Brains… (no, zombies have not invaded my blog)
The Spoonflower design challenge theme for this week was “Designs for Good”. From the design spec, that is defined as “challenging you to create a repeating design inspired by a cause that is close to your heart. From raising autism awareness to creating food security in your local community, we want to know what inspires you every day.”
I decided to make my design about brains and if you follow any of my social media channels, you saw a little sneak peek of this design in a video I made for #GiveAtHomeMN to highlight some organizations that are trying really hard to figure out ways to help artists in this new world we are living in. In fact, I made the paper collage pieces for this design while I was listening and participating in an “Artists Town Hall” Zoom meeting.
I call this design “Your Brain’s Not Broken”. It is made from recycled magazine pictures and I really looked for things that were bright colors and interesting textures. I grouped them generally by color to make rough rectangles and then cut each one into the shape of a brain.
For the background of the design, I cut stripes of black and white patterns: the text from magazine pages and safety paper envelopes. I scanned each of these components and assembled the design in two layers, creating a seamless repeating pattern of the black and white bars and then putting the bright colored brains over top.
Why brains? I wanted a way to represent mental health, and although that might seem like a pretty obvious choice, I liked that it was easy to understand. I like that it’s a little science-y. And it feels busy and vibrant. This design is about […]
Making masks. My version with some sewing tips.
I posted a tutorial for working with a bias tape maker today on my social media channels (I will post that again below) and got a bunch of questions about how I was making masks and what pattern to use. So here is what I have been making. This is a version that is based on one that was posted by Fairview Health (associated with the University of MN). I have simplified the sewing instructions they provided because I saw a simpler and cleaner way to construct them. I am not going to provide a step-by-step tutorial here, but I will give you the basics.
Cut two rectangles that are 9 inches by 7 inches. They recommended using 2 different fabrics so you can easily tell the inside and outside of the mask if you need to take it off and put it back on.
Place the rectangles right sides together and stitch just the short sides, using about a 1/4 inch seam allowance. Turn right side out and press flat.
Make three tuck pleats about 1/2 inch each along each short edge of the rectangle. You can pin these. (I have a lot of practice at this kind of thing, so I just eyeballed them.) I used a wide zig-zag stitch to then stitch over the pleats about 1/4 from the edge. This is thick, so don’t force your machine or you will break needles at this step. Do this on each short edge. It doesn’t matter which way you pleat, as long as the pleats go the same way on each end.
Cut two strips of fabric to make ties. I use the full width of a piece of 45″ super soft muslin, cut 2 inches high. (I fold the fabric in half, matching […]
GameNight: Blueprints
We’re 14 days into “stay-at-home”. How about you? Hanging in there? We pulled out this game the other night as an effort to get away from screentime and I had forgotten how fun it is. I have to admit I bought this one without knowing anything about it. My dad is an architect, so any game called “Blueprints” was automatically appealing to me.
Blueprints is a dice game where the dice represent building materials: glass, stone, wood or recycled materials. It is played over 3 rounds and each round you get the blueprint for a building you are trying to build.
You keep your blueprint behind a screen so it is secret from the other players. Every building is made from 6 dice; the card shows you a side view and a top view and the numbers tell you how many stories high the building is.
Everyone takes turns picking dice from a shared pool, placing one in their building and then rolling and replacing one. It seems really simple, but there are a bunch of things to think about when you pick your dice. A dice that is on the second or third story of the building must have a higher numbered face than the one below it. So if you put a 6 on the first floor, you won’t be able to build the second floor.
Each color of the dice also scores differently. Glass (clear) is worth whatever the number is showing on the top face. So there are 7 points in Glass showing in the photo above. Wood (orange) is worth more for every side of the dice that’s touching another one. This orange is only touching one face, so it’s only worth 2 […]
Game Night: One Deck Dungeon
Many of you are stuck at home with bored kids by this point, but here at Chez Rahn, it’s just us and a labrador who thinks that work-from-home-week is the most amazing thing ever. So today I want to tell you about a 2 player game called One Deck Dungeon. My husband and I really like to play games, but most things are really designed to work best with 4 players, so it’s a challenge to find one that’s really fun with two.
In One Deck Dungeon, you and your partner are exploring a dungeon. It’s a collaborative game, which means either the players win or the game wins, you aren’t playing against each other (which can also be awesome if your partner is a competitive sort.) One each turn you explore a room by opening one of four doors (flipping over the card). You will either find a monster or a trap which you have to defeat (or dodge) in order to move on.
Each character has a pool of dice to roll in order to defeat your obstacle. The dice have one of 4 different colors and each character gets different ones. One quirky thing I like about this game is that the game designers decided to make all of the characters be girls. So the Paladin, Rogue, Warrior, Archer and Mage are all female. It doesn’t change anything about the way you play the game, but I love it.
The monster or trap has some specific dice rolls you need in order to defeat it. For this monster, you need to fill up each of the colored boxes with dice totalling or exceeding the number in the box. We’ve already placed a 6+4 of […]
Game Night: Carcassonne and The Princess & The Dragon
Next up in my Game Night series is a game called Carcassonne. Carcassonne is a map-building game; players build the map collaboratively but your score is based on placing your “meeples” on features of the map that score points when they are completed. On your turn you draw and place a tile. Then you have the option of placing your meeple in a place where he can score. You only have a limited number of meeple tokens, and your guy is stuck there until the feature is complete, so there is a little strategy to knowing when to place and when to hold out.
For example, the blue player placed a meeple on this road when she placed the tile. When both ends of the road are connected to something, then the road is complete and the blue player gets the score and takes their token back. This completed road is worth 1 point for every tile with a road segment on it, so it would score 4 points.
Things start to get competitive when different parts of the map get joined up. Someone can place a tile so that two previously unconnected parts of a city are suddenly joined together. If there are different colored meeples now all in the same city, everyone gets the points. There are symbols that give you bonus points and rules for having a majority of meeples in one area and how that scores, but the rules are pretty simple and easy to learn.
The basic game is pretty straightforward. But if you like a little random twist in your game, there are a LOT of expansions that shake up the basic rules. My favorite of the expansions is The Princess and the Dragon. It works just like the […]
GameNight: Sushi Go & Sushi Go Party
I decided today that it was a great time to do some more board game posts. Many of us are looking at some quality time inside our own houses and I think board games can be a great way to pass the time. Some friends and I are talking about playing a virtual game night through Google Hangouts so we can have some virtual social interaction. In that spirit, I am testing out some new video recording space and so I made a little video to go along with this post.
Sushi Go and Sushi Go Party are two related games. They work the same, but the “Party” version just has an expansion with more cards. The theme is sushi and the game play is as simple as Pick, Play, Pass.
Sushi Go is a great game for nearly any group of people. It’s marked as ages 8+ but even non readers can play because there isn’t any text you need to read. Like I said in the video, the game play is as simple as Pick, Play, Pass, which means it’s fast to learn and you can just jump in and play. The “Party” version mixes it up a bit and adds some cards with more variations in the kinds of sets you need to make and a little more strategy you can use for messing up your neighbor if you can stick them with a card. For example, with tofu you can have too much of a good thing: one or two cards are worth points, but if you have three tofus they are worth zero. Here’s an example round worth 13 points: 10 for having a set of 3 sashimi, 1 for the dumpling and 2 for the salmon nigiri. To score a tempura, you have to […]
Hi, I’m Becka.
Talking about fabric design, Spoonflower, teaching, and the life and business of being an artist.
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