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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Becky Kramer's Brother poster - process

When 90's cover band Becky Kramer's Brother asked me to draw a poster for their upcoming April 5 show, I was actually really excited. Even though it was just a favor for friends, I wanted to treat it like my first professional job.

I started like every other artist I follow starts any of their pieces: I did thumbnails. Well, FIRST I wrote down all my ideas, then I sent them two versions each of the two ideas I was most excited about - a three-wolf-moon situation with their heads, and them with their instruments in front of, or in, the 'Friends' fountain.

This exercise doubled as 'practice digital painting before you actually have to digitally paint something'

They picked the lower right version since it seemed most clearly 90s-ish.

I armed myself with some reference photos and my trusty Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting book and got to work (although I actually did my first sketches on paper - true to size).

photo refs

(The two bottom photos are by my boyfriend Dave - he is a great photographer!)
11x17 fountain on paper

This was my first mistake and by far my worst - NOT COMPLETING THE SKETCHES before scanning them in. I thought, "I'll have to go over them again in Photoshop anyway, might as well do the cleanup versions in there." Then I learned that freehand linework in Photoshop is INCREDIBLY hard unless you have a Cintiq.

While I was working on this I came across a phrase that someone's art teacher used to say - "Don't make turd sandwiches." You can make the most beautiful sandwich in the world, use the freshest bread and best heirloom tomatoes and Grey Poupon and what have you, but it's still gonna be a turd sandwich if you started with a turd. Likewise you can spend 20 hours rendering and painting, but if it's a bad drawing after 2 hours it's going to be a bad drawing after 20 hours. The next time I make a digital painting, I'm going to get it RIGHT on paper first.

So I finally took everything into Photoshop and proceeded to work in chunks for the next two weeks. I exported a JPEG at the end of each day.

Mar 10 - linework and BASIC values

Mar 11 - probably spent the longest on this stage, this was about 6 hours

I sent them that and told them that if they wanted any changes, now would be the time to tell me. They asked for some houses in the background and for Steve's bass to be slung across his back.

Mar 12

Mar 13

Mar 15

Mar 18

Mar 19

Color is something I realized I know NOTHING about (despite having read the amazing Color and Light). It made me really want to take a painting class where they show you how to actually recognize and choose colors.

I sent this colorized version to them and asked for their feedback and for a couple of days to give my eyes a rest. They asked for their trademark neon shirts, since it was looking a little dark, and for the drum kit to have cymbals.

The finalized poster.

(Text was done by the amazing Thadd Williams, who has a much better graphic design sense than I)

At this point I can only see the things that are wrong with it - but the band is happy, and that makes me happy. I learned from it, and that means it was not a waste. And if it gets any attention for the band, that's even better.

Something else that helped me with this process - I finally bit the bullet and bought a couple of CGMA workshops online. The one that helped me the most was Digital Painting with Erik D. Martin - I picked up a lot about layer organization and painting process. I also learned about the LOCK TRANSPARENT PIXELS option in Photoshop, which was a lifesaver.

Now it's back to regular old daily sketches! Until BKB needs another poster that is...

© Gina Florio 2013

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Daily Sketches Weeks 10-12

Sorry these took so long to get up. You'll see there's missing days here too - I've been devoting a lot of my time to producing that poster for my friends' band, which finally went live yesterday. I'll make a full process post tomorrow.

Mar 3 - started perspective homework

Mar 4 - Benedict Cumberbatch (sketched while watching an episode of BBC's 'Sherlock')

Mar 5 - completed perspective homework

Mar 6 - sketching my friend Heinz (in the band)

Mar 7 - lips practice (from ProkoTV)

Mar 8 - band pose practice (from facebook pictures)

Mar 11 - had a free evening, went to life drawing class

Mar 13 - some pirate-y doodles
Mar 14 - felt like doodling some horses... won't make that mistake again anytime soon

Mar 15 - character doodles

Mar 16 - sketched while watching Dave play the new Tomb Raider
Mar 18 - some environment doodles
Mar 20 - Link... been chipping away at Ocarina of Time for over a year

Someday, my daily sketches will look like this:

Nathan Fowkes - Location Study

Pascal Campion - sketch of the day, 3/22
Justin Rodrigues - Cafe sketches
Brett Bean - life drawing studies

But until then, just have to keep chipping away...

© Gina Florio 2013

Thursday, March 21, 2013

TED Talk: Young-ha Kim

In this video, celebrated Korean author Young-ha Kim talks about how we all start out as artists, but eventually, most of us stop.

"It's not the hundreds of reasons why one can't be an artist, but rather, the one reason one must be that makes artists."

The main points of his speech reminded me of that essay, Draw Like a Six Year Old by Phil McAndrews, that I posted about a while back. It's one of my favorite things that I've ever read about art and drawing.  Sometimes it's easy to forget that drawing is supposed to be fun and it becomes more like work. But it is supposed to be fun. Your six year old self did NOT question his or her desire to draw something they thought was awesome. I remember once I drew an entire comic about the letters of my name becoming conscious, animated beings and exploring my house. Yes, the letters G, I, N, A and F, L, O, R, I, O were each separate, freethinking individuals hopping around. At one point the letters of the first name got separated from the letters of the last name and they were trying to find each other again. Six year old me thought this was the greatest idea I'd ever had. Of COURSE I should commit it to paper! And so I did. I bet my mom still has it.

Borrowing this from Phil McAndrews since it's great. One day I'll be able to illustrate my blog posts with my own work.

