/ Recent content on Annie Sullivan Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Sun, 12 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 /2020/01/trying-out-vintaj-patinas/ Sun, 12 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000 /2020/01/trying-out-vintaj-patinas/ I really like the Jax patinas, but Vintaj offers some that are more like paint for metal and I really wanted to try them out. I had engraved a few extra brass business cards with pictures. One had the picture darkened with Jax black patina, and the other one hadn’t been finished at all, which resulted in the etched area naturally taking on a patina over time. Engraved brass business card with black patina. /2019/10/halloween-2019-knight-and-dragon/ Thu, 31 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000 /2019/10/halloween-2019-knight-and-dragon/ After coming back from a trip to Florida, the kids were excited about the astonaut and knight costumes they saw at Disney and NASA. I pointed Doug to some online tutorials for craft foam helmets. He got really excited about the idea and put some together. They came out great! The kids trying on their astronaut and knight helmets. Now that Doug had the basic idea from the tutorials, he kept going… /2019/02/metal-etching-with-glowforge/ Mon, 18 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000 /2019/02/metal-etching-with-glowforge/ Warning Metal etching can be dangerous! If you’re going to try this, make sure to read all red the warning text at the bottom of the Edinburgh Etch page first! Also note that copper is reflective. Laser forum users warn that there’s a risk of the beam bouncing off the copper and back into the laser head. I scuffed the copper prior to lasering to avoid this, but I’m not certain how big of a risk this is. /2018/12/bleach-shirts-on-the-glowforge/ Sat, 29 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/12/bleach-shirts-on-the-glowforge/ I’ve made a bunch of bleach shirts using stencil vinyl/contact paper on my cricut. But I really wanted to try it on my Glowforge, since it can cut higher detail stencils. I also wanted to try switching to freezer paper, so that I can iron/heat gun the bleached areas of the shirt to make them lighter. The big problem I had with freezer paper (on both the cricut and the Glowforge) is that it curls up a ton, and I didn’t have a good way to transfer the stencil to the shirt, especially stencils with multiple tiny bits. /2018/12/unglazed-bisque-ornaments-a-happy-accident/ Sat, 08 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/12/unglazed-bisque-ornaments-a-happy-accident/ I was really excited about the results I got lasering on porcelain ornaments, so I tried to order a bunch on Amazon Prime. But I didn’t pay close attention to the description and accidentally bought these unfinished bisque ornaments instead. I had been planning to send them back, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it might look like to try to do a 3d engrave on one. So I picked a test ornament to sacrifice, and tried out a simple gradient with increasing power settings. /2018/11/bleach-shirts-with-polyester-blends/ Fri, 23 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/11/bleach-shirts-with-polyester-blends/ All the tutorials for making bleach shirts say to use 100% cotton. But I had some Old Navy 60% cotton 40% polyester blend shirts sitting around, and the kids need some long sleeve shirts for winter. They’ve been asking about deathly hallows shirts after seeing someone wearing one, so I decided to give it a shot. I made stencils using contact paper on the Cricut. One problem I’ve had is that it’s super easy to make stencils with vinyl or contact paper, but then you can’t iron to lighten the bleach. /2018/10/halloween-2018-part-2-captain-america-costume/ Thu, 18 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/10/halloween-2018-part-2-captain-america-costume/ Logan absolutely fell in love with Captain America over the summer, so it was the clear choice for his Halloween costume. I was really excited about this costume. From cute toddler costumes to amazing cosplay constructions, there are tons of great ideas and tutorials online. Doug and I were both really interested in all the stuff we’ve seen online made out of EVA foam coated in PlastiDip. The shield was the obvious place to try it out. /2018/10/halloween-2018-part-1-lion-costume/ Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/10/halloween-2018-part-1-lion-costume/ Cole loves animals, but his brother convinced him he needed to be something scary for Halloween. After some deep thinking he settled upon a lion, which he decided is scary enough. I took him to Jo Ann to pick out fabric. He settled on a light brown fleece for the fur, and a darker brown fur for the mane. I also looked at the lion costume patterns, but they were really complicated! /2018/08/middle-earth-leather-journal/ Sat, 18 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/08/middle-earth-leather-journal/ I saw these beautiful map journals and thought it would be fun to make one with a fictional map. Doug’s birthday was coming up and he loves Lord of the Rings, so I decided to try making a Field Notes cover that’s a map of middle earth. I started with the template I used for the Marauder’s Map Field Notes Cover. While I was making the Calvin and Hobbes journal, I made some other journal templates, including a Field Notes cover with pen loop: /2018/08/calvin-hobbes-moleskine-cover/ Sun, 12 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/08/calvin-hobbes-moleskine-cover/ I had a lot of fun making the Marauder’s Map Fields Notes Cover, and I wanted to try something just a little bit more complex. Plus I needed a cover for a bigger journal. So I decided to extend the field notes cover in Illustrator to fit a 5″x8.25″ Moleskine Cahier Journal, and add a pen loop and snap. Here’s a link to my design, in case anyone wants to use it. /2018/08/leather-field-notes-cover/ Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/08/leather-field-notes-cover/ I really wanted to learn more about working with leather after making the Marauder’s Map bookmarks. So when I saw this field notes template on instructables I decided to extend the same design to a Field Notes cover. I knew I wanted to dye the leather, and I’d need to be able to stitch together pieces, but I had no idea where to start beyond that. I’d heard great things about the customer service at Tandy Leather, so I headed down to the store with a ton of questions, and picked up some 2-3oz veg-tan leather,gel antique, waxed thread, stitching needles, and edge kote. /2018/07/first-glowforge-project-harry-potter-bookmarks/ Sun, 01 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/07/first-glowforge-project-harry-potter-bookmarks/ I just got a Glowforge and I’m so excited! I haven’t had time to make much yet, but it came with a sample of leather, and I thought it would be fun to do Harry Potter bookmarks. So I found an image of the Marauder’s Map online, and quickly threw together the “I solemnly swear..” quote with footprints in Illustrator. I saved them as .png images and uploaded into the Glowforge app. /2018/06/bleach-shirts/ Wed, 20 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/06/bleach-shirts/ The Basics I randomly happened upon this subreddit full of bleach shirt pictures and was totally mesmerized. So many different possibilities, and such a simple process. So I started reading up. There are a lot of variations in the process, but making bleach shirts mostly looks like this: Use a 100% cotton shirt. Wash the shirt. Lots of shirts come with chemicals on them that will stop the bleach from working. /2018/05/decorating-mugs-with-porcelain-pen/ Tue, 01 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/05/decorating-mugs-with-porcelain-pen/ Even after twenty years as a woman in tech, this article about One Direction fans and especially the Larries brought a fresh perspective. I mentioned it to my sister, and as usual, she was way ahead of me. She also loves coffee, so when I found out about porcelain pens, I thought it would be cool to try and make her a Larry Stylinson mug. I did a Google image search for a good picture and decided to start with this one: /2018/04/sandblasting-glass/ Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000 /2018/04/sandblasting-glass/ We have been running out of glasses lately and I’ve been thinking about decorating my own. I’ve seen some cool pictures of frosted glass online and wanted to try something like that myself. The first thing I tried was etching cream, which is pretty cheap and easy to find, but I ran into some big problems. You can see where the etching cream leaked at the top of the glass, and where it dripped around the back. /2017/12/etching-photos-on-metal/ Fri, 15 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 /2017/12/etching-photos-on-metal/ Warning Metal etching can be dangerous! If you’re going to try this, make sure to read all red the warning text at the bottom of the Edinburgh Etch page first! The big reason I spent all the effort learning to use press n peel paper to etch (instead of cutting vinyl stencils on my cameo) is that I really wanted to be able to get the fine detail needed to etch a photograph onto metal. /2017/12/learning-to-etch-metal/ Sun, 10 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 /2017/12/learning-to-etch-metal/ Warning Metal etching can be dangerous! If you’re going to try this, make sure to read all red the warning text at the bottom of the Edinburgh Etch page first! When I took the laser cutter class at Maker Works and learned about all the different materials you can etch, I was really interested in learning how to etch metal. But most lasers at makerspaces and such are CO2 lasers, which can’t etch metal. /2017/12/gingerbread-houses/ Sat, 09 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000 /2017/12/gingerbread-houses/ As kids we always made milk carton gingerbread houses, but I’ve always wanted to try making a real one. I found this set of gingerbread house cookie cutters with a recipe book at Cost Plus World Market and decided to give it a shot with the kids and their cousin. It took some planning because we needed to bake the dough ahead of time, but overall it was well worth it–the gingerbread pieces held up and stuck together really well, and the kids loved decorating them so much! /2017/11/harry-potter-hooded-towels/ Sat, 25 Nov 2017 00:00:00 +0000 /2017/11/harry-potter-hooded-towels/ I happened upon this Harry Potter Hooded Towel tutorial and both got really excited (the kids love Harry Potter and so do I!) and felt kind of dumb (when they were tiny I had all sorts of ideas for cool hooded towels and I never realized a hooded towel is just a hand towel + a bath towel). When I saw the tutorial I got some red towels for quidditch robes like in the tutorial and also some black ones. /2017/10/halloween-2017-ghost-and-bunny/ Tue, 31 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000 /2017/10/halloween-2017-ghost-and-bunny/ The kids are really excited about their Halloween costumes