tutorial: pan chang chinese knot

In a previous post from a few years back, I made some Chinese knots for Chinese New Year 2010. Well, January 23, 2012, is the date for this year, and it's fast approaching! I still had some of the same red cord from that previous project, so I decided to try and learn a new knot. And I picked a doozy of one called the Pan Chang knot.


It took me a few times, but I finally got it. I had to get some cardboard and stick some pins in it to keep the cord where I wanted it, but in the end it turned out kind of cool. I had take more photos, but when you work at night and your room has incandescent lights and therefore a dim yellowish hue ... it's just too much work trying to make them presentable. Anyhow, I missed using Adobe Illustrator so much I decided to use the program to make a little guide. Yay.


1. Get some cardboard stack it up (two or three layers so the pins stay in). Then following the guide, put pins where there are pink dots.

   
2. Get some cord/string that's got some thickness (red is a lucky color). You'll need about a yard ... maybe more. In the middle, create a loop tied off with a knot. With one end, string the cord around the pins following the guide - stringing it vertically and then horizontally. Make sure to note when it goes over/under the already-laid cord.

   
3. With the other end of the cord, you'll weave it through vertically and then horizontally. Again, make sure you take note when the cord is supposed to go over/under another one.


4. And that should be that. Carefully pull the cord up from around the pins and carefully pull on the outer loops. After you get the center roughly squared away, then you can begin adjusting the length of the loops by slowly working the cord through the piece, tightening along the way. The original knotted loop should be tight to the center square, and the two side loops should be bigger than the four other ones.


5. Voila! After all the tightening you'll have to trim the ends of your cord. And then you can either leave the ends hanging or finish them off with some button knots.


Whew. Wasn't that fun? I don't have enough cord to make another knot, so that's it. It's kind of a small thing to show for all the time and effort I put into making it. It was fun though. Once you make one successfully you can sort of understand how the knot is constructed. The one I made here has four rows, but you can easily expand the knot to have six or eight rows just by increasing the number of vertical and horizontal moves you make. Good luck! Wishing everyone a happy new year!

starting on xmas cards

I like to make my own cards for Christmas because I feel like there are very few good ones out there that are unique but simple enough for my taste. And cheap enough for my budget. I'm currently experimenting, so I'm not sure what I'm going to end up with, but it'll probably just be black ink on white card stock, with maybe some added ribbon ... maybe.


I really want it to have a modern, simple look, where the typography takes precedence. Hm ... I'll have to play around more with it. I don't want it to be too boring, but if I'm making a whole buncha cards, I couldn't go too complicated either. Any suggestions?

I'll just shelve this for a while until I figure out something I'm completely satisfied with. After all, I still have over a month to make and write these cards!

glass jar + paint = jar-o'-lantern

A while ago I had seen this Martha Stewart project for Jar-o'-Lanterns and I thought, I got jars and I could easily get paint. So voila.


I decided to make my little jar-o'-lantern be a happy little guy, so I just freehand drew his face on with a permanent marker and let it sit so the marker would dry. Then I headed down to Michael's to buy orange paint. I probably should've gone with the recommended oil-based enamel paint ... but the orange acrylic was cheaper. And whatever, it looks fine. Oh, and the wire was just some normal silver 16-guage I picked up at the local hardware store. Simple and cheap - why does Martha have to make it seem so much more complicated?


Right now I've got him on our table in the living room, hanging out with our plastic pumpkin (filled with chocolate) and our real pumpkin (which is waiting anxiously to get carved). Now if only I can find some green ribbon to tie onto the silver wire, I'd be completely satisfied with it. In total, I only spent about $4 for the project since I only had to buy paint and wire. Yay!

framed green letters

I finally finished the gift I had blogged about in my last post. Here it is! I know, you're probably scratching your heads trying to figure out what the heck it's supposed to be, so I'll do you the favor and explain.


First of all, it's art, so it's not meant to do anything but hang on the wall and look pretty. I cut out the letters of my friend's name in various fonts out of green card stock. Then I randomly jumbled carefully arranged said letters on another piece of green in a lighter shade, stuck it all in a frame, and voila.

Pretty simple and I thought it was rather cute. Whaddaya think?

giftness: m&ms in glass

Have I mentioned that I'm a poor college student? Well, I am. I'm also incredibly fond of holidays, gift-giving, and collecting things. I especially like glass, so I hate throwing away glass bottles. Since the nearest recycling center is a decent drive away I figured I'd reuse them like the good eco-friendly person I am (well, I try).


