Baby Mobile - Hooty Hoot Owls!

Earlier this year, I went with Farrah to our favorite little gift shop in Columbia, The Butterfly Tattoo. They specialize in cute gifts for girlie girls and funky baby products.

Trent and Kara were expecting their first baby and Farrah had heard through the grapevine that Kara had fallen in love with a particular crib bedding at the boutique. It was the perfect solution to their office gift.Of course, as soon as I saw the print on the crib bedding, I was in love. Infatuated is probably a better word. "Silly Owl" by LittoKids Inc. is the bedding. And boy, oh boy! It is adorable!

Inspired by retro designs, it features this cute little owlie (I named him Arnold) surrounded by a kind of fleur de lis meets mid-century pattern in orange, white, gray and brown. It rocks. So super perfect for a little baby boy (or girl).

With that in mind, I decided to give them the gift of handmade: an owlie baby mobile.

The first step was to find a usable image of the owl. Harder than it seems, LittoKids has very few closeups of their bedding. Silly company. I finally found an image that some dummy like me had uploaded :) Yay for dummies!

The image had a few issues so I used photoshop to touch it up and mirror it to use as my owl pattern. Cute!

When doing any kind of hand-stitching project with numerous matching felt guys, I advise you to make one first and figure out what you are doing before moving on. That's what I did!

Owlie Parts (Cutting):

My first step was to decide what kind of parts I needed, in what color and to make a pattern for those parts. After making the pattern from the original image, I cut out all the little owl body pieces.

Here's what I ended up having:

2 - full body - brown

1 - breast - orange

2 - wings - orange

1 - eye foundation - orange

2 - eyeballs - white

2 - owlie corneas - black
(not shown)

1 - beak - black

2 - feet - black

1 - heart - orange

Wow. That's a lot of little pieces! And a lot of little pieces leftover too! If you're a packrat like I am, you end up keeping all those little pieces for weeks until it drives you crazy!

After cutting out the little pieces, I assembled the front of Arnold's body.

Owlie Parts (Sewing):

First, I added his little orange breast using a running stitch. I used 4 strands of a matching orange embroidery thread to attach the breast to his little brown body.

Next step, I attached the wings and orange eye foundation in the same fashion.


Now for his eyeballs. I used the normal 4 strands of (white) embroidery thread to attach the whites of his eyes using a running stitch.

Finally, add his little eyeballs with black!

I nearly forgot to stitch his beak and heart on last!

After I put Arnold's front pieces all together, it was time to give him some dimension.

Starting at his right owlie ear, I began attaching Arnold's back to his front using all 6 threads from a matching brown embroidery skein. At his bottom half, I had to remember to add his cute, little legs into the stitching. His legs are just single pieces of black felt.After binding Arnold together everywhere but the top of his head, it was time to add his stuffing.

The hardest part to stuff in the owlie was his little wings. I stuffed his bottom half, just a tiny bit of stuffing at a time. After he was pretty plump in his southern region, I added a little bit of stuffing into his wings. I had to use something (a pencil) to get that stuffing to the end his little wing tips.

After stuffing my owlie, I stitched up his head. Arnold the Owl's body is all done!


I was able to successfully add a ring to the top of Arnold's head for adding his hanging string. Yay me! I just used a couple of black embroidery threads and stitched in on there firmly. Finally, I added a string to hang him to the mobile!

Then I finished Arnold's 3 brothers!

I'm pretty sure little Clark likes them since in the picture below, I was told he fell asleep on his belly and rolled over to look at his owlies during the night! I'm sure that was the reason...

Creepy, Crawly Wreath

Post started in October 2009

I promised Christie that I would try to update the craft blog because even though neither of us have been mega-busy at our work (me having been laid off this work, her not having a ton of stuff to work on besides her typology class), we haven’t been motivated to blog. Funny how when you have tons of time, you use it for other things.

However, I have been a craft maniac. I haven’t been a total craft loser.
I guess my first craft post back will be the Halloween wreath.

