LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE -- Abstract Paintings

Abstract Painting -- "LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE"

First off, I haven't posted anything in a while and I would like to apologize for that. I have been busy and haven't really had time to sit down and write all this out. Second, I know I said the next post would be about Paracord Bracelets, but I had to shelve that idea for the time being and will get back to it at a later time.

About a month ago, I did my first painting in just over a decade. I was still in elementary school the last time I picked up a paintbrush, but I saw something I liked and could easily make (I mean it's called abstract painting for a reason, anyone can do it, right?) and I gave it a try.

It's really simple and something I saw on Pinterest (link is for the blog post, not the Pin). It simply says "LOVE" in white with pink, red, and purple bursts all over. I think its quite pretty and am selling it as part of a trio on Etsy. The other two say "LIVE" and "LAUGH" for a "Live, Laugh, Love" trio.

All you need to do this:

Canvas

Acrylic Paint - White, Red, Pink, Purple

Brushes

Painter's Tape

Ruler

I used a 12" x 16" canvas and flipped in to landscape, so it was 16" x 12". Then, we get our tape out and make the letters for "LOVE" across the canvas. My vertical letters were 7" high and the horizontal ones were 3.5".

Once you have your letters on the canvas and they are spaced in such a way that pleases you (I made sure my "L" and "E" were 2" from the edge of the canvas), you are ready for your first coat of paint! You're going to paint over everything with white. The tape too, make sure the whole canvas is covered. Remember, that you are probably going to be painting the sides of the canvas as well if you go with one that is ready to hang. Acrylic paint dries very fast, so you should only have to let it sit for 10 minutes, at the most.

Once your base coat is dry, fill your palette with the red, pink, and purple and start your brush strokes. Some of mine look a little like star bursts, and others are just strokes going one way or another. However you want to make it, do that. Once you're done with the front of the canvas, move on to the sides. Try not to paint near the tape too thick because it can bleed through if you're not careful.

If you have an easel, do the vertical sides first and then give them a few minutes to dry before you turn the painting to portrait and do the other edges. Set it down somewhere out of the way to let it dry and then carefully peel the tape off.

And now you have a pretty painting to put up in the house or gift to a loved one! It can also be a nice project to do with your kids! Don't forget to sign your name on the back. :)

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

~ Kimiko White of Andromeda Crafts

Arm Knitting -- Infinity Scarf

Arm Knitting an Infinity Scarf

Dad and I were talking about cool crafty things that I could do and he mentioned arm knitting as something he did "back in the day" for a school project. I looked it up and found a video for arm knitting an infinity scarf in 30 minutes or less. It seemed pretty cool and I had been wanting to make a scarf for a while and just never got around to it. 30 minutes seemed quick enough, so I decided to try it!

... so soft ... so fluffy ...

I used 2 skeins of Yarn Bee Effortless Super Bulky Graphite yarn. I doubled up, just like in the video and spent about 10 minutes tightening and then loosening my base row (?), I was worried that I would end up doing them too tight and then not be able to get the loops back over my hand and on to my other wrist. Or, worse yet, they would be so tight that I ended up cutting off circulation and had to cut them off my wrist! (What a waste of perfectly good yarn!)

Once I got that first row as tight as I felt comfortable with it being, I found that it was surprisingly easy to do the next few rows. 15 minutes later ...

Almost 30 mins and this is how far we are ... /cry

... And I have 4 rows complete. At this point, I am just a little bit discouraged. I have also realized that there is no way I can get these things off my wrist now that I've started and that I am now committed to finishing the entire project in one go. Short attention span is not helping me right now. Another 20 minutes and I have just a bit more done and it is actually starting to looking to look like a scarf.

I think I'm finally getting the hang of this ... right?

Okay, I say just a bit more and what I really mean is "Are we done yet?" because I have now started to scratch the back of my hands while transferring the loops from wrist to wrist. It's almost like being attacked by your cat in the same spot over and over. Not fun. However, I am resolved to finishing this project and power through the rest of the rows!

Scarf before I whip stitch the two ends together.

 And voila! A 30 minute project actually took about 2 hours. I am new at knitting, in general, so that could have something to do with it, or maybe it was that I kept getting distracted by the Gilmore Girls and Jared Padalecki's super cuteness and baby moose hair. :D Anyways, I used the last couple feet of yarn to cast off and the tail of the slip knot to make this super long scarf into an infinity scarf.

Dad wearing his new scarf.

And now, just the scarf (because it has a bit of an ego). ;)

Not bad for my first try! I will be making 2 more; one for my Aunt and another for my Grandmother, so I'll post those up once I get them done.

Next post will be DIY Paracord Bracelets, thanks for reading!

~ Kimiko of Andromeda Crafts

A Day of Firsts -- Crochet Boot Cuffs

A Day of Firsts -- Crochet Boot Cuffs

In which I finally am able to connect the two ends and finish Boot Cuff #1 & #2

I found these cute crochet boot cuffs on Pinterest (I love Pinterest) and decided to try them out. The blog post (by seven-alive) was very easy to understand and it only took a couple hours to complete each cuff. The hardest part of the pattern for me to do was actually Row 8, the wave/scallions/seashell design thingy that goes around the top. I'm pretty sure I had to redo Cuff #1 at least 3 times before I finally got something that looked a little like the pictures. After all of this, I realized that I needed a yarn needle to whip stitch (this is also my first time doing one of those!) the two ends together and finish my project.
Luckily, Dad got one with the loom kit he got this past Christmas (so far, he has made a single scarf and I promised I would post a picture, so that will be at the bottom of this post), so I was able to use his instead of having to go out and buy one.
As for the boot cuffs, I don't have any pictures of the WIP (Work in Progress), but the finished product looks like this:

Not too bad for a noob! :) Just slide them over your jeans and let them peak out of the tops of your boots for a little extra warmness during the last leg of the winter months!