Something else he said also struck me - the part about how the artists inside us don't vanish, they get bottled up and come out as anger and jealousy. I feel like this is something I've been noticing more and more lately, ever since I read that Cracked article, 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person. It says, "Do the math: How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being. [...] It's incredibly comforting to know that as long as you don't create anything in your life, then nobody can attack the thing you created. It's so much easier to just sit back and criticize other people's creations. This movie is stupid. That couple's kids are brats. That other couple's relationship is a mess. This Internet writer is an asshole. I'd better leave a mean comment demanding that the website fire him. [...] Whatever you try to build or create -- be it a poem, or a new skill, or a new relationship -- you will find yourself immediately surrounded by non-creators who trash it. Maybe not to your face, but they'll do it. Your drunk friends do not want you to get sober. Your fat friends do not want you to start a fitness regimen. Your jobless friends do not want to see you embark on a career. Just remember, they're only expressing their own fear, since trashing other people's work is another excuse to do nothing."

I've started to witness this in real life - you're either a person who creates, or you're a person who sits around judging things other people have made. That's not to say it's THAT black and white, or that artists don't judge. But I've found that the established artists I've met at classes and workshops are always very careful with their words. They give constructive criticism but are careful to not discourage new artists (like myself). And I've found myself thinking this way too. Bad singer on American Idol? At least they're up there, putting themselves out there, actually TRYING. That's more than you can say for most people in the world. Certainly more than you can say for the person on the couch trying to make themselves feel better by trashing them.

The very last anecdote he shares about Martha Graham is just perfect. And it echoes this Noah Bradley post that I wrote about some time ago. All those nagging questions and doubts you have when you're starting out on this are the work of the "artistic devil." It's not that hard. Get out of your own way. Just do it.

© Gina Florio 2013

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Taking a Break

In extreme contrast to my last post, today I am going to not bog you down with a bunch of words. Instead I'll just leave you with this awesome music video.

Happy Saturday!

© Gina Florio 2013

Friday, March 15, 2013

One Year of Art

Before you read: This is a very long, personal post... I wrote it because I've been concentrating on art and drawing for about a year now, and I'd like to have a record where I am at this place in my life. Feel free to skip it if you're just here for the art and links to other things.

I can't pinpoint an exact date that I started on what I will just be totally cheesy and call "my artistic journey." But I know that it started around this time last year, in mid-March.

Of course, I could also say that it started when I was born. When I was little, I drew all the time, during school, after school, on every piece of paper I could find. I could entertain myself for a good few hours if someone set me up with crayons and paper. For career day in third grade where we had to dress up as our role models, I went as Marie Curie. [HUGE EDIT: Wow, don't know how I did that... I meant to say MARY CASSATT. Wow. Anyway.] There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to be an artist when I grew up.

It's a little hard to say exactly what happened. I started writing and illustrating my own "books" in third or fourth grade, and I discovered I really loved writing stories. In late middle school and high school I was still drawing, but I started to focus more on writing. I also started reading a lot of graphic novels at this time - I particularly remember Blankets, Bone, Maus and Persepolis. I started to see how words and images could really work together to tell a story.

In tenth grade, within a few months of each other, I saw the films Garden State and Lost In Translation. Those movies opened my eyes to the kinds of stories you could tell with a film. I began to see movies as the ultimate medium. They can combine every single form of artistic expression - images, words, music, and the fourth dimension of time - pacing - to tell a story. I decided that year to go to school to study screenwriting.

I attended Emerson College in Boston, and in one of my very first classes there, I had to produce a short video. I don't even remember what it was about - but I remember going to the computer lab to edit it on whatever version of Final Cut Pro was around in 2006. And I remember looking at the time on the computer screen and being shocked to realize that 6 hours had passed. On that day, I discovered I loved to edit. I loved determining the particular sequence of images and the pacing of the story. I changed my major to post-production in sophomore year and never looked back. I stopped focusing on writing. I also pretty much stopped drawing altogether.

I worked really hard in college. I wasn't a partier. I did lots of internships and extracurriculars on top of my classes, basically living and breathing editing, and loving it. But after I graduated in 2010, I got a job, I found an apartment, and I sort of... started to coast, a bit. I was enjoying my newfound free time on evenings and weekends, spending my (also newfound) spare money. I remember thinking that I had worked really hard and now it had paid off, and I deserved to just enjoy this time, going shopping, hanging out with friends, playing videogames, watching TV. I was relaxed and happy. But of course, after a couple of years, I started to get restless. I wasn't sure what was wrong with me. I thought, I have it so great! Why am I so unhappy? I realized that there was no longer anything driving me. While I was in school, I always had a goal I was working towards - good grades, getting into college, choosing a major, finding a job. Then, suddenly, I found myself with a job, an apartment, a great boyfriend... I had it all. I had everything I'd been striving for my whole life. Almost like Inigo Montoya at the end of The Princess Bride, I was at a point of... what now?

I tried a lot of things to fill the gap. I started running. I watched Youtube videos about how to do your hair in certain ways (and almost always failed at accomplishing them). I basically replaced my entire wardrobe. I even dabbled with drawing here and there, but always hated what I drew (without, of course, having the rational thought that maybe I needed to LEARN first before I got better). In early 2012, I was at my lowest point. I was feeling extremely unfulfilled by work. I remember a few weeks where I spent the majority of my free time just trying to find the best free phone games to entertain myself with during downtime.

But then one day, in March of 2012, I was on Reddit (as per usual) and came across a link to this post on someone's blog. I still don't know who Josh Beswick is, and I still don't know what it even was about that particular post, but when I read it, it was like a switch flipped in my brain - I immediately knew: I need to learn how to do this. I need to have the ability to make images like that.

I went a little bit overboard at first. I started buying more art books than I would ever have the time to read. I started reading more art blogs than anyone has any business reading. (I read the entire, fairly extensive, backlogs of Gurney Journey, Deja View, and the Character Design Blog.) And I started researching off-hours art classes, more than I could ever afford to take. I started drawing more, and still hated what I was drawing, and lamented it all the time. I'm pretty sure Dave thought I had gone slightly insane.

