crafting

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Dye seems to be a theme lately. The kids have wanted to do some tie dye and being the end of the year I thought we’d do tie dyed teacher gifts. I picked out some more “grown-up” colors and a new technique I’ve been wanting to try. Arashi Shibori is a traditional Japanese form of tie dye which results in beautiful diagonal streaks of color that are at once graphic and organic. Per usual I am taking a little inspiration and a lot of liberty mixed with make-do tools. I’d say it was a worthwhile attempt and one that I’ll repeat.

arashi shibori on rayon fabric with fiber reactive dyes

I didn’t find what I wanted at the fabric store so I ended up with some lightweight rayon/spandex knit. I cut it into 12″ wide strips that I sewed into long loops in the manner of a current fashion trend—the infinity scarf—which can be worn long and loose or twisted into a cowl. The blue/green one on the right was my first attempt and shows its faults laid out flat but looks okay when worn. The kids picked out the colors on the other two for their teachers. Despite my novice attempts I think the finished products turned out quite nicely.

arashi shibori dyed infinity scarf cowl tie dye blue green

I read a lot about arashi shibori before attempting this project and was most inspired and blown away by the beautiful work and words of Shibori Girl.

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I haven’t posted anything to the blog in quite a while. I’m not sure how that happened. School started. And September birthdays and Halloween and November birthdays and Christmas holidays and somehow it’s February. I have been making things and doing things and even taking some pictures. At first I wanted to go back and post things in chronological order, then I thought maybe I should just do a summary with a bunch of pictures. But I guess it really doesn’t matter.

So here is the decorative shower curtain that I started about two years ago. Seems like an appropriate project to break my break. I have a bad habit of getting stuck on a project and putting it into time-out for a while. I work on other things, hope that a solution will come to me and eventually it will come back around. I’m trying to get myself out of that cycle and just make myself work through whatever difficulties arise instead of waiting months or years in between. When we moved into this house, the little bathroom was bright, shiny and completely white. I wanted to do something fun and seized on this cute fish fabric as my inspiration.

Heather Ross mendocino fish blue orange shower curtain

The feature fabric is Mendocino Swim Class in the Pacific colorway by Heather Ross. I loved this fabric so much I used it previously as an accent in a dress for the girl along with the seahorse fabric from the same line. This time I paired it with a solid Kona cotton coordinated to the tiniest fish and a little bit of navy blue piping left over from this project. I started this so long ago I don’t remember why I had to try the curved piecing. I see that it’s not obvious in the photo but the line between the two fabrics is gently curving.

I lined the shower curtain with extra wide white muslin and that is where the trouble began. For some reason I had a horrible time getting everything square and lined up nicely. You can probably still see crease marks in the fabric from where I wadded it up and threw it in the corner. My other difficulty was that I had my heart set on orange grommets. Dritz does make some colored plastic grommets but they were a tad expensive for my taste. And large. Don’t get me wrong, I like orange. It is probably my favorite color now. (Yes this is strange because I spent the first half of my life hating orange.) But a little orange goes a long way. So I bought the plain little silver colored grommets and dipped them in orange tinted Plasti-Dip. Easy-peasy. I have all kinds of other ideas for this weird but cool hardware store crafting find.

Heather Ross mendocino pacific orange blue navy shower curtain

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One night the girl asked me how paper is made. Being a graphic designer, I actually learned about this in school and was able to give her a pretty thorough explanation which she was surprisingly attentive to. She then asked if we could make paper at home. Hmmm . . . Well, we can’t start with wood pulp and cotton or linen rags but we can recycle used paper into new paper. Many people don’t know this but the paper industry has been recycling it’s own waste since long before it was environmentally fashionable.

So the next day I started scouring the house for materials. I built a mold and deckle from some half inch wood trim and old window screen left over from other projects. I made it a little bigger than a half sheet of paper.

tools and supplies to build mold and deckle for papermaking stapling the screen on the frame to make paper hand made mould and deckle for making paper

The kids bring home so many papers from school and I keep anything that is blank on one side in a scrap pile with the other art supplies. We went through a pile of mostly copier paper and pulled out all the pink sheets we could find. The girl and a friend tore up the paper into one inch size pieces, dropping them into a bucket of water which we allowed to sit out overnight to soften the paper so that it would be easier for my blender to chop up. The blender chopped up the pieces into slurry that looked rather like a pink milkshake. With the occasional piece of grass. . .

torn up used copier paper soaking in water for papermaking tear up scrap paper and shred in the blender to make your own paper pink copier paper turned into slurry to make handmade paper

