Lee Does Stuff

Dry Erase Magnets tutorial, plus other magnet ideas!

Look what I made yesterday! I had this brainstorm about making dry erase magnets back when I was making magnet projects for the May club, but I was just going to try it with white paper, for a plain white background… then I saw this tutorial via Craft: and thought of using images for the backgrounds! Now I have a great looking note-taking station on my fridge!

First you’ll need a basic flat magnet – freebie promo magnets work fabulously. If you can find an image that’s light and low-contrast enough that you’ll be able to see notes written over it, then you just need glue (glue stick works well) and packing tape – higher quality, thick tape is ideal, as opposed to the really cheap, thin type.

Cut the image (could be: magazine/book picture, photograph, printed out image, etc) into a rectangle a bit bigger than the magnet. Glue it onto the magnet, then trim the paper neatly around the edges. (Now it’s probably good to let the glue dry, but I didn’t because I was anxious to finish and see how it worked!)

Smooth a piece of packing tape over the front – as you can see below, my packing tape was just a wee bit more narrow than my magnet… Since my magnets are thin and easy to cut with scissors, I decided to trim the magnet to tape size, but you can also deal with this problem by layering another piece of tape to cover the whole surface:

Trim the tape around the edges and your functional dry erase magnet is complete!

If you want to use an image that’s too dark/bright/high-contrast for the writing to be clear on top, then you can add an extra step to make it work… You’ll just need tracing paper or tissue paper (or some other kind of paper that’s translucent enough for the image to show through, but will dull it enough so the writing will be clear), plus basic white glue (or Mod Podge will work) and a brush for the glue:

Complete the first couple of steps from above – cut out the image and glue it onto the magnet – then spread out white glue over the top of the image (photo is before spreading it out with the brush):

Now smooth the tracing paper or tissue paper over the top… I used tissue paper because it’s all I had, but I’d expect tracing paper to work much better, since it wouldn’t tear nearly as easily. On my first try, I attempted to smooth out the tissue with my fingers, ended up tearing the paper badly, and had to peel it off and start over. So, just smooth it out the best you can without ripping it:

Then trim the edges, add the tape over the top (after the glue is dry would be best), just like the first version above, and there you go! By the way, both of my images came from an old yarn company catalog – great source for background images!

To complete your refrigerator’s dry erase station, you’ll need a clip magnet big and strong enough to hold a dry erase marker, and if there’s a spot where you can stick a piece of paper towel to use as an eraser, excellent! Or, you can make one of these awesome fridge tin pen holders by Not Martha!

And then my other note-taking magnet idea – this one needs no tutorial because it’s so simple – chalkboard magnet! Buy some chalkboard paint at your local craft supply store (I used this kind), follow the instructions on the container to paint over your basic flat magnet, and tah dah! Love it!

And then going back to my club magnet projects to finish things off… I mentioned these over here, but not in any detail. I used a simple foam stamp (from the dollar section at Joann, impulse buy!) to stamp designs onto old book pages, then cut out the shapes and layered them on the magnets:

You could use the same concept with drawings over the book pages, or you could layer pictures from magazines or photographs over the text background… this one is a rectangle of book page with a stamp on it, then another cut-out stamp design layered over that. I like the look of the text going in different directions on the 2 layers:

Then the final magnet idea, also from the club, was record album artwork magnets – no instructions needed, just cut out a piece of old album cover and glue it onto the magnet:

If you make over some reclaimed magnets using any of these ideas, I’d love to see them! Happy crafting!

May 27th – June 6th photos

Time has been flying by lately – I can’t believe Summit of Awesome is in just over a week already! And my club mail-out day being a week from today means that a couple projects I hoped to release this week are not going to be finished until the week after next now, due to all this hecticness and time-speediness… oh well, keeping busy is a good thing!