After six frustrating months of trying to learn on my own, I started taking VisComm 1 at the Concept Design Academy in October 2012. And the rest is pretty much history - I've been keeping the blog since then.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind year. I'm happy to say that I think I've improved at least a little. More importantly, I've learned that improvement takes a lot of time and conscious effort, so I don't get as fed up with failure anymore - I try to learn from it and move on. And I'm pleased to say that I no longer feel bored or restless. Ever. There's too much to learn and not enough time in the world to learn it in. But lately I've been struggling with an entirely new big question - now that I have this passion and drive again, what am I going to do with it?

I still love editing. I'm still very passionate about the act of storytelling, which is what editing IS (especially in reality TV, where the story is usually created in post!!). However - almost no one who takes classes at Concept Design Academy or 3kicks is taking them just for fun. They're taking them because they want to be concept artists and character designers. Many of them already are working in the entertainment design industry but are just trying to improve their skills. And so people in my classes will ask me what my goal is, and I will say... I'm not sure. I always give sort of a waffle-y answer about how I enjoy art but I also enjoy my current job. And the general response is usually surprise. They'll look at me strangely and say something like "you seem more serious than that."

And it's true. I am more serious than that. In January I took the time to listen to Bobby Chiu's "The Perfect Bait," and the free portion of Noah Bradley's "The Art of Freelancing." And both of those things, coupled with the amount of time I've now spent doing this, made me realize - I want to do this. I want to make my living as an artist. And I need to say that I want it. I never want to say it aloud because I am so fucking terrified of failure. But I need to start saying it. I think storyboarding or concept designing would be a great career path. And more importantly, I think I'd be good at it, if I got my artistic skills up to snuff.

There's a lot of stuff I'm scared of. Mainly I'm scared of being too old, and everything that comes with that. But despite that... I know what I want to do. And I have to start being honest with myself about what I want, because otherwise I'll never get it. I want to work as an artist in the entertainment industry. And I'm going to try my hardest to do it.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Zen Pencils, and Photoshop woes

Sorry for the lack of posts. I was unexpectedly off of work again this week, and when that happens I like to try to stay away from the internet to focus more on actually making art instead of just looking at other people's art and reading and thinking about art. Usually that doesn't end up happening, but I'm happy to say I've logged a lot of drawing/painting hours this week, mostly in Photoshop which I am really enjoying learning. As a junior in college, when I was teaching Avid, an editing program, to some younger students, I always used to tell them: "I can show you Avid tutorials all day, but the only way to really learn the program is just to import some footage and try to edit something yourself." And I've found that's totally true with Photoshop - I had watched a million tutorials before, but it never TRULY sinks in until you start using it yourself. After about a week of fussing around and being super frustrated, I'm starting to understand how to actually achieve the look I'm going after. It's really not too different than learning any other material - you can buy all the paint brushes in the world, but then not know how to use them until you experiment with holding and moving them in different ways, with different paints, etc etc. And then after years of using a certain brush a certain way, someone will come up and show you an angle of the wrist that produces a totally different affect. Or, you know. I'm not a painter (yet) but I IMAGINE this is a thing that happens. Whatever, it's my blog and I'm sticking to that analogy.

The thing that has frustrated me the most by far is line drawing with the Wacom. I was almost in tears the first day, because I had drawn up a rough sketch and scanned it in thinking I'd refine it in Photoshop. And then no matter what I tried I could NOT draw a good clean line for the life of me. I eventually chalked it up to a lack of line confidence/arm strength/general drawing skill and figured I'd just have to keep at it... until today, when I came across THIS POST by Jesper Ejsing on the Muddy Colors blog. Note that there are about FORTY COMMENTS saying that line drawing in photoshop with a tablet is nearly impossible. Commenter Jari Paananen says: "I switched to Cintiq three years ago - and haven't looked back. Before Cintiq it was Draw Line - Undo - Draw Line - Undo - DrawLine-Undo-DrawLine-UndoDrawLineUndoDrawLine - Okay, that will do even if it's not even close to the line I wanted." Which was exactly my experience. Needless to say I felt validated.

ANYway. I wanted to post about an awesome short comic I found last week that illustrates a quote from Chris Hadfield, a commander at the ISS.

Rest of comic HERE.

The art is by Gavin Aung Than, who runs a website with these comics called Zen Pencils. It's really worth checking out - The art is great and the quotes are great too. Here is another of my favorites:

Rest of comic HERE.

Lastly - extremely sad news today - Google Reader, the way in which I consume 90% of my internet (and ALL of my art blogs), is being put out to pasture for no reason that I can discern. Does anybody know of a good replacement?

© Gina Florio 2013

Thursday, March 7, 2013

The inspiration for this post came from this short documentary on the making of John Mayer's new album cover art. John Mayer, on a long, rambling search for an ephemeral look that he couldn't quite describe, eventually came across David A. Smith from England, who may be one of the last people still doing the meticulous but beautiful work of traditionally hand-painted and lettered signage and glasswork.

While I watched this, I was reminded of a documentary my parents rented when I was in high school called 'Rivers and Tides.' It chronicles the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a Scottish 'sculptor' who works almost exclusively out in nature. His creations are not permanent - they are meant to fade, slowly but surely, back into the wild from which they came. As Goldsworthy says, "Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph [of the work] shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit."

It was without doubt the slowest film I have ever seen, in every sense of the word. I'm fairly certain I napped through part of it. But looking back, I think it influenced me a lot. The trailer is below just to give you a sense of his work. (The trailer does its best to convince you it was filmed in the late 70s, but don't be fooled, it was made in 2004.)

