Some attributes of creativity are:

- Challenging assumptions
- Being receptive to new ideas
- Recognizing similarities or differences
- Making unlikely connections
- Taking risks
- Building on ideas to make better ideas
- Looking at things in new ways
- Taking advantage of the unexpected
- Taking chances

*Photos in this post by Bug, taken at Architects of Air

I made the first batch using vellum for the petals and scrapbooking cardstock for the stamen. For the one I made to craft this tutorial, I used pretty basic printer paper.

The first bouquet of poppies I made. For these beauties, I used vellum.

Materials and Tools:

• Paper for the petals (1 sheet of 8.5″ x 11″ paper makes 2 poppies)
• Paper for the stamen (usually black, yellow, or orange)
• Floral wire (18 or 20 gauge works well)
• Floral tape (the same color as your floral wire)
• A bead (the same color as your stamen paper)
• Thin wire (I used 28 gauge jewelry wire)
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun (& glue sticks)
• Needle nose pliers (with wire cutters)
• Paper Poppies Template (downloaded and printed out): paperpoppiestemplate

Steps:

1) If you haven’t already, download and print out the Paper Poppies Template by clicking the link in the Supplies list. Cut out the Petal and Stamen templates – you’ll trace them shortly!

2) Fold your petal paper into eights, so that it looks like this picture:

3) Trace the petal template onto one piece of the folder paper:

4) Cut out the petal shape through four layers of your paper. These will be the four petals for your first poppy! There should be enough petal paper left to make four more petals.

Trace and cut the stamen template out of your other sheet of paper. You should now have four petals and one stamen:

We’re just getting started… keep reading this post for the rest of the tutorial!

5) Snip the stamen so that it is fringed. Right now, the stamen is just a strip of paper that’s 11″ long and 1.5″ tall. With your scissors, snip down about 1″ every 1/4″ or so. Don’t cut all the way through the paper!

6) Cut a length of floral wire so that’s it’s about 9″ long. (Hint: the green thread covering my floral wire started to fray, so I dabbed a bit of hot glue at each end to hold it to the wire):

7) Take your bead and about 12″ of the thin wire. Thread the bead onto the middle of the wire, fold the wire down on either side of the bead, and twist the wire around itself:

Starting with one end of your (now fringed) stamen, glue the bead and wire onto the stamen:

9) Roll the stamen paper around the bead and wire tightly:

10) Put a dab of hot glue at the end of the roll and wrap it up:

11) Put a liberal blob of hot glue on the base of the wrapped up stamen so it doesn’t unravel:

12) Stick one end of your floral wire into the base of the stamen (you may need to apply a new dab of glue):

13) Cut a 12″ (or so) long piece of floral tape and wrap it around the floral wire, an inch or so below the base of the stamen. Wrap the tape tightly, twisting and stretching it around the wires, pressing the tape into itself (floral tape isn’t really adhesive, it’s waxy, so you need to press and stretch it into itself to make it stick to itself). Wrap it up and around the base of the stamen:

14) Now, put the stamen down. Take your petals and pinch a crease along the middle of the tab on the petal, like so:

15) Snip a little cut (about 1/2″) at the base of each petal, along the crease you made:

16) Put a spot of hot glue on the stamen right near where the floral tape ends, and glue your first petal to the stamen and stem. You can use the two sides of the slit to glue around the stem more solidly:

17) Glue the second petal directly across from the first petal:

18) Attach the third petal between the first two petals, by gluing it underneath the other petals:

19) And now the fourth petal:

20) Get another piece of floral tape and wrap the stem up to the base of the flower:

21) Wrap the tape around the base of the poppy covering up all the gluey, cut ends. Make it pretty and cut off any excess floral tape:

22) Tada!

ATX DIY is contributing two rewards for people who contribute to Rob’s campaign. The first will be a screen printed canvas patch with serged edges, suitable for any messenger bag, jean jacket, or baseball cap.

The second will be an extension of our tool roll design, done in natural canvas, with an antique tool screenprint.

We look forward to seeing Rob’s progress updates and the handiwork from his bench.

Today's Easter Eggs!

