Happy Holidays!

Project by gingerbreadsnowflakes in our Holiday Blog Carnival

We at Craft Critique would like to wish you and yours a merry everything and a very happy New Year. We are beyond thankful for all of your readership and support. We will be taking some time away from the interwebs to enjoy time with family and friends over the holiday, and suggest you do the same. 

Should you require any entertainment between now and January 2nd... we suggest searching our vast archives via our sidebar, watching some of our crafty videos, revisiting some of our crafty carnivals filled with tons of projects, or visiting our wonderful sponsors.  We will remain active on Facebook, so be sure to join our page to join our little community.

See you in 2011 with more great reviews, event coverage and crafty posts! We'll be back in action on January 3rd.

Holiday/Winter Crafty Carnival Winner

Congratulations to the randomly chosen winner of the $25 crafty prize package....

BARBARA BRUDER

If your name appears above and you are the winner, please email us at info@craftcritique.com with your name and address as well as Holiday Carnival Winner in the subject of your email.  Congrats to the winner!

It's time for a new Crafty Carnival!  This month, the theme is Holiday/Winter.  Whatever your December Holiday of choice might be, or even just a craft with a winter theme; we'd like to check it out!  Any type of craft is cool with us: scrapbook layout, jewelry, card, cupcake, knits... whatever you've got to share!

All you have to do is submit your blog link through our new handy "inlinkz" system!  Just click on the little button! Easy peasy!

Add your links by midnight CST on December 20th, and you'll be entered to receive a $25 prize pack from Craft Critique! Enter as many times as you'd like.

Spread the word and have a wonderful month of craftiness!

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner Winner

Congratulations to the winner of the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner...

Linda F. said...
What a cool little device. Here's one of the things I'd use it for: I love microbrews & unusual beer brands. You know, like 12 Dogs of Christmas or Weihnstephan Hefeweisbier ... yes, I'm a beer geek. I love to go to the local shop & pick out a 6 pack of different beers, bring them home, & sample. Well, instead of having to write down the names of the ones I would buy again, I could just SCAN THE LABEL! How cool would that be? Then I'd not only have a record of the name, but also of the cool label graphics. He he! What fun!

If your name appears above and you are the winner, please email us at info@craftcritique.com with your name and address as well as the product you have won in the subject of your email.  Congrats to the winner!

Crafty Holiday Gift Wrap

Reported by Simone Collins
It's the most wonderful time of the year again, and once you are finished with all your holiday purchases, it's time to get wrapping. Gift wrapping can be such a creative outlet, so go ahead and put those crafty items to use and jazz up those boxes this year!

Sure, I like traditional wrapping paper just like the next guy, but newspaper can work too—and can cost nothing.

Start with a plain wrapped box. I like to use the property sales section of the paper since it is all words and no pictures.

Next, simply add some bakers twine and some punched snowflakes. Here, I used the Martha Stewart Alpine and Himalayan snowflake craft punches, as well as her red and white bakers twine.

Another option would be to use those snowflakes directly on the newsprint and write the recipients name with marker.

Or jazz up this idea with some of the Martha Stewart glitter glue. Here I added the garnet, onyx and carrara marble.

Look at all that sparkly glitter, with none of the mess!

Don't like or have newspaper? Try some plain tissue paper. I like to double wrap my gifts in tissue so that none of the print from the box shows through.

You can decorate simply by adding a piece of your favorite patterned paper like I did here with a strip of last year's holiday paper from Cosmo Cricket.

Or you can create a cool paper snowflake for the top that will wow anyone on your list. First, you will need six pieces of white copy paper cut 2" x 2".

Fold each piece on the diagonal.

Then you are going to use a ruler and mark one of the pieces like below, so that you will be making even cuts on each piece but not all the way through the top. Cut each piece using this first as a guide.

Next, open the pieces and begin gluing the centers together. I used Scotch Quick Dry Tacky Adhesive because, well, it's quick. If you are using patterned paper or cardstock you will need stronger glue but for this light copy paper, I just held each in place for a few moments and they were set. The first piece with look something like this.

Then, flip it over and glue the next. You will alternate with each section.

When you are finished, your piece will look like this. Glue each of your six pieces—it may take a little time, this part took the longest at 15 minutes.

