Making Rug Labels

It was just time to print out rug labels since I had one page of information.  Of course that means that it will take another few rugs to be hooked before another sheet of 8 labels can be produced.  Well, that is since I'm cheap (thrifty).

I tried to attach a photo of the Microsoft Word document but that didn't seem to work.  Therefore I printed out my labels, trimmed them and took a photo after.  Some of the rugs for which I made a label are older rugs hooked but didn't have a date hooked in it nor another form of documentation and felt they needed one.   Some are fairly newly hooked rugs you would recognize.  If you touch the photo it will enlarge for you to see my info.

Below is the product I used.  It was purchased from Hancock Fabrics near me.  It is sold in both white and cream fabric sheets; I purchased the cream.  As you can see I wrote on the front of the package how my printer accepts this product.  To find out that info I made a mark on a sheet of paper and ran it through my printer to find out which side would be printed on.

It is not a rubbery product but a muslin.  Here is what I did to design my sheet of information.

~ Open a new document in WORD
~ Make margins the most narrow so more room for label information
~ INSERT "table" and use 2 across and start with 4 down per sheet
~ TYPE your information using your favorite font
~ COPY and PASTE a photo of the rug you choose.

Depending on the amount of information you want to give will determine how many labels you will get per page.  

After a whole page is set up and printed I save the document so the hard work and basic information is there.  All that is needed for the next round of labels is to change the information and change out the photo. That is IF you choose to put a photo on your label.  If you don't put a photo you will have more room for information.  

Sometimes I've wanted to put a picture of the original antique from which I've adapted the rug.  And then it got to be kinda nice to have a photo on the back in case sometime the rug gets damaged the person can see how it was originally.

A Little This and a Little That

A few years ago I started doing shows with mainly hand made dolls. Then began hooking and wanted to introduce my hooking of smalls to sell. Mostly small items sold but did get lucky (?) and sold a few larger pieces too; some I wish I still had.   Anyway recently I went thru the container which holds my show hooked items to see what could be listed on etsy. But first it needed to be tweaked as my eye sees things differently now.

Am fighting the urge to show you the 'after' photo first but will show you the 'before' and what was pulled out of the container to tweak.  I love the design which is Hearts and Flowers Oval, a design by Kindred Spirits from one of their booklets.  Can't remember which booklet but perhaps Ali Of Kindred Spirits can tell you.  

Looking at it now realize the hearts are lost since they are pink and light in value.  They need to look like hearts.  So to my worm bag I went.  Since the border and some of the blocks are hooked with a textured red and blue looked in my red worm baggie.

Under the lights that red looked close with the red in the texture so pulled out loops and hooked one heart and took a look.  Sure does look bright but better than the lost pink heart.
So decided to hook the other heart as well.  Then the flowers were sorta blah and hooked some red in there too.  I think this looks much better.  The measurements are 10" x 23".

Now, remember yesterday's blog post mentioning those clips to hold the rolled edge of a rug?????  Well today I own some.  Sorry for the horrible washed out photo, but you can see the Clover Clips which works much better than the straight pins I was using.

They are pricey BUT, they are presently on sale at Hancock Fabrics 30% off PLUS I was able to use a coupon for more money off.  Since there are 50 clips in the container a couple hookers could purchase one, split the cost and split the bounty.  

Have a great evening everyone.  As I'm closing my post am wondering... do I want to bind or hook on my sheep??  Think I'll hook a couple blocks on my sheep rug tonight as I want to finish that and put it in it's special place.

Saundra

Gifts for Textile Artists

This is the month of the year that I take spending liberties for myself since it is my birthday month and Christmas month.  One year it was a GPS which was an extravagance for me at that time.  Another year it was a better more portable camera, and then a Townsend Orbiter floor frame, and this year was not only my iPad 2 but these other two must haves for textile hand work.

I already have two floor OTT lights; one stays in my living room and doesn't move from it's spot and there is one which travels with me when I go to rug camps to use in the classroom.  However, since I don't like carrying my floor light to my sleeping room when I hook there decided I needed a more portable OTT for that.

So this past weekend I treated myself to this cordless, rechargeable portable OTT.  I works wonderfully because my roomie Deb had one last year and me, being envious, had to own one as well.  Frankly I didn't know they existed other than the ones with cords, but this is wunnerful.

AND also purchased this handy dandy OTT which is shorter but a wee bit thicker than a cell phone and works on just 3 AAA batteries. Here is a picture of the front, and they had different colors but I chose this.  That white spot is where the flash bounced back and is not a rub off on the cover.

Here is what it looks like opened and you an see the lighting mechanisms.

This will be useful for me to see if I am picking up black or blue wool strips as I sit in the sleeping room with my cordless OTT to my right and my hooking strips on my bed to the left.  I just pick up my handy dandy OTT and see if my strip color is a dark brown, black or navy ~ voila.  It has a clip so it can be attached to a shirt, a tote, etc.  I am sure it has other uses as well.

And it only gets better.  The mini-mini OTT was originally $20 at Michael's but it is NOW on sale at 50% off PLUS I had a computer print out of an additional discount which brought the total cost of it to me for $8.  WOW!  Now that is a deal.

The cordless portable OTT was not to be seen at my local Michael's so maybe they had been bought out of those.  However, my local Hancock Fabrics (a/k/a Minnesota Fabrics) had them at 40% PLUS I had a coupon which brought the price down from $99 to $50.

Sale at Hancock is effective until December 24th.  I'm not sure how long the sale is effective at Michael's.  But you may want to check both stores out and if you don't get the flyers delivered to your home you should sign up when you go to the store to purchase.  AND, do a Google search and bring up each web site to see if you can download a coupon before you go.

Good luck, happy shopping and please remember to be kind to one another. 

Saundra

p.s.  I want to finish my Wee Folk REALLY BADLY!!!!!!!!!