Additional Tri-Square ornaments Part 2

Finished four more and edited the photos.  Last night I kept thinking about how to do plastic canvas chandeliers other the the fuzzy chandelier and the fringe chandelier I have done in the past.

Have ordered over 1,000 additional rhinestones, luckily they won't arrive until after the holidays.

Everyone seemed to  like the Tri-Square ornaments.  Following are additional photos of the ornaments from 2016.

My sister received these:

Godson Jimmy and his wife, Hayley received these four on their first Christmas as Husband and Wife.

Co-worker 's daughters  received the following two:

This was given to the daughter of an employee who works for one of our printing suppliers and has received several other of my ornaments, all in Pink and Purple.

Additonal Tri-Square ornaments

Finished these this past weekend.

Working on new design with 12 diamond shapes and a variation with 8 diamonds and 4 squares..

Finished editing one of the plastic canvas Tri-Square ornament. Color corrected. Working on getting photographed and edited three more variations of the design. Will gave all four as a Christmas present to a couple of got married in October of this year.

 

Have one more variation in this series but the teardrop drop rhinestone doesn't fit in area.  So will complete with either an oval or circle.

It was August since I updated.

Here are some of the ornaments I have been working on.  My partners in the Yearly Ornament Exchange received this ornament design which I call "Tri-Square".


















Here are a few more variations using the Tri Square design.  Adding sew-on rhinestones to embellish.  Will add chain and bead dangles before gifting them.

Update since it has been awhile

Didn't realize it had been almost 5 months since I updated.  In that time I have moved to a new residence and most of my crafting supplies are still boxed.  Moved into a smaller place so have to decide if I am going to put about half into storage, get rid of it or try to make it work.

I have a Third Quarter Ornament Exchange due out end of October. Looked around my office at work and found that most of the items I needed for plastic canvas ornaments were stored there.  So I have the design decided, what I had been calling the "Tri-Square".  The plastic canvas are parts cut so I can make five ornaments. Have made the ornaments before so it will be easier than creating an all-original design. Need to decide floss colors, thinking about embellishing with sew-on rhinestones and sequins. Photos to follow.

This is a version I did many years ago, I think in either 2009 or 2010.

First design - Egg

The first design for the Plastic Canvas ornament book.  Using plastic canvas pieces, I constructed an egg frame which I stitched in white with a pink trim.  I added the pink teardrop acrylic sew-on rhinestones for a little bling.  Later I added a bead chain hanging from the middle inside the shape for a little more bling (no photo taken).  Since this was the first, I continued to need to make some modifications while working.  Most of the issues came when I was working on the top point of the egg.  Didn’t want to have it too pointed nor too rounded.  Have changed the connector in the area on my second attempt.

Some of the stitches were worked in tight areas and I felt very much like my logo design of a bear trying to thread the eye of a needle.

The thing is, I created this logo in 1999 and it has stuck, but never so close to how I felt on some of the stitching.  Working on the second egg now, taking the lessons I learned from the first such a baste stitch the components together.  On the first egg, I used a quilting thread to join the various components together but when I was stitching them with the yarn, I didn't like the way the yarn looked when it was stitched beside the thread.  In the second egg as I filling them in, I am removing the basting stitches and the yarn is laying down better.  Another area of dis-satisfaction was the connector at the 'top' of the egg.  After re-designing the connector, the attachments are easier to join together.  Still not complete happy but am more satisfied.

Design. Adjust. And Re-Design.

Started the plastic canvas designs and have already had to make adjustments to reduce waste at the cost of increased complexity. I wanted to try and make the ornament from just three pieces of plastic canvas, two 'poles' and one 'equator'. The 'equator' would be joined once and the 'poles' would join the 'arms' forming the shape pulling them into the over-all shape. However, cutting the shape would produce only one of the larger shapes from one piece of plastic canvas. If I cut smaller pieces and stitched them together, I could produce two or more ornaments from a single piece of plastic canvas. Going to try it both ways later, right now I am making two of the Easter eggs for two daughters of a co-worker and need to have them finished before the 27th.

Starting from scratch / Why artists can have strong feeling about Intellectual Property.

Starting at the beginning, one does not realize how much work there is in designing ornaments with little previous information.  There are many who cry about "Intellectual Property", copyright and patent infringement and others who decry that once it is in the public, it is 'fair-game'.

Having seen only a few three-dimensional globe type ornaments in plastic canvas, I had little to start basing ornament construction on.  Many times I can modify a technique I already have mastered and just transpose onto another medium.  With Plastic Canvas I really had to start almost at the beginning.  I had found a few patterns for globes on Pinterest but really didn’t like the way the ornaments were constructed nor finished.  The design of the ornaments did not excite my aesthetic sensibilities.  Making variations to existing designs is relatively easy, building it from the ‘ground up’ takes some time.