27th – On this day, I taught a class, but took no photos, and whatever else I did (I think dinner at Ya Hala and a movie at the Academy) also went by photoless, so I snapped a shot of Pete’s new studio space since he spent the bulk of the day moving his stuff over (Banzo was very interested):

28th + 29th – Spent many hours swatching swatching swatching for a knit project, plus a little sketching and brainstorming… then I did the yarn wrapped branches project the next day:

30th + June 1st – Some serious coding on my future new leemeredith.com home page, which I’d hoped to get up sooner, but it’s probably going to be a couple weeks now, since I want to finish my other leethal.net updates to release all at the same time… anyway, this page is done now, and I’m pretty happy with it, clean, simple, functional…

2nd + 4th – Some food shots for you… Pete took a work trip to Seattle for a couple days, so I decided to make something for myself that I could never make for him – he doesn’t eat fish and I do (though not often) so I tried out this recipe for a gourmet-ish version of tuna noodle casserole. I subbed a bunch of ingredients for less gourmet versions that I had in the kitchen (like Trader Joe’s frozen organic veggie mix instead of the fresh veggies, and basic TJ’s tuna in water instead of “high-quality imported tuna packed in oil”) but it was still totally good and lasted me 3 big meals, so that was awesome. I’m trying to get into making super yummy salads throughout the summer – such a great summer meal, and so many possibilities, even though I usually end up making the same salad over and over (garbanzo beans and kidney beans, maybe chopped up tomato)… So I made us spinach salads with cold baked honey sesame tofu, shredded Tillamook colby jack cheese, mushrooms+sunflower seeds for me, and dried cranberries for Pete. The tofu made it SO GOOD!

3rd – Designing mitts! The design is done now, and I’ll be sending out the test pattern to some test knitters in a few hours (if you want to test knit fingerless mitts, let me know!) They use a new kind of sideways cuff construction that I don’t think has been done before (not publicly so people know about it at least) – no picking up stitches! And they are designed for Knit Picks City Tweed yarn (which is great!) because they are going to be my first entry into KP’s Independent Designer Program (which I am a huge fan of and fully support, as it’s a somewhat controversial program)… My camera battery died this day, so this shot was taken by my computer with Photo Booth:

5th – Took advantage of a few hours of gorgeous weather by walking to Fred Meyer for some groceries. By cutting through our local cemetery, I can avoid walking down 82nd (which is a horrible major street) for a few blocks – much more pleasant! (Took the photo with my phone):

6th – Yesterday was a super crafty day! Spent a few hours knitting at a coffee shop with my buddy Kate, then decoupaged a lamp shade with Pete! It turned out SO cool! Deserving of its own blog post in the future, I think:

Now today I’m making club yarn and hopefully finishing up another home decor project to show you tomorrow! Yay!

Farewell Threadbanger, it’s been a good 2 years!

I just got some bummer news earlier this week that my run of Threadbanger weekly roundups has come to an end. It’s been over 2 years (109 roundups) of posting every single Friday, so it feels really weird today that I’m not collecting awesome projects to share with TB readers. But, coincidentally, this gig ended exactly on my 2 year anniversary of leaving my day job, which makes it feel like it was time – I was starting to get kind of restless with the roundups being the same thing for so long, trying to figure out a way I could mix it up and feel less static… I realized that my Craftstylish blogging run ended right around the same time last year; it’s like the universe closes a door every 1 year of self-employment on purpose to make room for new paths and keep me moving forward.

So, enough reflection… I’ve completed my list of roundups over here – all 109, categorized, linked, dated. A pretty massive source of craft projects (tutorials, patterns, inspiration, etc). For a pseudo-110th roundup I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite roundups from over the last 2+ years…

Some of the best fun/funny roundups were ski masks, knit and crochet cephalopods and tentacles, Nintendo knit and crochet projects. A couple of my favorite technique-based roundups were artful embroidery and printing on fabric:

I definitely made use of a lot of the links I found in the drinks for winter warming list, I think there were some awesome ideas in the gift wrapping roundup, and I had a lot of fun collecting links for rainbow pride projects:

And a couple great crafty lists – so many fabulous tutorials in the pincushions roundup, and I love a bunch of projects I rounded up for spring sewing:

There are so many more memorable ones, but you can just see them all on the full list if you’re interested. I had a lot of fun finding inspirational ideas every week, so I just might start doing occasional roundups here on do stuff!

