Mother’s Day Candle’s: Time of Birth 05.12.13

Idea:

What do you get for a mom that has closets and cabinets full of stuff?  Well, fortunately, mom is super crafty and appreciates hand made sentiments and burns candle’s all the time.

Inspiration:

I’ve had Krafty Pearl’s Spooky Candles bookmarked for a long time.  I’m not one to make much for myself but with an occasion like mother’s day I couldn’t resist executing this project.  Thank’s P for the inspiration!

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Interesting Points:

If you’re like me and work with graphics editing, you’re more likely to have something to print rather than stamp.  Here’s a tip I found online for how to print on tissue paper using an Inkjet printer.  It worked really well!

Birthday Card: Color and Bind Your Birthday Bright 03.23.13

Idea:

After a two year hiatus, I present to you a birthday card project. This year, D’s nieces turn 8. What do 8 year olds like?

Inspiration:

During one of my bloghops to How about Orange, the typography-lover in me gravitated to her A good gallery of free fonts post. I found these two lovely fonts, Mosaic Leaf and Drop Type, which reminded me of coloring book pages. Almost 100% in tune to what I loved as a little girl, one of his nieces loves coloring in rainbow so it only made sense to me to make them a coloring book birthday card.

As an afterthought after I completed the design and production of the front cover, greeting page and coloring pages for this project, I realized I hadn’t thought about how I was assembling the pages. I reverted back to my old projects and narrowed it down to stitch binding or paper binding. I decided on stitch binding after discovering the wonderful art of Japanese Stab Binding.

Ingredients:

The Essentials

1. Graphic Design Software – Adobe Illustrator is my software of choice
2. Color Printer
3. Paper cutter (or box cutter and cutting mat)

Paper

1. White Cardstock
2. White Print Paper
3. Kraft Cardstock

Project Specific Supplies

1. Mosaic Leaf Font
2. JL Hidden Vines Font – As much as I loved Drop Type, the font unfortunately didn’t have numbers so this was the next best thing
3. Random Selection Illustrator Script
4. Thread
5. Needle
6. Awl (or a nail and a hammer)
7. Paper clips (or clothes pins)

Instructions:

The card comprised of 4 parts:

1. Coloring pages
2. Front Cover
3. Greeting Page
4. Binding

Colored Pages

For the coloring pages, each page was printed with a number from 1-8, and the font was hollowed out to its outlines (it’s a coloring book after all). I used Illustrator to make my 5″x7″ pages:

1. Create 4 artboards
2. On each artboard, draw 2 5″x7″ rectangle. These will serve as outlines for your print and cut.
3. Within the rectangles, using your patterned typeface at a font size of ~400 pt, type a number
4. Center each number to each of the rectangles
5. Select all numbers and expand the font
6. Reverse the coloring so that there is no fill color and only a line color

Front Cover

Using the same patterned font, I typed my cover message and made it a mosaic of colors.

1. Create an artboard
2. Draw a 5″x7″ rectangle
3. Within the rectangle, using your patterned typeface, type your message
4. Select the message and expand the font
5. Hide all the other layers in the project and only display the newly typed message
6. Select all paths of the message and ensure it is completely ungrouped and all compound paths are released
7. Select the Random Selection Script, enter a percentage and change the color of the selection
8. Select one of the paths of the original color
9. Select all with the same fill color
10. Repeat steps 7-9 until you have the desired mosaic of colors. With each repeat of the step, be sure the increase your percentage since your pool of paths is decreasing

Greeting Page

I wanted the greeting page to look a little like a subway sign. I used this wedding monogram as an inspiration. There isn’t much instruction here. Just type and adjust accordingly!

