Thing-a-day.com

Well, it’s the last day and my last post so I decided to end it with another gift card holder adorned with three sparrows circling.  I choose the design because I wanted to do something with sparrows, but I wanted to do something different.  They’re circling because they’re imitating the famous recycling symbol with the three arrows.  They’re also a symbol of all that I’ve learned from thing-a-day, the most important lesson for me being the reuse of existing materials to create something brand new and seeking out already recycled materials for craft.  For example, the back of the gift card holder is made of ecospun felt made from recycled plastic bottles. I never would have noticed or sought out using this type of material had it not been for my experiences this month and the other posts from others who’ve crafted with recycled materials. I’m inspired and viewing the world with new eyes. As I look at something I might have simply tossed away, my mind flurries with ideas of ways to reuse it.

Thing-a-day changed my life for the better. I’m glad I got to experience it with all of you. I’ve learned so much everyday. So many posts, so many ideas, and everyone is inspiring

I’m even planning on opening a shop on etsy in late March. Hope to see more of you there.

My paper beads were dry enough today to paint so I decided to try a few experiments with the colors. I started three separate groups of them, two of which were metallic color paints (solid copper and silver splashes on a black background) and the other group being a Spring pink and green. The metallic ones seem to have taken on an outer space feel to them for some reason, and Adam said the pink and green beads reminded him of colored marshmallows from Lucky Charms or crunchberries from Captain Crunch.

I have this quilt from my grandmother-in-law that I keep meaning to hang, but I didn’t have any quilt hangers until the other day.  I stumbled upon some unfinished ones, and decided this morning that some black paint is just what they needed.

It’s not the best paint job, but people won’t be looking too close at them.  They’ll be looking at the quilt instead.

And speaking of painting, my paper beads are drying faster than expected.  I let them out for some sunshine in the afternoon and hopefully they’ll be dry enough by tomorrow to start painting.

I think I was looking at Craft’s blog when I stumbled upon a great tutorial on how to make beads from recycled newspaper. Today I decided to give that tutorial a try and I’m partially through the process. The beads take several days to dry so it’ll be a while before I can paint them, hopefully by the 29th! Yikes! Anyway, I boiled the water with the newspapers inside and waited for about an hour and then rolled the beads, which took about twenty minutes or so.

While I waited I made some more shrinky dinks:

a black cat with big yellow eyes (in honor of my ever-so-curious feline companion Phoebe who modeled for me), an owl and a friendly heart.

I got inspired by Jeremiah’s Indy pin cushion with the steel wool leg, and stole the idea of the steel wool portion of his project as filling for my smaller version of the red die pin cushion from earlier. I think it came out great for a first try.  I’ve never hand sewn anything this small before and I thought it would be easy, but it was a real challenge.  Because I was using the steel wool as the filling, and it being so small, I had to turn it inside out after I sewed the first wall of the sixth side so that whole other three sides are hand sewn on, and don’t look all that great.  The stitches bulge all over and I’m not sure why this is.  Maybe I need to use a different type of stitch?  I’d appreciate any tips/advice on sewing small items from others who’ve done it because I’d like to try this project again.

I’ve been inspired to do shrinky dinks after seeing all the cool things people are doing here at thing-a-day. thefabricator had fun with them yesterday, shinwa made a really cool keychain for her husband on the 19th, craftkeg made some neat buttons on the 18th, and before rakka made the awesome cheeto Britney and Bender Easter egg, there was the terribly cute shrinky dink cloud necklace, and of course, Lu’s been having a field day with it, the shrinky dink owl necklace being my favorite of her many creations. I had just had to join all the cool kids just to see what the fun is all about.

I used some number 6 plastic I had from some store bought food items, sanded them down, and drew/colored them in with pencils. I did the two square ones with a black sharpie just to see the difference in sharpness in color variation, both the squares being one inch squares to measure the shrinkage. Just to see how the metal pin would fair, I made the five pipped die side with the pin stuck inside per instructions on wee wonderfuls shrinky dink pins. They all came out pretty good for a first time, I think. In the future, I’m going to invest in a nice set of permanent markers to do these in. I think they’d come out looking more vivid instead of dulled like my robot kind of does.

