After seeing this in the Dabbled flickr group, I had to spotlight it here on Dabbled.org. Check out this incredibly cool felt sculpture by The Felted Chicken!

Very cool, huh? I love the combination of airbrush and needle felting…

Check out her other cool felt work at her shop… I love the felt sushi!

Here is a fun little idea I came up with last year, a cute valentines (or anytime) gift for a little girl. A stacked felt heart or flower pin.

This was inspired by the fact that kids grow out of clothes so fast, and while I was going to make a shirt or dress with a heart applique, instead I decided to make this pin (and a few others) so they could be used for a longer time. This looks adorable pinned on a dress or jacket, and would even work pinned to a hair elastic for a cute hair accessory.

You just need:

• felt – old felted sweaters work well for this, or even store bought felt. (Thicker felt will be less ‘floppy’, so use that for the bottom piece, if you can.
• A pretty button
• embroidery thread/needle
• safety pin

Older kids can make these themselves, too!

Here are the instructions and a step by step photo tutorial!

These are fun and easy, and offer a ton of possiblities.. Check out these that Joanne at Ready, Set, Craft made last year

And here’s another version I made, a flower:

For your inspiration and enjoyment, here’s some lovely valentine treat ideas, collected from around Flickr!  Links are below the big picture–click through for more info on the creators and/or links to how to’s.

1. valentine westie cookie – red, 2. Engagement Cupcakes, 3. pink hot chocolate, 4. Valentine Fortune Cookies, 5. Hearts and Flowers for V-Day, 6. valentines day cupcakes, 7. Valentine Cake Balls, 8. Valentine Cake, 9. Valentine’s Day Cake

Wanna share yours?  Add them to the Dabbled Flickr group!

When you’re new to Wordpress, working with multiple images in a post can be frustrating. If you just want to insert a single floating picture, it’s easy, but what if you have multiples close together? Well, there may be other ways to handle this issue (in fact, I’ve used several myself, including the gallery feature, using tables, and so forth), but this is one quick fix on how to get your images looking like they should, that just takes adding a line of HTML to the post. So if this has always bugged you, read on! And if you know of other good quick fixes for image issues like this, leave them in the comments!

Two Side by Side

<div style=”clear: both;”></div>

AND SAVE IT, without going back to Visual Mode! (If you save in Visual mode you’ll delete the div tag) so you may want to do this LAST.

Single images, with text beside them:

This is text that shows us beside the image. These might be steps in a recipe, for example

test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test

Second set of text that shows us beside the image.

test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test test

The HTML for this last part looks like this:

<h2>Single images, with text beside them:</h2>
<a href=”http://www.dabbledstudios.com/supperwhirl/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/lemons.jpg”><img title=”lemons” src=”http://www.dabbledstudios.com/supperwhirl/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/lemons-300×225.jpg” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”225″ /></a> This is text that shows us beside the image.

test text
<div style=”clear: both;”> </div>

<a href=”http://www.dabbledstudios.com/supperwhirl/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/freezing.jpg”><img src=”http://www.dabbledstudios.com/supperwhirl/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/freezing-300×208.jpg” alt=”" title=”freezing” width=”300″ height=”208″ /></a>This is text that shows us beside the image.

test text
<div style=”clear: both;”> </div>

Here is the same thing, except with a right picture. Works the same way as the left.

For just a picture by itself (no float) just use the None option when inserting the photo.

Hope this is useful to you! It was to me I try not to post too much web design related stuff here, since it’s not really the topic of this blog, but I figured this would be more universally useful. If you’re into this stuff, I post more if it at the DabbledStudios blog – latest was a post on troubleshooting problems with Contact Form 7, if you’re interested!

I use Photoshop all the time, but I hadn’t ever made any brushes.  I figured there are a ton of good brushes out there, why make my own? And I figured it was complicated.  But then I realized how easy they were to make, and that they could be really useful web work, using them basically as ’stamps’ to create graphics that you use over and over. I used this technique to make the swirl for the Foodwhirl logo into a brush I could use whenever I needed it — easy peasy!

Here’s a quick 2 Step tutorial on how to easily make them, hope you find it useful!

Example 1: Make a brush with transparency, from scratch.

1.
Open a new file and create your shape. I created a 2000×2000 pixel file, Grayscale, with a transparent background (White background is fine too). Then I drew the black oval filling most of the space, and added a gray swirl to it. I then Trimmed it down to just the shape. Either white or transparent will show up as transparent on your brush. Shades of gray will be semi-transparent.

2.
Then I Defined the Brush Preset : Go to the Edit menu, pick Define Brush Preset.  Enter a name, and you’re done!  (Click to see these screenshots larger)

Example 2: Make a solid brush from an existing image.

So, what if you have an image that you want to make into a brush?
In this example, I wanted a brush of the Twitter bird.
I snagged the image from Twitter, turned it grayscale, and inverted it. Now it’s got a gray background and black center. The black center is what I want (black will be solid), but I want it surrounded by white. So I’m going to use Levels to get it just black and white.
Click on “Create New Fill or Adjustment Layer” on the Layers box, and choose Levels.

Then move the sliders until your image is just black and white. (You can darken or lighten grays this way, just play around with it).
(Zooming in helps)

Then just Define a New Brush Preset, and you’re ready to go!

I’ve been such a slacker on drawing lately, sorry… I’ve been working on Foodwhirl (Go check it out..)!

For Illustration Friday today (yeah, I know it’s actually Sunday), I decided to work on a logo design for a friend’s organic food business. She’s a very focused person, and I thought this illo had a very focused look to it!  Here’s the design, and also, the steps I did to come up with it!  (They are similar to the process I used for the black & whites recently.)

Finished prototype:

So, wanna follow along with the process?  You should never watch how they make the sausage, ya know… This isn’t a real tutorial or how-to, but maybe my steps will give you some tips you can use!

To get to this, here’s what I did:

I started with a concept sketch…  I had this idea in my head that seemed to match what we’d discussed as far as her logo.  We have Gaia with flowing plant hair!

Next, I did a quick ink tracing, with heavy black lines.  Not thrilled with her face, but I can work with it.

Then, I colored it in an photoshop, just black and white.  It didn’t have to be perfect, just close.

I did some additional cleanup, and then I took it into Illustrator.  A trace smoothed everything out and gave it the look I was going for.

I did this a few times, playing around with the image in photoshop, then in Illustrator.  I’m not very good with Illustrator, so I tend to rely on Photoshop more than I should.  The final black and white version was a little different than the above.

Although I like the black and white version, I figured she might like a color version as well, so I colored it in Illustrator, and added a couple of different logo fonts for her to look at.

Hope this was interesting for you!

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Links: Black and White Illustration Series