Happy Valentine's Day!

Once again, my friends and I are planning a party this weekend-- this time, for Valentine's Day! Any excuse to celebrate the end of midterms is fine by me. To prepare for the party, we decided to make goodie bags. My contribution was teeny crocheted hearts.

Aren't they adorable? I wish I had time to photoshop them a bit, but alas, it is four in the morning and I have yet to finish a 7 page paper as well as study for my Italian midterm tomorrow. Sigh!

For those of you who want to make your own cute little hearts, use this tutorial! It's super simple compared to other heart tutorials I've seen out there-- I made one every 6 minutes, and I'm a slow crocheter! The only difference between what I did and what they did was that I used embroidery thread so that the hearts would turn out super tiny compared to the original version! Love the pastel colors, and I can't wait for everyone to see 'em!

Sorry for being MIA, but it looks like school's going to be my first priority, so I'm going to be posting whenever I can, but expect to hear from me sporadically!
<3 Linda

Freebie Alert!: Flier Printables

As you may have noticed, I've been MIA recently. Why? Because I've been designing fliers and doing artistic things for school. I have one to share with you today, as a freebie, because the show I made it for ended up getting cancelled! Sad for me but good for you. They're meant to be for a show, but you can also use them as invitations or announcements for sales and such.

Front side:

 Back side:

Things to note:

• Ignore the terrible spacing of the word "Info" on the back side! Replace all of the "__ here" things with the information you want to put in.
• The font of these images is called Alien League and I love it. You can download it for free here.
• On the front side, I would recommend putting a large B&W version of your logo or whatever it is at the bottom of the hourglass. It really pulls the look together. I also think writing the name of your event in large letters on the top and curving it (on Photoshop with an upper arc of -4) would look great, but that's up to you. Here's an example of what I'm talking about if you can't picture it.
• The space at the bottom of the back poster is for an email address or phone number to be listed.

They are HQ, so you can download them from my Flickr (they're 8.125 by 11.125 inches, incorporating the bleed space). Enjoy!

<3 Linda

DIY: Board Game Piece Shrinky Rings

Hello hello! I was inspired to do a shrinky dink ring after reading this tutorial. Pretty, no? I've actually never used shrink plastic before, even though a lot of people used it when they were kids. I have a lot of board game pieces that go unused because they're leftover from old sets, so I combined them together to make a cute ring!

Materials:
Board game piece (I used an old checkers piece)
Shrink Film (I used clear, but any type is fine)
Sharpies or acrylic paint (many colors)
Newspaper
Scissors
Hot glue gun
Measuring tape/ ruler
Mandrel (or something cylindrical that fits the size of your finger)
Parchment paper, wax paper, or thick cardboard
Oven

Board game piece (The perfect size for a ring!):

1. Decorate it how you want to. Be as creative as you want! I free-handed it with a bunch of sharpie pens and did a cute floral! You can use paint too. If you're not the type to draw something, you can print an image and scale it down to size. I like the idea of an optical illusion ring with this pattern. If you want a floral print like mine, draw light lilac dots and surround them with fine-point sharpie lines to create teeny roses. Use a light green outlined in dark green for the leaves, and color in the background with light blue and pink stripes.

2. Surround the button with newspaper. Measure out the circumference of the board game piece and cut a rectangular strip of similar size. You can even pleat the paper so that more words are on the sides. Hot glue the newspaper strip to the button. Where the ends come together, you can cut a small section of newspaper, pleat it, and glue it on top to hide the ends.

Ring (You could always follow the tutorial posted above instead):

1. Measure the size of your finger on the shrinky dink sheet and double it. Approximate the width of the future ring you want and double that as well. For mine, I cut a 4.5 inch by 1 inch piece because I wanted a 2.25 by .5 inch piece.

2. Cut and curve the ends with a scissor so that they aren't all jagged and pointy.

3. Decorate the strip however you want to. Once again, I used sharpies, but paint works too. Test out different colors and see which ones you like.

4. Preheat the oven to 300. Pop that shrinky dink on a sheet of parchment paper or cardboard and throw it in the oven. 

5. Watch it; it will curl and then straighten. When this happens, pull it out and mold it to your mandrel after 5 seconds (since it'll be hot!). I messed up the first couple of times and put it back in to reheat and tried again. Don't let the ends touch! Once you succeed at getting a nice round shape to your ring, let it cool completely. I love the little air bubbles, although I'm not completely sure if that's supposed to happen...

Putting it together: 

1. Hot glue the board game piece to your ring piece, making sure that it's on the opposite side of where the ring ends.
2. Let it cool completely and you're done! (Sadly I don't have pictures at this step yet, my camera died during this DIY! Sigh!)

Tell me how it works out for you!
<3 Linda