Bridesmaid Cards

Posted on January 30, 2013 by whatgoodcrafts

Since we’ve been engaged, I’ve shocked Trevor with my love of organizing and spreadsheets. We have so many shared spreadsheets on Google Docs. My favorite and one of the most useful is our wedding checklist. It has a list of everything we need to do from now until the wedding date, who is in charge of it, and what date it needs to be completed by.

The biggest thing was finding a venue, which we did quite quickly. The only thing we needed to complete this month was to choose and notify our wedding party. My friend had sent the cutest card asking me to be her bridesmaid, so I decided to do a card as well. I saw this awesome Will You Be My Bridesmaid? DIY and decided to do something similar.

I only had photobooth pictures with three of my four bridesmaids, so I needed to go a different route. I thought I’d make signs that said “Will you be my bridesmaid?” and hold them up in a photobooth. This proved to be harder than anticipated for two reasons:

1. I couldn’t figure out if photos are mirror images or not. I made the signs in regular writing an backwards writing just in case. This truly boggled my mind.

2. The bright flash of a photobooth combined with the bright white of a sign will make any writing on the sign disappear, as well as make your photo super washed out from the glare.

These problems were easy enough to solve. No, photos are not mirror images. Yes, I do have photoshop and can add text that way. Despite all of the unexpected obstacles, I was really happy with the results!

Mary

Children’s Circus Blocks

Posted on January 5, 2013 by whatgoodcrafts

An addition to the A-Frame dollhouse I built for my niece, the other Christmas present I spent some time working on this year were these wooden circus-themed blocks for Mary’s nephew, Henry.

I made similar blocks for my niece last Christmas, but this time I used an orange wood so the lettering and pictures would stand out more against the wood. I also laser-etched them to save myself some time and give them a much cleaner look. The laser-etching allowed me to do much more detailed images too.

Trevor

Designer Love: Sandra Dieckmann

Posted on March 27, 2012 by whatgoodcrafts

Last week, I made a post about bison-themed art, including an image of the design below:

I’ve really liked the illustration for a long time, but was finally able to locate the actual designer, Sandra Dieckmann. Her other drawings are almost as awesome, so I thought I’d share them here and give credit where credit is due.

from Sandra Dieckmann

Trevor

Peg Puzzle for a 1st Birthday

Posted on February 21, 2012 by whatgoodcrafts

My main project over the last month or so has been to make a peg puzzle for my niece’s first birthday. I was able to celebrate her birthday with her at my brother and sister-in-law’s house yesterday, and give her the newly-made puzzle.

First, after tracing the shapes I wanted on a thin sheet of wood, I drilled a small insert hole at different points of each shape for a scroll saw blade to fit through. Once I got the blade through, I could cut out each shape, leaving me this:

Then, I glued that onto another piece of wood of equal thickness.

I had to re-cut the inside pieces since the pieces I originally cut out had drill holes on the sides of them. I then painted each piece and also painted a scene on the main board.

Finally, I found some little wooden pegs at a craft store and glued them to the Michigan/animal pieces. I had to saw off the end of each peg because they were a little long, but they worked really well otherwise. Here’s the finished product:

Happy birthday, Madeline!

Trevor

Laser Cutting and Etching

Posted on February 3, 2012 by whatgoodcrafts

I previously made a post about Tech Shop Detroit and finally had an opportunity to take my first class there, choosing to start with Laser Cutting and Etching.

I was searching around for some ideas of cool things I could make using my newfound skill, and found these great examples what could be made with a Laser Cutter.

U.S. Map Puzzle from PipeDreams2010

Cassette Tape Necklace from haleycue

X-Ray Bear Etching from joellefelyce

Toy Front End Loader from Instructables

Gentleman Necklace from finestimaginary

Trevor

Holiday Custom Orders

Posted on January 2, 2012 by whatgoodcrafts

What Good Have I Done Today? had a great holiday season and through the Detroit Urban Craft Fair, Etsy orders, and orders from friends, we sold out of chalkboard bunnies, chalkboard bison, phrenology puzzles, Michigan chalkboards, and adult-sized Dino Science tees. Our first order of business is to get those back into our store and then we’re onto new projects!

Here are a couple of new items I made as custom orders for the holidays.

The first is a chalkboard bear I made for a friend who bought it as a gift for his wife. I really like the way this guy turned out.