Janell here, In March I got a hold of some of Jen Allyson’s Quite Contrary Fabric Collection from Riley Blake and I made my daughter this cute summer dress, but what’s a girl to do without accessories? Make some of course!
There’s still time for a few summer craft projects, these flowers are so simple you can whip up a bunch to enjoy for the rest of the summer or give a few away, they make perfect gifts. Simple, sweet, and handmade.
The best part about these projects is that they can be made from fabric scraps. Those of you who work with fabric have oodles of scraps. I chose five different fabrics from Quite Contrary. For the first flower, you’ll need thread, a needle, scissors, and extra embellishments like buttons, hair clips, or a head band if you choose.
Start with cutting a circle about the size of your hand from one piece of fabric. You don’t need to make this is perfect circle, in fact a little imperfection adds to the fun of these flowers.
The take your threaded needle and simply stitch about a ¼ inch all around the border.
Then gently pull to cinch the circle together. Repeat with another circle of fabric slightly smaller than your first circle. You can make multiple layers to add depth and beauty to your flower. Once you have at least two circle flowers you can layer them one on top of the other and stitch together. I added a button so I sewed all three together at the same time. You can also use jewels or beads in the center, or leave the flowers plain.
Now you can attach the flower to a clip or a hair band or an elastic hair tie. I wanted to make a fabric covered hair hand to attach the flower to. This is also very simple to do. Take your head band that you want to cover and a few long strips of fabric. I chose to tear some strips because I like the raw frayed look of the edges. I started with two long strips that were about ¾ inch thick. Take a hot glue gun or your favorite craft glue and start at one end and wrap the headband with the fabric strips adding glue about every inch or so.
You can attach your flowers with a little glue or you can sew them on as well. I chose to do both to make sure they were very well attached since I knew my toddler might not be so gentle with her headband.
I even made a card with an extra fabric flower that I had.
The second flower is a “no-sew” flower, also great for scraps. Tear some strips of fabric anywhere from 1 inch thick to 2 inches. You can experiement with the thickness to find one you like. Tie a knot at the end of one strip and start twisting the ends around the knot to form a circle. As you go place glue around the edges. I used a hot glue gun, because that’s what I already had out, but a quick dry craft glue would be ideal and you don’t have to worry about getting burned.
Here are three examples of the different looks you can get from different fabrics using the Quite Contrary line.
The hair clips (below) I started with the pink polka dots for the center of the flowers and then wrapped them with green circles. I filled the center with brads and buttons.
Try layering multiple flowers for a larger hair barrette or attaching to a pin for a fun, colorful broach. Make a few for present toppers, magnets, scrapbooking or t-shirt embellishments, there are so many ways to use fabric flowers.
A couple of month’s ago I was seriously inspired by Trish Turay’s dress garland featured on Get it Scrapped. I instantly knew that I wanted to create a shadowbox for my new niece’s nursery. So I bookmarked the website and ordered a 9×20 Shadowbox online.
On Saturday I had a whole day to do whatever I wanted with it. So I hopped out of bed and got to work! The first thing I did was create my own cutting files. I have a Cricut Expression and use SCAL to cut all my own custom files.
I created 2 dresses, 1 apron, 2 over-skirts, and a collar. This made really short work of my project because I didn’t have to hand cut anything. I love my Cricut.
For the first dress, I used ribbons, paper and brads to create some cute hand-made flowers. I also added some tiny rhinestones for buttons and made a glittered sash.
The second dress also got some glitter on the collar and layered skirt. I ran the top skirt through the sewing machine and topped it off with a ribbon sash and a button. I also added a playful pink pom pom trim using my Glue Arts Glider.
For the third dress, I wanted to gather some wide organza that I had lying around. So I pulled out my sewing machine… I barely know how to sew, so pardon how messy this is… but at least you know beginners can do it too!
I traced where the apron hit the dress so that I would know where I needed to start my skirt and how long of a gathered piece I needed.
Then I grabbed some yarn and sewed it loosely to my organza – about twice as long as the skirt.
Then I gently pulled on the yarn to gather it, and then sewed it to the bottom dress, so that none of my bad sewing would show!
The gathered skirt was a little unruly, so I used my glue glider to help it stick down. You couldn’t see any of the glue in the final product.
I also wanted some ric-rac on the bottom of the apron to finish the transition. The best way I know to create adhesive ribbon is to run it through my Xyron. This really makes it easy to get ribbon down securely especially on curves. I also used it on the green ribbon on the first dress.
