Congratulations to Tammy Hempel, lucky number 37 and winner of the Design Dye starter kit! Thanks as well to everyone else who entered. I hope you will all check out Design Dye if you get a chance. Want to pick up a starter kit of your own, grab all the links and the information here in the review!

This week’s featured Etsy shop is Drops of Color. Drops of Color specializes in custom made baby mobiles and other home décor accessories. Each mobile is made to order and they’ll match it to your nursery colors and tastes. The choices of mobile themes are amazing–each set is handmade from felt and completely adorable. Whether you like owls, sea creatures, superheroes, monsters, or even Mario, there’s a mobile perfect for your baby. Check them all out in the shop.

As always, I love suggestions for shops I should check out. Leave me a comment or drop me an email if you have one.

The giveaway is almost over! You’ve got only 24 hours left to enter the Design Dye Giveaway! (Click here to read and enter!) If you’ve already entered, then check out some of the  new tutorials over on the blog. There’s one all about color mixing in complex designs–the way they created this adorable balloon loving robot. And there’s one all about how to print using natural materials. Both are great walkthroughs on how to achieve different techniques with the Design Dye.

Jonty Hurwitz sculpts like you’ve never seen before. Each of his pieces is mathematically calculated to produce an image only when viewed in a specific reflection. He uses computers to scan an item, then distorts it using special algorithms. The final pieces are then created and placed next to special view cylinders that allow the original image to be seen. Talk about not judging a book by its cover–these sculptures look almost nothing like their final image. This one is called “Rejuvenation” and represents the desire for youth and vitality instilled in our culture. You can see more of his work here. Check it out!

Kickstarter is a great way for people with great ideas to get them out there. Robot Brigade, for instance, is a robotics company working on some pretty interesting products (robotic cookie cutting anyone?). And they’re using Kickstarter to gather support for their D.Bug Model Kits. D.Bug Models are made by soldering together electronic components. What is a D.Bug you ask? Why it’s what makes software programs malfunction! They come in three varieties: Watch Dog, Grand Cappy, and Memory Hog. You can read more about all of them here!

More art, less craft today, but I felt like Tamara Phillips‘s art is too beautiful not to share. Her medium is watercolor, but what sets her images apart is the unique use of repetitive patterns instead of solid colors. Each painting displays a unique blend of nature and humanity in a color palette that elevates it from everyday to magical, like the . The influence of scientific thought is also visible in many pieces, inspired by her degree in biology and her love of the natural world. You can read more about her or see more of her paintings on her site.

Spotted on TheMAG.

This week’s featured Etsy shop is Nemki. Nemki is based out of England and sells illustrated accessories. What does that cover? Everything from baby bibs to coffee mugs to iPhone cases. Nemki artist Namie claims most of her inspiration comes from the natural world and it’s visible in the subject matter. Whether you prefer a cute llama tote bag or (my personal favorite) this adorable sloth mug, the beautiful quality of the prints on the items will be appreciated. Check out everything in the shop.

Are you tired of seeing this message, reminding you that your shop could be featured here? Well then, link me to your shop so I can check it out.

Gourds are always a popular canvas for different craft projects. But I’ve never seen anything like Polish artist Przemek Krawczy?ski’s carved gourd lamps. Each lamp is unique, hand carved, and has a halogen bulb inside that projects the designs onto nearby surfaces. This is beyond a clever lighting fixture and into the realm of art pieces. As the Calabarte site explains, “Creating gourd lamps requires patience and precision at every stage of the work – to begin with shaping the idea in my mind, initial sketches, outlining the pattern, and, finally, the processing of the gourd: engraving, painting, shaping, puncturing and refining the pattern till the base is ready and the lamp can be finally formed. It takes from 1,5 to 2 months to create a single lamp.” That kind of dedication makes the finished product even more amazing. You can see all the beautiful examples here.

Spotted on inthralled.

