Hobbies & Crafts

We talked about interior design, but along with the increase in technology, a lot of designers are expressing themselves digitally. We were interested in the field of graphic design in visual communications that we read about at http://www.gibbsnj.edu/.

My daughter loves to work on graphic images, photos, etc. to produce artwork to add to her website, and I've enjoyed helping her develop those talents. She's quite adept at figuring out the programs and has gone on to quickly surpass me in these areas. While I still prefer paper scrapbooking, I think she will probably go all digital soon and produce extraordinary results. (I think she's going to have to start her own blog someday!)

OK, brag mode off ... but with her talents and interests, I try to encourage her to learn more about web design and graphic arts as that segment of design is almost certainly destined to increase greatly. I would like to see her enter a field that she enjoys and that she can express herself through, so I'm glad to see her continue to express interest in various aspects of computer design. As she learns more and more, I know that she'll be able to one day enter this area as a career, if she chooses to do so, and I hope it will prove to be as fulfilling to her then as it does right now.

Comments

If you have an eye for style and a flair for design, you might want to consider turning your talent into a career, either full-time or part time. Some schools are devoted almost entirely to design, such as http://www.iadtnashville.com/. Programs here are varied, including Interior Design, Graphic Design, Fashion Design, Digital Photography, and more.

I have a friend who loves to decorate and is very talented at it. She received her training in interior design and went on to fulfill her dreams using her training. She bought an older home in a historical district of her town. After moving in, she started remodeling and restoring the home. She financed her work by doing freelance interior design work for acquaintances and soon word spread and she had plenty of work. She was able to stay at home with her children most of the time, since she could do a lot of the work in her studio. The bills were paid by her design work. At the same time, she was able to buy everything wholesale as she remodeled and redesigned her own home, and of course did all the work herself, saving professional costs as well. After about two years, she now has a lovely restored home, tastefully decorated, and worth MUCH more than she put into it (although she isn't interested in selling ... she just loves having such a lovely home even though she couldn't have afforded such a nice home outright).

Many of our readers are interested in photography. Digital photography is a growing industry, whether you are interested in doing portraits, product photography, design using photos, or any one of a wide variety of photo-related fields. Scrapbooking remains a hot craft field, and those who can teach techniques of digital photography and photo editing are in growing demand as well. Photo restoration is a related field that could easily be incorporated.

Our point is that, whatever you love to do, you may be able to turn your hobby into a career, either as a full-time occupation or a part-time extension of your hobby that lets you do what you love, meet people, have fun, and earn a little extra in the process.

Comments

I recently purchased a wrought iron garden wall sculpture that I absolutely loved because of the lines of the design. I really wanted to hang the piece in the living room, though, rather than on a garden wall as it was intended. But somehow it looked out of place, as if it had somehow wandered into the house from the garden on its own, and just didn't fit in with everything else.

I solved the problem by taking an artist's canvas and covering it with fabric, placing the canvas within a frame, and mounting my garden sculpture in the center of the canvas. The effect was dramatic ... no more did my little garden sculpture look like Oliver Twist visiting my home but instead hung proudly on the wall, perfectly at ease with its surroundings.

This little trick of framing works for virtually anything you want to include in your decor, but by itself isn't "dressy" enough. Children's art work is a perfect example. If you choose a few favorite pieces and frame them using matching simple black frames, then arrange them on the wall like a collage, you have instant "Little Picasso." You can use tiny frames for something as small as a charm or cameo, all the way up to fairly large pieces ... perhaps as big as 20" x 30". Unfortunately, if you get very large, the trick is not really as effective anymore.

If you use a background, rather than filling the frame with your item, do consider the background material carefully. For example, a black or rich-colored velvet fabric in a tiny frame can perfectly set off charms or jewelry pieces. If your piece is more natural, or rustic, perhaps a fabric such as burlap would suit. Even humble burlap becomes suitable for the living room when enhanced by the right frame!

Comments

Valentine's Day is an especially fun day to craft with kids, because there are so many fun crafts that turn out so well.

