Special Thanks to All Crafters that have allowed their work to be featured in this issue.

Editor in Chief Jane R .Editor in Chief Meredith J.

Layout Design Sergio J. Contributing Writer Kelly B.

Art Direction Sergio J. and Jane R. Photography Jeannie N.

CRAFTIER

Special Thanks to All Crafters that have allowed their work to be featured in this issue.

CRAFTIER

LA artist 2Atom grew tired of the monotony that sur-rounded him. It began with a life size painting of Rei Ayanami on his deep red walls and spread to smaller objects like his razor and XBox 360. “I like my things to be colorful, unique, and stand out.” Now you can have your own custom XBox 360 faceplate designed by 2Atom. $25 and up. Email 0002atom@gmail.com for more information.

BFF Halo Tee, $16

Name of Store: Coyote AlertFind it at: coyotealert.etsy.comLocation: Denton, TxGender: MaleAge: 21Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Plastisol inks and tees. Pretty much anything that you can screenprint on.Favorite Craft Related Website or Event: Etsy.com would have to be my favorite. They provide such an accessible outlet for anyone to show their handmade wares. Stitch Austin is also a great annual event to showcase crafted products.Advice for fellow crafters: Create what you love. Don’t be afraid to make something be-cause of what current trends are!Video Game system of choice: Xbox 360. If I printed as much as I played on that thing, I would be up to my ears in shirts.Favorite Video games: Halo 3. Halo 3. Halo 3. and occasionally some katamari :)

vintage handheld video game stamp, $9.99

Name of Store: Terbear CollectiblesFind it at: terbearco.etsy.comLocation: CaliforniaGender: FemaleAge: 41Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Rubber StampsFavorite Craft related website or event: EtsyAdvice for fellow crafters: Don’t be afraid to try new things!

Name of Store: The Lovely Teaspoon (Alicia Murphy-Rodriguez)Find it at: www.thelovelyteaspoon.etsy.comLocation: Fort Wright, Kentucky (Greater Cincinnati)Gender: Woman!Age: 24Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: I love my dremel and my glue, Goop! I love to turn toys into fun jewelry.Favorite Craft related website or event: www.etsy.com Advice for fellow crafters: Make what you love even if nobody else does. Video Game system of choice: Wii, love it!!Favorite video game: Guitar Hero

television necklace, $7

Name of Store: Argyle Whale by Elise Towle SnowFind it at: argylewhale.etsy.com Blog: argylewhale.blogspot.comLocation: Salem, MassachusettsGender: FemaleAge: 24Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Print GoccoFavorite Craft related website or event: I’m pretty enthusiastic about Etsy!Advice for fellow crafters: Don’t forget to have fun while you are running your craft busi-ness.Video Game system of choice: WiiFavorite video game: Rayman raving rabbids :) Gocco Print, $12

Name of Store: Sprocketbox Custom DecalsFind it at: sprocketbox.etsy.comLocation: Columbia, MOGender: MaleAge: 24Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Vinyl and Exacto bladesFavorite Craft related website or event: Etsy.comAdvice for fellow crafters: Don't design crafts for what you think the market wants, de-sign for yourself and the market will react.Video Game system of choice: XBOX 360Favorite video game(s): Fable, Fable 2, Half-Life 2

Custom Computer Decals, $8-$10

Name of Store: Wax LaboratoryFind it at: waxlaboratory.etsy.comLocation: Rowland Heights, CaliforniaGender: MAge: 28Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Scissors, Papers, and sometimes Rocks?!?Favorite Craft related website or event: www.etsy.com is pretty awesome!Advice for fellow crafters: Just have fun!Video Game system of choice: My Ceram-ic White PS3Favorite video games: At the moment it’s LittleBigPlanet on the PS3. I remember calling a Mom & Pop game store and wait-ing all day for the shop to get the game in because there was suppose to be a recall on the game (due to offensive content sampling verses from the Koran). Later in the day I was shopping at Ikea with my lady and we got a phone call from the game shop letting us know they finally got the game in and we dropped everything we had (well just ice trays) and rushed ourselves out the maze of Ikea to go pick up the game. Besides that, here are a few of my other favorites: Heav-enly Sword (PS3), Uncharted (PS3), Castle Crashers (360), Mario Kart (Wii), Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime (DS), Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (DS), and more if I got the time to play.

