Not Just Macaroni Art

Shrink Film Success! (And some Dimensional Magic) Celtic Keychain

2011-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

After my first failed attempt with shrinky dink film and a technical yet messy success, I decided to give it another try in hopes of creating something that was actually attractive. End result:

A celtic keychain for my favorite (and only) sister. This one is definitely a success.

Despite the warnings on the Silhouette website, I decided to try running a sheet of shrink film through my Silhouette cutter. The shrink plastic is quite thick and the blade did not cut through. In fact, it probably dulled quite a bit in the attempt. It turned out okay though, because the blade scored the plastic well enough that I did not have much trouble cutting the shape out with a craft knife.

The plastic is glossy, so the instruction sheet recommends sanding the surface with fine grit sand paper before using colored pencils or rubber stamps on it. This worked pretty well - I used colored pencils and the color did not stick at all where the surface was slick, but the color took pretty well where the plastic was sanded.

Colored pencils are just fun - so much texture in the blended colors!

Sorry, no photos next to a ruler, but here are the before and after with my hole punch for perspective.

It's pretty amazing what 3 minutes in the oven can do!

This also turned out to be a good time to experiment with some Dimensional Magic. I applied it to the surface of the knot and it seemed surprisingly watery, but seemed to still maintain its shape. I put a drop at the corner of the knot and it across the curve as if it were on a track.

Couldn't get out all of the bubbles though - bummer!

But see how milky it started out?

No worries, it definitely dries clear!

FO Friday - an Amazing matching set

2011-04-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

Yay - I have a finished object to share!

I finally finished the Amazing mitts, from the Semplice Mitts pattern by Knitpicks. They turned out really well. They are soft and warm, and without anything too fancy to distract from the color changes in the yarn. The pattern was pretty simple, except for the ambiguous directions on where to place the stitch markers for the thumb increases. I hope the recipient enjoys them.

And here is the matching set, along with the convertible neck warmer.

So overall the pattern + yarn combo was a success - the patterns were both pretty mindless, and the color changes in the yarn kept it interesting enough to complete.

Check out the rest of the Friday FOs over at Tami's Amis!

Shrink Film ....Success?

2011-04-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

Refusing to be beaten by the shrinky dink film, I gave it another try. The problem I had with the first attempt was that the film curled up on itself and welded together that way while it was still in the oven. A tip I read somewhere was to place a sheet of vellum on top of the film while it was in the oven, and that was the magic trick that made it work.

So I started by drawing out a name, cutting it out, and adding a hole punched at the top to attach it to a keychain or zipper.

Next I let my son color in the letters - we used Prismacolor markers, and the markers on the film are pretty messy.

Since my son loves anything Spider-Man-esque, I took the thin pen side of the markers and added in little spiders and webs into the red letters:

Onto a sheet of vellum it goes. This was an 8 1/2"x11" sheet, for an idea of the before size.

With another sheet of vellum on top to keep the film flat. Sorry for the printing - this was scrap vellum I salvaged from some mail, thinking vellum is a terrible thing to waste.

And... whadya know? It shrunk down and didn't end up in a hot little curled mess!

You can even see the little spiders and webs in the red letters, which is really neat.

The finished size is about 3" tall, so it probably shrunk down about 50%.

There was a little bit of curling even as the film cooled, and I'm not really sure how to keep that from happening. The black marker looks a little caked on, as you can see on the "e" above, but touching it, it does not actually feel flaky.
This stuff is a lot of fun to play with. My son is so excited to have his name that he helped make, he even carried it to bed with him. All kinds of ideas are swirling in my head for the next shrinky project.

Knitting, Crochet, and Swatching! Another WIP Wednesday

2011-04-06T18:58:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's right. Swatching! It used to seem like a waste of time, but as I've been knitting more involved projects, it just seems worth the effort. So in between other already in progress projects, I started a stockinette swatch for the Myrtle cardigan.

The swatch is from a recycled Talbot's sweater in a wool/cotton blend. (For a pretty nifty tutorial on stashing on the cheap by recycling sweaters, check out this site.)