Just to kind of close the Threadbanger door, a few more links for you… my first TB post ever was in April 2008, kind of a pre-roundup post of cardigan reconstruction projects. In May I officially started doing the weekly roundups, but I also continued doing other kinds of posts for TB for awhile, like an interview with Cosy, this post on revolutionary knitting, mini-tutorials like this shirt patch and kid-friendly freezer paper printing, book reviews, cool website alerts, and other fun posts like these. Fun times!

Make a scrap-yarn-wrapped branch decoration!

While flipping through The Big Ass Book of Home Decor a couple weeks ago, I came across a project like this – yarn-wrapped twig arrangement. I felt like I’d seen similar projects online too, like it wasn’t the first time I’d seen a branch wrapped in yarn, but now I can’t find anything in blog-land (at the bottom, I linked to some other related projects that I did find!)… Anyway, mine is a bit different from the book project, so now I’ll share it with you!

I wanted to use a glue gun, but some crafty items got temporarily lost in the move and my guns were nowhere to be found, so I came up with methods that use as little glue as possible. Some glue was necessary, so I used Aleene’s Tacky Glue, which worked very well.

All you need for this project are some branches/twigs (the size and amount that you want for your vase or other arrangement plan), yarn leftover scraps, glue, and scissors.

You can barely see, but I tried out something with the solid blue yarn that I thought would look cool – as I was balling up the yarn, I tied knots in it all throughout, which made little bumps on the branches. It would indeed look cool, I think, if I did more; if you make knots, make them super frequently (like every 4-6 inches or so). I think I knotted the yarn an average of every 18-24 inches-ish, and that makes the knots pretty far apart on the branches, oops!

To make the scrappy version, you’ll need a bunch of yarn bits around 1-2 feet long. For either version, to start wrapping at the bottom of your branch, wrap the yarn around itself a couple times then start wrapping upwards. I found no need to knot or glue the piece at the bottom, just holding the tip down and overlapping it in the first wraps worked out well.

To change colors, when you have about 3-4 inches of your first color left, hold the tip of the next color alongside the branch. Wrap the last 2-3 wraps of the first color around the end of the next color:

Hold the end of the first color against the branch, and start wrapping with the next color over the first color, wrapping over the tip to hold it down:

When you reach the end, cut the yarn when it’s wrapped all the way to the top, then unwrap a couple times around, dot some glue on the branch end, and wrap back over the glue.

To wrap the offshoots, the number one rule is be careful – they can be easy to snap! Either wrap up over the offshoot and back down to continue upwards, like the red yarn above, or you can wrap the end of a new color into the base, continue up the main branch, and then use that new yarn for the offshoot. The neatest way is to wrap up the offshoot just like the rest of the branch is wrapped, and glue it off at the tip, but on smaller offshoots you can wrap up loosely (further apart wraps), then wrap back down to the base, normally, so it’s double-wrapped and there’s no need for gluing the end.

By the way, I do recommend doing this project over newspapers – the little twig dust gets everywhere on your workspace, so newspaper makes for easy cleanup!

If you do snap an offshoot after wrapping, like you can see I did below, you can glue it back together, twisting it to get the wrapping back in place as much as possible.

So, just keep on wrapping until you’ve wrapped all the branches you want…

Then arrange them in a vase, or whatever (some kind of wall art arrangement could also be rad looking):

I had a fun time photographing mine, it’s so colorful and fun! I love how it turned out!!

I made this one for our bathroom, which is white and boring, so now it’s cheery and colorful! Yay! If we had some kind of entry area, this might be a great piece for that (bigger and crazier, perhaps)…

So, as I was searching around to see if other crafters had made similar projects, I found some fun other ways to decorate with branches/twigs… I super love Betz White’s pussy willow rainbow, made with felt balls. I also love the idea of pom poms on twigs, like Apartment Therapy shows here, and row home living shows here.

