I may be a scarf addict.

I own a good many scarves.  Because I’m allergic to metal I tend to avoid necklaces.  I wear scarves instead, sometimes with a fetching vintage brooch pinned in a strategic way.   When we first moved to St. John’s the scarf trend hadn’t yet made it to the Rock and people tended to look askance at my “old lady” attire.  Since then, however, they’ve picked up here in a big way and I’m very glad.

I love figuring out new ways to tie and drape the things, in their different lengths and textures.

My mother is also big into scarves.  And when she goes through a scarf purge, I’m the first beneficiary.  Then Cait and I fight over them.

So as I said, I have a good many.  So many sometimes I forget which ones I own.  I wanted a way to keep them organized and stored in such a way that I could see each and every one of them.

We had this towel rack on our door that was rubbish for towels because the position of the rods put the towels too close together and they didn’t dry.  When we replaced it we ended up with a spare rack.

But it’s perfect for all my scarves, which now hang on the outside of the closet door, so I can see them and be reminded to wear them all.  Our belts are at the top.

How do you organize your scarves?

Rustic Pencil Holder and Homemade Pencils

I saw this about a year ago, and I remember thinking at the time that it was such a simple yet elegantly nifty project I would have to make it sometime.  What better time than the present?

I wrangled a log out of the mildewed pile in our dilapidated excuse for a shed and got to work.  You can of course use any form of windfall or anything you find lying around.  I’d love to try this with driftwood, if I still had my beach handy.  As it was a pretty long chunk of wood, I figured I’d make three pencil holders, just to spread the love amongst my Christmas gift recipients.

I also thought I might make them slightly angled, so that all the pencils or pens could be viewed from one side, instead of them all being on the same level. So I sawed them accordingly, in varying thicknesses.  Actually, the Pie did most of this because I took too long.  But we didn’t really try too hard to get things level or straight — the crooked adds to the charm, and I swear we did this on purpose.

And then the bark, which had been sitting and drying out over our kitchen heater for two months, just peeled right off so easily.

I used a butter knife to get the thinner inner bark off.

Now you drill your holes.  I used 3/8″ and 1/2″ drill bits, to accommodate skinny and fat pens and pencils. You know, like the fat ones you pick up from the bank or that you get in swag bags at conferences and stuff.

You can space them out evenly or put them in randomly, whichever floats your boat.

To make sure that all your holes are uniform in depth, use a bit of tape around your drill bit to mark how deep you want it to go.  When the line of the tape touches the wood, you’ve gone far enough.

In addition, if you are pursuing an angled approach, make sure that your drill is going in perpendicular to the surface upon which the wood is sitting, not perpendicular to the surface of the top of the disk.  Although I suppose you could do that, too, if you wanted your pencils to stick out at an angle.

Then I sanded, to smooth out the edges and to make the top nice and even.  You don’t want splinters in something you’re going to be touching all the time.

I stained one of them as well, again for kicks.

To go with the pencil holders, I thought I would include some pencils I made myself.

I got the idea from here, but modified it so it was easier for me (because I found this actually quite difficult).  You need some 2mm pencil leads, the kind that go into architectural drafting pencils (also known as clutch pencils).  They tend to come in small plastic boxes of 10, and you can find them at art supply stores or on the internet.

Then you need some thin paper.  I used a combination of newspaper flyers and origami paper for this, with the cheap newspaper on the inside and the nice origami pattern on the outside.  Cut the paper into squares that are the same length as the leads, which is usually about 5″.

Take a paint brush and some glue and paint some onto the edge of one of the pieces of paper.

Lay your lead onto the glued surface, just a little bit from the edge.  Fold that extra part over the lead and tuck it in.

Now start rolling, carefully, putting even pressure on both ends of the lead.  You want the paper to be tight around the lead but you don’t want to put too much pressure on it that the lead breaks.  I definitely broke a few.  And go slowly, so you can make sure that the lead rolls straight in the paper.  Many of my pencils came out crooked and had to be trimmed later.

