A skirt waiting to happen

Late last summer I came to the awful realisation that my favourite dress to wear on a really stinking hot day had deteriorated into a terrible condition. This made me quite sad as it was a pretty dress with very nice embroidery. I did notice that the damage was almost entirely on the top half so I put the dress aside intending on working out how to turn it into a basic skirt. I've done some machine sewing before so know my way around a basic machine but I've not done any work on clothes or with elastic before, so this was new. Many thanks go to Mum for helping me out here.

This is the old, tired dress with quite a bit of yellowing around the top and a lot of elastic that had given up and died. It took a bit of courage to take the scissors to a favourite item of clothing, but with a bit of courage...

After this I naturally forgot to take more photos, but I made a waistband from inch wide elastic, sewed it into the top and rolled it over. I did this with Mum's whiz-bang sewing machine as my 30-or-so-year-old ol' faithful sewing machine is in storage. Its a very nice machine. Even cuts the threads for me.The skirt might not be winning any competitions for refashioning, but it's nice to have it back in my wardrobe.

I'm also working on Etsy listings for these two necklaces. They should be posted this evening. I'll put a shout out on the TTL facebook page when they're up.

Babies and Christmas

A staggering number of people I know have been having babies lately (or so it seems). I made a couple of cards for some of the most recent arrivals today - one boy and one girl.

This card is for a neighbour who has just had a baby - an excellent reason to use a gorgeous paper I bought quite some time ago and have been waiting for a reason to use.

This one is for a friend's baby - I've deliberately made it somewhat less blatantly gendered. Opinions vary, but I am sure that this baby already has more than enough pink (though it is not entirely lacking here)

Christmas is getting entirely too close for comfort and I have made a huge number of Christmas cards lately. These are two of those I'm most pleased with.

This card was based on a stamp that I couldn't initially see a lot of use for - until I took a craft knife to the stamped image. Now the possibilities seem quite endless. I'm sure I'll be getting plenty of use from this one.

This card also allowed me to use a really gorgeous piece of paper I had sitting about the place.

Before these two I'd had very few cards with stamped images that I'd been happy with - cutting them out and adding a bit of dimension to them makes the world of difference. Now I have more use for my picture stamps that came with the word stamps I bought the sets for...

Tutorial: Bigger-on-the-inside TARDIS card

Time for the promised TARDIS card tutorial! As an added bonus this tutorial shows you my method of making standard card blanks. This is the first tutorial I have made, so if you have any feedback do let me know so future tutorials might be improved...

In order to avoid sounding like a broken record I'll let you know right here that you need to be quite precise here. It'll really show in the results. On with the tutorial - Allons-y!

These are the tools used. With one exception - the glue marker. How I could forget such a useful object is beyond me.

Tools and materials:
TARDIS blue cardstock - A4 or 12" square
Black cardstock - scrap is OK
White cardstock - scrap is OK
White printer paper
Self-healing cutting mat
Clear quilting ruler
Metal ruler
Rotary cutter
Craft knife
Bone folder
Glue stick
Glue marker
Glue tape
Fine silver paint or gel pen
Black fineliner - 0.1
Pencil

The first step is to make the card blank. Start by cutting an 8"x6" piece of TARDIS blue card. Keep the scraps, you'll need them later. The best way to make the larger cuts is with a quilting ruler and rotary cutter. The cuts are kept straight and it's very easy to line things up precisely (don't use a craft knife with a quilting ruler, you'll kill the ruler).

Using the bone folder, score a line at the 4" mark on the long side. If the paper is textured, score on the side that will be the inside. Fold along the line and, with the card folded, run the flat of the folder along the crease to sharpen it.

Cut the top inch from the side that will become the front cover, and prepare for one of the trickier sections.

Keeping in mind you will need to erase later, rule a pencil line one inch from the top in line with the previous cut(not shown in the picture). Measuring up from here rule a line at 3/8", 1/8" and 1/8". This should leave 3/8" at the top.

As per the lower left section of the picture above, n the lowest ruled section draw vertical lines 1/4" from each side. In the next section draw lines 1/2" from each side. In the top section draw lines around a 1/4" section at the centre. Join this to the tier below with a diagonal line.