On Thursday I tried to make a smurfette with embroidery, but my lack of skills and lack of sense of appropriate color coordination got the better of me (not to mention some sloppy stitching!).  Today I decided to go back at it, and I realized it was better to reduce the difficulty level to increase my chances of success. 

There may be a simpler way to do this, but I went and made three copies of the form I wanted to duplicate and cut out the parts that were white, yellow and blue separately and then cut them out of felt. I picked a hot pick background to make it jump out more, but I’m still uncertain if it’s the right color choice. The difference with today’s creation is that I had a bit more fun with seeing the shapes come together than I did on Thursday. Not sure why other than it took me less than an hour to complete. Overall, I think it looks a lot better than Thursday’s version, but the details in the face are lacking and hard to replicate by stitch, I think. I may still play around with it before finishing it. This is going to be the cover of my very first sewing case!

A few days ago I saw this tutorial on Crafty Chi’s blog about making rubber stamps from old corks.  I meant to do it then, but other crafts called to me and after seeing Kimberly Pye’s Korkinesse yesterday I was reminded that I hadn’t yet to try making the cork stamps.  So today I made one of a little bird.  

The image reverses when stamped, something I forgot. Luckily, I chose something that didn’t matter. Carving into the cork was easier than I anticipated, but it did make a mess and I had to be careful around the more narrow areas.  The cork surface isn’t the best for stamp.  It’s uneven, and the holes need to be filled in.  I’d have to get a matching ink pen to fill in the gaps, and as you can see I used a ballpoint pen on the one on the right and it shows.  This was definitely fun and inexpensive, using materials I already have so I think I’ll be playing around with these little guys. 

Oh well, not everything is a success.  I attempted a rather ambitious project today.  Ambitious for someone new to embroidery.  I tried to hand sew an image of Smurfette I copied by sewing directly onto the paper.I have no idea how long this project actually took me because I worked on it off and on in-between things all day, but it had to be more than an hour.  The stitches came out uneven especially in the barely visible white portions.  I had a hard time pulling the paper out, too, once it came to that point of the project.  The stitches looked good before I took the paper out, and I can’t help but wonder if pulling the paper out also affected those stitches.  Next time, trace paper or parchment and a much simpler design.  I also think the background was the biggest mistake.  I should have done white and stitched her dress, hat and shoes with black stitches.  D’oh!  Least I had fun doing the stitches.  That has to count for something.

I made more fabric covered tack pins.  These are really fun to make and I love trying to figure out how I want the fabric to look on the pin, and today I made myself a template to help me.  Basically, I took the larger size circle for the size of the fabric and traced it unto another cardboard piece of paper.  Then I positioned one of the buttons inside the circle as centered as possible and traced around it.  After that was done, I cut out that center circle so I could see where I wanted position it on my fabric instead of just blindly figuring things out.

These ones are made from a fabric with nesting doll designs on them.  I plan to use these in my home office when it’s ready. 

These ones are for Adam’s new office.  I picked geometric designs for him that have an 80’s kinda feel since he’s an 80’s kinda guy.  If only I had fabric with dice on it …   

Easy & fun crafts today.  I wanted to make some cool pins for my die pin cushion, and when I told Adam my idea for the ends to have dice on them, he offered his novelty dice for the project.  These dice are really small ones they sell every year at Kublacon, a gaming convention he goes to every year.  I glued them on to silk pins with super glue.  All it cost me was my patience. 

I also made a few fun tacks by following this tutorial on How About Orange. All the fabrics are leftovers. The googly eyes, those are new.  I added those to the project for a special someone.

Our home is filled with various forms of dice and dice related goods.  I’d be remiss in not including dice into my sewing so I decided to make my first pin cushion today inspired by a singular red and white die courtesy of Adam and Sam’s Town. I borrowed instructions from instructables rubik’s cube pin cushion idea and modified it to fit the die.  I used synthetic red and white felt, sewing the squares together and gluing the pips on afterwards (mostly out of fear of sewing the sides on incorrectly.) The die is stuffed with poly-fil, and in the end I think I spent about two hours working on it because I sewed it by hand and not by machine.  I think if I had done this with a machine I would have whipped it out in less than twenty minutes. 

