Hobby Shop Blog

Christmas wreaths are an old Christmas tradition that is used to decorate the outside of the house, typically on the front door, to give Christmas time visitors a festive greeting.

To make a Christmas wreath you will need a wreath ring, florist wire (you can get these cheaply from our local florist) and some vegetation.

Take a walk around your local park, your garden or in the countryside. Take a bag and some scissors with you and collect interesting vegetation to make a Christmas wreath. Under no circumstances should you pick plants from other people’s gardens unless you have their permission to do so.

Collect evergreens, ivy and loral leave are good. Some leaves are a silvery grey; these add a frosty feeling to the wreath. Conifers are popular in people’s gardens. Do you have a conifer in your garden? Conifers don’t have overly interesting foliage but they make a great base to the wreath.

Also look out for holly or other shrubs that bear berries. Berries add colour to the wreath. Look out for dried seedpods such as poppies, teasels and pinecones. Seedpods can be spray painted silver or gold and used to add interest to the wreath. If you do intend to use spray paint any pieces do this well in advance of the day you intend to make the wreath to give the paint enough time to dry. When using spray paint always closely follow the direction of use printed on the back of the tin.

To make the wreath To attach pieces of foliage to the wreath ring you cut to piece to length and wrap the wire around the lower end of the foliage and then twist the wire around the wreath ring with another piece of wire. Repeat this procedure an inch or two further down the stem.

During the first round of the wreath the foliage will slide around a little bit but the more you put on the more stable it will become. Keep your work flat on a tabletop to prevent movement.

Much of building the wreath is to place your foliage to make something pleasing to the eye, with interest around the whole of the wreath.

However there are some general rules of the thumb.

Use the inner and outer rings as separate ’rounds’ filling both rings makes a full plush wreath.

You will find that you can make rounds appear to have a direction. This is when the stems all lay the same way. Wreaths look best if a round follows the same direction. However, the two rings on the wreath ring don’t necessarily have to go in the same direction.

The more you add, the better it looks.

Save the ‘feature’ or fancier pieces until last so that they sit on the top layer of the wreath where they can be seen.

To add pine cones, wrap some wore around the bottom layer of the cone seeds, and twist the two wire stems firmly together and push the wire into the wreath and twist them together at the back of the wreath. You could also wire on Christmas baubles.

When the wreath is finished hang it on your front door for all to see and appreciate.

As a society, we all must be a little paranoid. We can barely contain ourselves, waiting for the next techno gadget to make our lives better. And even if our lives isn’t better for owning it; we have to buy it anyway, just to keep up with the Jones’. As soon as we get this new toy, it’s great, at least for a little while. We eventually get bored with our new toy. We start to misplace it, lose it, it doesn’t even matter anymore because we’ve completely lost interest. Slowly but surely we start to buy more and more new gadgets, but it doesn’t matter because they all seem to end up in the same place. Somewhere, in the back of our closet, gathering dust, with all the other super incredible gadgets that we once ran out to buy. We really don’t want to throw the old toys away because we might want to use them again; but as time passes and objects start to pile-up, we reluctantly make the choice to dispose of our old toys, to make room for the new.

They say, “everything that is old, becomes new again”. Styles come in cycles, so if you’re around long enough, an old style will become new again. This concept really does apply to fashion. It’s amazing to see clothing styles from 20 and 30 years ago, brought back as the latest fashion. But we can only wonder, if it’s the clothes, or the fact that the people wearing them are so young that they have no clue that their style has been done before.

Maybe it’s our human need to stay somehow connected to the past; that has driven us to create an industry for the past. And this industry would be that of antiques. Yes, antiques, that old junk that was left behind by our great-great ancestors. No one has really created a definition for antiques that everyone agrees on; but a more general description is, objects that have reached an age which makes them a witness of a previous era in human society.

Objects, which are antiques, usually show an attention to detail and design; like the older model automobiles. The more unique an antique is, the more valuable it’s likely to be. Just about any object can become an antique if it lasts long enough. It seems very strange, that an industry like antiques, which at times appears to be like a private club, has no say so in who can enter the club. Antiques can be purchased in stores, or through dealers and even on the internet. There are many people who have become dedicated in shopping for antiques; and they don’t just do it from home, but they travel around the country, hoping to find a special piece.

