felting, natural dyeing tutorials, learn to felt step by step beginners experienced feltmakers

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Updating my Dawanda Shop

I am revamping my Dawanda Shop and I am also starting to translate it in French.
Todays new item: Green Upcycled Nuno Felt Shawl


My dawanda shop: http:/lizetfrijters.dawanda.com

Friday, January 29, 2010

Queen's Beauty - White Knitted Fibre Art Shawl


This white fibre art shawl is knitted with soft thin cotton yarn using very big needles, which makes the texture extra soft.
To add to the beauty, I have sculptured the knitted fabric, using needle and thread, to give it its own identity.
You can find Queen's beauty in my etsy shop

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Time to clean up

Tropical cyclone Olga is on its way. Time to clean up, no day off today.
We better put all the chickens to some higher ground, everything is soaked already and there is more rain expected.


Saturday, January 23, 2010

Dancing in the Rain

To celebrate all the heavy rain we are getting on the moment, I made this spotlight on byhand.me

From top to bottom and left to right:

Friday, January 22, 2010

Goodbye to gold and yellow

These two pieces will start their journey to the United States next week, to go to their new home. Exciting!















Sunrays
, Felt Art Poncho
Yellow Dream Patches, Felt Art Top

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

And another jacket: Desert Walk


A stunning jacket in nuno felt, made with organic merino wool and silk, both dyed with natural dyes.
This "desert walk" jacket, in browns and purple, reflects the energy and texture of the sand in the desert.
It is lightweight, so the kind to wear on cooler summer evenings.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Flower Field Felt Art Poncho

My new work listed this week on etsy: Flower Field Felt Art Poncho.
Handmade by me in nuno felt:

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Introduction to natural dyeing: scouring silk and wool.

Scouring fibres or fabrics is the term used for removing dirt or grease through scrubbing or washing them with a detergent, depending on the kind of fibre used. Scouring is needed if you want to dye the fibre afterwards, otherwise the dye will stick to the dirt instead of to the fibre and will be gradually rub off in the future.

If you buy wool slivers or yarn and you are sure that they have been cleaned thoroughly, there is no need to go through the scouring process.

If you use wool fleece, soak the wool in water overnight. The next morning remove the water (you can use it for watering your vegetables). Repeat this until most of the dirt comes out of the wool. Adding a bit of warm water makes it easier, however be very carefull not to create any sudden shock for the wool by putting it from cold straight into hot water. Most wool has felting qualities and it can start felting during the washing process if handled in a rough way or by sudden temperature changes. Next time, add wool washing liquid to the water and let the wool soak for a while. More dirt will come out, together with the grease. You might need to repeat this several times, until the water is totally clean. Rinse and dry the wool or keep it wet if you are ready to start the dyeing process.

Silk fibres, yarn or fabrics need to be degummed. Often it has been done before you purchase the silk, I tend to do the scouring anyway, just to make sure that no residues are left. Gradually heat up the silk in a solution of water and soft soap. Bring it close to boiling and keep it at that temperature for approx. an hour. Boiling takes away some of the beautiful lustre of the silk, so it is better to avoid it. Let it cool down. If the silk is still sticky, repeat the process. Otherwise rinse the fibres or fabric and dry.

Your material is now ready for mordanting, which I will explain in another post.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

I am in a New Treasury - Take Your Vitamins

My Felt Necklace, " Morning Sun", is featured in this beautiful sparkly treasury, "Take Your Vitamins", made by veryverdant.

You can still see it until Monday January 11 at the following link:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list_west.php?room_id=82424

Friday, January 8, 2010

How to Copy an Etsy Treasury using Gimp.

I have been asked several times how I copy treasuries into my blog, so I decided to make a post about it. It took me a long time to learn this; I searched in the etsy forums, through gimp tutorials and tried many different ways, some to the extend that it blocked my computer.

I have come up with this method that works for me, using the gimp, which is free to download from the internet by following this link:

http://www.gimp.org/downloads/

TAKING A SCREENSHOT

Open the treasury you want to copy. On my computer, I can not see the whole treasury at once, so I make sure to have the top half on the screen. I will copy the treasury in 2 parts.

Open the gimp.

Go to File - Create - Screenshot

A new window will open where you can choose between:

- Grab a single window

- Grab the whole screen

I usually choose the first one, grab a single window.

Click on Grab.

Grab the crosshair and drag it to the window with the treasury.

You now have copied the top half of the treasury, it will automatically open in a new window.

Go to the web page with the treasury and place the bottom half on the screen.

Repeat the same process as with the top half.

Once you drag the crosshair to the treasury, a new file opens in gimp with the bottom part of the treasury.

You now have 2 files, each one with a part of the treasury and the rest of the webpage that comes with it. Let's clean it up and select the part we want to copy.


CROPPING

We start with the first window and we are going to crop the part of the treasury we would like to copy.

Select the crop tool from the toolbox dialog or alternatively, click on Tools - Transform Tools - Crop and the crop tool will be available.

Move the cursor over the part you want to select and draw a rectangle over it. If it isn't right from the first time, you can always have another go or stretch one of the sides with the cursor. Once you have selected the area, click on one of the squares in the corner.

Now you have cropped the image. If by chance you want to change it, you can always go to edit and undo any action, as long as you haven't saved it.

Repeat this whole process for the bottom part.

PASTING

You will have 2 partial images of the treasury now. I used to save them and paste them into blogger as 2 separate images. I will show you how you can make one image out of them:

In one of the windows click File - New :

A window pops up.

You will need to decide on the size of the image. The size that pops up is the one from the image of half the treasury. Make the width somewhat larger.

The height needs to be at least twice the size, I make it a bit longer, we can recrop that later.

Click OK.

Go to the top treasury window. Right click on the image - Edit - Copy

Now go to your new image and right click it - Edit - Paste

Click the Move Tool.

Or click Tools - Transform Tools - Move

Bring the image to the top of the template.

When it is in the right place, right click on it - Layer - Anchor Layer

Do the same with the bottom image.

You can see in the picture that the 2 images are overlapping, so move the bottom image to where you want it to be.

Make sure to anchor the layer when the image is in the right position.

If you'd like to crop the image a bit, you can do it to take away some of the white background, but it is not necessary.

the image is ready, the only thing left to do is save it on your computer.

SAVING.

Click File - Save as

a window pops up, name the file.

Choose in which folder you want to save it.

I also select jpeg as a file type in both places provided for it.

Click Save.

A new window pops up "save as jpeg": choose the quality of the image and click Save.

That's it, now you can copy it to where you want, your blog or social network, just as any other image.

This beautiful and inviting etsy treasury, "Put On Your Party Frocks N Dance" was made by SachiDesigns.

I hope this helps some of you, etsy sellers to show your treasuries on your blogs.

Feel free to comment or add links of other posts about copying treasuries.

Friday, January 1, 2010

Treasury: Taken with Teal.

What a beautiful teal collection is this! I am blown away by the colours and especially when I knew that my teal nuno felt shawl "Magic Wings" is included in it.

Go and have a peek at Terrbear37's Shop as well, she is the maker of this beautiful treasury.

To visit this treasury online until January 2 2010 follow this link:

http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=103292


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