I poured the slurry into a rectangular plastic bin several inches larger than the mold and added water to make the slurry thinner. I put the mould on top of the deckle and the kids took turns slipping it into the water and watching the bits of fibers swirl around and settle onto the screen as they pulled it back up. After gently removing the mold, I laid a piece of felt on the wet paper, gently patted it to squeeze some water out, and then tipped the whole thing upside down onto a flat surface. I tapped the deckle a bit to get the paper to separate and left each sheet to dry in the sun. Wool felt would probably work better since it’s much more absorbent but I used cheap acrylic felt and it seemed to work fine. I admit to getting impatient and ironing the paper to dry the pieces. This also helped flatten the paper. When the paper is dry it will peel off the felt quite easily.

making paper by hand mould and deckle with freshly pulled wet paper handmade new piece of handmade paper still wet

making handmade paper sheets of handmade paper drying in the sun IMG_0277

Our finished papers.
The girl proudly took several pieces to her teacher to show her exactly what we had done with her homework pages!

sheets of handmade pink paper recycled from used copier paper scraps

Click any of the thumbnails to view a larger picture. I included a lot of pictures because there were some parts of the process that I had a hard time finding clear pictures of. We are currently making a batch of blue paper. I’m going to count how many pieces we can make to see what the ratio is of old paper to new paper.

Here is a link that gives much more detailed instructions than mine as well as some interesting history about papermaking.

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I guess they missed me. : )

A few pictures of things we’ve done over the last few months.

For Valentine’s Day we made corner bookmarks like this lighthouse one I made for our dear neighbor E. I cut 2.5 inch corners off of envelopes (red ones left over from Christmas cards were especially useful) and then attached 2 inch triangles of a different color or patterned paper to each side. The kids had fun mixing up colors and decorating with stamps, stickers and cut-outs from magazines and catalogs. We found the nursery/seed catalogs and the quilting fabric catalogs to be gold mines for this activity. You can find instructions for a similar corner page marker here at Tally’s Treasury.

lighthouse collage corner page marker bookmark

Then we stuck the bookmarks into these Valentine cards. I think I made up this sentiment myself, but it’s possible I heard it somewhere. In any case I found some free clip art online and made this card. I printed out enough copies for all the students in both of the kids classes and they colored and decorated as desired, making each one special for the recipient.

all occasion card for readers books world bookmark earth

I’m including links to the printable pdf version here if you’d like to use it, just print on cardstock or regular paper, fold in half and in half again. original Valentine’s Card. And the write-your-own-occasion card pictured above.

knitting a tapered skinny scarf with novelty yarn

I knit several skinny scarves out of novelty yarn. This is the sort of yarn that looks pretty or fun but you really don’t know what to do with, or at least I don’t. But I finally figured something out that is easy to make and looks good. With extra large needles, I knit loose garter stitch scarves about 3″ wide with a single ball of novelty yarn, about 75 yards, for a long accessory scarf that can wrap around the neck and hang down fashionably. These won’t keep you warm at all but they are fun to wear. Rather than making a blunt end I figured out how to increase and decrease to make tapered ends that give a little extra finishing touch. My construction notes are on my project page in Ravelry.

hand knit skinny scarf with tapered ends novelty yarn

rock candy crystals homemade kitchen science

The subject of gems and crystals came up and on the way to explaining how crystals grow, I decided we needed to do an experiment. This falls under the category of what I call kitchen science—real experiments you can do with stuff you already have around the house. Even though I know I’ve done this before, it took two tries to produce a sugar solution that grew several of these rock candy sticks. I used the instructions from About.com. Our crystals did not retain either the flavoring or coloring that we added to the solution. Nobody complained when it came time to eat them.

smashed pansy bookmark flower ink

I cannot remember why we did this but we had fun. The girl and I picked pansies out of the garden to make some smashed flower art. The colored juices from the plant are transferred to soft paper by force. I used some bookmark sized pieces of heavy paper left over from another project. We used a regular hammer, sandwiching the flower face down on the paper between a piece of paper towel on top and wax paper on the bottom, on top of a scrap piece of wood. I cut the green fleshy calyx off the pansy with sharp scissors after positioning it on the paper. You could use this technique to make cards, placecards for a summer meal, or even art to frame. Get more details on how to make prints from botanicals from this great post by Wendy of Build/Craft/Make/Bake. Too bad I read her post after we did this project but there is plenty of summer and plenty of blooms yet to try!