Over Labor Day weekend, Mom and I were wandering around Pier 1 when we came upon a really cool Halloween wreath. It was $25. It was super cute, but much too expensive. Mom and I took a picture and moved on.

Here are the list of supplies you will need for certain:

- 1 - 12 - 14 inch wreath
- black spray paint
- 1 - black feather boa
- hot glue gun and glue
- various creepy crawly plastic creatures

The first thing we did was spray paint the wreaths black. We invested in straw wreaths for two reasons: 1) Spray paint doesn’t eat through straw and 2) Straw wreaths are much cheaper than styrofoam.

After the wreaths were thoroughly saturated in black paint (they don’t need to be perfectly covered), I wrapped the wreath with the black feather boa (mine was black with silver flecks in it). I attached one end of the boa onto the wreath with hot glue and allowed it to dry (be careful not to burn your fingers like I did!). Then I wrapped it around the wreath. It won’t completely cover it, but it’s fluffy and looks pretty good. Just attach the other end of the boa to the original end of the boa with hot glue.

I flipped the wreath over to the "back" side. I took some white embroidery floss (6 pieces) and hot glued the ends, criss crossing them to make a web. At the intersections, glue the crossings so it will make a stronger connection. Once again, don’t stick your fingers in the glue!

When the hot glue has dried, attach your creepy plastic creatures onto the wreath in the bald spots. Mom and I bought a big spider and I suspended him under the wreath. Creepy!

I addition to the big creepy spiders, I added some middle spiders and some small spiders here and there. I also added some creepy critters ON to the web.

I have a wreath hanger that goes over my door. If you don’t have a hanger, hammer a nail into the very top middle of your door (I’m talking the top end) and loop a black ribbon over it to suspend the wreath.

In addition to the wreath, I added some spiders I had left over to "crawl" up the door. Since I live in a rental and who wants the fear of chipping the paint on the door anyway, I used an old Farrah trick and cut up pieces of 3M double sided foam to attach to the spiders/door. When you are ready to remove the spiders, it should come right off the door without peeling any paint. Clever trick, Fe. Mine are arranged as if they are crawling up the door to the wreath and the door handle.

Please note that I am REALLY afraid of spiders. I could hardly touch the middle sized spiders when I put them on the wreath. Yek.

All in all here are the expenses for the wreath:
Straw wreath $2.49
Feather boa 40% off of $7.99 at Joann
Bag of 100 creepy crawly critters $4.99 at Big Lots
White embroidery thread free leftovers from other projects
Hot glue free leftovers from other projects
So all in all the wreath (we actually made two - one for each of us) cost about $10. Much less expensive than the less cute one at Pier 1.

Sorry the picture isn't the greatest! This pic was taken before I got my new camera (that is now lost as of Saturday night).

Baby Mobile - Weiner Mobile!

Super Lesley, a Columbia friend of mine, had a cutie patootie little girl earlier this year named Rosie Eileen. One of Super Lesley's many quirks (many, I say! - just like me!) is her true love of all things Dachshunds. Her and her husband, Don, own three little girl doxies: Lulu, Bird and Sheba.

Before Christmas, when I was doing all my felt creature research, I found a girl on Etsy who makes felt Dachshunds. I knew as soon as I saw them, I knew I had to make one. Or two. Or four.

Four because that's what fits on a baby mobile!

Puppy Body (Cutting):

I began by "borrowing" a picture from the earlier mentioned website to have a pattern to cut out my felt doxies.

I cut two identical doxie bodies in a brown felt.

I also cut out two ears in brown and a square piece of light pink for under the ears.
Later in this post, I will discuss Doxie tails, but for now, here is pic of the puppy's brown body pieces.


Puppy Ears (Sewing):

Using 4 strands from the embroidery thread (same color as the brown felt), I used a running stitch to stitch the brown felt to the pink felt. After knotting the end of the thread and snipping, I trimmed the pink felt closely to the edge of the brown felt.
Puppy Eyes (Sewing):

For the puppy's eyes, I took the puppy body and lightly dotted in the outline of the eye because I'm a much better seamstress when I have a line to follow. Please note in the picture below that I used tracing paper...a luxury us architects keep around the house ;)

I then took 4 strands of black embroidery thread to make the line of the eye (closed). I used a simple back stitch, following the slight curve of the eye. I ended up doing two rows very close together to simply make the eye show up better. I then took 2 strands of the black thread and sewed on the eyelashes. You can make these as long or short as you wish!