Binding

1. Find a pattern you like (Using sources like Becca Making Faces)
2. Assemble your coloring book (front cover, greeting pages, coloring pages and a sturdy back cover)
3. Paper clip your coloring book together
4. Stab (here is where the Awl or Hammer / Nail come in)
5. Bind

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Interesting Points:

I have an amusing story about the Awl. When I googled ‘Japanese Stab Binding’, one of the essential tools called for was an Awl. I had to google ‘Awl’ but once I saw a picture of one, I was pretty sure I saw one long ago in my dad’s old tool box but I never knew it’s name. At this time I’d like to blame the namelessness of the tool to the fact that I’m a 2nd gen Asian with parents that called an Awl the ‘big needle’ or whatever we felt described the tool. I took a chance and asked D if he had one in his tool box. Here’s how the dialog went:

M: ‘Would you happen to have an awl in your tool kit?’ (I wondered if I pronounced it right and if I did, whether he even knew what I was talking about)

D: ‘No. What are you trying to doing?’

M: ‘Stab binding.’ (I thought, ‘he’s going to ask what stab binding is next, isn’t he?’)

D: ‘Why don’t you use a nail and a hammer?’

The damn guy knew what an Awl was and was able to deduce what stab binding is! Well color me shock red! So, because of his fine contribution to my crafting world, this post is dedicated to him.

TOMS Ribbon Box 02.10.13

Idea & Inspiration:

As you may know by now, I find it very hard to throw things away. It’s a characteristic I’ve inherited from my mother. Perhaps deep down it’s the feeling that if I throw it away now, who’s to say I will not need it again or how can I assume I can even obtain it (financially, etc) again in the future? Thus, a hoarder is born.
I received a pair of TOMS for Christmas this year and if you have a pair you might have noticed the sleek design of their box. It was this design that made it so hard for me to throw the box away. Just as I was deconstructing it to put in the recycling bin, It occurred to me that it was the perfect size to store ribbon. I compared it to the Martha Stewart ribbon boxes that Krafty Pearl gave me and what do you know … It was almost perfect!

Instructions:
Copying is the highest form of flattery right? Well, I cracked Martha Stewart’s box open and came up with my own DIY design based on MS’s box. It’s really amazing what you can make with household items you would normally think to throw away.
I outfitted the box with a slit to feed the ribbon through. To make the rod, I grabbed a pants hanger from the dry cleaner, took only the paper part and cut it down to the width of the box. Finally, the supports for the rod can be made using very thick card stock or any shoe box lying around. I cut the card stock/shoe box to fit within the box and cut slits for the rod support. It took about 4 sheets per side. As you cut 1/2 the batch remember that they need to be opposite.

Ingredients:

• TOMS Shoe box
• dry cleaners pants hanger rod
• old shoe box or thick card stock

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Ornaments & Decor: Autumn Harvest 12.23.12

OneFour of the beauties of living in NY are the seasons. This summer I moved to the suburbs and grew a greater appreciation for the seasons. Summer gave me the gift of a vegetable garden. Autumn has given me the gift of foliage. With Winter here, I’m anxiously awaiting Christmas, all the while gathering the autumn harvest to use as decorations for my 9′ Christmas Tree.

Idea:
Nowadays, 90% of my ideas stem from Pinterest. My Christmas decorations were no exception. What do you find when you google ‘DIY Christmas Mantle’? Acorns, Twigs and Pine Cones. So, I thought, why pay $4.99 for a bag of 10 pine cones at Michael’s when I can walk around the neighborhood (in my case, I asked my coworkers who have plenty of oak and pine trees in their yard) and get them for free?

Instructions:

• Harvest pine cones
• Prepare them for crafts by drying acorns and drying pine cones
• Decorate! I spray painted using Krylons metallic colors and glitterified my pine cones using the metallic fine glitter series of recollections glitter.

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Tree skirt: Sew and No-Sew Ruffles 12.5.12

Idea:

It’s our first Christmas in the house and I wanted to make sure it felt like Christmas come December 1st.  To take full advantage of our cathedral ceilings, we went out and bought a 9′ tree.  But, by the time we bought the tree, we were $178 in the Christmas hole and spending anything more wasn’t something I was looking forward to.  Believe it or not, one of the most expensive things to outfit the tree is the tree skirt.  The designs are also pretty limited.  So, I set off to Pinterest to find DIY tree skirts.

