Gifts & Crafts – halifaxwritersfest.com

To Buy or to Rearrange? That is the Question

Every time I find myself in a craft store poring over the new selections, I begin again to think that if only I had this item or that decorative craft, then my house would look perfect. Unfortunately, this is not great for my wallet or my house!In all reality, that new exciting purchase may be the first thing I add to my next garage sale list. Instead of the constant looking and searching for new items, I have found that rearranging what I already have is a great solution for home décor. It doesn’t take a lot of effort, but I feel like I have a brand new look. It is the best of both worlds: I get the experience of interior decorating, and my bank account balance doesn’t go down a penny!

How to Improve the Look of Your House Using Just A Few Minutes

Great interior decorating does not have to take a lot of time. With a couple minutes each day you can complete any one of the tasks listed below: One is to have a notebook where you write down ideas for redecoration and reorganization as they come to you. When you have enough time to do some decorating, this journal will be a gold mine for you. Another tip is to spend a few minutes each day cleaning or organizing something that will stay clean and organized for quite a while. After just a few days of this, you will love how neat and structured your home feels!You can also take a few minutes each day to learn new home decorating techniques. Use the Internet or some magazines, and see if something catches your eye. A gorgeous, efficient, and pleasant home is within reach—and all it takes is a small amount of extra time each day.

Making Your Workplace A Little More Green

Does your workspace make you feel like you are stuck behind bars?Empty, pasty walls and a desk with nothing but computer equipment and papers do little to break up the monotony of the day. It is hard to feel inspired in such a place. Believe it or not, it doesn’t take much to revamp all this dullness into something more inviting and invigorating. Choose a place in your office to add a good-sized tree, such as a Japanese maple, to revitalize your work area. Many offices have put in silk trees because most of their conference rooms or offices do not have natural lighting available. You can further promote this nature-like atmosphere by adding a few small plants or flowers and a desktop fountain. With just these few changes, you have transformed the atmosphere of your office and created a much more productive work area.

Using Hanging Plants as Interior Décor

Displaying a hanging plant adds another dimension to your house. A good variety of silk plants—large and small, wide and narrow, on the floor and on the ceiling—brings uniqueness and variety to your home. Corners make some of the best places for hanging plants—there is hardly a better way to add color and a clean feeling to those areas of your rooms. Hanging plants placed in corners also stay out of the way. It is important to hang your plant correctly so that it does not someday crash to the floor. You will want to find a strong hook that can be adhered in some way to a ceiling beam if you are planning to hang a heavier, denser plant. There is much less to worry about if you decide to hang smaller plants with light containers. Read the rest of this entry »

Creating Attractive Wreaths

A simple but beautiful way to decorate your porch is to add a wreath to your door. There are many ways to be creative when you make a wreath: the combinations of colors, shapes, and themes or styles lead to endless possibilities. For a simple wreath start with any desired foam ring and silk flowers; these can usually be obtained at a local craft store. Using some heavy-duty scissors, cut the stems of your flowers, leaving about an inch of stem below the flower. Insert the flowers one at a time into the foam ring. A key to an attractive wreath is to make sure that the flowers are grouped closely enough so that the foam does not show through, but not so close that the flowers are crammed. If you add a bit of glue from a hot glue gun to the base of the flowers before you push them into the ring, your wreath will be less likely to lose or shed pieces. A little extra green in your wreath is often a nice touch—use leaves or vines to supplement your flowers. Color coordination can be used to match the seasons, or if you like a natural look, any variety of flower colors will work. Finally, choose what part of the wreath you want on “top” and tie a string around that area so that you can hang it on the door.

A Real Plant or an Artificial One? That is the Question

A decision to make as you decorate your home is whether you want to use silk plants and flowers or real ones. There are some advantages and disadvantages with either selection. Make sure that if you choose live plants, sunlight and water are readily available to them. Also, bugs are sometimes drawn to live plants. However, there is a degree of fulfillment you get when caring for living things that you cannot have with artificial ones. If you are planning to change your greenery based on the seasons, if you like to move furniture and decorations around a lot, or if you yourself may be moving at some point, you will find it easy to store and move silk plants. The most important consideration to be careful of with artificial plants is how true to life they look. You don’t want someone to walk into the room and instantly know that it is a fake tree or plant. You want it to catch their eye, make them walk up and feel the leaves before they realize that it is artificial. If your visitors believe that the artificial plants in your home are real, you have done a great job!

