Spinalcat's Crafty Adventures

WIP: Mermaid Sleeve Done! , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . The first Mermaid sleeve is finished and set in, and the second is being washed! If you want to see it (and me, lolz) in person, come by the Yarndogs booth at Stitches on Saturday the 28th. I thought I had finished all the knitting on Lizard Ridge , but I decided to add a 5th strip. The shop had exactly 5 usable colorways that I hadn't used yet! The kitties helped me wash the strips and set them out flat to dry. I'm going to use a light teal shade of Cascade 220 Heathers for the crochet edging. I finished the felted cat toys from the Tigger Toys kit by Knitwhits . Tina is a local designer. We just got a ton of her kits at Yarndogs. Her designs are so cute! I almost want to have a baby right now just so I can make the Flore hat. (And matching bloomers!!!) The cats fought over the mouse for a minute, then lost interest. The cats are becoming very interesting. Rocky got over his initial shyness and is...

T-Shirt Collection , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . I've been getting a lot of traffic from people interested in stenciling, so I'm sharing 8 t-shirts that I've made. All except the right-hand Darwin were made with contact paper stencils (that one used the Mod Podge "screenprinting" method found here ). I've also made a quadratic equation shirt for my math teacher MIL, a Badnarik campaign t-shirt that's gone missing ("Vote Libertarian And Win A Free Country"), and an adorable walrus sweatshirt with glued-on googly eyes for my brother. Visit the flickr page for more notes on the shirts pictured here.

Finished Shirt , originally uploaded by Buxtrosion . Here's a better pic of the finished shirt. The stencil templates are from the Saffron Revolution blog at http://saffronrevolutionworldwide.blogspot.com/ I was going to send in the link to my shirt after I posted this photo, but somebody beat me to it!

Supplies: your image on normal paper contact paper scalpel or exacto knife cutting surface scotch tape prewashed and dried t-shirt scrap cardboard fabric paint (like Tulip brand from craft store) sponge brush (very cheap at craft stores) Step 0: Print out your image. It's best if there aren't any islands. For example, you'll want to be careful with what fonts you use for text. Stencil fonts have a lovely DIY punk aesthetic for protest shirts, but I've also developed a freehand stencil-friendly text style I use for a daintier look. I'll be posting a pics of my t-shirt backlog shortly. You'll also want to consider the amount of detail in the image and the number of shirts you'll want to make. This method creates stencils that are good for one use only. It allows a pretty good amount of detail and crispness, but it's limited by your cutting ability. It doesn't work so well for things like math equations that have a lot of thin straight lines (ask...