If you’re only spending time scrapbooking because you have photographs that need a home, you’re missing a big part of the process. You could just as easily put your pictures in a digital frame, in photo albums, or leave them in shoe boxes under your bed, next to the dog’s half-chewed bone. I strongly believe (can you tell??) that you need to know why you’re investing yourself in this hobby.
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What’s Your Scrapbooking Why? My Key to Happier Scrapping
Pieces of glass are joined together by the process of glass fusing. Glass is partly melted in high temperatures and then joined to another piece. An electric kiln is used to heat and melt the glass pieces and then with the help of a lead solder joined together.
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Quality Glass Fusing Supplies
Lost your scrapbooking mojo? Don’t worry, your spark will come back — I promise! Here are four things you can do to speed the process.
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Scrapbooking Burnout: What to Do When You’ve Lost That Scrappy Feeling
Turning other people’s neglected photos into gorgeous albums can earn you good money, if you approach the process wisely. Unfortunately, many scrapbookers think that because they’re great scrapbookers, they will be great business people as well. But no sooner do they get started than they soon find that scrapbooking as a business is much different than scrapbooking as a hobby.
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How to Start Your Own Scrapbooking Business
Getting cheap building materials is the most important thing for those who would like to build anything because it can save more money. To help you in finding the best materials for your needs, carefulness is the most important thing you need to perform so you will not make any mistake that can cause you feel sorry. When talking about the process of purchase, it is important to check this article out that gives the best information for your needs so you can make it suitable for you.
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Several Easy Steps For Finding Cheap Building Materials
The term “warm glass” refers to slumping, fusing, and other processes for molding glass which occur between temperatures of 1100F and 1700F. This may not sound warm, but it is compared to the temperatures used to blow glass, which may exceed 2000F. Another term for this process is kiln-forming.
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Warm Glass Supplies Challenges and Fun!
I get asked about creating custom needlepoint canvases more often than about anything else.
A custom needlepoint canvas is such a rewarding project to do. If it’s a gift, it’s something special and unique for the recipient. For yourself, it puts on canvas, what you want to see.
Sandy and I have been talking about the process she uses to turn images into needlepoint. I thought you’d be interested in learning about what goes into the process and how to pick great images to become the basis for great needlepoint.
Earlier this week in her two articles you’ve learned about some types of images that work for needlepoint. Today I’m going to show you the two pieces I’m sending to Sandy to be our test of the process.
The image above is one I found in a magazine and is a picture of the seashore on the island of Jersey. I have wanted to visit it (the only remaining part of the Duchy of Normandy in British hands) since I was in college. As soon as I saw this picture I thought it would make great needlepoint.
This image is a picture of a beach hotel. I’m planing on doing a guest bedroom in a beachy theme, so this would be a wonderful accent for it.
We’ll keep you posted on the progress.
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Originally posted 2008-05-20 03:20:14. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
I don’t know if you read Craft magazine, but you should. It’s a quarterly magazine about making stuff which is fresh, fun, and endlessly creative.
I always find exciting, interesting, and inspiring projects, artists, and ideas in it.
I want recommend the current issue to you especially. You’ll know it, it’s one the newsstands now and has a pair of Converse high tops with knitted tops on them on the cover.
I often get questions about how to convert a picture into needlepoint and often wonder how to do this so it looks good and look like needlepoint, not a needlepoint of a picture.
The current issue of Craft has a step-by-step tutorial on how to do this using Photoshop. The example takes a photo of a pigeon in flight, shows you pictures throughout the process and has a photo of the resulting whole stitch counted cross stitch piece.
Since it’s whole stitch, there is no reason why it couldn’t be needlepoint.
There are a couple of points I’d like to bring up about the process, one in the magazine, one not.
First off, the magazine urges you to pick a picture with the right amount of clarity and detail. The more small fussy details the source photo has, the more the end result will be fussy and cease to look like needlepoint and more like a bad imitation of a photo. I think this is the main reason why needlepoint conversions of people’s faces always look bad to me. A face has lots of detail and lots of color changes. So you always have a scaling problem when you convert them to needlepoint (I discussed this type of problem in an earlier post).
Second, and the article doesn’t cover this, pixel stitching only works when you can step back far enough to have the pixels blend with your eye. This is why pixels work in printing artwork in the first place. If you’ve ever wondered about it, look at a newspaper photo close up, you can see the dots. Step back and you see the pictures. Applying this to needlepoint. I think pixel shading only works when the mesh size of the canvas is fairly small. I pretty much would only do this on 14 or 18 mesh.