Game Coasters Set of 4, $12

Name of Store: Idea FountainFind it at: ideafountain.etsy.comLocation: St. LouisGender: MaleAge: 15Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Magazine Paper, Craft BeadsFavorite Craft related website or event: EtsyAdvice for fellow crafters: Find something you enjoy to do, and you might even make some money from it. But the most important thing, have fun!Video Game system of choice: XBOX 360, DS or WIIFavorite video game: (Wii) Super Smash Brothers Brawl (XBox 360) Halo 3

Name of Store: Pixel PartyFind it at: pixelparty.etsy.comLocation: Chicago, ILGender: MAge: 33Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: shrinkydinks and recycled ikea furnitureFavorite Craft related website or event: etsy.comAdvice for fellow crafters: take the time to learn to take good pictures. if your work is great and your pictures aren't, nobody will ever know.Video Game system of choice: The Ar-cade, NES, Intellivision, Commodore64Favorite video game: Sinistar

Hi-Score Custom Bracelet, $25

Bomberman Buttons, Set of 4, $3

Name of Store: Lost MittenFind it at: http://lostmitten.etsy.comBlog: http://lostmittenblog.blogspot.comLocation: Ontario, CanadaGender: FemaleAge: 26Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: Yarn/wool, plastic beads, embroidery thread, my 1” button maker, paper, fabric, and whatever else I can get my hands on!Favorite Craft related website or event: Craftster community (www.craftster.org). It is a great community of such talented and creative people who are willing to share their projects and ideas!Advice for fellow crafters: Keep creating the things that you enjoy making! Crafting is such a relaxing pasttime - nothing is more relaxing for me than knitting and enjoying a coffee. I am continually inspired by the creativity and talent of those around me on Etsy, Craftster, and around the Internet, so it is wonderful when fellow craft-ers share their creations with others online! It is great to be creative and make something new, as I try to do with the creations in my Etsy Shop.Video Game system of choice: As for current systems, my video game system of choice is the Nintendo Wii. As for all-time favorite, I’d have to go with either the original NES or SNES - there is so much nostalgia there for me, plus I still enjoy playing games on the older systems!Favorite video games: Any of the original Su-per Mario games for the NES and SNES, as well as Earthbound for the SNES.

Name of Store: Betty Lou Handmade Arts and Crafts---I named my shop in honor of my dearly loved grand-mother, Betty Lou. Find it at: missbettylou.etsy.comLocation: Pleasant Hill, MO (Kansas City area)Gender: FemaleAge: 23Favorite Crafting Tools and Materials: recycled scrabble tiles, wood, glass, resinFavorite Craft related website or event: etsy.com Advice for fellow crafters: One thing that has really helped me is to stop worrying about being original. It’s so hard to try to do something that hasn’t been done, almost impossible. I have found that when I stop wor-rying about originality, my creativity is free to flow. Just focus on doing what you love and your individual-ity will shine through! Video Game system of choice: Nintendo---Old School!Favorite video game: Super Mario Princess Peach Scrabble Pendant, $5.50

Space Invaders Cufflinks, $60Name of Store: DedaloFind it at: dedalo.etsy.com

interviewed by Jane Ragasaphotos provided by Anthony L.

When did your love of gaming begin? I think my like for gaming started with my first Nintendo Entertainment System when I was 3, followed by the Game Boy with Tet-ris and various Mario games. I think my love began with Tekken 2 on the Sony Playstation. That’s when I defined what genre of games I liked, fighting. I was about 10 years of age then I think. But I always had the latest gam-ing system, Genesis, Game Gear, Nomad, SNES, N64, etcetera, etcetera.

I know there’s a big gaming community out there, much like the crafting one, how do you suggest new gamers get out there and become a part of it?

