thehobbydujour-blog

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Burn Baby Burn: Wood Burning

When I was searching through ideas to refinish my coffee table (yes - I have been bitten by the restoration bug!) I came across the technique of wood burning. This lead to a deep spiral of instagram videos and youtube videos of the technique that kept me occupied for the next two hours. The technique is mesmerizing, and if you’ve never seen woodburning done, I would recommend taking the time now to scroll through the #woodburning hashtag on Instagram. Or, specifically, checkout @pyrocrafters Instagram page, which features a lot of videos of their work in progress.

I’ve always loved the aesthetic of wood. My grandfather retired when I was still in diapers, and took up woodworking as a hobby, so I long remember playing in his shop as he sanded down the edges of his latest work. He was a master craftsman in woodwork - his pieces were precise, the designs intricate and complex, and his finishes were flawless. It as a patience and a dedication to the art of woodworking that I can only hope to find one day in a hobby. But the smell of freshly cut wood, how it feels after it’s sanded and the design of the wood grain are all things that I connect with him, which is why I love incorporating wood pieces and details into my home.

Wood Burning was a new, unfounded technique for me, but seemed simple enough. After scrolling through Instagram and Youtube for a few hours, I decided to take on one of the simpler projects: Wood Burning detail and personalization on wooden cooking spoons. I had two close friends that had both recently moved, and pairing these with a bottle of wine seemed to be a great housewarming gift. So I headed to my local craft store to purchase what I needed.

I chose an inexpensive beginners tool that some of the videos recommended (THIS!) and found a pack of wooden spoons to practice on. My new fancy wood burning Tool heated up to 950° F and included 4 different Points to “draw” or burn with as well as a Tool Stand to keep the tool from catching my place on fire. I really, truly encourage all readers who are interested in this method to practice this craft with caution: The tool gets incredibly hot and you want to avoid any fires, burns, or injuries by using caution and preparing appropriately.

First thing I noticed is that wood burning is trickier than it looks. I imagine certain types of wood, their treatment, and their smoothness affect the draw of the wood burning tool. My first spoon, the lines were a little choppy, my tool getting caught in the grains of the wood and some of my burns were too deep. So I made sure that one cooled completely, then I threw it in the trash. My second attempt was much more successful, I had gained a little perspective on using the tool and attempted my design with gentler touch. Success! I had drawn on a Harry Potter themed design for my Ravenclaw friend, and it was completely safe to cook with and use considering no paints or dyes were used in it’s creation.

I’d like to continue to practice this craft a little more and get a little dexterity and further complexity in the art. I think I may need to invest in a higher end tool - I think my current selection has its limits. In addition, I think I need to be more selective with the wood products I use and will likely do a little more research to find out if some types of wood are better to use than others. However, I do think I will try and do a few more spoons for fun on-hand gifts, or even maybe a cutting board for a bridal shower I have coming up. It’s definitely a quick and easy way to personalize something or give a unique and thoughtful gift!

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Blooming: Floral Art

Springtime is a period of rebirth. We all stumble out of our hibernation, relish in the warmer weather, and watch the flowers bloom. And with the fresh feeling of spring and the pretty blossoms it produces, it’s not surprising that many are looking to bring floral art into their homes. Now, flowers are not new decor pieces by any means. From vases of flowers to flower prints and patterns, floral art has brightened our walls and fragranced our homes for years. But this feeling of Spring and rebirth has me looking to bring some new life into my living room.

I become inspired for this week’s hobby du jour off an Instagram post I had seen by an interior decorator I follow. She had set up this beautiful modern and minimalistic living room for client, bright white with neutral tones, it rivaled the style of Chip and Joanna Gaines. But the piece that caught my eye was a wall hanging of wood and rope, accentuated by silk flowers. I instantly loved it, but flinched visibly when I saw how much the piece retailed for. Still I couldn’t help longing for the piece, which triggered those dangerous crafty words - “I could make that.”

I set out for supplies at our local craft store. I found the wooden hoop first and a wooden dowel that would stretch across the hoop’s diameter. I also found a spool of hemp-like rope to loop around the bottom half of the hoop. Lastly, I braved the aisles of the silk flowers. The store I was in had hundreds and hundreds of options, and I spent the majority of the following half hour pulling out sprigs of flowers and trying to match a bouquet. Did I want a pink scheme? Or purple? Does white match or does cream go better? There were many trials, but I finally put together the perfect combo. Color scheme and flowers finally chosen, I headed to the checkout ready to get started.