My doxies are all girls, so I went for mid-length eyelashes.

Repeat for the opposite body side of the puppy.

Puppy Tail (Cutting):

Let's just pretend that if you are making felt doxies, then you have been around doxies. Therefore, you should know that most doxies have skinny, long tails that curve slightly upward. I didn't use a pattern for my tails and just cut them out based on how the tail looks. It took a few tries for the first tail but once I got it out, the other three were much easier! I didn't do any sewing to the actual tail piece since I used only one thickness of felt.

Puppy Body (Sewing):

For each puppy, I used pins to hold their cute, tiny bodies together while sewing them. I started around the ear area and worked to the tail then to the underside of the body and back to the tail. Once again, I used a simple running stitch.

Don't forget that when you get to where the tail should go, to add the tail! I forgot once and had to pull and restitch my puppy's behind!

Once I got the back foot stitched, I went ahead and stuffed it with some polyester filling. Otherwise, it would be too hard to get the filling deep down into the foot area as it's pretty tiny. As I stitched more of the puppy, I would add filling to the finished part to keep the filling more evenly spaced. It has a tendency to bunch up in a ball.

Puppy Ears (Sewing onto Puppy):

My first suggestion for the ears would be to make sure that they line up perfectly on each side of the head.
Starting with one ear and 2 strands of embroidery thread, begin attaching the ear by hiding your knot under the ear. Once again, use a simple running stitch to attach the ear. Do the same for the other side/ear.

Puppy Nose (Sewing):

For the nose, I used 4 strands of thread and used a stitch similar to a satin stitch. Beginning on one side, using future stitches to hide the knotted end, I basically looped the fabric over the end of the nose/felt and came back through near the original stitch from the backside. Do this several times until you feel you have a likable nose size!

Puppy Bow:

I used a different color 3/8" wide ribbon for each puppy. I simply tied the ribbon around the puppy's neck and trimmed it to my liking.

Adding The Puppies To The Mobile:

Using a tiny jewelry circle, I attempted to attach this to the back of the puppy's back and it just didn't work.

In the end, I just used all 6 steins of the embroidery thread and sew it through the puppies. I tied a nice knot and then kept the length of the thread to use for the actual hanging part to attach to the mobile. After tying the thread around the mobile, I snipped off the extra bit! Don't want baby reaching up for that!

Felt Flowers (To Cover Up The Sad Unadorned Music Box):

Per my mother's suggestion, I checked out a link she sent me earlier this week for felt flowers. I ended up making three of them (purple, orange/yellow and red) with coordinating button middles to put on the music box of the mobile to make it prettier. I'll add some finished pictures but if you feel like making these cute and easy felt flowers, just go to this link and follow the directions!

After making the flowers, I hot glued them to the music box. Woo!

And then I sent those puppies out in the mail!

It looks like Rosie enjoys them :)

Dick Van Dyke makes a furniture comeback!

This past summer, I bought a chair for $4.98 at Goodwill. When it comes to ratty looking, sturdy pieces of furniture, I’m like the cat lady who lets in any old Tom. Instead of 50 cats and an overflowing kitty litter box (I’m down to one cat, thank you very much), I have an infinite number of places to sit, most of which have needed or will need a facelift. The "Dick Van Dyke" chair, as the Goodwill folks named it, was no exception.

The chair came in a yellow stain with a matching faux yellow leather seat. It was very…monochromatic. But underneath all the jaundice, I could visualize a colorful clothing catch all for my bedroom. My clothes needed a place to call home instead of the floor when I tried on 15 outfits in the morning before finally settling back on the first one I tried on and this chair would be that place.

My first plan of attack was to remove the seat. Be sure to save the screws! I put them in a plastic Ziploc sandwich bag for safekeeping. For some reason, the chair had a massive amount of extra screws where the arms meet the legs. None of them were actually holding anything together so I removed them. What was up with that?