Once I was happy with how all the dresses turned out, I decided to make a banner with the new baby’s name.
I just hand-cut a bunch of triangles and then ran them through the sewing machine with some crocheting string. I did it really SLOWLY so I had control over the string and the placement on the triangles.
I chose a contrasting color – brown, to give the banner a more detailed effect. Then I simply added some glitter sticker letters.
Once I decided how everything would be placed. I grabbed some teeny clothes pins and some cream seam binding to hang the dresses on. I also found some eye-screws to hang the ribbon by.
For the banner, I used some small pins and tied the string around them.
You can also see that I added a few pins in the middle of the banner to create a scalloped look. This was the final product and I absolutely love how it turned out. The hardest part was having to give it away! But I can’t wait to see it in my new nieces adorable nursery.
For the wrapping, I wrapped some tissue paper around the frame and had my cricut cut out another dress and apron. I only added one embellishment to this dress — a little rhinestone necklace. Then I clothes-pinned it to the ribbon with a little congratulations tag.
If you’re interested in doing this or a similar project, I actually took the time to build all the files (SVG, GSD, JPG, AI) for the various cutting programs and am selling them at Design House Digital starting Thursday May 2oth (2010). These files should work for any die-cut machine including the Cricut (with SCAL), & Silhouette. I’m giving away this digital kit to one of my readers, all you need to do is comment — tell me what kind of cutting machine you have — and I’ll choose one random winner on Thursday Morning!
If you’ve heard about Project 365 or are thinking about doing it, now is a great time to start. I’m sure you have *some* photos from 2010 and many more days are ahead of you still! This year I was planning on doing a modified version of 365 where I would compile photos from each month and make a few pages, and then at the end of the year get an album printed. However when I really started looking at how much fun taking just one single picture every day could be, I decided to go for it! So I made a super clean, super simple album template for the month of January. I wanted it to be very photo-oriented because with 365 photos of different things, you don’t want too much interfering with that. Plus I like really graphic and editorial style layouts. Here is the album that I designed:
You can see that it’s really basic. It has 8 pages wth spaces for 31 photos, and then a 9th page which has one line for a caption for each photo. I am going to make a corresponding album for every month of 2010. Each will be a variation based on the season, but they will all have the same look and feel so that if you followed the project through for the whole year, you would end up with a sleek coordinating album.
You can also personalize and modify the template to your specifications by adding digital elements and patterns. I decided to make a quick video tutorial to show you just how easy it is to compile your photos from 2010. Hopefully it will inspire you to start taking pictures! If you are unfamiliar with templates, this tutorial should give you a basic understanding of how templates work in general. I used Photoshop Elements 8.0 but the same principles apply to other versions as well as full-featured Photoshop.
If you’re interested in digital scrapbooking, but you think it’s a little intimidating, here’s a video I made for Design House Digital.
It’s just a really simple layout to get you started, and best of all, you can download the kit that I used for FREE so you can follow along. I used Photoshop Elements 8, and if you don’t have it, you can download a FREE 30-day free trial. It’s actually quite a simple and straightforward program to use, yet it has so many awesome features. You can also do this same basic thing with Photoshop.
Hi, Mr Project here. You may know me from the website idsketching.com, or from the occasional layout my my wonderfully talented (and beautiful) wife – JenAllyson, the project girl. In any case, I’m lucky to be a guest blogger today on theprojectgirl.com
Earlier this summer, we were contacted by Provo Craft and given the opportunity to test out their awesome silk screening machine, the YuDu. I must say, it’s simple enough to use and we had a great time using it. We tried to think of what our first project would be and decided to use the YuDu to create some nifty shirts for our then upcoming family reunion. I tried to design them, but ultimately, the project girl won out, and we went with her awesome “vintagey” design for the silk screening process.
The yudu comes in a box (LARGE) with everything you need to get started – some water based ink, emulsion, two screens, transparencies, a squeegee and instruction card. I highly suggest searching for a video online of how the process actually works before you dive right in. it certainly helped prepare me for the heartache that lie ahead.
First things first, find yourself an assistant. Mine happened to be the project girl, and I was in good hands. We signed up to do about 30 shirts. Looking back, I would have tried to find three or four assistants to help with the process. Jen took care of the design and we printed it on our Epson wide format printer at home. Things didn’t go too well with the first design (sordid details of which I will forgo discussing); needless to say, we rethought things and settled with a much simpler design.
