Yay Weekend! And thank goodness, it looks like the overtime at work is done for a while. Back to ordinary eight hour days, and my Saturdays are my own again.

For the past couple of weekends, I've been doing crafty things... I just haven't had the time to type about it! The roundup: Serendipity Squares, a handmade Font, and card making!

Two weekends ago, I made Serendipity Squares. These are from the scrapbooking world, little coloured squares that are design elements on a scrap page. Basically, you just glue random things on to a sheet of cardstock, colour randomly with paint or markers, then cut the sheet up into little squares.

The randomness of S.Squares really appeals to me. I love making abstract art, and making my squares was a good experience. And now I have millions of little coloured squares to stick on things!

I started with a sheet of white card stock, glued ripped peices of coloured paper to half of it, and cut colours from a magazine were glued to the other half. Threw down some water colours in between the magazine bits. Made some lines and leaf shapes with metallic markers. Then, dabbed on spots of acrylic paint and stuck tiny paper punch "positives" into the wet paint!

Then I chopped up my page into 1½ inch squares. Beau-Tee-Full.

Last weekend I installed a program called Your Handwriting 2, which turns your own writing into a font. I had my doubts about how well it would work, but now I am totally impressed!

I printed up a grid they supply, wrote my letters, scanned it back in, let the program do it's thing and then I cleaned up some of the letters. It took less than an hour to get a really good looking font!

It's amazing, I can't believe I spent only 15$, and I can't believe it's unsupported software. I can't even send you to a web site to buy the program, because there isn't one. But it's still the coolest program I've bought in a good long while!

The only problem I've run into, is that the font looks fuzzy. I'm not sure why it's fuzzy, since it is a vector and vectors aren't supposed to have any fuzzy lines. So I guess the program is adding some kind of feathering to make the letters look smoother, or some other program nonsense. But honestly, I can live with fuzziness because the program is still the coolest.

This week, I made a Thank You card to send to my Grandma, using my Serendipity Squares!

I have had some not-so-subtle encouragement from the universe (and irate humans) to start my letter writing again. I have lots of stationary, but I'm interested in making my own cards too. So Grandma's card was an experiment, and apparently I am capable of making one-of-a-kind cards even if they aren't brilliantly beautiful or even artistic.

And this weekend, I'm making some bread in my bread making machine. It's been ages since we've had fresh bread. And from the food forum I belong to, I learned a new trick for making a soft and hopefully, slice-able sandwich loaf: lots of wheat gluten. Keep your fingers crossed!

And speaking of the forum... I have been posting there regularly, and I'm getting some inspiration from that site which is leaking over to this blog. For instance, I made the Serendipity Squares for the craft forum that I moderate there!

Veggin'Out is a female-only vege food forum (sorry gentlemen) with a few odds and ends in the subforums to keep a non-foodie like me occupied...

If you're veg*n and female, please join us! Harmonia is the owner there, and I'm known as rift.

Bread Update: Wow, that is some big, fluffy bread! Yay!

Static8 > Journal > Archive > 12 Aug 2006 Entry