When you reach the end of the paper, add some more glue and fasten the edge securely on your roll.  Repeat with more paper until you get to the thickness you like, with some nice patterned stuff on the outside.

Put some glue on the outside, just to seal it all in.

Allow your pencil to dry, then trim the pointy end of the pencil with a knife or a pencil sharpener, and you’re all set.

Finger Knit Basket

I know, it’s been a long time coming.  I promised to show you what I ended up doing with those long felted strings of finger knitting I made back in October.  Well here it is.  So my carpal tunnel in my wrists right now is so bad I can’t actually do real knitting for longer than ten minutes before my fingers go completely numb.  I’m getting massage therapy for it and it’s helping, but the road to recovery is slow.  As a result of this, I still haven’t finished the Atlas blanket that I was making for Krystopf and Atlas for their wedding.  I needed a sort of stop-gap present to keep them appeased (not that they even care) until I was ready to present them with the real thing.

After I felted that one ball of finger knit merino wool, I went on to do five more; in total, I had two black strings, two maroon strings, and two olive green strings.  The Pie actually finger knit one of the green strings all by himself, grumbling and complaining the whole time.

Then I felted each one by chucking it in the washing machine — and then the dryer if it was needed.  The green ones felted differently from the rest, despite being the same wool — so there was a longer string of green than anything else.

I tied each matching string to its partner and rolled it up in a giant ball.

Then I braided them all together.  This took a very, very long time, because I kept having to move the balls around while I was braiding.  I found it was easier to keep the balls from rolling all over the place and unraveling if I put them in saved produce bags from the grocery store.

Finally I had a huge thick braid. The idea is to coil it all together, like so.  This would be the bottom of the basket.  Then sew the braid to itself, like you would a braided rug, or that doily I made last year.

When I got enough of a base going, I started to loop the braid on top of itself, to form the sides of the basket.

I kept the basket relatively narrow, not letting it get too wide (though that would be neat, too), and so I was left with a lot more braid once I’d gotten the basket to a size I liked.  I just tied it off and sewed it down and that was that.

And that leftover green string?  I actually finger knit the felted finger knit, forming this tight little braid, the perfect length for a handle  Tada!

I sewed that into the top of the basket and now we’re good to go!

Travel Document Holder from Old Maps

My brother Krystopf travels frequently for his job.  Most of the time it’s to Brussels, where he has fully exhausted the entertainment value of the city and now dreads going.  He’s also a bit of a disorganized traveler, and there are few countries on this planet that don’t have a little piece of something that he has left behind.  Actually, both my brothers are pretty good at this, so maybe Ando will get one of these some time in the future …

This is a travel document holder that I designed myself.  It’s made out of a mining resources map of Newfoundland I inherited from the Geography department at MUN, and dates from 1969, so it’s quite old in terms of relevance.  I actually inherited three of them, plus a few more resource maps, so I’m sure you’ll be seeing more map-related projects in the future.

My first step in this project was to “antique” the map, using a technique I learned from the good folks at Design*Sponge.  So you lay out your map (or whatever it is that you are antiquing), on a workable surface.  My map was too big for the table, so I laid it out on some dog towels on the floor.

Brew up a cup of dark coffee and let that cool.  You will also need a cup of plain water and a handful of coarse salt.  I used the stuff you put in your grinder.  And a paintbrush.

When the coffee has cooled sufficiently, dip in your paintbrush and paint a swath of coffee onto your map.  Follow that with a dip into the fresh water, just to dilute it a bit.  Paint at random, and allow some puddling.

Now, while that area is still wet, sprinkle a few grains of salt into the wet areas.  The salt will help to dry up the puddles.

Continue this way, randomly swiping your paintbrush wherever you like, sprinkling salt as you go, until you’ve got something you like.  Leave that to dry overnight.

Now brush off all the particles of salt.  You may find that it’s crystallized in the darker spots, and you can brush that away as well if you use a stiff brush.  Or you can keep it that way, it’s up to you. I think the little perfect squares of salt look kind of neat, but they won’t adhere well to my contact paper so I gotta get rid of them.