After the screw removal, I had a number of holes that I had to fill. Unfortunately, my wood filler was DRY. No worries. Just add a little water IF you have a water based filler like I did. Not too much water, just enough to turn it back into a soft putty. Then I filled any gouges or holes (useless screw holes!) with the filler and a flat metal putty spatula.

This is the part where I add that, while taking the chair down to southern MO to show my Mom my wonderful find, I pulled the chair out of the car and knocked off the edge off the top of the veneer. I taped it to the chair at that time so I wouldn’t lose the veneer. When I was doing my putty work, I simply added a small amount of wood glue to the veneer, taped the crap out of it to the chair so it would be secure and fit closely and let it dry. I filled the holes after it was completely dry.

When the holes have all dried been filled and dried, take your chair either outside or to a well-ventilated room and sand it. I sanded the filled holes down to blend in AND I sanded the entire chair lightly to prep it for primer. I wasn’t about to restain this chair. Great find but not worth the staining effort. It was going to look much better in a nice shade of blue than a nice shade of walnut stain.

I used a spray paint primer on the chair. Outside. I used white. In hindsight, I should have used gray since I’m painting it blue, but the white looks so much more crisp.

After the spray paint has dried, allow the chair to sit in the middle of your living room taking up space for over a month or so. Just because. That’s what I did. No point actually FINISHING a project.

In addition to the fine painting cosmetics of the chair, you will need to recover the seat. My seat feels like a piece of hard plywood. Maybe that’s because it is. No matter what I did, short of creating a new seat with some sort of fabric bottom instead of plywood, it will always feel that way. Therefore, to ease the pain in my tailbone when I forget it’s hard and sit down fast, after removing the gross old fabric (only two layers) and a gross old batting, I covered the existing foam with a new quilted polyester high loft batting. You can find it in the "quilting" and/or "batting" aisle at the hobby store. I was going to replace the foam, but it appeared to be in fairly good shape and not too stinky. I used my trusty staple gun to secure the batting to the underside of the existing plywood chair seat.

The fabric I chose is a thin cotton Kona Fabric. I like the Asian influence Kona Fabrics embrace and it really goes well with my bedroom decor and colors. I didn’t feel like using an upholstery weight fabric mostly because of cost but also because I want to feel like I can change the fabric anytime I want. For some reason, I feel limited with upholstery fabric. I simply stapled the fabric onto the plywood like the batting.

For the actual chair painting, I used Dutch Boy. It’s available at Wal-Mart and comes in these cute little easy pour containers. Plus, it’s fairly inexpensive. I just used an everyday interior latex in a semi-gloss (easily cleanable) for the job. To apply the paint, I used a mini roller for the large parts and a foam brush for the more intricate, hard to reach detailing on the back of the seat (Asian influence?).

When the paint had COMPLETELY dried (another month in the middle of my living room, of course), I screwed the seat bottom back onto the chair and voila! A perfectly cute and useful new piece of furniture!

I think my total cost ended up running around $25 ($5 for chair, $10 for fabric and let's say $10 for the paint because I can't remember!) Not too bad! (I'll post a better picture soon!)

Gocco Part II: How-to - Family Reunion Napkins

Provided you’ve managed to acquire a Gocco printer and get your hands on the basic supplies -- Gocco flashbulbs (either 2 or 4 per screen, depending on your Gocco printer), blank Gocco screen, Gocco ink (either ink for paper or ink for fabric will work for the napkins), and of course a big stack of blank napkins -- you’re ready for the Gocco magic to begin. The images here are from some commemorative Family Reunion napkins Carrie and I made a couple years ago.

First off, Making the Image
To make your screen you will need a black and white printed image at least slightly smaller than the size of your screen (a good rule of thumb is to leave about ½” margin at all sides to assure proper printing). Consider whether you want your design printed square to the edges of the napkin or at a 45-degree angle. Also keep the crimped napkin edges in mind. It’s a personal preference, I guess, but I prefer to keep my image entirely off the crimped edge.

