Snow Day Paper Crafting

December 19, 2008 at 11:37 am (Crafts, Ornaments)

I love all sorts of star shapes, and a few days ago, I saw a pattern for some large paper stars on another blog.  They are similar to some stars that I’ve seen in a local shop, and I’ve always intended to try to make some to hang in my front window.  Someday, I’m still going to, but today I decided to make a smaller version of them.  

First, I found the original pattern here:

http://thisrecycledlife.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/decorating-for-the-season/

After downloading the pdf, I decided that I’d like to start with making a smaller version.  There are lots of ways to reduce patterns, but in this case, I used a setting on my printer.  By choosing “properties” and then “paper” I was able to choose an option that says “9 in 1″ that will prints nine pages in miniature form on one page.    This basically makes a 1/9 size pattern.  There are also other options, such as “1 in 2″ and “1 in 4″ that reduce page sizes as well.  I’m sure that other printers offer similar options.  I printed this on cardstock, which made a great pattern for tracing onto my paper.  

The paper I used for this project was some that I’d purchased  with a larger project in mind.  Unfortunately, my cat helped make it unusable for my original purpose by running across it with muddy feet, so now I am just working around the muddy spots and using it for smaller projects :) .  For gluing this, I used YES! paste, which I really like for a lot of paper carfting.  It stays where it’s put, is workable for a longer time than some other glues, but also holds well as soon as you stick it together.  A tub of this will last for a very, very long time- I’ve had mine for a few years, I think.  I applied it with a smallish paint brush.  Here’s a picture of  it if you haven’t seen it before- it’s a very useful glue to keep around:

yespaste1

 

And finally, here is my finished product:

Rather than tying it together as the pattern mentioned, I just glued all of it together.  I also cut out a spiral from the paper I used to glue on the center because I like spirals and I thought it needed a little something else in the middle.  For hanging, I poked a hole in one of the star’s rays with a needle and threaded ribbon through.  I love my new ornament!.

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Shibori Stitching Experiments

November 29, 2008 at 10:08 am (Uncategorized)

Yesterday was “Black Friday” when everyone is supposed to go shopping.  Since I’ve been one of those “buy nothing” people on that day for many years, for me it was a wonderful day off.  Instead of shopping, I decided to do some experimenting with Shibori stitched resist.  I keep a stash of white dish towels that are good for dyeing to use as last minute gifts and/or gift wrapping.  They aren’t of a super high quality, but since I’ve never really done much shibori stitched resist, I figured they would work as a beginning place and I wouldn’t ruin any “good” fabric if it didn’t work out.    

 

My husband told me I should have taken some pictures of the stitching before I dyed the dish towel, but I didn’t.  I think in my mind it wasn’t going to work out very well, so I figured it would just be more wasted pictures and I didn’t feel like the taking the time.  I just wanted to get on with the project.  Here are my results (and I do wish now I’d listened and taken a few pictures of the stitiching, but I’ll try to remember to do that next time :) ) :

 

In the picture above, the color is a little washed out. I used Dharma trading’s blue-violet dye, as I like the way it often seperates into different colors and was happy that it worked out that way this time, too.  These detail pictures are a little closer to the actual color:

 

 

  I’m thinking more stitching is on the agenda for today.

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Another Star Ornament

November 26, 2008 at 1:38 pm (Crafts, Ornaments, Recycled Arts and Crafts)

I love star shapes and recently was browsing the internet for instructions for making star books.  The last time I did that, it led to an ornament on my blog (found here:  http://hinzpired.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/how-to-make-paper-star-ornaments/.  This time, the results were the same, although the design is new.  I think these are actually easier than the the first star ornaments and also offer the potential for lots of embellishments.

I’m sure that this isn’t really something new- I’m sure I’ve seen this sort of ornament somewhere before.  However, I didn’t find any instructions for them during my internet search, so I’m offering my version (I did find some very similar ornaments that someone is offering for sale using the custom images of your choice, which reinforced my idea that the instructions must be out there somewhere).

For my version, I used a few different choices for paper:  some multi-use 24 lb copy paper, both plain and stamped with paint; a paper grocery bag stamped with paint; and magazine pages glued together with a glue stick (the bottom two ornaments are made with magazine/catalog pages glued together).

