CraftilyKori

Lumi Shadow Print – Take Two

July 6, 2016 No Comments

Whoo-hoo! The second time around seems to be the charm. In Lumi Shadow Print – Take One, I mentioned a few sad faces when my first attempt at the project did not turn out the way I had expected.

Time to brush off the fail and try again.

I searched around for a blank canvas but decided to just buy the kit again. Yep, my 60% coupon was basically null at this point because I bought the item twice…moving on…

For it to work this go-round, I believe the sun had to be at high noon, well 11:47am (thank you Weather Channel). Saturday morning rolled around and I peered out the window – CLOUDS!! Okay, okay, no need to buy a third kit, I can wait.

Next Saturday finally came and there it is – a bright sunny day. Perfect! Following the same steps as before, I spread the dye, placed the items on the pouch and headed outside. Within moments the color began to change. Yippee!

Also, surprise! I changed to magenta. Gotta live a little, folks. 🙂

I got distracted with a show (binging on Making a Murderer) and went to check on the pouch about 30 minutes later.

Things are looking really great! Time to bring in my new precious…

Yeah! It worked. Better than I imagined, actually. The cable needle looks three dimensional. The stitch markers seem as though you could just lift them off the pouch! Guess the placement of the sun is the main player here.

There’s tons of other stuff you can do with this dye beyond just placing random objects on a surface. Some projects on Pinterest include transferring drawings or photos and making your own T-shirts. You can never have too many fur-baby pictures on things. Time to get creative!

So, when life hands you a lemon of a project, buy another one, and try again 🙂

Tools and Techniques

Lumi Shadow Print – Take One

June 26, 2016 No Comments

One of the great lessons about the adventure into the unknown – failing. Really. It is humbling, teaches patience, helps you grow, and provides the opportunity to do better the second time around.

Let me jump back a few steps…

One day, I was checking the mail just like any normal day. La, la, la… mail and BOOM! 60% off coupon to Jo-Ann. I could not be more excited. 40% normally, 50% on a good day, but 60% – now it’s time to buy that ONE special item I have been waiting up for.

Fast forward to the weekend and my husband drops me off while he runs some errands. I walked through every single aisle of the store, on a mission, to get the best bang for my buck. I stopped at the sweater machine…hmm, $180 big ticket item I could now get for about $80. Not yet. I kept walking.

It was if time slowed and all lights focused on That.One.Item. The Lumi Shadow kit. A complete package containing a pouch, two colors of dye, and a piece of acrylic. Memories flooded back of a Shark Tank episode I had watched a year ago. Although **spoiler alert** she did not accept the Shark’s deal, I could never get their product out of my mind. Now was my opportunity!

I bought the kit and waited until the next weekend that promised sunny skies. The dye technology relies on UV rays and after my lesson with the Abracadabra Yarn, I thought I may have to cross my T’s and dot my I’s with this one.

I opened the package. Picture Ralphie from the Christmas Story opening his secret decoder ring from the Little Orphan Annie radio program. That was me.

My creative Muse suggested since this project involved an 8×4” pouch, using crochet items as the decoration would be perfect. Once done, the pouch could hold the supplies! Party on the outside, serious on the inside. I searched through my craft items and found scissors, stitch markers, yarn needles, crochet hooks and other little items used on similar projects. Never one to skip steps, I watched the video and read through the instructions.

Alright, the time was here! I found a dark spot (remember UV light initiates the change), and split open the dye. I spread the goo around, placed my items back on the pouch and headed outside.

Almost immediately the color changed from white-ish to orange. During the latter part of the afternoon, you are supposed to keep it in the sun for 30 – 40 mins. I went inside and did some laundry, a bit of cooking, and waited. And waited.

Alright! The time was here. The moment I have been waiting for. I took the items off and plunged it into a soak to remove the dye. And… disappointment.

What went wrong? Well, when I took it outside it was about 4pm, so I’m guessing the angle of the sun did not produce the strong upright shadow needed for the small wire items. Also, the directions mentioned to place the piece of acrylic on top if you think your items might move around a bit. I lost a lot of the strong contrast, so I think adding the weight of the acrylic may help.

So, after a few sad faces, it was time to admit my defeat.

Take-two, coming up!

Yarn

Local Yarn Store in Wickenburg

June 12, 2016 No Comments

A three-day weekend meant a chance to take a little trip to Laughlin, Nevada for my husband and me. One of my favorite things to do, when visiting a new place, is to scope out local yarn stores. We stopped in Wickenburg for lunch and happened upon an A-frame sign on the side of the road proudly stating “YARN.” I got so excited and told my husband to turn around.