I just wanted to write up a quick post with answers to the most frequently asked questions we got yesterday during the tour.

About the coop specifically, we estimate that it cost up about $200 dollars in materials and was made over the course of a couple weekends (we’re fairly handy, but not necessarily master woodworkers or anything). It’s really helpful to have a chop saw that’ll do mitered cuts for all the angled pieces. Other than that, we pretty much only used a power drill and a jigsaw to make the handles.

We got a ton of questions about predators getting at our hens. In the almost two years that we’ve had chickens in the backyard we haven’t had any problems with raccoons, possums, or anything that was after our birds. We have twice spotted a snake in the top of the coop – one time at night when the ladies were upstairs (they didn’t seem to notice the snake at all) and again during the day in the egg box (it had a big bulge in it’s belly, so it’s safe to assume that it’s interested in the eggs). A few weeks ago, Bug went outside to check for eggs, and instead of eggs, there was a piece of snake shed in the nest box – presumably we’d had a visitor earlier that day.

Our snake visitor, enjoying an egg supper.

Both Bug and I like snakes, and the snake (or snakes) that we’ve spotted in the coop are harmless rat snakes. We already get plenty of eggs, so we’re happy to pay a small tax to the snake as long as it keeps our backyard ecosystem healthy (and takes care of varmints!).

We definitely have raccoons and opossums in our neighborhood, but they haven’t been able to get into our coop (or they haven’t tried). The plans specifically instruct you to use hardware cloth instead of mere chicken wire and poultry staples instead of just staple guns. Raccoons can rip out chicken wire fixed with staple guns. The bottom of our coop isn’t covered with anything, but you could possibly use more hardware cloth around the bottom. You could also make an apron of wire extending outward on the ground around the coop so that digging creatures would have a harder time getting in. We just haven’t had a problem yet, so we haven’t had to build a more secure fortress.

We also got a lot of inquiries about how the bird and the coop holds up in the weather. In the summer, we make sure that the coop is placed in part of the yard that gets afternoon shade (most of our yard is shaded). In the really hot summer days (when it gets over 100 degrees) we have run a fan on the coop. The birds don’t seem to mind the heat too much – their top roost is fairly well ventilated. If you’re looking at keeping hens in Texas, make sure to look for breeds that do well in heat (or all climates).

This winter we had a cold snap that dropped temperatures down into the teens for a few days in a row. During that time, we brought our whole coop into the studio (it barely fit!) and left the ladies there for a few days. That was probably more coddling then our birds needed; a week later there was another cold day but the birds were up and out scratching around downstairs first thing in the morning. It would be quite easy to run a red light bulb upstairs in the roost for really cold nights.

I’m off to rest and recoup (recoop?) but feel free to email or leave us questions in the comment section. We’re thrilled to encourage more backyard chicken keepers!

Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ve got in store for you:

If you’re checking out this post after the tour – thanks for visiting! We’ll be posting more chicken related content in the next few days, including pictures from the tour and exclusive interviews with both Teriyaki and Dumpling about their tour experience.

In the meantime, you might be interested in some chicken info and resources.

The plans we used to make our coop are from Catawba Coops. The plans were well worth the $20 we paid for them – they include a very detailed shopping list for all the lumber and hardware we needed as well as really detailed cut lists (two things that other plans we looked at lacked).

Our hens are Buff Orpingtons.  Friends of ours from Green Pocket Farm in Red Rock raised the ladies from chicks. We got them as young hens, or pullets, a month or two before they were laying their first eggs. Of the mixed bag of chicks that our friends raised, the buffs were the most friendly with humans and the most bossy with the other birds.

Now, we joke that Dumpling and Teriyaki are the “two-headed-chicken” because they’re often right next to each other doing the exact same thing. Some times, when one of the girls is upstairs laying, the other hen will wait downstairs and squawk out of, what appears to be, loneliness. Yes, it’s annoying, but it’s also kinda sweet.

We get most of our supplies and food from Buck Moore Feed. It’s a great local store with knowledgeable and friendly staff. If you’re in Austin and looking for chicken resources, go there! They’re also selling chicks now – they had lots of buff-orp chicks today, as well as some Black Australorps, Dominiques, and Rhode Island Reds.

