11.10.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 12:05 am by Meg
That’s what I feel like after turning out 40 of them. I think I mentioned last year that my chorus exchanges little things at our Christmas party, or maybe I didn’t on the blog, only in my leatherwork section.
Anyway, last year I made leather keychains that went with the pins that we wear.
and they were a hit, but I needed something to do for this year.
Then the store that I buy my supplies from came out with instructions to make Christmas trees.
and I thought it looked like fun. I have to say that I’m amazed on how well they came out because you start with a piece that’s shaped like an arrowhead.
and then cut it into a the tree, stamp and paint it.
Now I did do some changes. If you look at theirs, they painted the entire thing. I wanted something quicker (I’m doing 40 remember!) and dyed mine. I’m really happy with the dying because the trees came out in all different shades of green (go back and look at my forest) and really makes each one different. Then I went back and painted the trunks and ornaments.
Now I have a problem.
What to do with them. I’ve basically come up with 3 ideas, and I need some feedback or something else.
1. Punch a hole in the top (probably through the top star) and put a string through it. So, it would be an ornament for someone’s tree or could be hung somewhere else. (Not only am I not keen on punching a hole in it, Hubby suggested that it wouldn’t show up well on someone’s tree.)
2. Put a magnet on the back. Girl’s top choice. (Though Hubby and I aren’t sure it wouldn’t be too heavy.)
3. Hot glue it to a wooden clothespin. The “expensive” option, since I’d have to buy the clothes pins (I have any other supplies I might need.) and I really don’t want to spend much more on them. (and I know clothespins are not “expensive”, but I’m thinking of the total cost.)
Anyone have any thoughts, or another idea?
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07.19.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 5:41 pm by Meg
Watch ‘cha think?
The tupperware cup wasn’t meant to be used, but I didn’t want to do bee’s wax (what you see at most Renaissance Fairs) and it’ fits - perfectly!
Boy wants it and he’ll have a liner he can pull and wash.
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07.05.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 7:33 am by Meg
And I am so not a morning person.
During the summer I’ve been setting my alarm for 8 and working on getting out of the shower by 9 (and yes, that means I’m usually not bouncing out of bed when the alarm goes off!)
I got up so early this morning (or actually, I should say Girl got me up so early this morning…) because it’s project submittal for everything else. And she’s decided that she wanted to bake her bread this morning instead of last night - so it will be extra fresh.
It’s yeast bread and we have to get it there between 8:30 and 11 AM - so she’s shooting for 10 AM and wanted to get started at 5:30. And the good mother/supporter that I try to be, said I’d get up with her. For joy.
Anyway, she’s doing it all herself, but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t want my opinion on multiple steps. - yeah, I’m her expert - do you know how many loaves of yeast bread I’ve baked? I could count them on one hand and have fingers left over. I love my bread machine.
She made a practice loaf a few days ago and it came out fairly good. We do have a standing joke about what coarsely chopped onions means - yes, it has onions. She’s chopped onions before, but the “coarsely” term threw her. She left them chunked in huge pieces - yeah, they are better in this loaf. We also cut the amount of onions in half this time.
We also decided to cut the amount of pepper. I don’t know if I don’t cook with pepper because I’m sensitive to it, or that I’m sensitive to it because I don’t have it in a lot of foods. The original recipe called for a tablespoon. Eating it, my entire mouth tingled. Girl agreed, but Hubby and our friend, T, thought it was fine. We cut it back to 2 teaspoons.
Anyway, after all these teases, I figure I’d share the recipe she’s using.
Rosemary Country Bread ( It’s suppose to have olives, but she cut those out first thing.) It’s from The New Basics Cookbook by Rosso and Lukins - a favorite of mine. She needed a recipe with a specialty grain - whole wheat, rye, oat, or bran (etc.)
1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons of sugar
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons of yellow cornmeal
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup coarsely chopped onions (originally 2/3 cup)
2 tablespoons rosemary leaves
(orginally 2/3 cup pitted Nicoise olives)
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons ground black pepper (originally 1 tablespoon)
2 cups whole-wheat flour
3 to 3½ cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1. Stir the yeast, warm water, and milk together in a large bowl. Let the mixture stand until the yeast has dissolved, 5 mins.
2. Add the sugar, ½ cup cornmeal, butter, onion, rosemary, salt, pepper, whole-wheat flour, and 2 cups of the all-purpose flour; beat well. Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead for 2 to 3 mins, adding the remaining all-purpose flour as necessary to make a workable dough. Let the dough rest for 10 to 15 mins.
3. Knead the dough again, until it is smooth and elastic, 10 mins. (Sprinkle it with flour as you knead if necessary to keep it from sticking.)
4. Lightly oil a large bowl, and turn the dough in it to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 1½ hours.
5. Punch the dough down and divide it in half. Shape each half into a round loaf. Sprinkle a baking sheet with the remaining 2 tablespoons cornmeal, and place the loaves on it, seam side down. Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise again until barely doubled in bulk, about 45 mins.
6. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350° F.
7. Bake the bread until it is well browned and sounds hollow when the bottom is tapped with your finger, about 45 mins. Remove it from the baking sheet and set it on a wire rack to cool.
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07.04.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 12:15 am by Meg
Thursday evening was when our county has the kids turn in exhibits for some of the more popular 4H projects - crafts and photography. Because they do community judging, turning in projects is a slow process as each exhibit is examined and the judges talk to the kids about what they like or dislike.