Him: “Really?”

Me: “Yes!”

Him: “Really, really?”

Me: “YES!”

The store was one of my favorites I have been to yet. It’s called Isabelle’s Parlour: A Yarn Boutique. It’s definitely not the largest, but their selection of yarn was great. The owner, who I assume to be Isabelle, was working on a project in a comfy corner chair when I first walked in. She was super nice and we chatted about the upcoming Wool and Fiber Festival in Flagstaff. There were various projects hung around her shop so you could see how the yarn would react when used. The owner offered a lot of great advice on which yarns would work for different projects. She mentioned she closes her shop during the late part of the Summer so I was happy to happen upon her store when we did.

One of my purchases included a yarn called “Abracadabra.” What’s its magic trick? It changes color in the sun! More specifically, it changes from white to either pink or purple (depending on which color you purchased) when it’s exposed to UV light. I had a quick science lesson about UV light because the yarn wouldn’t change very much when I was trying to take the picture around late afternoon. This one was taken about lunch time. The store owner suggested incorporating the yarn with a solid main color and using this as more of an accent color. After seeing how it reacts in the sun, I agree.

I also picked up some hand painted and hand dyed yarn. I’m not too sure what knitting or crochet projects these will turn into just yet, but I couldn’t resist. Isabelle’s Parlour yarn store was awesome and the next time we take a trip to Laughlin, I’ll be stopping in again!

Fiber Events

Road Trip to the Flag Wool and Fiber Festival

June 6, 2016 No Comments

There is a crazy heat wave coming through town but luckily my husband and I had planned a quick road trip to Flagstaff for the Flag Wool and Fiber Festival. I’ve been waiting for this festival for about two months and have been talking everyone’s ear off at work about it. Even coworkers who had never heard about yarn, knew there was a festival. I found out about it from a newsletter sent by one of the local yarn stores in Prescott. It seems like most LYS offer newsletters so I always make a habit to get my name on their list. I would recommend asking the next time you are shopping at one. Being on these newsletters has helped open doors to events and products I would have never known about otherwise.

The festival was from 9am – 4pm both Saturday and Sunday at the Pioneer Museum, which was an awesome back drop to walk through. We got there about 2pm on Saturday and arrived to a packed parking lot. There were a lot of people walking through the festival, more than I expected! I was really excited to be around so many other spinners and those interested in fiber arts. The festival had a good mix of vendors everything from completed knitting projects to prepared roving to straight off the animal fiber! The wool and alpaca locks were in heaps of bags around the tents. There was even a brewery and food truck there. One of the main attractions was the alpaca and sheep shearing, but we got there a little too late to see a demonstration. They have some awesome photos from the 2015 festival though.

We walked around to each vendor and I was in fiber heaven! One of my favorite vendors, Purple Lamb, featured a “make your own art batts” where you could choose the types of fiber and color scheme and use her drum carder to prepare the batt. Drum carders are one of those high priced items (about $575 or higher) that most beginners don’t have access to so it was nice of her to share and make the experience interactive. I happened to like her pre-made ones so I picked up some of those – but what a cool idea!

Another vendor, Old School Wool, mentioned she priced things a little lower than normal to get you “to come to the dark side and start spinning.” Yep, it worked. I picked up some of her roving that was very light and airy with beautiful colors of gold, green and orange.

I was happy to meet the spinner from Lollipop Acres Fiber from Chino Valley. Her yarn was the first hand spun yarn I had ever purchased and I happily exclaimed, “I’ve bought your yarn!” To which she smiled and replied, “Thank you!” It’s about as close to meeting a celebrity as I’ve ever gotten.

There were also demonstrations, workshops, and a competition with multiple categories. It was so neat to see people gathered around their spinning wheels and enjoying each other’s company. This is only the second year of the festival and it has grown a lot from last year. Next year, I hope to enter something into the competition, and perhaps, even be a vendor!

Hope you had a chance to check it out! Let me know what your favorite part was.

Happy Crafting!

~Kori

Fiber Arts, Tools and Techniques

Making Art Yarn

June 2, 2016 No Comments

When I first came across art yarn, I’ll admit – I didn’t like it. I wasn’t quite sure why or how it would be used. A few days later, I found myself thinking maybe I hadn’t given it a proper chance and decided, I’d give it a try.

