Our collection of Germany Crafts for Kids are ideal to help you learn about this amazing country! Perfect for German Unity Day and Oktoberfest!
North Carolina artist Colin Richmond handcrafts charming, porcelain collectibles based on some of nature's furriest friends.
Our collection of Germany Crafts for Kids are ideal to help you learn about this amazing country! Perfect for German Unity Day and Oktoberfest!
El verano es para dejar volar la imaginación y llamar creatividad.A veces fugaz es ideal plasmarla en un cuaderno de artista,mira como hacerlo en este post.
Embrace your child's artistic side and learn about crocheting, knitting, painting, photography, scrapbooking, and more from the editors of Parents magazine.
Have you ever tried extracting colors from plants? There are hundreds of plants bearing beautiful dyes, growing all around us. Yes, some plants are traditionally recognized as basic dye sources, but if you open your eyes and look around, you will find an abundance of color in front of your door. I made a list of plants local to me, but I strongly encourage you to try plants that grow around where you live. And living in a city is no excuse here! I live in a big city myself - but even in Berlin, Germany I found enough plants to make a full spectrum of color.
Hitting the road soon? Or, perhaps you're just a lover of tiny, wonderful things? Get inspired by Silvia Chenault's super-charming accidental altered mint tins collection!
M.A. and J. van Nieukerken. Tegels damestoilet eerste verdieping Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, 1916. Collectie NAi, NIEU 270 Ondanks de opkomst van moderne stromingen als het functionalisme, bleven de gebroeders van Nieukerken stug vasthouden aan hun traditionele, ambachtelijke en historiserende architectuur. M.A. and J. van Nieukerken. Tiles for ladies room in the Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, The Hague, 1916. NAI Collection, NIEU 270 Despite the emergence of modern movements such as Functionalism, the Van Nieukerken brothers stuck to their traditional, artisanal and historicising style of architecture.
One of the simplest and coolest ways to see engineering in action is by making catapults for kids. It's a STEM activity you can play with!
blouse pattern from somewhere between 1901 to early 1904 with a chunk of its instructions.
All Roads behind the scenes…designing the holiday collection for a collaboration with Anthropologie.
Surfing the net a million years ago, before I started with all the medieval stings I did do a lot of looking at other peoples work, wishing that I would find the courage to staring doing it myself.…
To celebrate the month of March, and the anticipation of Spring, I wanted to share a fun beginner tutorial on floral bundle dyeing you can do in the comforts of your home! In my previous post, I gave some insight as to how to gather and collect flowers and foliage and store them for future dye projects. Let’s use some of those goods as we create a floral dyed kerchief. For this tutorial, you will need: A piece of cotton cloth Soy milk Twine Vinegar Flower petals (I’m using marigolds, hollyhock and delphinium) but you can use whatever you like! A pot (do not use a pot you use for cooking!) A colander Creating colour on cloth naturally requires a lot of attention in the beginning stages. Preparing your fabric correctly is super important so that the dye will adhere to your fibre. Washing your fibre, known as scouring in the natural dye world, means to cleanse it deeply. You need to strip away any wax and oils fabric contains from all the processing it has been through. After the cleansing, you need to mordant your fabric to make it colourfast. Mordanting is an essential part of natural dyeing as it is what creates the bond between fibre and dye. Protein fibres and cellulose fibres work differently and require different methods. For our tutorial, we will work with a cotton kerchief that I have mordanted with soybean. This is a centuries-old method and works very well in assisting your cotton fabric in retaining and absorbing more dye than untreated cotton. A useful way of exploring this is by testing out a piece that has been treated, and one that hasn’t! You will surely see the difference in your results. Making your own soy mordant from the actual beans is fun and simple to do, but you can also buy soy milk (unsweetened and unflavoured), and it will work as well. In a bowl, mix one part soy milk and three parts water. Before immersing your piece of fabric in the bowl, soak it for twenty minutes in lukewarm water. Then, ring out the excess water and submerge it into your soy/water mixture. Stir it around, taking care that all parts of your fabric are absorbing the mixture. After twenty minutes or so, ring out the excess and hang it to dry. Repeat this method three more times. After you are done, you can work with your fabric right away, or let it cure for some time. The longer you allow your mordanted fibre cure, the better the results. Always remember. The natural dye process requires time and patience. Now we are ready to play with our flowers and create runny, painterly colour on cloth.You can use dried flowers, frozen, or fresh. I always prefer to enjoy my arrangements and garden blooms for as long as possible before using them for dyeing. 