Artflock and Magcloud

Readers who are interested in earning money from their work will be interested to hear about ArtFlock as it is an alternative to Etsy which is free with no listing fees with commission rates are from 3.5%

You can also use it as a basic business website as you can upload a portfolio of your work and import your blog which is a good way to increase your exposure. If you have work in galleries, shops etc. you are able to list locations that sell your work.

Details are also here at Craft Boom!. While on Craft Boom check out their all time most articles they are all worth a read.

The implications of MagCloud as a service for self publishers is huge as MagCloud enables you to publish your own magazines. Basically  you upload a PDF and they print, mail out, and manage subscriptions. I immediately started to toss ideas around and thought about a sort of “Tips and ideas for Crazy quilting  from Sharon B”. It is just an idea at the moment as I noticed they only shipped within the US so dropped them an email about it. In their prompt reply I was told plans are a foot to enable overseas shipping too.

Thanks goes to Meggiecat for the link

 

Craft Stylish

Craft Stylish is a new ezine/craft site which is part of the Taunton chain of sites. Taunton publish Threads magazine. There are lots of small quick and useful tutorials and articles which make the site well worth browsing if not subscribing to in your RSS feed.

Take a good look at the look and feel of this site as what I found the design and business model even more interesting than its content for it is heavily influenced by the crafting and stitching blogs even to shaping the site as a social site where you can share what you make.

 

A great resource for Crazy quilters

I am not sure if all crazy quilters know that a wiki on crazy quilting is being developed. It has been framed as series of lessons that are ideal for new hands.

These fully illustrated lessons are in a PDF file and are free and open to anyone. Do check it out as it is a fantastic resource as it is very worth while.

 

Craftsman Magazine

This is one of those posts in which you have make sure you have ink and paper loaded in the printer, make a cuppa and browse the goodies

There are facsimile copies of the Craftsman magazine edited by Gustav Stickley hosted at the Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture at the University of Wisconsin. These are fantastic historical resources if you are interested in design history and philosophy. Do put some time aside to browse as these magazines published between 1901 and 1916 as they cover arts and crafts, gardening and landscaping and give a wonderful insight into craft philosophy of the era.

Thanks for the link goes to Meggiecat

 

Wonder How to

Wonder How to is a search engine and directory site for free instructional videos online.

To be listed on the site your video must be instructional. Videos made to promote and market are not listed and since videos are reviewed by human editors this ‘rule’ is enforced. There is also a community space to share your favourite videos

The directory is divided into easily understood sections and there is huge craft are of over 2000 videos. The Quilting section alone houses over 200, the Sewing and Embroidery is about the same. The site is well worth exploring

Thanks for the lead to this site goes to Meggiecat

 

The Colorspire colour schemer

I have wasted far too much time playing with another online colour schemer. Regular readers will be aware that every now and then I turn up another of these designers toys online. Actually they are not toys as web designers find them very useful and so do quilters and textile artists!

The Colorspire colour schemer has a very flexible colour picker which allows you to easily shift tint, tone and shade enabling some very unusual colour schemes to be developed. As another designers tool it looks very useful as you can preview your colour combinations in real time and easily see what works well and what is a total mistake!

If you need a reminder on the difference between tints tones and shades or simply to brush up a bit on your colour theory Basic colour schemes is an article which is concise, is illustrated and covers the main points.

 

FotoFlexer is fun

FotoFlexer is an free and easy online digital photo editor which is ideal to use to do the usual tasks such as  crop, rotate, resize, flip and red eye fix.

For textile practitioners however it is an ideal introduction to digital design. You can upload one of your own images and have access to standard image manipulation tools in order to develop a design for textile projects.

Although some have said FotoFlexer is like Photoshop it is far from the depth of the Adobe package but it is good. That said for an average non professional user who wants to have some creative fun with a digital image it is a great free online graphics editor.

Adding text to an image is simple and you can draw on top of an image. Colour and erase are also available.

You can smooth or sharpen an image or apply effects to images such as turning it sepia or inverting the colours in the image. Or you can turn the image into an ink stamp, fresco or film grain using some of the effects. Pinching, twirling , bulging and stretching the image is also possible. It is even possible to layer images forming composite pieces. After all this playing if you do not like it you have an undo button too.

For those who have not explored designing using a graphics editor this little free web based app is an ideal introduction. If you want keep up with any news about it there is the FotoFlexer blog too!

 

A stitch dictionary of canvas stitches

Stitchopedia is a comprehensive collection of directions on how to work canvas stitches. For anyone interested in needlepoint the diagrams and instructions provided on this site will prove to be useful and I think you will find it worth bookmarking.

 

Finding inspiration in nature

Ernst Haeckel’s masterpiece, Kunstformen der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) is available for both low and hi-resolution download. The wonderful thing about this resource is that not only are the original plates inspiring but you can also download files of the outlines too, which are ideal as jumping off spots to developing a design that can be translated to fiber.

Above is a screen shot of the original detail drawing and the line drawing placed side by side so you can see what I mean. As you can see the line drawing is simple enough to start developing a design which can be applied to various textile techniques.

Candida a regular reader kindly emailed me the link to this fantastic resource

 

Three fun links

I came across these button fairies on flickr check them out as I am sure you will see how the idea can be adapted for both crazy quilting and all sorts of craft projects.

25 Things you can make from a Bra is totally kitch but fun.

For those who like swaps - you will like Swap Bot as it is site that facilitates swaps as it is where swappers can connect, share, and have fun.

Enjoy!