Sew at Home Mummy: February 2013

tips & tricks tuesdays: nati @ nati's little things! and, organizing stitches.

9:00:00 PM

{self-imposed} bloggy vacation

9:19:00 AM

Today I'm going to be posting about color theory - I can never keep the difference between hue, value and saturation straight, so I thought why not do a post about it! And then, I started researching all about color, and came across some pretty cool tid-bits (that's the geek in me talking...)

Claude Boutet's interpretation of Newton's Color
Wheel, approx. 1706. Unable to represent the
spectral red with any pigment, the artist
substituted two reds, omitting one of
Newton's two blues. As well, the artist misread
two of the hues: "orange" and "violet" (2)

History of the Color Wheel:
The first notation of the color wheel in history is attributed to Isaac Newton, who was the first to assign the colors of the rainbow (remember? ROY G BIV?) to a disc shape in the year 1706 with the help of the painter Claude Boutet; as the disk spins, the colors blur together so rapidly that the human eye sees white (1, 2). The colors were based on a series of refraction experiments conducted by Newton between 1666-1672. It was his idea to place primary colors across from their complimentary colors "as a way of denoting that each complementary would enhance the other’s effect through optical contrast." (2)

You'll notice the (first) color wheel depicted by Boutet on the right is incorrect; the orange wedge is painted purple, and the purple (violet) wedge is painted orange. Oops! Also omitted is the color "indigo".

I guess even famous artists have bad days...

Generating Color Schemes:
Primary Colors:
Red, Yellow, Blue - the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of other colors, and all other colors are derived from these 3 colors (1).

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Secondary Colors:
Orange, green and violet, colors all created by a mixture of two primary colors (1).

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Tertiary Colors:
Tertiary colors are a combination of a secondary color and a primary color next to it. They include yellow-orange, red-orange, red-violet, blue-violet, blue-green and yellow-green(1).

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Analogous Colors:
Analogous colors are any two-six colors beside one another on a color wheel(3,4).

Color wheel image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Complementary Colors:
Complementary colors are colors which are directly across from each other on the color wheel(1) -

Color wheel image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Monochromatic:
A color scheme of one color, in varying intensities(2).

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Triad:

A triad is three colors forming a triangle in the center of the wheel(2).

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Color Definitions:

Hue: used interchangeably with 'color', refers to the colors within the wheel; a gradation or variety of a color (3,5).

Value: adding to a hue: white to create a tint, black to create a shade or gray to create a tone. (5)

Saturation: the purity of the hue. The colors on the outside of the wheel are considered to be in their purest form (most saturated). As the colors move towards the center (see below), they are considered desaturated and no hue dominates (i.e. - moves towards being 'white'). (5)

Image courtesy of HGTV.com (4)

Hopefully this helps a little bit when you go to choose your color palette for your next project...be it monochromatic, analogous, or another color scheme, the color wheel is a great tool to have in your arsenal!

(1) Extracted January 21, 2013: Colour Lovers - History of the Colour Wheel. http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/05/08/history-of-the-color-wheel
(2) Extracted January 21, 2013: Web Exhibits.com: Newton and the Color Wheel. http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/bh.html
(3) Extracted January 21, 2013: Basic Color Theory. http://www.colormatters.com/color-and-design/basic-color-theory
(4) Extracted January 21, 2013: HGTV - Color Wheel Primer. http://www.hgtv.com/decorating-basics/color-wheel-primer/index.html
(5) Extracted January 21, 2013: Dictionary.com.

Featured: Sew, Mama, Sew! my "Gearhead" sewing machine cover!

12:00:00 AM

tips & tricks tuesdays: adding a favicon to your blogger blog

9:00:00 PM

Winner!

11:49:00 AM

spreading the word...

3:09:00 PM

a new addition & a reminder!

11:51:00 AM

My sewing area needs more storage, so I've been looking for a book shelf or storage of some sort for forever and a day.

I also couldn't break the bank on it, so the babe and I have been scouring second-hand stores and antique shops looking for something relatively cheap.

This last Tuesday we managed to find something at a shop a few blocks away...it's got an awful paint job right now, but I'll fix her up. I don't mind a bit of elbow grease for $30. It's super solid, real wood (not that particle board stuff), and weighs a tonne (much to my husband's dismay, as he had to carry it the 4 blocks home on the very icy sidewalks).