If you’re looking for an even more incredible chicken field trip, make plans to visit H&H Poultry in Burnet. They have beautiful and unique chickens and an amazing flock of guineas. Guineas are super cool and prehistoric looking – it’s like visiting Jurassic Park!

The BackYard Chickens website has most of the info any person would want about raising a small backyard flock of hens.

Leave a comment if you have any specific chicken related questions and we’ll answer them in an upcoming post.

Until then, I just wanted to share some pictures of a few recent random projects.

We got our spring garden in back in early March. We’re growing tomatoes, herbs, beans and peas, melons, greens, radishes, carrots, and some other things I’m forgetting right now. So far, the garden is growing great – we haven’t got much rain this spring, but our garden is on an automatic drip irrigation system. I wanted to share this cool picture of a volunteer tomato plant (one of many) that I found in our garden:

This winter, we had a Sun Gold Cherry Tomato plant that grew up from a dropped fruit. Now, the fruit that dropped from that plant is sprouting all over the garden bed. I went to pull out a few rouge sprouts and found this neat little science project under the ground.

After we put in the garden, I got inspired to revamp some planters that were on our front steps since we moved into the house. I painted our “logo” on ‘em – a tall, orange carrot representing Bug, and a round, red beet representing me. Then I found some great lilies that matched the images perfectly. Fun!

And one final piece of eye candy for you to feast on – Texas Shortcake with berries and whipped cream. Every good Texan needs a Texas shaped cookie cutter.

The funny thing is, though we’ve been lazy bloggers, we’ve been incredibly active do-it-yourselfers. We’re already on to the next big projects (more on that soon), but I did want to share with y’all some of the great things we’ve made recently.

I drew an owl and a chicken and we screenprinted a bunch of tea-towels for gifts for various people.

I made a bunch of Bird Wreaths last year, but had some materials left over and made a few more for this holiday season.

I also helped our friends make gifts – our 4 and 5 year old buddies drew some art, including the allosaurus pictured above, and I turned them into screens. Then we printed tea towels and t-shirts.

I made a few bicycle tool rolls by screenprinting canvas, then sewing some pockets for wrenches, tire-irons, patch kits, etc. The whole kit rolls up into a handy little case:

Some other gifts we made but didn’t document as well were: screenprinted hoodies, screenprinted cards, beaded stitch markers for knitting, iPhone gloves (with conductive thread in the fingertips so you can answer your phone without taking your gloves off, and a screenprinted silk tie for my dad.

Bug here with a quick update letting you know that we are so excited and proud to be participating in this year’s East Austin Studio Tour!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the East Austin Studio Tour, it’s an event where hundreds of artists who have workspaces on the East Side of town open their studios to the public. It’s free to come check out any of the 150 participating studios. Some artists will be doing demos, some will be selling their work (everything from jewelry, to painting, to fabric art, printmaking, woodworking, and lots more!).

We’ve been huge fans of the tour in past years, and its a big part of our inspiration in building our own studio.

Our recent focus over the past few months has been to transmogrify our backyard garage into a Screen-Printing studio. We’ve re-plumbed, re-wired, demolished and constructed, and I think it looks pretty good. We have two presses, and the ability to coat, develop, and reclaim screens.

And we want to teach all y’all how to do it!

Our studio (and other participating EAST studios) will be open on Saturday and Sunday, November 13th and 14th from 11am to 6pm and again next weekend on Saturday and Sunday, November 20th and 21st from 11am to 6pm. We are #134 in the catalog. The address is 1713 E. 38th Street. (map)

It’s a little out of the beaten path (further North than the bulk of the participating studios), but please do drop by! We can point you in the direction of other (in many ways much cooler) studios.

Bring a blank shirt (or other cloth-like item) to print on, if you’d like!

A small whale I made last summer using a delicious yellow watermelon from the farmer's market.

