antuhsa: (Default)
[personal profile] antuhsa
The last few days were such a whirlwind of work and bookbinding that I completely forgot what I did when, but I definitely did something every day.

Laundry detergent
Remember that conker laundry detergent I made in the beginning of the month? Well, I finally had the chance to use it! I put some of the dried conker bits in water and waited until it turned into a soapy liquid. Then I filtered the conkers out, added the liquid to the washing machine and turned the machine on. It was really easy. The laundry came out looking clean, so I suppose it has worked. The only thing is that this laundry detergent has no smell and that takes some time getting used to, I find. Otherwise, this seems to be succesful.


This is what the laundry detergent looked like

Bookbinding
First, I finished the two books I had to finish for class. I'm not super happy with them, but I didn't spend that much time on them either, since the commission was my priority. For the first book, I found some odd, textured paper in my stash that I decided to use. This paper was very difficult to work with, because it was transparent, so everything shows through. I used more glue in the middle than around the edges and you can very clearly see that, because the black paper I used underneath shows through. Oh well, now I know what not to do when I use the other sheet I have of this paper. For the second book I tried something I have wanted to try for some time, namely folding paper into pleats. I made three pleats on the front cover and left the back plain. I really like how minimalistic it looks. I just don't like the placement of the pleats very much, but I hope the design will look more balanced when I trim the books in class in a few days.


The weird book and the pleat book

I made a lot of progress with the sheet music commissions. I have now made all the endpapers, which was a lot of work. I wanted my design to look very neat and clean and it took a lot of time and experimentation to figure out how best to do that. But I did it and am happy with how they turned out!


The endpapers! I love how clean this looks. There are some irregularities in the middle, but that was fine, because the sheet was going to be folded in half anyway. I tried a few different methods to see which one gave me the best results, and that turned out to be ruler + white gelly roll pen, so that's how all six endpapers are made.

Then I discovered that the dark blue tapes I had sewed the books on showed through the bookcloth I want to use on the cover, so I cut new tapes in white and resewed all three books onto those. It was frustrating to have to cut the books apart and redo them, but if it makes the end result better, it will be worth it.

I glued my freshly made enpaper onto the bookblocks and glued the spines. As I'm writing this, I still have one more book to glue, but I hope to get to that within the next few days. After that, I will still have a lot of work and experimentation to do, but the bulk of the work for these books will be behind me, which is a really good feeling!


The resewn bookblocks with the endpapers attached. The top one has been glued, the bottom one not yet, so you can see what a difference gluing makes. I have another one glued, but that one was still drying at the time of taking this picture, so you'll have to take my word for it that it's done.

Final notes
Wow, I can't believe this challenge is already behind us. October flew by so fast. I had a blast doing this challenge and sharing my work with you guys, though I am sorry I didn't finish much this month. I mostly started projects, so I posted a lot of process pics. All these projects will get finished, but not in October anymore, obviously. When I have the sheet music commission finished, I'll probably post pictures of it on my personal journal though, as I do with all of my more complicated bookbinding projects, so feel free to subscribe if you want to see them. 

I also loved seeing what everyone else was doing, since we were all working on completely different projects and crafts. Keep up the great work and hope to see you all again elsewhere/ next year!
 
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
Day 28

I started to attach the gold cloth to the top of K's costume. I had NOTHING but problems: curling, bunching, thread breaking, and the bottom of the shirt disintegrating under the stitching. After a frustrating 90 minutes, I stopped and went on to more pleasant activities, like folding laundry.

IMG_20191029_162943

Day 29

I assessed the gold trim again; I changed the sewing machine needle (I had been using the wrong kind), and changed the thread, but nothing worked, and my skills were not up to trying to make it work and get finished in 3 days. I admitted defeat, and informed K, who wailed and wailed. I promised her we would work on it again starting in January, and have it ready for our local SF convention in May. (And in the meantime, I'll get my machine serviced, because tension was part of the problem, and find a substitute for the gold fabric that isn't as finicky.)

