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December 2, 2008

HOW TO - Sunprint Calendar

Kelly Wilkinson of Make Grow Gather made this beautiful calendar from sunprint paper. This is an easy gift project for a kid to make, and I love the sunprint blue.

HOW TO - Bead Tree Holiday Decorations

Seattle's Fusion Beads has some great online tutorials - I really like these little bead tree decorations.

Here's a simple place-setting solution for upcoming holiday meals - make a place card pocket from this print-at-home free PDF from BlueArgyle. When you fold it up, you can hide a small surprise for your guests inside. After the holidays are over, I'm sure this would be great for large dinner parties of any celebratory nature.

HOW TO - Paper Pieced Hexagon Flower Ornament

Lovestitches has a tutorial up for making these sweet soft paper pieced hexagon flower ornaments. I'm thinking they are cute enough to have up year-round.

This Weekend: Glitter Workshop Craftacular & Flint City Handmade

There are a slew of events coming up this weekend all over the U.S. of A. which will afford you the opportunity to shop handmade, meet local artists and crafters, and maybe even win a CRAFT box set or two. Stay tuned all week long to find out about more!

The Glitter Workshop's Holiday Craftacular
Saturday, December 6th, 10am - 6pm
@ The Madison Masonic Center
301 Wisconsin Avenue.
Madison, WI 53703
www.glitterworkshop.com

Flint City Handmade
Saturday, December 6, 10am-4pm
@ The Lunch Studio & Brown Sugar Café
444 & 432 South Saginaw St.
Flint, MI 48502
$1 admission
www.myspace.com/flintcityhandmade

HOW TO - Mizuhiki Cord Knots

Zakka Life shows us how to get started using Mizuhiki cord with this gorgeous gift-wrap project.

The knot on the box is called an abalone knot. It's also referred to as awabi musubi, the Josephine knot, or a good luck knot. This is one of the easier mizuhiki knots to make.

HOW TO - Glittery Word Decorations

One Pretty Thing tips us off to Bienvenue's tutorial showing us how to create these shimmery word decorations from foamcore, glue, and glitter.

HOW TO - Felted Appliqué Skirt Revamp

Betz White revamped one of her old skirts using sweater scrap appliqués and embroidered details. Amazing how a few special touches can make old clothes seem new again.

Related:
• Felted Sweater Flowers with Betz White - CRAFT Video Podcast

Turkey Window Display

turkey window display

Jenelle from Sew Occupied made this enormous turkey softie and oven for a window display contest. She won 2nd place.

HOW TO - Philly Phanatic

fun fur philly fanatic

Joan De Lurio came up with this knitted Philly Phanatic during the 2008 World Series and is now offering the pattern for free. You can also find the pattern on Ravelry. Go Philly!

Luv-able + Hug-able 2 Opens December 4

Gallery Hanahou's Luv-able + Hug-able show is back for a second year, and will features works by a slew of today's most accomplished plush artists, including Jam Fancy, Kup Kup Land, and caffaknitted.

Luv-able + Hug-able 2
December 4 - January 7
Opening Party: Thursday, December 4, 6-9pm
@ Gallery Hanahou
611 Broadway, Suite 730
NYC
www.galleryhanahou.com

If you're in NYC on December 13, you should also check out Gallery Hanahou's plush-making class with artist Jenny Harada, where you can learn to make one of these funny elves using hand-sewing techniques. The class is $20 and includes materials. Space is limited, so e-mail them to reserve your space.

December 1, 2008

HOW TO - Personalized Gift Wrap

Spotted in the CRAFT Flickr pool: Bugs and Fishes by Lupin shares a great tutorial for decorating holiday gifts by using cut-out letters to spell out the recipient's name. Very modern and elegant--not to mention a great use of scrap paper.

HOW TO - Fabric Scrap Wreath

Lindamade shares a colorful project for the holidays (or any time, really!)--this festive wreath whipped up using fabric scraps.

Stocking Stitch-Along With Meet Me At Mikes

Meet Me At Mikes is hosting a Stocking Stitch-Along this week, and though they've already started, their tutorials and patterns are archived and ready to use when you are. They've included the stocking pattern, picture-rich tutorials, and two cute embroidery patterns from which you can choose to stitch on to your stocking.