Black and white means black and white. When making your image, it’s important to remember there are really no shades of gray with Gocco. A graded dot pattern will give you a fading effect, but you should basically think of your screen like a stencil: either ink comes through, full color, or not at all.

Equally important is to realize that you cannot print two different colors directly adjacent to each other (again, like a stencil). Different colors will either need to be separated by at least 1/2" of space (more is better) or printed with two separate screens. (This is possible, but it’s very tricky to get the screens to register exactly the same. For a “simple” project like paper napkins, I don’t think it’s worth the trouble.) So, for instance, for the Family Reunion, we started with this cute color image:

You'll notice these cute little chickens have several colors (yellow, orange, red, black) touching each other – a big NO for doing a single-screen Gocco print. I brought the image into Photoshop and made some adjustments to get it Gocco-ready. First the hen: I deleted the color from her head and feet, leaving a heavy outline at the edges. This means the head will be left the background color of the napkin, allowing the beak, comb, wattle, and eye to all stand out. Because the rooster has the same color for the head and body, I removed the color from his eye, beak, comb, and wattle (leaving an outline around the edges), as well as his feet. The little chicks mainly needed their eye-color deleted, similar to the rooster. I also gave them a little more definition by “cutting out” a partial outline under their little wings. Finally, I scooted the entire rooster further to the right, so it would be easier to use a different color ink for him than for the chicks. Here’s the resulting image, ready for the next step:

Now, because the Gocco process relies on carbon-based inks to burn the image into (or out of) the screen, take your printed image to the nearest black & white Xerox machine and run off a copy or two (one should be enough, but I’m a big believer in back-ups). Please note that it is very important that you use a black & white copier, NOT a color copier, or else you won’t get the carbon ink necessary to cut the screen. It may also be a good idea to make a copy a little bit larger than full-size and one a little bit smaller, so you can be sure you end up with the right size for your napkin.

Making the Screen

Before you make your screen, decide exactly how you want your image positioned on the napkin. I do this by cutting away the excess paper from the edges and laying the image on the actual napkin. (Here's where you can try out the various sizes you printed.) Now take the napkin and place it on the Gocco printing pad, with the image in its desired location on top. Mark the location of where to place the image. (I use a couple of strips of masking tape for this.) Insert a blank screen and four fresh flashbulbs into the printer lamp. You’re ready to cut your screen – almost.

This next step is more or less important depending on how “old” your photocopy is. If you’ve run it off within the past 30 minutes, you can probably go right ahead and burn your screen. If it’s been sitting around for awhile, though, take out a hair dryer and blow-dry your print (yes, seriously) for about two minutes. Somehow heating up the carbon ink helps in the screen burning process.

Now reposition your image on the ink pad, put the lamp on top of the printer, and press down until you hear (and see) a flash.

Close your eyes (they probably should have been closed anyway in anticipation of the flash) and pray. Remove the lamp from the top of the Gocco, and lift the lid. If all went well, your paper image should now cling to the underside of the screen, and the image should be "burned" out of the screen. To see if you got a successful burn, carefully peel back a bit of the paper. (Don’t peel it off all the way. You want to leave it “stuck” so that you can use the paper as a guide for where to put the ink.)

Inking the Screen

On to the fun part. If you plan to print in multiple colors, you’ll need some of Gocco’s handy foam ink-blocking stuff. This is like a large foam sticker that you can cut into strips and place between different-colored parts of your image to stop ink from running from one area into another. Make sure you ink the right side of your screen! The cellophane side should be face-up. Pull back the cellophane to expose the screen. Cut foam strips about ¼” wide and stick them in place as necessary, making sure you have a continuous wall between the different areas.

Keep in mind that once you start the inking process there’s really no stopping until every last napkin is printed. This is because the ink will dry out if left in the screen for too long. Also it’s very useful to have a helper for the inking process. It can be done alone (trust me), but it’s faster, and easier to avoid screw-ups, with a second set of hands. If you’re sure you’re ready, take your ink tubes and squeeze a generous amount of ink over the cut out portions of the screen (the black areas of your image). The ink will eventually spread, but if possible try to keep it as far from your foam separator tape as possible.

