News From A Crafty Broad

When I'm not dreaming up new goodies for Ciara Loves You! and holding up my blog duties for the Hollywood Craft Mafia, I'm usually traveling for my day job as a travel writer. Most recently, I had the amazing experience of cruising along the Black River and Solimoes Rivers in Brazil, both parts of the Amazon. Swimming with dolphins, spotting parrots and toucans, narrowly avoiding a sloth attack (seriously) -- the trip was just beautiful. And so were the goodies I got to bring home: jewelry handcrafted out of local materials by the women of the Novo Airao village.

It's DIY, Amazon-style! Everything here is local: wood carvings from area trees, incredibly sturdy string that you could just peel off of a certain type of palm, and some of the most colorful beads I've ever seen, actually hollowed out seeds from fruits like assai.

And I really couldn't resist showing off my new BFF, the sloth:



Hope this crafty news from abroad inspires you as much as it did me, to use the materials close at hand to create totally new and beautiful works of art! Who else uses natural materials in her/his crafts?