MSCEApril – Dabbled

MSCE April is OVER! Anyone up for May?

Dot — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:13:00 +0000

I’ll post more about the outcome of MSCE April later–I’m slammed today, but if everyone playing along could post the favorite project they did this month here as a comment (or email me if you prefer). I’ll be doing a wrap up post, and I want to include your stuff. Also any comments about the experience you might have.

I had a great time! Hope you did too… and if you want to keep playing along for may, especially if you started late, go for it!

How to…. do something: How to make something cool everyday in April

If you did a wrap up post, like this great one from “How to… do something” leave a link to that as well!

Edit: PS, do go check out the Pinata tutorial, by one of our MSCE April participants!

Make Something Cool Every Day in April – (#MSCEApril) Update!

Dot — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:20:00 +0000

We’re at the halfway mark, so hopefully you are chugging along with your projects! Remember, it’s not about the output, so much as spurring your creative juices. And hey, if this challenge seemed too hard at the beginning of the month, jump in now with just 2 weeks to go (don’t worry, we won’t judge!), and it’s twice as easy! I’ll admit, I’ve missed a couple of days, but all in all, it’s been a great challenge thus far.

So here’s a few of my MSCEApril’s, that I hadn’t shared here:

Tuesday 4/14: Making/freezing homemade chicken broth. I love freezing broth this way – it’s so easy to just pop in a frozen portion of homemade stock into soups, stir-frys, sauces, whatever. I had a carcass of a rotisserie chicken, some leftover carrot and onion, and put it to good use!

Monday 4/13: A Craft FAIL! Attempted to tie-dye a t-shirt with leftover egg dye.
I wrote the fun up at Craftfail.com, the great new blog about sharing our mistakes…

Sunday 4/12: Ooops!…easter and my hubby’s birthday, so I didn’t manage to create anything. But we did have a lovely day with friends!

Saturday 4/11: Much making… I don’t have any pictures but I baked and decorated a birthday cake with homemade cream cheese icing!

Friday 4/10: Party prep meant experimenting with appetizers… puff pastry squares with various topping. Plus I made this lovely bouquet, with a $3.99 bunch of flowers from Trader Joe’s and azaleas from the yard.

Thursday 4/9: Craft night at Holly’s house! We made puppets for the boys out of my favorite material, old sweaters.. Tutorial on this one, and more examples, to come as soon as I get the pictures.

Wednesday 4/8: Nothing major, just a cute little juggling robot sketch on my party planning list!

Tuesday 4/7: Hmm, maybe I forgot?

Monday 4/6: Robot Tattoo design finished. And guess what? They sent me a picture of the final tattoo!

Thursday Link Day … MSCE, and other fun stuff

Dot — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:01:00 +0000

Ack, so behind today, after spending much of the day troubleshooting my husband’s iTouch. But it’s working, yay! Tonight I’m making puppets with a friend (yay MSCEApril!), so I’ll post about that coming up.

Anyway, here are a few little things for you today:

A few tidbits from our Make Something Cool blogs (see the full list of participants here):

A few cool links from my side blog: A Smidgen of Dabbling

PaperCuts · Interplanet Janet Leaves the Boys Behind
This guy’s work with paper is just amazing.

Super Punch: Orange Peel Halfpipe (link roundup)
Always fun to check out the cool links at Super Punch, like this and the next one

Super Punch: How to make Totoro cream puffs

Photojojo – Go back in time!
This could be a fun project for MSCE!

5 Orange Potatoes: Turn Your Child’s Doodles into a Felt Bracelet Tutorial
Great idea.. this is a nice tutorial

A Bulbdial Clock – Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
The Evil Mad Scientists rarely disappoint. And though this is beyond my skill level, it’s a really neat project!

swissmiss | Coolest. Doormat. Ever.
I have to agree, being a nerd and all..

And finally, these last 2 are via Daily Art Stop

Mel Stampz: Miniature Carrot Tutorial (+Carrot Craft Links)

Crafting in Color Etsy Team: Tutorial Tuesday: How To Make Your Own Padded Envelopes
What a great way to spruce up your mail!

Easter Eggs: 12 Interesting ways to color/paint/dye them!

Dot — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:23:00 +0000

Another Flickr Roundup for you, this time it’s Ways to Dye Your Easter Eggs… come on, you weren’t going to just go use a kit, were you? From cabbage to duct tape, we have lots of cool ideas for making your eggs memorable. Some complicated, some easy and kid-friendly!

See under the pictures for links to the original pics, and more “how to” info.