This week’s Etsy shop of the week is LanaBella. LanaBella carries bath and body products made with organic herbs, including soap, shampoo bars, perfume, bath salts and etc. But what really made this shop stand out? They sell artisanal teas. Tea blending is craft of its own and difficult one to master (no matter what they say at certain chain stores). Personally, I like the sound of the simpler summer blend. But you can check out all of the different blends in the shop.

Think you’ve got a shop worth sharing? Let me know!

I’m sure the name Craftsman rings a bell–if not, you probably haven’t been in the power tools section of a store lately. But you may not have heard about what Craftsman has been doing lately, a wonderful thing the call the “Make a Difference” Tour. They’ve set out to inspire Americans to break out their tools and help their communities by setting an example. Their goal is to travel around the country and renovate veteran’s homes and help rebuild communities in need. And you can help them out by volunteering! Check out all the ways to help and check out how they’re doing here.

As promised, here is your chance to get your hands on a Design Dye Basic Fabric Kit, just like the one I reviewed (missed that? Check it out here and here). The Basic Fabric kit includes everything you need to begin dyeing fabric and creating awesome projects!

To win, leave a comment on this page telling me what kind of projects you’ll make with it. One winner will be chosen at random. You must have a valid US mailing address to win. Giveaway ends May 19th at Midnight PST.

Good luck everyone!

Yesterday, I told you all about the basics of Design Dye. Today? I’m going to tell you about all the cool things beyond the basic “this paper dyes fabric!” excitement. Because Design Dye isn’t just a one trick pony–it’s got some cool features I didn’t expect.

Design Dye is reusable. Yup, each of those cut outs can be used again–at least twice. Of course, the color intensity is a little less depending on how bright your first print was, but they can be printed up to 3 times before recharging. And to recharge? Just place your cutout, dye side down, on a second sheet of dye, cover with tissue and iron. You can also put dye on something that isn’t a cut out using that method, like a feather, leaves, or doilies.

I used all of the flowers from the tests and printed them repeatedly on fabric to create an all over design. Because each layer of dye is slightly transparent, the flowers get darker where they over lap.

You can use the transparency to layer colors and create any shade you wish. Design Dye comes in eight shades but you can mix those shades by printing multiple colors one over the other.

In this case, I printed the red flower first and the yellow and blue ones second. If you’re going to properly layer colors, you want to print the lightest color first and work your way up to the darkest. Because I printed the yellow second, the orange isn’t as visible as the purple. Another interesting facet of this technique is the way the first layer of dye stains your second cutouts, using the same principals as recharging.

Reprinting the cutouts I used in the dye layering print resulting in fun multicolor prints of my flower. The Design Dye website has tutorials and ideas that build upon this method to create all sorts of cool designs.

The website also recommends using your paper cutting tools to cut the dye sheets. Which made me curious–how detailed and small a design can the dye handle? Breaking out my trusty die cutter, I picked a fairly small design with a lot of detailed edges–a one inch bird from the Tim Holtz collection. And the Design Dye? Printed beautifully.

All in all, I was pretty impressed with the Design Dye’s capability. I feel like its definitely a good product for beginner use–there’s barely any learning curve and results are instantaneous. With no messy clean up or need for complicated materials and processes, it’d be a great choice for projects with kids of all ages (so long as there was a lot of supervision with the ironing).  On the other hand, it’s not a product I’d ignore as a seasoned crafter either. I feel like there’s a lot of possibilities for inclusion in mixed media and other fabric art projects. Many collages utilize writing and I’d love to see someone utilize all of the available die cut fonts to create some beautiful prints.  I know I’ll be keeping an eye out for more cool projects using the Design Dye.

Ready to try it? You can pick up your starter kit on the Design Dye website. Or you could check back tomorrow.

It’s a lot of great stuff in a single kit, enough to create lots of different designs. It’s also great to have everything you need in a single kit, instead of purchasing it bit by bit. The Design Guide is full of easy to understand directions and ideas. The great thing about it being a paper-like product is how easy it is to start using. If you’ve got scissors, an iron, and an idea, you’re ready to go.