Summer is definitely here and fresh, cold watermelon is a favorite summer indulgence over here at ATX DIY Headquarters. These long, hot days remind me of growing up in California’s Central Valley (although the humidity of Central Texas is something that I’m still becoming accustomed to). My favorite way to serve watermelon is to make a watermelon whale. For me, it’s always a nostalgic project – my mom made watermelon whales for summertime family gatherings. It’s a tradition that I’m happy to carry on and share with y’all.

Making a watermelon whale is no more difficult than carving a pumpkin. Follow these simple steps to make your summer a little sweeter:

1. At the store, select a watermelon that is vaguely whale shaped (oval) and one that rests well on one side.

2. Materials and Tools:

You will need:

• A watermelon
• A big cutting board
• A large bowl
• A sharp, medium sized knife
• A spoon
• A dry erase marker (preferably green)
• A couple towels (that you don’t mind getting watermelon juice on)
• A colander
• A few toothpicks
• 1 sprig of mint
• 2 blueberries

3. Wash the outside of the melon with soap and water. Dry it thoroughly.

Begin marking the outline of the whale shape on the melon with the dry erase marker. See the following few images to get a better idea of what shape to draw.

4. Draw the whale’s tail on the end opposite the head.

5. From above, your whale should look something like this (look at the next image to see how the head and tail shapes connect along the sides):

6. Begin cutting by gently scoring the melon in the area in between head and the tail. Don’t cut too deeply – if the melon is really ripe, it may split a little, scoring a few cuts in the rind helps to take the pressure off.

7. Continue cutting, following along the outline of the whale. Be extra careful when cutting the inside curve of the whale’s tale – start by cutting a very shallow cut and continue over the same line going slightly deeper each time.

8. Once you’ve cut along all of the outlines, you can begin taking out the rind in the non-whale sections of the melon.

9. Remove segments of the rind one piece at a time. Don’t worry about the flesh inside the melon, you’ll scoop it out once you’ve cut away all the unwanted rind.

10. Save all the pieces of rind and fruit in the large bowl.

11. Once you’ve sliced out all of the rind, you’re whale should look something like this:

12. Carefully scoop out all of the flesh inside of the melon. Try to scoop the flesh out in big chunks and leave enough flesh on the rind so that the melon supports itself (this is a lot like scooping out the inside of a pumpkin). Add the fruit to the bowl.

13. While you’re scooping out the fruit, take a few minutes to de-seed and cut the melon into bite sized pieces. Keep some towels close at hand as watermelon juice tends to get everywhere while you’re scooping and cutting!

14. Drain the watermelon pieces in a colander so that you’re whale isn’t full of juice when you fill it back up. This is particularly important if you’re making a fruit salad with other fruit.

15. Once your whale is all scooped out, it should look like this:

16. Now you’re ready to add a blow hole! Take a toothpick and poke a hole into the top of the whale’s head.

17. Poke a sprig of mint into the blow hole.

18. Now help the whale see by giving it eyes. Break a toothpick in half – stick the pointy end of the toothpick into the side of the whale’s head, leaving a quarter inch or so of toothpick sticking out.

19. Carefully poke a blueberry onto the toothpick. Repeat for other eye.

20. Now your watermelon whale is ready to swim! Fill it up with the prepared watermelon or your favorite fruit salad. Enjoy!

In the interest of getting on with an already lengthy tutorial, I’ll post more about soft circuits in a future post.  For now, enjoy these instructions for how to sew a simple circuit bracelet (or Power Cuff if you’re selling boys on the idea!).  Please let me know in the comment sections if there are any instructions that are confusing (or flat out wrong!).

Materials and Tools

1. Sew-On Snaps- Make sure they are metal and not coated with paint, they need to conduct electricity.  Magnetic snaps would also work – Available at craft stores or here.

2. Needle – Needs to have a relatively small head – Available at craft stores.

3. Conductive Thread – I’ve been using the 4ply conductive thread- Available at SparkFun.

4. Strip of Felt – Feel free to use another sewable, no-conductive material or fabric.  Felt is easy because it doesn’t fray and is easy to stitch into – Available at craft stores.

5. LED – Most kinds should work, make sure they don’t need more than 3volts of power.  I like to use the flat, rectangular LEDs for this project because they don’t stick out too much – Available here or in larger quantities here.

