Silhouette Ornament Tutorial

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I know, I know... I bet you thought I had fallen off the face of the earth. I assure you that despite my poor neglected blog, I am doing well. When life gets busy (when is it not, right?) the blog goes on the back burner. I've put together a little tutorial to try and make it up to you. Christmas is coming up and I'm always antsy to make ornaments. These are similar to my other silhouettes, except I use a digital silhouette printed on iron-on transfers instead of cutting... I know there are people that can cut a silhouette the size of a quarter, but I am not one of those people, so there you have it. Hope you enjoy!

Materials:

♥ wooden plaque (small 3" to 5" size, any shape, unfinished)

♥ acrylic paint

♥ Iron-on transfer sheet for LIGHT fabrics

♥ small piece of cotton fabric, light color and pattern

♥ Mod Podge

♥ ribbon

Step One: Prep your wooden plaque. Smooth with fine grain sand paper if desired. You can purchase these small wooden plaques at most craft store for 50 cents each. I purchased mine from my local Hobby Lobby, but they also sell them online here.

Step Two: Paint the plaque. I just used classic black acrylic paint, but feel free to go wild and use any color of your choice. I only painted the sides and the back, leaving the top unfinished, since the top will be covered by the silhouette.

Step Three: Create your digital silhouette. This is the most tedious part of this project, but it's worth it to make digital silhouettes of your children because then you can use them to make a countless different projects. The best way to draw your digital silhouette is by creating a vector image in a program such as Adobe Illustrator. Vector images are created using "paths" such as points and curves that connect. Like this:

This means that your image will retain its same high quality whether you enlarge it to the size of a house or shrink it to the size of a peanut. Very cool indeed. Drawing vector files takes practice, but it's definitely a handy thing to know. I taught myself by watching this excellent tutorial on YouTube. I will not attempt to teach vector drawing in this brief tutorial. If you are familiar with creating vectors, great, but if not then here is an alternative method to creating your silhouette:

1. Take a profile picture of your child. Good luck trying to get them to NOT look at the camera. Take at least 10 pictures and use the best one out of the lot.
   
2. Upload the photo onto your computer and print the head/shoulder profile picture as large as possible onto an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. Print as is, in color.
   
3. Lay a plain white sheet of paper on top of your printed picture. Tape at sides to hold sheets together.
   
4. Tape to a window with lots of natural light. Use a pencil to trace the silhouette. Free-form draw the shoulder bust as desired.
   
5. Remove silhouette from window and using a fine-tip permanent black marker, carefully trace the silhouette over the pencil lines. Since you used a permanent marker, you can now go back and erase your pencil lines without the black marker smudging.
   
6. Scan the silhouette image into your computer and use a paint or photo editing program to fill the silhouette in black. Also, clean up your image by tweaking the brightness, contrast levels. Crop and save as a jpeg.

A third alternative is to hire someone to draw your vector image for you (not me). There are a lot of sellers on Etsy that will do this :)

Step Four: Size your silhouette and add text. Determine the size your silhouette should be based on the size and shape wooden plaque you are using. Size silhouette accordingly, add text. Once you are happy with your layout, you will need to REFLECT/MIRROR/HORIZONTALLY FLIP the image so the text is mirrored. Now print a test page and lay it over your plaque to make sure it lines up nicely.

Step Five: Create your iron transfer. It is important that you buy the iron-on transfer sheets for LIGHT fabric (not dark). The iron-on transfers for light fabric are transparent, and will allow your cute fabric to show through, as well as laminate it nicely and prevent fraying. Follow the instructions for printing your silhouette.

Step Six: Apply your transfer. Cut your fabric piece to roughly the size your need to cover your plaque. Your transfer should be laying on the RIGHT side of your fabric. Tip: Before you iron your transfers, run a lint brush over your fabric to remove any unsightly fuzzies that will be come forever trapped beneath the transfer.

Now use your superwoman strength to firmly iron your transfer, using the highest heat setting, and NO STEAM. Iron in circular motion.

Cool completely and peel away paper.

Step Seven: Mount your silhouette. Cut your iron-on transfer to the shape of the wooden plaque. A good way of doing this is making a template first. Lay a sheet of paper over your plaque and use your finger to trace and crease. Cut out paper template, center it over your iron transfer, and cut out your image.

Tip: To center your template over your iron-on transfer, hold up to a window with a lot of natural light.

Apply a coat of Mod Podge and adhere your silhouette. Hot glue a ribbon loop to the back to finish.

Now go make a bunch... the grandparents are going to love these!

♥♥♥Happy crafting♥♥♥

Easy Knitting Needles Tutorial

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Ok, I know knitting needles aren't terribly expensive in the first place, but here is an uber cheap way of making your own for under 50 cents a set. Last year, the 8-year old girls at church begged me to teach them how to knit. Supplying needles for ten girls was a difference between $50 for 10 sets of store-bought needles, or only $5 (plus one hour of my labor) to make them. Well worth it to make them in my opinion. Well, this Saturday our church is doing a knitting class for the women, so I decided to make some sets to encourage more people to give it a try (and of course they get to keep the knitting needles as a perk).

Materials:

• ♥ 12" Wooden craft dowels of desired thickness (Hobby Lobby carries these for $1.99 for a pack. The 1/4 inch thickness comes in a pack of 12 dowels)
• ♥ dowel caps for your chosen size of dowel or polymer clay to make your own caps

You'll also need the following for this project:

• ♥ pencil sharpener
• ♥ fine grain sandpaper
• ♥ soft dry cloth
• ♥ wax (I used a tea light)
• ♥ wood glue
• ♥ acrylic paint (optional)

For this tutorial I used 1/4 inch dowels, which is equivalent to needle size 10 US. I think this is great size for beginners to learn on.


Step One:
Using the pencil sharpener, sharpen one end of each dowel.


Step Two:
Sand the dowels. Start by dulling the sharpened point into a nice blunt tip. Sand the entire dowel from tip to end.



Step Three:
Using a clean, dry cloth, wipe down the dowels to remove the wood dust.

Nice blunt tips and smooth dowels.

Step Four:
Wax the needles generously from tip to end. I used a cheapo tea light for convenience purposes.



Step Five:
Use a clean, dry cloth to smooth and wipe away excess wax. Rub until the cloth glides smoothly. You don't want sticky needles. The purpose of the wax is to condition the wood so it is nice and smooth.


Step Six:
Paint the dowel caps if desired.

*Note: If you can't find dowel caps to fit your dowels, then use polymer clay to form little balls. Press the balls of clay onto the flat end of the dowel to mold the dowel end. Remove clay cap from dowel and bake in oven as directed to set clay.

I wrote the needle size on the end with a fine point permanent marker.

Step Seven:
Glue the caps to the ends of the needles. Use wood glue for the wooden caps or E6000 for the polymer clay caps (just use a small dab).

Let them dry and start knitting!

I took them for a test drive to knit these hats for my 3 year old and baby girl on the way.

♥ Enjoy ♥

Sewing Vintage Slips

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I have a friend who has the tall, slender body of a goddess (poor girl). Consequently, a lot of dresses that would fall knee length on most of us, are much shorter on her. She asked me to make some vintage slips for her to wear with her dresses so they'd add some length to them. The cute vintage style hems are meant to peek out at the bottom of her dress when she wears them, adding a fun and feminine touch.

I love how they turned out! Check out this shop to buy really cute slips that are sure to dress up your wardrobe!