Now for the instructions:  Cut your chosen paper into strips.  I chose to make my strips 2-1/2 inches wide.

Then cut the strips into squares- you will need either 5 or 6 squares.  Most of the ornaments above were made with 5 segments, but the bottom ornament made with the Lee Valley catalog cover uses 6- it’s up to you.

Next, fold all squares in half:

Open it up and fold it in half the other way:

Next, open it up again, flip it over and fold it diagonally.  If you are using a paper with images on only one side, those images will be on the outside during the first folds and on the inside during this fold:

Now, open up the paper, and on the right side, fold the little triangles that have been made inside the squares.  This is hard to explain, but easy to do:

Repeat these steps until there are  5 (or 6) pieces folded:

Now, the pieces are glued or taped together.  For most of the ones I’ve made, I used glue stick, but I tried double sided tape and found out that it worked out, too- and it’s a bit less messy.  Either way, apply glue or tape to one section and then stack the next piece on top:

Continue until all pieces are stuck together:

Next, cut two pieces of ribbon, jute, string, etc.  I tend to cut ribbon a bit longer than I think will be needed and then trim it at the end if it turns out to be a bit long.  Fold ornament into a stack and glue or tape ribbon on to one side:

Next, cut two more pieces of paper to be the covers of the book.  You can make it exactly the same size as the folded star or make it a bit bigger.  I chose to make mine the same size, so cut out one piece from my original strip of paper that was 1-1/4 by 2-1/2 inches and then cut it in half one more time.

Use glue or double sided tape to attach  this paper, covering up the corner of the ribbon that has just been attached:

Repeat on second side:

The ornament will now look like this:

Now bring the two ribbons together so that the ornament forms a complete star.  Slip a bead onto the ribbons and tie a knot in the end of the ribbons:

The finished star is now ready to hang.  For storage or to display the ornament in book form, the bead can be pushed to the other end of the ribbon and the star can be folded to become a book.  Push the bead back down to the end to keep it in this position:

I think that these ornaments would be beautiful made with some of the art papers I’ve seen, using nicer beads.  All sorts of recycled papers could be used, too.  I’ve also been experimenting with using stiffened fabric instead of paper, but those results aren’t ready for the blog yet (and you don’t really want to know why, although I’ll tell you that it involved my cats…).

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Natural Pink Food Coloring for a Princess Cake

October 26, 2008 at 7:22 pm (Cooking)

I’ve mentioned here before that our family does not eat foods containing artificial flavors or colors.  3 out of 4 people in our house feel better this way, and since one of them is me and the other two are my kids, that’s how the food gets made here.  Over several years of eating this way, I’ve learned a few tricks to make our food more fun for those times that call for that.  While no one really needs for food coloring  to be added to things like frosting, it’s definitely more interesting to have it available.  There are some natural food colors available now, but they are expensive, don’t have a long shelf life,  and even more importantly, they have to be ordered through the mail in my small town.  This  means that spontaneous food coloring can’t really happen.  Because of this, we’ve done lots of experimenting with making our own natural colors from ingredients we can easily find locally.  The easiest of these is making pink food dye from beets.

When I first heard about making my own dyes, the instructions I found for pink said simply to reduce beet juice. Now that makes sense, but at the time I had no idea how to do that.  For those new to this, here are instructions for exactly how I do that.  

First, I purchase canned beets.  Open the beets, dumping the pink water into a pan.  For this batch, I used 3 cans of beet juice water.  You can eat the beets, freeze them for later, or as I did with this batch, feed them to the chickens who love everything :) .  Here’s a picture of my beet water, which was about 2 cups worth of liquid at this point:

Next bring this mixture to a boil.  I keep the temperature on medium-high until the juice has reduced quite a bit.  I then turn it down a bit and stir it to reduce the last little bit.  It will get all thick and syrup-y.  Here’s a picture at the end:

I put it into a jelly jar to keep- the original 2 cups of liquid reduced to about 3 Tablespoons of food coloring:

 

 

At this point, I keep it in the refrigerator if I’m using it soon or the freezer for longer storage.  

 

The batch I made yesterday was for a specific purpose.  My daughter was making a birthday cake for  a princess- themed  surprise party for a friend and wanted pink frosting.  My daughter tinted all of the frosting a pale pink for the main cake and then added a little more beet coloring to make the deeper pink accents.  Here is her finished cake, which I think turned out very well for a 14 year old- it’s certainly better than I can do :) . 