6. Surface Mount Battery Holder – Order this part from SparkFun, not all surface mount battery holders are sewable, this one is! – Available at SparkFun

7. Battery – CR2032 Lithium 3Volt Battery – Available where ever batteries are sold (I’ve seen ‘em cheap at IKEA and you can order them here).

8. Sharpie – Preferably a colored one.

9. Lighter – Optional, for burning ends of thread, I suppose a match would also work.

10. Round Nose Pliers – Typically a jewelry tool, small needle nose pliers would also work – Available at bead stores, most craft stores, or here.

11. Scissors – for clipping thread

Optional Materials:

Needle Threader – The conductive thread can be tricky to get through a needle and a needle threader is particularly useful for kids – Available at craft stores or here.

Electrical Tape – To tape the battery in place, especially in light of this scary article about kids swallowing these batteries – Available at any hardware store, most grocery stores, and some craft stores.

Alligator Clip Cables – Great for testing the project along the way.  If you follow these steps exactly, you shouldn’t have anything go wrong, but it’s always nice to test that you’re wiring it up correctly before you sew it all together (trust me!).  Also, if you’re planning to work with soft circuits in the future, you’ll definitely need a few sets of cables. – Available at Radio Shack and here.

IMPORTANT

By follow these instructions you should create a working circuit (which means that the LED will light up once the bracelet is snapped together).  Because you’ll be stitching a circuit, it does matter that you stitch from one component to another in the exact order mentioned.  There can’t be breaks in the thread in the middle of any two components that need to be connected.  Also, crossed threads will create a short (and the light won’t go on or the battery will be drained).  Follow the instructions carefully and be aware of what side (negative/positive) you are working with.  Ultimately, negative will connect with negative, and positive will connect with positive.

CHECK YOUR BATTERY AND LED

Before you get too far into this project, you should probably make sure that your LED and battery work.  This is pretty easy to do before you sew everything together.

Identify the positive lead (the little wires that look like legs on the LED are the leads) – it’s the longer of the two wires.  Now find the positive side of the battery (it should be labeled with a +).  Place the LED over the battery so that the positive lead is touching the positive side of the battery, and the negative lead is touching the negative side of the battery.  The LED should light up – if not, your battery might be dead, your LED might be bad (not very likely), or yer doin’ it wrong (make sure the leads are only touching the corresponding side of the battery and not accidentally touching the opposite side).

PREPARING YOUR LED

Before you start sewing, you need to wrap the leads of the LED into circles so that you’ll be able to easily sew the LED onto the felt.  Grab the Sharpie, LED, and round nose pliers.

Identify the positive wire on your LED – it will be the longest of the two leads.  Mark it with a Sharpie.

Using your round nose pliers, curl the leads into circles.  Make sure the leads don’t cross or touch each other.

By bending the straight leads into circles, you now have something to sew through so that the LED will stay on your cuff.

Now your LED is ready to be sewn on!  Take note of where your labeled positive lead is – we’ll start from that side when we start stitching.

SEWING THE POSITIVE LEAD TO THE BATTERY

Thread your needle with a length (about 18 inches) of conductive thread and tie a knot at the end.  (When conducting this activity with kids, you can double string your needle and tie both ends together in a knot so that the thread won’t keep falling out of the eye of the needle.)

Place your LED in the middle of the felt cuff and begin sewing it on working only with the positive lead.  Loop up through the circle a number of times being careful to pull your thread tightly in order to create a good connection between the LED and the conductive thread.

Once you’ve stitched around the positive side of the LED, begin stitching out towards the end of the felt.  Use a simple straight stitch (also called the running stitch, here’s a video tutorial).  Sew until the last stitch is approximately at the bottom of your wrist  when you wear the cuff like a watch (put the LED in the spot where the watch face would go).

Make sure your last stitch is coming out the bottom of the cuff (the opposite side from the LED).

Take your battery holder and mark the positive end with your Sharpie.  If you’re using the SparkFun battery holder there should be a little tab and some tiny negative and positive signs.  End nearest the plastic tab is the positive end.  Mark it with a dot.

