Last year I designated a specific set of art supplies to use: pencil, pens, limited palette of markers, waterbrush. This year I did almost the opposite – I decided to use watercolor for all of them, but with any & all additional items I felt like including. And that worked very well, actually! Without making any deliberate effort (at least at first) I ended up trying several new techniques and combinations.

Crayon resist – the crayons kind of got away from me so I was pleased how well this came out in the end. I used a clear crayon from an egg-dyeing kit and a lavender Crayola, though it’s not clear the color is visible at all.

Masking fluid and lifting out with a circular stencil – I hadn’t used masking fluid much before. In fact, I may have only done experiments with it. This was inspired by a Karen Rice video, Bokeh Made Easy For Beginners.

Spatter (I’d done this before but never with any particular success)

Salt – I didn’t use any particular tutorial for this, though there’s a Scratchmade post about salt in watercolor. I used Morton’s table salt and the effect was decent, though instead of “granulated sugar coating” I got something more like “left in the break room for three days and dried out.”

More masking fluid, this time attempting to lift out in a halo around each dot before removing the masks (white lines are gouache)

More lifting out, over top of a pale underpainting – I don’t know if lifting out is the appropriate term here. I took a paper towel and mopped up wet paint where the sheep bodies were, and used diluted gouache for their heads, legs, and tails.

Shaving watercolor pencil on wet paint with an emery board (the green in this is crayon) – I got this idea from a Karen Rice video. I don’t know that it was this video, but it’s a good introduction: Watercolour Special Effects Techniques Tutorial – Painting Pebbles

There were some more compositional things I attempted as well, with mixed success.

Multiple attempts at perspective and appropriate shading (you know, we’ll get there)

Negative-space teabags

My best Northern Lights attempt yet; also using a technique to try to show glow by giving the item a narrow halo of lightened background color

“Tracers” effect (I soon realized my brain doesn’t actually know what happens when you slide a shape around on the page)

Shallow depth of focus (I actually like this one pretty well, except the flat gray silo sticks out like a sore thumb)

Let’s close with some favorites not already pictured…

My final tally was:
Halloween – 3
Halloween? – 8
Animals – 9
Landscapes – 11

It is a whole lot! I really like these drawing challenges. I have a prompt and a deadline, and the relentlessness of it means I can’t dilly-dally around – but one month a year is plenty.

The post Botober 2021 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

If you’re me, you come away with a sewing project.

The only Costume Proper in the store that particularly interested me was only available in Small, and that ain’t me. So I went back to the car…but the gears started turning. There had been a green velvet cloak that I might have bought to wear over the unavailable costume, and maybe it was worth buying… I can’t reconstruct how I got there, but on the strength of that cloak and the fact that I owned suede ankle boots and a leaf pin I’d only kept because it was reminiscent of the ones the hobbits get in Lothlorien in the movies, I concocted a plan to be a wood elf.

I went back in and got the cloak; there were elf ears but they were the kind that’s a big production to put on and were also a sickly yellow color so I passed. That evening and the next day I accumulated brown tights, an antler headband (since I didn’t have ears), plus two yards of tan faux suede (found in clearance!), a remnant of sage green heavy slightly-stretch cotton, and a large skein of brown cotton yarn.

Tuesday night I set to sewing. I made a coordinating face mask from stash elastic and fabric (a brown leaf-patterned batik and unbleached muslin), cut out and started sewing two drawstring belt pouches, and cut the entire 190 yards of yarn into 4-yard lengths. I tied the lengths of yarn into a bundle at one end, combed them out into equal 3 sections, and braided them, tying them off at the opposite end afterward.

I also set the headband to stretch a bit since one-size-fits-all headbands tend to give me a headache.

Wednesday I started the tunic dress. Some poking around online for “simple tunic pattern” had reminded me of the scheme of 4 tall rectangles, sewn into a cylinder for the lower stretch, and with the top edges sewn to make shoulder seams. The unsewn upper part of the rectangles becomes a sharp V neck and the armholes.

