Watercolour words, part 2 (project life cards)

The Easter set was all a little vintage. Don’t get me wrong, I really like them, but they aren’t my usual bright and bold style.  This is a another set I was playing with.  Grab it here.

If you go back the splatter set I did previously, you will see these are also simple two-word phrases in a similar more artsy style.  I imagine they could also work to add to a canvas or an art journal.

 

If you missed that set and like the look of it you can grab those here.

Otherwise, I am deep in the throes of my WOYWW 6th ATC design.  More about that tomorrow….

 

{wink}

Perspective, perception, illusion – Printables

So I made a set of printables, and I’ll explain why later.

 

Just a handful of filler cards. Grab them here

Why, you may ask? I’ve had optical illusions on the brain since a strange thing happened.  I have been reading a bit about “that dress” and the issues surrounding why people perceive it to be one way or another. Initially when I saw the dress, I think I recall believing it was clearly white and gold.  Then I saw it on that linked site. It was Black and blue.

Clicked the link there. On the Buzzfeed poll I see (SAW) it clearly as white and gold.  Honestly.  I really and truly did. I grabbed the above image and added it, interested to see the two different colours in different shots. And when I went back to the Buzzfeed page to grab the image?  It was TOTALLY Black and blue.  I swear.  One minute I saw white and gold, the next I saw black and blue.

Now, no matter WHERE I see that dress I can ONLY see it as Black and Blue.  THAT is weird.  Far weirder to me then the initial debate over colour.  So I want to know.  Can you see one black and blue and one white and gold.  Do you see two different colours on the two different sites?  Have you ever been able to see both versions?

HOW did I see it one way on one site then another way on another, and what made it change between visits?? Over time will I eventually see it differently or has my brain been trained?

Comment and tell me your experiences with “that dress”  – is it just me or did you ever see it two different ways? I am SO curious…..

 

🙂

 

Easter Printables – Project life or traditional scrapbooking

I’ve been playing around with some images from The Graphics Fairy.  I just love the bird’s nests from there.  And some adorable rabbits from another site I like a lot.

I adore the Yearly Egg Account ledger.  It came from a weird site, and initially I used a fairly low res image but I found a better one – this is getting posted late i the day because I re-did them a number of times, tweaking this and that till I got it to where I wanted it to be.

Pretty vintage, rather than my more usual brights, but I had fun playing.  Hope you can use them.  Interesting to note that Hippity hoppin’ is in fact the right snippet from the song Here Comes Peter Cottontail, although Hippity Hoppety is included as well.

Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin’ down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppin’, Easter’s on its way

Oh, here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin’ down the bunny trail
Hippity hoppity, Happy Easter Day

What I kept finding was Hippety Hoppety Easter’s on it’s way, combining the two.  I went with hoppin’ possibly just to be different! That’s me…

Just a single page – I decided the font minimized the boyishness of the blue, so just the one sheet. Grab it here.

WOYWW 303

Getting close now to the WOYWW 6th anniversary and as usual my mind turns towards the ATC for the swap and something to make for the crop, like the little pointy eared fellows from last year.  This time I wanted to have something that I could mail, and I think I cracked it.

The Cricut mat on the left has the template, created and sized for the ATC I have in mind.  I did in using a combination of an online” gift-card”  download, my Intaglio drawing program, my Cricut with SCAL and a LOT of trial and error.  I even found a use for the bajillion loom bands that litter the floor in every room of my house.  DD is still hopelessly addicted to making them.

I have a couple of experimental versions – and no, clicking the photo won’t make it bigger so you can get a better look!- some easier than others, but I am limited by the tools I own.  There is no way I am going to be able to make more than a handful. I have the structure of the ATC already sorted bit the design of it is a different matter.  I am loving my ATC displays and already thinking I need to make one specifically for the 6th.

I still haven’t worked out the best way to make one that handles both portrait AND landscape ATCs in the same hanger…

Have a happy WOYWW day.  See you round at yours in a bit.

The perils of organization

Whenever I strive to get organized I always go thru a period of disorientation.  Where IS that thing I use 12 times a week, that I could find with my eyes shut cause it lived in THAT spot for years? Until I moved it when  cleaned…

OK, so I can’t say that the stamping gear thing was ever anything more than a bit of a novelty.  I did a few posts about figuring out a way to use wood mounted stamps in or around the gears, made a couple of cards for my card-stash, then boxed it up, and put it…somewhere.

When it came time to make a card, one I could see in my head even before I started looking for the supplies, could I find the darn thing?  I could not.  What I DID find was the set of looms I bought for DD at Christmas.  As I looked at them I thought Hummmm…..