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I realize it has been a long time since I last posted. An obvious reason is my preoccupation with a certain little boy. It’s hard to craft or cook with one hand while bouncing up and down. There have also been times when we have been crafting but I haven’t taken step-by-step pictures because that does take a bit more time. Having two children who really enjoy “making” means that most of my projects are done with their “help”. And sometimes it’s not worth interrupting the rhythm of their creativity just because I might want to post the results to my blog.

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This seems like a good time to remember why I keep this blog. This is mainly a personal record of the things I make with my hands. I used to make thing and then give them away without having taken pictures or adequate notes. Because I rarely follow instructions, I found it difficult to reproduce my creations, or even to remember even vaguely what I had done. So now I try to make a record of most projects. I also try to add links to references or pictures I might have found inspirational or helpful. I often refer to my own blog to remind myself how to do something I’ve done before, or to get started on a new project with roots in a previous project.

I’ve made this journal public because sometimes people ask me how I made something or when or why and it’s nice to have all my notes in one place to refer to or even pass on a link to a post. Because the blog is mainly for my own use, my pictures are not perfect, descriptions may be sketchy on one project, lengthier on another. Some projects may include patterns or tutorials, others may just be a photo reminder. Please feel free to e-mail me if you have questions about something in particular. I do try to answer all e-mails and I do like to provide more information when I have the time and know there is interest. I am constantly surprised and touched that people are interested in my creative process. And I am always happy to hear that you are motivated by a blog post to try something new yourself. Thank you all for reading and thanks especially to those who take the time to leave me a note!

Some pictures of the yard in spring bloom—the perfect sprig of lilac flowers, a chive blossom complete with spider silk lines, Solomon’s seal bending over the hostas on the north wall.

lilac in bloom chive flower edible

Solomons seal and variegated hosta foundation planting

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I’ve been working pretty hard on a rather important project for a while now. It’s more than halfway along but it will still be a few months before it’s finished. I don’t have much to show for it just yet but here’s a hint:

tie dye shirts and baby onesie

left to right: for Dad, big brother, little brother due 12/5.

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scrunch painted paper washable markers

This is a super easy project for rainy or sunny days. This can be done by any kid old enough to grab a washable marker! (And not immediately stick it in the mouth.) It’s fast so you can work with several kids at the same time and each can do several pieces and experiment with different techniques and colors.

First scrunch a piece of tissue paper into a ball. (You can experiment with other kinds of white paper, we actually used exam table paper in these pictures. Tracing paper works well too especially for younger kids, because it doesn’t tear as easily as tissue paper.)

Pick out a few colors of washable marker and scribble all over the ball, getting as much color on the outside and in the cracks as possible.

scrunch painting tissue paper

Carefully open your wadded paper ball and smooth it out with your hands. See how the color is now randomly distributed all over the paper? Scrunch it up again and color again using the same colors.

tie dye paper

Open, scrunch and color again. About three times gives a good amount of color. (You can also color the whole ball with one color per scrunching.)

wadded paper dyed with washable markers

You can stop at this point and use a warm iron to flatten out your paper. A smaller piece can simply be glued to a little larger piece of contrast color paper and hung as art. A larger piece can be used as wrapping paper or cut up for other projects. Laminate it and cover a book or a journal.

spray water on scrunch painted paper washable markers

If you want to go one step further . . . take your flattened out paper outside. If it’s raining you can experiment with holding it flat on a cookie sheet for a few seconds or holding it vertically and see what happens to the colors! Don’t keep it out too long or your colors will run away in the rain! Bring it inside to dry. If it’s a sunny day, use a spray bottle filled with plain water to squirt your paper, put some rocks in the corners and let it dry in the sun. This project even works in the snow! Lay your artwork on a cookie sheet and let fat flakes fall on it for a few minutes or throw a loosely packed snow ball and then shake off the excess snow. Water softens the colors for a different look, as seen in the first photo above taken before ironing flat.

Enjoy!

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This project is on the list, unlike some other things I’ve been doing lately, but I admit it is pretty far down the list. Why are those projects farther down the list so much more enticing?