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And now for Dad's scarf (he's so proud ^.^):

Super cute, right? Right! ;) He used a loom to knit it and the 7' cotton candy pink scarf took about 5 - 6 hours to complete.

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That's all for today, thanks for reading!

~ Kimiko of Andromeda Crafts

A Day of Firsts -- Jeans

A Day of Firsts -- Jeans

My First Time Successfully Repairing a Piece of Clothing (Jeans, no less)

Okay, this is something that I'm really excited about. A little back story, I have tried to fix some of my clothes before, just little rips in the seams and such things. Things that should be relatively easy for just about anyone, except me. Because I am the worst at fixing clothes, my stitches always get loose and then the seam is just a gaping hole on the side of my shirt and then I end up frustrated and annoyed and ugh. So, now that you know how completely terrible I am at fixing such things (I wasn't kidding earlier when I said there would be lots of things going on here), I have managed to fix something. It wasn't a ripped seam, but my Dad did tear the button off his jeans and he was, understandably, upset that they were now unwearable. I felt bad that he was now down an otherwise perfectly good pair of jeans, so I decided to do something about it. I took to the Internet (read "Pinterest") and found a blog post that told me exactly what I needed to do it fix my Dad's poor, broken, useless jeans.

You'll need some button jeans (I got a pack of 6 from my local Michael's for < $2) and a hammer. You will also want a small scrap of jean material so you can patch the hole if you plan on putting the button in the same place as the old one. I ended up moving my button over just a smidge to loosen them up, so I forwent the patching part of the instructions.
 

The back of the jeans, you can see where I placed the tack before hammering it in to the button.

Poke the tack through the the jeans in the place you want your button to go, lay the button face down on a flat surface, line the tack up with the button and use your hammer to, gently, secure the back of the tack to the button. I say gently because you probably don't want to go all Thor on the button and put a hole in the table instead. Not that that happened to me or anything, because I was gentle. ;)

The tack and button we'll be using to fix Dad's jeans.

And that's it! Super quick and easy and you get to keep your favorite jeans!

The finished product. Looks good!

You won't even notice the hole unless you're looking for it and my Dad doesn't care about those types of things anyway. He's just happy he can wear the jeans again. :)

You can find the original post here by Offsquare.

Thanks for reading guys! Next post will be about Crocheted Boot Cuffs.

~ Kimiko of Andromeda Crafts

A Day of Firsts -- Blogs

A Day of Firsts -- Blogs

My First Blog Post

Hello everyone! My name is Kimiko (but my friends and family call me Kim) and I like to make things. All sorts of things. A little bit about me, I am an early 20s middle child. I am a casual gamer (For the Alliance!), and also a Professional Procrastinator (that's right, it's an official title). I have a black cat aptly named Shadow. This is because he likes to hide in the shadows and jump out at everyone. All the time. Unless he's hiding under the bed and/or sleeping. Which he also does a lot. :)

I love creating things: art, food, cute, crafty, soft things made out of yarn (you see where I'm going with this). I recently (and by recently, I mean November 2014) learned how to crochet, I will be learning how to sew and I'm kind of on the fence about learning to knit. Mostly because I've seen it done and while YouTube people are amazing at explaining things, it just looks soo hard; hence the fence. :) My Dad does have a loom though, and that seems to be pretty easy, so maybe I'll try that out first. Side note: on occasion, I do help my grandmother bake cakes for our family members birthdays and I love taking pictures of the process and the finished product, so you will get to see those too! They are seriously awesome pieces of work and my heart breaks a little each time the knife cuts its first slice of our masterpiece and children start devouring that sweet, yummy, sugary goodness.

This blog is going to be about the awesome things I am going to be making and doing, and just a little bit of me thrown in here and there. And maybe somewhere in between, if I feel like it. ;) There will be crochet projects, some (most likely failed, several times over) attempts at sewing things, lots of pictures of me painting things and making other things out of wood (lots of things going on here). One of my reasons for making this blog is to share what I am and will be doing with the world. The other is to motivate me to actually do the things that I say I'm going to do, because, as I said in my first paragraph, I am a Professional Procrastinator. I need a bit more incentive than just myself to make things happen and this blog is going to do that for me, so thank you for helping me be more motivated to start and finish more projects and maybe I can help motivate you to do some crafty DIY too! :)

There are several ways you'll be able to contact me. I have an email address set up specifically for this blog and everything attached to it. There will be buttons for email, Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter as soon as I can make them. You can also make a comment in the Comments section at the bottom of this post and I'll respond as soon as possible and try my best to help. :) 

Well, that's all for now, thanks for reading. I'll be posting some of my creations and anything else I can think of to write about. 

~ Kimiko of Andromeda Crafts