Spoonflower custom prints anything you design onto premium cotton fabric. So you can create your own quilts, aprons, potholders, baby clothes, hats, curtains, purses, and anything else you can think of!

There is no minimum yardage order, and each yard is $18.  For a truly homemade personal gift, that sounds pretty interesting to me.   All the details are available on the Spoonflower website.

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Spoonflower: for custom-printed fabrics

Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to go somewhere to take a class. There’s so much to be said for classes…being able to see the technique demonstrated, being able to ask questions, mixing and mingling and meeting new people. It’s all good. But it just doesn’t work out for everyone.

Fortunately, there is the internet!

There are three categories of posts on this very blog that will lead you to lots of techniques, tips, tutorials, and fun new projects to try. There are also lots of new sources that I’ll be adding to these categories pretty regularly.

Collage Techniques

Creating Backgrounds for Artwork

Digital Effects

Image Transfer Methods

Tutorials & Techniques – all kinds of mixed media how-tos

Technique Tuesday – my own step by step projects

There will be some overlap on these lists. Sorry, but it’s unavoidable If you’d like to share a source that you think I’ve missed, please do! I’d love to be able to have the most complete list of resource links for online learning anywhere!

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Online mixed media art education

Fauxto (like “Photo”)

You know how much I rave about Photoshop, how I love it and can’t live without it. So why would I care about free online photo editors? There’s even a free version of PS now that you can download, and if that doesn’t suit you there’s always Gimp, which is a free download.

So again, why care about online photo editors? What about when your computer is in the shop, or you’re traveling without a laptop, stopping into libraries to use their computers? You’ve taken lots of great pictures, and you’d like to send a few to some friends without sending the full-sized file that will make them hate you. You’d like to post some of your travel pictures to your blog, but the file size is too big, the picture needs cropped, the eyes have the dreaded red-eye…

You get the idea. There are good reasons to know about online photo editors! Here’s a great review on ExtremeTech by Michael Muchmore on five editors that go beyond the basics. Thank you, Michael!

[6/4/09 - another I just became aware of: Online Photo! Editor ]

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Free online photo editors

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Here’s what I made at Animoto

Or from any other images that you want to use! Animoto is an intriguing site: it creates a slideshow to the music of your choice, automatically. You have to register to use it, and I have no information to give you about copyright issues, so please read all the contracts if you decide to register and use it. Here’s a description from the site:

Animoto.com is a web application that creates MTV-style videos with the click of a button.

Users simply choose a song and images. Animoto then automatically generates a unique video for them. No two videos are ever the same.

Many of the post-production techniques that the founders used while working as producers for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC are used in Animoto’s patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor and director. The resulting video is produced in a widescreen format, containing the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

Animoto Productions is based in New York City with an office in San Francisco.

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Make a custom video from your art images

Here is a brilliant online tool that will allow you to chart your text in six different fonts. These are perfect for cross stitch, backstitch, or even beading! Text in Stitches has been made available by StitchPoint.

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Text in Stitches

You may recall awhile back I asked for reports on the various online publishers that would produce one-offs of your artist books. Well, I got a report about MyPublisher that gave it an A+ on all counts!

Robin Atkins, who started the Bead Journal Project that I participated in last year, has used MyPublisher to create a book of her beaded pages and poetry. What a great idea! She was very satisfied with ease of use, options available, customer service, and the end result. You can see her book online here to give you some idea of the possibilities.

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A report on MyPublisher

Why would you want to print, cut, and fold a piece of paper just to stick it in your pocket? Wait till you see what all your can print out onto that piece of paper to help keep you organized

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What is a PocketMod?

That said, here’s a list of publishers who will do small runs (even just one copy, some of them). It’s self-publishing without the huge cash outlay of having to have 10,000 copies printed…and pay for all of them yourself.

I’d love to hear from anyone who’s actually used any of these companies: were you pleased? Were you treated well? How were the images? Did you have a lot of freedom to select what you wanted?

Blurb
Lulu
MyPublisher
Snapfish
BookSurge
EditionOne Studios

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Online publishers for your artist books

Have fun with Interactivate: Tessellate!

If playing with this cool tool isn’t enough, you can look at lots of tessellation art at the Tessellation Database. In addition, there’s always Tessellations.org …check out the tessellating frenchfries

Here are two of my previous posts with ideas about how to use these patterns:
Expanded Squares

Making a digital stamp

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Tessellation tool online