The width of the fabric went around me quite comfortably so I measured and cut what seemed like a suitably generous length, and cut it in quarters the other way. My approach to making sure it worked out was to sew the seams only far enough that I knew they would work, then try it on and extend them as needed. I did the center front and back and the shoulder seams first, and decided after sewing about an inch near the bottom of the armholes that I would insert a narrow panel in each side seam. With no stretch to the fabric at all, I thought an additional couple of inches around from the waist down would help my mobility a lot.

I cut those side panels that night, but the rest of the sewing happened Friday, when I was off work.

When I tried the tunic on after assembly I thought, well, it’s really bulky and unflattering but it will do. After that I sewed all the seam allowances flat and hemmed the armholes and bottom (I’d done the neck already), and threw it in the wash.

Then I turned my attention to the drawstring pouches. I finished them as planned and hung them from my braided “rope belt” by their drawstrings – to realize that would have them banging into my thighs every time I took a step. Not enjoyable. Also, they would be much more out of reach. So I cut two strips of the fabric and folded them in thirds, then made a loop out of them to sew to the pouches for hanging. That worked well. I had to thread them onto the belt before putting it on but that wasn’t as awkward as I expected.

Once those pouches were done, I was done. And rather amazed I’d made it in time for our big Friday night Halloween event!

When the tunic dress came out of the dryer I was pleasantly surprised at how well it draped, given that it has less shaping than a paper bag and no stretch to the fabric at all. Stitching down the seam allowances and washing it had somehow made it much less bulky. I did wish that I’d turned more fabric under at the shoulder end of the neck opening, but I’d already done an inch there tapering to the half-inch seam allowance at the center front, and I don’t know if non-stretchy fabric could do much bigger of a taper easily.

I accessorized with green and metallic eyeshadow and a tiger eye pendant, and the hubs and I went to a park by the river to take photos in the late afternoon.

That night I added a tree-patterned shawl secured with my leaf pin, and of course my face mask. I actually liked the face mask as a costume component because it kind of looked like I was going into battle. I had my phone in one belt pouch, and my keys and a pair of gloves in the other.

Suitably geared up for the Friday night festivities! No one had any idea who I was. In reality, or in costume. Such is life.

The post Last Minute Costume Construction appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Two of the fundamental construction ideas for this pouch came from So Sew Easy: the accordion-fold corner boxing method, and side tapering. I’m somewhat amazed that, in my decades of sewing, I only first encountered the accordion-fold method a year and a half ago.

I’m going to give the directions for the exact bag I made most recently, then some tweaks and variations for it, and finally the calculations you’ll need if you want to make your own custom size.

There are photos below from both of the two most recent bags I’ve made. I tried to pick the ones with the clearest demonstrations.

Sewing instructions

You’ll need lightweight upholstery fabric or something like canvas or duck, and a zipper that is at least 11″ long. Make sure the fabric is something your machine can sew through four layers of. This is a great remnant project.

1. Fabric preparation

Cut 2 pieces of fabric, each 11 1/4″ by 13″. The 11 1/4″ edges will be at the opening of the bag. Zigzag the edges of the fabrics.

Fold each piece of fabric in half, wrong sides together, to make 11 1/4″ by 6 1/2″ rectangles. Pin near the fold, with your pins parallel to it.

Now fold the loose sides of the fabric back up, resulting in a piece that is mostly right sides together but with a little accordion fold at the bottom. The original fold and the new ones should be 5/8″ apart, and the edges of the fabric should all line up together. Pin all along the edge; press the fold if desired (not shown). If this description and the photos are not clear, refer to Sew So Easy’s video.

2. Sewing individual pouches

Mark your sewing lines: you will be sewing straight up from the bottom for 5/8″, with a 1/2″ seam allowance, and then diagonally to a point 1/2″ down from the open edge and 1 1/8″ in from the side. The top 1/2″ will be open. Sew all four seams (either direction; I don’t mean to imply they have to come up from the base).