IMG_20191029_181446

(I took K to a thrift store after school on Wed, and we were able to find her a suitable beautiful costume.)

Day 30

Since I hadn't put my sewing machine away yet, GB asked me to repair the stitching on the waistband of his pants (no picture).

Day 31

The clutter in my office/craft storage space had become overwhelming, and I needed to get things sorted in there so at least I wasn't tripping and slipping and having things fall on my head.

Before
IMG_20191031_093336 IMG_20191031_093320

After
IMG_20191031_162609 IMG_20191031_162650

And, after returning home from the sugar mugging, I sat down and worked on my cross stitch until I ran out of thread in the needle.

IMG_20191031_211733
antuhsa: (Default)
[personal profile] antuhsa
Well, this will be the easiest and shortest post I've written on here, because I've done nothing but bookbinding for the whole week. That's not even much of an exaggeration, because there were a few days on which I spent more than 12 hours bookbinding. It was really intense. A friend asked me to bind her sheet music for her (my first commission, yay!) and that turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, so I spent most of my time on that. I'm not even close to being finished yet, so I will have a couple more bookbinding days ahead of me. But that's ok. I have an idea in mind for those books that I really love and I can't wait to see my vision come to life!



Here are the books I've been working on last week! There are 7 books on the photo, but there's an 8th one that still has to be sewn.

The small one on top is a practice piece for myself. It has no deadline and I have no idea what I want to do with it yet, so that one is finished for the time being.

The two books below are for class. The homework was to sew and glue them, which I did a few days ago, so those are also finished for now.

The two yellow ones below you've already seen. Those are also for class and the homework is to finish the cover. I worked on that last week. I only have to add some finishing touches and then they'll be done! I'll show them in more detail in my next post.

And the two books at the bottom are the commission. I've sewn them last week. There will be a third volume of sheet music which I'm working on right now and hope to have sewn on Wednesday. I've also designed the cover and the end pages last week and I'll start making those as soon as all the books are sewn. So yeah, plenty of work ahead still. I don't think I'll be feeling bored any time soon.
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
I think I hate the posting part of this challenge, if I'm being honest...

Day 22

I mostly played catch-up with household stuff, and didn't do any arting or crafting.

Day 23

I put back in the section in the cross stitch that I had to frog on Monday.

20191023

Day 24

Hey, some more cross stitch!

20191024

Day 25

My local Joann store moved, and had a grand opening sale. I picked up some Halloween-themed beads (like I really needed MORE beads!) and made some Mother/Daughter earrings!

20191025

Day 26

A HUGE crafting day today!

I baked and crumb-coated a cake for the birthday party...

20191026a 20191026b

And then I started to deal with the costume for K. K had sworn up and down that she'd help, but hasn't wanted to for the past two weeks. I finally got out the material anyway, and she stayed with me for about 10 minutes, before deciding that this was all boring and went back to watch tv. I suppose it's typical for an 8 year old, but I was, and am still, annoyed. I got a long-sleeved shirt from last year to build the costume on, cut a few things on it, ironed on an embellishment, and cut a bunch of yellow strips of material (of which I think I am eventually going to hate dealing with).

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Day 27

Unfortunately, F came home sick with a fever from her lesson on Saturday. We waited until the morning to see how she was, and she still had a fever, so we had to postpone the kids' birthday party. That gave me a bit more time to redesign K's costume in my head about a dozen times before deciding that even though the costume looks like a dress in the pictures, I do not have the required skills to make it a dress in reality. So I'm making it a top and skirt. K was pissy when I wanted to do some sizing stuff, and I almost gave up on making this for her. She also wanted to help again and but only stayed about 5 minutes when it became very clear that I wasn't going to let her run the sewing machine by herself. So I finally got the base skirt sewn, except I didn't leave a hole in the casing for elastic, and that's when I knew I needed to stop.

20191027
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
It's been a tough day at work. More knitting and Netflix is in the cards! Here's a progress picture. I love the yarn. It's called Copehagen and looks like it belongs in Ponyland. We're starting to run out of daytime around 5:30, so stay tuned.