I thoroughly cleaned some clear bottles, filled them with M&Ms, topped them off with some pink fabric, white ribbon, and red knotted cord ... and voila. Cheap, easy, and universal - because who can say no to chocolate? I wanted to find the red, white, and pink M&Ms, but the store I went to didn't have any. It was probably for the best since a few of my friends are being decidedly anti-Valentine's Day this year.

I don't see why people gripe so much about it. Is it a commercial holiday? Yes. Do I care? No. Why? Because whenever there's a chance for people to show how much they appreciate each other (and consume chocolate), it's all good in my book.

xmas cards

Christmas is coming up in a week and a half and I have yet to send out Christmas cards ... oops! Well I finally got around to making the cards, so that's progress, right? Now I just need to write out all the cards, make sure the addresses I have are still current, buy stamps, et cetera.


It took me a few trips to Michael's to figure out what I wanted to do, but I found these letter stamps and they seemed pretty nifty, so I grabbed those (along with a black inkpad) and that was pretty much it. The rest of what I used I had on hand.


I ended up with three versions of Christmas cards for this year. I've never been fond of giving everyone the same exact card, so I try to make different variations. After stamping each card with "Happy Holidays", I drew a tree, ornament, or present with a black marker. Then I hot glued a little something for color and dimension. The tree got a blue gem as a star, the ornament a red ribbon, and the present a green bow. Cute, eh?


My roommate left today, so I wrapped up the first part of her present and gave it to her. I used the rough draft of my essay (with red marks and all) and tied it with a bow. I go through so much paper in school so I try to recycle the best I can. Anyway, she thought it was hilarious because she recognized it as the essay I had been complaining about. As for other Christmas presents, well they're proving a bit trickier. I went to the mall the other day and after almost two hours, didn't buy a single thing. To be honest, I was shopping more for myself, but I kept having trouble finding the right size for things ... very disappointing.

Most of my friends have already left for home, but I'm going to be hanging around here for a bit longer to work and do some shopping. Christmas is coming up way too fast.

tutorial: stuffed hedgie

I've been a bit busy hanging out with the family, so I haven't made anything recently. This project is from a little bit ago, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. It's a stuffed hedgehog made from a car-washing mitt that I got at Dollar Tree. I posted a step-by-step here, but by no means did I think of this myself. All credit goes to Darling Petunia and her tutorial here. The only variation was that I embroidered the eyes. So cute! I named him Hedgie ('cause I'm creative like that).

   
First step was to get the mitt from the dollar store. I had seen the Darling Petunia blog post a while ago when it was featured on Dollar Store Crafts over here. So I had actually been holding onto this mitt since June. Snipped off the wrist and thumb and then pulled out the sewing supplies.


I had looked for black buttons, but sheesh! Buttons are expensive. I ended up just embroidering on eyes just with black floss, just eyeballing their placement (har har ... I'm so punny).

   
Then came the harder stuff. First up: sewing it up. After the eyes were on, the mitt was flipped inside out and I drew lines, forming a triangle to make its nose. Sewed that shut, leaving the thumb hole open. Once the wrist was sewn into a triangle (and some of the excess material snipped off), it got flipped right-side out and stuffed. Then the thumb hole was blind-stitched closed. Is it called a blind stitch? Like with closing pillows? That's what I've always called it because that's what my mother calls it ... but who knows.

   
Unfortunately though I had finished the sewing, I wasn't done because it looked a bit funky. The mitten shape was a little weird, asymmetrical because it was meant to fit a hand, so the poor hedgehog was a bit wonky. The square picture shows how it was, with the weird corners, and the second picture shows the hedgehog's underside once I fixed it. I just blind-stitched a bunch around the edge to smooth out all those weird bumps, giving it a nice rounded edge. Then the very last step was to sew on a black pom-pom to serve as his nose, and voila! Hedgie is born.


We had some family friends over today and their little boy V is about two years old. He's such a cutie. Anyway, I had put this hedgehog in the storage room that has all my stuff from school and V, being curious, started rummaging around in there. When he found the hedgehog (although he called it a rat) ... it was so cute! He played with it and this sheep that we had. Absolutely adorable. Also, I'm working on a new blog layout, which I hope to be up within the week. It's been taking a while though because while I know HTML, CSS is a bit new to me.

geeky necklace

I have a habit of accumulating "things", so I'm trying to clear stuff out by either throwing stuff away (unlikely) or using them in projects (slowly). So I rummaged a bit in my odds and ends box and found this circuit board from what I think was an old radio that was really static-y and not very good. And, hello, but ... who uses a radio anymore? Ergo, I made it into a necklace.

