Hobby Haven

A few days ago, I did my 2nd attempt at a mousepad since the 1st attempt didn't turn out how I expected. After work last week, I went to Hobby Lobby to get a another pack of mousepads. Since I already had the design picked out, I went ahead and printed it out on sublimation paper using sublimation ink. Just as a refresher, sublimation is a type of printing in which the ink turns into tiny particles and embeds itself into the surface of an object, creating a seamless and beautifully vibrant design that never peels or cracks. For the temp, this time I did 400 degrees instead of 350 degrees. I watched some videos on sublimation and most of the videos said you need to have it at 375 or above. I think the higher temp definitely worked better. Last time I said we burned them, but we actually didn't have the temp high enough so all the color from the design wasn't transferring to the mousepad.  Materials Needed: Access to a sublimation printer Sublimation Mousepads Heat Resistant ...

     A while ago I made some sublimation keychain wristlets. I made two different kinds, one was a sublimation keychain wristlet made out of neoprene and the other was made out of nylon webbing. The neoprene wristlet was definitely easier overall since it comes assembled already whereas the nylon webbing you need to cut the webbing to the length you want and then you also need some keychain fob hardware (the pliers and keychain fob). I first chose what design I wanted for the keychains and then measure the neoprene keychain and decided on what length I wanted for the nylon webbing wristlet. After I had the size dimensions for both, I was able to make a template so I could put the design on. After, I printed the designs out on sublimation paper using sublimation ink. Next I used my heat resistant tape to secure the wristlets onto the design. For the neoprene wristlet I wrapped the design around the keychain and for the nylon webbing I was able to just lay the piece of webb...

     This past weekend I attempted to sublimate a water bottle with a heat gun. I first went and bought a sublimation water bottle from Hobby Lobby. Next, I had to make the design I wanted for the water bottle so I measured the water bottle. Then, I used Affinity Designer to create my design. I found banner posters for some of the broadway musicals that I like. Below is what my design looked like. I then printed out my design on sublimation paper using sublimation ink. After, I attached my design to the water bottle using heat resistant tape. You want to make sure the design is tight around the water bottle and not loose. Next, I used my heat gun and applied heat over the design. Making sure I moved the heat gun around and not staying in one place too long otherwise I could burn the design. Once the design starts coming through pretty dark that's when you know the design has transferred to the water bottle. I removed the paper from the bottle and I saw that it didn't turn...

     Last Thursday, my friend and I made some sublimation coasters. We first bought some sublimation coasters. We got ours from Michaels and these ones were a bit more pricier than some of the other choices, but we decided to go with these because they had a bit of a marble look to them on the sides and we liked that these coasters were smooth and shiny compared to matte. Next we picked out 4 designs that were similar because we wanted to have a set of 4 coasters that were cohesive and go well together (same kind of art style). This part took us a while to get because it was surprisingly hard to find 4 different images in the same style that we liked. We finally decided on our 4 designs after maybe a couple weeks of slowly looking. We decided to go with a location theme. So the first coaster was of Venice Italy, the second coaster was of Zurich Switzerland, the third coaster was of Ibiza Spain and the fourth coaster was of Tokyo Japan. We first made the Ibiza coaster and ...

     A while ago I got some Armour Etch which is a glass etching cream. I've seen a lot of videos with people trying it and it worked for them so I wanted to try etching on glass but I hadn't had a chance to try it out so this past weekend I decided I would give it a try. I first cut out y design on a Cricut with some permanent vinyl and I weeded out (removed) the part where I wanted the design to be etched into the glass. After I had my design I used some transfer tape to help me transfer the design onto a random glass that I found. After I had the design on the glass cup I used some painters tape to cover the remaining spots on the cup so the Amour Etch won't get on any other spots. Next I applied the Amour Etch to the areas I want etched, and I put a nice thick layer. The instructions on the bottle say to wait 1-3 minutes but all the videos I saw people waited about 30 minutes before rinsing off the Amour Etch with water. The first time I tried I waited 30 minutes but ...

 Last year my friend and I decided we wanted to make and design our own playing cards for this game called Revenge.  My friend and I first learned how to play Revenge. Revenge was created by a friend of a friend and we first started playing the game with a regular deck of cards that just had the symbols drawn on the top of the card. Once we started playing with this deck, my friend and I decided we wanted to design our own deck and make it so we had our own pretty deck of cards for this game. The process to. make a deck for this game was pretty complicated. We first had to decide what we wanted the cards to look like. Honestly we didn't get very far with this project since we didn't know how to get the cards to have that playing card feel. We looked up sublimation playing cards where we could sublimate our own designs onto both sides of the card. The decks themselves weren't to expensive but once you factor in the sublimation ink cost and sublimation paper, and all the ti...

     This past weekend on Sunday my friend and I made some sublimation mouse pads. On Saturday we went to the store to get some sublimation mouse pads. Then we picked what designs we wanted on them. My friend went with a design from the show Moomins and I went with a picture of an acrylic painting of a Japanese mountain with cherry blossoms. We sized our imaged for the mouse pads (make sure to make it a little bigger than the actual mouse pad so the whole thing gets the design) and then we printed our designs on sublimation paper using a sublimation printer. S ublimation is a type of printing in which the ink turns into teeny tiny particles and embeds itself into the surface of an object, creating a seamless and beautifully vibrant design that never peels or cracks. After we printed the designs we taped the mouse pad (make sure white sublimation side is face down) down onto the design using heat resistant tape. We heated up the heat press to 350 (but jut follow the recomm...

About year ago, my friend and I decided to make our own sublimation mugs. S ublimation is a type of printing in which the ink turns into teeny tiny particles and embeds itself into the surface of an object, creating a seamless and beautifully vibrant design that never peels or cracks. We wanted to make our own sublimated mugs because we needed some mugs for our apartment. So we thought, why not make our own with the designs we want on them. First we chose what designs we wanted on the mugs. We decided to have some of the mugs have some scenes from a couple Studio Ghibli movies. Afterwards, we went to our public library that has a makerspace and printed out our designs on sublimation paper using the sublimation printer. Next we cut the designs apart and used heat resistant tape to attach the designs to the mugs. Finally, we used the tumbler press to transfer the designs onto the mug. The heat from the tumbler press makes the ink release from the paper and transfer to the mug.  Mater...

 This past weekend my friend and I heat pressed our own crewneck sweatshirts and tote bags. I work at an apparel print shop so I was able to get a good price on some garments for us to use for this project and for the tote bags we just ordered some canvas tote bags off of Amazon. This project has been one we had been wanting to do for a while now and we just now got around to doing it. We got some designs we liked and then once we had them finalized in the correct format, we went ahead and ordered the DTF (Direct to Film) gang sheet. It only took a couple of days for it to come in but we had to wait until the this past weekend to actually heat press everything, since we don't have that much time during the week to start this. My friend wanted a sweatshirt that was blue on one side and gold on the other side. So she cut two sweatshirts apart and then sewed the the front of the blue sweatshirt and the back of the gold sweatshirt together. On Saturday we cut apart our designs and star...