Posts categorized “Arts & Crafts”

Hey guess what! My work let me come up with a sewing project of my own and then post it on their blog! SO I DID! Here’s a link to that blog: http://www.qualitysewing.com/blog/?p=3112
And here, I’ve copied it to my own blorg so you can read it here:

Hello! This is Chris with Quality Sewing, and I’d like to show you how I made these adorable little plush ghosts with the Brother Dream Machine:

I confess I’m actually not much of a sewist; I work behind the scenes of Quality Sewing in advertising. But the Dream Machine is so unbelievably easy to use that even I could do this–so it should be no problem for you!

First off, draw a ghost. Just a simple face and a ghostly outline. Here, look how cute he is!

You can make it pretty much any shape and size that you want as long as it’ll fit on your fabric in a hoop. I used those sheets of felt that you can buy at a craft store for like 35 to 40 cents each. Those are about 8” x 10”, and I used the 5” x 7” hoop to hold them. So I drew a ghost that was about 4” x 6.” We’re going to turn the ghost inside out and stuff it, so try to leave a gap of about 1” to 2” in the outline.

Put your drawing on the Dream Machine’s scanning attachment and press “My Design Center” then “Illustration” then “Scan.” The machine will take just a minute to scan in your drawing.

Then it’ll appear on the screen. We’re going to embroidery just the face first, so use the stylus to select just the face portion.

Hoop up your fabric with some stabilizer (I used Floriani tearaway medium stabilizer behind my felt) and put it in the machine. Make sure your Dream Machine is loaded up with the color of thread you want (black in this case), and embroider that cute li’l face.

Once that’s done, take off the top frame of your hoop, lay another piece of fabric on top of the ghost’s face, and re-hoop it all together. Try to get it to be as close to where it originally was hooped as possible.

Put your ghost drawing through the scanner again, but this time select “Line” instead of “Illustration” before you scan it. The scanner will convert everything to outlines.

We don’t want to embroider the face this time, so what I did was choose the eraser tool and just rub out those face lines.

One of the reason I like using felt for these is because it’s ever-so-slightly translucent, and you can put that to good use. When you get to the embroidery phase, click this button to have the Dream Machine really quickly scan the hooped material, and voila! You can faintly see where your ghost’s face was embroidered. Drag the outline so that it is positioned around the face where you want it.

Then just stitch it out! You’d probably want to switch to white thread for the outline, but I used black so it would actually show up in the photos.

Now take everything out of the hoop, tear off the stabilizer, and carefully cut all the way around your ghost. I tried to keep it about 1/8 away from the seam.

Now turn him inside out and look at just how cute he is!

Now you just have to stuff him and stitch the opening closed and there you go! You have a cute little ghost plush.

This seriously only takes a few minutes to make. They’d be so cute to give away at a Halloween party (or even to Trick-or-Treaters).

If ghosts aren’t your thing, you can easily use the same technique to make Jack-o-lanterns! Here’s one I made, the only difference is that I used orange felt and I sandwiched a loop of green felt between the two layers of orange fabric before I stitched the outline.

If you don’t think your drawing skills are the greatest and you’re worried about how your plushes will look, below are some image .JPG files that you can download and put on a memory stick. That would make the creation of these plushes even faster because you wouldn’t have to physically scan the drawing each time; just put the memory stick in the Dream Machine and pull the design up instantly!

Just click on these images to download them to your computer (if that doesn’t work try right-clicking on them and selecting “Save As”).

I hope these li’l guys make your Halloween happier.
Cheers!
-Chris

Squishy scares!

Happy Halloween, everyone! I’m back today with another in my long series of Halloween crafts, and I’m joined by everyone’s favorite drawing of a pirate on a piece of plywood, the raging-drunk Ocean Shores Pirate!

Arr, thanks be to ye, mate, for havin’ me back in there here blog o’ yers.

No problem, OCP. Today we’re gonna be whipping up some ghosts.

Didn’ we do one o’ them ghostly crafts a few years back? Here, lemme dig through yer archives… yarr, there it be: Ghostly Crafts with the Ocean Shore Pirate! That were almost five year ago! Did ye think the booze saturatin’ my brain’d make me forget?

No, this is an entirely different craft project. I still hang up that paper ghost garland every year, though!

An’ every year I vomit into the most peculiar o’ places. Let’s be gettin’ on with it, eh?

This year I’m gonna show you how easy it is to make some adorable plush ghosts.

Can ye show ’em how to make a plush version of the ghost o’ me dignity? ‘Cause that be long gone.

Start with some soft white fabric. I have a bunch of white fleece lying around, so I’m going to use that. You could use felt if you want a less-stretchy version.

I… I can’t think o’ any puns that be about stretchiness an’ alcohol. Ye stumped me, ya bastard!

The first thing you should do is draw an outline of the ghost you want to make. Ghosts come in all shapes and sizes, from Pac-Man style scalloped-bottom ghosts to those with long, pointy, trails. They can have arms or not. You can make a bunch of these pretty quickly, so try a whole bunch of styles! Be sure to draw it about ¼″ to ½″ larger than you actually want (for seam allowances).

Draw a Gost!

Arr… I got me a scalloped bottom from fallin’ off a pier into a bed o’ snappin’ scallops! The welts still ain’t gone!