Why not sew a diagonal line all the way from top to bottom? The opening at the top is needed for zipper installation, and sewing diagonally through the accordion fold will cause the gusset triangle to pucker in the finished bag. (I tried it! Passing the savings on to you.)

Trim the seam allowance on each side and zigzag the new raw edge. Press seam allowances open near top; finger-pressing will do.

3. Connecting pouches

You now have two individual pouches. Turn each one right-side-out and choose which side will show, and which will be hidden against the other pouch. Hem the hidden sides: fold the raw edge down 1/2″ to the wrong side, with side seam allowances open so they are enclosed in the hem, and sew to secure.

Turn one bag inside-out again and nest them, right sides together. I find it easiest to slide one bag into the other if I pleat it in the middle to make it narrower, then spread it back out again once it’s mostly inside. Pin the hemmed edges together and mark the sewing lines for the pocket: the vertical seams are 4″ long and 2″ in from the side seams at the edge; then connected at the bottom with a horizontal seam. Sew.

Pull the inner bag out and turn the whole thing right-side-out. You should have 2 pouches connected in the middle via sewing that creates a flat pocket, with a raw (well, zigzagged) edge on each outer side.

4. Zipper installation

Line up the zipper so the top zipper stops are 1″ outside the side of the bag; any excess zipper length should be at the bottom end. Pin the zipper to one bag opening, wrong sides together, with the edge of the fabric lined up to the edge of the zipper tape. Keep the side seam allowances open so they get tacked down. Sew down the center of the tape. I typically use a standard sewing machine foot bumped up against the zipper teeth, with the needle moved toward the zipper teeth.

With the zipper closed, line up the other fabric edge and pin the zipper at one end (either one). Open the zipper and pin the rest, sewing the way you did the first side. If you zip the zipper at this point it forms a sort of trough between the sides of the bag, when the edges of the fabric point upward.

Trim the fabric edges as needed so they won’t protrude past the zipper tape, and fold the zipper to the outside of the bag. Make the fold in the fabric tight. Sew near the edge of the zipper tape to secure.

5. Finishing

Shorten the bottom end of the zipper if needed: sew across it a couple of times, a little more than an inch away from the bag side seam, and trim the extra length past your stitching (shown in previous picture).

Cover the raw end with a fabric tab: begin with a piece of fabric that was 1.5″ by 3″. Fold the long edges in by 1/4″ and then the short edges in by 1/2″, and fold the whole thing in half to make a 1″ square. Sandwich the end of the zipper inside so that your zipper-shortening stitching is hidden, and topstitch as close to the edge as possible on the non-fold sides.

(I make tabs slightly differently each time, and the one on the orange zipper is probably the tidiest one I’ve ever made! A wider tab on the green zipper shown for comparison – that kind is easier to put on the open end of a zipper.)

To fully match my bag, you’ll need a decorative bead zipper pull. I used three beads threaded on a head pin, with a lobster clasp attached via a wire-wrapped loop (not a good one, I didn’t leave an actual stem to wrap around). I added the clasp to the loop after shaping it and before wrapping the wire. Not my area of instructional expertise, so here are written instructions from Goody Beads and a video tutorial from Beadaholique.

Quick tweaks for your bag

1. If you need to piece your fabric, cut 4 pieces of fabric each 11 1/4″ by 7″, and zigzag all four. Sew pairs together along long edges at 1/2″ so you end up with two 11 1/4″ by 13″ pieces with a seam down the center. Press the seam allowances open. Note that you’ll be sewing through SIX layers of fabric at the accordion fold in this case.
   
2. In step 4, you could line up the zipper tape so it extends 1/8″ out from the edge of the fabric, and then not need to trim your fabric.
   
