Being Crafty: How To Repaint a Junkyard Trunk

When I'm not procrastination baking, I like procrastination crafting. I bought an old trunk for $15 in New York State last year and hadn't done anything with it yet. I figured since I'm moving soon and this thing is going at the end of my bed, I'd better give it a makeover. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out:

It's easy, too. No really...the easiest.

Step 1: Clean and sand it.

Step 2: Spray on a primer coat. I don't think I necessarily had to do this, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. The primer dries very quickly. I love spray paint; it's almost idiot proof as long as you're aiming in the right direction (hint: not at your eyes). The key is to not hold it close to the object you're painting and not hold it in one place too long. Otherwise you'll get drippage, and no one likes that.

Step 3: Spray paint with your primary color. (same process as above. It dries super fast, too).

Step 4: This step isn't hard, but it's a labor of love. Carefully tape paper over the panels you want to stay your primary color. Give the trunk a couple of hours to dry and use painter's tape or it's liable to strip off a layer when you take it off later.

Step 5: Spray on your trim paint. I used a hammered finish paint, which has a dull sheen and a cool pitted look.

And there you have it: an awesome trunk.

Bookcycling

So instead of blogging about my writing and editing process (later, promise) I've been making belated Valentine's cards. I don't celebrate the day, generally, but I do like taking it as an opportunity to shower some appreciation and do some crafting.

So today I did something a little subversive: I ripped up a book to make cards out of the pictures in it. I know, I know: a writer ripping up a hardback? Unthinkable! Except there are so many old, neglected books out there looking for a last hurrah. If they could converse, they'd say "I'm still interesting and relevant. So get me out of this second-hand bookshop before I throw myself off of this high, high shelf!" ... or something. Most of them will languish on back shelves and in cardboard boxes, slowly rotting away. But some will be repurposed and enjoyed in a whole new way. I was given a book about cool ways to do this called Playing With Books, and I have to say I think it's awesome. Easy, too:

Find a $5 bargain filled with yellowing pages and silly illustrations. 

Whip out your dinosaur typewriter and one-finger punch out some witticisms.

Try not to asphyxiate on the spray mount.

And there you go! Instant classics.

Upcoming Book Release: Forever

I'm so, so, so excited for the upcoming release of Maggie Stiefvater's third and final book in her Wolves of Mercy Falls series. She's a bit of a YA literary hero of mine, and I've loved following her through her publishing process. One of the many reasons she's a favorite of mine is because she's ridiculously artsy. Artsy enough to put together stop-motion trailers for her books. This is the kind of thing I could see myself doing when I'm a published author (and a crazy cat lady).

http://www.fountainbookstore.com/autograph-maggie

Linocut Printmaking

So I went to a beginner's linocut class this past weekend as an early birthday present to myself. I've always had a thing about black and white prints, the simple beauty and intricacy of them, the contrast of a black silhouette against a white page. It was a lot of fun and not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I took a sketch I'd drawn of what I wanted to try and create: a silhouette of a bird sitting on snow-covered branches.

We started with a plain piece of linoleum. We traced and outlined our design onto the linoleum with a Sharpee. Then we used little shovel-like tools with different heads to carve out our design. The tricky part was wrapping my head around the black/white concept: whatever I carved out would end up white, while whatever I left behind would end up black on the page. How much ink showed on the page depended on how deeply you cut into the linoleum. This is the part that took me the best part of FOREVER: the artsy illustrator guy to the left of me had carved out two designs in the time it took me to do this puppy. And I'm pretty sure I injured my neck while I was at it.

Then it was time to try printing. I rolled my lino with black ink and lined it up on a giant press. Then I turned the big captain's wheel and pressed the wet inked lino under my chosen decorative paper. And out came several of these:

I had a lot of fun printing my design on different kinds of paper that I plan on turning into this year's Christmas cards. This is such a fun art form and something I plan to play with in future, although I'll have to figure out how to do it without a giant press.

Someone Ate My May

... it's been three weeks since I last blogged?.... really? My calendar must be lying to me. I'm almost three months into my first big-girl editing gig and I'm STILL struggling to 'find the time'. Granted, my editor decided to go and have babies a week and a half ago, leaving me to pretend to know what I'm doing at her desk. But I mean really- where are all of these days going? I'm feeling slightly swallowed alive. (I am alive, by the way, dear friends whom I haven't spoken to in many weeks but that I love deeply.)

I could bore you with more complaints about full-time employ, but I think I'll tell you about my new camera instead.

I bought my first SLR yesterday! It's a Canon Rebel T1i 500d, the first digital camera I've invested in that hasn't just been point-and-shoot. I've always loved taking pictures. I took a photography class in high school that has always stayed with me. I loved going out and exploring through a lens, then watching the photos take shape beneath my hands. My teacher was a little old lady who really liked photos of puppies. Most of my pictures were of old headstones. She wasn't a fan.

Since I started traveling, I've found myself wanting a camera that could do... well, more. I can't tell you how many times in the past few years I've taken a picture of a breathtaking vista, looked at my camera's screen and gone, "You just don't quite get it." I'm working my way through the manual (Moby Dick, anyone?) and am looking forward to learning the manual settings as I go. Here are a couple of the practice shots I've taken:

Brisbane as seen from the Cliffs at Kangaroo Point.