Both artists go through an incredibly painstaking process to create beautiful works without ever sitting down at a computer. They must have an extraordinary amount of patience and take extreme care when working, because one wrong move could ruin hours upon hours of work. David A. Smith's medium of choice is LITERALLY as fragile as glass. Because, you know... it is glass. Jokes. Tell everyone you read a hilarious blog today.

Patience, as well as hand-made work, seems to have gone out the window lately. It seems cliché to write about the fast-paced, always-plugged-in world that we live in, but it's true. And yes I appreciate the irony of writing a blog post about this problem. But quality work that takes time and is done by hand is harder and harder to come by. Everyone wants everything as fast as possible.

I was raised Quaker. (Yes they still exist, no they didn't die out, no my family doesn't live on a farm, yes we can use electricity, no my dad doesn't wear a funny hat. You are almost definitely thinking of the Amish, or the guy on the Quaker Oats box.) Quakers are probably best described as the hippie faction of Christianity - they believe in simplicity, solutions through peaceful means, and in "finding the light within," emphasizing a personal and direct relationship with god. The Quaker churches (called 'meetings') I went to also did not have a conventional service. The gathering would generally sit in silence for an hour - basically, group meditation - and if someone had a thought they'd like to share, they could stand and speak aloud. I have fond memories of these services, and believe they taught me the two very important lessons of learning to sit quietly and patiently and turn my focus inwards (probably something I do too much of these days), and also to pay attention to what other people might be thinking or feeling.

Patience is an important thing for children to learn, I think. The name of this post comes from the French word, attend, which literally means 'wait', and which in turn comes from the book I'm reading, Bringing Up Bebé, about an American mother's experience having and raising children in Paris. (NO I'm not expecting children soon, it's just an interesting read.) The French seem to have the child-rearing thing down pat. One among their many great methods is to teach children that instant gratification is just not possible. 'Attend' is said to children all the time, to teach them patience and to help them understand they must be considerate of others before getting what they want.

I am glad to have learned patience so early on. Yet, I'm still certain I would not have the patience to create work on the level of what David A. Smith or Andy Goldsworthy do.

I actually feel quite impatient lately, mostly with my art. I understand why. I realize that I'll probably always have a complicated relationship with my own artwork, but right now the results of my work are so far from the original conception that it's hard not to want to skip to the point where I can just DRAW and have it at least somewhat resemble what I'm thinking about. My skills just aren't there yet. I often catch myself looking for quick fixes. But I think it's good to remember that the journey is of the reward, and that the process of struggling is important. It's how you learn, how you earn the skill.

I may keep a blog, but I also think it's important to step away from the internet, go out into the real world, and do things by hand. (It's Rule #4 in Steal Like an Artist: Use Your Hands. It recommends keeping separate desks for traditional work and for your computer/digital work, if you have the space. Can't wait till I can do that.) I have no doubt that my forgetfulness, impatience, and scatterbrained state of mind lately is caused by my constant proximity to computers and the internet. I've focused on setting boundaries for myself for the past few months to keep distraction at a minimum. I try to remember: Do one thing at a time. Take the time to really look, really think. Have patience. Slow down. Wait.

© Gina Florio 2013

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The Scared is scared

So many relatives drew my attention to this online short film today that I eventually just had to watch it. In the film, in very meta fashion, soon-to-be graduating film student Bianca Giaever asks her six year old cousin what to make a movie about, and then goes on to animate/shoot what he says. The result is not only delightfully adorable, but a great example of simple, cohesive design through and through on the part of the production.

Childrens' ability to just make up stories on the spot is unrivaled by any adult. I wish we all retained such natural carefree-ness with our creations into adulthood.

Post script: I aim to use the word "swizzling" more. That is not an English word, but it should be.

© Gina Florio 2013

Monday, March 4, 2013

'Funny Bones' - short documentary of caricaturist John Kascht

One thing I've been struggling with while attempting to draw my 90's cover band friends is capturing a resemblance. At this point, I can draw something that looks like a face. But a face that looks like my friend's face is harder to do. And a face that looks like my friend, from different angles, every time? Forget about it.

I recalled watching this short documentary some time ago, and so I watched it again last week to try to gain some insight into how to do it. While I doubt I'll have time to make sculptures, it definitely helped in some ways. But I still can't get my head around one thing - how does he draw a person multiple times, and wildly vary the proportions of their facial features every time - and yet, every time, it STILL looks like that person? Obviously, capturing a resemblance has nothing to do with facial features' proportional relationships. It's something else. Something fleeting, that I don't know quite how to capture on paper yet.

© Gina Florio 2013

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Daily Sketches Weeks 8 - 9

Last couple weeks of work.

Feb 18 - practicing values and compositions with Copic markers

Feb 19 - how to draw an elephant head

Feb 19 again

Feb 20 - sketching my perspective class professor Gary Meyer in action

Feb 21 - more elephants

Feb 21 again

These elephant doodles were actually shape exercises from a great workbook that Aaron Blaise posted online from his time as a story artist on the canceled animated film 'The Legend of Tembo.' I encourage you to check it out if you have any interest whatsoever in drawing elephants, or even animals in general. He does an amazing job of simplifying the shapes of an elephant's body, and showing you how to caracaturize them as well. Not that I have too much to show for it, but, you know. Practice, practice...

Feb 22 - a sunset watercolor from memory

Feb 23 - some of the many characters in Los Angeles
Feb 24 - Oscar night
Feb 25 - head practice

Feb 26 - more head practice... have looots of trouble with those extreme up and down shots...

