Crafts thread

[Retro]

Good exercises msmay, thank you. Unfortunately my co-ordination is really awful just now so that's letting me down.

Lindsey

[antimatter]

msmay, thank you for the exercises, if it is just a matter of training to fix it, that's great. I do want to ask for a bit of clarification though...

In exercise #1, are you talking about pressing all fingers flat down (fully in contact with the table), having them in a piano playing curved position with only the tips touching, or mostly touching with the middle joints somewhat elevated? I used to have a similar exercise with fingers curved around the neck of a guitar pressing against the fretboard. This discussion may need to move to the music thread.

I do notice that if you are talking about fingers being held very flat, my ring fingers tends to bend backwards at the middle joint. If you are talking about fully curved fingers, most of them bend back nicely at the base joint for a hammer action, but the ring fingers tend to go somewhat sideways instead. I may have a go at trying to aid the motion of that finger with the other hand for a while (don't worry, if I injure it, it is my own dumbness that caused it, I used to horrify my guitar teacher with practicing "every breath you take" with spools between my fingers to get the necessary reach...no telling what damage THAT did).

I am not quite sure what you mean by dragging the little finger in exercise #2.

It sounds like it may help to go work on my parent's manual typewriter again, I wonder if one of those could be easily wired to be a computer keyboard .

I also wonder if it throws off beginner music students to have a hypermobile teacher .

Congratulations on the dining table, i usually leave it to my husband to build the big items (when there is time, energy and inclination), mainly because I hate to start projects that will take up lots of space whether or not I finish them. I somewhat dislike using hammer/nails and glue when building if i can avoid it because I know that I'll want to dismantle and reconfigure later. It's surprising that I've managed to build anything.

...antimatter

p.s. that's exactly the sort of exercise I like, very little motion, not much to remember and no chance of getting dizzy .

[ombili]

Good question. The position of your fingers would be rounded, as if you were playing the piano.

As for dragging the little finger, that exercise is a little confusing to describe, I admit. Basically you'd just want to keep the little finger in contact with the counter or table while you moved the hand around. Does that make sense?

Do you still play the guitar? I only ever learned to play "Leaving on a jet plane."

I don't play a lot for my students, and my fingers are quite strong since I started playing piano when I was four, so luckily I don't have a lot of trouble with them hyperextending while I play. The only one that really does is the thumb, and, of course, for the piano that's good since it allows me to have a larger hand span. Maybe that's why my thumbs always hurt!

[antimatter]

msmay, I rarely play the guitar or piano (I tend to have little feel for timing), however, the guitar often leans on the couch just in case. I mainly learned it to have a chance of composing music for lyrics (not much luck there yet ). I did get passably good for a brief time while I was taking lessons (learned to play piano as a kid, guitar as an adult).

The crafty bit here is my good guitar has a clear removable faceplate which I designed a couple of pictures to put behind. One had silver monkey-like creatures crawling in and amongst the dials, and the other (the current one) has a pentagonal repeating pattern which probably can be extended to form some sort of fractal. On the cheap one I did raised curvy design in fabric paint.

...antimatter

[ombili]

Wow, that sounds really neat! I have never seen a guitar like that.

[Shadowlady]

It really does sound cool Antimatter, are you able to take digital pics of some of your projects to show us? Dead nosey I am! I love seeing pics of what peeps here have been making! My bf is buying us a new pc to replace mine that blew up in the summer, so in a few weeks I'm going to be able to edit and post some of my photos...

[antimatter]

Sorry Shadowgirl, I don't seem to have any relatively anonymous place to post pictures. Apparently our internet provider has some, but they embed way too much information in the url name.

msmay, I have been trying the exercises, but I expect that it will be a while before I see results. I tried to get my 3-year old to try them, but she wasn't inclined to avoid lifting all her fingers when tapping .

...antimatter

[Retro]

Hi Anti-matter,

Try photobucket or if you don't like the look of that do a search for "photo hosting".

Lindsey

[Hayley]

I used photobucket when I posted my cross stitch piccies - it's really easy to use and of course, it's free!

Hayley

[elliewelly]

I like tie dyeing and decorating clothes, and before I had Kate I made beady jewellery and scrunchies too!

[Hayley]

I'm thinking of printing out some invitations for a big family reunion / get together that I'm organising in the summer, does anyone have any ideas please??? Preferably something free that . What I have in mind is a background of a tree that I can put simple text on top of - would this be feasible? I'd like to do four invites per A4 page.

Thanks

Hayley

[paw]

Hayley, do you have any nice digital photos of where the reunion will take place? You could use them as a faded background and put the details right over the picture. I think 1/4 page sounds fine. (Our standard page is 8.5 inches by 11 inches)

I use Paint Shop Pro for graphics, my kids prefer Photo Shop. I don't know what type of program you use. I would print on heavy paper -- we call it card stock here.

[Retro]

Hi Hayley,

Do a search on any search engine for images. What software to use depends on what you've got. Any word processing software can cope with what you want to do or desktop publishing sofware. If you're using MS Word you can do a mailmerge from Outlook to personalise the invitations.

If you don't have any office suite (which would surprise me) there is OpenOffice which is a free fully MS Office compatible suite.

If you need to know anything else, PM or email me, I'd be happy to help.

Lindsey

[Hayley]

Thanks for the advice Lindsey and Paw! Great idea about taking the photgraph and fading it onto the background. I've got some card so when I've decided on the final design, I'll print it on that.

Thanks again

Hayley

[Retro]

Oooo missed that bit. You can set it (the pic) as a watermark

Lindsey