Sammy the Sock Pirate Monkey

Meet Sammy the sock pirate monkey. I made him at last weeks craft club for the Story Sack I am making. He is made with a pair of Little Mr's socks so is smaller than a standard sock monkey. I hope Little Mr will like him.
If you want to make your own sock monkey here is how to cut and sew the socks.

Turn the socks inside out and lay out as above. Sew where the red lines are and cut where the yellow lines are. Turn all the pieces the right way round and stuff. Then sew them all together, sew on buttons for eyes and a mouth. Simples. I also made a hat and eye patch which I cut from felt. 

A day off

Today I haven't had time to think about what I want to post, so I am taking a day off. The rules of Blogtoberfest say I have to post every day - but not that I have say anything interesting - so that's me done for today folks!

See you tomorrow.

Back to school

Today I am going to start a course 'Support work in Schools'. Like a lot of Mums I would love to get a job in a school, I am hoping this course may help with that. Apparently I get homework to do - I haven't done any homework since I left school at 18!

Editing Photos

When selling online the only thing the customer has to go on is the photos so it is very important that I show my items in the best way possible. Sellers can spend hours achieving a good photo, I want to find a compromise where my photos are acceptable but don't take too long to process. Time taken on processing photos all eats into the profit margin and as my margin is already low I needed to find a simple solution to good photos and an attractive shop front.

I choose two free online photo applications to help me Picmonkey and Fotofuze

When taking photos of the items, I use a white background, take a few and decide which ones to use.

I alter them in Picmonkey . It is quick and easy, just a couple of steps

First (unless you have got the camera angle perfect) straighten your picture by clicking on rotate and moving the circle on the bar until you are happy. I also crop (if necessary) at this stage.

Next I adjust the exposure by clicking Auto adjust. I then play about a bit moving the Brightness and Highlights bars slightly until I get the look I want

I do the above steps on all my photos. The main one I then go on to edit in Fotofuze. I use the magic highlighter and the smallest circle and start to highlight around the edge of the object, once you start to do this it will automatically fill in the item for you. Click finish when this has been done and download the completed photo to your pc.

These are the photos of the stages (sorry but I forgot to keep a copy before I straighten it - but you get the idea)

original

pic monkey

Fotofuze

I hope this is helpful to you, it also happens to be my first tutorial (-:

Enjoy and have fun playing with your photos.

Sock Monkeys

Tomorrow is my craft club day at the library and I plan to attempt to make a pirate sock money to go in the story sack. In a spooky coincidence I was browsing the folksy forums and found a competition to win a sock monkey hosted by Jemigo if you would like to enter please visit her blog.

This is my second post today, does that mean I can miss a day in the blogtoberfest?

more doodling

My doodle pen arrived and it made the world of difference. I have been enjoying doodling, I do it when I have a spare 10 mins to fill. It really is a very relaxing way to take a bit of time out and if like me you are not fussed how they turn out it can be done very quickly. The professional artists that do this will take time to make sure that their lines are straight and uniform, me I have no patience for drawing and if I spent ages on it, it would take the enjoyment away, so I just slap a bit of ink onto the paper and see how it goes.