Feb 27 - practicing drawing some friends from Facebook photos

Feb 28 - more Facebook photo practice... top right picture actually looks like him, so I'm calling that a semi success

Mar 1 - eye practice

Mar 2 - quick gaming/drawing session with Dave

I've been asked by my friends who are in a 90's cover band to design and draw a poster for their upcoming show in April, so a lot of time these past couple of weeks was devoted to learning photoshop painting (finally). I've been spending a lot of time with a book called 'Beginner's Guide to Digital Painting in Photoshop' which I highly recommend. You should also check out the band, Becky Kramer's Brother, if you're in L.A. and/or into 90's music. They're really good! (And I'm not just saying that because they're my friends - they are actually impressively good. And, yes, their website is supposed to look like that.) As far as the poster/digital painting goes - I've done some of work on it already, but decided not to include it here. I'll do a final making-of post when it's all finished.

A lot of the above sketches were done with the help of ProkoTV - an artist named Stan Prokopenko has been producing some highly entertaining and informative (and FREE) youtube videos on how to draw the head and various parts of the face. I've been going slow with them so far because I've been really trying to practice and absorb them as I go, but I really recommend checking them out. There's an example below, but I'll link to the other ones I've been using.

Other videos:

How to Draw the Head - Front View
How to Draw the Head - Side View
How to Draw the Head from Extreme Angles
How to Draw the Eye - Structure
How to Draw the Eye - Step by step

That's it for now. Hope everyone has had a great weekend!

© Gina Florio 2013


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Gingercake Holiday Gifts Sewing Series 2016 and week 1 giveaway!

Posted by on November 14, 2016 in Books, give away, Holiday | 109 comments

I am so excited for another round of Gifts Sewing this year!  Do you remember when I did a similar series back in 2013?  Well, it has been 3 years and I thought it would be great to do it again!  Not only will you be seeing all the fabulous sewing of some very creative bloggers, but Gingercake is hosting some great giveaways for each of the 5 weeks of the series!  That means you have FIVE chances to win!  Your chance to win this week is at the end of this blog post!ere is the line up of sewers~

Holiday GiftsToday is the first day of the series and I am so so pleased to have the very talented Heidi Staples of Fabric Mutt as the guest sewer!  Heidi lives in Texas with her family and is a fellow author at C & T publishing.  Her book, Sew Organized for the Crafty Girl is a must for getting your sewing life in order!

Heidi has a beautiful range of sewing tutorials!  One of my favorites is this pixie cup below.  A great use of scraps and so useful!

the-pixie-cup-tutorialFor the Gifts Sewing series, Heidi sewed an Art Caddy Tote and converted it into a make-up organizer!  She use some of Cotton + Steel’s new fabrics which look adorable!.  Head over to Heidi’s blog to read more about the bag!

Love it!  Thank you Heidi!

Since Heidi and I are both author’s for C&T publishing, this week’s fabulous giveaway is a set of FIVE books from C&T!  Included is my book, Sewing to Sell and Heidi’s book, Sew Organized for the Crafty girl!  To enter the giveaway through rafflecopter, just leave a blog comment about what you want to make as a gift this year for the holidays!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

  1. I am making matching pajams for the grandkids and a new tree skirt for my Christmas tree.

  2. Love the Art Caddy Tote in both sizes. It’s a great bonus when you can utilize a pattern in more than one way. I am knee deep in sewing a quilt for my daughter and table toppers for each of my sisters for Christmas.

  3. I.m thinking zipper bags and pixie cups!

  4. I am at this time making Christmas ornaments for 5 Grandchildren and 2 Great Grandchilern!

  5. These little gifts are amazing! Thanks for the giveaway!

  6. I’ll be making some Pixie baskets for Christmas gifts!

  7. I’m planning on making zip bags, fabric buckets and baby items as gifts.

  8. i plan to make laptop sleeves and foot warmers.

  9. The book looks great and congratulations for being published.I want to make a pillow for one of my niece and runner,pouches ane little decors for me.

  10. I plan on making drawstring backpack for my boyfriends grand kids. He only has 10 of them. Last year I made zipper pouches for them. I always try to make them something.

  11. Love the Pixie Cups! I plan to make some microwave bowls for a few gifts.

  12. I belong to a coffee group (I’m the only quilter) that meets on the first Wednesday of each month. I am making each member a small gift bag with chocolates inside. They always expect me to bring show and tell, lol.

  13. I’ve got one table topper made with a hummingbird theme. Also have a few pouches ready to go. Not sure what else will happen. Thanks for the giveaway.

  14. I’m hoping to make some soft, stuffed dolls for my granddaughter. The books look amazing. Thanks for a chance to win.

  15. I’m making a bunch of scarves and zipper pouches!

  16. This year for Christmas I’m making my three daughters a Christmas table runner. They have all asked for one, and I’m happy to be able to make them. Two are already complete,; one to go!

  17. I’ve got some lap quilts and table runners made. I also plan to make some tote bags. I love giving handmade gifts!

  18. I was planning to make a few make-up bags for my co-workers. I really like your bag better than the one I chose! Thanks!

  19. I am thinking of making some stars this Christmas and also some little baskets

  20. I want to finish up a couple quilts for Christmas . I would also love to make some of those small baskets!

  21. I particularly want to make the art caddy. It looks perfect. Thank you

  22. There are so many things that I want to make for gifts this Christmas season! Aprons for my girls, a cape for my boy…to name a few:) I think this might just have to be added to the ever growing list….

  23. I am making personalized Christmas ornaments , some bags and lap quilts. Thank you so much for letting me have this chance to enter .

  24. I am making 2 window panel quilts for my daughter and DIL I also am making some pillow covers (MineCraft) for my grandaughter…We always have a home made Christmas with each of us making gifts and decorating the tree with ornaments that we have made….

