Monthly Archives: November 2013

Hotwheels Racing

Posted on November 29, 2013 by joel

Last weekend the kids and I took all the empty flooring boxes from the work I did in the master bedroom and built a Hotwheels racetrack in the kitchen. It was all very spontaneous, while we were waiting for Mom to finish her shower.

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Leather Tooling – Wallet Attempts

Posted on November 4, 2013 by joel

As a small, simple leather tooling project I've been trying to make myself a simple card wallet out of some lightweight tooling leather. The first attempt was an octopus - but I wasn't quite satisfied with how it came out, and the tooling got too close to the edge of the leather and I wouldn't have been able to sew it. The second attempt was a koi - which I left enough margin for sewing. I even put in the interior pockets. I used too big a punch for the holes, and too small a thread for sewing it, plus I accidentally stained the spine with something in the shop without noticing - so I'm not totally pleased with that one either. The third one is a bunch of Hawaiian flowers, borrowed from the pattern I made up for my electric uke's pickguard. The tooling came out decent for my beginner status, but I have yet to put in pockets and sew it - so a lot can still go wrong. But hopefully the third time's the charm!

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Melted Crayon Art

Posted on November 4, 2013 by joel

Carter and I saw this project online, and decided to give it a shot. We tried using felt stick-on letters to mask the canvas where we wanted her name to show up, but it didn't quite work. The hot wax soaked through the stickers and colored the canvas behind them. You could still see the outlines of the letters from the raised ridge of wax around them, but there wasn't enough contrast for our liking. So we painted the letters within that ridge instead. Carter was quite proud of it.