Using my hot glue gun from home, I attached the wooden dowel to the diameter of the hoop. Using wire cutters, I clipped the silk flowers from their stems and arranged them into a perfect sprawl. Then using my trusty glue gun again, adhered them to the wooden dowel. I let the glue dry for a few minutes, then touched up any flowers that weren’t secure enough. Finally, cutting the rope I purchased into strands, I looped each strand around the bottom of the hoop with a reef knot. The project was surprisingly simple, and I was very pleased to find how realistic the fake flowers looked when the piece was hanging on my wall. In fact, it’s impressed a couple of my house guests in the past few days, and I’ve even had a few requests to make them one as well!

Quick Recommendation: Silk flowers can get expensive very quickly, especially the more realistic ones. Save money with craft store coupons and buying in bulk online!

[thehobbydujour-blog]

Good as New: Restoring Furniture

Disclaimer: I watch a lot of television. Half of the time I’m working on a new hobby, the TV is on in the background. It’s my favorite way to unwind. So it’s not surprising that after a Sunday full of binge watching “Flip or Flop” on HGTV, I decided my hobby du jour would be to restore/flip a piece of furniture.

Now, I decided to encompass both “restoration” and “flipping” into this post, because the work and activity portion of these two hobbies are essentially the same. Restoring furniture is working with an existing piece and utilizing finishing materials to emphasize its appearance or to bring it back to its original quality. Flipping furniture is a term used to describe changing an existing piece utilizing finishing materials and quickly reselling for profit. Flipping often also encompasses the idea of changing the piece in a significant way, either in style or in function.

Luckily, I didn’t have to search the hidden corners of a flea shop to find a hidden treasure to flip into something new, I just had to scrounge through my attic. It’s also a good point in this post to mention that I also have a retail therapy impulse, in addition to my TV addiction. Therefore, I was looking for additional storage for my (ridiculous) amount of clothing. It was just my luck that we had an old wooden dresser in the attic that used to belong in my brother’s nursery. To give you an idea on how long it’s been up there, my brother is now 25-years-old and lives in Texas.

After hauling the dresser downstairs to the garage, I went to our local home improvement store. Furniture restoration requires quite a lot of supplies depending on the situation. In my case - I wanted to paint and refinish the dresser, and add new drawer pulls. Since I was painting, and not staining the wood, I didn’t need stripper to pull off the current stain. But I did need a sander, primer, paint, a top coat, a hammer and nails - to fix the broken drawer, and new drawer pulls.

Sanding down the wood took the most time, as I had to run over the rough spots with a coarse sandpaper first, and then smooth out the whole piece with a finer sandpaper. I cut corners a bit by buying a paint with primer already added, but it also meant I had to do an extra coat or two of paint. I also recommend painting all the tight corners and weird edges first, as it’s easy to smooth out the paint and blend the brushstrokes afterwards with a roller. The rest of the process was fairly straight-forward but all-in-all the process was time consuming. Between sanding, and waiting for each coat to dry fully and waiting for my drawer pulls to come in the mail, my dresser took about a 6 days to finish, and that was with working on it everyday. But the time put into it was fully worth it - all in all I had a brand new dresser for about $45. I couldn’t be any more pleased with the result, and the new piece brightens up my bedroom exponentially!

And yes - for you Doctor Who fans out there - the dresser is Tardis blue :)

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Sunday Strip: Cartooning

This week’s Hobby du Jour is brought to you by a pencil, paper, and very large animated eyes. Cartooning is a vast and rich world of illustration, encompassing character drawings, scenic images, and action strips. And cartoons are a daily presence of graphic art in our lives: from the Sunday Comic Strip to cartoon television shows, from t-shirts to memes, cartooning is everywhere.

I have dabbled in the past with sketching and drawing - everyone pretty much has. It’s the basis of our art classes when we are young. Our parents ask us to color them pictures, or to draw the way we see something. I’ve found that, as an artist, if I’m going into a sketch with a vague idea and shape it as I go along, I’m pleasantly surprised by the result. But if I go into a sketch knowing exactly how I want it to look in my head, I’m usually setting myself up for failure, which is why the art of cartoons and caricatures have always eluded me.