  25. I am making some potholders, pillows and ouches filled with some homeade goodies!

  26. i’ll be making embroidered throw pillows, Christmas jammies, and Christmas dresses for our grandgirls….
    and probably other various things as well!! usually most of our gifts that we give are handmade :)

  27. I would love to make several of the Philomena Fox Pillows for my grandchildren as gifts.

  28. Since here in California, most businesses are charging for shopping bags. I thought it would be helpful to sew up shopping bags for my family and friends.
    It will be a great use of cleaning out my stash.
    I love the books that you are giving away. But mostly very excited to learn to sew new items from your guest bloggers.
    Holiday sewing here we come.
    Warmes Wishes Pam Metsers

  29. I plan on sewing pajamas, bags, and hopefully some dresses for my girls. I would love new ideas from these books!

  30. I love this idea! I have quite a few bags to make and ornaments out the wazoo.

  31. I am making my nieces, nephews and children the crayon art folio (x7) on the go organiser(x 3) and the cute Annie’s penguin for the 2 babies. For myself is the Hobo Style lunch sac :-) Can’t wait!!!

  32. I am making Llamas for gifts!!! ❤

  33. I want to make the notebook slip ccover for gifts this year.

  34. I want to make some silhouette ornaments, handbag ornaments, and maybe a poinsettia pillow.

  35. Love this idea, and I love Heidi’s pixie cups, too!

  36. I have been looking for ideas to sew for this Christmas. I think I will make some Pixie Cups. Thanks for the reminder about those!

  37. This year I’m making potholders, tea towels, & scarves for Christmas. My friend told me about Gingercakes & Im hooked!

  38. I’m hoping to make some sweatshirts w/embroidery.

  39. I have more ideas than time! I hope to make tote bags, oven mitts, and maybe doll clothes. Thanks for the chance to win this great giveaway!

  40. I’ll be making things for my grandson and new granddaughter :)

  41. I’m looking forward to sewing drawstring bags for all my gift giving this year (as reuseable earth friendly wrapping)!

  42. Love the idea of using this for something else. It would be a great kids art bag too!

  43. I am a beginning sewer and have the Pretty Birds book. It appeals to my creative side and wanting to use up what I have in the way of fabrics. I’m excited to learn more and sew more!!

  44. I might make some make up bags and coin purses.

  45. totes bags and keyfobs will be wrapped under the tree and in stockings this year – monogrammed !

  46. I’m planning on making some wine bottle totes with a nice bottle of Savigion blanc inside 😉

  47. I made a dozen embellished Christmas stockings for the local children’s shelter. I completed a wool applique Christmas quilt for my close friend, and I have plans to complete three baby quilts for the shelter for delivery before Christmas. Thank you for the giveaway opportunity, Virginia! I love C & T Pub/Stash Books!

  48. I am sewing some cosmetic bags for friends and family.

  49. I’m sewing mittens made from sweaters!

  50. Eye pillows for all of my colleagues.

  51. Love those pixie cups! I’ve been slacking when it comes to sewing, but would love to make some doll clothes for my daughter for Christmas.

  52. I hope to make as many gifts as I can. As much as I don’t really want to think of Christmas yet, I know that as a maker of most gifts, planning ahead is key. I’m looking forward to seeing some ideas from these great sewers! Thank you for organizing this!

  53. I hope to make a Lulu Llama from your pattern! They are too cute.

  54. I would like to make some of those cute Pixie Cups!!

  55. making felt TREES for lil to decorate

  56. I am going to make a lunch bag with my grandson for his mother. Also some small toys as gifts

  57. I will make some bags.

  58. I am making a quilted knitting bag for my daughter

  59. Love your patterns! I just bought “Sewing to Sell” and have made a bunch of market bags. Everyone loves them!

  60. This year I have made lots of pouches and tissue holders. I also have some needle books, pincushions,a nd crochet hook holders to get done soon. x

  61. I’m hoping to at least get a Lloyd and Lola quilt top done for my sister and brother in law!

  62. I am making some small minis and mug rugs this year – maybe I will get them done in time!!!

  63. Hoping to get some mug rugs made!!!

  64. HI, just now thinking about stuffed toys for the Grandchildren! That’s next! Thanks so for your Blog+this giveaway too!

  65. I want to make a tablerunner for Christmas this year

  66. Activity pillows for the grands: zippers, buttons, toggles, windows…

  67. I am making mermaid tails, Raglans, hoodies and tutu dresses this Christmas!

  68. Such great ideas from Heidi! Love the cosmetic bag idea and the cups are darling!

    • I hope to make matching dresses for my granddaughter and her AG doll. I also have plans to make matching aprons for them and my daughter-in-law. I have already started on vintage Ninja outfits for granddaughter and grandson.

  69. I plan to sew reusable shopping for gifts. I was given a roll of lightweight striped canvas that will be perfect made up into bags!

  70. So far I finished 20 ornaments and 6 sets of 4 snowfamilies and 2 quilts so I am in good shape.

  71. Such an amazing giveaway and sewing seri!!! I am looking forward all projects…

  72. I have at least 20 pairs of pajamas lined up to be made for the little ones in my family as well as several gift items! I love being able to make special gifts for all the loved ones on my list as well as other people!

  73. I am excited to sew an item for each of my 4 daughters!

  74. I plan on making my grandchildren lunchbags and art caddy bags.

  75. I am hoping to make some art totes!

  76. What an awesome give away!!

  77. I am making patchwork pillows of all shapes and sizes for holiday gifts.

  78. I’m planning on making most everything I can! Tablet covers and potholders are a few things on my list. I love the idea of using the Art Caddy Tote for makeup, I think that’s going to find its way onto my gift list!