Knit shawl in progress

Day 18-21

Oct. 22nd, 2019 11:58 am
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
The twins' birthday was this past weekend along with their school's Fall Fest, and I was too busy and too tired to post.

Day 18

I washed all the fabric for K's costume to be...

20191018

...and made two dozen allergen-free cupcakes for the Fall Fest (not pictured)

Day 19

I did some stitching at the Fall Fest...

20191019a

...And made some very quick earrings for my kids' morning birthday present (like stockings at Christmas, K said)...

20191019b

...And baked a double batch of brownies (for Coffee Hour at church on Sunday), a single batch of brownies for F's cake, and a double-layer yellow cake for K's cake (not pictured).

Day 20

I frosted F's cake...

20191020c

...and then I frosted K's cake...

20191020a 20191020b

...For my kids' birthday present from my Mom, we went to a ceramic painting place, and the kids painted "sugar" skulls, and I put another layer of paint on the black lines of my bowl...

20191020d

...And then when I collapsed after dinner, I put a few more stitches into the #MadXStitchalong...

20191020e

Day 21

I took the kids to the park after school and went to work some on the Stitchalong, and discovered that I'd put in an extra 2 rows WAY UP THERE, and had to frog a bunch, and then just could not face any more...

20191021
antuhsa: (Default)
[personal profile] antuhsa
I was on vacation for all of last week, so I didn't have time to post until now. I did get a lot done though!

Day 12
Unfortunately, I had to skip this day because I was travelling. I took much longer than I had expected to reach my destination, so by the time I finally got there, I didn't want to do anything anymore.

Day 13 - Cooking
I made borscht (Eastern European beetroot soup)! A Polish friend made it for me years ago and I loved it, but I somehow never got around to making it myself. I don't know if I made it in the 'proper' way, but it was very good nonetheless. I forgot to take pictures though, again. I keep eating my food before remembering to take out my camera :/

Day 14 - Cooking
I made banana chips. The friend who was on vacation with me brought a lot of bananas. I don't like them much, but I do like banana chips, so I tried to make it. I took two bananas, sliced them very thinly and put them in the over on a low temperature for a few hours. They were really nice and crispy at the end, but they didn't taste as well as I had hoped. I'll look up a recipe if I ever decide to do this again.



Day 15 - Sewing
I repaired the lining in my winter coat. The stitching had come undone around the armscyes, making the coat less waterproof in that area, so it was high time to repair it.

Day 16 - Sewing
Repairing the lining in my coat was so relaxing, that I finally felt ready to tackle a sewing project I've been wanting to finish for months: a sleeping mask. It's an easy project and I had the fabric already cut out and everything, but I always found excuses not to work on it. One of my main goals for NaCraMaMo was to finally finish this and I'm super happy to say that I did it! On day 16, I just sat on the sofa with my sewing supplies, calmly handsewing while my friend was watching a movie. It was the most relaxing thing to do and I enjoyed it tremendously. I was almost sorry to see it finished and wished I had taken supplies for more sewing projects with me.


The mask. The flowery cotton was left over from another project and the black cotton on the back comes from a shirt that was falling apart.

Day 17 - Sewing
I remembered I had some bias binding with me and decided to sew that onto the edges of my sleeping mask, because I wanted to do more sewing. Once again, I had the most relaxing evening and wished I had more sewing projects to work on.

I'm very happy that the mask is finished though! I wear sleeping masks all the time because I wake up immediately if there's even the smallest ray of light in my room. My previous sleeping mask was falling apart and smelling badly, however, so I'm glad I can finally replace it.



Day 18 - Bookbinding
I had also taken a lot of bookbinding supplies with me on vacation, and with all the sewing done, I had the time to work on that. Because of my inability to say no to fun creative projects, I suddenly have 8 bookbinding projects right now, so it was high time to get started. I folded the pages for three books and put them in the press to ge the air out, so I could continue with them the next day.

