The Garage: A craft-y type thread for handypeople

Learning all sorts of cool corset facts from DG. Never knew there was so much to them.

Don't assault my man-cred, The things are fascinating from an engineering standpoint.

They are, truly. Fascinating things.

Pocket hoops are nearing completion.◊ Now to stick them on a waistband, and because I'm too lazy to actually stitch the bottoms on by hand, I'll make pockets that hang inside them.

Woo! Doing more work to avoid doing work!

This is what I get for not looking at avatars. I could not, for the life of me, figure out why Maddy looked like DG.

@blackcat: ...because they are both awesome?

Sigh. I have two wooden hoops, pretty ribbon, pretty colored hemp string, beads of all sorts and some neat leather owls. I want to make a mobile thing. Bit I dunno how or what or which. Ideas?

Tried this site yet?

Lera: ooh, no not yet. That's perfect, thanks!

@Drunks: That's an impressive collection of bottles you have there.

@yuan: you don't know the half of it. Possibly because only half the collection is featured in that photo.

See, that's how you can tell DG's pictures from mine. If that were a picture of my house it would be books, not bottles. The bottles are on a shelf in the basement. Well, the ones that aren't on the kitchen counter...

Ooh, what a fun thread! I love arts and crafts, but since I'm a bit ADD, I mostly know basics over a wide range.

Knitting: I can do scarves, afghans, and one specific type of fingerless glove. Oil Painting: I can make simple, basic designs. Sewing: Minor clothing repairs, embroidery, and quilting. Gardening: I grow things in pots. But I don't pay attention to "cover with x inches of dirt" Carpentry: I can build basic things like birdhouses and shelves. One winter I borrowed my granddad's lathe and he helped me make a rolling pin.

Right now I'm in a painting/gardening mood. It's fun :)

So, Drunkscriblerian and I spent the day doing fun stuff. I finally got him to come around and help me play with my dolls, and I got pictures of the process.

So, this is the doll that I made of my Changeling character a while back.

First off, she needed a bow. Because we're crazy, we decided to do a 1/6th scale laminate recurve bow.

We painstakingly traced a bow shape, cut it out, and sanded it.

Then we cut some strips of 1/8 inch oak veneer, spread some glue on them, and stacked them on top of the form.

However, the shape was too severe to clamp right, so we had to scratch that and start over.

So here's the new form, and here's the glued and clamped layers of wood. We've got to wait for it to set overnight, so I'm not sure how it'll turn out. Hopefully it'll work.

So, when we got home we decided that wasn't enough crazy for the day, and grabbed a broken bandsaw blade that we happened to have laying around.

Drunkscriblerian broke the cutoff wheel on my Dremel trying to shape it.

Undeterred, he grabbed one of the sanding drums and kept going.

So now the doll has a huge, evil looking knife.

I just have to finish the grip and get some amber to make a pommel out of, and it'll be done.

edited 18th Mar '12 8:52:19 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

What's cool here is that if our bow form works, the bow will actually be functional; since the grain line follows the curve of the bow it won't break if it's flexed. One of my co-workers is a musician, I plan on asking him if he has any pieces of gut or nylon guitar strings I can use to string it with.

Next up; making properly scaled arrows. I still have lots of steel for arrowheads but I need another cutoff wheel and some sanding drums before I can make them. Also, fletching in 1/6th scale...not going to be fun.

Actually, I saw a tutorial somewhere on how to fletch bows in 1/6 scale.

edited 18th Mar '12 8:57:27 PM by DrunkGirlfriend

You two are insane. I want to come live with you.

@shima: we're full up at the moment, but there will be a room available eventually...

@Drunks: You are both amazing, and a wee bit scary!

Update: the bow did not turn out. For several reasons we did not get a good bond between lamination layers; I was able to pull it apart with my fingernail (which I should not be able to do). Currently going back to the drawing board and trying to design a better form to glue on. When I have something, there will be photos.

Trying to plot compound curves with a compass and ruler is defeating me. I should have paid more attention in geometry.

The knife however is totally finished, and I'm starting to plot arrow designs...which I will put into effect as soon as I get some bamboo skewers, feathers and Dremel bits.

Gonna be painting a dresser soon.

Anyone painted finished wood before? what did you use to "stick" the paint?

Attack it with sandpaper before hand, says my non-professional experience. You want a degree of roughness for the paint to cling to. Definitely clean it with whatever half-assed eco-friendly version of pre-painting cleaner they sell these days, so that grease and stuff on the surface doesn't make your paint peel off.

Apart from that, I don't know.

@Ori: strip the finish off, sand it and prime it. Then paint it. those first three steps are almost more important than painting it.

Maybe I should have added: I'm painting just a small portion o the dresser. The dresser is painted white, which is what I want. I want to paint a mural on top. should I still strip and sand where I plan to paint?

Oh, oops; by "finished" I thought you meant "had finish instead of paint on it". No, just cleaning and roughing the area that you want to mural-ize with sandpaper should be good. I recommend priming if the mural is supposed to completely cover the existing paint.

Priming...I'm such a paint noob. Like, white primer? Or something else? Can I use acrylic paint to muralize?

edited 26th Mar '12 6:42:33 PM by OriDoodle