Now we’re going to measure out our pieces.  A pencil and a ruler might help, obviously.  I have a plan as to how this is going to happen.  When I make plans for stuff I usually construct a mockup on scrap paper, writing in all the measurements and such, and notes as to where I’m putting what.

On the inside we have a passport pocket, a notepad, and a wee pouch for small things that folds over itself to keep everything in place.

On the other side of that pocket are a series of slots for odds and ends.

So now we’re ready for cutting. I used my rotary cutter and cutting mat for this but you can use scissors or whatever works for you. Cut two pieces out of the map that are 18″ x 9 1/2″ (or whatever works for you).  These are the inside and outside of the document holder, and will be folded in half.  Remember that one end folds over itself and fastens with velcro. That fold-over flap is 3″, making the folder 7 1/2″ wide by 9 1/2″ tall, the perfect size to slip into a laptop or even a netbook or tablet sleeve.

This is the two pieces folded together. You may need to trim the inside piece a bit to get the edges to match up, simply due to the bulk of the mapping paper.

Here is the piece I cut out for the inside pocket. It is 8 1/2″ tall and 16″ wide. Then I folded it in half with the map facing outwards and folded in the open edges by one inch, and then over itself again by another inch. That double fold will ensure that the contents of the pocket won’t slide out.

So the folded pocket is 8 1/2″ tall and 6″ wide, a good fit for the inside of the folder.

On the inside left cover we are going to have a space to store a passport, as well as a stash of scrap note paper for writing things down.

I cut the scrap paper to be all the same size and a proportional fit for the folder, 3″ x 5″.  A passport is 3 1/2″ x 5″, so the lengths matched.

Originally, I was going to construct all these slots and pockets by cutting slits in the structure of the folder cover and inserting paper pockets inside. But then I changed my mind. I decided it would cut down on bulk, streamline and strengthen the design, and make things easier to see if I used the contact paper itself to make the pockets I needed. Then the clear nature of the plastic would mean you could see your stuff, as well as the details of the map underneath it. It makes things a little trickier to put together but I think the end result is less bulky and complicated.

Now for the contact paper.  This is the stuff they use to cover shelves and things.  You can pick it up at any hardware store.  Because I don’t have a car and Newfoundlanders don’t like their contact paper to be clear, I had to get mine online.  But it’s a common thing.

First we do the inside cover.  Cut a piece of contact paper the exact size of the inside cover (18″ x 9 1/2″).  Before you take off the adhesive backing, we’re going to plan out where all our slots go and how we’re going to put them together.  Please note here that I totally planned out my design backwards, and in the end had to change the way that the document folder opened.  So make sure you remember that the design you put on your contact paper will be reversed when you stick it down onto the map.

For the inside left cover, with the note pages and the passport, …

For the inside right cover, with the slots for receipts and such, we’re going to do more or less the same thing, except these slots are going to overlap, so sticking things gets a little complicated …

So then I cut slashes in the contact paper where I wanted documents to stick through.

Then I carefully cut through just the backing paper to peel away areas I wanted exposed.

Then I cut another piece of contact paper to fit on that exposed piece.

And stuck it down.

Now that’s going to form the basis of your pocket. But we need another piece of contact paper on the inside, to go against the map. So I cut out a bit more of the contact backing sheet, then cut a larger piece of contact paper and placed it, sticky side up, on top of that, so when I laid it all out it would adhere to the map.

The slots were a bit trickier, because I had to go through the same process as for the above pockets, but I also had to remember that they overlapped, which meant I had to start with the bottom one first.

It took a while. You can’t really see all the individual layers here, but just know that it’s four separate pockets.

Then I oh-so-carefully stuck it down on the inside cover. You can see it here, with pieces of paper in the little slots, to show you how it goes. And yes, it’s totally backwards.

Onward.  Let’s put together the inside pouch.

Cut the contact paper to be  8 3/4″ wide and  18″ long.  The extra 1/8″ on the width will leave the contact paper adhering to itself.  The extra 1″ on either side will fold over the top edges of the pouch, protecting them.

