Page 236 – the long thread

April 30, 2008May 1, 2008

Gocco!

My husband gave me the ingenious little Gocco printer for Christmas and I’m ashamed to say that I just took it out of the box today. I am intimidated by objects that require me to read instructions (particularly when they are in Japanese), but these great tutorials here and here got me through it and it turns out to be very simple. I now understand this Gocco craze! If you have not heard of these, they are basically mini silkscreen printers that burn the image and print it in a couple of simple steps.

I worked on this with my five-year-old who brought home a Dr. Seuss-ish drawing from school of her name in cursive made into people. The image needs to be in carbon to transfer to the screen, so I had her re-draw it with the carbon pen provided. Lost some of the detail of her original drawing as you can see below, but still great. I guess I could have traced the original. You can also scan in or create an image on the computer and (from what I gather) print with a laser printer or make a photocopy.

Anyway, all you do is make a screen of the original, ink it and print away. I look forward to trying some designs of my own and want to try multiple colors. Good-ness over at Etsy has a good price on the basic set.

April 29, 2008April 29, 2008

Ottoman Schmottoman

I hate this ottoman. I am in a period of crafrustration where none of my projects come out right, which is one reason that I’ve not posted the past few days. For this project, I used a cheaper blend version of sari fabrics, as silk obviously would not work for a project like this and would be too expensive. Still, the fabric was slippery and had to be backed with fusible webbing. Here’s the before and after shot of the ottoman, so I suppose it’s an improvement:

But in a house with two small children this is not the best fabric choice and it came out a bit sloppy. You should see the matching chair that I energetically ripped apart but have now decided that I am not capable of recovering. Oops. At least I bought upholstery fabric for that project. Do you ever start to hate something in your house so much that you must change it right away? That’s how I felt about this chair and ottoman. And I’ll probably feel compelled to change this again soon. Persistence, right?

Enough of my complaining. I still think that sari fabric would make some lovely pillows, and I like these colors. I used the wrong side of the fabric as it had a little less sheen and more muted color tones.

April 25, 2008April 25, 2008

Etsy Finds Friday

Vintage Fabrics. A great way to be green since we’ve been thinking about that this week. Some Etsy sellers of vintage fabric (clockwise from top left):

Yvestown Pillows

Lovely letter pillows from Yvestown. She’s now also selling the beautiful and hard-to-find Paumes books, so check out those too.

April 22, 2008April 22, 2008

Mosaic Painting

My husband made this painting of our first-born years ago, when she was around 6 months old. We must have had more free time back then. He should open an Etsy shop, don’t you think?

I searched through our old pictures and found the photo that he used:

He took the photo, created the mosaic effect in Photoshop and then laid it out on a grid. Sort of a paint-by-numbers thing. I wouldn’t have the patience for this, but thought I’d share since it turned out so well. I’ve always loved it. Our younger daughter got one that was done in Photoshop and sent off to the photo processor to be printed on canvas. I guess if we had another, she wouldn’t get one at all. Or any baby toys since I’ve given them all away.