Last night I was testing out my newly made light box, which, once I get the hang of it will come in handy. I did, long ago take a photography class, but that was before digital cameras. (Whoa, I’m really dating myself!) So I have a decent understanding, but digital photography is a bit different ball game. With 35mm, it is all manual, and once you know the basics you can go from there. But with digital, you must read through the manual and find out what all the buttons do, and what setting to put the camera on, etc…
The first set of photos I took, were o.k., but not great, I thought they needed more light. That’s when my husband stepped in, found the manual, and started playing around even more. I’m not sure if it’s a personality thing or a gender thing, but he is much more of a tinkerer than I am. Anyway, we ended up with some photos that are pretty good for beginners. He also gave me a new nick name, hence the title of this post, which made me laugh:)
The top photo is one of the Valentine’s I made this year. The heart shaped cards and envelopes are from Paper Source, I love their products and couldn’t resist the color combination, so, of course I had to make Valentines this year. The cards come blank, so I drew the flower and then added the gold bow. Simple and elegant. And the bottom photo are swatches of a couple of my print designs.
I’m looking forward to playing around a bit more with my new tool and hopefully figuring out my camera;)
I’m very proud and excited to introduce you all to my latest iPad cases! They have been a true labor of love and a few steps closer to my bigger dreams of printing textiles. The linings have been hand block printed by me using custom mixed inks. I will have these up on my shops soon, but feel free to contact me if you are interested. They are $45.00. And as always, I love to take custom orders!
I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day, mainly because I do not subscribe to cheesy, unauthentic romance. In fact when my husband and I were getting to know each other I very clearly informed him, he was never to buy me a stuffed animal, EVER. He will also never buy me any mass produced heart shaped jewelry….
But with that said, it doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun with it. Especially since I’ve had kids, every holiday is fun and I wouldn’t take that away from them. I also can’t pass up an opportunity to be creative. And that is where these heart garlands come in. I learned how to make these as a kid, and remembered them when I needed to come up with some seasonally appropriate decorations, but didn’t want to fill the windows with pink, red, and lace.
Here’s what you’ll need:
-Tissue paper in any color or colors
-medium weight paper to make pattern
-pencil
-white craft glue or glue sticks
-scissors
-mini or regular hole punch (optional)
-hole reinforcers (I think that’s what they’er called, also optional)
O.k., so these are super easy, and go very quickly. First thing to do is to create your pattern. This can be done by tracing a heart onto the medium weight paper or folding the paper in half and drawing a half heart on the fold and then cutting that out, then opening it up. Stack your tissue up, as many layers as you can cut through and then place the pattern on top and trace with a pencil. Cut out the hearts, as many or as few as you like, as long as it is an even number.
(A trick for cutting layers of tissue is to staple along the outside of the traced pattern. This way the tissue won’t shift around and the hearts will all come out even)
The next step is to start gluing. Take one heart and place it on your work surface, place a line of glue in the center of the heart, then lay another heart on top, on this heart you will place glue on the outer most edges,then place a heart on top of that one. And now just keep going, alternating from the center to the outside until you have the length you desire. Once all the hearts are glued let them dry throughly. (This is important because if you open it up too soon it will fall apart and you will have a sad mess.) When the garland is dry gently open it up. At this point you can punch holes on the end hearts for hanging and reinforce with those little hole reinforcers(you can find them at office supply stores). You can make these garlands with any symmetrical shape, which makes them very versatile. They are also a very inexpensive way to fill a lot of space.
Have fun!
I had intended to post this much sooner, put we had a doozy of a snow storm here which I was writing about below just before the power went out. So here it is, I hope it gives you a little break from the winter doldrums, and perhaps an idea to cheer the inside of your home bit:)
Here in the Pacific Northwest we don’t often get a snowy winter, and when we do it’s either a light dusting or doesn’t last more than a day or two. But this time we got well over a foot, and to top things off an ice storm and the Governor declaring a state of emergency. So what better time than now to share these spring windows with you. When I was rummaging through my photos and came across these I felt like I could breath a little.
These windows came about after we had gotten a shipment of paper bags that were glued shut, not very useful, or so I thought. I’m one of those people who have a hard time throwing things away, (although I have gotten much better, thanks to all the times I’ve moved!) I know, or I think I know that somehow there is a use for things,sometime down the road. This time I’m so glad I didn’t throw them out! I patterned these garlands from inexpensive silk flower leis. I used a flower cookie cutter as my pattern and traced them onto the unusable bags and bright colored tissue paper. Then I cut up some straws and strung them onto fishing line, and hung them at different intervals in the windows.
After looking at them again I thought they would be a fun project to decorate for a shower or kids birthday party. They would be very pretty in all one color too. Oh, and of course you don’t have to use paper bags. Any paper would do, light weight paper will give a more delicate effect, but heavy weight paper would also be nice.
Have fun, and remember spring is almost here!!!
While we had our retail store I had a lot of fun coming up with display ideas for our windows. They were particularlly challenging because they were big and long. The windows wrapped around the store, without much space for creating traditional displays. So I thought I would start sharing some of the ideas I came up with. They are all simple, and use inexpensive and recycled materials. And can be adapted for most any season or space, even at home.
Here is the first one I would like to share. It was a project I designed for a fall window display, I wanted to stay away from the typical leaves and pumpkins. Not because I don’t like the typical fall symbols (it is my favorite time of year), but because I had to cover so much space I needed something that wasn’t going to take me forever to put up, or cost me an arm and leg. I love going back to childhood projects, and I remembered making “stained glass windows” from tissue paper and black construction paper. I took that idea and made it bigger.
For my materials. I used brown butcher paper, and fade proof tissue paper. I wanted them to fill the window space so I cut the butcher paper to fit the height of the window, I cut two pieces for each panel. The next thing I did was to lay the two pieces of paper on top of one another and secure to my surface with low tack masking tape. That way the big pieces of paper wouldn’t move around while I was cutting. Then I started laying out my design, I went with a random pattern using the width of a yard stick to measure out my borders.
After I had the design cut out, I lifted off the top layer, then started gluing the tissue paper down. After the tissue was glued down I placed the top piece back on, being careful to line it up correctly. Then I used double sided tape to secure the top to the bottom.
These windows turned out to be one of my favorite, and were so simple and fun to create. I’m glad to share them!