She's a pretty ugly beast right now, but trust me, I'll beautify her up :). At the same time, I'm going to give my other old hand-me-down bookcase in the area a sanding, scrubbing, and painting so it'll match this one. So, this'll be my Sunday project. I'll bundle up and take them outside (it's supposed to be -12C tomorrow (10F)) and get hopefully the sanding and TSP wash done, and if I'm lucky, a coat of primer.

In other news, on this coming Monday, I have a featured tutorial with Sew Mama Sew! I made a gorgeous machine cover - very mod quilted - well, I think it's gorgeous, you'll have to decide for yourselves!

Also, I just wanted to remind you, my gorgeous readers, that I have a linky-party every Tuesday I'd love you to participate in! It's called: "Tips and Tricks Tuesdays: what would MacGyver do?"

Tips & Tricks Tuesdays at Sew at Home Mummy

I'll be posting a tip on how to add a Favicon to your blog...what's a "Favicon" you ask? Well, you'll have to come back on Tuesday to check it out!
I encourage you to link up a tip, trick or tutorial that's sewing/quilting/blogging related with me here - a way to share your awesome tips with my readers, too!

Hope everyone out there in Sewing Land is having a fantastic weekend.

fyi friday: the dresden

2:30:00 AM

{Orange!} Crush... hugs & kisses blog hop!

11:00:00 PM

looking for (more!) hexie lovers..

7:30:00 PM

i love my postlady...

3:30:00 AM

Tips & Tricks Tuesdays:Stacey @ The Tilted Quilt....and A 1/4" Presser Foot

10:59:00 PM

more eye candy - a great stash-builder....

4:00:00 AM

Remember! Tips and Tricks Tuesdays

3:40:00 PM

Blog tip: inserting a blog button using html code

9:16:00 AM

Hi all!

With the upcoming blog hop I'm co-hosting with Mdm Samm, I thought I'd post a few blog tips to help out our participating bloggers whom might be having a bit of trouble with the blogging side of things.

One of the requirements of our hop is that you insert our blog button in your post.

You'll see this button and a bunch of mumbo-jumbo 'words' in a little box below it, like this:

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.sewwequilt.com" title="!Sew WE Quilt!"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYn_srRHUa5-xkwxhRORT-SiuBYYVn6_RvNiWpO_J75cqUwgZXiG514Edzz-5lnQN9e29KP4dxXQ7NjL236putionvj8cHgi_X8ZDyllPWAbUxCshCNnhqfwMKdXCsyo-OqUddO6Eeycfz/s200/aprilshowerbutton.png" alt="!Sew WE Quilt!" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

The mumbo-jumbo in the grey box is called "HTML code". It's a language that's generated which all web browsers can read (Chrome, Firefox, IE, etc.). In all of that gobbledy-gook, there's information for the browser to 'read':

- the code or language distinctive to the button's image (tells the browser to display the umbrella)
- the code or language of the site that owns the button (Mdm Samm's SewWEQuilt site)
- the code or language of the website that, when you click the button/image, the browser will bring you to that site (Mdm Samm's site)

Now - what the heckadoodles do you do with it? How do you insert it into your blog?

Two ways to insert it:
1. into your post
2. into the sidebar on your blog

So. Let's go over first how to put it in a post.

1. You'll see the code in the little box under the umbrella listed for the April Showers hop either above in this post, on my blog post HERE or over at Madame Samm's blog HERE.

2. Put your mouse cursor over the text in the little grey box. TRIPLE click (so, three clicks) really quickly without moving your mouse - this will select all of the text in the box, like this:

IMAGE PROPERTY OF MDM SAMM: www.sewwequilt.com

OR, if the triple click doesn't seem to work for you, manually highlight the entire contents of the code from the top left and drag all the way down to the bottom of the box to highlight everything.

3. Click the RIGHT button on your mouse. A little window will pop up, like this:
Select, "Copy" (in RED below)

IMAGE PROPERTY OF MDM SAMM: www.sewwequilt.com

4. Head over to your blog post now that you're working on. Now we'll enter the code within the postp by 'pasting' it ( press CTRL and P at the same time)

Now if there are some unwanted spaces in the html, we'll have to remove those spaces, like this (**make SURE you don't delete any of the characters - only the spaces in the lines**):

(note - the code on my blog has no spaces so you can skip this step)

Last step: we have to make sure that Blogger knows that you want to display the image, and not the html language you've inserted. So! Beside your post box, click on

"Options"

----Select: "Interpret typed html" (in RED below)

- - - - - Click "DONE" (in BLUE below)