3. Often I also add a tab to the open zipper end in step 5. It increases the symmetry and gives you something easier to hold on to when opening the pouch. This is done in the same way, although working with the open zipper end is a bit fussier. I was ready to be done at that point, though, so I didn’t add one to this bag (but I did save a bit of fabric in the inner pocket in case I change my mind later). If you don’t need to shorten your zipper you can also skip fabric tabs entirely, which is seen in two of the five bags at the head of the post.

Variations

• Zipper tape to inside of bag: If you would rather have the zipper tape to the inside of the fabric, keep the two bags nested after step 3. The right sides of the unfinished edges of the bags will be facing each other. Line up and pin the zipper similarly to step 4, except right side of zipper to right side of fabric. Sew down the center of the zipper tape on both sides, then turn the whole bag right-side-out and topstitch through the fabric and zipper tape to secure. For tape-to-inside zippers I prefer to topstitch very close to the fabric fold instead of near the edge of the zipper tape (I bump the regular sewing machine foot against the zipper teeth with the needle centered), but it is a matter of taste.

• Single pocket pouch: It you only want one pocket, cut only one piece of fabric, and skip step 3 entirely. Install the zipper with the bag right-side-out to have the zipper tape show, and with the bag inside-out to have the tape (somewhat) hidden. If you have directional fabric you may want to piece, as in the first tweak above, regardless of how much fabric you have to work with.

• Lined pouch: I have not made a properly lined bag, just one where two layers of fabric were treated as one. If I were to try it, I would start exactly the same way but with 4 pieces of fabric instead of 2, and without zigzagging anything. After constructing the individual pouches I would connect lining to outer fabric of each pouch in place of hemming the hidden side of each pouch in step 3: put lining inside outer (or vice-versa), right sides together, and sew along that edge at 1/2″, with the side seam allowances open so they’re caught in the sewing. Turn the whole thing right-side-out so the lining is nested inside the outer fabric, wrong sides together. Get your seam allowances and so forth tidied up, press, and topstitch close to the seam. Then use the zipper installation to connect the lining and outer fabrics at the other half of the open edge, treating them as a single piece of fabric. Basting or zigzagging them together along the raw edge before installing the zipper might make it easier.

Sizing your own bag

If you know what finished measurements you want for width, height, and base breadth, you can calculate the fabric size needed and where to place the seams. Once you’ve constructed the individual pouches the only thing that will change in the rest of the instructions is the measurements for sewing the pocket that connects them. The important consideration there is to have something that connects them through at least half of their width and height. If you make very small pouches you might not be able to have a pocket, but you should still make two seam lines down from the open end, about a quarter of the way in from each side seam.

Choosing your size

When deciding bag size, note that the sides of these bags are theoretically tall, narrow triangles – but in practice, the contents will settle and the long triangle edges will bulge outward, converting some width into breadth.

The combination of that with the intentional flattening of the bag as you go up from the base means you need a generous amount of ease, and the fuller you want to pack the bag, the more ease you need. The marker pouch I describe above has finished measurements of 9″ width and 1 1/4″ breadth. I made it for Tombow brush pens, which are 7 1/2″ long. I’d previously made them a bag with 8 1/2″ width and 1″ breadth, and once the bags were over half full the pens were quite tight in there. The extra base breadth means they won’t reach half-full as quickly, and the extra width means when they get there it won’t be as snug.

I prefer a zipper that sticks out from the bag by an inch on each end, which requires a zipper at least 2″ longer than the finished width of the bag. This helps with the bag opening fully and also makes it easier to sew the zipper to the bag.

Fabric and seam measurements

The whole computation is based on this fact: the breadth of the base will reduce not only the height of the bag, but its width. If you want a 6″ wide bag with a 1″ base, you need 7″ of width to start out with, plus seam allowances. For a 5″ high bag with a 1″ base, you’ll need 11″ of fabric to start, plus seam allowances.