Finally, glue the petals together. I used a button in the center, adhered with my hot glue gun, to hold the whole thing together. You can tie it on your package, and the recipient can use it as an ornament next year. I know this may seem slightly tedious but the entire process took me about 30 minutes. And don't the very special people in your life deserve a paper snowflake?

There are other really great crafty gift wrap ideas online. Here are just a few to inspire you:
Martha Stewart Gift-Wrapping Ideas
Danielle Thompson vintage gift wrapping
Wrapping your gifts with yarn
DIY gift wrap with Ready Made Magazine
Handmade wrapping paper with Design Sponge
Layered gift wrapping
Stitched gift wrapping
Gift bags from envelope and tape
Vintage doilies and lace
Use your punches in a 3D way
Fabric gift wrap
Scrapbook paper for wrapping
Gift wrapping with knitting odds and ends
Christmas paper pom poms
Bunting and flower and felt, oh my!

Got a great gift wrapping idea of your own? Is there a tutorial on your blog you'd like to share? Using your crafty products in a cool way this holiday season? Share your ideas in the Comments Section—we would love to hear about it!

Vendor Spotlight & GIVEAWAY: Flip Pal Mobile Scanner (2 of 2)

Reported by Dana Vitek

I first laid eyes on the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner at the Summer 2010 Craft & Hobby Association Trade Show. There was quite a buzz about it during the Innovations Showcase for new products (I was a part of that buzz... I leaned over to Executive Editor Simone Collins and told her I wanted one, pronto). I was not surprised at all when it won for best new product. So, when the review opportunity came up, I was the first to raise my grabby little hands.

The Flip Pal Mobile Scanner is small and portable, but that's not what makes it awesome. It's awesome because you can remove the lid, hold it up to stuff, and scan it. Just think about the possibilities: you can scan objects and photos that you can't remove from the wall, say like vintage wallpaper or cool graffiti. Or maybe a tile motif.

Or, say you need to make a bunch of name tags for your next high school reunion, and can't face the thought of wrangling the yearbook onto a flatbed scanner and scanning whole pages that you have to break down into a bunch of little pics.

Here I've removed the lid and flipped it over to scan

This is the display screen on the back of the scanner

 

surrounding photos  were blurred for privacy; they were crystal clear on the scan

My hair has changed, but my attitude is the same.

This was a cinch. Really.

The Flip Pal Mobile Scanner is also great for scanning cool textures that you definitely wouldn't be able to use a traditional scanner for:


Carpet:

yes, this is my nappy carpet

Dog Fur:

this is my not-so-nappy dog

And with a little Photoshop magic, you can use those textures to create digital elements for your scrapbook pages... there's all sorts of things you can do:

A plain flower

A wooly flower, a "felted" digital image, with the carpet scan used as texture

my dog's name

my dog's name, written in her scanned fur

Here's another thing that the Flip Pal is perfect for... tattoo artists.

What? Hear me out (and thanks to Editor-in-Chief Sarah Moore for this idea)... traditionally, when a person goes into a tattoo shop for a cover-up of say, someone's name permanently inked on her shoulder:

who thought this was a good idea?

the tattoo artist would have you basically do a backbend over a photocopier, to photocopy your tattoo, so they could design something snazzy to cover it.

I don't know about you, but my backbend days are long past. Here we used the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner to scan my tattoo.

Here's what the scan looks like:

Into Photoshop for some design work:

yum.

my old tattoo is going to get all swirled into that luscious hair!

My new tattoo is going to be so epic. You'd better believe I'm going to glitter him up so he shimmers when I go out on the town.

I hope I've given you some ideas of how you can use the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner for more than scanning old photos (although there's certainly nothing wrong with that, and I plan to do that as well). This is one of those pieces of technology that I'm going to use in my daily life, and I LIKE that. A lot.

Pros:

• Very portable. This will fit in my purse.
• Being able to remove the lid to place the scanner flat against a wall or photo album: genius.
• I'm looking at the world in a whole new way; now I can scan pretty much anything!

Cons:

• It's not pink. I prefer my tools be pink.
• Hey Flip Pal...I could use a little carrying case for it! 
• That's it, really.

The Flip Pal Mobile Scanner retails for $149.99, and I definitely think it's worth the investment. Be sure to visit their website for some demos and other ideas.