Printing

When everything has been inked, fold the cellophane back over the screen, insert the screen back into the printer, and carefully peel off the paper. Before you waste ink on your precious (if inexpensive) napkins, it’s always good to do a few “starter” prints on some scrap paper. It usually takes a few goes to get the ink fully flowing to all areas of the image. When you feel like your tests prints are looking satisfactory, bring out the napkins. Now, bleed-through isn’t as much an issue with napkins as with t-shirts, but it remains a possibility. For this reason, I like to keep scraps of thin cardboard (cut-up manila folders are handy) to slip inside the napkin, just under the top layer. Slipping the cardboard in is one of the many little jobs you can have your helper do.

The printing process itself is very quick and easy: insert napkin/press/remove napkin. The trickiest thing, in a way, is finding somewhere to put all the napkins until they’re dry. (Don’t want to stack them while the ink is wet.) A very useful tool, then, is a laundry drying rack. These will hold several napkins, and they make your house (apartment, whatever) look very crafty and productive in the meantime. Invariably, though, I end up using every horizontal surface available to me as well. From time to time you’ll notice an area of the image that’s not getting its full color. Simply remove the screen, lift up the cellophane, and reapply ink to the fading areas, then get back to business.

And there you have it! Unique, personalized napkins for any and every occasion!If you think you might want to print your image again in the future (more napkins, t-shirts, whatever), make sure to clean the screen well. Using a rubber scraper or a scrap of cardboard, scrape off as much as the ink as possible. (The thrifty among us will store this in an airtight container for another day. The rest of us will toss it.) Then use simple soap, water, and LOTS of paper towels to remove as much of the rest as possible. (Don’t expect to completely remove all color from the screen – just make sure no ink is left in the cut-out portions.) You don’t want your screen to warp, so be careful not to get the cardboard edges wet. I typically lay the screen on some reliably sturdy scrap paper, and rub gently with a damp, soapy paper towel. You will have to frequently change the paper underneath. Cleaning the screen is the messiest part of the whole process.

If you want a more thorough tutorial, with pictures, on how to Gocco, check out this website.

As mentioned in the previous post, these little gadgets are becoming increasingly scarce. I know there’s a new home-crafter screen printer out there called the Yudu, but I haven’t heard a lot about it. From what I can tell, though, the Yudu screen-cutting process is much more complicated and time-consuming than the flash-bulb burning of the Gocco. The scarcity of Gocco products (screens and bulbs especially) may have all of us looking for another way soon enough, but we can always hope another manufacturer resurrects this fun, if only marginally useful, technology.

Gocco, Part I: Party Napkins - A Last Gasp for a Dying Technology?

Time for a little divergence into near-obsolete technology!

Gocco (rhymes with “cocoa”) printers, made in Japan, are essentially a very easy way of making and printing from your own screens. They use flash bulbs to burn any black (carbon-based ink) & white image into a screen which can then be inked and printed onto virtually anything. Pretty cool, maybe, back in 1980. Now that everyone in the world has access to photo-quality inkjet printers, not to mention laser printers, it’s a little hard to know what use to make of Goccos. Yes, an inked print is longer-lasting and possibly more satisfyingly tactile than a standard inkjet print, but is the difference really worth the expense and trouble? To put it another way, what can you do with a Gocco that is truly unique and otherwise impossible?

Let’s examine the facts.

Gocco Negatives

Increasingly harder to find supplies (production appears to have ceased several years ago, and supplies are only available from online sellers (etsy, ebay, etc.))