I recommend a half inch seam allowance at the opening, because that works well with the zipper installation and getting the enclosed edges away from the zipper teeth by enough but not too much. You could use a smaller seam allowance on the side edges but that would be asking for absent-minded mistakes in my case, so I use 1/2″ everywhere. To keep things a little simpler below, I’ll assume that seam allowance instead of leaving it as a variable.

In sum, your fabric cutting measurements are:
width: finished width + base breadth + 1″
height: (2 * finished height) + base breadth + 1″

To fold the fabric and mark your seam lines, the important measurement becomes tuck depth, 1/2 of the base breadth. The term “tuck” refers to the accordion fold you make in step 1. After folding your fabric in half wrong sides together, you’ll fold each half back so that the original fold and the two new folds are one tuck depth apart.

Your seam will start 1/2″ down from the opening edge and (1/2″ + tuck depth) in from the side edge. It will angle outward until it is a tuck depth up from the bottom edge and 1/2″ in from the side edge, and then go straight down to the bottom.

If you work in metric would could probably round the half inch seam allowance down to a centimeter, but you might want to turn down a bit more than a centimeter on the enclosed edges (hence start your side seam more than a centimeter down from the opening edge).

Bag sizing examples

The dark bag with gold accents was the original Tombow bag, the one that turned out to be too snug. It is 5 1/4″ tall (per the enclosed edges – more like 5 1/2″ total because the zipper doesn’t carve off a full 1/2″ seam allowance) and 8 1/2″ wide, with a 1″ base. So my fabric measurements were:
width = 8 1/2″ + 1″ + 1″ = 10 1/2″
height = (2 * 5 1/4″) + 1″ + 1″ = 12 1/2″

With a tuck depth equal to the seam allowance, the seam calculations become very tidy:
start seam 1/2″ down from top and 1″ in from side
sew diagonally down/out until 1/2″ in from both bottom and side
sew straight down to bottom at 1/2″

The bag given in the instructions beginning this post was designed to the the same height but an extra half inch wide and with a 1 1/4″ base:
width = 9″ + 1 1/4″ + 1″ = 11 1/4″
height = (2 * 5 1/4″) + 1 1/4″ + 1″ = 12 3/4″, rounded up to 13″

The post Double-Pocket Standup Marker Pouch appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I was thinking about watercolor palettes one morning, as I often do, and realized the same principle applies there for me. A small set of paints is directive: mix everything you need out of these basics, or do without. It can get a little tedious to constantly mix everything, though, and uses up a lot of palette space to do so. On the other hand, a larger set of paints can be quick and easy, as you mostly use the paints directly without mixing. However, I find that sometimes I “forget” mixing is an option and feel stuck with exactly the paints I have, or alternatively, get bogged down trying to mix perfect colors in a way I wouldn’t if I had only a few paints to work from.

As with other instantiations of abundance and scarcity, the happy medium lies in alternating between them.

Currently I have one main palette and three mini palettes. You can fit 5 half pans in an Altoids Mini tin, and that’s what I use for mini palettes. The big palette is the kind that comes with 12 half pans but can easily fit 20, especially if you bend the insert a bit to widen the center area.

My main palette I call the Candy Palette. It is inspired primarily by 80s Memphis Design, neon graphics, and Lisa Frank, with some additional colors to give more mixing (in particular, neutralizing) options. It’s an evolving project; the Lisa Frank ice cream dog illustration was done with a “first draft” palette of only 11 colors. Twenty colors is its max size, but I do not anticipate it containing exactly the same 20 colors a year from now as it does now – and I look forward to finding out which colors will be replaced!

One of my mini-palettes is metallics. It’s available for adding accents to a project, but I’ve been less interested in it than I anticipated. If I get more into the hypersaturated graphic design idea it may come into play more, and in that case I’ll likely swap out one of the silvers – they are way too similar to coexist in a selection this small.

One mini-palette is a standalone general-purpose mixing palette that predates all of the other palettes. It holds watercolor [approximations of] cyan, magenta, and yellow, plus sepia and what was supposed to be a darker, truer blue but isn’t really because of materials limitations at the time I made it.

