Blog - Page 46 of 548 - Violet LeBeaux

Architecture Time! – Melbourne Snapshots

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 25, 2014 | Life

Architecture time! Aren’t these trees beautiful? Everything is just starting to green up agin now.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve themed these posts.

I think when you live somewhere as pretty as Melbourne you kind of get a little blind to the beauty everywhere. You see it every day and half of the time you don’t even look.

So I’ve been trying to look at the little details.

Even down the gross alley ways.

And it’s definitely still beautiful.

You just have to stop and look up!

This is my favourite door:

And one of my favourite bits of street:

I like looking out of tall windows to see the tops of old buildings.

Sometimes there’s even a rainbow ^_^

Even the same standard boring buildings look beautiful again from a different angle!

So look up this week!

Does Drawing On Mugs With Sharpies Work?

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 24, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

So this whole Sharpie mug decorating craft has been everywhere. Like EVERYWHERE. And I figured it was time that I gave it a try finally. I wanted it to work so badly because it’s so cute but I only managed to get *kind of* results. Quite pretty and worth a try anyway so let’s get going!

I used a mug from Daiso and a mixture of Artline permanent markers and Sharpies.

There were so many different methods that I thought I would test them all and see what came out well. I drew each colour on to the bottom of the mug.

Plain drawing on the mug managed to stay through hand washing but not when I added detergent. Boo.

Then I thought that maybe using hand sanitiser would get cool effects like it does with Sharpies on silk painting. Yep it did! Cool watercolour effect!

I drew on a bunch of colour splotches.

Then used some sanitizer on my finger to spread it around.

Super cool look, very watercolourish! But even after being dry, it just came off on my hands because the sanitiser had degraded it. I then tried heat sealing it using a hairdryer on high until it was burning hot. Nope, it still all washed off with water.

So in a last ditch attempt I decided to try the oven version. I drew on my design again:

And tried slow baking it but still no dice. So what I’ve concluded from this is that it really does depend a lot on the glaze of the mug you’re using. There are so many kinds of glazes and so many kinds of mugs that this was never going to be able to work on all of them. Of course I could just continue buying mugs and trying until I find the perfect brand… but who has time for that? There is also the option of buying the specialty porcelain pens but until I have a whole crockery set to do I think they are a bit pricy for just 1 project.

Instead I have decided to embrace the non-permanence of it and am going to use the cup as my personal white board XD

Now I can write my order on the mug every morning for James XD

Lottie approves and that’s all that matters >_>

How To Make A Center Pull Yarn Ball

by VioletLeBeaux | Oct 22, 2014 | Craft, Other-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’m in the middle of cleaning out my craft supplies, it seems to be a never ending process. Bleh. I got up to my yarn box today… this is my least favorite craft thing to organise because yarn never stays organised no matter how hard you try.

Monster yarn boooox!

To begin with I ignored the fact that the yarn was all tangled and wasted a bunch of time painting the basket instead. Because shut up. >_>

Rustic? Let’s go with that.

At that point I decided that it was probably time to do something about the yarn. So here’s how to make a center pull ball. Center pull balls are easier to work with because the yarn comes from the inside. So the ball can stay in the same place while you knit rather than rolling around on the floor.

So wrap the yarn around your 4 fingers several times leaving the tail long and hanging to the side.

Pull the bunch off your fingers and keep wrapping around the bunch.

Keep wrapping around the middle until it turns more into a fat sausage.

Eventually wrap it around into a ball shape. Keep the tail clear from the wrapping so it you were to pull it, it would easily unwind from the inside.

Wrap and wrap and wrap until you run out of yarn. Again, make sure that you can easily pull the tail. I like to hold the ball with my thumb on the tail while I’m wrapping so it’s easier to make sure it’s going to pull easier later.

And that’s done!