VERY IMPORTANT: You’ll be sewing the battery holder onto the bottom side of the cuff (the opposite side of the LED).  If you haven’t already, flip your cuff over so you are working on the bottom side.

Start stitching through the hole in the battery holder closest to the positive side.  Stitch up and down through the hole and the felt until it’s secure (you’ll probably only be able to pass the needle through two or three times as the hole is very small).  Again, make sure that your stitches are tight and that the thread makes good contact with the metal tab on the battery holder.

Tie a secure knot in the thread and clip your thread leaving a tiny tail.

You’ve just connected the positive side of the LED to the positive side of the battery holder!

SEWING THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF THE BATTERY HOLDER TO THE SNAP

Tie a knot at the end of your thread (or thread and knot a new length of conductive thread if you have less than a foot left).

Stitch the other side (negative) of the battery holder to the felt.  Just like before, make sure your stitches are making good connections with the metal tab and you’ll probably only be able to get your needle through the hole a few times.

Once the negative side of battery holder is securely stitched, stitch a few stitches out to the end of the felt.  This is where you’ll sew in one side of the snap.

Take one side of the snap (I used the pointy side that pops into the hole side) and stitch it to the felt.

The snap will act at the switch for your circuit – when it is connected, electricity will pass through both sides of the snap and make the circuit complete.  When the snap is disconnected, the circuit isn’t complete and electricity can’t flow through all the components.

Like always, make sure to stitch the snap in carefully, creating a tight connection between the thread and the metal snap.

Clip the end of the thread, leaving a short tail.

SEWING THE NEGATIVE LEAD TO THE OTHER SNAP

Thread a new length of conductive thread, making a knot in the end.

Go back to the middle of your cuff – now you’ll be sewing the negative side of the LED out to the other end of your cuff.

Stitch up through the negative circle on the LED (remember, that’s the one that is not marked) and loop up and down through the felt and the LED legs a few times.

Now, stitch out to the other end of your cuff.  Stop when you’ve reached the point where the other snap should go so that your cuff will fit your wrist.

Begin stitching the other side of the snap to the cuff – Make sure you are stitching it to the front (LED side) of the cuff.

Stitch the snap in securely and clip your thread.

Double check your work.  The back should look like this: One side of the snap, battery holder, stitches.

The front should look like this: Other side of the snap, LED, stitches

Check your whole cuff (front and back) for any ends of thread that may be touching another thread.  All of these need to be clipped.

I’ve found that the conductive thread doesn’t knot super tightly, and on occasion, my knots have fallen out.  To remedy this, I singe the ends of my thread where the knots are.  Be very careful!  The felt will melt (and you can easily burn a hole through your cuff) and obviously lighters are not toys!

Now you can snap the battery into the holder.  The battery is labeled – one side with a + the other with a – .  In the SparkFun battery holders, the + side of the battery needs to face up.  Slide the battery in and push it in place.

For added battery safety, you can tape the battery into the holder using electrical tape.  Cut a two inch piece of tape and slide it underneath your battery holder with the sticky side facing up.

Securely tape around the battery holder and battery.  If you need to change the battery in the future, you can just lift off the tape and install a new battery.

(You can tape the battery into the holder before the holder is sewn onto the cuff.  That’s probably easier.  To do this, tape your battery inside your holder before Step 8, and proceed to stitch it into place following the directions.)

Now the moment of truth!  When the snaps on your cuff are connected, the LED should light up.

If not (gulp!) you might want to check the following things:

• Is your battery dead?
• Is your battery installed correctly in the holder (+ side facing up)?
• Are all of your connections good (sometimes you have to jiggle things a little)?
• Is your snap conductive and well connected?
• Is the positive leg of the LED sewn to the positive side of the battery holder?
• Is the negative side of the LED sewn to a snap that, when connected, is sewn to the negative side of the battery holder?
• Make sure there aren’t any crossed or disconnected threads.

Hopefully it works great, and now you can decorate your cuff!
You can use embroidery stitches (with plain embroidery thread), beads, pieces of felt, sequins/rhinestones, feathers, fabric paint or pens, and many other decorative things.