I set off to my local fiber store and picked up some pink and blue combed top mohair fiber. They had a few other colors but I was really feeling pink for this project. I thought the blue would create nice shades of lavender and complement the lighter pink well. One of the things that really excited me about art yarn was the understanding that blending fiber is similar to blending paint. Blue and red make purple, yellow and red make orange and so on. A bit of a brush up (see what I did there?) on the color wheel and color theory and I was feeling good about my color choice.

And then off to the next store! What makes art yarn so unique is the texture. Some spinners add texture by spinning in beehives or coiling the fiber around crochet thread. I thought — Go-big-or-go-home (maybe I’m watching too much MTV’s the Real World lately) and decided to pick out bits of ribbon and lace to add into my art yarn.

I found the items below at JoAnn and only needed them to cut half a yard of each. Felting and weaving seems to be trending right now because the store even had some curlywool fiber. I chose some lighter lavender, purple, and white elements to draw out the color I was hoping to get once the mohair fiber was blended. The fiber and ribbon and lace elements brought me up to about $50 for this project so far.

The next step was creating a blending board and a Navajo spindle – yep, I had to basically start from scratch for this project but I’m never one to think a challenge is too big to take on. More to come on how to make a Navajo spindle. Now, I was up to about $70 for the tools but I can use those over and over. Plus, making them myself saved a lot. And by myself, I really mean my husband.

Now, the fun part. I blended away on my carders to mix the mohair to various shades of lavender. I did try to use dog hair brushes (brand new of course!) but found it wasn’t as good as the real fiber carders. Size does matter here, folks.

The ribbon wasn’t going to work on the blending board, so I saved that for when I was using the Navajo spindle. Once the blending board is full, you are supposed to remove it with dowels to create rolags or a diz to create long bits of roving. Well, the only dizes I could find were brass and over $30, so I set out to find something a little bit more in my budget. A button! I actually got this one at Walmart for around $4 and let me tell you, it worked perfectly. The secret was finding one with a large enough hole.

Next, it was time to spin everything together. The first round involved spinning the fiber on the Navajo spindle and mixing in the pieces of ribbon as I spun. The Navajo spindle is a ton of fun to use. You sit cross legged on the floor and just spin away! It took about three rounds of filling the blending board to get an amount that seemed large enough to make a project with.

The next part was adding in the crochet thread and spinning the same direction. Normally, you’d want to spin the opposite direction, called plying. But with this technique, you do it the same direction and it’s known as the second spin. After that was completed, my new yarn was transferred to the homemade niddy-noddy and wah-laah! My first art yarn.

I’ve found a cool knitting pattern to make a purse and picked up some great fabric to make a liner. That will be art yarn post, part 2.

Hope everyone has a chance to make their own art yarn. I’m excited to hear other project inspirations you come up with.

Happy Crafting!

~Kori

Tools and Techniques

How To Make a Blending Board

May 17, 2016 2 Comments

Let’s be honest, blending boards are expensive! I watched a video on Craftsy about techniques of making art yarn and next thing I know, I was searching blending boards online. One-hundred-and-eighty-eye-rolls later, I was looking for less expensive options.

Blending Board DIY — Items needed for blending board – bamboo cutting board and a replacement mat.

First thing was to order the blending pad material. I found a “replacement” piece online here. It seemed like forever for the item to arrive, but that’s because I am spoiled by same day shipping from Amazon. Plus, with the savings of over a $100, I can be patient.

While waiting for the blending board material, I took a trip to the local Ross store and I came home the proud owner of three shiny new bamboo cutting boards. The three pack was the only one that included a cutting board larger than 12″ x 12″, so I picked it up. I only needed two, but hopefully someone at Goodwill will be happy of the overage.

blending board hinge — Adding a hinge to the back of the blending board

This is where my handy husband stepped in. He helped me glue the “replacement” board to the bamboo cutting board using silicone we picked up at Home Depot. He then hammered brad nails for extra reinforcement (You’ll never know how carried away I might get when making art yarn). With a few bat of my eye lashes, he even helped to add a hinge (that’s where the second board comes into play).

Adding the hinge helps keep it at a perfect angle for making art yarn. It also folds flat for easy storage. A few more hours (okay, overnight actually) for the silicone to dry and wha-lah! My own blending board. All in, the items cost just about $60 saving me another $100.

Happy Crafting!

~Kori

DIY Blending Board — Finished DIY blending board.