This isn’t written in the form of a tutorial, since I doubt too many people out there still have MagnaStamp stamp mounts LOL!  but the general concept of adding a popsicle stick to the mount and the between-the-pegs spaces to place the stamps holds true.

With the edge of the mount bumped up against the loom, you can get pretty nicely spaced stamping – ignore the oddball one, as you can see I used the same paper to test out a variety of placements.

and inside too

Now, I can’t recall exactly how much the stamping gear thing cost me, but I know my local Tiger has the knitting looms for about £3.  No, it isn’t perfect.  You are never going to get the sort of precision you will get with the official product, so if you care about that sort of thing, buy the real deal. But if you want to get a reasonably well placed curve or circle of images, a knitting loom works well enough to create something like this:

 

Gosh it’s been a long time since I played with paper and ink.  It was fun…note to self: DO MORE.

{wink}

Thinking of Spring printables

There is definitely the hint of spring in the air.  A few flowers are trying bravely to emerge in the garden and the sun is shining.  Shame I pulled a muscle in my back yesterday and have been taking it easy.It would be lovely to get out and about.

With that in mind, and cause I have been neglecting my blogging a bit recently, I will pop these little printable up for you.

Nothing amazing, but colourful enough to fill a sleeve nicely with room for a bit of embellishment or to add a bit of journaling

Grab them here.

Sock progress. Not happy….

Progress has been made.  I also seem to have a problem with my lens.  I’ll clean it, but there is much to do today so I apologize that you have to suffer thru these rubbish photos for the moment.

I got sock one mostly done, and even though I could see the stranding across the magic loop was pretty bad, I was so close to being done I wanted to see how it would look before I ripped it back.

I have an idea to try and will do so with sock 2.  But over all I like how the words fit the space, I think they are marginally more readable in the more solid blue areas so might consider breaking the yarn and creating a larger block of blue for the words.  Not sure.

I also think I need a bit more solid knitting between the top of the text and the ribbing.

I think the Fish Lip Kiss heel is fab in the way it fits and the ease of knitting it.  It LOOKS a bit funny not on but oh my does it hug my heel beautifully.

And therein lies the problem  – DS’s foot is at least 3 sizes bigger than mine.  I used the cardboard template that I created while he was here to size the sock.  Yet it fits ME perfectly so HAS to be too small for him, right?  I mean there is ease and then there is EASE.  It might be there is nothing for it but to wait for him to be here so I can see it on.  Which means putting it away for now.

{sigh}

I may have a go at the duplicate stitch part before I frog it. Might as well….

WOYWW – creative socks

Hello WOYWWers!

I have been considering why we do homemade.  You wouldn’t be here if handcrafting SOMETHING (cards, layouts, Project Life albums, art journals, home decor, etc etc etc) wasn’t a big part of who you are.

Why *I* do homemade is that I want to create something unique.  It’s a given that your scrapbook is going to be unique as it is filled with YOUR photos, and your art journal too.  Your cards, possibly, if you are creating from scratch and not just following a tutorial. But sock knitting?  OK sure, you can pick a fab yarn, but is it really going to produce a unique item?  Maybe it will, but is it unique ENOUGH?

So I wanted to knit some socks for DS.  I wanted them to be so unique to him that he would overlook the possible knee-jerk reaction to any colour other than Black or Grey.  So what is on my desk, or more rightly in my hands, is the first of a pair of socks that I designed.  I used THIS tool.  All you do is upload an image, give it some specific info on what you want it charted for (beading, knitting, x-stitch, etc) and have at it.  What I designed was a simple snippet of text to surround the sock, and a small pixel art image that I will add with duplicate stitch (frankly after watching a bazillion intarsia-in-the-round videos, I agree with the one stray comment I saw on some Ravelry pattern, which was “do duplicate stitch – life is too short.”)

DS loves League of Legends, playing, watching, casting.  And the champion I’ve seen him play most is Graves.  You may recall the canvas I made for him at Christmas a couple years back:

OK, so the pixel art image is not nearly so detailed but then it has to fit on a SOCK, and the front only,  so at most about 36 stitches of 4ply yarn.  I found this graphic out there on the web, originally a design for Minecraft, which I simplified to B&W.  That free charting site worked well, although getting the original text in the right font for such a small area was tricky

I’ve actually hacked up the chart, altered a few areas, and am working from that altered chart.

