Another great tutorial. This was something a little different and lends itself to lettering and other shapes. This is from Nobu Design and is called Illustrator Trick: Art Brush Lettering.
Once you’ve created the art brush, you can use it on any path you want.
I found that it worked better if I broke the path on some letters so that the two ends of the brush didn’t munge together and remained distinct and separate.
🙂
This column of text looks like its edges have been eroded away or blown off. It was all done in Illustrator. It’s made from a column or shaped text box filled with text. I made a number of Scatter brushes using individual letters. Simply type a letter or two, in the same font and font size, as the column of text then go to Type>Create Outlines. This turns text into editable shapes.
Drag the letter (now an editable shape) onto the Brushes palette. Select Scatter Brush from the options. I left the size pretty much the same but if you want your letters to look as though they have blown far away you might want them to scale smaller, etc.
I kept the scatter and spacing close to the defaults but enough to give the distribution a sufficiently random effect. I set the Rotation to allow a full 360 rotation of each letter.
Create several of these Scatter brushes with different letters.
Finally, I used the paint brush to roughly draw the outline of the main text shape on the right-hand side. Repeat and build up the letter drift as you want.
When you’re pretty much happy with the end result, select Object>Expand Appearance and then Ungroup. Each letter can now be selected if you want to pick off a few stray or unwanted scatterings.
The brushes can be saved for use in other projects and the settings can be edited anytime you want.
Here’s the papercut of the design posted yesterday ready to be framed. It is quite large and will go into an A3 frame.
Today has been busy. Mr T is laying new flooring in the bedroom we keep for family and friends when they come over. He’s really cracking on and I’m totally amazeballs at how hard he’s working. We bought some sliding wardrobe doors from Ikea and he’ll be hanging them at some point. And he’s painting everywhere. Stand still for long enough and you’ll have an Annie Sloane makeover. He looks a bit wild and wooly though – like a good thrashing with a weed whacker would tame some of the facial growth! He scrubs up well and a hot shower and shave will gussy him up to his usual level of handsomeness.
Meanwhile I’m making soup—chicken, chickpea and sweet potato. All done in the pressure cooker with a tickle of turmeric, a sprinkle of black pepper, a quiff of curry powder, stock, parsnips and lots of carrots with a tin of chickpeas thrown in at the end. We haven’t had soup for a while as the hot weather was salad and sandwich fare. Now we’d had some rain and the temperature has dropped, a bowl of soup is perfect.
Then time to do a bit of sewing. I need to get a wiggle on myself and get cushions made. I bought some fabric from a cloth shop in Dublin. Nice stuff but very expensive so back to Amazon, I’m afraid. I have found a super pattern on line for a cross backed apron surprisingly called a ‘Mobius’ apron! 🙂 and an origami bag that caught my eye.
I think I’ve got the easier side of this house refurb deal!
I have a papercutting to do. The first stage is design—a rough paper drawing then drawn in iIllustrator. Tracing the design doesn’t really work too well, I’ve found. I create the flowers and leaves and superimpose them over the design then do the painstaking Shapebuilding and / or my method (I think it’s my method as I’ve never read of the technique anywhere else), of using Pathfinder and the Direct Selection tool.
It’s not really a job I’ve got time for as we’re in the middle of some refurbishment around the house. The back room has its new floor, it’s painted, the futon has been assembled and put into place, the curtains are up… joy and happiness are on my doorstep along with the new mats. We have a bedroom to refloor and some wardrobe doors to put up. Lots and lots of painting. 😦 I really don’t like painting house things). 😦
Poor Gracie had a very nasty tail injury. She came in with it drooping, almost dragging it. It was obviously very painful as she didn’t want us to touch her lower back or tail and yowled and pawed at us to leave it. We got her to the vet where they put her under anaesthesia, X-rayed it and checked her over. Luckily, it’s not broken. The vet thinks something make have yanked it or she got it caught and yanked it herself to get free. She was kept in overnight to recover from the anaesthetic and to check that she could wee.
However, I was over the moon when the vet rang to say we could collect her – she’d had a wee (and the other), she’d twitched her tail though it was still drooping but there was no reason to believe she wouldn’t make a full recovery. Phew! Am glad to say that her tail is much more upright today but is still not the upright antenna we’re used to seeing but I’m confident she’s getting better so it’s a matter of time. Give her a few days or a week and I’m sure she’ll be back to normal.
As for the injury… hmmmm, I have suspicions that someone nearby hurt her. No proof. A certain man who came to my door after finding a dead pigeon in his garden and told me to put a F***** bell on her, put a F***** fence up (we have walls with tall hedges on three sides!!!!) and said he’d know what to do if he found her in his garden again… That was only a week ago. It seems a little too coincidental that after making vague threats about what to do and then her suddenly coming home badly injured. I don’t think it is. I think it’s deliberate.
In Ireland, it is normal for most cats to be outdoor cats – though we keep her in every night when she comes in for her tea, that’s it, she’s in till the next day. And I truly wish she didn’t kill birds (or mice that breed in the shouty man’s F****ing compost heap) and we have tried collars and bells but she always gets them off. And, there are plenty of other cats that also catch birds. I’ve had birds left on my doorstep overnight when Gracie (and Jess) have been in all night. Jess, for the record, is not interested in catching birds. He has a core belief that every bird captured and killed round here is down to her. Ignorant P****.
As crafts go, salt dough is very easy. You can cut out shapes with biscuit (cookie) cutters or draw round templates. Cereal boxes make for sturdy templates. Salt dough takes a good while to dry – mine were in the oven for some 16 hours on its lowest temperature. Obviously, the thicker the dough, the longer the baking time.