It’s amazing how society can create an industry, where apparently one didn’t exist. In antiques, people are basically salivating over objects that many of us would’ve considered old junk. Yet, we have lots of people willing to pay great deals of money for the privilege of owning an object that probably had very little value, back in its heyday.

For free scrapbooking ideas the Internet is a great place to look. There are some excellent sites full of creative tips and suggestions to help you make your own unique scrapbooks. If you’re looking for an original way to organize your favorite photos, arranging them in special scrapbook albums could be the solution. Scrapping is a very popular hobby, and offers a wonderful way to preserve your treasured memories for posterity. It’s an enjoyable and addictive pastime that allows you to use your imagination and add your personal touches to your pages.

Ready made scrapbook kits can be really good, particularly if you are making a themed scrapbook, such as for a wedding, a vacation or the birth of a baby. Pre-packaged kits come in a huge range of themes, and contain a selection of coordinated materials such as cardstock, stencils, frames or stickers. One advantage of using a kit to create your scrapbooking layouts is that it saves you the time of having to choose your supplies separately, making it quicker and simpler to design your pages. If you’ve got a digital camera, then there are some good digital scrapbooking software packages that enable you to use your computer to try out different looks. You can play around with all kinds of things, from templates to font styles.

There are many other free scrapbook ideas online, and loads of artistic ways of adding embellishments to your pages. In addition to using stickers, there are all sorts of paper piecing patterns; die cuts and other accessories that can help add color and style to your page. As well as using photographs and other visual images, many scrappers like to use words to enhance the meaning of the pictures. Journaling is a great way to record your memories and feelings related to the events in the photos. You may want to add scrapbooking quotes or poems, where appropriate, to help bring the stories to life. This can work well in both chronological or heritage scrapbooks, as well as in other types of albums.

If you’re looking for new ways to display your photos and memorabilia in scrapbooks, the Internet can be an excellent source of inspiration!

Believe it or not, there are (and always have been) quite a few men who make quilts, and make money making quilts.

As a matter of fact, there was an article in our local newspaper (the San Diego Union Tribune) about a retired man engineer who is designing and making some really unique quilts - kind of 3 dimensional-looking quilts.

Michael James has been around for years; I took a class from him in the mid 1980s, and he is now a professor in art / fabric arts at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.

Ricky Tims is a kind of cowboy quilter who took up sewing as a broke adult when he inherited his grandmother’s sewing machine. He travels the quilt guilds giving workshops and making speeches. And there are always quilts made by men hanging at local quilt shows.

The Museum of the American Quilter’s Society in Paducah, Ky. sponsored a traveling quilt show that featured the work of 22 men — 26 quilts in all — many of whom are as macho as they come. In March, the show was in Greensburg, in April the Quilt Show was in Pittsburg and in June, the fine folks in St. Petersburg enjoyed the show. featuring men and their quilts.

October 2005 saw the opening of a traveling show “Men of Biblical Proportion.” The goal for this exhibit was to present a theme about men, by men, and for men. Male characters of the Bible fit this description. It was aptly named “Men of Biblical Proportion. This exhibit will travel to quilt shows, churches, museums and galleries throughout the US until the end of 2007.

A Google search will turn up many more men in the quilting world. Guess it’s not just about making blankets - it’s about creating art that captures the spirit, imagination and history.

Gardening does not need to stop after your autumn harvest. Even in winter, you can plant herbs and where weather permits winter crops, such as lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, silver beet and spinach, brussels sprouts, broccoli, broad beans and finally onions and beetroot.

Winter can also be a good time to be planting herbs such as sage and thyme, dill, mint, parsley and chives.

Some gardeners plant lettuce direct into the ground in rows. however you can sprinkle some lettuce seeds in a small area close together and prick out the largest of the lettuce seedlings to sow, this way you can spread your crop over a longer period.