The text is what the character says at various points in the game.  The plan is to have THINK I’M then BLUFFIN’? as a two-line phrase on one sock with TRY ME! and the image on the other.  The text is knitted in, stranded, and duplicated on the front and back, so the yarn can carry round.  I accept the fact I may have to frog them, as I am using the FLK heel template and it may not work.  But I am determined to give it a go.  Doing the longer text sock first, as you see above, although in hindsight it MIGHT have been a better plan to do the minimal text sock first, have DS try it on, then if it fits, add the duplicate stitch and do sock two.  Oh well …..

I am s l o w l y getting to grips with a series of annoyances, the first being a month with crappy internet, followed by a mystery noise from under the hood of the car (I seem to be the only one who can make it happen and never when DH is in the car!) and most recently {shudder} a rat from the fields invading the house.  That has taken far too long to sort out – but frankly 10 minutes would be too long – and unfortunately, a smell lingers on.

St. Patrick’s Day PL printables

Just something I have been playing around with.  Maybe you will find one of them useful.

The first set has something called a Celtic Shamrock but it bugged me that it only had three leaves.  Shamrock’s,  I thought, had four! Apparently that is an Americanization.  Shamrocks, it seems, have three leaves. Clover, no matter how many leaves if has, is a different plant.  I’ll refer you to this post for an interesting discussion, rather than try to paraphrase it and get it wrong.  But the point is, I AM American, and I have always associated the four leafed symbol with St. Patrick’s day.  Hence my dilemma when designing.  What?  You think I just sit down and whip something up without doing a LITTLE research?  Na.

So here you have three different versions.  One is the Celtic Shamrock, which is a cross between a Celtic knot and a shamrock (the three-leafed variety).  One is a four-leafed version of the knot, in two-tone greens. One is with the four-leafed clover, as I remember it.

 

Busy week, so not much progress on my socks, except to say that I’ve now tried both the STH and FLK heel and can’t decide which I like better.  Either frog the STH and begin again with the FLK then go on and do the dreaded 2nd sock OR carry on with the STH for the 2nd sock (damn.  No way to avoid the 2nd sock completely… {wink})

dithering, waffling, and wallowing in indecision.  That’s me in a nutshell.  Maybe I’ll just cast on a whole new pair that I can do 2-at-a-time, or finish up the one 2nd sock I already have half way done.

A lifeline

I was a little wary of starting the heel on my socks, never having done the STH before.  I wanted to put in a lifeline, so that if I hated it, or it didn’t fit right, I could rip it back to just before the heel without worrying about going too far.  I was going to use dental floss, as I had heard that was a good thing for lifelines, but then I kept reading how it maybe wasn’t so good.  So I decided to use some cord that I had.  It was till thin and smooth but not floss, so I thought it would work.

Checking the right place to  thread the cord thru, so I could pick up the stitches without having them twisted,  I saw this little video for a neat trick to add a lifeline without having to thread it thru with a needle.  Hey PRESTO!  So easy

 

All you have to do is thread the thin whatever thru the hole in your interchangeable needles and knit as normal.  

You have to be a little careful to ensure the cord stays in place as you pull thru, but….

And best of all you can do both socks if you are doing 2 at a time magic loop.  I didn’t snap photos of it but I’ll annotate this one from yesterday to show you what I mean:

Jeez.  That looks like a hot mess, but if you follow the numbers hopefully you will see how it works as you do it.  You are basically knitting around to the middle back, pulling out a bit of extra at the left, then cutting in the middle.  Knotting the cut end and the starting end secures the completed lifeline around the LEFT sock.  Threading the cut end back thru the needle and completing knitting the back of the RIGHT sock then knotting the last two ends secures the lifeline on the RIGHT sock.

In the end it didn’t matter because I always assume I need bigger socks than I do.  The heel turned out fab, the ribbing was great (but the stretchy bind off was too stretchy – first time I’ve had that problem) so I ended up ignoring the lifeline and ripping back to the cask on, knocking off 12 stitches and casting on a much smaller sock that fits.

 

a couple of little flaws in the colour transitions at the heel (found a project  note on Ravelry for that) and in the ribbing but that was OK as it was all practice and I didn’t mind doing it KNOWING I was going to frog it at that point. The new one fits perfectly and the heel is starting out nicely….

I think you can see the difference in the size! I still want to buy the e-book for the STH but still getting an error.  One more try and if it doesn’t work I’ll either buy it via a proxy or ask someone from the US to gift it to me.  The video is an excellent start but I still think I am messing up on small step.

DHs birthday today.  Lots to do …mexican feast for dinner.  I won’t say what lest he drop by here today.  Short day for DD, skating in the afternoon, so won’t get much done on these today.  but maybe I’ll be to the point I can wear them next week!  Yippee.