Embroidery Owl

Owl, originally uploaded by sweetbo.

I finally found somewhere to buy handkerchiefs (Burlington Coat Factory, men’s section) and got to work on my second attempt at my owl. The first attempt was on an old t-shirt and will not be seeing the light of day.

I am annoyed with the gimpy eye since I didn’t even mess that up on the test run, but all in all I deem it cute and acceptable as an early project. I’d like to do a hedgehog, sparrow, and other illustrations popular right now, but that will require some doodles.

PaperBackSwap.com

That’s right folks. I have taken the next and obvious step in nerd-dom. I am swapping paperbacks via the internet. The program is simple – list books you own and don’t want into the database, someone requests it, you mail it to them, you get a credit. One credit equals one book. When you get a credit (you get three free ones when you join and post at least nine books to the database) you can search for a book in the system and request it. The owner mails you the book. The only money involved is when you mail a book to someone and it is about 1.60$ to mail a paperback. I have three books coming my way and I’ve already mailed two out, with a third getting ready. That means I’ll eventually get to pick three more books. *glee*

Magnets

Glass is very difficult to photograph. What you are looking at here are those decorative marbles like you put in vases made into image magnets. In this case I used images from a magazine of a polar bear, bugs and birds. Too bad my camera sucks and glass doesn’t like flash.

To get this look you run a pebble over images in a magazine until you frame something that looks nice. You trace around the circle and then cut it out. Take a drop of elmer’s glue all and put it on the image. Press the pebble down on the image and glue and press into your palm really hard until it start to set. Then check out the back of it with your fingers and press out any bubbles and make sure the edges are sticking to the pebble all the way around. Then take a little magnet disk and glue it onto the back.

The glass does most of the effect work, but selecting the right framed image is also key.

I tried putting it on something white thinking that the glass would pick up some of the reflected light and pop and as you see that didn’t happen.