Inspiration:

During my 2008 volunteer trip to Costa Rica with Cross Cultural Solutions, I purchased a burlap sack from a Coffee Farm that we visited.  I was tempted to use the burlap sack as a tree skirt but Pinterest led me to The Johnston’s DIY No Sew Ruffle Christmas Tree Skirt and I fell in love with the idea of a muslin ruffle tree skirt instead.

Ingredients:

- 2-3 yards of 36 inch muslin (~$1 / yard @ Joann’s with their sale on muslin and a 50% off coupon)

- 1 inexpensive tree skirt ($1 at the dollar store)

- Hot glue gun or sewing machine

Images:

Interesting Points:

1. Sewing machine is the way to go.  Mine is 1/2 glue gunned and 1/2 sewn (post-purchase of the Singer 160th Anniversary machine)
2. I want a little more volume so maybe next year I’ll make a second tree skirt to place one skirt under one half of the tree and the other skirt on the other half.

Light Fixture: DIY Yarn Pendant 08.20.12

Idea:

D was not fond of the brass light fixtures in the bedrooms and hall. Frankly, neither was I. The difference between him and I is I am a lot more passive about replacing things that are clean and still work perfectly fine. Obviously he won because I’m posting about the replacement of the office (3rd bedroom) fixture.

Inspiration:

Light fixture shopping is NOT easy! I spent countless hours searching in stores and online for the right light fixture for each room. I scored fixtures for bedroom 1 and 2 and the hallway but by the time it came to shopping for a fixture for the office, I was pooped and sick of spending money. The Random Light was the only fixture I liked for the office but I couldn’t get myself to spend the money. Thank goodness it was so easy to DIY! I found many tutorials by googling ‘yarn pendant’ but MadeByGirl explained it best.

Interesting Points:

• Use a pendant kit rather than making your own fixture. I went with the Westinghouse pendant kit which comes in all types of finishes.
• Use a beachball as your mold. A balloon is not a perfect sphere and is difficult to deflate slowly and a toy ball is too difficult to extract.
• Apply Vaseline to the ball to reduce stickiness between the yarn and the ball.
• Mark a hole where the pendant kit will be inserted but, more importantly, mark a hole either at the bottom of the yarn pendant or off to the side of the first hole (much like the random light) to give yourself room to change the bulb. I made the mistake of not having a second hole. I had to move the yarn at the bottom of the fixture in order to stick my hand in, attach the yarn pendant to the pendant kit and, also to insert the bulb. Thank goodness for LED bulbs because I will not need to touch that pendant for a long time!
• Do all work over a drop cloth. This project can get messy.
• Soak the yarn in the stiffener (preferably in a bowl) and then as you wrap the soaked yarn around the ball, drag over the bowl of stiffener one last time. Do this rather than wrapping the ball first and applying the stiffener to the ball. This will reduce the amount of glue ‘webbing’ between the loops of yarn and ensures maximum stiffness of the yarn.
• Deflate slowly, lookout for pieces of yarn that might have stuck to the ball and detach.

Ingredients:

• Westinghouse Mini Pendant Kit
• Stiffy Ribbon Stiffener
• Beach Ball
• LED bulb
• PVC old-work ceiling box
• yarn
• latex gloves
• drop cloth

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Tagging Trash/Recycling Bins 08.7.12

Idea & Inspiration:
I picked up two new recycling pails from the county last month and they’ve been patiently waiting to get tagged with my address.

Ingredients:
I couldn’t bear to go at it free hand with a paint brush and I couldn’t justify buying stencils since technically, MY Silhouette SD is a stencil maker. Instead of using expensive stencil paper, I decided to cut one of my favorite fonts (Engravers) on transparency film. I was doing this after work one night and due to my rule against going into the garage after dark, I opted for a sharpie rather than spray paint.

Interesting Points:

• Make one stencil, cut out each letter, position and hold together with masking tape and reuse!
• To keep the middle for letters like ‘P’, ‘O’, etc, make a cross using thin thread and tape down using masking tape.

The results make me so thrilled about taking out the trash and recyclables!

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