Plant and Foliage Decorations

When you are decorating your home, it is important to establish a pleasing ambianceYou can achieve this ambiance by combining tasteful styles, textures, colors, and furniture pieces. For those who enjoy an earth based or natural mood in at least one room, adding greenery is an absolute necessity. When adding greenery, make sure you know the size and positions of the areas you will utilize so that you choose pieces with complementary shapes and styles. Ensuring that you have one to two feet of space above the tree makes the room feel more spacious and airy. Adequate space for the branches of the tree keeps your room from looking too cramped or too empty. Some shorter trees, like the bonsai tree, are great choices for tabletop decorations. Hanging plants add greenery to places that otherwise may look too bare, such as the corners of your ceiling. The benefit to silk plants is that they can be placed in areas that do not receive direct sunlight, yet they still retain a natural look.
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By: Amanda Bee

It’s important never to guess how a hand looks. Also the most adept draftsmen use the hand they are not using in front of them as a example when they are drawing hands. Likewise you should find a little mirror and utilize it to examine your hand from the front or to turn your left hand into a right hand.

A recurring beginner’s fault is to depict the hands too small. You have to examine the dimensions exactly when you are drawing a hand. As a guide, place your hand in front of your face. See how it spans all the way from the chin to your hairline. Keep that in mind especially when drawing hands on or near heads in your sketches.

Once you’re beginning to learn how to draw hands it’s ideal to depict a unstrained hand posture first. Notice how the digits are not unbent when the hand is unstrained. They all of the time bow a little, the little finger more than the index finger.

1st analyze the dimensions of your digits. Look at your digits with the palm turned down. You’ll discover that the digits are roughly half the length of the complete hand. All fingers consists of three sections of different lengths. The topmost section (with the nail) is around two-thirds of the middle part, and the middle part is around two-thirds of the bottom part (which gives way to the knuckles).

Here for some magic! Turn your hand over so you look at it from the palm side. The dimensions of the digits have been altered changed now clearly! The digits now appear shortened. If you examine them you will discover they are much less than one-half the length of the hand. The reason: the pellicle between the digits appears as element of the palm.

In addition to this notice that all three parts of the fingers now are all of almost same length. When sketching hands it is very crucial to keep in mind this so you don’t make the mistake of sketching identical digits no matter which way you observe them.

The thumb is a completely distinct thing, so don’t draw it as yet another digit. It only has two joints, not three, goes in a distinct direction and has a completely distinct form so analyze it with care. You should also understand how it bends lightly when fully put out.

Drafting other hand poses

The next basic hand poses you should try to draw is the fist. Notice that the knuckles don’t wind up in a unbent line and that the fore finger and frequently the middle digit stick out more than the other digits.
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In the past, making candles was a matter of having light for the hours of darkness. Candles burned much cleaner than some other ways of getting light for homes before the invention and widespread use of electric lights. Today, making candles is an enjoyable hobby and a creative way to prepare gifts for friends. Soy candle making supplies are readily available on the Internet and instruction can be found in any of the many candle making kits.

Soy wax is the most important component of a soy candle. Soy wax is economical and burns longer than some of the other types of wax. Soy wax is clean burning with a steady light. Soy wax comes from the same soybeans that are grown for food and animal crops. Some soy waxes are mixed with small amounts of beeswax to make them even more attractive to the chandler hobbyist.

You will need wicks for most candles. There are several different types of wicks that can be used in your soy candle. If you prefer, you can create a candle with no wick. If you choose to use wicks, they may be made with a cotton core or with a hemp core. Either type of wick is firm enough to use in a candle. Using a cotton core wick reduces carbon build-up, since the flame burns hot. A hemp core is enclosed in cotton fibers.

If you want to add soft color to your candles, dyes that are environmentally friendly are available. These colors are available in different intensities from pale to deep, depending upon the amount of pigment that you add. Pigment can come in liquid, gel or solid form so that you can determine the preferred way to add color. Liquid dye or color blocks can be melted into the liquid wax, or they may be used separately for dipped and sculptured candles.

Many chandlers like to add their aromatherapy oils to the soy wax for home or gift use. In this instance, only a few drops of scent are needed to permeate the entire room as the wax in the candle warms. You may use standard scents, including floral, spice or musk.

Inventive chandlers use all sorts of jars to form a holder for the candle wax and wick. Unless you are experienced in candle-making, you may want to limit your experiments to smaller containers at first. Once you become familiar with how the wax behaves in different environments, you can branch out and let your imagination be your guide. Standard decorative jars can be purchased online.
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