Trees and Dreams

Feb 28, 2013

Furniture makeover 3 - Benefits of Primer

As the weather is improving, I am making plans for my furniture makeover - always have some pieces waiting to be refurbished. I don't have proper studio for such work, particularly for preparations eg. sanding, so I am waiting for warmer days to work outside, in the yard. Another reason is that I like to paint on daily light, as can better notice imperfections and flaws.

In addition to surface preparation, I usually use primer before painting and this post is actually about primer.

Read more about primer after the jump.

Felted birds

Spring is near, birds are coming back!

Spring is near (I do hope so, although snow is forecasted in Zagreb for this week), birds are coming back soon. After black/grey/brown season, bring some colors in your life. I had so much fun making these birds and new ideas hot to use them were popping in with each new bird. I made decorations, brooch, garnish for my purse, key charm, just with little customisation.

Read more in the tutorial: How to make felted birds

Flower made from egg cartons

There are a lot of discussion on internet whether it is OK to put other people's craft on your own blog or not. I feel sometimes I just need to pay tribute to some authors, this time I can't resist to this work of Jane LaFazio. She made this beautiful flowers from egg cartons and published also a tutorial how to make the flowers.

Feb 14, 2013

Word clouds

Or: How to play with words!

It might be a common knowledge for a lot of people, but somehow I missed the 'word clouds'. Of course, I saw them occasionally, but didn't know how to create them or even the terminology, and then of course, how to find right tools. And, as it often is, I accidentally found the right site. As I love letters and fonts, fell in love with them. It is actually very easy to create clouds and choose different shapes, font types, colors.

The best known is probably Wordle : it is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
The Tagxedo Creator enables you to create various shapes and there are number of others.
Read these reviews to find something more about other tools. And try some of them, it is realy fun to play.

On the examples above I tried the same text for all of them, see how different each of them is.

Feb 11, 2013

Traditional wooden toys of Croatia

In today's consumeration world we are used on mass-production, same product found in New York, Zagreb or Tokio. It is my pleasure to show you these beautiful, handmade toys from Croatia, Hrvatsko zagorje (North-West part of our country). You can feel love and passion built in each of them.
Wooden children’s toys are recognizable traditional products of Hrvatsko zagorje with a long history. Precisely in this area, a peculiar production of toys was developed in the 19th century and it has been preserved in some villages. From very simple reed toys, the assortment widened so that, at times, one hundred and twenty different toys were produced. The method of their production was passed on from generation to generation in some families and has been kept to this day. The peculiarity is that they are handmade by men and mostly painted by women.

There can never be two completely identical toys since each one is handmade. The material used is soft wood from the area, willow, lime, beech and maple that craftsmen hew after drying and then cut and shape it with the help of wooden or cardboard models. In painting they use eco paint and their base colours are usually red, yellow or blue. They paint the toys with floral and geometrical ornaments. Today, about fifty types of toys are made, ranging from various reeds, tamburitzas, animal toys and objects of common use. In the year 2009 UNESCO declared them as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Till the end of May, 2013 you can visit the interesting exhibition hold in Ethnographic museum in Zagreb: World of toys.

Feb 4, 2013

Valentine sugar card

In my believe, it is always better to make cards and gifts by yourself - in that way you show people you do care about them - in the hectic and busy era we live, time is the most precious to give. This card is easy to make, I like to use material I can find at home.

Read this simple tutorial how to make Valentine sugar card.

Valentine cards

Valentine day is approaching and although I don't like the commercial pressure of that day, it is nice to dedicate one day to love and friendship. In my country it is not custom to give cards on that day, but as I like cards, I made some - it was fun and easy, and I have plan to make some more. They can be used also for birthdays, Christmas or any other special day. Of course, I used chalkboard paint again, I just love it and use it whenever I can.

Jan 23, 2013

What to pay attention when buy camera

As a novice in photography, I decided to buy new camera, nothing very expensive but good enough to take quality photos, shoot my projects and learn 'tricks and tips' step-by-step, and one day, when reach better understanding and experience, take something more advanced. So, I started to google - shops, photo sites, forums, first to see what could be important for my level of (in)experience.

I learned that Megapixels over 12 MP is not so important but optical wide-angle zoom could be. The sensor choice - CCD or CMOS ( I read the CMOS is better - don't know why) could be important. Battery is also rather important - the plain AA or AAA are probably the best choice as could be bought everywhere. The ease of use is also good to check. Video possibilities were not interesting to me, so I didn't check them. Finally, after spending few hours on Internet, I decided to buy Olympus SZ-14. It is travel zoom digital camera - a bridge between point-and-shoots and mega-zoom cameras. So far, I didn't shoot a lot, can't tell much about this.

The pleasant surprise is the PC software for photos storing and editing - very user-friendly with the number of possibilities. Unpleasant surprise was the equipment that came with the camera - I didn't get the memory card and got the USB-AC adapter FC-2AC which is useless here in Croatia (need to buy FC-3AC separately). And in all materials I read, it was not clearly written what you get with the camera. The memory card and adapter are rather inexpensive, but I am frustrated with the vendor's approach to hide those details. Few years ago, I bought compact camera from the same vendor and got everything - memory card and battery charger. So, as 'devil is in details', check literally everything before your purchase.

Jan 15, 2013

Fonts, letters, text

Fonts and letters are endless inspiration for me in my craft work. There are number of sites you can download various font types for free. Look at this links, eg:
1001freefonts.com
dafont.com
fontzone.net

But there is a script I like very much, although it is not in use any more: Glagolitic alphabet. Look on the pictures how the letters are beautiful and interesting.
It is part of Croatian history and was used for centuries.

If you are interested in this font, you can download it from this site.
(Site is on Croatian, download is on the bottom of the page, right side - 'cijeli paket').

Nowadays, original jewelry and souvenirs could be found inspired by this alphabet.

If you'd like to read a little bit more about Glagolitic alphabet:

Singer machine cabinet makeover

Some time ago I was lucky to get the 100 years old Singer machine cabinet - some aquintances didn't recognize its beauty adn were happy to give it to me. Some wooden parts were not in a very good condition, but I wasn't worried, I saw the hidden beauty of the cabinet. First of all, I decided not to replace the veneer that was in a realy bad shape, but to remove and sanded the surface. After that, I dissasemble all parts of the cabinet (hubby helped) to clean them and sand them, particulary the wooden parts.
This is the unavoidable, but necessary work to be done, and the work I don't like very much, but if you don't do that properly, the finished piece will be defficient.

Metal parts painted with Hammerite silver, wooden with acrylic paint (white) and varnish.

Now I have beautiful table for my notebook, and in the same time, vintage Singer sawing machine. A lot of people get rid of the sawing machine, but for my point of view, this is sin. When you see how it is made, all those inventive details, you can only admire the old craftsmen who created it.

Below you can see how it looked like before I refurbished it.