Every the stubborn Irish-Italian lass, I still persevere, of course. I chose the art of cartooning this week because it creates character and visual prowess to characters from books that we normally would have to use our imagination to see. I am constantly scrolling through fanart of my favorite books and novels on instagram to see other’s interpretations of the characters and certain scenes. I envy the talent of some of these fans - their depictions are clear and crisp, the colors vivid, and the hands realistic and life-like.

That last bit is without a doubt my greatest struggle. I can’t draw hands to save my life. I think that should be Art School 101. If you can draw hands, then you are accepted. Does anyone know why hands are so difficult to draw? I actually googled it, and guess what? I’m not alone! According to Google and the internet, hands are particularly difficult to draw because they are so complex as body parts. Not only do you account for the joints and segments of each finger, you have to account for the pads and flexible portions of the palm, you have to make sure the fingers are uniform with the hand, you have to be conscious about the connection of the wrist, and you have to make sure the hand gesture matches the rest of the cartoon. So like I was saying before, basically, hands are complicated and stupid (okay, they’re not stupid, I just wish I was better and drawing them).

I spend three days sketching and making alterations to my character, an unnamed Hogwarts student that I wanted to sketch out after binge-watching a bunch of Harry Potter movies this weekend. All in all, I’m pretty pleased with the finished result. However, it blows my mind that there are so many artists out there that whip out these character cartoons in such a short amount of time. If you haven’t taken time to search for “Fanart” on Instagram for your favorite book or movie or character, seriously do it. There are amazing cartoon depictions out there. And while I’ll keep sketching and trying my hand at cartooning from time to time, I can easily say that in comparison I am far, far away from mastering this hobby.

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Snapped: Photography

Photography is probably one of our society’s more popular society. It’s likely that you are Facebook friends with someone’s mother who has an entire online album dedicated to her nature photography. With modern technology and a camera on every phone, photography is more widespread than ever. Apple actually has a campaign - Shot on an iPhone - where they feature amature photography in ads, bragging that these amazing images were taken on their iPhones and showcasing the technology behind their superior camera.

But this all brings into question - what constitutes a photographer. There are amature photographers and professional photographers. There is is photography is a profession, as a hobby, and as a commonplace in everyday life. An argument could be made that anybody and everybody is a photographer, or that only professionals are the true photographers. But this could be said for any of the hobbies that I’m trying out - for example, there are those who knit for fun and those that knit as a profession. But photography is so commonplace - you look at anyone’s phone and you’ll see an album full of photos. So how does taking pictures turn into photography?

“If you want to know what someone fears losing, look at what they photograph.” I’m not sure who first said this, the internet is terrible at giving credit where credit is due. But it determines what photography is for me. Snapping a picture is a way of capturing a moment, but photography is a way of sharing an experience. Lighting, composition, color, aperture, and focus are all techniques used by photographers to portray more than a moment. They capture motion and movement, feeling and a story behind the pictures they take.

I’m an ameture photographer at best. I know my way around an iPhone camera and DSLR camera. I know my way around photoshop and filters. I can set up a shot that’s staged, or capture a shot that’s stumbled upon. Photography for me isn’t an art form or a means of living - it’s capturing moments, or places, or people I hold dear to my heart. It’s capturing what I fear losing, and keeping a reminder, forever encased in a photo.

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Missing Peace: Puzzles

This week’s Hobby du Jour is going to make me sound like I’m retired and I have too much time on my hands. Puzzles! Specifically 500+ piece jigsaw puzzles. Now Jigsaw puzzles are not only for the retired community, in fact my favorite holiday tradition is getting a holiday themed one to do Christmas day with the family while we open presents, eat and watch movies. But jigsaw puzzles are popular with older generations because they are a great way to stay creative and engaged in your leisure time. They also help in strengthening your visual memory and improving concentration.

So my goal this week was to complete at least 3 puzzles. One 500 piece puzzle and two 1000 piece puzzles. This was amended to one 500 piece puzzle and one 1000 piece puzzle for the week, because puzzles can be expensive! Jigsaw puzzles at that level range anywhere from $4.99 at discount retailers to $20-30 (there are more expensive puzzle out there, but this was the average price point). I am now considering starting a puzzle exchange within my own family for future puzzling adventures.