I followed some advice in a recycled yarn group on Ravelry, where the more seasoned recyclers suggested not bothering to straighten the yarn before knitting with it. So I washed the sweater, unraveled it into balls, and knit straight from the balls. The yarn, at this point, is pretty kinky and the swatch stitches are a bit sloppy.

However the Myrtle pattern calls for larger needles and a lacy pattern that will require aggressive blocking. So I'm reserving judgment on the kinky yarn until I tackle the lace swatch and *double gasp* block the swatch. The yarn may very well straighten out with blocking, so we'll see. *Fingers crossed*

And much overdue is a birthday owl:

It looks like a bowl at this point, but the top two stripes already have some decreases for the neck area. For some reason my crochet rounds never line up, are they supposed to be this far off?...

Finally, the Amazing mitts are excruciatingly close to being finished. Just a thumb and a half to knit and some ends to weave in!

Here's the rest of the WIP Wednesday posts!

Rub a Dub Dub - Hand Washing Knit Sweaters

2011-04-04T09:57:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit it, but I can be pretty lazy about hand washing knits. It's such a pain to fill the bath tub soak the knits, and then have to gently wring out the water without causing too much agitation. But then as I was gathering up some baby gear to clear out of the house, I re-thought chucking the old non-contoured baby tub. It's perfect for soaking knits!

It fits two adult sweaters pretty comfortably.

It also eliminates some of the headache of wringing out the water - there's a plug at one end that lets a good amount of the water drain with no agitation at all. What water remains can be gently squished out and then the knits are ready for blocking and drying.

Shrink Film Craft Fail!

2011-03-31T09:55:00.000-07:00

Remember how much fun shrinky dinks were?! I found some of the plain shrink film at the craft store and all kinds of ideas started swirling around - jewelry, buttons, zipper pulls, maybe even little custom people that look like my family to jazz up Candy Land. But the first attempt didn't go so well.

The Little Man of the House gets so excited when he sees his name, so for the first experiment with shrink film, I wrote his name in black marker. The film is pretty glossy, so it needed to dry a bit to keep from smearing the ink.

Then I cut around the name and added a little hole so that we can eventually attach it to a keychain or zipper or something else that the Little Man will be pround of.

Next, things got a little messy. BEWARE of the smudgies - Even though the marker had set a bit on the film, it still smears when ~~adding in~~ allowing a 4-year-old to add in other colors. It may not suit my grown-up taste, but it was totally kid-tastic by preschool standards.

Next step - get that baby into the oven for 2-3 minutes. The directions are sparse, but do say that the film will curl before flattening, and do not remove it from the heat before it uncurls. ....so 5 minutes later it is still in the oven and yet not uncurled because it managed to meld itself together. I managed to break it while trying to uncurl it:

Even in the hard curled plastic mess, I see some promise. The colors really did pop out in a fun and cartoony way after baking, and it looks like the finished product will be sturdy. So attempt number two is to follow, wish us luck!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Amazing Mitts

2011-03-30T10:03:00.000-07:00

After finishing the Knitted Gifts convertible neckwarmer, I had 2 1/2 skeins of Amazing left over and cast on some mitts to go with it. The pattern is Semplice, a freebie on Knitpicks. In theory, it's a simple pattern, but it's a bit hard to follow. The pattern is unclear on where to place the stitch markers to place the thumb increases. I improvised by starting the thumb increases at the beginning of the rounds, but in retrospect the pattern probably intended the thumb increases to begin at the end of one round and continue into the start of the next.

Other than the thumb issue, the pattern is pretty clear and simple. It is a twisted rib cuff, straight stockinette, a thumb, and then some more stockinette and twisted rib. One nice thing about the pattern is that the two mitts are identical, so there is no shaping to reverse. That makes it easier when you're a two-at-a-time-on-one-needle junkie like me. Socks, sleeves, mittens, you name it, two at a time is the way to go.

Don't forget to visit the roundup of the other WIP Wednesdays.

Taming the Startitis - finished two projects!