Other ideas: branch jewelry holder, cherry blossom branch, and cherry blossom branch lights! I think I see a roundup developing here…..

It’s a fun project, I’d love to see photos if anyone does it! The scrappy branch is my favorite for sure – I love that I found a use for some of my scrap jar yarn!!

Flattr: about to change the world, if we help make it happen!

I want to take a minute to tell you about something I think is completely awesome and could really change the way our community and the whole internet works. The concept can be hard to grasp if you’ve never heard of anything like it, so I’m going to explain it as it relates to you, as a craft blog reader, but keep in mind that it reaches much further than just blogs or the creative community (actually, it currently has very little reach in our creative community, but I’m hoping that’ll change!) So, here it goes…

Right now, this craft/knitting/blog world of ours has two kinds of content: free and paid. There are free knitting patterns and for sale knitting patterns; there are tons of free craft tutorials, and then there are craft books and ebooks you can purchase (just a couple examples). If a blogger you love writes a rad tutorial that you use and you want to show them your appreciation, you can comment on the post, share the post with your friends on twitter, facebook, your own blog, etc. If they have advertising, you can click on the ads, which will help them, but kind of indirectly-ish… If the blogger happens to have a book, or an ebook, or a for-sale pattern or something else to offer, then you can purchase that to support them. And now enter Flattr, adding a new, easy, direct, genius way to show your appreciation to your favorite creators!

Here’s how it works:

Once you have an account, you put some money in it, and choose a total amount you want to give out each month (this can be changed at any time) – as little as 2 euros (about $2.50) can be chosen.
When you read/see/hear anything you like online (Flattr calls them “things”) and it has a flattr button, click flattr to show it some love.
At the end of the month, your chosen amount will be evenly divided between all the “things” you flattred, and distributed between them. (If you chose to give 2 euros, and you clicked on 5 things throughout the month, the creator of each thing would get a fifth of the total, about 50 cents, from you.)
If you have a thing you made/wrote, you can put Flattr buttons on your site/blog, add them into the Flattr list of things, and watch the counter add up as people flattr you.
The money that you receive from being flattred gets put into your revenue account (separate from your “for flattring” account) for you to keep, or for you to transfer over to use for flattring others.
You can have an account and flattr people without having any “things” yourself, but you cannot have things for people to flattr without giving back and flattring at least 2 euros total each month.

Make sense? If you want a more visual explanation, click over to flattr.com and watch the video on the home page. Obviously, if hardly anyone is using it, it’ll be pretty worthless to us all, but if this really catches on and becomes regularly used within our community, it can seriously help sustain us bloggers and designers – if a blogger receives a bit of income each month from their free tutorials getting flattred, it will allow them the time to make more free tutorials and keep on being awesome!

A bit of a tangent… Have you heard of the concept of micro-payments? (I was first introduced to the idea through comics by Scott McCloud.) I love it so much, but it’s pretty much theoretical because of the way the internet and payment methods work… If a blogger was able to charge just pennies for a tutorial, instead of offering it free, would you buy it? Imagine an internet alternate reality in which you can buy something for any tiny amount (2 cents, 5 cents, 10 cents) with one click of a button (no being redirected to paypal, no fees on either end) – if your favorite bloggers offered up their awesome tutorials (that they put hours of work into) for 5 cents instead of free, would you pay the nickle? I’m guessing the answer is yes. And then, on the blogger’s end of it, instead of putting all that effort and creative genius into the world for lots of non-monetary gain (which is great, but the bills still need to be paid), if 500 people enjoy your tutorial, you get $25, if 5000 people like it, you get $250, etc. That’ll help you to keep on creating fabulous content, a win-win for everyone!

Sadly, the internet doesn’t work this way, and there are fees, and it’s basically impossible to offer something for 5 cents. But, dude, you guys, Flattr comes pretty damn close to making this happen! It’s a whole different thing from what I just described, but what I described was a concept that had been floating around in my head for awhile, this what-if frustration, wishing that when the internet was a baby and paypal was being born, things could have been different from the beginning. So when I first heard about Flattr a few months ago, I was so excited that this could be our answer to this want for a micro-payments system.