Screens can only be made from carbon-based prints – meaning you have to seek out old-school black&white copiers

Screen-burning process is incredibly finicky – make sure to have back-up bulbs and screens at the ready

Screen-burning process is fairly expensive: 4 bulbs and 1 screen (minimum, see above item) = upwards of $15

Multi-color prints only possible when colors are separated by at least ½” or so

Gocco Positives

Incredibly cool and gratifying, when it works

Multiple, multiple prints from a single screen

Very fast printing: you’ll be done in no time

Unique projects (see below) to impress your friends and intimidate your foes

I bought my Gocco in a triumphant ebay bid several years ago. The printers come in two sizes: the smaller can print an image up to 4”x6” and the larger up to 7”x10”. I knew I wanted the larger model, as my first line of Gocco endeavor was t-shirt printing. For a couple of years my roommate and I went crazy making t-shirts – snagging designs out of books, making our own out of thin air, or abstracting photos into posterized black & white images. The results were quite neat and unique, and we got the technique down pretty well (masking-tape markings for shirt positioning, cardboard inserts to stop the ink bleeding through, testing and re-testing on paper before printing on the precious t-shirt, etc.).

Inevitably, though, there were a lot of throw-away shirts in the process – probably the biggest downside to t-shirt printing with Gocco. Either not enough ink would come through, or too much ink, or despite your best efforts the design was crooked. Attempting to print a design both on the front and back doubled the risk of disaster. I began to associate a queasy sensation in my stomach with the whole Gocco process and the terror of opening my eyes to see failure. (At least, thanks to H&M, we had a good source of relatively inexpensive shirts.) The t-shirts, at least in the quantities we were making them, also failed to take advantage of one of Gocco's greatest features - the ability to make so many prints from one inking.

A sampling of old used Gocco screens from projects past:

A couple of years into Gocco-ing, I diverged into what has become my favorite type of Gocco project. What else, besides clothing, is fun to personalize but impossible to run through an inkjet printer? Party napkins! Now, in my mind, these are the perfect project for the otherwise obsolete Gocco printing method. The issue of cost and waste is negligible; IKEA’s fabulous FANTASTIK napkins are four cents or less apiece, so no sweat over the odd screw-up. But aside from cost, I think the napkins are more unique and useful: how many weird little t-shirts do you really need? There are only 52 weekends in a year, and in Boston half of those are in sweater season! Besides, the napkins make for great conversation-starters, depending on your design, and it’s more acceptable to personalize. (I don’t know about you, but I haven’t gone around with my name on a t-shirt since about age ten.) And of course the Gocco will let you print as many napkins as you need - tens, hundreds, thousands!!! (Yes, probably thousands, if your arms, and your ink, hold out.)

Sadly, and stupidly, I don't seem to have hung onto samples of all my napkin projects (although, since I still have the screens, I suppose I could always print more). Here, though, are a couple of favorites.

This first one I did for one of my best friends' wedding - not the wedding itself, but a cocktail party the night before. (That meant it didn't have to be too formal.) I was stumped initially as to the

design, but she sent me an image of one of the fabrics they were using for the wedding (except they used blue, not red):Then I looked through their online registry for ideas, and hit on their champagne flutes (still available from Crate & Barrel, if you're interested):

I brought these two images into Illustrator, played around with them for a bit, and came up with this design:

Cute, yes? But not how the napkins turned out. Why, you ask? Because light-colored inks just don't show up well enough on dark colored napkins - the ink sinks into the fibers of the napkin and well, the resulting image wasn't as peppy and fun as intended. This is one of my many learned lessons of Gocco-ing. Napkins are cheap, though, so after a wasted afternoon of printing lackluster, faded dark-blue napkins, I woke up the next day and printed the following:

Front side:

Back side:And of course the entire thing unfolded:

MUCH better contrast, much better result. AND my first-ever two-ink, two-sided design! I was happy, Julie was happy, a good time was had by all, etc., etc..

This next napkin, for a birthday party, is simpler, but to me is just a perfect confluence of all the right ingredients: inspiration, color, design. For this one I found a favorite photo:

(Sunglasses pics are always a plus for this kind of thing as it gets around the problem of weird, ghostly eyes. They also tend to be flattering, so you're not likely to get a "Why did you use THAT picture?!!!" from the honoree.)

Anyway, I brought the image into Photoshop, made it grayscale (you might want to play with the Brightness & Contrast a bit first), and posterized it with the minimum number of levels (2). I cropped out the part I wanted, then added in some text, courtesy of VH1):

And here's the result:(Yeah, it's awesome. You know it. I know it. Definitely my favorite so far.)