But I loved the process and one of these days I’m going to try it for myself.
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Pixel Stitching – Magazine Alert
Making tassels is not one of my better things. Much as I love them, mine always turn out badly. But now I have some on-line help with this marvelous tassel making tutorial from Bush Baby Jag. It’s goes through the process step-by-step with clear photographs all along the way.
A shout out to Denise at Craft Gossip for letting me know about it.
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Make a Tassel from Embroidery Floss
How did you get the idea to recycle sweaters into yarn and how do you decide when a sweater will work?
I first read about the idea of unraveling sweaters to recycle the yarn years ago (2005 I think) on a craft blog or craftster, found a wool sweater in a thrift store, and unraveled it successfully. But, it was so much work (it’s super hard the first time you do it!) so I didn’t do it again, until a couple years later when I started dyeing. I realized if I was going to get really into dyeing, I had to find a cheaper way to get yarn, so I got back into recycling sweaters, getting faster and better the more I did it. There are a ton of factors to be aware of when shopping for sweaters to recycle (I wrote about them in a Craft Stylish tutorial) – including fiber content and weight, the way the sweater is seamed and constructed, and the condition of the fabric. I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting sweaters that might work, the knit fabric jumping out at me from the crowded racks; then I check the label for fiber content, check the seams, and decide if it looks like good enough yarn to be worth the time and effort of unraveling.
I just love the colors you use, they are so unusual (at least in the needlepoint world), how do you come up with your ideas?
Well, I only dye with non-toxic food dyes, and mainly Kool-Aid. This may seem unprofessional to some, but I’ve been dyeing this way for years, having no problems with colorfastness/fading, and I’ve found ways of getting almost any color I want, though I often don’t plan out my yarns completely before dyeing. I’ve always enjoyed experimentation, and I always treat dyeing as experimenting! With a background in visual art (I majored in media arts and minored in studio art), I have been working with color theory for as long as I can remember, and I love playing with unexpected color combinations. So, with dyeing, I’ll often start with one color, see how it’s looking, and decide where to go next – decide if I want to add a contrasting/complimentary color to give the yarn a more dramatic look, or add similar shades, for a more subtle yarn. I don’t really look to anything in the world for color concepts, but I’m sure I’m subconsciously influenced by everything around me when I’m doing anything creative, including dyeing.
What’s the process you use for dyeing the threads?
I use Kool-Aid packets and food coloring (with vinegar), sometimes one or the other, often times a combination of the two. I use different methods – stove top, crock pot, and microwave once in awhile – and different processes depending on the yarn I’m going for. If I want a more solid look, I mix the dye in the stove top dyepot, or the crock pot, and drop the yarn into the dye. More often though, I add the yarn to the water first, let it heat up a bit, then add the dye, to get more color separation. If I’m dyeing a self-striping yarn, I separate the yarn into sections and dye each one at a time; for a variegated yarn, it’s much more experimental, dropping the whole hank in at once, and adding different colors to different sides of the dyepot. Sometimes I mix colors in a cup with water first and pour it in, sometimes I sprinkle/drip the dye straight into the dyepot over the yarn.
Some of your threads are stranded, some single strands. How do you decide when a yarn needs to be stranded?
I don’t decide – the sweater makers do. Many (most?) mass-made sweaters are knit stranded; you can’t really tell by looking at them, but once you start unraveling you realize. It would take a huge amount of time and work to un-strand a stranded yarn from a recycled sweater, so however the yarn is when I unravel it, that’s how my yarn will be. Usually the strands are slightly felted together, so I don’t think it hurts the knitting/crochet/needlepoint process much.
Are you thinking about expanding your line to include other natural fibers and blends, like cotton or silk?
I do make yarns from other recycled fibers sometimes, but I make them into spun recycled yarns, not dyed. It’s a whole other process to dye non-animal fibers like cotton and silk, which is toxic and I would need a dyeing area that’s not also my kitchen if I were to pursue it. So, I take recycled cotton, etc, and I spin it with my spinning wheel, and ply it together with other recycled yarns and/or threads. I don’t do as much of this, but now that I’ve started my Quick Knits Club I’m including this type of yarn in the club each month, and I may start adding more to my shop soon.
Tomorrow’s post will be my review of these delightful threads and using them for needlepoint.
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Lee Meredith of Leethal.net – Designer Profile