First figure out if you even like games and define what type of games you like. I think the biggest gaming communities out there are for First Person Shooters, RPGs (Role Playing Games), MMOs (Massively Multiplayer Online), and then Fighting. That’s if you want to be specific. You can probably even narrow it down to certain games from there. Then there’s the WOW (World of Warcraft) commu-nity but that a whole other story.

Otherwise there are general gaming places where people just like to play whatever is new. Most of these places can probably be found online on certain websites with forums. Once you find what you are looking for just start post-ing in the forums or chat in the chat rooms. Get to know people and be around often so people know you. Then start checking out tournaments and make a name for yourself so people you don’t know will know you, Hahaha. Just out of curiosity, just how intense do these tour-naments get? And where can people find a tourna-ment in their area?

I’m a fighting gamer at heart, so I go to many fighting game tourneys! Mostly Super Smash Bros Brawl tourna-ments. I never get close to winning at most tourneys. So it’s really intense. It’s never enough to know the basic, the combos, and the pro moves. You need to know all that and have experience. You need to be able to plan attacks ahead of time and in split seconds and be able to predict your opponent’s next move and/or be able to make them do what you want them to do. If anyone wants to find a tour-ney in their area, they should check out their community’s forums, I’m sure they can find tournaments there. When did you decide that it was time to start Unfo-cused? And how did you gather your team? I started listening to pod

casts right after high school. My first favorite podcast has 3 hosts who are just some regular, down to earth people that speak their minds on any given gaming subject. Later, I found another pod-cast that was just the same but to another level. They sounded a lot like my friends and I just sitting around talk-ing. So I was like, “I could do something like this.” Plus, as another hobby, I like to mess around with audio equipment so why not turn it into a fre-quent thing? So I talked it over with my close friend, T, and he agreed that it sounded like fun. But we didn’t have the equipment or money to produce such a project.

Then one day almost a year later, T and DJ were explain-ing something about comics to me with their own added commentary and I thought to myself, “This is what I want a podcast to sound like.” Then BAM! I plugged in a Rock Band Microphone and one normal mic and the 3 of us just started talking. Later we decided on a for-mat, segments and a title! We slowly bought new equipment throughout the months. Did you know about the process of developing a

podcast from start to fin-ish before you started? Or, was it a lot of trial and er-ror?

It was both! I knew the idea of what I needed just because I thought about it a lot and because… I just know stuff! But we didn’t have everything we needed from the start. We slowly bought stuff like more microphones, a mixer, headphones and more wires thought out the growth of our show. We’re still short a set of headphones a year later. And a second computer or monitor would be nice. You’re now becoming a successful podcast with a growing number of sub-scribers and listeners. What do you think contrib-uted to this success?

Along with promoting our-selves every chance we get, I think doing a live broadcast of the show on justin.tv and talking to people who have been around and have their own crowd contributed a lot. Networking. Twitter, Myspace and You Tube. What advice do you have for people that are think-ing about starting their own podcast?

Be prepared. Don’t give up and promote yourself when-ever you can and where ever you can. But don’t spam, because no one likes spam. Once you have people listen-ing, tell them to tell other people. They will if they enjoy your podcast enough. This is the independent way.

interviewed by Jane Ragasaphotos provided by John L.

How far back does your love of gam-ing go? What are some of your favorite games of all time?

My love of gaming started back around 1986 on an apple ][e with games like Zork, Archon, Choplifter, etc. Some of my fondest memories of gaming are on Super Mario Bros 3, Fallout 2, and Goldeneye (multiplayer). Recently I’ve been playing Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead.

When did your love affair with stitching begin? And how did you learn the craft?

I started cross stitching in late 2006, my first project was my piston honda cross stitch [above], it took me forever to finish. It was a mistake starting with something so huge.

I taught myself how to cross stitch by reading some online tutorials. It is way simpler than most people think at first...

Video games have such a cult following and it’s now seeping into the main-stream world, what do you think has caused its suc-cess over the years?