They can also be microwaved; I’ve tried microwaving and had mixed results but always with some surface puffing, buckling and cracking. (See Salt Dough Hearts and Salt Dough Microwave Method). Sometimes, the cracking suits the project but there are times you might want a smoother surface to work on.
2 cups of flour to 1 of salt. Add a tbs of dry wallpaper paste as well to help prevent mold and make the dough more pliable if you have some.
Mix with water until it becomes pastry-like then roll it out and cut it into shapes.
You can create all sorts of things and hang them up afterwards – just make a hole so you can insert cord or wire to hang them from – or, insert some bent wire into the raw dough (wet the ends of the wire with a thickish flour and water mixture ‘glue’ then insert the wire into the piece) and bake the mount with the dough. I
Basic instructions:
Pear templates:
Paper beads have been around forever and are simple to make. A few supplies and you’re good to go. There are free patterns all over the net, all similar to the pattern here.
1. Save the image above to your desk top then cut them out using thin paper (magazines are good – or plain paper if you want to paint them yourself ).
2. Dab some glue onto a cocktail stick / straw/ knitting needle (this all depends on how big you want your beads to be and how wide your template strips are) and stick to the widest edge of your template.
3. Wrap round and round (dab a little more glue every few turns) until all the paper has been wound up and is securely stuck down.
4. Coat them with a layer of Modge Podge or varnish and leave to dry.
Thread them onto ribbon, twine, string, etc to make jewellery or beaded curtains or bead bunting. 🙂
Here’s Gracie.
It’s a cat’s life, eh?
This is a picture of a tealight house in my garden. I love the grassy seed heads growing wild around it – so delicately pretty. Look at the gorgeous shadows they cast on the white roof.
And here:
Beatrice.
Probably going back to the hive for some breakfast 🙂
The bees also love this purple flower. I think it’s Purple Toadflax.The bees like it and that means it earns its keep in the garden. I have patches of clover and lawn daisies galore (love, love love lawn daisies) that the bees love even more than I do, so they stay, too.
The Hydrangeas are starting to outrageously burst out in riots of hot pinks around the garden front and back. Mine are huge and become massive bushes of colour. They are gloriously ostentatious, enjoy being centre of attention. No modesty whatsoever. They would show their knickers through the letterbox if you let them 🙂
I also have Petunias, Honeysuckle, Fuscias, Campanulas, Sweet William, succulents, Hebes and loads of others that I cannot name.
Hebes – coming into flower.
I tidied the sewing room and found several pieces that I’d done on linen that were too small to do anything sizeable with but too charming (IMHO) 🙂 to throw away. Like this one:
Simple stitches – Fly Stitch, Running Stitch and, my all-time dimensional favourite, the French Knot. The wooden spool had some fancy twine on it once and was a nice thing to keep but very plain once the twine was used up. Now it has a delightful hand-stitched linen wrap – and doesn’t it look well?
I’ll be doing something similar for this smaller one. I enlarged the hole to sit the scissors in:
**Update**
I was contacted by somebody telling me that the bee is a Wool Carder. I’m not sure but there is a biodiversity site in Ireland asking for sightings of this bee so I’ll send a pic and a few details and find out. Úna FitzPatrick at ufitzpatrick@biodiversityireland.ie
I had a large stash of fabric so made a quick pincushion. The original pattern for the pincushion had a circular base and top but attaching the sides to circles was too frustrating to be bothered with.
I made a quick octagonal template in Illustrator and fitted the sides to octagonal top and base. This makes it much easier to sew.
Here’s the template for the octagonal pincushion: Octagonal Flower Pincushion PDF
No instructions with the PDF but you can follow the steps below; it’s not complicated.
1. Sew the sides together along their lengths, press seams out then clip so that they curve easily.
2. Sew the petals right sides together two at a time leaving the straight edge open. Clip their curved edges and snip off the tip at the point of the petal.
3. Turn out and press.
4. Pin a petal to the top of each side panel, right side of petal to the right side of the panel, facing down.
5. Line up the seam allowances and stitch each side panel to each side of the octagon top.
6. Do the same with the base but leave an opening to turn the pin cushion right-side out.
7. Stuff then hand stitch (ladder stitch is great for tidy seams) together.
Am very happy with it.
Then I made a few other bits and bobs: a couple of hearts with some left over trim. The house is a sewing case inspired by Tilda.
A Tilda-inspired hedgehog just waiting for paws.
There’s no disputing the tenacity of these weeds. Their taproots go down to the devil’s doorstep, I swear. Yet how delicate and pretty are those seedheads? Pure fluffy white bobbles of loveliness. But those bobbles blow off…
I cut them with lovely full seedheads and give them a good shhuzzhh of hairspray and pop them in a little teapot for display.
Dandelions are prolific, too but I refuse to use any form of chemical weed killer. Just more contamination. I try to do my bit to encourage some bio-diversity in my garden. Bee, butterfly and insect-friendly flowers and shrubs with a small area uncultivated for ground-burrowing bees. There’s also a small clump of nettles reserved for butterflies to lay their eggs.
Changing the subject, last night I went to see the legendary and wonderful Jerry Fish.
Next week am going to see Further Ted and there’s to be a Lovely Girls Competition! I’ll be practicing my lovely laugh all week.
Right now I’m sitting here with a home made facepack (Rose Water and Glycerine, Castor Oil, Multani Mitti (Fullers Earth but sounds much more exotic in Hindi) with Aloe Vera gel. Very attractive! A contender for the Lovely Girls Competition???
Now for a shower and shampoo. This party’s over. I’m going home.
No More Mondays 