  79. I am ridiculously excited to finally finish the I-spy quilt I started 4 years ago to give to my son for Christmas!

  80. I love making zipper pouches for gifts. So many uses! Thank YOU!

  81. Pjs for the family for sure

  82. I am making little girl ponchos and handmade Christmas stockings

  83. I’m making a quilt and pillowcases for my daughter. A quilted wall hanging, placemats, cute bunny and 3 appliqued pillows for my DIL and a kitty and appliqué pillow for my granddaughter.

  84. I’m so excited for this series! I’m planning lots of homemade gifts this season– shirts, jammies, slippers, graphic tees, hopefully a stuffie or two!

  85. What a wonderful giveaway! Thanks for a chance to win!

  86. We are making all homemade gifts for extended family and most are being sewn. My niece is getting a Lula Lhama pillow and lots of leggings and joggers.

  87. I hope to make pyjamas for my family this year. Great series!

  88. Pixie hats for the two babies in our family!

  89. I plan to make mug cozies, makeup bags, and some dolls.

  90. Lately I’ve been into making bogs – so hopefully some tote bags, shopping bags, and small containers – I love the tutorial here for the cups!

  91. Thanks for the giveaway! This tote is lovely snd so practical!

  92. Would love to get my hands on these books!!!

  93. Your kitties; hand warmers; zip bags for gift cards, felt mittens for gift cards; zippered purses for 2 granddaughters….and lots more than time will allow!! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE your patterns!!

  94. A guitar strap for my son, a growth chart for my nephew, and a ninja suit for my daughter!

  95. I love the opportunity to learn of and to visit blogs I haven’t “met” before. I love these Pixie Cups. Thanks for sharing on Gingercake!

  96. I. Am making table toppers Thanks!

  97. Christmas has snuck up on me yet again. I am making placemats and cute little purse pincushions for my sewing buddies.

  98. I am making new Christmas Stockings for my kids:)

  99. Great idea for storing makeup! I think I’ll have to make an art caddy Tote for mine!

  100. I plan on making lots of personalized monogram shirts, everyone will be monogrammed this Christmas :)

  101. I haven’t figured out what I want to make for Christmas. I have some things I’ve pinned but I’m still contemplating.

  102. I’m making table runners this year. Some are ready to br quilted, some need to be assembled, some are still visions in my feverish dreams…

  103. I love the art caddies and art folios for the kiddos! The idea for makeup bags for the art caddy is great! They are super multipur pose bags, they work wonders for Sunday school totes.

  104. I am making tons of Christmas ornaments, a tent for my grandson, trivets, decor for my house, and special stockings for each member of my family.

  105. I would love to make some cute little kitty cat plushes!

  106. I hope to make a few mini quilts for some of the crafty ladies in my life and some other fun wool christmas projects. I also love to make new ornies for the tree and to give as gift toppers.. Happy Holiday!!1

  107. I love making and receiving gifts someone has made. I want to make microwave bowls from my stash.

  108. I am making quilts for the grands, and placemat sets for their parents.

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text:
If you're here reading Gizmodo, there's a good chance you have a hard drive full of video somewhere. And you also probably have a PS3, Xbox 360 or Wii. If those two things aren't working together for you in beautiful symbiosis, allowing you to watch all of your downloaded or ripped video on your TV instead of hunched over a laptop screen, well, this is the guide for you.

Now there are two general strategies you can take: physically copying your files to a USB drive, memory card or CD/DVD, which is pretty straightforward, or streaming your video over the network, which is where things get more fun and interesting. So let's dive in.

First things first, codecs. Now that you're all learn-ed on the ways of video encoding thanks to Matt's Giz Explains from this week, the issue of codecs will make a lot more sense. Thankfully, it's not something you have to worry too much about here, because all three consoles can handle a large number of the codecs you will find commonly: AVI, MPEG (1, 2 and 4), H.264, DivX/XviD, and WMV—and if a particular format you want to play isn't supported, it's often possible to convert it to work on the fly. The PS3 also supports AVCHD, a format used by many HD camcorders. Not all formats are supported with every streaming method though, especially in the 360's case, which we'll get to in a second. Now, for getting all those files on the TV.

Note: if you need to re-encode a video in a different format because it won't play, nothing beats VLC's transcoding wizard. Here's a guide.

Xbox 360: Streaming (PC)

In typical Microsoft fashion, there are tons of different ways to pull of streaming your video to the Xbox 360—and the only one that's truly comprehensive, in our opinion, comes from a third party. TVersity is a free UPnP media server that can manage your video and music files anywhere on your PC and stream them out to your 360 over the network. It will also kindly transcode just about any video you can throw at it into a codec your console can definitely read. You might have to install some additional codec packs here and there for Windows but for the most part, you can forget about worrying about codecs with TVersity. This also allows TVersity to handle files not officially supported by the 360, like MKV containers.

1. Grab TVersity here and install it.
2. Click the giant plus sign in the top left corner to "Add Your Media Source" - namely, the folder on your PC with all of your videos.
3. Under advanced options, set your transcoding preferences: "When Needed" will make sure most all of your files play.
4. In the main TVersity menu, select "Start Sharing"
5. On the Xbox 360, TVersity will now appear as a source in the Media blade or under My Xbox -> Video Library in NXE.

The other three options via Microsoft's own various software solutions all have their own drawbacks, which we'll cover here briefly. Our advice? Use them only if you already use the Zune software, Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center to manage all of your video.

Windows Media Player 11: WMP 11 can stream out to the Xbox 360 pretty easily. Here is an in-depth guide. Drawbacks? Somewhat clunky format support. In our tests we could not stream Quicktime video at all, and had inconsistent experiences with MP4 files. MPEG-4 and H.264 support are technically supported via third-party WMP codec add-ons, but even with those, we still had trouble—MP4 files tended to play fine on the WMP 11 end, but not show up as browsable on the 360. Somewhat unbelievably, the Xbox 360 team actually recommends you manually rename your unsupported MPEG-4 and H.264 files, adding the ".avi" container extension to fool WMP into playing them. This worked occasionally, but not for every file and was generally inconsistent.