Manfriend looking model-y.

Lilies from Manfriend in dim lighting.

I'm AMAZED by the difference in quality. These were photos I shot on automatic settings without knowing what I was doing, and I still think they turned out pretty OK. The camera shoots hi-res video, too, so maybe you'll even get to suffer through a video montage of me doing something silly in the not-far-distant future. Who knows? More to come!

How Cool Is This?

I found this awesome video clip about the making of a book cover. It seriously makes me want to hurry up and get published AND learn how to do web design. Mostly the getting published thing. As a side note, the book being promoted here falls under a sub-genre (that I just had to Google because I had no idea) called "steampunk". How did I not KNOW about this before?

Seriously?!

Being Crafty: Decoupage

These days, it feels like all my creativity is channeled towards a computer screen. Writing, reading, keeping in touch: it's all accomplished through my pretty little Macbook. So much so that I am developing intimate feelings for my laptop that no one- NO one- should feel towards a lump of wires and screen. Sometimes, I need to take a break and do something creative that doesn't depend on a plug-in battery. Thus my love of being crafty.

When I graduated from grad school last year, I decided I wanted to make something for my friend Lyndsey, who graduated alongside me. She was my rock, my drinking buddy, my us-against-the-world partner in crime: I wanted to make her something special. She is a list/I-need-to-write-down-my-thoughts-on-this-subject person, like me, so I decided to make her some personalized notebooks using decoupage.

This is one of the easiest, most versatile decorating methods in the world. It hearkens back to the days when you used to smear glue over your family's furniture with your chubby, unattended little fingers. There are about a million and one different "looks" you can achieve, but the method remains insanely easy no matter what look you're going for. You don't need many supplies to do it: just a surface to work on (this can be anything from a notebook cover to a tabletop, canvas, glass, a jewelry/shoebox... you name it, as long as it's smooth), some cut-outs that you want to put onto said surface and some decoupage glue. I've been told that you can use regular Elmer's glue in decoupage, but I've never been brave enough to try it as a substitute. Just make sure that whatever surface you're using in clean and dry.

First, I wanted to cover the front and back covers of three spiral-bound black notebooks with

different panels of sturdy wrapping paper. I measured out each panel and cut it to the size I wanted. Then I whipped out my handy sponge-on-a-stick tool (you can also use a paint brush or a Popsicle stick if you're feeling reckless), covered the notebook with a not-too-thick layer of glue, and smoothed the wrapping paper over it.

I rolled a pencil from one end of the now-papered surface to the other to try and scare out any air bubbles hiding underneath the fabric. Wrinkling is the trickiest part of decoupage: if you lay on the glue too thick or if you lay your fabric down sloppily, you end up with air bubbles that look like little warts in your work. No good.

Next, I cut out all the little bits and pieces I wanted to use in my design. That included some bits of decorative paper, cut-outs from the front of a greeting card, some black satin ribbonand some stickers. Keep in mind when choosing things to decoupage that they generally need to be flat and lightweight, or else you risk them falling off your medium over time. You can put things like coins or beads onto your medium, but you'll probably want to superglue them instead of using the decoupage glue. Also, try to stay away from super-fragile or transparent tissue paper and the like. I used a gauzy paper on Notebook #1 and found it difficult to work with (I ended up liking the result, but it was a close call). Take it from me, they rip and change color when you coat them with glue, and they end up getting wrinkled when saturated. Again, the warts. Photos, ticket stubs, stickers, stamps, some kinds of ribbon and sturdy paper work best for this. If you end up using markers, make sure they're permanent, or they'll run when you put glue over them. I find that Sharpies work best.

Once I'd cut out all the things I wanted to use, I coated their bottoms with glue (except for the stickers, which stick themselves) and laid them down carefully. I usually do the roll-with-a-pencil technique as I go to prevent air bubbles while drying. Once I had done that, I used a black Sharpie to write quotes on the front of the notebooks that I thought Lyndsey would find inspirational. Once you've stuck on everything you want, it's good to let it dry for half a day/overnight.

The last step in to coat the whole project in a thin layer of glue. Just take your brush or sponge tool and paint the glue over the collage as a varnish. I'll usually let this coat dry for a few hours and then apply another coat. This will make your collage all shiny-like and will protect it from peeling/future damage. This is some of what I ended up with:

Front of Notebook #1

Back of Notebook #1

Notebook #2, still drying. See the air bubbles underneath the light golden paper? I like to think they ended up looking like a stylistic choice, but they suck nonetheless.

I was really pleased with the way the notebooks turned out (though not pleased to have mysteriously misplaced half my pictures of them when they were finished: sorry).

I made Manfriend a decoupage collage of our trip around the States for his birthday. Working with photos and a canvas make this one of the dead easiest crafty projects in the world.

Everyone likes a hand-made gift, and I've found that these are cost-efficient and fun. This is the craft for "I'm not crafty" people. Go ahead, give it a try. The six-year-old (and the technologically over-baked adult) in you will thank you.