Jigsaw puzzles have varying levels of difficulties, depending on the types of pieces, the amount of pieces, and the image/picture they make up. I once got a puzzle for my birthday that was a photographic picture of popcorn. Just popcorn. So literally any piece could have gone anywhere. There was no color coding or matching, no obvious sky pieces. Just popcorn. Needless to say, it collected dust on my shelf until it was donated. While I like a challenge, that is just madness in my opinion.

As for the puzzles I did this week, I did complete both of them. The 1000 piece puzzle was my favorite, it was a scenic photograph of a German village, and it took me a few days to complete. I even had a little help from guests, who refused to leave until they found at least one piece. That’s the nice thing about having a puzzle in your living room - it becomes a community project for family and visitors.

I really am about to encourage everyone I know to have a puzzle constantly rotating on their coffee tables, because they are the best thing to do while watching TV or hanging out each night after work. There is something so soothing about working on a puzzle while watching a show, and it kept my hands and brain busy so I wasn’t absentmindedly scrolling through my phone or laptop. It’s not puzzling to see why so many people enjoy this hobby.

I am aware that was a terrible pun to end this post on. I don’t care, I’m using it anyway ;)

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A Stitch in Time: Embroidery

Maybe it's that inkling feeling we all get in the month of March. Maybe it's the fact that it was 8°F when I walked to my car this morning. But it's official, I'm 100% ready for summer. And so, as a result, I've been spending the majority of my time looking at summer clothes online, day dreaming of vacations and the warm summer sun. One of the clothing trends that has reemerged with panache the past year is embroidered pieces. 

Embroidery is the raised, ornamental threaded design which has been implemented on fabric. Embroidered is detailed, intentional, and time consuming, and the clothing that features embroidery is often more expensive than the items that do not. Which is why I flinched at the price of jean shorts with Polish Folk embroidery on the pockets. And then I said to myself the four words that always get me in trouble. "I could do that."

I must admit, I have attempted embroidery before. In highschool, I was an IB Art student and I focused the majority of my projects on fashion. One of the projects was (2000's fashion alert!) a canvas dress that I had stamped with martini glasses, and I wanted to embroider the olives. So I understood the concept and the execution already, but on a really tiny scale. Undertaking the embroidery pattern I wanted on my shorts would take a little more skill and a lot more patience.I ordered embroidery thread off of Amazon, and used your average sized embroidery needle from my previous attempt. I also found an embroidery hoop on the clearance rack at Joann Fabrics, so I was all set to start stitching!

 I included my progress photos, mainly because this project was not done in one sitting. In fact, it took me a lot longer than I was expecting! For such a tiny design, it required quite a bit of work. Part of the time consuming process was working with the thread pattern and making sure the embroidery was laying correctly. I wanted the threads to elaborate the floral pattern, rather than just fill in the space. It was also a process to secure the threads on the inside of the shorts, to make sure that my beautiful embroidery wouldn't come undone in the wash. I can confidently say that the design came out super cute on the outside, visable section of the shorts, but if you turn them inside out, it's quite a mess! (This is probably why you see most embroidery has a fabric backing that is applied after the fact).

Some afterthoughts: I really enjoyed embroidery, and hope to do future projects because I have a ton of embroidery string left over. But it's much trickier than it looks, and it requires a bit of technique. I found it to be a lot less like general sewing and much more like crochet, where the stitches and the patterns are essential to the appearence of the finish product.

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The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree: Ancestry