Finally, I have what I alternately refer to as the Dark Desaturated Palette and the Weird Desaturated Palette, my third mini-palette. It’s a standalone palette representing a twist on the CMY palette. It has Indigo, Naphthamide Maroon, and Yellow Ochre as “primaries”, plus Perylene Green because I love it and Van Dyck Brown as a sort of convenience color. White gouache is effectively a sixth color in this palette, as well. It is very…particular, but I quite like it.

The CMY palette has arguably been superseded by the Candy Palette, and I was thinking I’d replace it with a neutrals mini-palette. By which I meant, whatever neutrals I had on hand that weren’t in the Candy Palette, to add options for painting naturalistic images like birds. However, having thought about the abundance and scarcity idea again – and how cycling between them can be so beneficial to avoiding blocks – I’m interested in making another mini palette that stands alone.

But what? The experimentation has already begun.

The post Abundance, Scarcity, and Palette Design appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Since then I’ve published something like 450 posts, with not quite 400 currently published after a cleanout a few years ago. Amigurumi crocheted from embroidery floss or yarn, with my own or others’ patterns; crochet outerwear and household items (including my basket fixation of a few years ago); a wide assortment of sewing projects including many pouches and bags; a surprising number of embroidery projects; and many one-off posts about other crafts I tried.

Of course, recently I haven’t published at all. My only post of 2020 was the inevitable mask-sewing post, and the majority of my 2019 posts were journal prompts rather than posts about things I’d made. I haven’t had the impulse to blog, probably in part because I can always share on Instagram, for far less effort.

However, I didn’t want my tenth blogiversary to go unmarked, so let me show you what I’ve been up to these past months…..

On New Year’s Day 2020 I started working on learning to draw. My previous attempt to learn to draw had been 5 years earlier, for the first few months of 2015. I don’t remember why I decided to make the new start – my journal is silent on the matter and my husband tells me I was admirably low-key about it – but this attempt has gone orders of magnitude better than the previous one. In particular, I am still doing it, and I’m pleased with my efforts.

Two drawing highlights of the last year-plus:

I started drawing a mushroom every day in my planner on Feb 4. This was inspired by a video by struthless, though my daily drawing subject was not nearly as specific as his. I’m continuing this year, with daily snails.

In October I did a daily drawing challenge, combining drawing prompts from Inktober, DoodleWash, and Creamtober with an overall theme of Fantasy Landscapes. It was a significant commitment but I was able to finish all 31 drawings within the month and I was really pleased with a number of them. My goal aesthetic was ink drawings with color accents, and while it took a while to get there I ended up with a few that were exactly what I envisioned.

On January 18, 2020, I started watercolor painting, a fact I know only because I wrote it in my planner – again my journal has no mention of it, and there’s no photographic record. This was a product of having been watching watercolor tutorial videos on YouTube just for fun (though who knows where that came from!), taking an art class in January that included Japanese ink brush painting, and seeing watercolor feature in some of the drawing tutorials I was watching. I’ve painted versions of a lot of photographs and other illustrations, and done many video tutorials.

Two watercolor highlights of the last year-plus:

I have been gradually filling a sketchbook with animal paintings, mostly animals whose faces appeal to me. There are many pages left!

Around the turn of the year I started painting overwrought planetscapes, the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of a science fiction paperback or prog rock album.

And of course I sewed and crocheted, and did random other crafts in 2020. Many fabric masks, several zippered pouches, crocheted Christmas ornaments, my first-ever candle wreath, a set of tea shelves made from tea boxes, and my 2021 planner!

I think have a few more posts in me this year; although I’m clearly not holding myself to any posting minimum, I’m also not ready to shutter this blog.

The post Happy 10th Blogiversary, ReveDreams appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I have made two rounds of face masks now, using the face mask sewing instructions from Deaconess Health System.