Cut around this outline using a metal ruler and craft knife. You may find it easiest to cut small sections away. Erase the remaining pencil lines.

Cut a section of black cardboard 1/4"x3.5", or slightly shorter if you prefer (see right side pictures). Write on the card with a silver paint or gel pen as shown. Stick in place with glue stick or marker.

Cut a 1/4" square of white card. Stick to form the light at the top of the card. That's the top section complete! Next, on to the front.

Cut four 1.5" squares, four in blue, two in white.

Cut a blue strip 1/8" wide and at least 4.5" long. Don't worry if it curves a bit, that's fairly unavoidable. Cut it into three 1.5" sections.

Using a glue marker, stick the strips on to form a window pattern.

On the front flap of the card, stick the blue and white squares. They should be 1/4" from the edge of the card and 1/8" from the top, bottom and other squares. You can use any kind of paper glue here, but glue tape doesn't have a drying time so you can continue on without fear of shifting things. Repeat for the other side.

Cut a piece of white card or printer paper 1"x3/4" and write on it with a fineliner as shown. Glue it to the centre left panel. While you're at it, why not add a silver doorknob?

Congratulations! The front is complete. The rest should, by comparison, be very easy.

The pop-up that will form the inside is a map fold. There's a great tutorial for it on this website (link replaced Feb 2015) which I doubt I can improve on. Use an 8"x8" square. The tutorial uses a rectangle, but squares are fine.

If you put it in your card you'll likely find it's marginally large. No worries! Cut off 1/8" and get the added bonus of an extremely tidy visible end.

Use glue tape on one side and stick the folded paper in with the centre line 2.5" from the bottom. Be sure to get the point right into the fold of the paper. Put glue tape onto the other side, press the card firmly shut, then re-open...

Ta-da! It's bigger on the inside!

 With Adelaide's famous Christmas Pageant on tomorrow and as I'm also preparing a lot of work for a stall I'll have at St John's Anglican Church Christmas Fair (Friday 16th November, 6p.m., Church Gardens at 379 Halifax Street, Adelaide) I'm in a very Christmassy frame of mind. I twisted together sparkly pipe cleaners and made a wreath to make a Christmas TARDIS.

That concludes my first tutorial! I hope you liked it - I expect I'll make more in future. If you use this tutorial, either as-is or with modifications, I'd love to see what you do!  Please do not use this to produce items for sale.

Do, however, feel free to share the tutorial further. By all means use the first or last image as a link, but please link to this blog for the rest of the tutorial.

P.S. The link marked as replaced in 2015 was changed as the original site was now just throwing particularly dubious looking ads. Sorry about that, and hopefully the replacement will stay... if it should fail again, search 'map fold tutorial', there are quite a few about - Heather

Shrinkage

Do I sound too childish if I tell you that I'm easily fascinated by watching plastic shrink?

I'm working on things for an upcoming fête at the moment. I wanted to make more jewellery and make it fairly affordable. At the moment I don't really have the space or set-up to get out all of my jewellery stuff so I decided to have a go at shrink plastic.

My first few sheets were so bad they didn't even make it to the oven - I'm having tremendous difficulty getting stamps to transfer the entire image, and at first I did not know what kind of ink to use. I found that a waterproof fineliner worked just fine for the black lines - although it doesn't truly set until baked so needs to be handled carefully it comes with the bonus of being able to redo difficult bits. Coloured pencils provide great colour, especially as baking concentrates the colour. I also now sand one side before I start.

These are destined to be necklaces and earrings, the 50c piece is for scale. The cherries will probably go onto a bracelet - one on each chain link. I'll have plenty more time to do this when I get back.

I'm off now for a week and a half. I'll return in early November with a TARDIS card tutorial and photos of Uluru.

Until then, adios!

Book review catchup

Keeping these relatively brief so I can catch up without writing a blog post that'd border on being long enough to make into a book. I'm including only books I actually finished, nothing that was so terrible or dull that I couldn't bring myself to keep reading.

