Anyway, happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy some turkey (or whatever you like!) and have a day!
My pieces are dry now! There were some difficulties with some of them, particularly the ones with darker colors. The photos of my guinea pigs became even more blurry after adding the Mod Podge, and some of the others got a little messed up for other reasons. But, overall I think they look pretty good for a first attempt. Now that they're finished I get to decide what to do with them. The original plan was to make them into pins (and some of them still will be) but I'm not allowed to wear pins at work and I'd really like to be able to show these off. I'm thinking maybe some of them could be attached to magnets or pushpins to stick around my desk. In non-craft news, I got my Nintendo Switch this week! I'm trying not to play it too much, but Pokemon Let's Go: Eevee is so cute. I play it on the Switch's little screen, not on a TV, which makes it a little harder to enjoy while the system is charging and I can't prop the system up on the kickstand. The inconvenience of it gives me a good reason to take a break from playing at least every few hours.
Anyway, happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy some turkey (or whatever you like!) and have a day!
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So, as usual, it is taking me days to finish a simple craft project. Making your own pins looks easy enough but I find myself stumbling over steps even when I knew beforehand that I might need to be more careful. On Wednesday I put together a page of images to print out: I lightened the images significantly since the packaging of the shrink film states they will darken as they shrink. I chose images of different sizes, shapes, and types to see what I think works out well. Most of what I chose happens to be guinea pig related, since that's mostly what I have saved in my computer at the moment. On Thursday I put the film in the printer and it went through without any trouble. I was a little concerned when I saw how light everything came out, but I decided to go ahead and see what happens after I bake it anyway. I cut out all the shapes and set them on parchment paper on a cookie sheet, then covered them with a sheet of cardboard to keep them from curling too much and sticking to themselves. The packaging said to bake the pieces at 300-350 degrees for two or three minutes, but I baked mine this morning at 325 for about five minutes and that seemed to work well for me. Some of the pieces weren't very flat afterward, but pushing down on the cardboard on top of them while they were still hot got them flat enough for my taste. They are still lighter in color than I wanted, but baking them did help.
I can't quite tell yet, but I think the next step is also causing them to darken a little further. I poured some of a product called Mod Podge Dimensional Magic on top of the pieces to seal them and make them shiny. I made the mistake of leaving them out to dry in my room for a while, but I soon returned to find the tiny gnats who live in my plants were sticking in the Mod Podge! I scraped them out as best I could and now my pieces are drying in the closet, where hopefully the gnats can't get at them. It's going to take at least a day for the Mod Podge to dry completely, so I have to leave the project alone for today. I'll probably do a little reading to entertain myself this afternoon. The book Obedience that I was reading last week ended about as poorly as it started. Now I'm reading Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, the author of the Raven Boys series I've been enjoying. Searching the library catalog showed me none of the branches of the local library have the last book in that series so I thought I'd try out a different one. So far Shiver is a very typical post-Twilight paranormal romance, which is disappointing. I enjoyed The Raven Boys for its uniqueness and non-traditional romantic elements and I'm not feeling much of that here. I guess it at least gives me an appreciation for how much she has grown as an author. I'll have a few days off this week for Thanksgiving, so maybe I'll be able to post the results of my pin making adventure before next week. Maybe I'll even get some drawing done, wouldn't that be something? Or maybe you'll come back to find me ranting about how good or bad the Nintendo Switch is when I finally get one. The possibilities are all over the place. Whichever way it goes, have a day! If you've been wondering about me (which I sincerely doubt), I'd like to let you know that I'm doing pretty well at the moment. I got that job I interviewed for and so far it's not so bad. There's a lot going on at any one time and a lot to learn and remember, but I get my own desk (which I'm allowed to eat at), my coworkers have all been really welcoming and nice, and although it pays less per hour than the last place I have more consistent hours (and weekends off) so I think I'll actually be making more money and feeling less miserable.
This week I caught another cold (thanks dad) so I've been tired and brain-foggy and that really screws with my ability to adjust to my new situation. I have to keep reminding myself that at least I won't have to work Black Friday (may God have mercy on you poor souls who do) so I have a four-day weekend coming up to look forward to. Just knowing I had a two-day weekend coming up was enough to get me through working with this cold on Thursday and Friday. I've been reading a book this week called Obedience by Will Lavender. It's supposed to be a mystery-suspense kind of thing, I think, but it started out really boring and I don't like the characters very much. The male characters are all cynical dudebros with little respect for women and the main female character is a naive airhead. Luckily I'm almost finished with it so I can move on to another book soon. I saw a video a while back where a girl designed decorative pins and I've been wanting to try her method myself. I already had some pin backs lying around from some projects using polymer clay, and I bought the shrink plastic and Mod Podge she recommended in the video online. Now I just need to decide what kind of pins I want to make for myself and make time to try it out! Once I do, I'll post the results here... good or bad. It's almost time for Pokemon Let's Go to come out, so that means I'm getting my Nintendo Switch soon, too. Hopefully it doesn't distract me too much from doing art and other projects. It makes me really happy when I am finally able to finish something I have had in mind for a long time, and I also want to be able to do more things with other people instead of hanging out at home alone. But first I need to get rid of this cold. Have a day! |
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