blogging hints

How To: Zippered Pillow Cover – the easy way

Last week I had some fun Free Motion Quilting a pretty vintage tea towel (watch the video here). I was very happy with the result, and this week I’ll show you how I made it into a zippered cushion cover (pillow if you are in the US).
Inserting zippers are usually quite frustrating for me, so I tend to avoid them where possible, but the technique I’ll be showing you today is fool proof.

You will need:
Fabric/quilted panel for front and back of cover
Zipper longer than the width of the cover
Pillow insert
Zipper foot
General sewing supplies

How to:
1. Gather your supplies.
2. Attach your zipper foot.
3. Cut your front panel to size (same size as your insert), as you can see the zipper is slightly longer.
4. Cut your back panel to match the front (I have used wool blanketing).

5. Align your open zip to the edge of the panel, right sides together, then sew as close to the teeth as possible with your zipper foot. Make sure the start and end of the zip overhang at the ends.
6. When you are about a third of the way down, zip up the zipper to a closed position and continue to sew.
7. This is how it should look.
8. Align the front panel to the back one and pin into place, right side facing in.
9. Sew zipper as per step 5 & 6

10. Yay! Zipper inserted without any swearing.
11. Now pin front and back together and stitch along the dotted lines.
12. Take note of how the zip ends are pinned, this will ensure finished cover corners are neat where the zipper meets. Also make sure zipper is open about a third of the way to ensure you can turn inside out.
13. Reinforce the seam over the zipper ends by reversing over it a few times, just being careful that the needle doesn’t hit the teeth as there may be a risk of breakage, especially with a metal zip. Cut off the excess ends and trim any bulky seams. Serge raw edges if desired.

Now turn your cover inside out and insert your pillow insert. Time to make a cup of tea and enjoy your handy work.

Psst! Did you notice the awesome pixelated wall paper in my lounge room? Unfortunately it’s not real, I created it with the magic of Photoshop using a couple of excellent tutorials by Katrina of Pugly Pixel.
To create the pixel texture: PS I Love You: Pixel Blocks
To add the wallpaper: PS I Love You: How to Replace Backgrounds

Katrina is so creative and generous with her knowledge, she inspires me to experiment, learn, and try to create a better blog with every post I write, and photo I shoot and edit. Thanks for being so awesome Katrina!

www.mypoppet.com.au

Customise your Facebook Business Page

Chances are that if you have a Facebook page for your business you have already noticed it looks quite different now that the ‘timeline’ design has kicked in.
Love it or hate it it’s here to stay.

There are great opportunities to really showcase and re-enforce your brand by choosing some striking images for your cover photo and customising your tabs.
Read on to learn how…

Cover photos should be 851x315px and 100kbs or less. Choose something that describes your brand and compliments your logo, but make sure you abide by the Facebook cover photo rules listed here.

Another little known customisation option is Custom Tabs for apps.
If you are handy with a photo editing program like Photoshop or even a simple online version like pixlr or PicMonkey, you can create your own buttons that tie in with the whole look of your page or brand.
The buttons should be 111x74px, no bigger than 5MB (smaller is best).

Here is how to change your tab image:

Open your Page’s admin panel
From the Manage ▾ menu, select Edit Page
Select Apps from the left sidebar
Click Edit Settings under the name of the app whose icon you want to change
Click Change next to Custom Tab Image
On the next screen, click Change next to the existing image
Follow the instructions that appear for uploading a new image or deleting the existing image

If you want to reposition the order of your app buttons:

Expand the views and apps menu by clicking on the ▾ to the right of your Page’s views and apps
Hover over the position you’d like to put a view or app and click the ✎ pencil icon that appears
Choose the view or app you’d like to swap into that spot from the menu

I hope this has inspired you to get creative and pretty up your business page. Remember, first impressions count.

If you want to check out the My Poppet Facebook page and it’s customisations you will find us at https://www.facebook.com/mypoppetshop

This post was originally written for and posted on Handmade Kids

www.mypoppet.com.au

A conversation with The Haby Goddess – How Building Creative Relationships can help your Business

This video is an impromptu conversation with Jodie from The Haby Goddess who has been a long time friend of mine. In this video we talk about how we met, our creative business styles and how the relationship we have formed has helped improve our crafty businesses. We also talk about the importance of creative collaboration and how working together can make great things happen. Essentially, How Building Creative relationships can help your business.

I hope you enjoy the video. It’s a little bit long, and thanks to Emma’s many interruptions we may have repeated ourselves once or twice.

There are lots of take away points that may benefit you in whatever field you are in:
- Get to know people in your industry
- Build relationships based on friendship and trust
- Share your knowledge and talk about your ideas
- Collaborate on projects
- Identify your skills and share workload accordingly
- Motivate and be accountable to keep the project moving along.
- Don’t try to film a vlog post with a 2 yo around!

I would like to thank Jodie for taking part in this vlog post with me, she was a really good sport.
You can check out Jodie’s blog here and her shop here.

The Haby Goddess is a sponsor of the My Poppet blog but in the interest of full disclosure I need to point out that this was NOT a sponsored post. I just thought it would be fun to share.