1. Kymberlee della Luce shows us the results of dying with tissue paper. Lovely! Click thru for instructions
2. From Rick Unger, Easter Egg Dyed With Onion Skins (instructions linked)
3. Instruction on dyeing an egg using DUCT TAPE! by kateandersok
4. I’m guessing this is tissue paper punched with interesting shapes – Really simple and pretty eggs from pinkbelt.
5. Great instructions on using natural dyes and plants from musicpb. This blue comes from purple cabbage!
6. Looks like these by orangesoc12 were done using an oil dyeing method.
7. Click through to see more of these lovely botanical eggs. rosidae shows us how to make these using natural onion skin dye See More
8. Painted works of art by “Sara?”
9. “-luz-” brings us a nice guide to dyeing with natural dyes. Click through to see the notes on the picture. Also see the podcast at Curbly
10. Decorating with dyed newspaper yeilds cool results, by William Thalmus
11. Tresijas makes Silk Tie Eggs- the pattern is transferred off silk ties!
12. Gorgeous Ukranian style Easter Eggs by tanya zivkovic. click thru for more. And these are great too.

Be sure to click on the links above to get instructions (in some cases) and/or more inspirational pictures!

Eggs and Easter Resources (besides the links above):

Instructions for oil dyeing for a marbleized effect
Good info on naturally dyeing easter eggs, and a cool idea to use stick on letters.
Creative Re-Use of Egg Cartons – Neatorama
LollyChops: Easter grass to dye for!
Dye Easter Eggs With Silk Ties – Dollar Store Crafts
Dabbled’s Homemade Fabric Easter Basket tutorial (and others here at One Crafty Place)
13 Ways to Dye Eggs
Psychedelic (tie-dye) eggs, Rubber band ‘tie dye’ eggs, & a softer version
Craftypod’s Easter Crafts and check out Diane’s Mom’s roundup – love the flower decoupage eggs!
Tutorial on making the Ukrainian Easter Eggs (“Pysanky”)by Mega-Crafty
Carol Browne has a tutorial on making Washi Eggs using origami paper. So pretty!

Hope you’ve enjoyed this, and it gives you a few ideas!
EDIT: a few more egg ideas here

Related – Other Flickr Photo Roundups:

April Fools Food flickr roundup
Sweet Treats too cool to eat…a flickr photo roundup
Faux Foods — Yummies made of crochet, clay, felt, knit, etc
Upcycled Cool Craft Ideas flickr roundup
Cephalopod flickr roundup

PS: Make Something Cool Every Day Update —>Before I actually bought my name as a domain name for my art site, I used to link it as dorsner.dabbled.org. Since that might still be floating around out there somewhere, I figured I’d better have a landing page that redirects people. So for my MSCEApril for Tuesday, I created this webpage. Like it?

Illustration Friday – Talisman

Dot — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:31:00 +0000

Good morning! For Illustration Friday (yeah, I know it’s Tuesday, I’m late) (and yesterday’s MSCEApril) I’m presenting this lovely little robot, with his flower talisman. To a robot, a flower which grows from the earth must have magical properties!

Digital- commissioned tattoo design.
(Note, please don’t steal – if you’re interested in using this for your own tattoo, please email me and we can work something similar out.)

What the heck is MSCE April!?
Who’s participating thus far?
All Illustration Friday Posts click here.

Twittering? Follow along with MSCE in April here: #MSCEApril
or check out the ones on Flickr here: Dabbled Flickr Pool (tagged MSCEApril)

Oh yeah, and I’m excited about this! We had a really fun trip to trip to Boston this weekend and saw the space where the Robot World watercolors are going to live for a bit. I’ll post more details soon!

Boston trip Review and a updated MSCE Participant list!

Dot — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Here is the list of who is participating in the Make Something Cool Every Day in April Challenge thus far. Go check ’em out!

I was out of town all weekend, visiting Boston on a quick trip to drop off my artwork and the Museum of Science. It was a lovely, if hectic, trip–with both The Boy and Handy Hubby in tow. Loved the MoS – though we certainly didn’t see it all. My son really enjoyed getting to drive the boat on the duck tour. And I would totally recommend the hotel we stayed in, Hotel Marlowe, on the river on the Cambridge side–cute hotel, great staff, and convenient to the museum and the T. I just wish we’d had more time… we ended up getting into Boston later than we planned and I think I underestimated just how much you can overstimulate a 3 1/2 year old!

A big thank you to Dan at Cahners ComputerPlace at MoS for touring us and making us feel so welcome!