Basically, they’re just fun. People are always looking for ways to pass the time with en-joyable relaxing activities and video games are just another way of accomplishing this. As the generations that were raised on video games get old-er, video games will become more and more entrenched into popular culture, it’s a natural progression. How do you decide what your next pattern will be?

I find inspiration in many places. At first it was from fond memories in my child-hood, now however, I find that I am the most inspired by the people I post about on sprite stitch. I am always thinking to myself as I post “wow, thats awesome, I’ll have to try that”

When did you decide to start a blog that melds the love of different groups of people: video games and stitching?

After I finished my first project (piston honda) I looked around on the internet for other peo-ple doing the same thing...and found barely anything...I think there was like 2-3 other people online who had posted projects, and they weren’t in organized places.

I wanted to create a place where people could come to find new inspiration and a place for people to show off

their work once they were done.

You have an impressive team working with you at spritestitch.com. How did you meet them and get them all together?

I met the other bloggers through the sprite stitch fo-rums that I set up a few months ago. I actually rarely go out searching for con-tent anymore, I get so many emails every day of people sending me their own work, or work that they have seen posted on other blogs. The community really keeps itself going, I just pass on the blog posts...

It says on your profile at spritestitch.com that you’re a teacher. Do you ever sneak projects involv-ing video games or cross stitching into your course curriculum or extra credit assignments?

Very rarely. I’m a physics and earth science teacher in high school...there isn’t much extra time for stuff like that. I do occasionally sneak in a physics problem about mario jump-ing or something along those lines. I also have a bunch of hand carved stamps of video game characters that I use to stamp the students papers.

I also read on your profile that you have a degree in geology, is there some kind of relation between crafts and science that many peo-ple don’t notice?

Hmm...good question. Maybe it’s just that in science, people are always trying to under-stand how things work...so when I see something that is handmade I’m not happy to just buy it from someone else, I need to understand how to do it myself.

Is there an ultimate goal/pattern you’d like to do? (Like make a detailed pat-tern with all the gaming characters in the history of Nintendo, or place for some kind of Guinness world re-cord?)

Not really, I lose interest on massive projects...my goals are really learning new crafts that I haven’t tried before. Right now I’d really like to learn how to do stained glass and mosaic tile work...those are my two goals now.

What advice do you have for fellow crafters?

Make your first craft some-thing simple, starting big is a mistake.

visit spritestitch.com for tutorial and patterns

How did you create the pattern for your scarf?

I originally tried to make a grid pattern using an online tool, but I realized the grid it gave me would be mon-strously huge. I’ve been “free-handing” the design using an image of the Super Mario Brothers Level 1-1 map from ian-albert.com’s website. In hindsight, I wish I’d taken more time to pattern-out each component of the map to save myself time and frustration, but it’s been going alright so far. I have a few patterns started of the characters that I will sew in later.

How long have you been a Mario fan?

The very first game I ever played was Super Ma-rio Brothers when my dad brought home an NES some-time around 1992. I rarely play games more involved than Super Mario Broth-ers and enjoy playing the great selection of “retro” NES games on the Wii.

How much time would you say you’ve put into the Ma-rio scarf so far? It’s hard to say because I’ll work an hour here and there. I’ll estimate a little more than 20 hours so far because in the beginning I struggled with re-teaching myself intarsia.

What will you do with the Mario scarf once it is com-pleted?

Honestly I don’t know yet. I’m sure my boyfriend will try to wear it, but it’s going to be

huge so maybe it’ll end up be-ing wall art. I said in a previ-ous interview that we won’t sell it, but lately the idea of auctioning it for charity has come into my head. I don’t know if my boyfriend would want to let go of it, so as of right now, only time will tell.

Have you done any other “geeky” crafts in your crafting career?

I made my boyfriend a Space Invaders hat and enjoy mak-ing the occasional Shrinky

Dink Mario, but most of my knitwear is girly and simple. This is the biggest project I’ve ever taken on and certainly the geekiest.

Any tips for crafters look-ing to take on a similar project?