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Crayon Rubbings on Fabric

August 30, 2008 at 2:52 pm (Crafts)

I’ve always enjoyed making paper rubbings of common objects and recently I’ve been thinking about trying some projects on fabric.  I had some ideas of supplies I’d like to use, but none are available in my town and will have to be mail-ordered.  I decided to go ahead and try some experiments today with the supplies that I had.  My daughter was up for experimenting, too, so we headed off on our bikes to a nearby college campus.  We took along some sections of second-hand-store sheeting and a small box of stockmar beeswax crayons.  We had a lot of fun and my daughter only told me a couple of times that people were looking at us funny :) .

Here are some of our images:

These are from two door knobs in our house:

These are images from two different light posts:

From a memorial plaque by a tree:

From another plaque:

From a gate:

From a small water utility cover:

From a sculpture title:

From a phone utility cover- I love the geometric shapes on this:

After today’s experiments, I have lots more ideas in mind to try. I’m thinking  of trying to work some of  today’s rubbings  into some sort of art quilt along with more images that we collect other times.

I did heat set these images with an iron- I covered them with a couple of layers of paper while ironing to absorb any excess wax.  I tested a couple of them by then washing them in hot water with synthropal (a strong textile detergent I use for my dye work) and the colors stayed fast.  I may just stick with using the Stockmar beeswax crayons, but now I want the bigger box with more colors…which I will still have to mail order :) .

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Rust Dye with Stencils

August 9, 2008 at 4:19 pm (Crafts, Rust Dyeing)

Yesterday, I saw a blog with instructions for making freezer paper stencils for t-shirts.  I’ve done this in the past with fabric paints, but seeing it made me wonder if I could make this work with rust dyeing.  I thought it would be great if the shape of the rust dyed image was not limited to to the shape of my rusty object.

I was (of course!) out of freezer paper, so after a quick bike ride to the grocery store, I cut out a few basic shapes.  For this experiment, I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on the images- I just wanted to do something quickly to see if it would work.  After cutting, I ironed the shiny plastic side of the freezer paper onto the fabric:

I then took it outside to my plastic tray and placed it over my rusty saw blade- which is the only semi-solid rusty shape I currently have.  I sprayed it with my water bottle, sprayed it with a bit of water, sprinkled it with salt and then sprayed again with some water:

I covered it loosely with plastic to keep it from drying out too fast as it was way too hot yesterday.  I sprayed it a few times throughout the day and also at night when I closed the chickens into their coop.  Here is the image that I washed out today:

Success!  This image has sort of a country look which isn’t really me, I think because of the hearts and stars and the saw blade shape.  Still, it worked and now I can continue to experiment.  I need to get a flat piece of steel that I can turn into a rust stenciling surface for other sorts of images.  My son wants me to try to make him a skull and crossbones image rusty t-shirt and I think this technique will work for that- since I don’t happen to have a flat rusty skull and crossbones :) .

I plan to play more with the freezer paper and maybe some other resists, too.  I’m thinking that soy wax would work.  I was also looking at a plastic mailer that came with a book I ordered.  I think that it might be interesting to try to cut shapes out of it and sew them to the base fabric as resists.  I’m definitely going to be exploring this idea more in the future.

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Summer Squash Fritters

August 7, 2008 at 12:09 pm (Cooking)

Since summer squash is plentiful in my part of the world right now, I thought I’d share a recipe I’ve been making a lot lately- actually for lunch 3 times so far this week :) .

This recipe is inspired by the one in a favorite cookbook of mine this time of year, Simply in Season.  Here is the recipe mostly as published ( I’ll share my major variations at the end):

Vegetable Fritters

Place in a bowl:

3 cups shredded summer squash

1/3 cup minced onion or 2 cloves minced garlic

Mix together:

1/3 cup flour or whole wheat flour ( brown rice works, too)

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/8 tsp. pepper

2 eggs, beaten

Mix gently with squash mixture. Heat a pan over medium heat (I use a cast iron frying pan).  Add a bit of oil or your chosen fat ( I usually use a bit of unsalted butter.)  Drop by spoonfuls into frying pan- I flatten it a bit with my spoon to help it spread a little.  Cook until golden then turn over to cook the second side.