While the kids leave the judging knowing if they have won blue, red, or white; we’ll have to wait until Sunday or Monday to find out if they got any honor awards, Championships, or Grand Championships. We also have to wait until then to find out if anything will be going to state.
So, they left the judging with all blues except for Girl’s 10 color prints - it got a red because the pictures were not as sharp as the judges would have liked. While I’m not posting the photography collections, I thought I’d share their salons and leatherworking. They each had three 8×10 salons - one in color, one in black and white, and one that has been modified into a creative print.
In photography, Girl competes in the intermediate level, while Boy in advanced. The only way they compete against each other will be for Grand Champion - a touchy point since Boy won it two years ago and Girl last year.
Boy’s salons:
And his original picture and what he did with it:
Girl’s salons:
And her original picture and what she did with it:
They both had leather to submit in crafts. For this project, they are both in advanced - but neither is really competitive. Crafts is a very competitive project and winning anything other than an honor ribbon is hard.
Boy made a pair of leather bracers
And Girl made a leather CD case
So now we have to finish up what will be submitted on Saturday morning. It’ll keep us busy.
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06.27.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 10:15 pm by Meg
…other than dealing with graduations, workshops, and running critters all over the place….
so glad you asked.
For nearly the last 3 weeks I have been working on my own leather bowl.
I’ve had a couple of people recently ask me about the “process” I go through making a bowl. Because of that, I took a lot of pics as I was working on it. If you aren’t interested in the “process” - just jump to the end to see the finished bowl.
I started by tracing a large bowl onto the leather as a guide for cutting it out. You want the piece to be slightly larger than the lip of the bowl. (black bowl on a black plastic covered table doesn’t show too well does it?)
Then I spent days going through patterns and pictures trying to figure out what I wanted to put on it. I finally settled on this coloring page from Dover. I used to be on their weekly free downloads, and had saved it to carve - this seemed to be the time.
Then I trace over the pattern, first to transfer it onto translucent plastic mylar. And then using a pointy tool, unto the leather (you almost always work on damp leather, not dry.)
When I’m starting completely from scratch and drawing my own pattern, I can just sketch on the mylar, but it’s often easier to sketch on white paper and then put the finished design unto the mylar. One convenience of the mylar is that it is reusable and I can take a design and use it over and over again (getting highly bored in the meantime.)
Once the pattern has been traced onto the leather, you need to carve it. Leather carving tools come in a lot of different shapes, but there is a basic set of 7 tools that you use.
Now that funky thing in the middle is a swivel knife, and it’s the first thing you do. Any line that needs to be more than faint, gets cut. Not all the way, mind, but ideally about a third of the way down.
The other 6 tools are used to add details and textures. The one you use the most is the beveler. Every line you cut, gets beveled to make one side ‘up’ and the other ‘down.’ It can get very, very boring - or a perfect time to get into a white zone.
The last tool you use is a backgrounder - guess where that’s used?
How much you do will depend on your picture, but it stamps down the areas that you aren’t interested in.
Then you need to shape the bowl. - And amazingly, I forgot to snap a picture during the shaping process. - Anyway, I took one at the end by putting the finished bowl, back into the black plastic bowl I used. (Remember that first picture of the leather sitting on top of the bowl?), but since I don’t want this to give away the finished bowl, you’ll have to wait to check it out.
Shaping the bowl takes about 3 days and needs diluted lemon juice and a refrigerator…but it’s actually fairly easy.
After the bowl is shaped and dried completely, you finish it. For this bowl, I opted to paint the flowers and leaves. With all the different flowers, I ended up searching on the web for ideas of what the colors should be. (I’m especially pleased with the blue flowers.)
That sketch under the bowl is a tracing of a dragon for my next project. I’m going to try to make a leather mug like they sell at the renaissance fairs. (But I haven’t found instructions, so it will be fully winged.) I decided to put the dragon on it, and as I suspected, Boy has already tried to claim it for himself.
Then the last steps are to stain the bowl to bring out the details and then cover with a water-proof finish. Read the rest of this entry »
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06.02.08
Posted in The creative side of life, Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 10:00 am by Meg
And it comes with a cake (of course!)
And I made a little something for a friend’s daughter who is also finishing. The friend had a massive panic attack last week that they think was triggered by a new medication, but she was in no shape to do much for her daughter’s graduation.
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05.10.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 2:18 pm by Meg
She wanted to just have a bunch of friends over and play silly yard games - in particular water balloons.
So we have about 10 games set up and it’s been easy because she and her friends are doing all the work of blowing up balloons and the like.
For her cake, first she wanted a dragon like her brother’s, but when I said no, she decided she wanted a castle, so we search on the web and found this:
The instructions were enough to get me started and we ended up with this:
Which she is very happy with.
If you look around the flickr photos, you can see it under construction.
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03.21.08
Posted in The creative side of life at 7:18 am by Meg
Hubby sent me looking at Etsy, and I’m considering making a bowl or something and try selling it on there.
It looks interesting and at 20 cents to list it and 3.5% of the selling price to sell it, it wouldn’t be an expensive experiment.
The catch is both making something (what?) and then pricing it. Anyone have any suggestions on what I should set the price of something like this?
I remember my mom’s advice with something (something she knitted maybe?) that 4 times the material cost is what handmade stuff should be priced at - that would set the bowl in the $50 to $100 range. But is that fair?
Has anyone used Etsy, or known someone who has?
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