The written instructions aren’t completely explicit – though the video fills in a lot of gaps – so I thought I’d write my experiences.

For the first round, each mask was made of two 6″ by 9″ pieces of fabric and two 7″ lengths of elastic. I pinned the elastics onto one piece of fabric before I started, just over 1/2″ in from the long edge, and sewed most of the way around with a half-inch seam allowance. That is more than the video shows, though the video says “one-quarter to three-eighths of an inch”, so my finished size could be as little as 1/4″ smaller than theirs in each direction.

After turning and pressing, I added pleats (more on that below) and sewed an eighth of an inch from the edge all the way around.

The finished masks were big enough for me, if a little snug on my ears (that extra seam allowance also shortened the elastics!), but not big enough for my husband. He could wear them, but they didn’t come over his chin at all if they were high enough on his nose.

Meanwhile I also received advice from someone using masks that making the two sides with different fabrics is desirable, because if the mask is removed it is quick and unambiguous to determine inside from outside when putting it back on.

My second round of masks was for my husband. I started with 7.5″ by 10″ fabric (1.5 inches taller and 1 inch wider), and for sturdiness, still sewed at a half-inch. I increased the elastics to 7.5″ apiece to accommodate the extra seam allowance. Really, the extra seam allowance is only needed at the sides, not the top and bottom, but it would bend my brain too much to keep track of changing seam allowances each time I turned a corner.

I had started with a prototype – quickly-sewn doubled fabric with pleats, elastic (that precious resource) safety-pinned on – and determined my original thought of increasing all the way to 8″ by 10″ was too much. It was making the fit more gappy.

For the pleats on the smaller masks, I made 3 on each end, trying to get them all even. I basically made it so that once you were within the elastic, all of the edge of the mask was part of a pleat, but pleats did not overlap. Each pleat ended up about 3/8″ wide, fold to fold.

On a larger mask I went up to 4 pleats, which are easier to do. You can mark the halfway point of the side of the mask with a pin, and the points halfway between that and the inside of the elastics, and make each pleat with the fabric between pairs of pins (or elastic and a pin).

I am curious to try out making a Ragmask, with more coverage and fit. From that page I found a good resource on the effectiveness of different homemade mask materials. The upshot: not as good as surgical (unsurprisingly), but still beneficial.

Good luck out there. I’m thinking of you!

The post Thoughts on masks appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

This will likely change a bit as I actually write answers, but my year in review will be based on the following questions, skipping any that I turn out not to have answers for:

General: Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? What dates stand out from the year? What did you do this year that you’d never done before? What will you always associate with this year (such as a song or activity)? Where did most of your time go? Where did most of your money go?

Friends and family: Who was in your life a lot this year? What influence did they have? Who did you meet, reconnect with or get closer to this year? Who did you drift from this year? Any births, moves, or career changes in your circle? Any illnesses, injuries, or deaths in your circle? For both of those, who was it, and how did it affect you?

Infatuations and themes: What were you really into this year? What did you really look forward to, or were thrilled with after it happened? What styles or ideas pervaded your year? What were your routines?

Successes: What was your biggest achievement of the year? When did someone thrill or impress you, or go above and beyond (“someone” could be you)? What did you want and get? What was the best thing you bought this year? What did you improve at this year? What did you maintain this year? Was that easy or a struggle, and do you want to improve it?

Failures: What was your biggest failure of the year? What did you learn from it? When did someone hurt or disappoint you (“someone” could be you)? What did you want and not get? What did you hope to improve at this year but didn’t?

Hobbies and social activities: What new (or nearly new) activities did you try? Which ones did you stop doing? Anything learned from that? Would you try any of them again? Which new activities did you continue? What do they bring to you? What ongoing/pre-existing activities and relationships were at high or low tide this year? What pre-existing activities or relationships did you let go of? What did that open you up for?