Now make some sort of face for your ghost. You can cut out some eyes from a dark fabric and sew them on, you could use your sewing machine and some satin stitches to make a face out of thread, or you can even take a sharpie and draw on a face. Here I’ve cut two eyes out of some dark gray fleece and sewn them on with a straight stitch around the edges. Whatever you do, be sure to put the face on the opposite side of your drawn outline.

Spooky eyes.

My face be drawn on me piece o’ plywood! Hey! Hey! Pay attention t’me!

Put your piece of fabric face-down on another piece of fabric so that the outline you drew is facing up. Then take it to your sewing machine (you can pin it or baste it if you want, but this isn’t an exact science, so if you don’t want to you don’t have to) and sew all the way around the perimiter, ¼″ to ½″ inside the outline. Leave about a 3″ gap somewhere so you can turn it rightside-out and stuff it.

Sew, sew, sew your ghost!

I stuff me liver so full o’ booze that it be the size o’ the Wrigley Field in Chicago!

No it isn’t; I’d be able to see it coming out of your piece of plywood if that were the case.

I been meanin’ t’ask ye, matey: how can I be consumin’ so much hooch when I’m just a drawin’ on a piece o’ plywood anyway?

Magic.

That’s what I thought! Har-har!

Anyway, now cut out your ghost (through both layers of fabric) along the outline you drew.

This ghost is such a cut-up!

Then turn it rightside-out.

This is why you need to mind the gap.

There’s your face again!

It’s mostly ghostly now!

And here be my face!

Knock that off!

Ye can’t stop me! Here it be a dozen times!

Now stuff it with some stuffing! No need to overstuff it; it’s easier to finish it if it isn’t bulging with too much stuffing.

This ghost is full of stuff and nonsense!

Now to seal up that opening. You can hand-stitch it closed if you want, or you can do what I’m doing here and tuck some of the fabric into the inside of the opening and top-stitch over it to seal it. Then just continue to top-stitch all the way around the ghost.

This top-stitching is the tops!

And while ye be at it, stitch up the hole in me side that got there ’cause I had to sell one o’ me internal organs in order to get more money to buy more hooch!

That’s it! You’re done!

Fantôme accompli!

Once you get the hang of this you can crank out bunch of ghosts in very little time. Give them away at your next Halloween party! They also make excellent cuddle buddies for wee ones:

Halloween Buddies!

Aye, or soak them in the finest rum and ring them out into the greedy, upturned mouths of yer party guests!

Or that. Well, thanks for another fun Halloween craft project, Ocean Shores Pirate.

And thank ye, Chris, fer pretendin’ not to notice that when I burp giant bubbles made o’ vomit & rum come out o’ me mouth and slowly float down to me crotch, where they burst with a fowl stench and a nethers-dampenin’ splash!

What do you think of this project, Ocean Shores Pirate?

It’s Christmas Eve! Happy Christmas Eve!

If you look around your home this morning and think, “You know, this is nice and pretty and all, but I wish I could have decorated more,” well, don’t worry: it’s never too late!

All you need are some pieces of paper and some scissors, and you too can make some pretty pretty holiday snowflakes to tape up around your house. I like to tape them up to the windows, personally. Below is the batch that I made this year. Here’s a “fun” game: one of these snowflakes was made by special guest snowflake-maker Josh Hird the Maroon Fool. Can you guess which one?

If you guessed correctly, you “won” the game!

Oh, and here’s one that I made at (and left at) work, so it doesn’t really count as one I have decorating my house, seeing as how it isn’t at my house. I have only this insagram of it:

You shouldst make your own! It is really very easy, and I wrote a how-to article a couple of years ago that explains how-to:

A Holiday How-To: Christmas Snowflakes!

A Holiday How-To: Christmas Snowflakes

Hope today and tomorrow are happy for all y’all! Let me know if you do make some snowflakes (or if you already have). I’d love to see them! Huzzah!

So the world didn’t end yesterday (big duh), so now maybe all the 2012 prophesy crap can stop.

But… even though the world didn’t end, I think maybe it came closer to happening than any of us realize. Just take a look at this snowflake that I made using my Holiday How-To:

The Snowflake Devourer?

Could it have been that the world was almost… Devoured?

At any rate, Happy End of the World, everyone! Let’s celebrate by listening to Pizzicato Five’s song “Happy Ending”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPTJ-8sWvg

You probably know that my pal Sandy, AKA Creepy Sheep, AKA Kowai Hitsuji, makes felt robots under the moniker of Heart Felt Robots.

A Strawberry Robot Dipped in Chocolate!

Well, her robots are so awexome that not only was one included in a video for an extremely talented hip-hop artist, but they were also accepted into an annual exhibit/sale of hand-made plush art! It’s called “Plush You!” and it happens in downtown Seattle at a cute indie toy store called Schmancy.

Plush You!

Schmancy’s “Plush You!” exhibit/sale is happening this year on October 13th from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM. I can’t find much information about the actual event on Schmancy’s website, but there is a Facebook event about it.

This is probably my favorite piece of graffiti tagging I’ve seen in, well, a long time. This Mario Kart banana was apparently found in a bike lane:

Don't Slip!

Way to make your morning bike commute more exciting!

(via albotas)

More French awesomeness, this time an artist who takes plastic bottles and other detritus and transforms them into incredible robot sculptures: Bottlerobots!

Here is un petit échantillon (a small sample) of what has been created:

Check out the Bottlerobot gallery on the website for many more!

Unfortunately you cannot as of yet purchase any of these robots, but you can purchase postcards of the various robots!

(via Chez Beeper Bebe)