1. For an extra special-valentine, or a heart wall decoration, try our tissue paper hearts.

Just use a sturdy cardstock, for a card, or heavier paper for a wallhanging. Draw a heart the size you want the finished piece to be. For a wall-hanging, cut the heart out. Now, draw a smaller heart inside the first one, making a border between the two hearts.

Cut up tissue paper into small squares. You will need two colors. You can get a very nice effect by using white squares for either the inside or the border, and the other color being pink or red.

Coat the inside heart (or a section of it if your design is large) with white school glue. Have children place a square of tissue paper over the eraser tip of a pencil, give the paper a slight twist up over the pencil, and use the pencil to press the paper into the glue. Younger children might be able to more easily just use their fingers to press the paper into the glue. Continue until the area is filled in, and then do the same with the border heart in the other color.

This will make a very special (though bulky!) Valentine card. Or you can add a hanger for a wall-hanging.

2. Heart gift boxes

Purchase paper-mache heart-shaped boxes at a discount store or craft store. Let children paint them in red, pink, white, purple, or other appropriate colors. Almost anything goes after that ... they can glue on silk flowers, ribbons, a lace border, buttons, paper doilies, small heart decorations, paint hearts or polka-dots all over the box, write a message on it, attach a photo inside or outside, apply stickers, or whatever else their imagination and your craft cupboard allows. These can become any style the child wishes, from romantic and elegant to funky.

Use these as a gift themselves, or better yet, fill them with wrapped sweets, bath luxuries, buttons or beads, flower seed packets, extra photos, personalized "coupons" (like "good for one hug anytime"), or whatever else would be appreciated by your recipient.

3. Salt dough magnets

These magnets are fun to make and would also make nice gifts, either as magnets or by punching a hole in the salt dough before baking, adding a personalized message, and threading it on a cord to give as a necklace or ornament.

Salt dough recipe: Mix 1/2 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of water, and 1 cup of flour until dough consistency is reached. Knead on a floured surface. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle just a little flour and work it in.

Roll dough out 1/4" thick on a floured surface with floured rolling pin.

Use heart-shaped cookie cutters to cut hearts. You may also cut them out freehand with a butter knife.

Make any special effects you like before baking, such as layering hearts on top of one another, forming groups of hearts, adding tiny balls of dough for 3-d polka dots, adding texture, or punching holes for hanging.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

The hearts are ready to paint with acrylic paints. You can write messages on them using a very fine brush or a toothpick, etc.

Spray with acrylic sealer if desired.

You can now thread them onto a cord for necklaces or ornaments, hot glue a magnet or pin-back onto the back (parents should handle the glue gun).


4. Fancy lace heart wreath

This one turns out beautifully in spite of its simplicity. You will need wire for the base ... preferably a little lighter than coat hanger wire, though coat hanger wire can work. Try florist's wire and choose one in a heavy gauge.

Cut the wire long enough to make your finished heart, plus about 4 inches.

Cut a length of lace that is twice or even 2-1/2 times as long as your wire.

Shape the wire into a heart, without joining the ends.

Thread the lace onto the wire, as if you were "sewing" one edge of the lace with a running stitch using the wire.

Push the lace back from the ends, twist the ends together, cutting off the excess wire using wire cutter pliers.

Pull the lace down to the ends, and fluff it to space evenly all over the heart. You can dress it up with ribbons, silk or dried flowers, florist's moss, etc. Hang using a loop of ribbon.

This one turns out nicely enough to try even if you don't have kids!

Comments

For those of you among our readers who create handmade products to sell, we're covering another website that offers this service. ArtisansMarket is an online listing and shopping gallery where visitors can buy art or hand-crafted items, and artists and crafters can sign up to sell art or hand-crafted items.

The site currently offers flat fees of $10 per month, and the commission on items sold is 10%. Artists and crafters can list any number of items for the flat fee.

We have compared this site to a number of other online sites selling crafted products and find that some of its strongest advantages are the large images that come up with first exposure to the product. Visual impression is most important when selling arts and crafts. Most buyers will not look further at your product if the image doesn't grab them within the first second or two of viewing. For this reason, we found the large images and visually pleasing pages of this site to be a very great potential advantage to sellers. The image shown at left is one of their category page for "Home and Entertaining," and links to "Home Accents."