Other experiences: Where did you travel – cities, states, countries? What books did you read this year? What movies and TV shows did you watch this year? What live performances did you see this year? For each of the previous 3 questions, which ones stand out? What else did you listen to or read this year (podcasts, recorded music, blogs, webcomics, videos)? Any new discoveries?

The post Journal Prompts: A Year in Review appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

1. Memories that come to you
2. Phrases that get stuck in your head
3. Quotations that strike you
4. Reactions to things you read, watch, or listen to
5. Interesting ideas, words, or phrases
6. Trivia that is fun or intriguing
7. Things you appreciate as particularly witty or clever

I do all of these to some degree, but in particular I take notes from my nonfiction reading in my journal, sometimes extensively. I’ve recorded particularly clever cryptic crossword puzzle clues, words for things I didn’t know there was a word for, and little bits about people I have just learned about and might want to look up later. Phrases and quotations often end up in my mini art journal.

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The original plan was a shearling coat, a hat with lamb ears, mittens, and face paint for my nose. I was lucky enough to find a remnant of faux shearling that matched the lining of an on-sale coat – though not so lucky that the coat had lined sleeves. I had to create and attach sleeves, which was simple but somewhat time-consuming: cut sleeve-shaped pieces and make them into tubes, then pin and sew by hand to the coat (by hand partially because it seemed easier and less visible, and partially because once I’m through with this costume I’ll take them back off and wear the coat for real!). Not my tidiest sewing job, but… it’s a Halloween costume.

For the hat, I took the general game plan from a dinosaur hat tutorial by Stitched by Crystal and a reversible fleece hat video tutorial by The Crafty Gemini: four rounded triangles and a band below. I decided to make a folded band instead of two pieces since my material was already thicker than theirs, and created ears to insert as low in the side seams as possible. The final hat is bigger around than necessary and a bit shallow for a real winter hat, but if I want to make myself a real hat it will be a good starting point.

I made an incomplete muslin and a complete muslin, plus one muslin ear. In my pattern piece photo below, the ear isn’t quite the final version – I rounded out the middle, so it not only tapered toward the point, but a bit toward the base as well.

The mittens were a lucky find that I expect to get a lot of use out of. The bell was a late addition when I worried (based on my hat muslin) that people might think I was a bunny. The bell was originally a Christmas bell with a handle, which unscrewed easily. The internet agreed that lambs wear their bells on red ribbons, so that’s what I used. It rang lightly with every step I took and really added to the costume. Though I had to move it out of the way when hugging people lest someone end up with a bruised sternum.

The lack of nose paint was a completely last minute change – I had applied it, and wiped it off with a napkin in the car on the way to the party because it just didn’t look right. Perhaps it just accentuated that my face was otherwise completely human?

In the photo at top, the straw caught in my fleece (so authentic!) was from a hayride I took at the party. (Though I may have patted some onto spots where it didn’t get naturally…)

One bonus shot: Earlier this month I made a couple of candy corns out of Petals to Picots’ crochet candy corn pattern. Easy and good! For the hanging loop, I folded a separate length of yarn in half, tied a bulky knot, and slid it into the magic ring before tightening. The knot keeps it from coming out, and if I decide I don’t want it I can push it inside or cut it off.

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1. What’s the worst that could happen? Seriously. How would you cope? Is there anything you could do differently from the start to mitigate the problems while still making the same decision? [This is also a good approach for dealing with non-decision situations you are worried about.]
2. What might you regret about not choosing this option?
3. What might be the long-term benefits of choosing this option – one, five, ten years out?
4. Put 1, 2, and 3 together: If I choose this option, the risk is X, but I could gain Y, and if I do not choose this option I would regret Z. Try to be concise but get at the heart of it; once you’ve made a sentence for all the options you can use them to help you compare.
5. Put yourself in the future, after the dust has settled. Explain to someone why you chose this option (and if this option is to do nothing, imagine it has come out that you came close to acting and you are explaining why you did not). Be brief, but write various versions. Do they feel true to you? Do they rely on something happening that hasn’t yet in order to feel true?

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