If your ground is not going to be covered three foot deep in snow you could try sowing Arugula, sow direct in rows 10 centimetres apart (3.9in). Arugula is sometimes called Rocket, Roquette or Italian Cress. It has a peppery nut flavour.

You can start harvesting when the leaves are 7 or 8cm long (2.76in to 3.15in), taking just a few leaves at a time. Grow virtually the same as cabbage. Arugula is a cool weather crop, it runs to seed early in hot weather. Harvest in 30 to 60 days.

Broad Beans can be grown in rows, 50CM apart (19.69in), directly, sow seed 20cm apart (7.87in), sow 5 centimeter deep (1.97in),These beans are good for cool climates. Sow while the temperature remains between 5 degrees Celsius to 18 degrees Celsius (41f to 64.4f). You find the short pod type tends to mature later and gives a fatter bean.

harvest in 120 days Plant all of your fruit trees during the winter too. Spray existing fruit trees with a copper-based fungacide as the buds begin to swell.

Winter is also a good time to prune existing fruit and ornamental trees while they are bare. You can also prune grape and berry bushes and vines during Winter.

If you want to plant bare rooted roses, do that in Winter too.

But most of all…have fun and remember a garden can be very forgiving.

This is a fun craft to do with a group of moms and their kids, one child per adult works the best. Each mom will need:

—One soft brush, any size but 1/2″ works the best

—One jar of “One-Stroke Ceramic underglaze”, either Duncan E-Z Stroke or Gare One-Stroke. (Of course they can share these, but it’s best if they have at least 3 colors to choose from. The best are a dark green, a dark blue or a dark brown. One jar of each color will do 50 hands altogether)

—One pint jar of “clear gloss glaze”, which all can use.

—A sponge

—Paper towels and a washcloth

—One blank UNglazed ceramic tile, 4-1/4″ (for kids 2 or 3 yrs. old or so) or 6″ (for kids over 3) Unless you know someone who does hand-painted tile as a career, these would have to be ordered in cases of 100 or so. The best thing is to call the hobby ceramic stores, where you will get the underglaze and clear glaze, and ask if they have a “molded greenware or bisque tile they sell”, and order the quantity you need. Tell them you would like them “fired to bisque.”

The most important thing is that the childrens’ hands are scrubbed with soap and water, then dried well. Salt, sugar or oils on the hands will prevent the glaze from bonding with the tile. Make sure to wipe the tile well with a clean sponge in plain water. Allow to dry a few minutes.

Tell the kids that it is like hand-painting only without wiggling their fingers. Make it fun, some get scared. Hold their clean hand gently over a tile to make sure their hand will fit, fingers spread out a little. Pick the right size tile and paint one wet coat of glaze across the flat of their open palm, not too runny but not too dry, follwing the instructions for mixing on the bottle. Try to keep their fingers from touching, the more still they keep their hand, the better the clarity. A good print will show fingerprints! But if it smears, it usually does, it’s all for fun anyway. If it starts to become a battle with the child, let him go, when he sees the other kids having a good time he will offer his hand to be painted. (I say “he” because it is usually the boys that wimp out, the girls are more adventurous. lol)

Make sure the paint goes all the way to the ends of the fingers and thumb and press the hand straight down onto the surface of the tile, quickly but gently and firmly, rolling the fingers slightly so the print doesnt look like skeleton fingers lol. Lift the hand straight up and see how cool! Wash their hands with soap, the paint is water soluable and non-staining, but dont let them lick it. With a fine brush, write the child’s name and date or birthday or age right on the tile. Set it in a safe place to dry well.

If you are nervous about smearing the dry glaze, have them fired at “cone 04″ before painting the clear gloss on top. This is the proper way, but if the underglaze is good and dry and you are very careful, it is ok to put the clear glaze on unfired underglaze and fire the tile once at “cone 06″ and the results will be the same. Either way, get the large floppy brush again and paint 3 thin coats of clear gloss on the tile and fire to “cone 06″.

You can buy frames from most ceramic stores that sell the tiles. They will last forever. Have fun!

To tell you the truth, I had not really thought much about the question prior to last week. Long ago, I took a quilting class, and the teacher told us to arrive at class with our fabric already washed and ready to cut.