1. Take your blooms and create a pattern on your cloth. Take your time; be creative, mix different things. There are no limits to what you can use and how to lay it out. 2. You can also add things to your bundle such as little metal pieces, copper bits, lemon peel. These types of things alter and change your results and create unique patterns for your piece. Once you are happy with your design, carefully roll it up, fold it and bind it all together to create a lovely little bundle. 3. Once you have bundled up your piece, soak it in a bowl with a little bit of vinegar and water. 4. Now place it in a colander over a pot of boiling water and let your bundle soak up the steam. Let it sit there for around a half-hour to forty-five minutes. You will see the colour slowly start to release itself and bind to the fabric. 5. After 45 minutes. Can you see the colour and how much our bundle has changed? The unveiling. 6. After it dries, iron it out to set the print. Can you see how much the colours shifted as it dried? Can you notice the moodier tones where the metal pieces had been placed? Such a pleasant little surprise, isn’t it? I hope you get a chance to try this out and have some fun with it! If you would like to learn more about this lovely, artful process, join me at one of my workshops! *The workshops listed on my website are currently sold out, however if you would like me to add you to a wait-list for the next class, please send me an email and I will make sure to do that for you. Or, if you have a group of friends you would like to share the experience with, we can arrange a private class! Drop me a line and I would be happy to organize it. Have a wonderful month of March!
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Looking for a Valentine's Day gift that will knock your sweetheart's socks off? Shop by colour for the perfect decorations and gift ideas this Feb 14th.
Heart Suncatcher Craft • Use the Bottoms of Wine Bottles • Leaf Suncatchers • Mini Lily of the Valley • Circles of Color • More ...
If you are looking for an axolotl crochet pattern to make, then this collection of cute axolotl patterns is perfect for you to look through. Scroll on...
This Carousel Swing project tries to capture the bygone days of childhood when there was anticipation for county fair and carnival rides such as this one. We’re approaching the time of year for fairs
I have spent the past 2 months trying to perfect and be able to easily recreate a rimmed soap design and finally have a technique down th...
The Camper badge is part of the “It's Your Planet - Love It!” badge set introduced in 2011. It replaces the retired Camp Together badge. Camping out is the perfect adventure. You get to spend the night surrounded by the great outdoors and do fun activities like canoeing, hiking, and singing. You might even go to your favorite Girl Scout camp. Do one of the choices below to help you start planning a fantastic trip. CHOICES – DO ONE: Talk to an experienced camper. This might be a parent, a neig
Decorate your space with a curious figure by Smiski®. With glow-in-the-dark finishes, each box contains one surprise figure. Collect them all to create your own unique set! Features - Surprise figure by Smiski® - Glow-in-the-dark finishes for a playful touch - Versatile - use it to decorate your shelves, nightstand or desk space - Sold assorted - each box contains one surprise figure Content + Care - Sold in assorted characters - ATBC-PVC - Wipe clean - Imported Size - Dimensions: 2.4"l x 1.9"w Please note, this item is Final Sale and cannot be exchanged or returned.
These stays are certainly the most complex cording project I've done, so I wanted to share how I've been going about it! First off, I'm using a totally different cording method than the ones shown in my Making a Corded Petticoat post. In both methods shown in that tutorial, the cord was put in place first and its channel was sewn around it. Those methods work just fine for a corded petticoat, but won't work very well for these stays. Instead, I'm sewing channels into the fabric first, then inserting the cording afterwards. As a reminder, this is the pattern I'm working with: Fabric Prep Since the criss-cross cording is the most difficult part of these stays, that's what we'll focus on. Each of the squares that make up the criss-cross pattern are only 0.25" wide, so they're very small and difficult to sew accurately. The space between each square forms the channel that the cord threads through. I'm using a green shot cotton as the pretty outer fashion layer of the stays, with two layers of thin but tightly woven white cotton as the strength layers. My stitches will go through all three layers of fabric, but the cording will be run between the two white layers of cotton. The first challenge was figuring out how to mark the stitching guidelines on the fabric. I could have made all the markings on the back of each piece, but I find that the top side of my stitching often looks a bit more precise than the back, so I needed a way to mark the green fabric so that I could stitch accurately, but not have the markings visible later. Squares marked with water soluble pen, with a penny for scale. At first I tried using a water soluble fabric marker that had a relatively fine tip. It showed up very well on the fabric, but since it is a marker and the fabric wicked the ink out a