“Do I have to talk to insane people?"
"You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.”
- The woman who died a lot, Jasper Fforde


The woman who died a lot is the seventh Thursday Next book by Jasper Fforde and at this point we've almost caught up with the alternate modern-day. Some of the things that were so central to the earliest books are missing entirely. Whilst before reading this I might have called that a deal-breaker, especially as book six, One of our Thursdays is missing did not particularly live up to the high standard set by the earlier books, I thought this book worked brilliantly without those things, and delved far deeper into things that were important before but clearly had a lot more to offer. What they are, I shan't say, because I don't want to ruin such a fantastic series for other people.

Despite the big changes, this book was fantastic. It had a bit of the whodunnit mystery about it, after a while the reader can cotton on to what's going on - but there are things stopping the characters from seeing this. It's a lot of fun, especially trying to work out how the main characters might go about finding out. If you haven't read the series, just do. They're brilliant.

I'm a long-time fan of fantasy short story collections and with names like these on the cover, how could I resist? Under my hat contains a lot of stories, and pleasantly every single one of them was new to me. I often find that modern collections contain quite a few that have been recycled over and over. I'm not sure if they can be found elsewhere or not but they're a great read! Don't be turned off by the book being listed as for children - the stories are full of depth and detail and are really wonderful. Three favourites of mine were A handful of ashes by Garth Nix, B is for bigfoot by Jim Butcher and Great-Grandmother in the cellar by Peter S. Beagle. There were plenty more great stories in here, once again a thoroughly recommended read.

I picked up The vampire shrink by Lynda Hilburn for two reasons. First, the premise, a psychologist treating those who might or might not be vampires or just pretending. Second, the reviews about the place promised me that this was, if not entirely free of the paranormal romance angle, not suffering from the same things that generally drive me away from that particular genre.

They lied.

The first half of the book was quite good. The premise and character were interesting, well detailed and developing quite well. Then along came the designated love interest and the strong heroine started, with what felt like token doubts, just following about and Being Protected. A real pity, because the first half of the book was shaping up quite well. I'm not averse to romance in a story, I just wind up frustrated that it so often ruins what might have otherwise been a pretty respectable book. If you're into paranormal romance you might well enjoy this, but if it's not your thing this, like the others, is probably not for you.

After three fantasy books in a row, here's a change... animal-centric autobiography. I read Cleo by Helen Brown a couple years ago and quite enjoyed it so when I saw a fluffy kitten and it was a sequel to a book I enjoyed I knew I had to read After Cleo came Jonah. It was a good book - as much about family and dealing with the coming-of-age of others as it is about the cat Jonah. Another enjoyable book recommended to those who have an interest in biography.

Tardis card is bigger on the inside

I was invited to a Doctor Who party last weekend, and I got the idea of making a TARDIS card that was bigger on the inside. The exterior design was simple enough to come up with - I didn't find an existing design I particularly liked so I took a good look at the TARDIS and the needs of my card and came up with this. The magnets are not part of the card, just holding it closed for the photo.

I knew that the interior was doable because I've seen folding maps that pop out larger than their covers. After searching about I found what's creatively called the map fold - there are any number of tutorials on it but I found this one particularly straightforward. With a little modification on dimensions it worked beautifully, and there you have it. A TARDIS card that is bigger on the inside.

Just a tiny little bit proud of this one.

I'm making a lot of other cards at the moment in preparation for a fete, I'll show some of the best of them later but there are only so many photographs of cards I can justify blogging in one hit.

Oh, and excuse the clumsy watermarking. It's a just-in-case so if anyone shares it on without, heaven forbid, linking back, the photo will do that for me.

P.S. As I intend on making another of these and there's been some interest I'll look at making a tutorial for this card soon, likely after I return home in early November

Update: The tutorial is now available in this blog post!

Spring is sprung

Spring is sprung,

The grass is riz,

I wonder where the birdie is?

They say the bird is on the wing -

But that's absurd!

I say the wing is on the bird.

-Anonymous

  It's been beautiful outside so I've been out playing with my camera! The first rose is out, plenty more to come. They're early this year. This is one of Mum's. Mine are a bit behind - one's been in too shaded a spot (fixed that) and the others have recently been moved from ground to pot. They all survived but I'm not sure if they'll flower this year.

Mum's orchids are also stunning this year. There are more spikes that haven't opened still. Every year Mum manages to get them to put on a stunning display.