Carefully adhere the contact paper to the pouch, making sure the edges line up and fold down the ends over the opening to protect the paper inside.

I used red embroidery floss, which I waxed, to sew up the outside edges of the pouch.  I liked the colour contrast with the blue of the water.

I cut some squares out of adhesive velcro and stuck them to the second fold of the pouch so it would stay closed.

Then I sewed the pouch onto the inside of the cover.  You could leave this until last, but I didn’t want my stitches to show on the outside.

That means that our next step is to stick the two cover pieces together. You don’t really need glue, or a lot of it, just something to stick them together so they’re not sliding all over the place while you’re applying contact paper to the whole thing.  I used a few pieces of double-sided tape, to avoid wrinkles.  The thing is wrinkly enough.

Cut the outside contact sheet larger on all sides by 1/2″ (so, 19″ x 10 1/2″). Lay the cover piece in the centre of the contact sheet. Mitre and trim the corners as you fold it over to protect the edges.  My original plan was to border the edges with bias binding and sew it all around but I changed my mind.  I like the clear fold-over of the contact paper better. Then you just have to stick on some more velcro pieces to keep the folder closed and you’re all set.

Rainbow-Dipped Wooden Spoons

This is a great and quick gift for people who are just starting out in a new home.  When I saw it over at A Pretty Cool Life I knew I had to do it.  And maybe even jazz up my own wooden spoons while I was at it, though at present I only own two. You can never have too many spoons (especially when you’re entertaining and all is chaos), and these bright and shiny ones are a great accent for any kitchen.

So you need some spoons, wooden ones. The Pie and I picked these up at Winners for a reasonable price. We did two sets, six spoons each. And you need some craft paint. We had six spoons, so we picked up six colours. We went with Martha Stewart Crafts™ Multi-Surface Satin Acrylic Paint.  It had a nice finish, was easy to apply, and is guaranteed to be non-toxic and food safe.  And if you let it cure for 21 days, then you can pop these babies in the dishwasher with no worries.

I gave the spoons a quick sand with some fine-grade sandpaper to get some of the splinters and rough edges off.  Then I measured to see where I wanted the paint to go.  These self-healing cutting mats also make great ruler-like work surfaces.

Then I used masking tape along the line I measured and pressed it down securely to make sure the paint wouldn’t bleed under.

These are my own wooden spoons here.  I originally wanted to do a set of stripes forming a rainbow on each handle, with them being the reverse of each other, so I blocked off 1″ increments for my stripes, figuring I could do a few colours at a time.  Conveniently, my masking tape is also 1″ thick.

I wedged the spoons in plastic cups with some rocks in the bottom for stability.  This way they can dry properly without touching anything else.

Then I set up my palette in an old pie pan.  Re-use, re-use, re-use!

Then I painted.  It was easy.  Leave an hour between coats to make sure it dries properly.  I ended up doing three coats on the spoons I was giving away, though I only did one coat on my own spoons.

When I took the tape off my own spoons in order to mask off the already painted sections, I decided I liked the stripes just as they were.

And if you put the spoons together it forms a rainbow!

And of course the other spoons are raring to go, just waiting for their requisite 21 days of curing.

If you have a glass utensil holder, you can put them handle-side-down.

Or if not, have them handle-side-up.

Either way, they’re a cheery addition to my kitchen.  Can I keep them?

Button Mosaic

If you’re looking for a last-minute gift idea for the person who has everything, the person who appreciates all things quirky and vintage, or the person who has a strong addiction to sewing notions (trust me, there are more of them out there than you think), then look no further than right.  Here.

I have a large collection of vintage sewing buttons, but my favourites are the ones with the pearlescent sheen — so I have extra of those.

I picked up this mini wood frame at Michaels back when I was doing the coffee stirrer wall art.

At the time I figured I would make another, smaller version of the same, but it was not to be.  Instead, I painted it purple and started sticking buttons on with Mod Podge (though any white glue — or non-white glue — would work here).

I kind of went with an ombre sort of pattern from purple to red to white.

