Hobby Haven

     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...

 One project I have been wanting to start with my friend is DIY up-cycled sweatshirts and hoodies. We haven't had the time to start this project yet, as we have been pretty busy with school and work, but we hope to be able to do this one in the future. Below I have included some photos so you can kind of get an idea of what I am talking about. The video I included shows the basic steps of how to make an up-cycled sweatshirt. The first step being to cut your design, usually you would at least 2 different colored garments. Next lay out your design how you would like it to look like with all the colors in the appropriate spot an then pin them together, this make it easier so the pieces don't move around as much on you when you are sewing. Now you actually sew all your pieces together so that you wind up with a finished sweatshirt again or whatever piece of clothing you were making. If I'm still at Bradley when I get around to doing this project with my friend we will most like...

       Last semester my friend and I worked on designing making the the Robotics Club T-Shirts and hoodies. For the design, we chose robots sitting around a table playing cards. This was because, as a club, we often play Euchre when we weren't preparing competitions, especially when we went to Michigan for a competition. Since we enjoyed playing Euchre, we thought it would be fun to incorporate robots and card games into our design. I came up with the general design for one of the robots and then a few more of my friends each designed a robot. My friend created the artwork for the design and hand drew everything in the main graphic.      After finalizing the design, we began making the T-Shirts and hoodies, which included finding the best and most cost effective place to buy them. We considered buying from a local stores like Michaels, JoAnns or Hobby Lobby, but decided against it because they didn't have the color we wanted in both a T-Shirt and Hoodi...

This weeks post will feature a crochet project on how to crochet Appa. Appa is a flying bison from the animated series (recently turned into live action tv show) Avatar the Last Airbender. This is a project I have started but havent had a chance to finish. Below I have linked the video I was following and I have included a list of all the supplies you will need. I have written out the instructions below and you can also use the video to help you learn the different types of stitches if you are new to crocheted or if you want to follow along with the video.  Video to follow along with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HISXCJr3gIs What you’ll need:   3 Colors of Yarn: Brown, White, and Light Brown Plastic Eyes A Crochet Hook (Size G: 4.25 MM) Yarn Needle   White Polyester Fiber Fill (Pillow Fill Stuffing) Scissors Piece 1: Appa’s Head Chain 4 and Join with a Slip Stitch 6 Single Crochets in the Circle (or Lil Bird’s Nest) 2 Single Crochets in each Stitch around 1 Single Croc...