2011-03-25T20:55:00.000-07:00

It's another Finished Object Friday and I actually have two of them to share. They were actually finished last week but life was too hectic to get them photographed and uploaded. So without further delay...

The Vine Yoke Cardigan is finished - more or less blocked and complete with buttons:

The blocking was only "more or less" because I was not very aggressive with it, just sort of pulling the bottom into shape, and it ended up drying unevenly. So looking from the front, the left side hangs a little lower than the right. Buttons were an issue - I was anxious to get something on them and ended up going to JoAnn. Have you ever tried finding 10 matching buttons at JoAnn? Especially 10 large (1 1/8") buttons? Choices were limited; I could only find 4 or 6 of any button I loved, and ended up with buttons I liked instead.

They are cute, and made from coconut shells. They have grown on me and I think they may stay on the sweater, instead of being a temporary solution until I find the gray buttons I first envisioned.

This was definitely a fun knit, and was suprisingly quick. If I had worked more diligently, it would have taken under three weeks to finish.

And the other finished object is a gift for a family member - she really wanted the convertible neckwarmer from the Knitted Gifts book, and here it is:

The Lion Brand Amazing produced a nice, soft, warm fabric.

The idea of the convertile neckwarmer is that it can be worn around the neck like a cowl, or the i-cord on top can be cinched up to make it more of a hat. The warmer is really just a stockinette tube with ribbing at one end and an eyelet row at the other. I was a little concerned about the sizing, since it seems like anything large enough to be a neck warmer would be too large to work as a hat. But somehow this seemed just about right. With longer hair like the recipient has, the ribbing on the bottom will just stay in place and look a little slouchy.

P.S. Say hi to one of the earliest homemade gifts I ever received - he's a handsome model, isn't he?

P.P.S. Check out some more fabulous finished objects over at Tami's Amis.

Another Work in Progress Wednesday

2011-03-09T18:52:00.000-08:00

Well it's another Work in Progress Wednesday, and instead of actually making progress on something I was already working on, I started a new project. Luckily, this new project is a gift and it is going pretty quickly. Which is good, because I think I want another one for myself. The project is a convertible neck warmer -turned - hat from the book Knitted Gifts:

The yarn is Lion Brand Amazing, and I really like it!

The yarn is 53% wool and 47% acrylic, and it is pretty soft. It has a slight halo so the stitch definition is not completely clear. But it seems both drapey and warm. Plus, it's fun to see the colors change.

This is my second project from the book. The first was a pair of hobby horses that I knit last Christmas. There are a few nice projects in the book, but they largely not quick knits which makes them not my ideal gifts. The neckwarmer, though, works up quickly, so it gets an A in my book.

Check out the other work in progress Wednesdays here.

More Works in Progress Wednesday

2011-03-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

This week has been kind of crazy, but I've still made progress on a couple of projects. First, the sweater I have been longing for for about a year, the Vine Yoke Cardigan, is almost done. I just need to graft the underarms and then add some buttons, still TBD.

I also started what should be a quick crochet project if I ever take a couple hours to just sit down and work on it. It is a striped owl, intended as a belated birthday gift for my baby girl (don't worry, she won't have any clue it's late).

So far it is only pink and brown, but I hope to add some fun accent colors. I found some honest to goodness Red Heart wool at a garage sale over the summer and have been looking for something perfect to use it on, and this will hopefully be the project.

And because Little Miss had a birthday this week, I had the perfect excuse to test out the new Silhouette. Using just the fonts already on my computer and the free shapes that came with the machine, and a little mod podge, I was able to make this box for the birthday girl.

Because the box is always more fun than the presents, right?

And a custom banner, which was a lot of fun to design.

So those are my works in progress this week. I can't wait to see what everyone else is up to - here is the roundup of other Work in Progress Wednesday posts.

Holiday Countdown

2011-03-01T10:03:00.000-08:00

It's funny how those holidays sneak up on you, right? Valentine's day has come and gone. New Years? Pffsht..., that is so two months ago. So before we lose track of things, here's a countdown in days to the next few up and coming events:

St. Patrick's Day                         15 days
Easter                                          53 days
American Independence Day     124 days

And, if you are really enthusiastic about taxes:
Tax Day                                       44 days

However, if you are looking for a reason to celebrate right now, it is National Pig Day! Pig macaroni art, anyone?

