Rockler Must-Haves For Every DIYer

Remember this picture from way back in January when I said we were starting our remodeling?

This is what it looks like now.

I don’t know about you, but when you are putting up a new wall, drilling holes for electrical, hanging drywall, sanding down the mud and tape, and laying tile, then remodeling = a big mess.

Thankfully, The DIY Club and Rockler had something to help us out immensely. This Large Aluminum Dust Pan.

I wish I had pictures of how much we used this guy (measuring 16'' wide X 10'' Deep X 2 - 1/2'' High). He really was one of my best friends because he held so much and made cleanup faster and easier.

One of the additions we included in our new wall were these oak French doors.

My incredibly talented dad made them in his shop, Cabnicon.

One of the coolest tools he used to help him out were these Bench Cookies that also came from Rockler.

The have this rubberized material that keeps wood from sliding around, so you can use a router without having to hold the wood at the same time.

Definitely simplifying the process, and eliminating a safety hazard of trying to simultaneously hold the wood and machinery by yourself.

With over 15,000 products, Rockler is sure to have what you need for your DIY needs. They sure helped me!

I know I keep teasing you with parts of our remodeling. Stay tuned, I promise more is to come!!

PhotoShop Tutorial: Headswaps and Other Photo Fixes

First thank you so much everyone who has participated in my “getting to know you” post. It’s been fun so far as I’ve been browsing each of your blogs and reading more about you. Be patient with me, I’m still working on visiting all of you, and I’m seriously loving it! You guys are so awesome!!

In case you missed me over at Shwin & Shwin last week, I shared a tutorial on headswaps and other photo fixes.

Example:

For pictures with children, I mostly just want everyone looking at the camera. However, my daughter is sitting on grandpa’s lap, picking her nose. Cute, right? It’s easy enough to swap out.

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Or what if you have a cute photo, but someone’s face is shadowed. Using the same photo, I was able to swap out the shadowed face for a lighter one.

And this is one I always get: eyes are closed. Guess what?! You can swap those out as well.

All three of these techniques were done using the lasso tool, a layer mask, and a photo blending brush. It might seem like a lot of steps right now, but I promise it is really easy and only takes a few minutes. Ready to learn how? Let’s get started.

First we need to make our brush. Select your brush tool (shortcut, hit B), and choose “Airbrush Soft Round 300”

We need to make the following changes to this brush. You need to have your Brushes palette showing. You can do this by going up to Window and making sure Brushes has a checkmark next to it. (shortcut F5).

Highlight “Brush Tip Shape” and get all your settings like so:

Then highlight “Other Dynamics” and set like so:

Click the boxes next to “Noise”, “Airbrush”, and “Smoothing” to place check marks next to them. Your final settings should look like this. Make sure other boxes aren’t checked that shouldn’t be.

We need to save this brush so we don’t have to make it ever again. At the bottom of the brushes palette, click on the square button next to the garbage can.

Give it a unique name that will help you remember what it is and click OK. I called mine “Photo Blending”.

Now that our brush is made, we really are ready to go. Open the photo that needs editing as well as the photo that we are going to steal body parts from. In my case I started with these two photos. The first one is the one I’m going to edit, and the second one is the photo I’m going to get her eyes from.

Working with the second photo, select your Lasso Tool (the one that looks like a cowboy lasso, shortcut L). Select the desired area by dragging your lasso around it like so, in my case I need her eyes.

Using your Move Tool (main arrow, shortcut V), drag the selected area to your other photo (the one we are editing).

Go ahead and minimize your 2nd photo. We don’t need it anymore. Move the selected area over the desired location. Now we need to line it up, make sure it’s the right size, etc. The best way I’ve found to do this is working with my zoom and opacity.

I zoomed in 50% and adjusted my opacity to 66%. I had to resize and move mine around a bit, but I used her eyebrows and nose as a guideline to line everything up.

If you were fortunate to be able to steal body parts from another picture that had the exact same lighting, then you can skip this next step. Notice how mine are different colors. I need to fix that, so down in my layers palette make sure that your body part is selected (my new eyes). Then go ahead and change your opacity back to 100%, but stay zoomed in.

Then I’m going to go up to the menu and select “Image”, “Adjustments”, “Brightness/Contrast”.

Play around with the brightness and contrast until you think it matches well enough. I adjusted my brightness +51 and left my contrast the same.

Next we are going to blend the two parts together with a layer mask and our photo blending brush. In your layers palette make sure layer of the body part selection is highlighted and click on the button at the bottom that looks like a square with a circle in it.

Then we need to select our brush tool and choose our “Photo Blending” brush. My diameter was bigger than I needed, so I changed mine to 89 px.