Giveaway!
The fine folks at Flip Pal are giving away one of the Flip Pal Mobile Scanners to one of our lucky readers. Leave a comment on any "Vendor Spotlight: Flip Pal Mobile Scanner" article (this is the second of 2), and answer this question:

What would you scan with the Flip Pal Mobile Scanner? Don't be afraid to think outside the "old photo" box!

One comment per person, per article, please.  You have until Monday, December 20th at 6pm CST to enter.

Disclosure


* in the interest of full disclosure, "Curtis" is my husband, Curt,  and that "tattoo" is Sharpie markered on. But the idea holds, for sure!

Vendor Spotlight & GIVEAWAY: Flip Pal Mobile Scanner

Reported by Rachel Johnson

Years ago, I worked for an art magazine, and scanning fine art images was a big part of my job. Since I had access to a professional grade scanner at work, I never got around to purchasing a scanner for home use. Since nearly all of my photography is digital, I mostly got by without one, but there were always instances when I wished I could scan an old photo or an illustration. It just never seemed worth it to go buy a huge, desktop scanner/printer combo for just a few projects or photos. It was a constant conundrum -- I wanted to scan things, but I didn't want to own a bulky scanner that would just take up room on my desk.

The Flip Pal Mobile Scanner solved my conundrum! The Flip Pal is a mini, battery-powered scanner that you can take anywhere. It is approximately 10 inches wide, 6.5 inches tall, and about an inch thick. It weighs about 1.5 pounds. It comes pre-loaded with batteries and a 2GB SD memory card. All you have to do to start scanning is take it out of its packaging. You don't need to hook it up to a computer or plug it in; just switch it on, and press the scanning button! Magic!

The Flip Pal also comes with a simple instruction booklet and a handy thumb drive "SD to USB converter" that you can use with the SD card to load the scanned photos onto you computer. The thumb drive also contains special Flip Pal photo software that runs on Windows computers and can help you edit photos and stitch together large photos from multiple scans. However, I use Mac computers, so I was not able to access the software. Instead I used iPhoto and Photoshop to easily edit all my scans.

I got married long, long ago in the age of analog photography, and for years I have been meaning to scan some of my wedding photos. A perfect project to test out my new Flip Pal!

The scanning surface is 4 x 6 inches and can scan at a 300 dpi or 600 dpi resolution. Three hundred dpi is a standard print resolution, and scans made at that size can be printed at their original size. Scans made at 600 dpi resolution can be successfully printed up to twice their original size. Many professional scanners work at much higher scanning resolutions, but for nearly all hobby and craft purposes, 600 dpi is plenty large. Plus, each scan is very fast! I scanned over 80 wedding photos and didn't even use up half of the battery power!

Each scan is displayed on the scanner's small screen after it is completed. The digital display helps you make sure you positioned the scanned item correctly and allows you to review all of the scans you have made during a session.

Another great feature of the Flip Pal is that you can remove the cover and "contact scan" larger pieces or things that will not fit under the cover. Once the cover has been easily pulled off, you can flip the Flip Pal over and scan... well, really anything!

The clear back allows you to position the scanning surface correctly. I scanned a few of my large wedding photos and also a few older photos that are affixed to a scrapbook this way.

It was incredibly easy to import the scans onto my computer. You simply put the SD card into the USB converter and plug that into your computer. Then, you can import photos just as you normally would off of a digital camera. If you have an SD slot on your computer, you can use that instead of the USB converter. I imported my scans into iPhoto and did a little bit of cropping and editing. The whole scanning process was completely user friendly and easy.

I am thrilled that I finally got some of my old photos scanned, including the two above of my grandparents. I love my new Flip Pal!

Pros:

• Small size makes it completely portable and easy to store.
• User friendly and extremely easy to use.
• No set up - simply open it up and start scanning!
• Patented flip-and-scan technology - literally flip it over and scan anything!

Cons:

• The included Flip Pal software only works on Windows computers.
• The scanning surface is small - 4 x 6 inches.
• Maximum scanning resolution is 600 dpi - some project may call for a higher res.

Giveaway!
The fine folks at Flip Pal are giving away a Flip Pal Mobile Scanner to one of our lucky readers. Just leave a comment on any Vendor Spotlight: Flip Pal Mobile Scanner article (there will be 2) answering the following questions:


Have you ever used a portable scanner, like the Flip Pal? What projects would you complete if you had a Flip Pal?