Anyway, we have a lot to do this weekend and I decided I could accomplish one thing by doing the dump/recycle run this morning. Since it was sunny out (yay!) I drove up to the junk wood piles and the girl and I scouted for usable pieces. I was mainly looking for 1x4s so I can construct a roof frame for the top of the slide tower which the kids refer to as the treehouse.

wooden swingset slide tower treehouse fort

Since the swingset is nicely weathered, it seems silly to buy new wood, especially when there is perfectly good salvaged wood available for the hunting. I did find some suitable 1x4s, the girl found quite a few pieces for building a “castle”, and we also found a few other interesting pieces.

salvaged wood pieces

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One of the pieces I found was just the right size to make a counter to attach to the posts under the fort. We also found a turned post long enough to cut in half to make legs. It’s not exactly level but it is sturdy. The girl found some large painted fruit cutouts and we brought those along. After arriving home we had just enough time before lunch to cut and install some support pieces and get the counter into place.

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I’m sure it will serve nicely as an ice cream counter/farm stand/whatever-the-kids-dream-up. The roof frame will have to wait, the threat of gray skies and the need to do some math have driven me indoors for now.

salvaged wood counter and painted wood fruit on swingset slide fort treehouse

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This is actually from a few weeks ago but I hadn’t gotten around to posting it. The girl likes to work with polymer clay on occasion. Usually I’m pretty strict about making a sketch first, otherwise she is apt to just cut it up into pieces and well, it’s not clay-dough. This time I didn’t ask her to sketch but we did discuss what she wanted to make. I helped make sure things were sturdy and fairly well attached but she did most of the work. I was amused to watch her put the legs on her cat just the same way she draws them, in a straight row instead of two by two!

5 year old's drawing of animal with long tail

The pet, as she referred to the cat she made.

polymer clay cat kid art child

And the pet owner, as she referred to the girl with blue hair. I made the feet so she would stand up on her own like the cat.

polymer clay cat and girl by five year old

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The boy’s class had an Arctic Celebration this evening complete with readers’ theater, songs, artwork, games and snacks, and surprise—snow—so appropriate to the theme and late March in Maine.

handmade cookie cutter polar bear

I had volunteered to bring something baked and at the last minute (not a surprise) I decided that I just had to make polar bear shaped shortbread. Had to. A piece of aluminum roof flashing, a pair of pliers and a few minutes of careful bending yielded a serviceable cookie cutter in a graphically simple shape of a polar bear reminiscent of Inuit sculpture. The boy helped me make the simple shortbread dough and we had just enough time to bake the bears before heading off through the snow to see his classmates and their families at the school.

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Rosalina is a character from Super Mario Galaxy, a game for the Wii, which builds on the story of the long running Nintendo video game characters—plumber brothers, Mario and Luigi. She is the benevolent caretaker of baby stars called lumas. I previously made a few lumas out of felt for the kids.

The girl recently requested a Rosalina dress for her Groovy Girl doll, Sarah. Since she plays with Sarah quite a lot, I decided it was worth doing. I had several fabric choices in my stash and could have gone with a dressier velvet that wasn’t quite the right shade of blue or a satin that would have looked good but would have been very difficult to work with on such a small scale. I decided to use an outgrown tee shirt in the right color for ease of sewing and dressing the doll. Since I’ve made a few other dresses for this doll, it wasn’t too hard to draft a pattern that suggests the general look of Rosalina’s dress. I used a thinner white cotton knit for the trim, using the inherent trait of knit fabric to roll over in my favor. It’s a bit rough but I spent about as much time as I’m willing to spend on a doll dress. Done is better than perfect.

Groovy girl soft fabric doll dressed as Rosalina from Super Mario Galaxy hand sewn handmade Rosalina dress Super Mario Galaxy

The star brooch and the crown are made from Sculpey molded over a paper skeleton, baked and brushed with silver paint and decorated with plastic jewels. I had intended to make those accessories out of fabric as well but I couldn’t find anything remotely suitable. Hopefully the paper skeleton inside the polymer clay accessories will give them some chance of survival.

hand made Sculpey polymer clay crown and brooch for Rosalina Super Mario Galaxy

Not that I’m particularly a fan myself, but I suppose this could be considered fan art. Or fan craft. Or something like that.

And yes, Sarah has big feet. Maybe I should have made the dress a little longer.