Wrenna - my first Finished Object Friday

2011-02-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

Whoever thought of knitting lace in bulky yarn was just genius. Seriously. I fell in love with the Wrenna cardigan from the book French Girl Knits after seein a few finished online. A lot of knitters finished the sweater as quickly as only two days. Mine took closer to two weeks for the actual knitting. However, it took a lot longer to figure out how to fasten it - laced with leather, as the pattern calls for, isn't quite my style, so I just finished sewing on hooks and eyes. Mine also took longer because I added sleeves, roughly 3/4 length in stockinette. Here's the finished product.

Close up of the hooks and eyes:

And here is the lace:

AND.... I am so excited - this week I bought a Silhouette craft cutter.

For years, I had considered getting a Cricut, but just could not justify buying lots of cartridges. But the Silhouette does not take cartridges, it connects to the computer and cuts any true type font and any of the digital images you download from the Silhouetter online store or create in the software that comes with the machine. Here's an action shot:

That's part of a birthday cake popping right off the sticky carrier sheet. Can't wait to see what projects this new toy can handle!
P.S. Finished Object Friday roundup here.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled blog...

2011-02-16T09:43:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that's not really what things have been like around here. Without any sort of posting schedule, I just have not posted anything. So, taking a key suggested in a group in one of my favorite places on the entire world wide web, Ravelry, I've decided to adopt some regular posting days. Welcome to the first NJMA weekly Work in Progress Wednesday!

Here goes:

So what is in the works at this moment? Well my little boy wants me to knit him a sweater. A green one, specifically. But since he is on a Where the Wild Things Are kick, I think he'll forgive me when he sees a cream wolf suit sweater. The pattern is from Splendor Knitting. Major mod I'm making is sticking it on my Bond USM knitting machine. It's slow going at the bottom of the ribbing, since there's a lot of hand converting purl stitches to knit stitches for several rows, but it should go more smoothly once I get past the bottom couple inches and only need to convert a few garter rows at each end every other row. (The Bond USM feeds yarn through a carriage across a bed of latch hooks. As the hooks catch the yarn, it creates rows of stockinette stitch, which are purled side facing the knitter. Any thing other than straight stockinette requires manipulation with spare latch hooks and needles).

So that's what's going on in these parts at the moment. Hopefully I'll have something that actually looks like a sweater to show soon!

P.S. There is a WIP Wednesday roundup is here!

Bowl - it's really a roll of tickets!

2011-01-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

Here's another idea I wish I'd thought of. It's a ticket bowl made from a roll of tickets and some mod podge. The original was posted at Buggie and Jellybean, complete with a tutorial full of pictures. I saw this and immediately thought of my dad, who received a coordinating set for Christmas. Here's how his turned out:

It took six little cork disks to fill in each roll center but now they are solid.

My one goof-up was not finding the perfect little glass bowls until after the mod podging (is that a word?) was complete. Once the bowls were finished, I found the perfect bowls at the dollar store and with the proper planning, I could have formed the tickets to the glass bowls for the perfect washable lining. Ah well, better luck next time.

Alien Abduction Lamp

2011-01-03T19:20:00.000-08:00

With little kiddos and Christmas and New Years to take care of, I got pretty lazy about posting. But with the holidays over, I have some fun things to share! This alien abduction lamp one of my favorite projects from our most recent round of homemade Christmas gifts.

It was inspired by the lamp created at Dollar Store Crafts. Heather at DSC had the brilliant idea to make a lamp out of two bowls and an acrylic glass. My modifications were using a round wooden cutting board as a base and adding polymer clay creatures.

I painted the cutting board brown, then sponged it with shades of green for a ore grassy look. Then a coat of mod podge sealed it up and made it look a little more finished. This pic is before the mod podge shined it up.