One comment per person, per article, please. You have until Monday, December 20th at 6pm CST to enter.

Disclosure

Vendor Spotlight: Jacquard Tie Dye and Indigo Kits - Editor's Follow up

Reported by Dana Vitek

 Not one to let Susie and Sara have all the fun, I broke into my Jacquard Tie Dye and Indigo Dye kits with vigor. Both Susie and Sara said that they didn't realize that the Tie Dye kit contained 2 different colors of ink; I just wanted to point out that it does, indeed, say it right here in the directions that the package contains a main color and an accent color.

Okay, now that the formalities are out of the way; let's get down to business.

I've been wanting to dye yarn for the longest time, but didn't want to deal with the mess and fuss that comes from dipping and mixing and stuff. So, I figured this Tie Dye kit would be just what I was looking for. It definitely was. I just added water to the pre-filled applicator bottles, and I was was good to go.

Here's what I started with (it's 100% cotton):

This is a lot of yarn (14 oz). Maybe too much for one kit.

Soaking in the soda ash pre-dye bath:

I added water to the bottles and tested them on a paper towel:

Now the good part... first the red:

then the pink:

I stuck the whole thing in a trash bag and let it sit for about 20 hours. Then I rinsed and rinsed and rinsed it. The water eventually ran clear.

There's no good way to dry this much yard without getting it all boogered up. First I put it in a lingerie bag and put it in the dryer on high. For a long time. No dice. Then I attempted to dry it using my hair straightener. My husband took one look at that operation and suggested I put it in the oven. 200 °F for 2 hours, and it's pretty close to dry. Finding the end is another story.

I crocheted up a quick swatch to see how it would look in my typical baby blanket pattern... I love it! I'm a little afraid that the color might run (reds are like that), so I'm going to wash the finished blanket several times by itself, before I give it to an unsuspecting baby girl!

While the yarn was in dye purgatory (i.e. the 12-24 hour waiting period), I mixed up the batch of Indigo dye. Included in the package was all this stuff:

including a really cool informational booklet about the history of Indigo. Pretty cool stuff. Anyway...

4 gallons of water + 1 tiny little jar of powder:

This does not smell very good

I know nothing of tieing things up to dye. There were directions included, but I pretty much winged it. That's the beauty of tie dye... anything goes!

While I was rubberbanding, I let the bucket of dye rest for about an hour, and came back to find this:

(this really doesn't smell very good)

Apparently this is exactly what it's supposed to look like, based on the pictures included in the kit.

The liquid part of the dye is actually a yellowish-green color. I dipped my fabric in (I was doing a whole bunch of white 100% cotton flannel) and gently squeezed while keeping it under the surface of the dye. The directions make a point of saying to not drop your fabric in the bucket and let it touch the bottom. That's too bad, because that would have been way easier. But, that's the nature of indigo.

Some action shots:

Here's the cool part; after taking the fabric out of the dye and unwrapping it, the indigo reacts with the oxygen in the air and tada! Blue!

I rinsed out the flannel, and threw it in the dryer for about 1/2 an hour. Then I ironed it, and started cutting it up to make a quilt.

I LOVE the way the fabric turned out, and had a hard time cutting into it! The flannel was still super soft; the indigo dye didn't change the texture at all.

Since I had all this dye left over, I stuck the bucket in my laundry room until I could decide what else to dye. And then it came to me... my favorite jeans. These jeans were purchased back when the light wash look was still in. I haven't had the chance to overdye them yet, but I'll be stylin' again soon!

Pros:

• Kits come with everything you need to get started, right down to the gloves and rubber bands. Which is great because then I didn't need to steal any from the office.

• Jewel tone kit had just enough for a small project; two t-shirts is a perfect amount.

• Indigo kit is great for larger projects or lots of shirts.

Cons:

• Okay, it's messy, or has the potential to be. But really, I've trashed my kitchen way worse than this.
• I probably should have used two kits for the yarn; now I know.
• The indigo dye smells yucky, so says my 4-year-old daughter, and I agree.

All in all, I loved these kits, and will definitely be using them both again. I still have an Emerald Tie Dye kit, although next time I think I'll crochet the blanket first and then tie dye the finished product.

So what do you think? Are you hankering to get your hands on some tie dye now? Leave us a comment and let us know!


Disclosure