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leather doll shoes made by hand Liv fashion doll Barbie Blythe

I make shoes. With no cobblering tools or training other than what I’ve been able to find in a few obscure books. That probably qualifies me as insane right there. In the past I have made several pairs of shoes for myself on homemade lasts, and lots of baby shoes. Now I’ve made doll shoes. Actually these aren’t the first doll shoes but these are the first that are actually made of leather and made with fairly traditional shoemaking techniques. I won’t bore you with the details. Alexia, is my daughter’s Liv fashion doll. Along with her rather garish outfit, she arrived with plastic boots. So although I have yet to make her any new clothes, I suddenly decided to make her new shoes today. Her feet are about an inch long, I don’t know exactly because I didn’t measure anything. These were a very simple pair of slip-ons made of thin suede and leather scraps leftover from baby shoes and a tiny scrap of floral cotton for the insole. I actually did not do any sewing, I used fusible web to construct these. My intention was to sew after but it doesn’t seem necessary. We’ll see how they hold up.

slip on leather doll shoes handmade

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The boy recently told me that he wanted to be a “builder” when he grew up, just like me. He then looked at his dad thoughtfully and said encouragingly, “You can be a builder when you grow up too Dad.” Poor Dad. I explained that Daddy builds things too but you can’t always see them.

A lego steampunk land-airship with boiler in the back.

lego boat with wheels

A collaborative Sculpey white tailed deer mostly done by the girl, with a little help from her brother and me. This was probably inspired by a recent trip to L.L. Bean where they have lots of native-to-Maine animal taxidermy on display. The plastic rhinestone eyes are the really old kind that had to be set with prongs. It didn’t occur to me that they might be heat sensitive, oops. Luckily the time in the oven only caused them to become less shiny and softer looking, a happy accident.

Sculpey deer with blue rhinestone eyes

They make so many things that I don’t always get pictures of everything but these were two things they particularly asked me to photograph. They set the scene themselves with the shiny snowflake papered box which they also made out of leftover Christmas wrapping.

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As always I have my eyes open everywhere I go for the supplies needed to carry out my random inspirations. Sometimes I don’t even know what to call what I’m looking for so how will I know where I might find it? The hardware store is one of my favorite places to find crafty supplies.

This week I was surprised to find an incredible array of beads, feathers, colorful fibers, threads and wire in a most unlikely place, the fishing department of L.L. Bean. Although their website, or my purchase, does not show the amazing variety I saw in the store, Google images can provide you a taste of what’s available in the world of fly-tying supplies. If you are a beader, spinner, scrapbooker or almost any kind of crafter, check out your local fly-tying supply shop, you’ll find a treasure trove of new inspirations you’ve never seen in your regular craft store.

feathers for tying flies

And this one I did find at the hardware store. Ultra thin transparent velcro. I’ve been looking for it at craft and sewing suppliers because I want to use it for closures on doll clothing. Cost with shipping for a small amount online would be around $10, a little steep for something I’m not sure is exactly what I need. $2.xx at the hardware store? Definitely worth a try!

ultra thin transparent velcro hook and loop clear

And yes, I do have projects in mind for both of these finds.

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homemade ice lanterns

I’m not sure when I started making ice lanterns. I don’t remember doing this as a child, but I don’t think I waited until we moved to Maine either, and I’m sure I couldn’t have accomplished this in Oklahoma. In any case, it’s fun and easy if you live somewhere cold enough that the temperatures stay around or below freezing for days at a time so you can admire your handiwork. These are fun to make for lighting your walk or deck for winter parties as well.

Ruth from Knitting on Impulse asked about winter traditions involving the celebration of light a while back on her blog. I was reminded that I hadn’t made these in a few years. I think the girl and I did build a tiny igloo with a candle in it two winters ago but I think it snowed again before I could get a good picture. When a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound if no-one is there to take a picture of it? (See? random.)

Anyway, I happened to have some smaller ice lanterns in the freezer waiting for the outside temperatures to cooperate at the time. These round ones were made outside in a 5 gallon bucket. Ice will form first on the surface of the water and the sides of the bucket. Once these edges get thick enough you will be able to carefully turn the bucket over, let the ice slide out and the unfrozen inside can simply be poured out. The top will be the thickest part and becomes the base of the lantern. I’m not a good scientist so I can’t give you any data on times or temperatures, etc. The temperature of the water to begin with, the size of the vessel and the temperature outside or in your freezer will all contribute to how clear or not clear the ice is. I don’t think it matters. One of these froze enough overnight I think, the other one was out all day and night. The smaller milk carton size will freeze in several hours. In fact, I have an unfortunate habit of forgetting to check on them and ending up with a solid block of ice instead. You can use those as candle bases in the bigger lanterns. A tea light will burn for several hours protected from the wind. The ice magnifies and fractures the tiny light in an earnestly wistful way. A nice warmth to come home to when the dark descends so quickly on winter days.

hand made ice lanterns 5 gallon bucket tea light

Too bad these are now buried under in a foot of new snow! I wonder if I should dig them out or just make new ones?

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