Knitted Pelts

I just finished a series of knitted pelts, made from all animal-free materials (cotton, acrylic, wooden frames, etc.). I look up images of particular animal pelts (the one above is a squirrel) and hand-knit the shapes before mounting. They'll be on display at the ASU sculpture show, Flirting with Disaster, this Friday at Bragg's Pie Factory in downtown Phoenix.

Flirting with Disaster
Friday, December 5, 6-9pm
Bragg's Pie Factory
1301 NW Grand Ave, Phoenix (at McKinley)

HOW TO - Two-color Scarves

Knitting striped scarves with two different colors of variegated yarns is big this year! I like that the effect can be as subtle or vivid as you want, depending on the colorways you choose. If you like horizontal stripes, there's the gorgeous Noro Scarf by Brooklyn Tweed.

If you prefer vertical stripes, the Webs people are doing a knit-along and point us to this free pattern download for the Inside Outside Scarf.

Steampunk Sewing Machine and Steampunk Show in Phoenix

You know steampunk has gone mainstream when it seeps into academic institutions... I recently was given a steampunk assignment in one of my sculpture/metalworking classes, so I modded a vintage Kenmore sewing machine with some spare parts from Phoenix's favorite junk shop, Apache Reclamation. The propellers on the drive wheel and thread spool spin when the machine is running.

This piece as well as many, many others will be on display at First Studio in downtown Phoenix this friday, December 5 as part of a steampunk show put on by Arizona State University.

ASU's evening of Steampunk
Friday, December 5, 6-10pm (part of the First Friday art walk)
First Studio
631 N. 1st Ave. Phoenix

CRAFT Project: Tater-Stamped Kitchen Curtain

I've been wanting to try out potato printing for a while now--hadn't done it since I was a kid--and I also needed some new kitchen curtains, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and stamp up some new window coverings. This is an extremely quick and easy project you can whip up in an hour or so. Best of all, the curtains are made by stitching tea towels together, so there are no hems to sew and you can hang them using curtain clips. Here's how I made mine.

Tater-Stamped Kitchen Curtains

Materials:
• A potato or three
• Kitchen knife
• X-Acto craft knife
• Felt-tip marker
• Fabric paint (I used Tulip Soft Fabric Paint, matte finish)
• Tea towels (I used the super-cheap and simple-looking Tekla towels from IKEA.)
• Thread

Start by figuring out how many tea towels it will take to cover your window and sew them together at the edges. I didn't want my window completely covered, so I used two towels sewn together along one long edge.

Cut about 1/3 of your potato off (with the potato laying lengthwise) and pat the cut surface off with paper towels. Use a marker to draw a shape on the cut surface. I chose to do a leaf. Simple, graphic shapes are best.

Using a small knife (such as a paring knife), cut away at the outside edges of your design, slicing about 1/2" down.

Clean up your design by carving closer to the marked edge with the X-acto knife. If the potato starts to feel slippery, just keep dabbing with on paper towels to remove excess moisture.

Lay out your curtain on top of some newspaper. Dab the surface of your potato stamp with fabric paint. I used a foam brush to do so, and found that this produced a crisper print than dipping the stamp directly into the paint.

Make some test prints on scrap paper. When you feel you're getting the hang of how hard you need to press to get the look you like, try it out on your curtain. I chose to run the leaf pattern along one edge of the curtain.

If you'd like to switch colors, simply dab your potato stamp on scrap paper and/or paper towels until the surface is clean and apply a new color. You can keep doing this until your potato gets mushy, if you like.

After stamping pink and green leaves, I hacked away at my potato stamp and made a slightly smaller leaf and added some blue leaves to the design as well. If your potato is in good enough shape, feel free to keep carving into it--otherwise just switch to a new potato and start from scratch.

Allow the paint to dry according to the manufacturer's instructions. Add curtain clips to the top, then hang and admire.

I had so much fun experimenting with potato printing, and am excited to apply the same technique to other items around my house like tote bags and teeshirts. I also can't wait to try it with all the kidlets in my life!

HOW TO - Shirt-to-Cape Revamp

One Pearl Button shows us how to turn an oversized men's work shirt into a sweet shoulder-warming cape.

Customized PacMan Nikes

Craftster user Appleshannon and a friend made over a pair of thrifted Nikes that had been ruined with spraypaint, and turned them into these fun PacMan-themed kicks.

Did you know you can buy CRAFT back issues in the Maker Shed? Snap up a copy of CRAFT: 07 for a ton of fun shoe-themed projects and articles.

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