Plan! If you can knit and purl and are fairly versed in in-tarsia, the mechanics of the scarf won’t be a problem, but charting is something I should’ve done before I even picked up my needles. Also, make sure you get A LOT of the yarn you’re using and keep track of color numbers and dye lots. I know that seems like standard prac-tice, but I was so excited and jumped the gun on a lot of basic steps.

two thirds of the mario scarf

1. Find an image you’d like to use. I typically Google something like “video game sprites” to help me find what I need. And, of course, there are some awesome video game patterns out there that can save you time if you stumble upon them first! Keep the type of project you are making in mind while deciding what image to use. For ex-ample, how many colors of a medium (yarn, perler beads, ect..) do you have available? How big is the project? I choose to make a pattern from Bubble Bobble, reminiscent of my childhood days.

2. Save the sprite to your computer. These images will most likely be really small and you may have to crop the exact image you want from a larger, more complex image.

3. Import the file in the embroidery program of your choice. I just recently began using freeware Artopik (http://www.artopik.rksoft.sk/) and so far am a big fan. If you are using Artopik, the rest of the screenshots will be applicable for you.

4. Adjust colors as needed/desired.

5. Save the file. From here you can either work your pattern from the computer screen or print it out. I personally like having the grid 3 mm and using small circles in a color print out using Artopik.

I understand there can be a downside to video games these days. Kids play too much and don’t go out in the sunlight and develop ter-rible illnesses from lack of vitamin D and they get bugged out eyes from staring at the screen and then the drooling starts because their gray matter is no longer matter but has turned to gray mush and of course these games don’t help them develop any manners or smarts that are so important in life.

But back in the day when game consoles for the home first came out, having one attached to your television could take your life from av-erage to awesome. I know. It happened to me.

When I was eight, my dad purchased the amazing Atari 2600. The Atari had four switch-es and wood veneer that was similar to the wood veneer on our television. Yes, that wood veneer would melt if left in direct sunlight, but it all matched and was so beautiful.

The Atari 2600 gave us access to wonderful games that my brother and I would play for hours. Space Invaders, Outlaw, Super Break-away, Asteroids, and most importantly: Pac-Man.

The fact that I had Pac-Man at my house was a pretty big deal at school. Friends I didn’t know that I had in the third grade wanted to come over to play.

I only cared about one friend: Todd. I wanted him to come play my Atari. When he finally did, he sat in front of that screen for two hours drinking glasses of chocolate Quik and then leaving. I don’t think he really spoke to me the whole time.

But! He came to my house and he played MY Atari! And a month later when it was time to choose partners to create the planets of the solar system from kraft paper and crayons, he picked me first to be on his third grade planet craft staff that created the best Jupiter ever.

Pac-Man paid off.

My well-developed Pac-Man skills were even more crucial when my friend Amy had her tenth birthday party at Chuckie Cheese. We had a Ms. Pac-Man showdown. The winner was going to win a mysteriously big wrapped package. Everyone played one round to get the highest score they could and then the top two had to play against one another to get the final highest score.

I remember gripping the joystick and sweat-ing profusely while playing. The pressure was on and at ten I was the most competitive kid in the world. I played my first round and man-aged to see four of the Ms. Pac-Man stories. My score was high.

My nerves were ragged as I watched all the other kids play and after every turn, I felt more relief as my score was still the highest. Finally, it was time for the showdown. It was me against Tanya. It might as well have been me against the universe. I HAD to win. I HAD to have what was in that beautifully wrapped pink package!

Again, my hands were slippery all over the controls but I managed to keep it together. Fi-nally, quietly, all knew that I was the winner. I ripped open the paper on that box and lo and behold!

It was a lamp. A lamp.

I think if I had known the contents of the box.

I might not have played quite so hard.

But again, the Atari had paid off.

I had won. And I won because my father was an early adopter. In his thirties, he was into new technology and my brother and I bene-fited. I don’t think my dad realized the impact he had on my popularity as a kid or my prize winning abilities.

My dad doesn’t know it, but he is getting a Wii Fit for Christmas this year. I wonder how that box of awesomeness will impact his life. May-be he’ll finally get into yoga.

Or beat one of us kids at Dance Dance Revolu-tion.