This is my third and last
presentation this semester so let me present
my hobbies. Today you will learn how to create something from nothing with
minimal effort and skills.
You may ask why I chose it as a
hobby, the answer is quite simple: for me the best presents are those which are
handmade, because they show that a person which made them and then gave them to
you made an effort and took time to do it. Besides, you are the only person in
the world who has that handmade thing :)
Decoupage
Difficulty: easy.
This is a technique of decorating almost every surface (wood, metal,
glass, fabric, ceramics or plastic ) with fragment of the pattern cut from the
napkin or special rice paper. (to be honest normal paper is good to - you just
have to use more glue :) ) Covered surface will look like a painted one. In my opinion
it is quite easy and probably in every house you can find tools to decoupage. If
you are interested in the topic here is a simple tutorial how to create a bookmark
from things you probably have within your reach :)
You will need:
1. A piece of ‘hard/technical’ paper. A cover of a notebook is good
enough, but a cloth tag is great for it, because in most cases it is in a good
shape and you do not have to cut it.
2. Scissors. If you do not have it
you can tear up the pattern.
3. Glue for paper (if you do not have it look for an egg - the white of
an egg is good glue!)
4. A napkin with the desired pattern - if you do not have a nice napkin
you can print some pattern on normal paper.
5. Lacquer for preservation of the pattern. If you do not have such
thing look for a colorless nail polish. If you do not have that either don’t
worry it is not so much important.
How to:
1. Cut from piece of the technical paper your desired shape of bookmark
or take your cloth tag and remove price tags - surface of it should be clean.
2. Cut or tear some pattern from the napkin or the piece of paper which
you had printed.
3. Glue the pattern to the base!
4. If you have lacquer you can use it to preserve the pattern. Usually you will have to put
about 3-5 layers of it to your decoupage to make it completely waterproof - it
is important if you are decoupaging glasses or any ceramic things - because sooner or later probably you will
want to wash it and still have you
pattern on it:)
Another decoupage examples:
Scrapbooking
Difficulty: normal
In my opinion this is a kind of decoupage but for different purposes -
it is creating cards or photo albums from pieces of patterned fabric and a lot
of imagination. Creating it is quite simple but I think it takes much more time
and talent to make something nice. I love buying for my family cards created by
scrapbookers! Please take a look at these little pieces of art:
Polymer clay
Difficulty: hard/nightmare
I know you could be surprised that I put “playing” with polymer clay on
such high level of difficulty, but keep in mind that I’m not saying about
creating suns and trees like in the kindergarten, but about real pieces of
miniature art. So working with clay is really nightmare - you have to be really
precise and know some tips and tricks to make your art realistic.
Please take a look at this: (I have chosen a picture which shows you how
little these things are...)
You may ask what for? What for should I create this little inedible
food? Some artists create jewelry from it:
Others are decorating phone boxes, headphone cases, etc…
Here is a tutorial how to make miniature bread and baguette.
1. Do you like handmade things? Or do you think they are only a waste of
time?
2. Have you ever done anything by yourself? Did you enjoy it or was it a
nightmare? (Things like "laurka" for your parent still count :) )
3. Do you know any other examples of handmade stuff?
4. Maybe you can sew or knit? Share your experience!
Comments
Basically I love the idea of handmaking anything, from bread to furniture. It gives you so much freedom and you can customize things as much as you need to. I can't say I have great manual skills, but I do like sewing - something which I discovered quite recently. It's so fun to make something just the way you imagined it. And it saves lots of money too ^^
Funny fact I heard from a friend, before medival people believed that every craftsman put part of their soul to make things they crafted unique.
Ofcourse! I love giving a handmade gifts. Imho this is the best type of gifts, that are really personalized and you have an opportunity to get perfect gift for diffrent occassions.
Im am not really into backstage of handmade staff. I've got two left hands so... But i like thos tiny things :P
I hated those lessons in elementary school when they told us to do some useless stuff ourselves. But on the other side when you give something you made yourself as a present, that’s a great thing. In such occasions it doesn’t matter how pretty (or ugly in my case) it is. It just shows how much you care about that person.
Definitely it is not waste of time for people who have passion and simply love it.
I did laurka or even two long, long time ago but recently I had no opportunity to show my creativity to the world… :) but my girlfriend is doing decoupage stuff every day.
Here simple example: click (is there any way to put images in comments?)
So if somebody need a pair of strange shoes or earings I will deliver :D