Crafting with cardboard

I'm a pretty big Star Wars fan. I'm also a pretty frequent "crafter". I find myself using cardboard, white glue, and hot glue in many of my projects. With that in mind, you can imagine how blown away I was when I stumbled across this tutorial on how to construct your own Boba Fett helmet out of cardboard!

This "crafter" takes cardboard construction into a whole other realm in this tutorial. Even though I've used similar methods to construct items of my own (check out my crown!), I had no idea cardboard could be so versatile and could be used in the creation of such complex shapes! I am inspired to utilize some of his tips and tricks in future designs. After seeing his technique, I feel anything can be created with cardboard and glue if you have plenty of patience and a sharp X-Acto blade!

The unfinished helmet

Craft-Boom: A blog dedicated to small business

Lisa of U-Handbag (and U-Handblog) has been working on a fairly new blog called Craft-Boom that is devoted to helping people start and promote a small business. I was reading it today and stumbled upon a very informative tutorial on how to take professional looking photographs of your projects.

Taking great pictures is essential, and something I feel everyone can accomplish with a little practice. Of course, not everyone has the ability to artistically express themselves through photography but that isn't always necessary. What is necessary is clear photos where the background doesn't compete with the subject. White backgrounds tend to drown out silver so I prefer to use dark backgrounds when photographing my jewelry. I do use white backgrounds for photographing my handbags. I use a similar technique to Lisa's for my white background photos but i do see a few differences in her technique that might help speed up the process for me. I found an amendment to steps 2 and 3 in the comments section that explains, in greater detail, how to whiten the background of your photo.

Lisa blogs on everything from how to sew a clutch to effectively marketing your business.

Moving beyond my color comfort zone

I'd like to get something out into the open: I'm a tanophobe. Yes, I said tan-o-phobe. I don't go near it. Ever. Or brown, for that matter. I only like very specific shades of chocolate, espresso, and sometimes taupe but that's where I draw the line. Tan gives me an uneasy feeling. It washes me out. It reminds me of a uniform. It screems DULL. I feel that, paired with the right accent colors, tan could be great. With help, I can work on my tan phobia, as long as I don't have to wear it.

Once, about a year ago, I was confronted with a huge dilemma. I was asked to make a custom handbag as a gift. When I met with my client I was floored. The neutral color pallet we discussed was like the sound of nails being dragged down a chalkboard. I could feel myself immediately shying away from the project. How on earth would I be able to plan a project around a pallet I knew so little about? I think this tutorial: Color Picking 101: It's easier than you think, by whoops-a-daisy would have made me feel much more confident in my planning. In the end, I got lucky. We scrapped the neutral pallet and went with a pallet of my choosing. (I have to say it was a success!) I'll definitely refer to this tutorial in the future whenever I'm forced to make neutral color based decisions.

The fruits of my labor and a softbox tutorial!

Guess what I did tonight? I stayed home and made this:

It's a softbox! And it literally cost me $10 thanks to a very easy to follow (and funny) tutorial on Strobist that I found today. I have a box of about 15 pieces of jewelry just collecting dust because I've lacked the ability to take high quality photos of them for my portfolio. I knew I needed a solution; I've been meaning to make one of these for a long time. It was ridiculously easy to create, even if it was a bit time consuming.

Here's a before and after photo of the earrings above. The after photo only has alterations to the brightness/contrast and I rotated the canvas since my camera was at an angle.

For my first go at it I'd say it was a success! The original photos are still turning out pretty dark so I'll need to tweak the lighting. Though, with a little help from PS everything looks beautiful. With some practice, I hope this light box will eliminate hours spent in front of the computer removing backgrounds from photos. How exhausting!

Altered Cloth

I stumbled across a new how-to site courtesy of Craft Magazine called Altered Cloth. There are great posts such as: How to fix bleach spots on fabric (which a friend of mine could have used about two weeks ago-OUCH!), 5 tutorials on how to make different headbands , and 7 tutorials on making shopping totes. There is a wealth of great crafting information on Altered Cloth that I'm sure to take advantage of in the future...as soon as I can find the time.

Copy-cats pt. 2

I've been on the subject of copying for the past few weeks (pt. 1). I think it's time to take a look at it in a different light. Here's a link to a crafter who is copying the big guys (in this case, YakPak). The person who posted these pictures actually put up a tutorial on how to copy this bag yourself.

Is it any different when it's a crafter doing the copying? Perhaps. Maybe I feel differently since these items, most likely, aren't being resold as a copy of the original...or is it because I'm a crafter too? YakPak certainly isn't seeing much, if any, of a reduction in sales due to the tutorial post. The poster, pfeffermint_ish, credits the original so at least (s)he's not trying to pass it off as his/her own design. I do, however, think (s)he could have added more of a personal spin to the actual design of the bag. Nobody is exactly reinventing the handbag these days; it's all in the details...

*pfeffermint_ish is not, by any means, the only one out there deconstructing and reproducing a mass produced item for personal use/resell; That tutorial just happened to be the first one I stumbled upon with the copy-cat theme in mind.

Great tutorial!

I found a really inspiring tutorial posted today at Craft Magazine's blog. Craft Chi breaks down printing fabrics using a Bubble Jet printer. She has some really pretty prints that she designed using Photoshop and her own drawings. I am in awe of how well they turned out and am inspired to give it a go! Photoshop -> printer is much more my speed than screen printing...