Day 19 - Bookbinding
The three bookblocks came out of the press looking nice and neat, so I made templates for where I wanted the sewing holes to be and pricked them.

Dag 20 - Bookbinding
I sewed one of the three bookblocks. I'll do the other two later this week. I don't need to go beyond the sewing stage for these books yet, so once I've sewn them, I can focus on the other 5 books I have to make. It's a bit overwhelming to have this many bookbinding projects at the same time, but also very exciting. Luckily I have this week off from work as well, so I hope I'll be able to get a lot of work done!

(Sorry for the lack of pictures this week btw. It's just that photos of folded sheets of paper aren't that interesting, so I'll post more bookbinding pics next week, when I've made more progress with my projects)


calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
I'm still knitting! I hope to post a couple of pictures soon. One ball of yarn is used up and I'm halfway through another. I didn't realize until I counted on a calendar that I spent a solid three weeks being sick, so I tried to do as little as possible this weekend.

I watched:


  • Real Detective

  • Forensic Files

  • Nailed It

  • Mean Girls

  • Riverdale

  • Clueless


  • I had never watched Mean Girls or Clueless before. I was quite a serious teenager, but now I can enjoy these a little more now, LOL.
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
More #MadXStitchalong!

Day 16

20191016

Day 17

20191017

There's some noticeable progress happening!
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
Somehow I had the itch to knit and just did not have enough UFOs around the house already. Cough! Ahem! I have a bunch of light purple chunky yarn that I am going to make a wrap with on my knitting loom. Stay tuned!
ladythmpr: (Default)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
I'm having some Not-Productive-Enough-itis, and as a result, I procrastinate.

Day 12

Some work on the #MadXStitchalong

20191012

Days 13 and 14

For two consecutive days I got some free time alone (meaning without kids) with my mom. So we went to one of her favorite places to paint ceramics on both days. I'm working on a large bowl. On Day 13, I got the second and third coats of the colors on the bowl. On day 14, I put the first coat of the black lines on the bowl. (I forgot to take progress pictures.)

20191013-14

Day 15

Worked a bit more on the #MadXStitchalong; there was a patch I had to frog, or there would be more done.

20191015
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
Although it looks like I skipped some days, I was productive! I started making larger rocking horse ornaments. The trouble is that they were more work than I anticipated.

I designed the cutting file years ago, so it was easy to cut them out on Pazzles die cutting machine. It's like a Cricut.

I made a sample one (which my Mom bought, thanks Mom!) but it looked quite plain. I needed a way to jazz it up without too much mess or pain. I wanted to use glitter but....mess and pain. Fortunately there was a bottle of gold Elmer's glitter glue in the stash and I tried outlining the hooves and saddle with it. Plus, I discovered that the glue part dries clear, which made it great for painting the rockers.

Alas glitter glue doesn't dry as fast as you would like it! It was easy to mess things up or have pieces accidentally stick together. I decided to make only as many horses as I had cut rockers for. I'm still assembling them. Stay tuned for the whole herd!


Brown rocking horse
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
I had this idea in my head to make little rocker ornaments for craft sales. It started with designing round ornaments. I played around with some circles and I think I'm on to something!



calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
Here's the finished card. I'm not quite happy with it - I think I overdid it with the burlap background stamp or my cold is just affecting my judgement, LOL.


New baby card

Days 7-11

Oct. 11th, 2019 03:52 pm
antuhsa: (Default)
[personal profile] antuhsa
Day 7: Cooking
I made something I've wanted to make for a very long time: traditional pudding. I've been fascinated by the 18th century practice of boiling puddings in a pudding cloth since I first heard of it, so it was high up on my bucket list to try it. The problem is that for most of these puddings you need suet, which, as a vegetarian, I don't really want to use, so I've been on the lookout for a suet-free recipe. Eventually I found a traditional pudding from my country, called Jan in de zak (in English: John in the bag or batter pudding), which didn't require suet, so I decided to make it. It's surprisingly easy. You need to make pancake batter, pour it in a pudding cloth/ tea towel that's dusted with flour, tie the tea towel off, and toss the whole thing in a pot filled with boiling water for a few hours. That's it. You usually serve it with some kind of sauce, like syrup or melted butter. Overall, it's an easy and cheap dish, only a little time-consuming.