When we arrived for the class, she explained that quilters always pre-wash their fabric – for many reasons:

1) To remove all of the sizing (chemicals) the manufacturers add to the fabric to make look more attractive, prevent wrinkles, and make it come off the bolt easier in the store. Although it makes the fabric easier for them to handle, sizing makes the fabric a little stiffer and more difficult for quilters to handle; plus it may leave a residue on your needles and thread as you are sewing.

2) Fabric with a high cotton content will shrink – even if it says it is pre-shrunk. (We all know about the pre-shrunk jeans that don’t fit any more after one washing! Eeek!) Since not all cottons are born ‘equal,’ they don’t shrink ‘equal’ either. That means that some cotton fabric will shrink 1%, other cotton fabric will shrink 3% or possibly more. The result is that once your quilt is washed, the fabrics will exert their own shrinking personality, and you will have a quilt that has puckers – and some patches will pucker more than others.

3) The color bleeds out of some fabric; and may deposit itself into other fabric. Reds, blues, yellows and purples are famous for sharing their beauty with whites, muslins, and tans. Translation – the beautiful, bright white in your quilt may end up with a pink, blue, yellow or lavender haze, if the excess color is not removed from the colored fabric.

I wasn’t surprised when the beginning quilter asked the question in an on-line quilt discussion group about whether to pre-wash the fabric, and I wasn’t surprised to see that several quilters answered with all of the above reasons. I was surprised, however, at the quilter who responded that she never pre-washed her fabrics because she liked the puckered look.

I understand completely liking the puckered look; I love it! It makes a quilt look well-loved and handmade. And I am always happy when my quilts develop that look, whether it is the first time they are washed or after several years. I would do almost anything to make sure that my quilts (although maybe not my wallhangings) could have that look of love. I just wish I could figure out a way to get the sizing and excess color out of the fabric without washing it before I sew.

Happy Quilting!

Penny Halgren

A party in the fall can easily take advantage of the autumn colors and atmosphere to accent the event, so why not also create fun and memorable fall party invitations.

The Fall Leaf Invitation is fun and you can create it for both children’s parties and adult’s. Your kids will love going outside to gather up the prettiest looking leaves for their invitations.

You’ll need:

• Colorful leaves

• Wax paper

• Iron

• Paper towels

• Cardstock

• Glue

Go outside and collect as many leaves as you need to have one leaf per invitation. When you have your specimens gathered prepare to iron them between the wax paper. The average invitation should be about four by six inches. Cut out two pieces of wax paper and one piece of cardstock per leaf.

When you have the Iron hot enough place the leaf between the two sheets of wax paper and iron them together. Be sure to place a sheet of paper towel on the top and bottom so that melted wax doesn’t soak into whatever you are ironing on. Once you have each of your leaves ironed into their respective wax paper sheets you can begin attaching them to the cardstock.

Cut out enough pieces of cardstock for each of your wax paper sheets. These should also be four by six inches. Carefully lay out a continuous bead of glue along the outside rim of the cardstock and line up one of the wax paper sheets on top of it. Press firmly and let dry. Once this is dry you have the perfect fall leave invitation. Write your invitation information on the back of the cardstock.

You can pick out a pretty colored cardstock to match your bright colorful fall leaves. The optimal colors would be more pastel versions of the vibrant reds, oranges, yellows and browns that you would normally see in your fall leaves.

There is nothing like the soulful sound of an old glass bottleneck on an accoustic guitar.

Lots of myths and stories aboud on how to make a good slide from a bottleneck. One of my favorites, is where an old bluesman used to to take a piece of twine and soak it in kerosene wrap it around the neck of the bottle, light it on fire and when it burns out, plunge it in a bucket of icewater. Presto ! the bottle is suppoded to break off clean at that point and then only takes a little grinding on the sidewalk to polish off the edge. This sounds good, but after trying it several times, I can tell you that more than likely, you will get jagged break at best, and the bottle with crack and fall apart at worst.