Do you have a friend like Jodie that you’ve worked together with to ‘get things done’?

www.mypoppet.com.au

How to: Using Image overlays in picnik

***Unfortunately picnik has ceased to exist as of April 19th 2012. RIP picnik, we miss you***
You all know I’m a big fan of picnik.com, and now I love it even more because I’ve worked out how to use PNG image files, that are designed for use in Photoshop, on picnik. PNG images have transparent areas on them which allows you to overlay multiple images like a collage.

It’s really easy, but you will need to have a Premium account in picnik.

I have created a screen cast for you, with some helpful hints along the way that you can apply to heaps of your photo projects.

I have used the free downloadable photo overlays created by Katrina from PuglyPixel.com. Her website is just choc-o-block full of great downloadable files that you can use to jazz up your images as well as great blog design tutorials and craft projects. I just love her washi tape strips, you can my tutorial on how to use them here.

Hope you enjoyed my screencast, leave a comment if you have any questions.
x Cinti

www.mypoppet.com.au

How To: Create an Instagram style photo with Picnik.com

***Unfortunately picnik has ceased to exist as of April 19th 2012. RIP picnik, we miss you***

I’ve created a video tutorial to show you how you can use the free features in Picnik.com to create and Instagram style picture, and learn a few handy tips along the way.
I had lots of fun creating my first screencast, and now My Poppet officially has its own You Tube channel ‘My Poppet TV‘

I’d love to hear your thoughts, and please feel free to leave a comment with your questions and I’ll try to answer them asap.

Well now you know what I sound like.
I’m planning a few more of these picnik tutorials, and am happy to take requests.
If only I had a video camera, I would love to film some crafty tutorials too…

www.mypoppet.com.au

An experiment in blogging…

Just trying out blogging and photo editing on the iPad.
This little post involved uploading photos from my digital camera onto the iPad via a special adapter.
Using adobe ps for iPad to brighten the photo and saving to camera roll.
Uploading the photo to photo bucket for iPad then grabbing the URL code.
Opening up blogger in safari and here I am.
I can only write text in the HTML window and I need to resize images in the HTML window as well…

So it’s not easy but doable, IF I have wifi available.
It’s all a bit of a palaver, so I think any blog posts I write from Japan will be on my travel companions computer. I’ll have to be nice to her.

So if anyone has a better way of doing things, I’d love to hear it…

www.mypoppet.com.au

How to WASHI TAPE STRIPS on picnik

***Unfortunately picnik has ceased to exist as of April 19th 2012. RIP picnik, we miss you***
Have you ever wondered how some bloggers get their pictures looking so pretty with lovely embellishments like washi tapes? Well most of them use clip art in photoshop.
I don’t know how to use photoshop so I’m going to show you how you can use clip art in Picnik photo editor.

Picnik is free to use, but for this particular technique I will show you you must have the premium package (around $25 per yr). I have gotten a lot of value from my premium upgrade and highly recommended it.*

First you will have to download your clip art file. I have chosen to use these lovely and free washi tape strips by Pugly Pixel. The key to using clip art in picnik is making sure they have a transparent background and are in a .PNG file format.
There are several designs in 3 different sizes, so you will have to open your chosen pattern and crop out the size you want. I have used Microsoft office picture manager to do this.
Make sure you ‘SAVE AS’ with a new name and as a .PNG file (this will keep the transparent background)
edit: If you are on a Mac you can use Preview to crop and select out your chosen tape image.

Now you can use picnik to make your images pretty. Upload your cropped tape image, select and drag over you picture.

That’s all there is to it…Check out the Pugly Pixel blog for some more great downloads, tips and tutorials

edit: If you have a question I will try to answer it in the comments section, thanks.

Did you find that helpful?
Yell out if you want me to explain some other Picnik tips and tricks that you may be stuck on

*This post was not sponsored by Picnik, but if Picnik big wigs are reading, how about a free subscription next year *wink, wink*

www.mypoppet.com.au

How to CUT OUT TEXT using Picnik

***Unfortunately picnik has ceased to exist as of April 19th 2012. RIP picnik, we miss you***

I came across this handy tutorial on How to create Cut Out Text for a blog header or similar using Photoshop the other night via Craft Gossip. It’s pretty clear (thanks Justine), but what about those of us that don’t own or know how to use Photoshop?

I have written this tutorial on how to get the same effect with the online photo editor Picnik.
Picnik is free to use, but for this particular technique I will show you you must have the premium package (around $25 per yr). I have gotten a lot of value from my premium upgrade and highly recommended it.*

Along the way you will learn other helpful Picnik tips…

Firstly open up a Collage page, choose the background colour as White and click done.
You will now have a white background to work on. Select the create tab then choose Text.
Type in your text, choose your font and then select colour black.
You can also use black sticker shapes instead of text.
Time to save.

Next go back to the home screen (or history) and open the photo you want to use as your background. Notice the tab at the bottom (only on Premium) select history, your previous text image should be there.

Now drag it over your your photo, you can move, rotate, flip whatever.

Now this is the ‘magic trick’ bit. When you click on the top picture a photo colour box will pop up, there is a pull down menu under Advance blend mode, choose ADD. Your black text will go transparent and you will be able to see the background photo.
(It’s fun to mess about with Fade and Advance blend modes to get some really interesting effects)

Now you can mess about with your image size, pull the edges to enlarge, rotate etc…

Crop and resize as desired to required blog header size or whatever use you wish.
If you prefer you can crop and resize earlier on so you are working with the exact dimensions of your finished image.