Stay tuned for some more specifics on how the actual printing is done, in Gocco, Part II.

We Are Climbin'....

...Jacob's Ladders!!!

A Jacob's Ladder is an old folk craft/toy that I've seen in the odd craft fair over the years but never paid much attention to -- until recently, that is. Typically a Jacob's Ladder is made up of several panels - traditionally wood - connected by strings or ribbons in such a way that each panel can flip backwards or forwards. It's actually kind of hard to explain how it works in words - in fact, it's hard to understand even if you're holding one in hand and watching it move. Here is a somewhat pedantic video that nevertheless does a pretty good job of showing you what the basic toy does. (I especially appreciate the decorative wrinkled bedsheet in the background.) The more interesting Ladders, however, have pictures on both sides of the panels, so that the image switches from one picture to another as it flips back and forth.

"Very interesting. So what?" you say?

Well, they only became interesting to me last fall when I needed to make a book for my Typography class. The emphasis of the assignment was on the content of the book rather than the binding process, but we were encouraged to find a creative way to bind it, nonetheless. Because there were two different topics for the book - typography journal on the one hand, process documentation on the other - I initially thought of making an accordion-folded book, with process on one side and the journal on the other. Then I came across a mention of Jacob's Ladders in a book-binding book I have at home. Immediately I was intrigued. Fortunately in this digital age not only can you find videos of odd Australian men demonstrating how to play with Jacob's Ladders, you can also find videos of scrapbook-obsessed women demonstrating how to make Jacob's Ladders.

Whereas the panels in wooden Jacob's Ladders, as in the first video above, are typically single blocks of wood with ribbon attached at the ends, each panel of the scrapbook-style Ladders is made up of two boards (typically mattboard or somesuch) sandwiched around the ribbons. (This makes more sense if you watch the video.) Unfortunately, the online tutorials I found only show how to assemble a Jacob's Ladder with blank panels -- onto which you apply photos after the fact. This might work OK for a scrapbook-y look, but I knew that for the look I wanted (perfect) I would have to mount my "pages" first, so that I could get them precisely even with the edges of my chipboard panels. A little trial and error was therefore necessary to figure out how to orient each board as I glued up my Ladder. (I loosely taped some trial pieces together until I got the hang of it.)

The other major problem I had with the typical Jacob's Ladder was the obtrusive ribbon right in the center of the panel. True, I could design my pages around it, but there had to be a better way. That's when I noticed that the ladder in the second video linked above has not three, but four ribbons holding it together. In effect, the center ribbon has been split down the middle and pushed to either side, next to the outer ribbons. The physical phenomenon is the same, but the center of the Ladder is left unencumbered. Brilliant!

The ribbon on that ladder was also much narrower than the others. How narrow a ribbon could I use, I wondered, and still have a functional ladder? Did it have to be ribbon at all? I went to the hardware store and looked at various options - fishing line, hemp, etc. - and finally settled on a decent-weight string, about 1/8" diameter: sufficiently flexible, yet strong, and not too stretchy. To accommodate the increased depth of the string (as opposed to a flatter ribbon), I used an Olfa knife to cut shallow little grooves in the back of each panel. This time-consuming step not only allowed the panels to adhere better to each other, but also provided additional surface area to allow for better adherence of the string.

Then it was just a matter of gluing/flipping the string/gluing/etc.. I allowed plenty of drying time in between gluing each panel, using heavy books to weight it down while it dried. It came out ... not perfect, but, you know, acceptable. I was happy with the overall graphic style of the book, and there was a sufficient number of pages that it was very long (tall?) and made a nice clacky sound as it moved along. The extreme length also makes it more fun to play with - you can get it going both directions at once.

Here are some videos of the result. (No, that isn't me in the videos.) Sorry there are no process photos - it was difficult enough to get this finished by the due date without stopping to take pictures. If you have a quick eye you can also get a look at some of the projects I made for Typography class. Enjoy!