A while back, I found a piece of embroidered artwork at the Purple Moon (an import store in downtown Pocatello). The art itself is about 4 inches by 4 inches, and still pricey since the process of making the art is extremely intricate, and it was mounted on an 8-inch piece of backer-board with an 8" by 8" matte attached.
There started the attempt to find a frame for it. My first find was an actual eight-by-eight frame from, of all places, a dollar store. It wasn't until I got it home that I could take it out of the plastic and discover that the backer-board was too thick to slide into the frae. Trying to separate the embroidered silk from the board would likely have ruined it, and trying to widen a very cheap, plastic frame would have ruined the frame. So that was out. Next I came across a frame that I thought was eight-by-eight, though it was matted for a four-by-six photograph. I pulled the matte out... and discovered that it was just slightly smaller than eight-by-eight. I debated using a jig-saw on the backer-board, but figured I'd look around some more before risking ruining the piece.
Finally, I came across some framed artwork on clearance at Ross. The bits that had been mounted inside the sealed frames had come unglued. The frames were larger than eight-by-eight, but they were square, and the display area inside was roughly eight-by-eight. So I bought one of these and used a paring knife to get the backing off. Then I removed the intended artwork, glued the backer-board in its place ... and needed a way to seal the frame back up. I could have glued or nailed it, but I liked the idea of being able to get back into the frame if I wanted. I wandered through various hardware sections, and found these connectors at Fred Meyer:
The screws actually came from Lowe's, as Fred Meyer didn't have any that were small enough. But these work beautifully. Attach them just outside the backing for the frame the frame, and you can rotate the plastic piece in to hold the backing in place ... or out to allow the backing to come out again. I attached four of these.
At any rate, here's the finished, framed piece:
I would have loved to get one of the larger pieces, but the prices went up rather steeply from this one. I think the 8.5" by 11" matted ones were $45, and the next size up (can't remember dimensions now) was around $60 or $80. Not bad, considering that the embroidery is done by hand, but more than I could afford.
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Here's the wreath all covered in snow. Pity that it's now about 40 degrees and everything is starting to melt. On the plus side, that should generate plenty of business for Spencer.
Below are some of the boxes I made this Christmas.
This was my third attempt at covering an empty candy box with paper such that it would be potentially reusable. On the first two attempts, I used tape. Bad idea. The tape just gets in the way. On this one, I used a stick of glue. I also didn't try to wrap the paper around the edges of the box-top. Instead, I covered any bare spots with the green ribbon, also put on with a stick of glue.
This is an old box that I found in my dad's basement this year and figured it was in good enough shape to reuse. The problem with this style of box is that it does not hold together very well. So when I use it for gifts, I cheat a little: the ribbon wrapped around the body of the box is to keep the two halves from separating.
This was a box that I put together in an unconventional fashion. I wanted to emphasize the fancier paper, but de-emphasize the plainest paper. The nice thing was that the colors of the middling paper blended in nicely with the plain paper, so the asymmetry of the joining isn't as obvious. Below is the bottom of the same box, just because I like the way the two papers look together. I tend to save the not-quite-as-nice paper for the bottom of the box, but these would have worked well as a top, also:
And this one was made by joining the pieces of the lid pinwheel style. There are four pieces to each lid. To make the pinwheel, you put the "square" edge of each piece into the "angled" edge of each adjacent piece.
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Whilst cleaning over Christmas, I managed to misplace my Tibetan mala. It's much easier to keep track of chanting with it, so on Saturday I wandered over to the craft store in Idaho Falls (Michael's; we used to have a branch outlet of it here in Pocatello, but it got bought out, and the new place isn't even a quarter as good). I found some decent wooden beads, and even lucked into a sale. Instead of $4 for a fourteen-inch strand, it was $3. Overall, including the beads I have leftover, it cost me about $13. I did wind up wandering over to the local excuse for a craft store after getting 99.9% done, just to get some beads with a larger bore to finish it off:
I had planned on using the disc-shaped beads every 36 or so, but it didn't look like I had quite enough round beads to make that pan out. They're currently every 12, though I think I could have gotten away with every 18. It's kind of nice to have a marker to go past on the mala. When I had to restring the other one (which will probably show up this week now that I've made a replacement), I put a knot every 36 beads for the same purpose.
I wound up using green garden twine to string it...primarily because I couldn't find my plain white cotton string. Naturally, it turned up a few hours after I was done. ^/^ Anyway, here's a closeup of the twine:
It adds an interesting color, even if it is a bit rattier than string would have been. To close it off, I tied a knot, then unwound the twine, rewound halves from the opposite ends together, then wound both of those together, put the larger bore beads over it, tied another knot, and frayed the end. Finally I put a drop of glue in each of the knots. The unwinding/re-winding wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't run across a show on rope making at some point in the last few months. I have no idea how well this twine will hold up, but I'm pretty sure that my finishing will hold together for a good long time.
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