I did not find small animals or aliens that were quite cute enough, so I made a sheep and some aliens out of polymer clay.

The glass is a green acrylic glass from Target. I only had a drill to work with so cutting the bottom of the bowl out was not going to work. So instead, I drilled as many holes into the bottom of the lower bowl as I could before the drill battery died. The way the light filters through the holes gives the lamp a little bit of a fun eery feel.

Check out the link above for more details on how to make one!

Polymer Clay Knitting Needle Pens

2010-12-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

There's tons of Christmas crafting going on in these parts right now, but with projects needing to stay on the down-low, I haven't been able to share them here. Luckily my knitting group's second annual potluck was a week ago, so one project is no longer secret. There were a lot of fantastic stocking stuffers at the potluck, some hand made and some pre-assembled. These were my contribution:

They may look like Boye knitting needles, but they are actually pens.
These would have been a quick and easy project for someone who was experienced with polymer clay, but I'm not so it was a long road. Here's what it took:

Polymer clay (I used Femo and Sculpey mixtures for the bodies, Sculpey III for the knobs, and Promat for the cap mold)
Large knitting needles - US 15 looked large but turned out to be a good size
Oven safe pens - Bic sticks worked great, but I also tested Paper Mate Eagle in the oven and they did not melt either
Silver acrylic paint
A little bit of blue painter's tape to keep the paint tidy

The first step was to make cap molds. I found a large knitting needle and stuck it into a wad of clay to make a mold, and then baked that according to the package directions.

I originally started with a US size 10 needle, since that seemed large enough in relation to the pen. However, the end caps lost some size due to my wiggling and compressing the clay to get it out of the mold. So I made a second mold from a size 15 needle, and that worked much better. I then made replica end caps by putting small balls of clay into the mold and pulling them out to bake.

Luckily the clay can be rebaked, so I had nice solid pieces to attach to the pens after they were rolled in the clay. The needle caps may have worked better if I had made them in Femo. With the Sculpey III being softer, it was pretty difficult to wiggle the clay back out of the mold without distorting the image.

After setting the baked needle caps aside, it was time to remove the pen innards. It's easy to do with a pair of small pliars; just rotate and pull the plastic portion of the tip (not the metal point), along with the ink chamber, out of the barrel.

The next step was to roll out the clay. I used a mixture of Femo and Sculpey III. The Sculpey was a lot softer the Femo, which flaked like crazy through the pasta machine.

After conditioning the clay for what seemed like hours, I rolled it out in sheets and cut it in rectangles to fit around the pens, just short of overlapping at the seam. Setting the pasta machine at 5 produced a nice thin layer of clay that seemed to have a neater appearance at first. Unfortunately clay that thin was not very forgiving because there was just not a lot of clay on the pen. So I went up to setting 4, and the clay was then thick enough that I could lay the pen on top of it, roll it a few times, and the seam would virtually disappear. The next step was to pop a pre-baked end cap at the end and set it in a manilla folder folded accordian-style to bake. This is how they turned out:

The white caps just weren't right, of course. So I took a little bit of blue painter's tape and wrapped it around each pen to create a sharp line.

Then I brushed on some silver acrylic paint and pulled off the blue tape. Voila!

Pillow buddies, even cuter than the original

2010-11-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

So every time we walk through the mall, my son drags me over to the pillow pets display to ooh and aah over the animals. They seem a little silly to buy. But make one? I'm totally down with that. There's a 2-part tutorial over at Twelve Crafts Till Christmas, just adjust the details for the animal of your choosing. Here's a look-see, head on over to check out the details:

And, oh happy day, this means I finally have something to make with those yards and yards of flannel I bought at the JoAnn Black Friday sale!

Win a Silhouette machine!

2010-11-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

I've been hand cutting all of my craft projects, but that will come to an end if I'm the lucky winner of a Silhouette machine. Several craft bloggers are giving away machines, but the contests end this weekend so hurry up and enter. Check out Infarrantly Creative - she is hosting one of the giveaways and her projects do a great job showing off some of the crafty possibilities.