By the way, paypal does offer a micropayments account, though it’s a bitch to get set up, it does help with knitting pattern sales – any purchase under $12 will charge a lower fee than a regular paypal account will. But, with the fee rate of 5 cents plus 5% of each order, it’s far from a true micro-payments system that I daydreamed about above. (Charging 5 cents for something is still impossible.)

Anyway, back to Flattr… it’s in beta now, so you have to get an invite – you can either sign up for one on the site, or find someone who just signed up, since every new member gets 3 invites to give out. It’s based in Sweden and seems to be catching on much more quickly in Europe than over here in the States, and hardly at all in the worldwide craft community (a “things” search for craft brings up 8 results, and 2 of them are me), so let’s get it rolling crafters! Spread the word – the more people who know about it, the more likely it’ll catch on, and if it doesn’t catch on, well then this thing will never happen and it’ll be a true shame. Let’s make it happen!!

Comment if you have any questions, I’m happy to explain details further if needed!

May 17th – 26th photos

Photo time! The last week and a half was filled with a little gardening, a ton of awful weather, some good food, and some knit designing! Sadly, I forgot to take a photo on the 16th, so starting with last Monday…

17th + 18th – I harvested a bunch of herbs that were ready, and some that were past ready, like this flowering thyme… The ones that looked good – sage, oregano, rosemary, a little thyme, and I think tarragon but I’m not sure – I hung to dry in the closet, hopefully they’ll turn out usable in another week or two! The next day I did a little gardening work too, before the weather turned… I got a few starters (basil, rosemary, and an early girl tomato) to try out and hopefully not kill, exciting! I’m so happy these rain boots I’ve had for years but never wear make perfect yard boots:

19th + 20th – I made a milkshake based on the kind I used to make a lot when I was a kid – blend some milk, some vanilla ice cream, a cup of flavored yogurt of your choice (I used Tillamook orange cream, when I was a kid I would usually use peach), and 1 banana. I also squeezed in some honey as it was blending, turned out yummy! Built our new Ikea couch, which makes an L shape with our older couch – they discontinued the old model, so we had to find something coordinating, but I think it worked out well! Also put together that hanging glass light, scored at Value Village for $3, yeah!

21st + 22nd – The weather was really getting to me these days… I know in Portland it rains through the Spring till June, but I don’t remember the last couple years being so freaking cold and dark still at the end of May! The first shot was a long exposure taken late at night, with a weirdly color balanced pink sky going on:

23rd – Tested out freezer paper stenciling with fabric paint (I usually use screen printing ink) – worked surprisingly super well! This is what I’m going to be using in all the free teen classes I’m teaching at Portland libraries throughout the summer, fun!

24th + 26th – A couple of food shots for you… asiago cheese toast with fresh sweet basil from the yard, and then last night I made an awesome dinner, delicious and super easy, too! Wild mushroom & herb couscous with some TJ’s organic frozen veggies added along with the spice packet at the beginning, then while it was cooking I grilled sliced up fake italian sausage on the George Foreman grill, chopped it into smaller pieces, and fluffed it in with the couscous! So so so yummy!

25th – I’ve been designing a bunch! Working on two or more projects simultaneously, focusing on one this day, another the next… not really the best way to do it, but with so much time off from designing through all the moving business, my brain keeps jumping all over the place and I need more knitting time! Yay, so glad to be back into design-land again!

Oh that reminds me of another thing I’ve been doing the last couple of days – remember code-land? Well, I’d been planning a couple of website updates for awhile, and then I decided I wanted my main navigation to have drop-down menus, which turned out to be super complex (for me, anyway) so I spent a big chunk of time yesterday deep in css code-land trying to get it to work… but it’s looking good and now my little shop update is turning into a bunch of new site stuff! Fun!

Future club 2.0 and May leethal quick knits club!