I will tell you how to make your own bottleneck slide. First, find a bottle, usually a wine bottle, but lots of other types of bottles will work as well. There are two basic types of bottles you should be looking for, one has a straight neck and the other has a flared or slightly curved neck. There are pros and cons to each. I prefer using the straighter type. but other players like the curve, as it makes it a little easier to play on the lower strings. My advice it to try both types and see what you like the best. There are no rules here! Some other considerations, are the thickness and color of the bottle. The color is personal choice, but the thickness is very important. Use a thin bottleneck, and the sound you get will be wimpy and no one wants wimpy. Try to find bottles with thicker necks that you can also stick your finger into. I use my little finger, but here again, no rules. Use the finger youj feel most comfortatble with.

Once you have found a bottle you like, get a couple more, as the odds are you will probaly break one or two before you really perfect this operation.

Lots of myths and stories aboud on how to make a good slide from a bottleneck. One of my favorites, is where an old bluesman used to to take a piece of twine and soak it in kerosene wrap it around the neck of the bottle, light it on fire and when it burns out, plunge it in a bucket of icewater. Presto ! the bottle is suppoded to break off clean at that point and then only takes a little grinding on the sidewalk to polish off the edge. This sounds good, but after trying it several times, I can tell you that more than likely, you will get jagged break at best, and the bottle with crack and fall apart at worst.

There are some other methods along that line as well, but what I have found works the best it to use a glass cutter, a large nail and some emery paper.

First take the glass cutter and scribe a line around the neck of the bottle at the length you would like. Opps, here is another thing you might consider as well. Some players like the lip of the bottle left on the slide, others do not. I do not, so I have to cut off the lip. Do this first before removing the neck from the bottle. If you really ger into this, you can still find a device called the Fleming bottle cutter, or some such thing, I have seen them on Ebay and in thrifstores, etc. These make it easy to keep the scribe line straight, but not really necessary if you are only going to make one or two slides.

After make your scibe lines, carefully start tapping on the line from the INSIDE of the bottle with the head of a VERY LARGE nail. Do this carefully and you will be able to make a clean break of the neck from the bottle. Another thing you can do it heat the nail with a torch or over the stove and just keep pressue on the scribe line with the nail. (Again, you are putting the pressue from the inside of the bottleneck).

Like I said, practive on a few bottles and you will get the hang of it. After breaking off the neck, you can use the emery paper to smooth the sharp edges off. Be very careful as the edge will be razor shart until you sand it smooth.

Practice and patience will yield your own “bottleneck” guitar slide. This will have much more “mojo” that the wimpy Pyrex slide they sell at your local music store.

You can find lots of unusual things in bottles, ships and messages, so why not fill a bottle with LED lights? What a bright idea! This attractive bottle is a great talking point; it makes a nice table decoration or a festive night-light.

To make the LED light up bottle you will need…

A clear glass bottle, a meter or so of tinsel, a loo roll or kitchen towel tube, glitter, PVA glue, and a set of 20 LED lights. You can get these ready made from with a battery compartment from the ‘99p Store’ on your local high street. Tech confident people could make their own from individual components. DO NOT use mains fairy lights, this is a fire hazard!

First wash out the bottle and remove all the labels. Use a nice smelling detergent to rid the bottle of any lingering odours from its previous contents. Leave the bottle to drain and dry out completely.

Take the LED lights and the Tinsel, use a small amount of selotape and stick the wire directly behind the last LED bulb (the bulb furthest away from the battery compartment) to the end of the strip of tinsel.

Twist the string of lights and the tinsel loosely together and carefully push the lights and tinsel into the bottle until the battery compartment rests on the neck of the bottle.

The loo roll or kitchen towel tube will become a fancy bottle stopper that covers the battery compartment.

Draw around the end of the tube onto a piece of card. A grocery box is great. Cut the disc out and push it into the end of the tube. Use a bit of selotape to hold it in place.

Cover the tube and end piece in PVA glue and sprinkle with glitter. Cover the cardboard completely so that it is no longer visible. Leave to dry.

Perch the battery compartment on top of the bottle and place the glitter bottle stopper over the top of it, so that it hides the batteries and part of the neck of the bottle.