Month: February 2025

Thaumatrope Valentine

On By CarynIn Craft

My youngest needed Valentine cards for school, but didn’t want store bought. I like toy-type cards, and if I can sneak some science in all the better. This line of pursuit led us to create a Thaumatrope, which is a spinning toy invented in the 1800s with two different pictures on each side of a disc. When the disc is spun, the pictures appear to combine. The original thaumatropes used string to suspend the circle, but a similar action can also be achieved with a stick mounted disc, and rolling a stick between two palms is easier than twisting string. My youngest chose the elements to go on the card, and I drew them up in Adobe Illustrator. Pro tip for getting colors right from screen to print: don’t go by screen color. If you want a bright yellow, go into the color picker and make sure that your CMYK color is all Y, with no cyan or magenta. High contrast images work better for this visual trick as well. I printed the images on card stock, and used my laser cutter to cut the circles (so much more precise than my old electric cutter). I used hot glue to secure the paper stick (I used a 6” stick marketed for cake pops), and keep the front and back together.

Photo description: finished stick-style thaumatropes in the background, glue gun to the left and the front and back of the disc in the foreground

I like that when the disc spins, the bee and sun are smiling at each other. It came out cute. What wasn’t cute was making 35 of them. Phew.

Tea jar terrarium

On By CarynIn Garden

We had an old tea jar that lost its lid, so I made it into a terrarium. Since the top was open I opted for succulents, which like the dryer environment.

Photo description: the side of the terrarium showing the layers of sand, charcoal, rocks, bark mix, and potting soil

I plugged the tea jar spigot hole with a silicone wine bottle stopper, which worked perfectly.

Photo description: lily pad leaf shaped silicone stopper on the side of the jar

I wanted a two layer layout, with the back plants visibly taller and higher than the foreground plants, but I struggled with soil depth and the root systems of the plants I purchased, so it didn’t quite fit my vision.

Photo description: looking down into the terrarium with seven types of plants, decorative rocks, and carved stone turtle and coyote

For the non-plant decor, I raided my childhood rock collection, adding some amethyst crystal, pyrite, fish fossil, and two carved stone figures. Although the container and rocks were no cost, the soil layers and plants added up. I do have left overs that can be applied to a different project, though.

I do like the cactus color pop, and that I have a spiral feel to the layout. Now to see what lives.

Throwback Thursday: quilling

On By CarynIn Craft

Here is a trip in the Wayback machine to 1988. My Mom was into quilling and we were decorating eggs. My Dad recently sent me photos of one of the eggs we worked on together.

Photo description: white egg with yellow and orange shades of quilling paper and a double brass ring base
Photo description: back of the same egg with different quilling patterns

This is a 37-year-old paper, glue, and egg project that has lived in a cupboard and been moved around the country a few times. I don’t think the colors faded or pieces fell off. Quilling is great for developing fine motor control and patience. (The egg was blown out before it was decorated.)

Cat chess

On By CarynIn Cats

This was an interesting game of cat chess. Izzy the calico was cuddled in the fuzzy blanket on my chair, and Sophie the dilute calico jumped up on the footstool and stared at her. Izzy woke up when I took the picture, saw Sophie sitting higher than she was, so moved up to the top of the chair in a checkmate move.

Photo description: dilute calico in the foreground staring at a calico cuddled in a fuzzy blanket

I would gave stayed in the comfy cozy blanket, which just proves I’d be rubbish at cat chess where the goal is the hold the high ground.

Masking tape

On By CarynIn Craft

Some people who use laser cutters advocate for using masking tape to reduce the smoke stains on the surface of the wood. I tried it as I redesign my dishwasher magnet. I don’t like it.

Photo description: after the laser cut project using blue masking tape, small areas of tape are left behind, and the image didn’t fully burn

With the addition of the tape, the laser settings have to be increased because of the thickness of the tape. After burning a design there are also small bits of tape left behind that need to be picked off, and in the fill areas the obliterated tape leaves a sticky residue. Yuck.

So how to deal with those smoke marks? A little bit of sanding with 400 grit sandpaper works wonders and takes less time than removing sticky tape.

Back to the beginning: Why am I redesigning? I didn’t like how the bit map engrave of the previous design was a little messy and took a long time to engrave, so I redrew the art and made an SVG file, which cut the processing time almost in half. Depending on settings, the previous bit map design took 11 minutes, where the new SVG takes 6.