To get a feel for how the Design Dye would work, I punched out a handful of flowers and cut up some squares of different fabrics. The Design Dye guide suggests using Polyester or synthetic materials to achieve optimal results, which was surprising considering most dyes work best on natural fibers. Curious to see what the difference was, I chose four fabrics in different colors and materials and prepared samples with the included prep spray and without. The prep spray is easy to use–simply spray and wait for it to dry (or use a hair dryer if you’re impatient like me). I marked my samples so I’d know which ones were treated, but it wasn’t necessary as the spray acts as a stiffener.

The guide suggests creating a stiff but firm surface by stacking newspapers. Not sure if it’s a necessary measure if you’re working on an ironing board or not, but it worked well on my table. With the design cut out dye side down, you cover it with a piece of the ironing tissue and press for 30 seconds while moving the iron continuously.

I tried the sample fabric included in the kit, but thirty seconds wasn’t enough for my sample. The gradient effect was pretty cool, but since it wasn’t what I was going for, I replaced the cutout and ironed for another fifteen seconds or so. Once I had the knack of it, the rest went super fast. Seeing your results immediately, without waiting for it to dry, is fabulous.

Within 10 minutes, I had all my samples done. As you can see above, the dye took best on the treated white poly/cotton blend. Treating the fabric with the prep spray made a huge difference. Even the treated 100% cotton looked brighter than the untreated polyester fabrics. And I love how the dye maintains a level of transparency, so prints show through your designs.

Overall, the product was super fast to learn to use. Set up was almost nonexistent and it would have been a great craft to do with children. The longest part of the process was drying the fabric after treating it. The hardest was choosing a design. Overall, I was pleased with the results. The color and strength of the outline was just as good as using liquid dye and so much easier to control and clean up.

But Design Dye isn’t just for printing simple shapes on fabric. Check back tomorrow to see what else it can do!

Ready to get your hands on it? Buy it here!

If you’ve been in the ribbon aisle at a craft store lately, you know how many different colors, sizes, styles, and themes there are nowadays. But as I often as I want to buy it, I usually have no idea what to do to show off such pretty ribbons. Thankfully, Nalan’in Hobileri has a great tutorial for making a ribbon topiary, a perfect display of those ribbons. The tutorial is completely in Turkish, but the photos are beautiful and easy to understand and with the help of Google translate you can read anything you don’t understand.

A few weeks ago the nice folks over at Uncommon Goods contacted me and offered me the chance to review their new Kantha Blankets. The Kantha Blankets are handmade in India, by workers who are protected under the fair trade practices. Each blanket is made from vintage cotton saris that are cut into strips and sewn together using traditional stitching methods that are passed down from mothers to daughters for generations.

So I already loved the premise of the Kantha Blankets–continuing traditions and helping bring those traditions into the present by sharing them through the internet. But getting to see this in person is amazing. The Kantha blankets are so different from anything you could pick up in stores right now. They have history. You can see it in the material; these are vintage pieces and they’ve been patched and stitched back together. But there is a beauty in that. As the tag says, the Kantha blanket is like a diary, it tells a story of the life that this fabric has seen. I love that each stitch is different, that the patterns on the saris make each blanket unique. White thread binds the layers together, without batting in between creating a medium weight blanket. The white stitching also highlights the beautiful coloring of the fabric and unifies the different patterns and motifs into a single quilt. The vintage nature of the upcycled cotton also means it’s incredibly soft straight out of the box. I would consider this more of an art blanket, but it’s also functional. The dimensions of each blanket are slightly different, but are roughly 91″ by 60″, almost a standard twin size blanket, although I feel it would work well as a throw blanket also.

The Kantha blanket is an opportunity, made possible by the people at Uncommon Goods, to receive a piece of textile art that you might otherwise never have had the chance to buy. There’s a magic in opening the box to find an heirloom quality item with a history of its own. Whether displayed at the foot of bed, over a sofa, or on a wall, the Kantha blanket is sure to make a statement.

Want one for yourself? You can check them out on the Uncommon Goods website.

(As stated above, I was sent the blanket for the purpose of review, but all opinions expressed in this post are my own.)