These buttons attach with that little sticky-outie thing and won’t lie flat, so I glued them into small spaces between other buttons, where the other buttons would hold them up.

Don’t forget to stick some hanging hardware on the back.

The finished product.  Easy peasy blamo kablam.

His & Hers Key Hooks

I love making useful things out of other things.  Especially when you can personalize it so you know that no one else has anything quite like it. This monogrammed key hook is a gift for a friend of mine.

The wood I found in the garage.  I needed to saw off the crooked end to make it straighter.  Little did I know that I am incapable of sawing things in a straight line.  So it’s just as crooked, but in the other direction.  But now it’s QUAINTLY crooked.  On PURPOSE.

The vintage-style brass initials, as well as the little crow with verdigris, I got from Dime Store Emporium’s Etsy shop.  What a neat place!

This aluminum plate I found on the street.  Conveniently it had been pre-weathered and pre-antiqued by the tires of passing cars.

These hooks I got at Wal-Mart.  Not everything can have such glorious beginnings.

Now you want to lay everything out beforehand, just to prove that you have a plan.  Having a plan is good when you don’t have any spare parts leftover if you should happen to mess it up.

After I’d cut the wood and sanded it baby-bottom smooth, I added hanging hardware, right off the bat.  I wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t damage or disturb any of the front stuff, which was why I did it first.

Then I wanted to stain it.  I had the option of three colours of Distress Stain, and one of India ink.

I thought I’d try the stains out first on another piece of wood, to see how they looked.  This was a good idea.  See?  I’m planning ahead again, not just winging it, which seems to lead to trouble sometimes.

I ended up going with the blue stain, and just doing the face of the wood.  Let that dry.

Then I used black acrylic paint around the edges.  Let that dry.

Then I screwed on the hooks. I had to use my world’s oldest drill to get the holes started for me, though.

But the screws went on and looked really good.

Then it was a simple matter to whip out the glue gun and hot glue the metal pieces into place.

And it turned out better than I thought it would, which is always a bonus.

Fast-Tip Friday: Storing Jewelry

(Sorry for the glitch with the photographs there, folks. Seems Flickr is subtly changing the addresses of my photos after I’ve already posted them …)

Next week is jammed packed chock full of fantastically amazing recipes, so I’m going to leave you hanging with a handy tip to tide you over for the weekend.

Get ready for a shock: this is my jewelry box.

I know it looks totally chaotic, but I swear it’s organized.

The thing is, I own a huge amount of jewelry.  Most of it is just costume stuff, but some of it is inherited.  I’m also horribly allergic to metal, so I can’t wear most of it.  At least, not until my body chemistry changes in the future.  So I keep it all stored very carefully.

I save tiny and odd-sized plastic bags, with the Ziploc-like seals, whenever I find them.

Then I keep my rings together.

And my necklaces separate, which keeps their chains from tangling together and also protects them from exposure to air that will cause them to tarnish.

And the finer chains I also take the clasp part and seal it on the other side of the closure.  I find this ensures that the fine links won’t tangle with themselves or with the heavier clasp.

Whenever I go home I usually spend an hour or so with my mother’s jewelry collection, doing the same thing.  For stuff that you don’t wear all that often, it really works.

Make Your Mail Literate

When I saw this project on Curbly a while back, I thought it would be the perfect gift for one of the older members of our family to keep cards and pictures and memories fresh and out in the open.

It’s a very simple trick.  You take an old hardcover book (again, being a law librarian, I have tons of these), and working in batches you fold all the pages in the book in half towards the spine.  You can use as many pages as you want in each batch (you want enough that the fold will hold itself but not too much that you have trouble folding it).

Use a bone folder to get a sharp crease.

It gets harder to get a good fold the further in you are in the book.  You really need to jam the edge of the page towards the spine as hard as you can.

When you hit your last section, fold the pages in the opposite direction, so that all the edges are tucked inside.

And then you’re done.  It can hold all your mail that needs to be looked at.  It can be a compact way to display holiday greeting cards or letters from friends.  It can also act as a photo stand so you can look at your whole family in one go.

