Tag Archives: tutorial

Technique-I-can’t-wait-until Tuesday: Mini Polaroids with the Pogo

I was over here reading Crafty Moira’s site and I stumbled upon her tutorials, this one caught my eye– pogo printer yes, making it look like an old school mini Polaroid, why yes thank you very much.

After checking it out, I realized it would be cool to have the pogo print the square image and then simply trim off the excess. (read, I'm too lazy to go get my white cardstock.) After some trial and error I figured some stuff out.

First. Don’t work the actual 2×3 inches of the print, you’ll get a grainy print. You need to work larger than the print size so the pogo can compress it down, or something like that. I chose to work in GIMP (a free photoshop clone that kicks butt) with a “canvas” size of 4×6 inches, which is the same aspect ratio as the pogo print, which is 2×3 inches.

Then I opened a photo, I cropped it square and then cut and pasted it to my 4×6 blank “canvas.” It was over sized, I then selected “resize layer” and resized the image to 3.375 inches square. This will give you a 1/8th of an inch border around the sides of your image, and about 1 inch at the bottom. After this you have to flatten the image and then save it as a jpeg. Now send it to your pogo.

When it prints you’ll notice several things. First the pogo has a hard time with square edges, the top edge of my images are all just a hair off square. I don't mind this, but if you do you may wish to go with Moira's original instructions. The second thing you’ll notice is that the bottom part of the image is really long. You’ll need to trim the bottom so that it is ½ an inch high or so that the whole thing is 2 3/8ths tall. Trim with a ruler and an exacto and voila! You have a mini Polaroid, from a Polaroid Pogo. Sawweet.

In Journal Revolution there are instructions on how to make a Polaroid mat from cardstock for a perfect polaroid full sized image. It looks awesome too.

Some tips for printing you want the image to be at 300dpi, if you let the program autoselect 75 or 150 dpi the resulting print will be pretty grainy. I’m pretty sure it has to do with how the pogo processes the images to its format. In any case the higher the DPI the better the pogo print will be. Also be sure that you save it as a jpeg, if you don’t the pogo will not print it at all, its little lights will blink at you, you might get frustrated because you don't understand it's blinking light, unplug it and then turn it on and off*.

So as I was doing this I realized that I could really add any color to the back ground. I remember Polaroid did some neutral gray and black bordered polaroids at one point, but what’s to stop me from making the background any color I want? Or what if I wanted to add some text to that little area below the photo? Or what if I tweak the image in GIMP to create a pinhole effect?

There are so many alternatives to this that it’s crazy.

Here are a few of the images I made, ready to go for anyone's pogo.

Arcadepogo
Arcadepogo
Arcadepogo
Arcadepogo
If you don't have a pogo you could create your blank canvas as 4×5 inches and then scale it to the "correct" Polaroid size of 3.5×4.25 inches. Then you can print it on any printer or load it to a thumb drive and take it to CVS/Walgreens/Walmart/or anyother store with photo printing. (Walgreens has a service where you can load a bunch of photos to a website, place them on an 8×10 sheet of photo paper, and then print the whole thing for a couple of dollars. All you have to do is pick them up at the store in a few hours, they will ship to you for a few dollars.)

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Binding Tutorial

I’ve added a new page tot he left of my main page. I’ve copied the text and images into this post so you can see it. I’ll update it periodically when I come upon some new websites with tutorials. If you have any suggestions leave a comment below.

So you think you want to start your way into this fantastic hobby of bookbinding? HEre area few tutorials, and beware binding can be addictive… like crack…

Coptic Style Tutorials: CHeck out this Youtube video:

There is no sound so don’t worry!One of the things that makes that video so great is that he’s showing a single needle tutorial with the covers attachedi n the correct way. See how his cover and spine edge of the signatures are even- the covers don’t overhang the spine? Yup, that’s how they should be. It shows a few good things- tensions are correct and the cover is attached properly.

Coptic15

This little gem of a tutorial is written from the stand point of a teacher as a classroom aid. (I remember those days, wish I’d had time to teach my students how to make a coptic book.) This is also for a single needle coptic book. (Image above is from the website.)

Tools

This tutorial is also for a single needle chain stitch. This tutorial features some great clear images of the sewing process. However, I disagree with the author in the section written on threads. The weight of the thread comes into play not because of "knotting between signatures" but because the thread lies in the fold of each signature. The thicker the thread the larger the stack of thread and paper along your spine, which causes the distinctive "coptic" spine flair that makes coptic bound journals so great for collage work. If you have knotting between your signatures you have other issues…. That being said this tutorial is one of the better out there. (Image above is property of the article author.)

Millepeede

This is not a true caterpillar stitch but it’s like a mini version. It’s from Evil Rooster, a website I love for it’s name not to mention that the site owner makes some great books. One of the many things that I really lie that is done on evil rooster is the use of stitching cards to learn new techniques. I have half stitched books, Evil rooster has card. I like the cards because you wouldn’t be tempted to sell s technique card like you might be tempted to sell a really col experimental technique journal…. Not that I’ve done that or anything….(Image belongs to Evil Rooster)