I’m not sure exactly when my art will be up, but I’ll let you know when I know. It’s the Series 1 of Robot World watercolors, and they’ll be displayed on the wall as you walk up the ramp in Cahners ComputerPlace, near another neat set of robot art.

A Poladroided picture of The Boy driving the Duck on the Duck Tour.
My MSCE for yesterday!

If you want to add the list of participants to your blog sidebar or a post, you can just use this html (i think this should work!) If I missed you– or you’re joining late–, just let me know!

Yesterday's "MSCE in April" Project: Shrinky ID Tags

Dot — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:53:00 +0000

This was a quickie project using #6 plastic to make faux “shrinky dinks”. We’ve done this type of thing before on dabbled, but usually with the clear stuff. I see tons of possibilities with today’s raw material, Solo drink cups. These are those disposable cups that seem to be at every party, and in the trash afterwards… so loads of good recycling you can do here!

MSCE April Day 3:
I decided to make a quick ID tag for a bag or backpack, with just a name and phone-number on it. You could, of course, do almost anything. After I played around with that, I just tried making cool looking pieces out of the plastic, without any writing. You could make some neat earrings or pendants with this stuff. Or rings!

This works pretty much like the usual instructions, and I’m not going through all those again – just follow the links in the post if you need more info, but it took a tad longer to melt, seemed thicker at the end, and in some cases needed to be flattened down right after taking out of the oven.

For the ID Tag, I cut a circle out of the bottom of the cup, following the lines in the cup already. On the white side I wrote a name and phone number. I could have done something on the colored side too, i suppose. You’d need to seal it to keep the writing from rubbing off eventually, but I didn’t here. Note, I was lazy and put it on a paper towel rather than parchment paper. Dont do that! it got fibers in it. I switched to parchment paper on the next one.

A couple of other interesting things: the only part of the cup which shrinks true is the bottom. Cutting shapes out of the sides will yield odd results. The two blue shapes that aren’t round started as circles cut out of the sides of the cup. Weird, huh? I thought the big red odd shape would make an interesting pendant. All are white on the back because these particular cups were colored on the outside and white on the inside.

This takes just minutes to make, and like I said has a ton of possibilities. Perfect for a slow day of MSCE in April!

MSCE Inspirations! We are here to help..

Dot — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:42:00 +0000

So I was chatting with a friend the other day about Make Something Cool Every Day in April, and she was thinking there was no way she’d have time. I pointed out that making something, and stretching your creative muscles, doesn’t have to take a lot of time, and suggested several quick and easy projects I’d done recently, stuff like the champagne cork wire little chair. So, for those of you who were trying to think of fun things to do, that didn’t take a ton of time, here are some ideas to get the creative juices flowing. Feel free to add links of your own in the comments!

So here’s a list of projects, some quick, some easy, to get those creative juices flowing:

An Elastic Bookmark Tutorial (see pic) from WhiMSy love
One of the million ideas over at Dollar Store Crafts
Just go take some pictures! Just show the best one off as is, or Make a Motivational Poster or maybe put them in glass jar frames!
If you have photoshop or something similar, google for tutorials, and try one. Learn a new technique!
A whole list of “5 Minute” projects at instructables (note, times may be more than 5 minutes!)
Recycle Vinyl Blinds into Plant Markers From Crafting in a Green World
Ten Projects for Re-using old Bottle Caps From Crafting in a Green World
Turn an envelope into a gift bag From Crafting in a Green World
Make your own shrinky dink charms, with plastic that would normally be trashed.
Remake old Crayons into cool shapes from Some Art Fabric
Make a felt Easter jellybean bag from Chica and Jo
Cook something you’ve never tried before.
Make a classic Sock Monkey via Daily Art Stop

Take some pictures and Poladroid them! from me, via Pepper Stitches
Make a Cheap and Easy tripod, for you budding photographers out there
Make a frameless easy photocube
How to Make a Paperback Picture Frame at Craftypod
Draw a sketch. Try an exercise like drawing without looking at the paper
Make your own Gallery using templates and children’s art via Whipup
An instructable for a quick and easy pizza
Post-it note doodles
How to crochet a button charm necklace at craftstylish
Got some champagne at your next sunday brunch? Make sure you have wire pliers so you can make this little chair
Weave a cool little basket from recycled materials at Craftstylish

There’s lots more I could think of, but I thought this was a good start!

Oh, and here’s my MSCE for yesterday: It’s the linework for a tattoo I’m designing.

Good luck on Day 3! (and remember, it’s ok if you missed the first two, just join in now!)

EDIT: Here are a few more, I’ll be collecting them here: http://dabbled.tumblr.com/tagged/msceideas