Update : Coffee Table

So I finished the research on how to apply the veneer to the table and bought the necessary components. It should arrive soon.

While waiting for that, I am redesigning the bartop. The epoxy resin is far too heavy and expensive. To be able to manage it, I nee the design on top to be as thin as possible.

Additionally, there is no longer any need to make the table legs collapsible, as the couch that it would have slid under is now blocked by the Game Sack I finished (pictures of velcro flap coming soon)

Camera trouble

While I was MIA, I was still taking pictures of projects. However it seems like those photos are gone. Either my iMac or Jenn's camera decided we didn't need them and erased the camera's internal memory. I'll post what I have, and try to take new ones of the progress I have made on my current projects.

Missing in inaction...

Hoo boy, its been a long time since I posted anything here. I'm sorry I haven't been around. I promise to endeavor to post more often.  I've had a bit of a creative slump and with several projects all hitting stopping points, It threw a huge monkey wrench into my motivation.

But I'm slowly building a head of steam to power through and jump start this year with more art, design and cool projects.

Update : Beanbag

The Bean bag is nearly complete! Here it is filled and the denim skin added. Its apparently quite comfortable, and has become the favorite choice for sitting in the house. I'm glad that it turned out like it did. I"m even glad I had to back up and redo it, as the original plan would have been much too big.

The bag in entirety weighs about 60 lbs, so its easily moved around when it needs to be. The only thing missing at this point is to add velcro to the open flap on the bottom, and that's it. The velcro I bought is too small and there isn't enough to do what I need, so I'll need another trip to a fabric store.

To be honest, i'm glad this went as well as it did. after the failue of the last project (the laptop bag), I needed a win to keep up my motivation.

 

Jenn playing some DS game. 

Update : Beanbag

Here's pictures of the foam being unloaded into the inner lining of the beanbag. I used a super-cheap sheet set for the fabric.

Laptop Bag Project = Failed

So the fasteners never went on the laptop bag. The bag was ultimately a failure, for one reason ; the laptop doesn't fit in the bag. It's too big by a half inch, or rather the bag is too small by about a half an inch.

To tell the truth, it's an ironic end, as I worried through the whole process that I was adding too much seam allowance, adding too many bag patches together, generally making the project too BIG for the bag to be properly protected.

Well, failures are inevitable. and on reflection, if any of my current projects were to fail, I would rather this one than any of the others. That doesn't mean that this bag failing precludes my other projects from failing as well, but it's best to remain as optimistic as possible.

The bag isn't an entire failure. The fabric is salvagable with work, and I would hate to cut up one of Jennifer's favorite sweaters to just end up tossing the scraps in the garbage.

Laptop bag Ver. 2 will commence shortly. Right now though I'm going to focus on making progress on the bean bag. with effort and a quick trip to the store, I think I can complete it this weekend.

Laptop Bag

 

As you can see the plastic and fabric sides have been sewn together, leaving one side open. This was a lot more difficult than I had planned for, as the plastic isn't stretchy at all, and the knit stretches under its own weight. this led to constant headaches keeping the 2 sides together, as I couldn't pin them together. Making any more holes than absolutely necessary in the plastic would weaken it. I went back to the video and looked for ideas. Of course I missed the part about the bobby pins standing in for sewing pins.

Needless to say, that made things go a lot more smoothly.

After sewing the sides, I turned the whole thing right side out ;

 

Notice I kept the pockets, thought they would be a cool addition.

Stuffing the bag was easier than harder than I thought. Adding the stuffing to the bag and sewing every few inches to keep it  stable was easy, and took less foam than I anticipated. The hard part was the foam. Shipped vacuum-sealed, the foam started expanding immediately after I opened it and spilling everywhere. I tried my best to limit the damage, but now there's a liberal scattering of little foam pieces all over the floor of my workspace.

The inside padding.

I sewed the sides together, checking after one side that the laptop would fit (yes it would) I sewed the remaining side, finally forming a recognizable bag.

Bag.

I hemmed the sides of the flap and I'm almost done. just add a fastener to the flap to close and that's it.

"Recycled" plastic laptop bag.