Whilst this last shot isn't a traditional garden beauty shot this caught my eye, especially as I've been reading a book on finding great photos in ordinary places, particularly with different subject matter. There is a lot on colour and texture as well - unfortunately some pattern-focused photos I took did not come out as well as I might have liked - I think I needed a greater depth of field. I will have another go at those when the light is where I need it again.

It is amazing just how many photographs you can find to take in a small area. I can spend hours out there with a camera - there's always something else to photograph. When I start I find the big and obvious things, but the more time I spend in a session the more detail and interesting subject matter I find.

The rose and orchid photos were taken using a Sony DSC-HX100V, the geranium seeds with a Pentax K200-D. Whilst the latter is a DSLR the Sony, a superzoom type camera, has been better for close macro work. It has a focus ring for manual focus and operated in aperture priority does a very nice job indeed. Hopefully I'll be able to save up for a macro lens so I can do the rest with a DSLR. The general-purpose lens with a macro setting is just not cutting it. I'm not sure whether I'll stick with this body or change to another for that. Anyone have any suggestions? It'll be some time until I can justify the expense but I eventually want a good setup for macro and night photography.

I'd also like a tilt-shift lens but I think I'd need to win the lottery to justify that...

Take one sheet of blue cardboard

I might not have as much opportunity to craft as I did before, but I'll take what I can get. Paper crafts take up an astonishing amount of space (not to mention the array of tools and materials) but I absolutely love working with paper. I tend to be more creative with it than other crafts in my repertoire.

I had fun this evening playing around with card making materials. I made the card blanks for both cards in this post from a single 12x12 square of card stock. The card above is just me having fun with buttons and paper and seeing what I can do with them. I'm normally a bit wary of using stripes - you have to get them just so or it looks wonky. This card's not been made for any particular occasion but I'm sure I'll find an occasion for it at some point.

This card is for a 60th wedding anniversary I'm going to in the near future - I'm not too worried about the intended recipients seeing it, so I might as well show it off now. I began with one concept and asides the pretty bird not much of the original idea stayed.

The World of Poo

Terry Pratchett's a busy author this year - courtesy of my library I'm looking forward to reading all of the new releases. A couple I'll likely buy as well. I certainly got some interesting looks when this arrived at the library! A few recognised it as tying in to Snuff but certainly not the majority.

Fiction from within fiction, though only fantasy by virtue of the outer level of fiction The World of Poo is most certainly a book that's aimed squarely at the (fictional) six to eight year old boy. I'd love to find out what a real seven year old boy would think of this! So long as the setting didn't confuse I like to think it'd be a hit, though possibly not inspiration to imitate the protagonist? This twenty-eight year old woman found it a bit of fun too. I particularly liked the mention of Unseen University in the visit with Harry King. My inner child got the giggles...

This was a quick read, well written and a bit of fun between chunkier books. If you've read the Discworld books, particularly the more recent ones, I'd give this a go. And if you happen to have the chance to introduce it to a suitably aged boy, do let me know if they liked it!

Another Sanderson Review

I promise I read other authors...

I finished reading Elantris by Brandon Sanderson about week ago. In order to catch up I'll try to keep this review short. This was Sanderson's first novel, and it really shows. It's not bad, but having read the Mistborn books I can see he's come a long way since. If you particularly want to read his works and haven't started yet, give this one a go first. You'll probably enjoy it more that way.

The premise of this book is great - the once godlike are now akin to lepers. Characters were pleasantly multi-dimensional, at least for the most part. Good and evil were not clearly defined though some were a lot greyer than others. One or two characters bugged me - one too perfect, the other almost comedically evil - a little but I liked that the primary antagonist wasn't acting on "evil" motives. Even the nastiest of characters showed a human side, if only briefly.

The exploration of the magic system through the main characters' discoveries that was seen in Mistborn is here too. The main difference is that in Mistborn things tended to dawn on the main characters as you worked them out for yourself. Here some of them were clear a mile off, and the supposed genius of the characters was blindingly obvious well ahead of time. And the ending was also always going to be the way it was. It was clear very early on how things had to resolve - it was just a matter of how the story got there.

To sum up, Elantris is enjoyable enough and showed the promise that Brandon Sanderson has come good on later on - this book, while very good by general fantasy standards, just isn't up to the standard of his later works.