Pouring the batter in the tea towel

Finished batter pudding
A slice of the pudding

The only problem I encountered was that my pot wasn't big enough, so not all of the pudding was covered by the boiling water, which resulted in parts of it remaining undercooked. Nevertheless, the taste was quite good. I'm glad I finally gave it a try and will probably make it again once I have a bigger pot.

Day 8: Cooking
My bookbinding classes start late in the afternoon and end late in the evening, so dinner is an issue. I've now started experimenting with food that tastes good both warm and cold, so I can have it the day before class, put the leftovers in the fridge, and then have those in class the next day. On day 8, I had some leftovers from a Moroccan lentil stew and decided to bake that into a cake so I could easily take it to class. This recipe was my own and is one of the most random things I've ever cooked. I basically took the stew, added eggs, milk and flour to it until it started to look like cake batter, and baked that in the oven. The result was ok. The consistency of the cake was good, but some of the flavours of the stew got lost in the baking process. I'm not sure how to avoid that next time, but I'll figure it out. I think it was a good way of turning leftovers into a proper meal that you can eat cold the next day, but I'll need to experiment with it some more.

Completely forgot to take pictures of the cake...

Day 9: Bookbinding
Bookbinding class day! I cut the boards to size and glued them onto the bookblocks. I also glued book cloth on the spine of one of them.



Day 10: Sewing
Last winter, two buttons fell off my winter coat. It was almost spring by that time, so I just ignored it. However, with autumn in full swing, it was high time I sewed them back on. It ony took 15 minutes maybe, but I still feel very accomplished that I finally got it done!

Day 11: Bookbinding
I glued book cloth on the spine of the second book, yay! The books are currently drying in my press. We have a few weeks off from class now, so I have enough time to finish them. Somewhere in the next two weeks, I'll need to come up with a nice design, get some paper to cover the boards with and glue that on. I'll trim the edges when class resumes and then they'll be completely finished!





calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
I seem to have a cold on top of my other cold. Bleh! My BIL and SIL had their third child recently and a store bought card won't do :)


New baby card
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
The real challenge is getting the pics posted.

I didn't get as much time as I hoped, so I did not finish on day 8.

20191008

Nor did I finish on day 9. I thought really hard about doing so, but it was already 22:30, which is 30 minutes past getting-ready-for-bed time, and I still had to make lunches. Today, for sure (I think)!

20191009
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
Two very full, often crazy days, where I finally got to craft in the darkness (well not quite, but you know what I mean).

Day 6

20191006

Day 7

20191007


I am so close to finishing the yarn looping on this one that I can taste it, and I may well try to finish it all up tomorrow, so that I can really get going on the #MadXStitchalong.
calzephyr: Scott Pilgrim generator (Default)
[personal profile] calzephyr
I started this batch of Christmas ornaments for craft sales in September. They were easy to make using square dies, but they did have a surprising amount of little pieces that had to come together first :-)


Oodles of horse Christmas ornaments

Days 2-5

Oct. 6th, 2019 07:53 am
ladythmpr: (Art)
[personal profile] ladythmpr
The part of a challenge that I suck at is the posting part. I was also down with a stomach bug or food poisoning, which didn't help.

Days 2-3

Managed some stitching on the stitchalong anyway, though not a whole lot.

20191002-03

Day 4

After a day chaperoning a trip with the whole second grade to our local science museum, and a birthday dinner celebration, I only had enough brain to work on the poppy latch hook I started back in March (the first picture is where I left it the last time I worked on it in September).

20191004-before 20191004
Day 5

I worked on the stitchalong on a commute to a party! (Hey, I went to a PARTY!)

20191005

I still need to catch up on reading and commenting.

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