Over the weekend I started taking my designs for the plastic canvas ornaments from concept to layout.  Using Adobe Illustrator CS4 I made a grid for the 7 Mesh plastic canvas sheets I will use for most of the ornaments.  My first attempt was slightly off, when I laid a piece of plastic canvas on top of the printed sheet, I noticed the graphic was slightly smaller producing a moire pattern.  I adjusted the scale of the pattern by increasing the entire graphic 1% until no moire pattern was visible. 

Once the graph was the properly scaled, I was able to start transposing my design from rough sketches to the graph for both pattern and cutting.  I transposed several concepts for the chandelier along with the concepts for what I have been calling “the globes”.  “The globes” are four (4) designs for three-dimensional ornaments most commonly found on Christmas trees: a sphere, an ovoid or squash which is wider than it is tall, another ovoid which is taller than it is wide, and a navette, similar to an oval but with pointed ends instead of rounded.  I am thinking about making another variation and mixing the point from the bottom of the navette and the rounded top of the sphere to create a teardrop or onion dome, depending on the orientation of the ornament.  Variations are easier once the basic framework is set.

Using rectangles I filled in the graph to represent the stitched portions of the plastic canvas which would be needed to make the ornaments.  Since I am wanting the globes to all be similar in construction, I used the same basic layout, the same circumference, or “Equator” of 72 holes and a 5 hole over lap for joining the ends together.  Since I did not know if I wanted 4 or 6 supported arms I knew I needed a number of hole easily divisible by both 4 and 6.  Once I re-designed with 5 and 6 support arms, the connection areas would be problematic due to the available designs of plastic canvas, so back to the original 4 arm design.    By making changes in the length of the support arms I was able to create all four shapes I wanted.  I then used the same design for connecting the support arms for three of the four designs.  The ends of the support arms for the Navette would need to be adapted to create points at the top and bottom, or “Poles” instead of the rounded ends needed for the other three.

Once done, I printed out the page with all four (4) ornaments layered so that I could construct a paper version of the ornament before cutting the plastic canvas.  Using 72 holes for the ornament would make the diameter to be 3.25 inches, a little larger than the common sized ornaments, If I used 60 holes, it would produce an ornament roughly 2.75" in diameter.  I will make an ornament in each size to see which I prefer.


Having printed out the graph and taped the paper ornament together, now I am ready to actually cut the pattern out and stitch each of the ornaments.   After looking at them I may decide to scrap this entire project but my brain may not let me.


Photos to follow.

2016 - thoughts on ornaments

Been getting this together for the first ornament exchange of the year. Going to try and make several more than the 2 needed for this exchange so that I can 'forget' about the other 2 quarterly exchanges. I will be using scrap from where I work to make the ornaments, just need to buy a few things such as alcohol inks and maybe some clay and metal bracket to use as hangers for the ornament.

Also have been thinking about plastic canvas ornaments. Most I have seen are flat 2-dimensional but the ones I have in mind are 3-dimensional. Have made a few over the years, but this last weekend I designed about 2 dozen.  The first one I did many years ago was similar to the 3 ring chandelier (directly below) but I had attached 3 inch fringe to each of the layers instead of the chain and beaded accents.

Do you want to make a snowman?

Most of my crafting supplies are boxed up and in storage so I am unsure if I will be participating in the ornaments exchange this quarter. That being said I have an ornament designed from recycled products, most of them I obtained from where I work. One of the lines of products we produce have holes punched through stainless steel sheets which are then made into the product - water recirculators for the welding industry. There are several sizes of circles, squares, rectangles which are produced as waste. Last year, I made a snowman out of 3 of these circles. Spot welding them together to produce the traditional snowman shape.

We also have expanded metal used to produce air-flow grates for these machines. In the past I used some to make icicles, and have other ideas for larger pieces, but I am thinking about using them to make stick arms for the snowman.

Another recycled aspect of the snowman will be the plastic 'sawdust' produced in another operation. We also manufacture plastic welding safety and cover lens for the welding industry which we cut to size with an industrial table saw. Even though the plastic is clear, the saw dust is white. I used the sawdust in making the icicles, so will use it along with flocking material to cover the metal discs. Thinking of adding some glitter on the top coating.

Finishing the details on the snowmen, I am thinking about making 'carrot' noses from air-dry clay, and use some yarn to form scarfs. Finally, I will use markers and stamping inks to add the finishing details such as faces, and buttons.