Make sure your foreground color is set to black and begin taking your brush along the edges to blend. Here’s mine about halfway done to give you an idea.

Keep using your brush until it’s completely blended, and then you are done! Save the file as a .jpeg and you have a new edited picture!!!

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Sharing….You and Me

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about my blog. It’s hard not to compare and beat yourself up at times. Yesterday I had the amazing opportunity to meet with Tauni, PR genius and co-founder of Creative Estates Conference (amongst many other incredible things). We were discussing my thoughts and she got me thinking,

 “What do I want from my blog?”

Basically, it comes down to what I like the most about blogging are the relationships I build and the friendships I make.

I really want to get to know you my readers. I’ve been fortunate to meet some of you IRL (in real life) and have enjoyed that immensely. I realize that I can’t meet all of you in person, but I would still like to develop friendships with you the best I can through this blog, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I like to share projects I’ve made with you because it’s an outlet for me, of sorts, to reach out to others. Remember when you were a little kid and you were so excited to show your mom and dad anything you made. I guess I’m still like that. So I truly LOVE, LOVE, LOVE when I post something and you guys share your feedback with me. It makes my day more than you will ever know. But I realize that I need to do a better part about reaching out to you and actually connecting.

Therefore, I’m going to start something new. I’ll share something with you about me, then I REALLY want you to share back. Kind of like we are having a “getting to know you” conversation.

To kick things off, I’ll tell you a few things about myself.

This is my family on two days ago on Easter Sunday.

My name is Tam, short for Tamarynn. I’ve been married to my husband, Dan for almost 9 years. We have two daughters, Kennedy (5) and Taylor (4), one son Carson (22 months), and another boy coming in about 10 weeks.

We live in the Salt Lake City, Utah area. I’m originally from the sunny St. George, Utah area, but moved away when I went to college, met my husband, and he dragged me to the cold after we graduated 8 years ago. I’ve been trying to acclimate ever since and still struggle with the snow. Before I had children I was an accountant. Now I get to be a SAHM and love every difficult minute of it!

I’ll limit it to that for now. I’ll share more in the future, but now I want to get to know YOU!

If you read this, please leave a comment telling me what your blog is. I want to come visit you and get to know you better. If you want to leave a tidbit of info about you as well, that would be great! Help me get to know you better, any way I can. I would really appreciate it.

And as always, thanks for reading! You guys rock!!!

Spring T-Shirt w/DecoArt Paint

I almost made my kids Easter t-shirts, then realized they would only get to wear them once or twice, so this year I made “Spring” t-shirts instead.

Even though it was in the 40’s this weekend, my girls wore them to their Easter egg hunt.

I started out with a plain t-shirt from Target that I got for $4. Then used the shape organic_flowers_C00398_19547 from Silhouette and the font Elise for the word “spring”.

I used freezer paper with my Silhouette to cut out my stencil with the blue cap, speed 8, and thickness 9. Mirror your image before printing and place the freezer paper with the shiny side up on the green cutting mat.

**If you don’t have a cutting machine, an exacto knife would work just as well**.

I actually split my image into two stencils so it would be easier to paint. This is the first stencil ironed on to the t-shirt.

Then I grabbed all my paint colors as well as a fabric painting medium by DecoArt.

Mix the paint with the fabric painting medium in a 2:1 ratio, then start painting.

After several thin coats, peel your stencil away.

Then iron on the second stencil and paint again.

Again after multiple thin coats, remove the freezer paper and allow the paint to dry 24-48 hours.

The directions on the fabric painting medium bottle suggest washing the garment inside out on the gentle cycle at this point. Then voila! a quick, easy, and inexpensive spring t-shirt!!!

Just as a reminder: you have until tomorrow April 26th to get the special Rhinestone Bundle from Silhouette for only $229!!!

And if you already have a Silhouette, grab the Rhinestone Starter Kit for only $34.99 by using code “DANGCUTE”.

Imaginisce i-Rock Collection Package Winner

The winner of the Imaginisce i-Rock Collection package is…

Who is:

Congratulations Kirsten! Please contact me to claim your prize (sewdangcute@gmail.com).

Thanks Imaginisce for a fun blog hop and giveaway!

Shabby Spring Rag Quilt

I’ve got a new tutorial for you today over at Moda Bake Shop.

One of my dear friends had her first baby girl (after 5 boys), so I made her sweet little baby Esther this rag quilt.

I couldn’t come up with a name, so I threw it out there to you guys on Facebook.

Thank you Kristy Hudson Nelson for coming up with “Shabby Spring”. It fits perfectly!!!

Full tutorial (originally appeared here on Moda Bake Shop April 22, 2011)

Rag quilts are so great because you can do so many things with them and finish them without actually "quilting".