this year, and they’ve been in deep debate about what they should be. Logan is adamant that Halloween costumes should be scary, and he wants to be a ghost with glowing red eyes. Cole ignored Logan’s passionate arguments for scary costumes and waffled between pumpkin and bunny for several days, finally deciding to be a bunny. The bunny was pretty straightforward; I picked up fuzzy bunny fabric at Joann’s and once again used the trusty Running With Scissors woodland animal pattern. /2016/11/weasley-sweaters/ Fri, 04 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000 /2016/11/weasley-sweaters/ I’ve been doing a lot of knitting lately, and also a lot of reading Harry Potter to the boys. Logan especially loves it. I finally learned to knit a bottom up sweater, and got some beautiful chunky yarn at Spun, so knitting the boys Weasley sweaters felt like the perfect winter project. I had a lot of fun with it, and will definitely be doing more bottom up sweaters in the future! /2016/10/halloween-2016-ninjago/ Sat, 15 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000 /2016/10/halloween-2016-ninjago/ My dad passed away this week. It’s an especially sad time of year because he always made such amazing Halloween costumes for us as kids. He and my mom would work as a team–she did a lot of research, finding sewing patterns and techniques in magazines, and he did a ton of awesome engineering work bringing chicken wire and masking tape and foam and spray paint together into these amazing works of art. /2015/11/better-github-labels-in-gmail-through-apps-script/ Wed, 25 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000 /2015/11/better-github-labels-in-gmail-through-apps-script/ When my team at work started doing a lot of projects in GitHub, I had trouble keeping up with all the notifications from the issue tracker in Gmail. Which mails were about bugs assigned to me? Bugs that had me in @ mentions? Bugs just from projects I was watching? Couldn’t the labels on the issues also be labels on the issue emails? I’ve always been a huge fan of Google Apps Script for productivity. /2015/10/halloween-2015-monsters-inc-update/ Sat, 31 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000 /2015/10/halloween-2015-monsters-inc-update/ This year, Logan loves his old costume and it still fit, but Cole is big enough to walk around! So I updated his Mike Wazowski costume, again with a green fleece bodysuit based on the trusty old Running With Scissors pattern, and taking Mike’s face off our baby carrier and putting it on an over-the-shoulder sack fleece cutout, which we stuffed with a pillow. /2014/10/halloween-2014-monsters-inc/ Fri, 31 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000 /2014/10/halloween-2014-monsters-inc/ This is our first Halloween with two kids and I was excited to work on costumes for both of them. Logan loved watching Monsters Inc so I decided to do Sully and Mike Wazowski costumes. I started work on Logan’s Sully costume first. After much Googling, I decided to buy a vintage McCall’s 6628 pattern online, and I bought turquoise fur fabric at fabric.com. After those arrived, there was a lot of cutting and sewing to do! /2014/06/story-board-book-from-photos/ Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:00:00 +0000 /2014/06/story-board-book-from-photos/ I’ve made a couple of books through Pint Size Productions and really liked them. When my two-year-old nephew came to visit, I wanted to take the photos from the visit and make them into a board book so he and my two-year-old son could remember them better. And then I had an idea–wouldn’t it be cool to use Photoshop filters to make the book look hand-drawn? So I tried out a bunch of drawing and sketch plugins and settled on Akvis Sketch. /2014/04/melted-crayon-easter-eggs/ Sat, 19 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 /2014/04/melted-crayon-easter-eggs/ We did Easter eggs for the first time this year. Logan requested that they be “scary”. So Doug and I shredded some crayons and we sprinkled them on the eggs while they were still hot after boiling. We all had a great time, and they look pretty different! Definitely cover the table and floor before trying this, though. /2014/04/cake-pops/ Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 /2014/04/cake-pops/ I got the book Cake Pops a while ago and I’ve been dying to try it out! There are a lot of recipes for spring, so I made some to take to the neighborhood Easter egg hunt. They were really easy to make and they taste great! I’m definitely going to try this again. /2014/01/star-wars-baby-blankets/ Fri, 10 Jan 2014 00:00:00 +0000 /2014/01/star-wars-baby-blankets/ The Ann Arbor Sewing Center had some awesome Star Wars fabric, so I picked some up. I had some extra minky fabric from Logan’s Halloween Costume, and I thought it would be fun to make some baby blankets. They were super easy to make, just put the right sides of the fabric together, cut to the size you want, and sew, leaving an opening to pull the blanket right side out again. /2013/12/laser-etched-glass-ornaments/ Thu, 19 Dec 2013 00:00:00 +0000 /2013/12/laser-etched-glass-ornaments/ I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting photos to look good on ornaments, so I decided to try something else. I had a really cute set of Logan’s footprints from the hospital, and I scanned it in. I wanted to figure out the best way to convert the image to a black and white bitmap, so I could experiment to see which method would etch best on glass. I tried a few different methods: /2013/10/halloween-2013-curious-george/ Thu, 31 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 /2013/10/halloween-2013-curious-george/ This Halloween, Logan was obsessed with Curious George. So it was easy to pick out a costume idea for him. I picked up some brown fleece and sewed up the same Running With Scissors pattern I used last year. Here’s a pic of Logan trying it on (sorry for the blurriness, he’s pretty hard to catch standing still!) Jumping on the bed wearing the costume base. Could only get a blurry picture. /2013/10/laser-etched-corian-coasters/ Sat, 19 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 /2013/10/laser-etched-corian-coasters/ At one point, we were considering remodeling our kitchen, and we got some Corian samples. We didn’t end up doing the remodel, but we left them sitting around the house to see how durable they are. My brother-in-law had always thought they made cool coasters. When I took the laser class at Maker Works, I noticed one of the materials that can be etched is Corian. Since my brother-in-law loves superheroes, I thought superhero coasters would be a cool Christmas present. /2013/10/harry-potter-shirt/ Sun, 13 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 /2013/10/harry-potter-shirt/ I happened upon the Harry P font and decided it would be fun to make a quick shirt for Logan. I typed in some text and drew some footprints in Silhouette Studio, and then printed onto stencil vinyl on my cameo. I used a sponge to paint through the stencil, fading away the footprints. /2013/10/first-time-using-the-laser/ Fri, 04 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 /2013/10/first-time-using-the-laser/ I got really excited after taking the laser class at Maker Works and decided to try a simple project to start. I didn’t want to worry about dithering photos, so I ran a batch job on all our family photos, putting them through Vector Magic to see which ones converted to single-color vectors the best. I picked a few of the best ones, added some text in illustrator, and made cut lines for ornaments. /2012/12/biodh-duil-ornaments/ Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/12/biodh-duil-ornaments/ My uncle Dick passed away this year, and it was a very sad time for our family because he was such an amazing person and we will all miss him so much. For Christmas, I wanted to do something to remember him. He always loved gadgets and new technology, so I decided to design gifts in Tinkercad and have them 3D printed for the family. When our family was going through some hard times, Uncle Dick and his daughter Colleen got together and designed a family logo, a tree with a heart and the words “Biodh Duil” (Irish imperative form of the verb “hope”) written below it. /2012/11/christmas-tree-skirt/ Fri, 30 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/11/christmas-tree-skirt/ I just got a Silhouette Cameo and I am really excited to use it! It can cut paper, cardstock, fabric, vinyl, stickers, and even temporary tattoos into whatever shapes you can put into vector graphic format on your computer. After a few experiments with cardstock, I wanted to make something real. I decided to start small, with a Christmas tree skirt. I had seen some photos of a tree skirt with mittens on it, and since we live in the mitten state now I thought it would be fun do do something like that. /2012/11/logans-first-halloween-costume/ Wed, 07 Nov 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/11/logans-first-halloween-costume/ Halloween has always been a big event in the Sullivan household, as anyone who knew my sisters and I in grade school could tell you. Every year, we each decided what we wanted to be, and my Mom and Dad worked together on the costumes–Mom found patterns and fabric and did the sewing, and Dad constructed the 3D parts of the costume, like all the masks, the nose and hat on the tin man, the muscles on the dinosaur. /2012/10/up-themed-nursery/ Fri, 12 Oct 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/10/up-themed-nursery/ I don’t usually do movie-themed home decor, but when we moved into our new house and I was thinking about Logan’s room, “Adventure is Out There!” really stuck with me. Logan has been walking for two months and he climbs anything he can, goes down the slide by himself, runs after cats and squirrels, and generally finds adventure at every turn. And I really liked the art from the movie. /2012/09/knitting-a-red-wings-hockey-jersey/ Fri, 14 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/09/knitting-a-red-wings-hockey-jersey/ My grandmother taught me to knit when I was 8 or 9 years old, and I’ve been doing knitting projects on and off ever since. I switch back and forth between making things from patterns and designing them myself. I don’t really know what I’m doing; I make things up as I go and look up techniques in my trusty copy of Stitch ‘n Bitch if I get lost. Several years ago, I made my husband Doug a sweater, but he doesn’t wear it much because it needs to be hand-washed. /2012/03/first-3d-printing-project-ladybug/ Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000 /2012/03/first-3d-printing-project-ladybug/ My friend Kai started this amazing company called Tinkercad–you can design 3D models online and then print them out either using a 3D printing service or with a MakerBot. I wanted to try it out, so I decided to start with a ladybug. Tinkercad is a solid modeling tool, so I used squashed spheres to make the ladybug–a little one for the head, a bigger one for the body, and a bigger one split in half for the wings.