I’m so excited to tell you about my future leethal quick knits club plans! I’ve been brainstorming about it and planning out all the details for the last couple of weeks, and I’m really looking forward to making the switch, which will happen after I’ve completed 1 full year of the current club. Not sure what it’ll be called yet, some ideas:

leethal quick knits club: the next generation
quick knits club 2, electric boogaloo
quick knits club: the new class

Any better suggestions? hehe… Ok so here’s the deal: starting in September, my club will be PDF only! But wait, it’ll be awesome, I promise! (I was totally inspired by my buddy Star’s supercool sock club, by the way.) Each month I’ll be making a club ebook, which will always include:

at least 2 quick knits patterns, perfect for using up yarn leftovers
at least 1 step-by-step tutorial for another project fitting with the theme
at least 1 fun extra, which could be anything from recipes to games/puzzles to embroidery or applique patterns, etc

Each month revolving around a theme, and everything designed with a focus on using up leftovers, recycled items, and things that you probably have on hand or are super easy and cheap to obtain. I’m excited to put more attention into awesome project tutorials, instead of having to figure out ideas based on what I can include in 30-40 packages each month, limiting creativity potential. And, of course, this means club subscriptions will be much cheaper (like, less than a quarter of the current club cost)!

Other major change: no more exclusivity! Each month, the club pdf will get released to the world, and be available for anyone to buy, forever. So, if you don’t like the idea of buying something when you don’t know exactly what it is that you’ll be getting (like my current club), you can wait until it’s released each month and see if you like it. It will be a majorly discounted per-month price to subscribe, however, and there will be a rad bonus for club members only…

Each month, all subscribing members will be entered into a raffle to win a club kit package! It won’t necessarily include everything needed for all the projects like my current club, it will vary each month depending on the projects, but every month I’ll be putting together a few packages of kit materials that fit with that month’s ebook and sending them out to a few lucky members!

Ok that’s enough info about this future club for now, since it won’t be happening for awhile, but the reason I wanted to tell you about it now (besides that I’m excited about it) is that there is only one week remaining to get 3-month subscriptions to the current version of the quick knits club! If you love the physical packages, grab a membership now for the last 3 months – June will be a Traveling theme (yay for summer road trips!), and July + August are yet to be announced, but I’ll be sure to make the last couple months extra awesome for sure! Starting June 2nd, you’ll be able to get a 2-month subscription for those last 2 months, and then in July you’ll just be able to sign up for the August club alone… and in August you can start signing up for the new club.

(those photos above were from old clubs, now moving on to May’s package…)

You already saw a chunk of May’s Home Decor club package, but here is everything that each member included (above), and the yarn – I Feel Like Going Home and To Go Home:

Which are used to make the Stuffed Ball Cord Pull and Garter Strip Light-switch Cover:

Everyone’s package included a standard switch plate to use with the knit cover, and I stuck an extra bonus idea in the pattern pdf, for this fitted cord pull cover:

The extra goodies were half of a record album cover, 2 book pages, 1 of them with 2 stamped designs added, and 5 reclaimed magnets:

So with the club items, pictured on the left, and some basic craft supplies, pictured on the right…

…members can make 5 custom crafted magnets and a switch plate (or multiple switch plates, or more magnets, or other crafts!):

See my switch plates post for album cover plate how-to, and I’m planning a future post of magnet ideas! It was a fun club month for me, hope you enjoyed it too!

Switch Plates! And how to make one from an old record cover!

My club mail out day was Tuesday, and, like I do every month, I put the 2 patterns up on ravelry and flickr after sending out the pdf to the members. Normally, since the patterns aren’t available to the public, plus they are small trinkets that most knitters don’t seem to care much about, this doesn’t really mean anything – but holy crap you guys, this light-switch cover pattern has gotten a crazy response!!