Some hobbies require more research than others. I’m afraid to say that most of the time, I’ll watch a few YouTube videos and wing it.  I spent a lot of time researching last week’s hobby du jour, gardening, because I wanted nothing but herbal success from my little seedlings. However, nothing could have prepared me for the EXTENSIVE research I would have had to do for this week’s hobby du jour: recording my family tree. Small disclaimer: This hobby in particular is one of those that people spend YEARS on before it’s even remotely complete. I didn’t have a chance at coming anywhere close to completing my family tree, and I had help. I’ve had other family members help me out with their own research, but that only got me so far (and with only one side). The picture included shows how far I got in my research (on my copy, there’s family information filled out where you see the blocks colored in – privacy purposes!). I found it exceedingly easy to get all the way through my great-grandparents, and then it got incredibly tricky. My Mom’s side is big into genealogy, we’re proud Irish-Italian immigrants. Even so, we even had gaps in our history. The younger end was too young to remember who was missing, and the ones who were old enough to know how to fill them in had a lot of trouble remembering. My dad’s side could rival any classic American Country Club (historically sound, but no intimate details). His side was a hassle and a half trying to track down my direct ancestors. I combed through ancestry reports, social security forms, census reporting’s, marriage records, obituaries, and news articles. It was the latter items that I had surprising success with. The government forms and information were surprisingly sparse, but the marriage records lead me to names, which led me to news articles. Thankfully my father’s family was from a small town, so they were pretty easy to track in local papers. It still amazes me the history I’ve found in my family. I’ve travelled timelines going through the generations, and got a glimpse of what I was made of. Their history is my own, and while this may be the most research-intensive hobby I have yet undertaken, it’s also possibly the most rewarding.

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Two Green Thumbs Up: Gardening

I find gardening very peaceful. Growing up, my family always had a small container of basil that grew in the windowsill that we used for homemade sauce or bruschetta. We would occasionally grow other herbs in the summer, usually either parsley or cilantro. This week, I wanted to try my hand at growing my own herbs. I chose lavender, sage, and rosemary because of their unique nature. Rosemary and sage can be found somewhat easily in the herb section of your grocery store, but they aren't commonly purchased or found in the kitchen. Lavender is almost never found, unless you stumble across it at an organic market. But all of the herbs are trending right now in cooking and cocktails, so I wanted my own source at home. There is something to be said about having your hands in dirt. There is an earthy, calming quality. It's also incredibly messy, especially if you've chosen to plant your herbs in Ball jars. The narrow mouth of the jar made for a horribly messy experience in my kitchen. I'm pretty sure more dirt went on the floor than successfully made it in the jar. I did some research, and the consensus with planting indoors was to fill 1/4 of the jars with rocks and pebbles, then add in the dirt and plants to allow for proper drainage when watering. Over-watering plants can kill the plants quicker than under-watering them, surprisingly. The herbs were relatively low maintenance, and I found spraying them with water more beneficial than the traditional "watering can" method. However, after doing some research on growth rates, I think I probably should have purchased more mature plants to start with. I also don't know how effective the Ball jars are for maximum herb health, I'm pretty sure they are more aesthetically pleasing than effective. But for right now, I take great pride in my little plants. They made me really happy, and the fragrance they emit is a lovely addition to our kitchen.

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Two Chains: Crocheting

The hobby du jour is probably the only hobby I’ve consistently revisited over the years. My grandmother is an expert at crochet, as was her mother. Her rows are even, her chains neat, and her patterns beautiful. So imagine my excitement when my grandmother first attempted to teach me at the age of nine.Crocheting seemed like an ever-existing heirloom, passed from woman to woman in my family. I felt a deep connection to the history of it, and I wanted to make beautiful scarves and blankets the way my ancestors did. I made a chain of stitches that were tight and crooked, so I lost interest.

Throughout the years since then, I would try again when the mood struck. My technique improved and was finally able to assemble more than a single chain of yarn. The increasing popularity of chunky yarn and bigger stitches also meant I could chain together a scarf or a tiny blanket with a fair amount of ease. But my favorite feat was the one I assembled this week.

A little personal history first: I’m an Anglophile. I love pretty much all things British, Scottish and Irish. It comes partly from my heritage, and partly from binge-watching British TV shows on Netflix and Hulu. And if there is one thing an Anglophile needs to know, it’s the art of a proper cuppa.

I had all the basic necessities for it: I had a pretty white porcelain teapot with cute little cups. I had classic Earl Grey tea leaves, a stove and a kettle to heat the water, a tea tray to place it all on and shortbread biscuits to serve it with. But I needed a tea cozy. A tea cozy is a knitted or sewn cover for the teapot to keep the tea hot. If you google tea cozies, or had a British gran with an ancient tea set, you are aware that these tea cozies can be seriously ugly.

