Thing-a-day.com

Happy leap year, thing-a-dayers!

The Teafaerie practices hand stick at the Spin Temple dojo in Pai, Thailand. (flashback)

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Today I did a billion things, but most importantly, I finished the silhouette notecards for my daughter’s thank you notes! I printed them with a gocco. I think they came out quite smashing. The blue is very brilliant in the real world (I took this photo in the dark).

I also started my next project - a personalized shrinky dink bracelet for a dear friend.

My theme for this week is childhood. Shrinky Dinks were very popular when I was a tot, although I never really got into them because you didn’t draw your own pictures and I did not have much use for the little plastic figures. But I have seen the light. I was inspired by a project in Super Crafty. This book taught me how to make my own shrinky dink beads, but instead of using their images, I decided to use my own.

I have a friend who makes me and my family the coolest knit jewelry, toys, bibs, and dishcloths. (check out her stuff at reine.etsy.com). So I wanted to make her something.

She loves typography so I made shrinky dink “beads” with beautiful lettering. I printed out the images onto shrink plastic (the images came from Fancy Alphabets, then I colored in the pictures with colored pencils and cut 2 inch circles. I punched the holes and then baked! I then coated the front with clear nailpolish to preserve the color. Here are the “beads” as they lay out drying:

I hope to assemble the bracelet tomorrow.

Title: Radio ga-ga
Description: 1920s dancers in the style of an iPod ad
Inspiration: This day in history, the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast takes place in America (1924)

Today I began my final correspondence themed project. I did not know what I was going to do until this morning when it dawned on me.

My daughter, Gloria, receives many gifts from family and fans. Who can blame them - she is totally awesome. In return for that stuff, I send out thank you notes. I love stationary, but if anyone could use personalized stationary, it’s not me, it’s Gloria.

So I flipped through some clipart and found a little girl silhouette I liked, but it decidedly did not resemble my little girl’s silhouette. So I decided to make my own silhouette of Gloria. I cannot draw, so that was not an option. Nor was the traditional art form which would be like drawing, but with scissors. So I took a photo of her profile and began to futz with the image in Photoshop Elements, which I have no idea how to use. It is nothing short of a miracle that I designed the card in Elements. I may not have used a good approach but I succeeded.

I may use a pen to try and get rid of some of the pixel look to the image. If you have suggestions on how to do that in Elements itself, please leave a comment.

Finally I will use my gocco to print the cards - I have to xerox the picture before I continue because an inkjet printout is not suitable to make the gocco master. I have included the template I will use for my master. I am pretty stoked.