 Out of everything I’ve made, this pin cushion is my favorite! It was the project I had the most fun with, and one where I can see my sewing and crafting skills improve the most. I think I might have to make another die so I have a pair. What fun!For those who like to embroider more, I found this die pin cushion pattern at Pussycat magazine.

 I made my first ever coin purse today.  It was an experience, one that I definitely learned a lot from.  For starters, I didn’t really have a pattern or any idea of what I was doing.  I wanted to see if I could make something with just the memory of what it’s supposed to look like and use what I had.  I cut out four squares and sewed them together, the outsides and the insides reversed so that when I reversed them they’d be correct.  That part wasn’t that hard, but because I was using vinyl, I didn’t want to poke holes through the vinyl to keep it all aligned.  I figured out too late that I should have used the binder clips I used yesterday to make the vinyl gift card.  Oh well, you live you learn.  The inner lining is a bit airy among other issues like not having a proper cover for the snaps I bought.  I ended up sewing a part of the flower material from the inner lining to cover it up.  In the end, I wouldn’t call this a success nor a failure.  Just a learning experience, one that was both fun and frustrating.

Today I took the gift card holder to a whole other level and made one out of vinyl I got out of the remnants pile at a fabric store I frequent and lined it with material from a thrift store shirt I found a few weeks ago and wanted to reuse the fabric for something.  I’m beginning to see this as a stepping stone to making an eventual wallet. 

Next time I make one with vinyl, I’ll find a different type of stitch because the blanket stitch doesn’t really work well with this kind of fabric.  I might also round the corners or fold the material inward for a much cleaner look.  But, hey, it’s all a learning process and this was fun! 

I had attempted to make a realistic stuffed animal bird, but while trying to cut out a pattern for it I came to the conclusion that this was waaaay above my skill level and would take longer than an hour to make.  After skulking, I worked on a variation of an old standby, the gift card holder.  Instead of using felt, I used pieces from a paper bag I had from the grocery store.  The idea came to me when I remembered a conversation I had with Adam the other day about making a little curve in the opening to make it easier to remove the gift card/business card and when I noticed the paperbag already had that kind of curve, I just incorporated that into my design,  I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to sew on paper, especially a paper bag, but it was super easy.  Now after making it, I can easily see this as a great craft idea for a rubber stamper.

not entirely new for me, but I’m low on time today.  I’m getting better with making boxes.  It only took me a few minutes to make the boxes, and the felt hearts were easy to cut out.  Least I did combine paper with felt!  Ideally, I would like to have a hand sewn heart inside, but not enough time.

I made a little love monster today for my sweetie.

Is it okay to be boring sometimes? 

Today I had planned to do a paper collage, but I couldn’t get the inspiration for it.  Paper just isn’t giving me the love today so I decided to go back to felt for one day and I made another gift card holder instead.

 I made the eyes using that french stitch and the eye on the left came out like it’s supposed to look!  I’m real happy about that.  It pays to be persistent and practice!

 No promises for tomorrow.

I tried at origami again today with some success.  My first attempt was to make an easy fish.  It was so not easy so I destroyed it by flattening it out and starting over with a Moorish fish, which came out better, but not entirely great.  Then I made a head fish, and that was the best of the three.  Lastly, I made a purse because I was hoping to do something today that didn’t completely fail and the purse seemed to come out okay.  I’m thinking maybe I should practice on the boxes before I move to more complicated designs next time. 

 Tomorrow, I try paper collage. 

On our way back from lunch, I spied a man sitting on a bench outside his house drinking a beer and wearing a gorilla mask.  It was the funniest sight, and I was caught without my camera.  By the time we got home, go the camera and drove back, Gorilla Man was nowhere to be found.  I took some random pics on our journey there and back home of people, and caught one of myself purely on accident in the passenger side mirror.  I wanted to take a picture of the person on the right corner, but in a moving car things shift and I spied myself instead. If you want to read more about my misadventures, check out my blog. 

I also tried 3d papercraft unsuccessfully.  The results of that you can see here.  Basically, what I realized is that I need to pick a design that’s a bit more solid and linear than something impressionistic.