It got blogged on Knit Hacker and the number of hearts on ravelry have surpassed not just all my club patterns, but most of my full-sized patterns as well! Of course, I so wish I could be selling the pattern to everyone who loves it, but my club promises exclusivity for 3 months, so it’s members-only until August… this system will actually be changing soon, but that’s another post for another time…

Anyway, for the record, the knit switch plate concept was Pete’s idea! I had thought of the cord pull for the Home Decor club theme, and we were trying to brainstorm other ideas, and genius Pete thought of this! Here is my first try – the center hole was messy and uneven, so I tried solving the problem with ribbon, which probably made it look worse:

So, moving on to the point of this post, making the knit plate cover got me all inspired to make more, since the switch plates our house came with looked like these, about half of each:

A quick note to club members – most of you should have gotten your packages by now, but if you haven’t (because you live outside the US perhaps) and you don’t want any spoilers, you probably want to stop reading now and come back to this post once you’ve opened your package!

My first try, covering a switch plate with a book page, was a bit silly… I tried attaching the page to the textured kind of plate pictured above, with spray adhesive, not a good match, so the edges never really glued down. But I learned from my mistakes and made some rad ones, and plan to make another, better book page plate, for the library light switch! Once I started seeing how cool covered plates look, and how simple they are to make, I decided to include some extra goodies in the club packages that could be used to make more switch plates!

So I included a couple of book pages and half of a record album cover, with a little instruction sheet for how to turn them into either magnets or switch plates… The instructions included are just text, so I thought it would be a good idea, and fun for everyone, to put up a more visual how-to here, for making a switch plate with an old album cover! (This is just how I made mine, and I am definitely not an expert – there are lots of great switch plate tutorials out there from people with more experience, which I collected for my recent Threadbanger roundup here, so check those out to see how to cover plates with fabric, polymer clay, and other things!)

Let’s get started! First, you’ll need:

an old record album cover with a good switch-plate-sized image
an X-acto knife
a basic switch plate
craft glue (I use Aleene’s Tacky Glue, but there may be glues that would work better for this type of project), and a brush to spread the glue

Start by laying the plate down on the album and positioning it where you want the image, keeping in mind the where the holes will be for the switch and screws.

Use the blade to trace around the plate, with plenty of extra space for the curved edges – I made mine so the the paper curved around to the edge of the plate, but I think it would be better to have more extra image so it wraps around to the back a little. To have it wrap around the back, cut at least a half inch out from the plate edges.

You don’t need to press down through the whole album cover cardboard piece with the knife, as you’ll see in the next step that you’ll just be using the top image layer…

Carefully separate the image into its own layer, peeling the cardboard apart – this is easier with some albums than with others, depending on age and wear. You want the image layer to be as thin as possible, but not to rip; though if it does rip, you can put it back together when you glue it onto the switch plate.

Peel it all the way off and you should have a rectangle of thin cardboard with your image, curling up at the edges. If it seems too thick to be able to curve around the switch plate smoothly, you can carefully peel more cardboard layers from the back.

Now lay the switch plate on top of the rectangle, centered, and cut an X across the switch hole, from corner to corner. Also, punch holes with your blade where the screw holes are, but they don’t need to be big or neat, since you can twist through them with screws later. Now turn the cardboard piece upside down and fold the X tabs back, like this:

Note: in the club instruction sheet, I just said to cut out the hole, but I’ve since found that this X method makes for a neater switch plate. This first one I made used the cut-out-hole method, and it looks fine, just a little more handmade-y or something. Here is a progress shot of that one, with the cut-out hole:

Before gluing on, curve the edges back, like how they’ll be curved around the plate, with your fingers. Now cover the back with glue…

…then spread the glue to all the edges, corners, and X tabs with a brush (I used a foam brush, but a paint brush should work fine):

Position the plate onto the glued piece, and center it so that the holes and edges line up:

This part gets messy, if you’re doing everything with your fingers like I do… Pull the X tabs down, and curve all the edges around, keeping everything centered and straight (it’ll want to slide around the whole time). If you cut the piece bigger to curve around to the back, press the cardboard on to the back.

For the corners, I first curve the edges around up to the corners, then fold the corners down, as you can kind of see above and below. You could also make the corners neater by making small cuts in them so they curve around without folding like this.