Zune Software 3.0: Zune offers a much nicer interface than WMP (Settings -> Sharing -> Add is the extent of the setup), and thankfully supports MPEG4 and H.264 much more consistently. Drawbacks? No DivX or Xvid support, which means a huge chunk of your Torrented video probably won't work.

Windows Media Center Extender: If you already have a Media Center setup honking on your network, there's a good chance you won't need this guide, but the Xbox 360 can of course stream your MCE content to your TV seamlessly (a complete guide is here). The interface is really fantastic. Drawbacks? The gimpiest codec support of the bunch: only MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and WMV are supported. So unless you're converting everything you have into those formats, you'll still need something like TVersity to play most files you'll find up for download.

So, in the end, TVersity wins hands down as the easiest and most elegant streaming setup for the 360. But do keep in mind—if you're playing a format that your Xbox can't handle (MKV being the most common of these you'll find), TVersity will have to transcode, which means you will lose a bit of quality.

Xbox 360: Streaming (Mac): UPnP support—the networking standard used by both the Xbox 360 and the PS3 in various flavors to play network-streamed video, music and photos—is not natively supported by OS X yet. And unfortunately, there isn't a stellar all-in-one free package like Windows' TVersity.

Nullriver, however, makes an incredibly slick piece of software called Connect360, which easily streams all of your iLife libraries or any folder full of video on your Mac to the 360. Unfortunately, it'll cost you $20. There is a free trial version that supposedly shuts off after 30 minutes of sharing, but sometimes it seems to forget and lets you play longer. But even so, $20 isn't bad for the convenience factor here. No transcoding, but it will handle every codec the console itself can play back.

1. Download and install the Connect360 preference pane.
2. In System Preferences, start up Connect360 sharing. Here you can also add folders for more sharing.
3. Access the Connect360 source on your Xbox in the usual way. Done.

Xbox 360: Physical Media
1. If streaming isn't for you, and you don't mind hauling a storage device back and forth between your computer and Xbox, then this is super easy: Insert Flash disk/USB/CD/DVD and browse it with the Media blade or the Video Library section of NXE (under "My Xbox"). Enjoy.

Playstation 3: Streaming (PC)
TVersity: Again, Tversity is your friend. It works just as well for the PS3 as it does for Xbox 360 (see above for setup).

1. With Tversity set up and sharing turned on, just browse to COMPUTERNAME: TVersity in the XMB and you'll see a listing of all your shared files.

Windows Media Player 11: Just like for Xbox 360, you can use WMP11's built-in DLNA/UPnP serving capabilities to stream to the PS3, too—but with the same codec funkiness as noted above.

1. In the Media Sharing preference box with your PS3 powered on and connected to the network, select "Unknown Device"—that's your PS3.
2. Your library should now show up in XMB.

Playstation 3: Streaming (MAC)
Mac: Nullriver didn't just hook up 360 owners—Media Link is the version especially for PS3. It costs 20 bucks, but will give you totally seamless and painless streaming of all of your iLife libraries (photos and music too) as well as files in any folder you can access with your Mac, whether it's on a network or local.

1. Operation is just like Connect360—with sharing enabled in the Media Link preference pane, just browse through all your files under the "Media Link" source in XMB.

Playstation 3: Physical Media
1. Easy as pie. If you're using a USB flash or hard disc or an SD or CF card, just dump all of your videos into a folder named VIDEO on the root of the drive and they'll show up automatically in the XMB.
2. You can also browse the entire drive or disc by pressing triangle and choosing "Display All" to find videos that aren't in the VIDEO folder.

Wii: Physical Media

For playing video on your Wii, physical media is the way to go, which is easy to pull off with some homebrew hacking. There are lots of services that will transcode your video and ouput it in a Flash player that you can view through the Wii's Opera browser (like Orb), but you'll take a hit quality-wise and it's not as easy as just playing the source files directly with Mplayer.

1. Install the Homebrew Channel and Mplayer on your Wii. We've got you covered here with our complete Wii homebrew guide—but hopefully you haven't installed the latest System Menu update. In that case, you'll have to wait for a workaround, but it probably won't be long.

2. Install Mplayer via the Homebrew Browser (also covered in our guide).

3. Now, you can use Mplayer to play files off or even an attached USB drive (as long as its formatted in FAT16 or FAT32, which most are). The interface is not nearly as nice, but it gets the job done.

4. Mplayer for the Wii covers a ton of codecs, but sadly, the Wii's processor chokes on HD content. If you've got HD files, you'll need to transcode them into a lower resolution with VLC.

And that's about it. Now, no more huddling around your laptop screen or fiddling with TV and audio-out cables. Welcome to the good life.

Additional reporting and testing by Seung Lee. See more Giz how-to guides here. And as always, if you have anything to add to our findings, please let us know in the comments.


text:
Even if you're not a musician, there's something incredible about the iconic crash of the first chord on The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. What is that chord anyway? The question has befuddled musicians until now.

If listening to CBCRadio host Randy Bachman deconstruct and play the first chord of "A Hard Day's Night" doesn't make you smile with delight, you have no soul. Bachman visited Abbey Road Studios where they've got all of the Beatles' master tapes converted to digital in the commonly used music production program Pro Tools. Bachman listened to each of the tracks played back one at a time to reveal the underlying root chord played by George Harrison. Listen for yourself. He nailed it, right? Beautiful. [Reddit via John C. Abell]

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