Printing the design was fairly easy. All we needed to do was make sure we printed on the right side of the provided transparency. There are two sides to it, so just be sure the side you print on (especially if you have an inkjet printer) is the sticky side.
Once your design is finalized and printed, you can step into the yudu process.
The yudu comes with a few sheets of emulsion. Emulsion reacts to light so it comes in a black bag. You want to make sure you don’t leave it out TOO long when working with it. It starts out green and changes color to blue when exposed to the light. So . . . What we did is cut the emulsion to the size of the design to save as much of it as we could (it’s super expensive for new sheets)
1. We wet the screen with a damp paper towel so that it’s not drenched, but moist.
2. Apply the emulsion with the squeegee. In this picture, you can see the first application of the emulsion that we tried. Be SURE to take the plastic film off the emulsion before putting it on the screen. Te next step will also be critical as well.
3. Dry the emulsion. The yudu comes with a nifty tray below the lighted surface that has built in fans., In our first attempt to get the emulsion to stick to the screen, the fans didn’t do enough for us, so this time, we used a BLOWDRYER. I highly recommend it if you have a yudu or are thinking about getting one. It’s definitely one thing they could improve in the next version of the yudu. A heated drying compartment would be ideal for making sure the emulsion sticks to the screen.
4. Place the design on the reverse side of the screen. Packaging tape works great for masking the rest of the screen from the ink application as well as securing your design in place. Where you place your cut and cropped design is where it’ll show up on the tee shirt once you center it on the included platen. The top of the yudu comes with 4 indexing pegs that let you keep the screen in the right place when exposing the screen to set the design. Once we placed our design as outlined by the instructions, we put a jar of rice on top for weight and set the timer and let the screen expose for around 15 minutes. It needs to be exposed long enough to have the screen go from bright green to a deep blue color. The parts that aren’t exposed will be green and will be removable with a light rinse of water.
5. Once the emulsion has set, rinse the screen with warm water (I think! ) and the green areas should rinse away. Be sure to rub it gently. We tried with a rough sponge at first and it ended up destroying the emulsion and also the design and had to start over.
6. Once the emulsion was dry, would start applying the design to our 30 shirts. We masked the exposed screen area with saran wrap and packaging tape so that the ink wouldn’t spill over to other areas of the shirt. When applying the ink, be sure to have enough. We had trouble the first few times with splotchy application simply because we didn’t have enough ink, or “flood” the screen first. You can read about that in the instructions that come with the yudu or check out videos of others using it online.
7. Squeegeeing was the hardest part. Man it was a workout. It was also challenging trying to figure out the right pressure, amount of ink, and how fast to apply the ink. I suggest getting a test shirt and trying it out a few times before you commit to that final stroke. From what I hear as well, the “super” squeegee with rubber blade works much better than the one included in the box. Jen handled the drying of the shirts with a blowdryer and placing them on the platen, and I took care of all the squeegeeing. Like I said before, It might be worth getting a few assistants to help out if you plan on doing more than 5 shirts. It’s a chore!
8. Once the shirt is done, you can hit it with a blowdryer, set it to the side, and repeat. Be sure to not let the ink dry on the screen. One thing we learned from the first run was that waiting too long between applications caused the screen to clog up a bit, resulting in a splotchy and uneven application. One way to avoid this is to “flood” the screen with ink while you’re removing the t-shirt and replacing it with another.
All in all, it was a great experience. i’d never screen printed before and we made some awesome shirts together, mostly due to Jen’s awesome design skills and assistance.
Some things I liked were the indexing pins for the screen, the storage bay for your screens, and the teeshirt platen. I think I forgot to mention is has a slightly sticky surface so that your shirt or application surface stays fixes when the squeegee party starts.
I’d like to see a heated drying area in the next iteration, and perhaps a way to lock the screen in place when opening the top door of the yudu. We found that sometimes the screen would fall off when we opened the door to change the teeshirts. Also, beware of rogue ink. We had to quickly wash a teeshirt and let it dry because of some stray ink on our worksurface.
All in all the yudu is a great product and helped us make our family reunion tee shirts, which EVERYONE absolutely loved. I look forward to the next version and hope some key improvements will be made as well.
) and the green areas should rinse away. Be sure to rub it gently. We tried with a rough sponge at first and it ended up destroying the emulsion and also the design and had to start over.
