Lorelei Caroline

Hey my peoples!  I took a short break to finish up some much needed spring cleaning.  But have no fear--I'm back! And I'm back with a tutorial on how to work with Glitter Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV).        Materials Design Weeding Tools (if applicable) Glitter HTV Shirt Vinyl Cutter (I use the Silhouette Cameo) Marking Pen (optional) Parchment Paper or Pressing Cloth Tile or hard pressing surface 1. Cut out your design. (Skip this step if you purchased one pre-cut).     Two tips on this step if you're cutting out your design:  Remember to mirror your design in the software. DON'T cut your glitter HTV with the glittery side up!! It will come out backwards! So unless you plan on reading your shirt in the mirror... These two steps are essential.  The adhesive is on the back side of the vinyl and a protective, clear plastic is on the front.  You don't want to cut through that sheet of...

Hey everyone!  Guess what. You're in for a treat because The Hubs is doing a guest post today!  He's pretty darn talented in many areas, two of which are woodworking and mathematics.  So naturally he combined the two and made this sweet knot/cube diagram.  Below you'll get to read all the fun details of how he put it together.  I posted this project over the weekend and got several questions from people about it, so I thought I’d share some of the process in case anyone’s interested. You can find out more about where the object comes from here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.314.4240 and here: https://arxiv.org/abs/0811.0225 Be warned….there’s math in them thar links! The process is pretty straightforward. To begin, I cut bars 1 inch x 1 inch, making sure they were long enough to get several of the final pieces out, without a lot of waste. Then I took them over the router table to round over the corners with a 1/4 inch r...

Hey there folks! I'm still moving along on my closet redo but am getting to the point where I can start incorporating more craft time into my week.  This week I made a mini portable ironing board.  When sewing you have to iron constantly if you want your project to turn out well. Sometimes, though, it's just a huge pain the butt to set up that big ol' ironing board for two little 3" squares.  Raise your hand if you've forgone setting up the ironing board and then regretted it later. *raises hand*  Yeah, um... That's when it ends up looking homemade rather than handmade.  I saw this tutorial from Popsugar on Pinterest several weeks back and tucked the idea away for later.  It's a mini ironing board.  I made mine 15"x15" and it's perfect for the smaller projects.  I'm going to show some pictures of my process, but you should really check out their tutorial.  Materials 1/2" Plywood, cut to size 4...

Ladies, the next time your man asks if you want to go to Harbor Freight (or any other hardware/tool store) you should say, "Why, yes, honey!  I would love to!"  He may soon realize that no store is safe from your shopping prowess.  Just make sure you take some nose plugs with you. If you haven't ventured into the hardware store to find items you can use in your craft room then you're missing out.  Harbor Freight has a reputation for being cheap. And they are. And sometimes you get what you pay for.  However, sometimes you find some gems.  General rule of thumb: if it needs to be precise, buy it elsewhere. Before we begin, these are in no particular order or organized in any way.  I also have no idea how prices compare to other stores. Pictured below: self gripping hangers, black Velcro, 18" magnetic bar, stretch wrap. The self gripping hangers are great if you need a spot to hang things but don't have the room or layout for a tensio...

Good news! I finished the paper shelf! It only took, like, forever and three weeks.  Seriously, though. I didn't realize just how involved this design would be.  Each of the vertical dividers and individual planks and they had to line up with each other to look squared.  Then, since the shelf was constructed from plywood, I needed to do something to finish out the front.  That meant cutting a bazillion tiny pieces of wood to frame it out, glue & nail them in place.  Then I had to fill all of those tiny nail holes and sand the whole thing down flush.  I think it turned out well. This is the back of the shelf.  It's getting mounted to the wall so there needs to be strong anchor points.  Both of those pieces are screwed to the cabinet box on the side.  After a week of priming, sanding, painting, painting some more, and sanding some more, I got the shelf mounted! I'm quite happy with it.  Isn't it awesome? I need to d...

I'm at the verge of having the closet come together in a big way so I'm going to save some pictures for next week.  Oh the suspense! But here's a teaser. The work I'm doing now seems small but is very time consuming.  That, and I'm just a slow person.  I framed out the paper shelf this week, which meant cutting all kinds of tiny little pieces of wood for the bazillion cubbies, gluing and nailing them into place.  I was also able to clean up a few of the boards that I tore out of the closet to use for my shelves on the opposite side.  They were in rough shape. Stained, not very even, and a little too thick for my taste.  So the hubs ran them through the planer for me.  I'm kind of glad he did this for me because one of them got stuck in a major way.  Sawdust was shooting everywhere.  I thought it was about to explode. Planers are pretty awesome. They're like little factory conveyor belt sawmill things.  W...