Then I decided to dress it up a bit.  I used newspaper to cover the covers of the book and stuck a roll through the spine to protect it and then spritzed some copper spray paint on the page ends.  This way you can still see the words on the pages, but they have a gilded appearance.

Actually, it looks kind of like a heat sink for a computer.

Then I masked the edges of the covers.

And used chalkboard paint on the white part.

So now it’s also a message board as well as a mail holder.

Not a bad little organizer for a book and a bit of paint!

Comfort, Company, and Compromise

Okay for real it’s autumn.  The time has come for me to finally start cracking down on my thesis.  My outline has been approved by my committee and I’m ready to go.  The problem is, until Saturday, my “office” (read: the tiny rolling desk I moved into) was stuck in a dark corner of our bedroom for the whole summer.  I love our bedroom, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not a place conducive to dissertation-writing.  I wanted my office back.

But my office looked like this (Corgi sometimes included).  That giant queen-sized bed pretty much takes up the whole room, which is only about 9 feet squared.

What’s left goes to the freezer.

We didn’t want to get rid of the bed if we could keep it — it’s very handy to have a spare place to sleep if you have unexpected guests or your spouse is sick or what have you (normally when this happens one of us [ME] sleeps on our tiny loveseat in the living room).  But holy crap a bed takes up a lot of room!  Of course it would be a simple matter to get some form of hide-a-bed or convert this sucker to a murphy bed or something like that.  But we don’t have any money and this isn’t our house, and we’re only going to be here another year anyway.  We just need a band-aid solution to get us through the year — a year that includes me writing the equivalent of a textbook.

So we had to do some shifting around.  And of course when you’re doing this you don’t want to spend an hour or two shoving furniture needlessly across your floors.  No.  You want to go in with a plan.

What do you do?  Well you map it out.  My husband studies cartography, so this was right up his alley.

First, you need to measure everything — the furniture, as well as the dimensions of your room.  Make sure when you’re measuring the room that you include the floor space of the room (that is, from baseboard to baseboard) and not from wall to wall.  Baseboards usually account for an inch or two in depth and that could mean a whole lot when it comes to fitting stuff in.  Also make sure that you can account for the full swing of a door, be it a closet or the main entrance.  You may think you can deal with a door that doesn’t open all the way, but trust me, that will get irritating pretty quickly.

Conveniently, there are tons of programs out there on the internet that can help you to map out your future room.  The one we used here wasn’t the greatest, but it suited our purposes.

The big issues for us in planning out our room were that the room itself only has two electrical outlets, and that the longest wall is taken up halfway through with an electric baseboard heater.  Oh, that and the huge honking bed we need to fit in there. So this is the room as it stands right now. The desk and chair to the left are what needs to fit in the room.

We tried out all sorts of permutations, and eventually we had almost agreed on getting rid of the bed altogether and just sucking it up for the next year.  It was the freezer that was causing us grief.  It would fit in our bedroom, now that we’d moved the desk, but did we really want our freezer in our bedroom?  Probably not. But it had to go somewhere. As far as my office move-around went, however, we ended up putting everything back (virtually) pretty much where it was originally, and just swapping out the freezer for the desk. Presto-change-o.

In the end, we decided to shove the freezer into our dining room.  I may eventually switch it up with that table in the corner (but as you can see the aesthetics of the place are pretty much ruined with all the craft stuff I’ve got on the go at the moment).  It doesn’t do anything for our dining room, and it makes it a little annoying to manoeuvre around the table now, but we don’t really have the time or money to have big fancy dinner parties anymore, and we really only use the dining room for a workspace and to have breakfast on the weekends.  So it will do.  For now (meaning I’ll probably re-evaluate my priorities and move everything around sometime in the next month or so — the way things are is already bugging the OCD in me).

And my office?  Well, it’s not perfect by any means. All the pictures are now hung up wrong. When I sit at my desk I get a bird’s eye view of what’s in our recycling bags. But it’ll do.  For now. It’s a compromise.