Crafturday

Faux stained glass geek lamp revamp

2011-09-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

Hello again! I am feverishly working on my house, so in the spirit of procrastination I give you another project- a geek project, but this time a faux stained glass geek project you can convert to non-geek if you have to ;)

Here is a before picture of the lamp-with a special appearance by the glorious Hannah B

It just felt outdated and plain in my kitchen and I felt like I was always dusting it.

First I taped it all up inside and out and spray-painted all the brassy-gold metal "matte aluminum". then I sat down and planned out each panel.

I made 2 panels for each of our geeky favorites (well.. SOME of our geeky favs anways)
2 Harry Potter
2 Doctor Who
2 Star Wars
2 comics.

I used tracing paper and drew out what I wanted each panel to look like, then taped it to the back of each glass panel.

all taped it looked like this:

I used Tulip Slick Dimensional Fabric Paint in black for the "leading" on the lamp and traced over all my black lines. I waited for each panel to set before moving to the next panel. I did this before, bed, and in the morning I mixed up Elmer's glue in mini-muffin tins and added a bit of acrylic craft paint to make them the colors I wanted. I like how mine turned out but I'd recommend only a drop of paint or two and not a lot so it's more see-through.

I let the paint well up in the little spaces and used cotton swabs to suck up any stray paint.

You don't even want to know how long it took me to make this lamp, but HOURS of drying per panel plus a ton of crouching and bending over it. I couldn't take the glass out of the lamp without ruining it, so I had to paint it then dry completely before flipping to the next one.

VOILA~ FINISHED!

my two favorite panels:

I am so pleased with how it looks in my grass green kitchen! I'd share pictures but... that was the point of this post - to procrastinate cleaning.

TARDIS quilt tutorial

2011-09-22T19:55:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I am Sarakenobi, and as my handle suggests I am a pretty big geek. I am a huge fan of color and decorating with geeky concepts in mind. I also LOVE making things for my 2 boys -- ages 2 and 4, in hopes of corrupting them and turning them into the most giant nerdlings ever.

Today I am hoping to create my first tutorial.

The TARDIS quilt.

Materials:

TARDIS BODY (navy blue on mine) - 1 1/2 yds

Lighter blue - boxes on body and triangle top of light - 1 yd

White - windows, sign, and light 1/2 yd

black for POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX sign - 1/8 yd

Pellon Wonderunder - 3.5 yds

batting - I used a thin cotton one - 2 yds

white fabric paint

freezer paper

backing/fabric behind TARDIS - I bought 4 yds each and then cut to the size I wanted. I finished with a size of 60" x 70"

Iron the WonderUnder to all the fabric except the white sign piece (the 6"x8" rectangle)

cut out all the fabric

This is the most pieces - the TARDIS body, all lined up for you with a little extra leeway (I used a bedsheet so I had a lot of extra fabric....)

take your background fabric (in my case, the planets fabric.) I folded the fabric so I had 2 -2yd pieces and then sewed it together so it was wider (82 ish inches) and ironed the crease. Like this

Line up all the pieces of the TARDIS and start ironing!

do it by layers - first the navy blue, then the lighter blue and the white.
leave off the black and the white sign! those are next!

take your freezer paper and cut it down to computer paper size, and iron on the backside of the white. it's going to stabilize the white fabric so you can print directly on it.

you should be able to save this and directly print it off. After you successfully print off the page, you can iron on the Wonderunder and then iron it onto the TARDIS with the rest of the pieces.

Make some Vworp Vworp Vworp noises because the hardest part is almost done!

Now you are going to do some freezer paper stenciling! Hopefully this will print out proper size for you:

I printed it off on computer paper and then traced it onto the freezer paper, used an E-xacto knife and cut the letters out. This is the stencil - the black parts are cut away and you are left with the white freezer paper. iron that onto the black fabric, spacing it how you want it. Follow the directions on the white fabric paint you've purchased and follow the directions on the bottle!

After the paint has set, iron the black bar onto the TARDIS. HOORAY NO MORE IRONING! Use a zigzag stitch to catch the edges of the fabric and outline the TARDIS. IT TAKES FOREVER.

Now do the same thing with the backing that you did with the planet fabric - fold in half, cut and sew together. I felt that it looked a little too square, so I trimmed about 5" off each side of the planet fabric and cut the interfacing to match. (1) Take the blue/gold fabric and cut it about 2" wider on all sides than the planets fabric. Then sandwich the fabrics together Top/interfacing/backing.

Next we do a faux-binding (the lazy man's way!) and are going to (2) fold the backing over the front of the top so there is about an inch of the blue/gold backing fabric over the space fabric. (3&4) Fold the edges of the faux binding in and pin. Topstitch over all the edges to bind the quilt, and then do whatever decorative stitching you want to do. I just stitched around all the planets.
PICTURE REFERENCE!

corners of the binding.

Grab your Sonic Screwdriver! you are finally done!

Welcome!

2011-09-15T07:50:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Crafturday! We are three friends, with different crafting interests. We get together monthly on Saturdays for some kid-free craft time. Well, we attempt kid-free. It hardly ever works out that way.

So, to recap: Crafters + Saturday = Crafturday!
Oh, who's clever?

Since we have such different interests, we hope to bring a wide variety to this spot. And to inspire ourselves to keep up with projects, and do at least one project a week! We'll each take a turn talking about what we did that week.

And now, I will end this in an abrupt manner. Because it is late. I lack any sort of focus. Plus, uh, what more is there to say besides the main concept, when we haven't really gotten started yet??

Check back for introductions to each of us, and we will jump into blogging next week!