Make a cornhole set

2010-11-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

It can be pretty tricky to find a homemade gift that even the men will love. But here's an idea: cornhole! The pre-made sets can be pricey, but some craft store sells blank boards at a fraction of the price, just add paint and beanbags. Even the board blanks look rather simple, and even they can be made from scratch.

Believe it or not, there's an American Cornhole Association. The ACA has adopted equipment standards. That means if you want to make a regulation cornhole set, plan on two boards made of 48"x24" plywood. Each board will need a hole, six inches in diameter, placed 9" from the top and 12" from each side of the platform. The back of the platform is to be placed at a 90 degree angle to the face of the board, and the back needs to be elevated 12". The surface of the board should be sanded smooth and painted in a high gloss latex paint for that optimal slid-ability. You will also need beanbags made from duck canvas and measuring 6"x6". It should be filled with 2 cups of corn feed and weigh 14-16 oz.

There is a page over at the Fun Times Guide with links to tutorials and videos to guide you through every step. Looking to jazz up the bags a little? Here's a tutorial over at Infarrantly Creative, with a way to make photo bean bags without photo transfer paper.

Custom Vintage Gift Tags

2010-11-21T05:28:00.000-08:00

There's no better way to top off a homemade gift than by creating a personalized gift tag. The Graphics Fairy is an amazing blog, posting new vintage images every day. There is tons of gift tag potential in her labels posts, and in some cases Karen offers both the original image and also an edited version to allow you to insert your own text or graphics.

To test it out, I added some text to the mermaid card. I saved the image, opened it in Microsoft Paint, and then selected the text option with a transparent text box. Pretty sweet!

Sweet Broderie Giveaway over at RetroMummy

2010-11-20T20:41:00.000-08:00

RetroMummy is hosting a giveaway of fat quarters of Sweet Broderie fabrics over at her blog. She also has a nice assortments of recipes and crochet patterns. In fact, here's a quick gift - a crochet facecloth, completed in two hours.

Who doesn't love a hobby horse?

2010-11-18T20:01:00.000-08:00

There are some logistical problems with posting any gifts intended for this year, so here is one of my favorites to make from last year - knitted hobby horses. The pattern is from Knitted Gifts by Ann Budd. But I knitted two at one time using one circular needle, following the method in Two at a Time Socks by Melissa Morgan Oakes. For some reason, two socks at once hardly take much longer than one single sock.

The pattern was easy to follow. It is basically just a large sock, with some nice textures added in. Seriously, the next time someone I know breaks a foot, they will be getting some of these socks to cover the cast.

The bridle is a knit icord, which would have taken longer to knit than the socks themselves. But the lighter weight Patons wool went through a Bond Embellishnet without too much problem, and I was able to knit up the many yards of icord in about 25 minutes per horse.

Some knitters found that the horse head tends to pull off of the dowl. I added a second ball knob to the top of the dowel, so the head stays anchored in place. For a quick and easy finish, a little watered down brown acrylic paint gave the stick an almost stained look without the smell or hassle.

The horses are slightly felted, making them more durable. Plus, they're super cute. A year later and the kids are still playing with them!

I really like the patterns in Knitted Gifts. There is a nice variety, from the standard scarves and hats to felted oven mitts and pretty embroidered slippers. My only complaint is that the only quick knits are small items like headbands and coffee cozies. This book is a keeper.

So where's the plastic canvas?

2010-11-17T19:52:00.000-08:00

Popsicle sticks, macaroni, plastic canvas, crunchy scratchy orange Phentex yarn. Yep. That's what people assume when they hear I'm making gifts for my family for Christmas. But we gave it a try last year and it was pretty fantastic. Here's a sampling of some of the fun things we made last year - leaded glass terrarium, hand painted bar rug, hand knit hobby horses, and stained glass recipe boxes, filled with family recipes. And there's so much more to come this year!

What I learned last year was to start earlier and not choose so many knitted projects - they are fun to make but take way too long to complete for everyone on the list. In my quest for fresh ideas for unique handmade gifts, I've come across a lot of great ideas and look forward to sharing some of them here. Stay tuned!