Let it dry, punch through the screw holes and twist them open with the screws (below). Then you can coat it to make it longer-lasting. (You could cover it with Mod Podge, or use something like Krylon Acrylic Crystal Clear, which is what’s recommended in The Big Ass Book of Crafts – I’ve never used it, but I bet it would work well and make your switch plate more permanent and durable.)

Screw it into the wall and enjoy! I put mine in the bathroom to brighten it up in there, but I might need to make some kind of over-sized plate (like this or this one, for example) to hide that terrible paint job around the switch…

By the way, I have no idea who that is on my plate – anyone know? It’s on some best of the 70’s album with this watercolor collagey kind of artwork… I just like the colors and the happy tone of the image. Ok that’s all, and I’m hoping to be posting more home decor projects soon! Yay!

May 9th – 15th photos

Wow this week is flying by! This post was meant to go up on Sunday when I started it, and now it’s Wednesday night, how did that happen?! A combination of club mail-out day, yard work obsession, and the last 2 days off with Pete spent house-stuff shopping to the point of exhaustion at Home Depot (lawn mower!), Ikea (couch!), Target (ice cube tray! ok, that one’s not exciting…), and four different thrift stores throughout Beaverton and Tigard…. time flies when you’re trying to work full time and work on your new house full time, at the same time. So here’s the blur of last week…

9th + 10th – Club work both days – lots of yarn unraveling, dyeing, spinning; then after flipping through home decor project books for theme inspiration, I spent the day trying to figure out my extra club goodies, which turned into doing some silly projects to test out ideas. One of those silly projects was this super crazy hanging light, made from one leg of a pair of dollar store girls’ tights and 2 wire hangers, plus some red glass marble things to weigh it down at the bottom… it was pretty much a fail… it was inspired by this one from The Big Ass Book of Home Decor, but using crappy materials makes the concept not work out so well:

11th + 12th – Last week Pete and I spent much of our free time thrifting (which we’ve been doing a ridiculous amount of since the move!) – I actually forgot to take a photo on the 11th, so both of these were shot on the 12th, but those glass plates were purchased throughout both days, and are destined for something awesome! The blanket was a pretty sweet Bins find – crocheted, thick, sure to be warm in the winter, and looks great draped over our black chair:

13th – Library day! I walked around the corner to our super local branch and lugged 2 bags home:

14th + 15th – More on this later, but I’ll tell you at least that this switch plate is May club related! Spent quite a bit of time in the yard on Saturday – used our new weed wacker on the overgrown craziness, taking breaks to rest my arms by picking up pine cones for when we start mowing… it would be fun for awhile, treating it like an easter egg hunt, counting the cones and spotting tips buried deep in the grass… until I was in the 100’s and wasn’t anywhere close to done. I picked up 145 that day and I’d guess it was about a quarter (maybe a third) of the total number. I love that we have a Doug Fir in our back yard, but damn those cones!

Ok hopefully I’ll be getting back to you in the next day or two with some crafty fun! And I’ll probably start bothering you with gardening posts soon enough!

From Thrifty Finds to Crafty Lamp!

A couple of years ago I came upon a bag of granny squares at the Goodwill bins! Score! No two colorways alike, they were obviously handmade, the start to a project that was never finished:

I washed them, then they sat there for 2 years, waiting waiting waiting for a project… and then I got a paper lantern style lampshade for $1 at a yard sale the other day, and this idea came to me!

It’s weird, but I love it! I wove through the edges with some yarn leftovers and a blunt needle, tied them around, and pulled the squares all straight into 6 columns. (A little more complex than that, but I didn’t take any step-by-step photos. I feel like my methods were probably not the best way to get the final result – if you want to recreate the look yourself, the best results would probably come from actually crocheting the pieces together, or at least sewing them.)

It looks pretty cool with the light shining through!

I haven’t completed a crochet project in years (need to get back to that skirt now that the move is over), but I do love crochet, so I’m happy to represent granny squares in my new home, even if I didn’t hook them myself!