cover story, Playing for Keeps, looks at the resurgence of the vinyl record. Over on sister blog Rocks Off, we taught you how to care for and clean that awesome vinyl collection you're building. But not all thrift store vinyl can be saved. Especially in Houston, some collections you find at estate sales or flea markets have been relegated to attics, basements and hall closets, and either the records or their covers are so badly worn that they're beyond repair. But that's where your crafty side can come in. One of the coolest things about vinyl is the visual factor -- vinyl records are what made album covers into something akin to an art form, after all.

Note that we'd never cut up or melt down a record that was still playable. But when all other recovery measures fail, why not turn your 99-cent Goodwill find into something worthy of display. We've collected some ideas and how-tos below.

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"Without lamps there would be no light."

Lamps are not the most exciting thing in the world, but Bender is right. Bender is always right. For the dedicated gamer looking to light up a room in a unique way, there are several different options to choose from. So welcome to the Houston Press's video game lamp guide, for all your video game lamp needs.

This Atari-themed lamp was created by a YouTube user that they call doktaluv. It features the classic Atari game console with wood trim as a base, a stylish spiral of cartridge games as its shaft and an ingenious shade made of video game box art.

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Photo by Nikki Metzgar

When Dran Alessi set up her table at Antidote's annual Craftidote market, it was the first time she sold her found object terrariums to the public. Usually busy at painting and drawing -- she last exhibited at Lawndale's Big Show -- she decided she had to start crafting so she could participate alongside her family of artists, including brother Sean Flournoy of Throttle Tees and sister-in-law Carol Smith of McCheek's Mayhem.

"I collect a lot of stuff. I go to all the vintage shops, like the Guild, so I have a big collection of stuff that's hard to explain -- little things I had to have. So, I thought I would use the plants and the glassware and see what I could do with it."

The delicate moss and upwards climbing branches come largely from Buchanan's, and Alessi lets the trinkets such as the ceramic owls, skull beads and chrome car emblems determine the overall concept for each terrarium. They often trigger memories for people. First goes a layer of rocks, then charcoal for absorbing moisture, dirt and sand.

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Lauren Adams "Flying Rings"

When an artist's work is described as "whimsical," we expect to see fairies and elves, not copper figurines. "Whimsical" is how Lauren Adams's body of work, now on display at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, has labeled itself. Adams's exhibition, "Going Up?," which opened Friday night, is comprised of two very different works, "Flying Rings" and "Women Series."

In "Flying Rings," finger rings with feet and propellers are strung along the ceiling on high-tension cables. You wouldn't know right away they were rings, save their description, as they resemble cartoonish robots, zipping through the air. Each ring has a person's name, such as Jeff and Paul, to add to the "youthfulness" of the piece. They appeared to be having a good time, which is nice for copper-cut ring-creatures, but weren't able to spread the love to us. Art does not always have to have deep substance, but when you cannot gather any meaning out of it, it doesn't grab you, and "not grabbing" is bad for an art show.

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