bit, the line it left was fairly thick. The thicker line made it very hard to see where exactly to stitch. Some of my test squares were more parallelogram than square, and the width of the squares varied between 5/16" and 3/16" wide. It may seem like I'm being overly picky, but that is a difference of 1/8", which means I was off in some areas by the width of half of a square! When working at such a small scale, even a little bit of deviation becomes extremely obvious. Wibbly wobbly stitching due to wide fabric marker guidelines. I considered using a fine mechanical pencil to draw more precise, accurate lines, but there were two potential issues. One, I was worried it wouldn't wash off well, leaving me with pencil lines all over my stays. Two, it's actually pretty hard to draw an accurate line on this fabric with a mechanical pencil, as the pressure of the lead warps and distorts the fabric as you're trying to draw. Can't draw a straight line b/c the pressure of the lead warps the fabric. Luckily, I was able to solve both issues at once with my favorite secret weapon: Mah super-sekrit weapon. Shh, don't tell! Starch has saved my butt on many a sewing project. Here, it serves two purposes. First, it stiffens the fabric so that it is almost paper-like, so now I can easily draw on it using the mechanical pencil without the fabric distorting. Now I can get perfectly straight, thin, highly accurate stitching lines! With starched fabric, no distortion! Comparison of marker lines vs mechanical pencil lines. Second, thanks to Lifeofglamour's various experiments with tinting starch for use on ruffs, I know that very often, pigments and dirt that are mixed in with or sitting on top of starch wash out without staining the fabric. When I tested this theory on my fabric, washing the starch out washed the pencil marks down the drain too! You can buy spray on starch or the liquid kind you dip your fabric into from the store, but thanks to Frolicking Frocks (dude, check out those petticoats!) I'm a convert to making my own out of cornstarch. My test stitching proves much more straight and accurate with the pencil guidelines, and after washing all evidence of the pencil lead is gone! Now that I've got that settled, the last step before stitching is to use a lightbox to trace my design onto the fabric. Stitching My original plan was to hand-stitch the stays, but I came to my senses after attempting a sample. I tried using my modern sewing machine, but it's very hard to stitch a line precisely 0.25" and stop in exactly the right place using the pedal control, so I pulled out the little Singer 99 hand crank machine I refurbished a few years ago instead. Remember this one? Isn't she pretty? With a hand crank, it's really easy to stop right at the exact number of stitches you want. A lot of fiddling and several tests later, I settled on a stitch length calibrated to precisely 1/16 of an inch, giving me squares that were 4 stitches wide on each side. Getting the correct stitch size is no mean feat on these old machines, since you set the length by screwing an unlabeled knob in or out as needed. That knob is the stitch length regulator. Notice the distinct lack of numbers or any useful markings of any sort? Now that I've got the length set, sewing each square is now as easy as starting the needle in the right place, sewing 4 stitches, sinking the needle on the 4th stitch, raising the presser foot, turning the fabric, putting the foot down again, sewing 4 more stitches, etc, all the way around the square. This leaves a bunch of thread tails all over the place. Of course I can't just trim them because the stitching would come out, so the loose threads are pulled to the back and tied off. Since I'm a bit paranoid about the knots coming undone, I put a dot of Fray-Check on each to prevent unraveling. Remember to test the Fray-Check on an inconspicuous spot first! My layers are thin, and on the first few knots I used too much and it soaked through to the front. Threads pulled to the back for tying. At first I was tying the threads after each square, but it's more efficient to sew several squares, then flip to the back and start pulling through/tying off. The problem with doing it that way is that those loose tails get in the way of stitching, and if you sew through the tail of a square a few rows down it's a mess to untangle. Luckily, I'm owned by two exceedingly furry felines, and thus have a clothing de-furring brush that doubles as a way to clear all my loose threads off to one side with a single swipe. Guess the fuzzbeasts are good for something. There's something like 200 tiny squares on just ONE front panel, plus more on each side panel, so you can see why this has been taking me a while! Cording After washing the starch out, drying, and pressing each piece, it's FINALLY time to stuff some cord in there. I'm using the same Sugar n' Cream cotton cord that I used in my corded petticoat. You'll want a cord of a width that fits fairly snugly in your channels, so choose accordingly, or stitch your channels to accommodate the cord you wish to use. I'm using a thick, blunt needle with a wide eye. Tapestry needles are perfect. The eye should be large enough that the cord just fits through it, but not so big that the needle won't fit through your channels with the now doubled cord in tow. I also have a pair