   
I liked the circuit board because it was brown rather than that green that most of them are. Also it's a pretty weird shape. I found a d-ring (also from my odds and ends box) that just happened to fit that shape beautifully. Sure I probably could've gone without attaching the d-ring, but I think it gives it more substance and it keeps the back (which isn't completely smooth due to the sautering) a bit from me and my top. I just super glued the d-ring to the circuit, let it dry, and it stuck just fine. The black leather cord came from one of my previous shopping trips, so I was all set to attach fixings and go.

   
I strung some silver wire (on hand) through the headphone jack and a coil on the circuit in order to attach a jump ring on it. I kind of messed up a bit, pulled too hard here, twisted it wrong there, so I had to secure things with some crazy glue. Not perfect, but no one will know. Then I strung the cord through the ring and stuck on cord crimps (available at Michael's or any hobby store with a jewelry section). Instead of using a clasp, I just closed it off with some jump rings since I made the cord long enough that I can just slip it over my head. I might attach a clasp later on, but I don't have any clasps on hand, so eh.

All in all, quick and easy. Haven't worn it out yet, but I will. It's pretty geeky since it's a circuit board, but I think it's cute. I'm going to be a bit busy for the next few days, but I'll try to keep posts coming.

bottlecap magnets

I'm somewhat of a packrat. I collect things thinking that one day I'll make something of it all. But usually it comes to nothing and I'm stuck with a lot of ... stuff. But today I'm actually getting to use some of that stuff, turning it into functional stuff. Yay! I have some bottle caps from soda bottles, mostly IBC sodas. I have a whole stash of glass bottles too, but I'm still trying to figure out what to do with those. Anyway, I decided to make magnets out of them after seeing the concept online. So, let's get started, shall we?


First, we gather our materials. Bottle caps - yep. Wood circles - yep. The circles that are 1" in diameter fit beautifully into the bottle caps, and they can be found at pretty much any hobby store (yay Michael's!). Then there are magnets. I got these at Wal-mart and they have foam and adhesive already attached to one side of the magnet. These are 3/4" in diameter and have a total height of just under 3/16".

   
If you have magnets with adhesive, go ahead and peel off the backing and center them on the wood disks. Press, hold, and voila. The main purpose of including the wooden disk is to give the magnet height, because to clear the edges of the bottlecap, the magnet's going to have to be at least 1/4" thick (which would be a waste of magnets). Then pull out the hot glue gun, squirt a big ol' dollop on the wood circle, and press it into the bottle cap. There should be enough glue that it squishes around the wood when you press it down, securing it into the bottle cap's ridges. This is just a precaution, because generally things don't glue too well to metal. Also, be careful because the bottle cap will heat up due to the glue. All of my hot glue turned yellow over the years so I have to be careful to keep most of it hidden, but if yours is clear (as it probably is) it won't be too big of a deal if you're a bit messy.

   
Then stack 'em together or stick 'em on the fridge. I ended up making a total of eight, four from cherry limeade and four from the tangerine cream soda. I still have some more, but I'm going to wait until I have enough to make a proper set so I can give them as a gift or what-not. They're functional and cute, which is just my style.

little improvement

My sister had mailed me this picture frame in the fall as one of her random little care packages (this is why I love her). It's a pretty glass frame with a translucent image of lavender and a square (square!) 3"x3" frame. The quote from John D. Rockefeller says "I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure." So it sat on our kitchen counter for a long time, just a cute little homey touch. But there was one thing that bugged me about it - the craft was slightly off. As you can see in the before photo, when you look at it from an angle, you can see the image of the flower just peeking within the frame ... annoying for a detail-minded person like me.

   
So I finally got around to detailing it a bit. With the help of some 1/4" black ribbon and good ol' Elmer's glue, I vamped up my picture frame. Nothing drastic, just a touch of class that happens to oh so conveniently hide its flaws. Just glued the ribbon straight to the glass, tucking it in some under the silver frame. Now I think it looks pretty darn spiffy. So spiffy that it is no longer relegated to the kitchen; it belongs with me!