The first time I made these, I used a mix of green and yellow summer squash.  The next time, I experimented more and substituted some grated carrot for some of the squash.  Other times, I’ve also added some finely chopped cabbage.  It seems to work best if summer squash makes up at least 2/3 of the ingredients.  I love how colorful they look when I use both yellow and green squash and orange carrots.  Today I only had yellow squash and yellow carrots, so they aren’t as colorful, but they taste good either way:)  Also, I often use both onion and garlic.  I always use garlic, sometimes even doubling it if the cloves are small because I love garlic (and also usually press it instead of mincing it).  I also add whatever fresh herbs I have around- today’s batch had some chopped up fresh basil added that came in my CSA box this week.  I experimented with brown rice flour yesterday and used it again today as I like it a little better- my daughter says she can’t tell the difference, though.  Also, for lunch, I usually just make half of a batch (and just sort of guess that my 1/3 cup measure is filled more or less half-way full as I don’t feel like getting out the tablespoons and teaspoons to measure it exactly!).

These are also good with a little cheese sprinkled on them.  I know I’m going to be making this quite a few more times before squash season is over.

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Using Rust Dyed Fabric

August 4, 2008 at 3:19 pm (Crafts, Rust Dyeing, Sewing)

I’ve been enjoying playing around with some of my rust dyed fabric and thought I’d share some of it here.

I’ve been participating in an irregularly scheduled group that exchanges various hand-made postcards for a while now.  There aren’t really any restictions in our group- in the past, there’s been all fabric, mixed media, hand-made embellished paper, photography, mini-paintings- all sorts of things.  My offerings usually involve something using hand-dyed fabrics.  I decided that this time I’d use some of my rust dyed fabric.  Here are the eight 4 x 6 postcards I sent out:

Here are close-ups of a couple of them:

They were made by cutting two of my saw blade prints into quarters.  I then appliqued on a portion of some of the prints made with washers.  The edge fabric is rust dyed and then over-dyed in brown tones.

Because I had to do some trimming of my appliqued shapes before sewing the postcards to their backing, I ended up with some interesting small strips of rust-dyed fabrics.  I really liked the way they looked and wanted to find a way to use them.  Then I happened to see the link to a small wallet pattern on somebody’s blog and thought it would be a perfect way to use up my fabric strips.

Here are the results:

Front of wallet:

Back of wallet:

Inside of wallet:

It’s just a small thing, but it makes me happy to see it in my purse.

The wallet pattern can be found here:

Wallet Pattern

You can see that I left off the vinyl outer pocket and the key chain tab.

And this little wallet pattern also came in handy this weekend when my daughter needed a birthday gift for a friend.  We sewed it up out of some fabrics in our stash Anna thought her friend would like.  We then filled it with (as my son says) “the gift certificate to anywhere”-cash.  It made a nicer presentation than just sticking some money in an envelope :) .

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More Rust Dyeing

July 17, 2008 at 2:11 pm (Crafts, Rust Dyeing)

I continue to be intrigued by the possibilities for rust-dyed projects, and have been playing around a bit the last several days.  When I was at the farm/hardware store last weekend picking up chicken feed and other assorted stuff, I decided to buy a handful of steel washers to see what rust results I might get.

After washing them to hopefully get off any manufacturing oils, I arranged the washers in some patterns on a plastic dog pen liner from a crate our dog has outgrown.  I soaked some fabric (from a thrift store sheet) in water with a some vinegar added and placed it over the washers.  I then sprinkled on some salt and sprayed it down with more water.  I covered it loosely with a plastic bag and left it out in the backyard.  I checked frequently to be sure it was still damp, spraying it down with more water as needed.  For two days, nothing happened.  I started to think that I must have gotten washers that were either not steel or were heavily coated with some sort of protective coating.  Finally, though, some little edges started to rust.  After a total of 4 days of dampness, this was my resulting fabric:

Now that the washers had a layer of rust on them, I decided to try again, this time using small pieces of fabrics rather than a large one.  Here’s a picture of one of my washer arrangements:

I then covered them with a piece of dry fabric ( I skipped the vinegar this time).  I sprayed it with water, sprinkled with a little salt and then sprayed it with a little more water:

I then covered them loosely with plastic, checking them and re-spraying them as needed.  This time, the rust designs started to show after just a couple of hours and were pretty strong in one day.  I left them outside for two days, though, as I didn’t have time to deal with them sooner.    I liked my first results, but I REALLY like these:

Here are some close ups of a couple of them that I especially like:

Here’s a picture of an old saw blade that I’ve also been playing with.  This is the side that was touching the metal:

This is the reverse side of the fabric, which I also like:

I’m going to play with overdyeing some of these and also keep experimenting with objects that look like they might rust.