needle nose pliers, because despite my best efforts, the eye of my needle still gets stuck in the fabric sometimes. When I made my last pair of corded stays, I broke the only good needle I had and swapped to one that was nearly the same, only sharp instead of blunt. It sorta worked, but the sharp tip kept shredding the fabric on both sides, and those scrapes later unraveled into larger holes, allowing the cord to poke out. I wouldn't have minded if they were all on the inside, but most of them were on the pretty outside! If all you can get is a sharp needle, grind the tip down. Holes in channels caused by sharp needle shredding fabric. Sadly, these are on the front, so they show when I wear it. On the backside of the stays, I poke the needle through just one layer of fabric right at the start of a channel. Since the needle is blunt, with some fabrics an awl is needed to start the hole. It takes a bit of practice to get the tip to go through just one layer of fabric, but practice makes perfect, right? Using an awl to start the hole. Threading the needle into the channel. Once inside, the needle is pushed down the length of the channel, dragging the cord behind it. It's tight, and I have to moosh (super technical term) and manipulate the fabric around the needle to move it along. Sometimes the pliers are necessary to pull the needle through the channel too. The eye is stuck at the entry to the channel, so I use pliers to help it along. At the opposite end, I poke the tip of the needle back out through the back fabric and pull it out, taking care to not pull all the cording out with it! The pliers are also super useful here, as the eye of the needle generally gets stuck on the way out. All the pushing and pulling on the needle is pretty rough on my fingers; using the pliers instead solves that problem. The downside is that I'm more likely to break a needle when pulling on it with the pliers. It's easier on my fingers to just use the pliers to pull the needle out. I don't trim the cord close to the fabric just yet; instead I cut it so there's about 1" still hanging out, then move on to the other channels. The places where the cords cross are a bit tricky to get through, but it's doable. Eventually I end up with a small forest of cord ends growing out of the back of the stays. Well that's a right mess. Once I've got a whole section done, I start trimming the stray tails. I cut the cord pretty close to the fabric, but not right flush with it. There are till some tiny tails hanging out. Trimmed close, with just a little bit hanging out. Then, without holding onto the cord, I tug on both ends of the channel, stretching the fabric slightly. Most of the tails pop back into their holes and disappear. A few are still sticking out a bit, but this is the inside of the garment, so I don't care overmuch. Gently stretching each channel. There are still holes at the start and end of each channel, but again, it's the inside, and they close up a little with time anyways. No more tails! Wow, that got lengthy! If any part of this tutorial isn't clear, let me know and I'll try to unmuddy it a bit. If you've got a cool cording project you're working on, show us in the comments! I've still got a few panels to go, so I'm off to the sewing table again for another late night.
A new book profiles talented artisans from around the world
Get the arm party started with these cute DIY friendship bracelets.
Ellie of by Ellie creates beautiful cold process soap and more. In this interview she shares her business tips, along with tips for soaping and photography.
Adrian Deckbar was born and raised in New Orleans. She earned a BA in Painting and Drawing at the University of Louisiana (now ULL) in 1973. She then earned an MA in Painting and Drawing at San Francisco State University under the renowned photorealist artist Robert Bechtle. Later, at Tulane University, she received an MFA, also in Painting and Drawing. She has taught Painting and Drawing classes at Tulane University, The New Orleans Academy of Fine Arts, and at San Francisco State University. She has also taught workshops including The Bascom in Highlands, NC, The Mississippi Art Colony, The Arkansas Craft School, and The Prince’s Foundation for Rebuilding the Environment in New Orleans, and Sketching in Provence, Umbria, and Northern Italy. Her work is in numerous private and corporate collections in the US and abroad. She has received grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollack Krasner Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Gottlieb Foundation. In 2008, Deckbar published a book of her work with a grant from Louisiana Cultural Economy Foundation, entitled, Continuum: Moving Through A Still Frame. Deckbar is currently working on a new series of paintings titled Movie Stills. These new paintings depict women who are aware that they are objectified, yet mysterious, weary and yet defiant. Her incredible mastery of photo realism, combined with an awareness of the times we live in, and all the emotional weight that carries, finds her in a unique place in the art world.
This summer I installed this commissioned artwork for NIH [National Institutes of Health] in their permanent collection.
This Dutch museum vitrine table/cabinet is the largest I've ever seen. I suspect that everything I own could fit under that glass! ...