The categories are nicely illustrated and encourage potential buyers to click on the category of their choice. At present, the categories are somewhat limited from the standpoint of a few certain craft categories (for example, if you sell premade scrapbook albums/pages or handmade Christmas decorations, there are no real categories for these). However, the majority of art and crafting categories are well represented, and in general are arranged by the buyer's need, which makes for a more practical listing from a buyer's point of view. This is beneficial to the seller, as buyers will be able to find your products when they are looking for them. In some cases, they may even search for things they would not otherwise have considered. We had to peek at "pet accessories," for example, while we were browsing under "Home and Entertaining."

Speaking of searching, that seems to be the biggest weakness of this site. The search function does not return some of the items we viewed when we tried searching for them using a description. This is most likely the fault of the sellers, however, who probably are not providing a good description of their items in the searchable fields. As always when listing an item for sale with an online auction or listing site, it is of the greatest importance to (1) place your item in the proper category, and (2) provide a good description, especially in searchable and initially viewable fields. Both of these things are the responsibility of the seller, and most listing sites will not oversee this process. However, having many sellers who don't reliably follow these basic rules will hurt the displayed results of both category and search results for the listing site, and can give a poor impression.

Overall, we really enjoyed visiting ArtisansMarket.com. As we first mentioned, the visual first impression of products is the most important factor in enticing customers to stay, browse, and buy, and ArtisansMarket has done a very fine job with their visual impact and in featuring products in a very flattering way. We hope this site climbs the ranks to become a widely used resource ... they certainly deserve to be!

Comments

Some more ideas for Valentine's Day decor, this time for your table.

Have you ever wanted to have a heart-shaped flower centerpiece? Try this easy method: First, find a heart-shaped basket. Line it with plastic if it doesn't have a liner, and cut florist's oasis foam to fill the basket. You can cut extra pieces to fill corners and crevices. It's better to push extra in and make it all more stable. Water the oasis foam. Purchase a bunch of fresh flowers, suited in size to your overall basket. (For a 10" basket, flowers should be ideally be about 1".) Cut the stems long enough to rest just above the oasis, and press the stem into the foam. If the stems are too weak, you can use a pencil or similar item to poke a hole into the foam to hold the flower. Keep going until you fill the basket. You can also tuck in a bit of moss between the flowers if you prefer. This makes a lovely centerpiece, in any size and with any type of flower. You can also mix several flower types together, just add each type one at a time, beginning with the largest ones, to get a pleasing overall arrangement.

You can also make the same basket using regular floral foam and silk flowers for a longer-lasting artificial form, if you prefer.

Now, how about a unique candle presentation? Take a clear piece, such as an ivy bowl, "fishbowl," or hurricane chimney. This will be the outer container. Inside of it, place a small clear votive holder. Pour red glass florist's marbles between the outside of the votive holder and the inside wall of the main container, filling deeply enough to hide the votive holder. Place a small candle or tealight inside the votive holder, light, and enjoy the sparkling red glow.

If your outside candleholder has a rim or place to tie something, a length of lace, ribbon, or raffia will add an extra nice touch. You can tuck tiny flowers into the knot. If giving as a gift, attach a card to the ribbon or raffia, and use a scented candle in the votive.

Comments

We want to feature a few more ideas for decorating your home for Valentine's Day ...

For the bathroom, why not have some feminine, romantic soaps? The easy version is to buy clear soap dispensers or liquid soap in a dispenser that the label can be removed from. Wash some small glass floral marbles and place a few in the bottom of the soap dispenser. Purchase some silk flower stems -- small flowers work best -- and wash them, allow them to dry, then clip them to just under the height of your soap dispenser bottle. Bend the bottom of the stem wire, insert the flower stem, and use the soap dispenser pump tube to work the stem under the glass marbles. Place more stems if you like. Fill your dispenser with soap. A clear or only slightly colored type looks best.

You can also use soap molds and glycerine soap to make small hand soaps using petals from your soap dispenser flowers to further echo the theme in your bathroom.

Comments