My 18 year old son doesn’t usually show that much interest in my little projects, but he actually commented about these, saying that they had a steampunk look.  That is apparently a good thing :) .

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Biking Around Town

July 13, 2008 at 10:16 am (Biking)

Just over a month ago, my mom generously paid for half of the price of a new bike for a birthday gift for me.  I have been loving it and am using it now for most of my errands.

I am not a person who has really ever been part of biking culture.  I had a bike as a kid, but probably didn’t have one of my own that actually fit me past the age of 10 or 11.  It just wasn’t a big deal to me.  Then, a few years ago, my daughter learned to ride a bike.  She wanted to ride it everywhere, and at first I could keep up just walking along behind her as she went around the block.  As she got faster, I couldn’t keep up with her and didn’t feel comfortable with my little 7 year old riding very far without an adult nearby.  I decided that I should get a bike.

I bought an inexpensive Huffy cruiser bike with coaster brakes from K-mart.  At that point it would not have occurred to me to visit an actual bike shop and I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to ride anymore.  After a couple of wobbly rounds of my block, I figured out bike balance again.  My daughter and I started riding around the neighborhood all the time.  We’d ride to the library and downtown and just randomly around the neighborhood.  I loved it in a way that I don’t remember loving biking as a kid.

That bike served me well for several years, but it was getting worn out and I was really wanting to start using my bike in more serious ways for errands and groceries.  Over the years as my daughter has grown, she’s needed new bikes and the last couple have come from a local bike shop rather than a discount store.  I love the people at this bike shop, and went there to try to figure out what my next bike should be.  I explained what I wanted and the bike guy offered some suggestions to try.  I was nervous, though, as I’d never ridden a bike with handbrakes and I was going to need to do that for the kind of biking I was wanting to do.  There is an alley behind the bicycle shop where one can try out different bikes, and the bike guy offered me some tips about handbrakes and said he’d stay near me while I tried them out.  After a couple of runs up and down the alley, I realized they weren’t that hard- much easier than I’d thought.  The bike guy then had me take a few more rounds of the alley shifting the bike into different gears. He was very kind and helpful and  didn’t make me feel silly about not knowing how to use handbrakes or gears at the age of 43 :) .

I tried out a few different bikes and ended up with a Trek Navigator 2.0.  I had a rack mounted to the back and now have two bike bags that hang on the rack.  I LOVE this bike!  It rides smoothly and I no longer have pain in my knees when I ride a bike because it actually fits me well.  The bags work great for library and small grocery runs.  My next step was to get a trailer for bigger errands.  I was able to find a used kids trailer on craigslist that my husband modified for me to make it easier to use to haul groceries, etc., around.

Here is a picture of me that my daughter took this morning on the way to church.  I had to bring in a couple of big boxes of T-shirts that will be used for VBS this week, so I popped them into the trailer.

After church, I ran by the grocery store and picked up a few groceries and put them in the trailer:

This is about $100 worth of groceries, which sadly only fill up about half of the trailer these days.  I’ve easily been able to bring home twice this many on other trips.

Here’s some pictures of the simple modifications my husband made to the trailer.  He found an old piece of plywood in the garage and cut out the various notches to fit the trailer frame.  There is a lip of plywood that sits on top of the frame.  Here’s a picture of the bottom of it:

Here’s a close-up of the clamps he used to attach the plywood to the frame:

It’s very stable and has worked great for everything I’ve needed to haul with it so far. The plywood was free, and the clamps were $3, so it was a very affordable project :) .

I really don’t think at this stage of my life that I’ll become one of those true biker people like friends I know that are doing the Seattle to Portland ride this weekend.   At this point, I’m very happy just to be able to run my little errands around town, knowing I’m doing a small part to use less of the world’s resources while also getting myself stronger and healthier.

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