* 1 Layer Cake (I used Chez Moi's beautiful Hunky Dory line)

* 1 Jelly Roll * 1/4 yard coordinating fabric (my blue)

* 1/2 yard coordinating fabric (my cream)

* Warm and natural batting

* Coordinating thread(s)

* Ruffle foot (not necessary, but definitely makes things easier)

Any desired appliques.

1. The first thing we need to do is cut our fabric. To make things a little easier to understand, I've included a diagram of our pattern.

- Select 12 layer cakes and cut into 1/4's to make (48) 5"x5" squares - (B) in the pattern.

- Select 10 layer cakes for your big squares (A) and several others for appliques if doing any.

- Cut jelly roll strips into (16) 10" pieces - (E) in the pattern, except the center square. (I used 2 jelly roll and 2 layer cakes: pink and blue).

- Cut (7) 2 1/2" strips from the 1/2 yard coordinating fabric (my cream). From those strips, cut (16) 13" pieces and (4) 10" pieces - (D) in the pattern, except the center square, and (E) of the center square.

- Cut (2) 2 1/2" strips from the 1/4 yard coordinating fabric (my blue). From those strips, cut (2) 13" pieces - (D) of the center square.

- Select 8 different jelly roll strips and cut (64) 5" pieces from those - (C) in the pattern.

Now that you are done cutting, you should have something similar to this. Remember you are making both the top and back of the quilt, so you'll need to arrange your pattern with this in mind. Here's how mine looks (top shown).

2. Let's start with (B). Cut (24) 3 3/4" x 3 3/4" squares of warm and natural batting. Layer one (B) wrong side down, then one piece of warm and natural, followed by one (B) right side up. Stitch from corner to corner as seen in the photo below to form an "X" and create your fabric sandwich. You don't need to worry about backstitching when doing these. Repeat to form 24 (B) squares. I have found the fastest way to do this is by doing a chainstitch. Line all your squares up diagonally and stitch corner to corner in one direction. Then simply clip between each sandwich and line them all up again to stitch from the other corner to corner. 3. Let's move on to (A). Cut (5) 8 3/4" x 8 3/4" squares of warm and natural batting. Layer the fabric and batting as you did in step 2. If you are using appliques, apply those to your top square piece. I used my Silhouette and their fabric interfacing, which was fabulous. Stitch down your appliques through the entire sandwich, or stitch an "X" as you did in step 2 if you aren't using appliques. I used invisible thread to make it easier for me, rather than changing my thread multiple times. And this is how it looks from the back side. Repeat to form the (5) A pieces. 4. Cut (32) 3 3/4" x 1 1/4" strips of warm and natural batting for your (C) pieces. Sandwich in the same manner. Instead of forming an "X", I chose to simply stitch one line down the middle of the strip to create my sandwich. Repeat to make 32 (C) strips. Again, don't backstitch and I highly recommend doing a chainstitch to make things faster. 5. Cut (10) 11 3/4" x 1 1/4" strips of warm and natural batting for your (D) pieces. Sandwich and stitch together as you did the strips in step 4, with a single stitchline down the center. Repeat to create your 10 (D) strips.

6. Cut (10) 8 3/4" x 1 1/4" strips of warm and natural batting for your (E) pieces. Sandwich and stitch together, again just like in step 4, with a single stitch line down the center. Repeat to create your 10 (E) strips.

7. Now we get to sew all our sandwiches together. This is where you want to grab your walking foot if you have one.

The walking foot makes it so the fabric is fed through evenly and you avoid bunching - great for when you are working with numerous layers of fabric! Grab three of your (B) squares. *Note: You can do a larger or smaller seam, depending how much fringe you want. I chose to do a 1/2" seam for this rag quilt. Using 1/2" seams, sew the back sides of the quilt together, so the seam is sticking out on the top side of the quilt. Using the same method of sewing back sides together, sew another three (B) squares together and eight (C) strips to create three rows. Then sew those three rows together to form one big block. Repeat with the other 3 blocks that are this style. For the other five blocks, we are going to sew two (E) strips to one (A) square first, then two (D) strips to create one big block. Repeat for the other four of this style. Sew three of the big blocks together to form a row. Repeat to create three big rows. Then sew those three big rows together and stitch around the entire perimeter of the quilt. You are done sewing! 8. Grab a good pair of scissors and a great movie and begin clipping all of those seams that are sticking up. Just keep clipping away until every seam has been clipped. 9. Toss the blanket in the washer, then dryer and be sure to clean out your filters afterwards. You are now done and have a beautiful rag quilt!!! Here's how it looks from the back.

One rag quilt 36" x 36".