Instagram culture demanded that I had a cute tea cozy. After all, if I made the perfect cuppa and didn’t instagram it, did it even happen? And in keeping with my English tea party theme, my cozy needed roses.

First and foremost, there are TONS of ways to crochet a rose. There are different styles, sizes, yarns, crochet hook sizes, colors, etc. My grandmother only ever used patterns for crochet and had never done roses, so without her wisdom and expertise, I was left to youtube tutorials.

Crocheting the body of the tea cozy was fairly simple. I did a simple chain stitch in a beige-nude yarn, allotting a gap for the teapot nozzle and handle. I stitched buttons on with yarn so the cozy could easily slide over the pot and then be secured snuggly. This process was all fairly straightforward. No, the challenge for me was the roses.

I chose the following video tutorial of crochet roses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi0E0ufviWs (seriously aren’t they so pretty?!) I wanted big, fluffy 3-D flowers that made my teapot look like a vase of tea roses. I chose a soft pink color yarn, and set about many, many attempts at crochet roses.The key to my success was the pause button. Used many times during the video tutorial, I used the pause button to allow me to follow at my own pace. When I finally had 5 roses that I was satisfied with, I used yarn and an embroidery needle to attach them to the tea cozy. The result was EXACTLY what I had intended, and I was more pleased with this project than any of my other crocheting attempts.

Some tips and afterthoughts: Try and store these roses somewhere where they will not be flattened. Unless you’re using a very stiff yarn, the stitches used to make the roses are quite open and the roses can lose their shape if squished. Also, I may go back through my relatively open crochet of the body and weave in a chunky cream yarn to add some “softness” to the cozy. I also want to try crocheting the roses with different types of yarn to see how they turn out. Part of the fun of trying new hobbies is experimentation!

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Get Stuffed : Making Stuffed Animals Out of Old Sweaters

Hi readers! Welcome to Hobby du Jour – blog of an ambitious twenty-something who can’t decide on a steady hobby. Each week, I will attempt a new hobby and document the experience behind the glue gun.

My first hobby is one that is close to my heart. My cousin, Ashley, gave birth to twins this past week (little girls!) and as a gift to them, I really wanted to do something special. I had stumbled across the idea of repurposing the clothing of departed loved ones, and it stuck. Ashley, my cousins, and myself were all very close with our maternal grandfather, our Papa. He passed away in 2012, and we all miss him very dearly. He also left behind a bunch of sweaters, which would be perfect material for Teddy Bears.

Ashley’s husband, TJ, lost his father when he was in high school, and I wanted to incorporate him too. So I secretly reached out to TJ’s brother, and got him to send me some old shirts of their Dad’s that weren’t being worn or used for something else. He sent me two of their Dad’s beloved flannels, and I set out to try and incorporate all my materials into the perfect gift.

Playing around with ideas, I settled on Panda Bears as my inspiration. I could use the white sweater from our Papa as the body, and a separate flannel for each bear as the features. This way the bears would match, but be distinctive enough to be able to tell which one belonged to which twin. I sketched out ideas, and finally set out to sew.

It is important to note here that my sewing experience is of my own making. My mother guided me in my early years, but it wasn’t until recently that I took the time and patience to really put some craftsmanship into it. Even with that disclaimer, these bears were much harder than I anticipated (all my crafts usually are).

The material of both flannel shirts was incredibly delicate, and had to be stitched in multiple rows just to hold. My proportions for the first set of arms were totally off, and sewing the eye markings on with thread was a complete failure (I ended up using embroidery string). But somehow, amidst all this miscalculation and mishap, I got the bears done. Not only that, but I LOVED how they turned out. They were simple and old fashioned and they meant so much.

I’m so glad I powered through and finished them when I did, because Ashley went into labor the very next day and my gift was ready to go. In terms of hobbies and crafty projects, this one may have been the most meaningful, because of the reaction I got out of Ashley and TJ. They cried and hugged me tighter than they’ve ever hugged me before.

That’s the beauty of hobbies: they are rooted in the human experience. We immerse ourselves in hobbies, not only to pass the time, but also to create something unique and meaningful. It’s not about the price tag, or the latest fad, but rather the investment of time and thought into an action. Perhaps that’s why I’m constantly on a quest to find a new hobby, because the experience and the results are always so rewarding.