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Elmer's celebrates the 40th anniversary of Earth Day with 40 tips for becoming more environmentally friendly at home

Beginning on Earth Day, teachers across the country will begin recycling the millions of glue bottles and glue sticks their classrooms have collected since the beginning of the school year. This recycling effort is part of the Elmer's Glue Crew Recycling Program, which was created three years ago to help teachers educate children about recycling and environmental stewardship and prevent millions of glue bottles and glue sticks from going into our landfills.

To coincide with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Elmer's is inviting parents to get involved in the Elmer's Glue Crew program through the "40 Days of Earth-Friendly Living." The campaign kicks-off on Earth Day and offers an eco-friendly tip or idea every day through the end of May. The tips are designed to allow parents and children to participate together and to give teachers more ideas for expanding their Earth Day curriculum. To participate, parents and teachers can download the "40 Days" calendar at www.ElmersGlueCrew.com or sign up to receive tips on Twitter or Facebook. The tips include:

Day 17: Walk instead of drive

Leave the car at home and walk to the store or a friend's house

Day 26: Don't run the water

When you brush your teeth, turn off the water when you're not using it

"Through Elmer's Glue Crew, we've been able to provide teachers with recycling information, student contests and curriculum ideas. The 40 Days of Earth-Friendly Living is a way for us to involve parents and help teachers extend their education into the home," said Mary Beth Cowardin, senior marketing manager for Elmer's Products. "Our goal with this program has always been to develop a mindset at an early age for being environmentally conscious."

Last year, nearly 1.2 million school-age children participated in Elmer's Glue Crew to recycle 2 million glue bottles and glue sticks. Beginning on Earth Day, classrooms will start recycling their collections by submitting the empties to Walmart or TerraCycle.  To recognize their efforts, Elmer's honors one classroom that has gone above and beyond to incorporate environmental stewardship and recycling into their daily activities with the Elmer's Glue Crew Grand Prize.

Elmer's® Products, Inc., headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, has been a trusted brand and industry leader for more than 60 years. Elmer's produces a variety of well-known adhesives, arts and crafts, educational and office products developed to provide project solutions and inspire people to create, build and learn for life.  Elmer's also markets the number one instant adhesive in the U.S., Instant Krazy Glue®, and X-ACTO®, a leader in innovative cutting blades, knives, and office supplies. For more information, visit www.elmers.com.

If you have an old piece you would like to clean and refresh, here's a step-by-step how-to.

Thread tension is probably the greatest bugbear for those learning how to use a sewing machine. Watch this video to learn how to get it right.

Fat Quarters, Jelly Rolls, and Charm Packs -  most quilters will know that these terms are not exactly what they seem. but have you ever paused to wonder if they are worth what they cost? Check out the bottomline.

A friend who will be moving out of the country called yesterday, looking for a home for a barely used airbrush and a never-used calligraphy kit.

So how many of us have splurged on materials or tools for that special project, and ended up just locking up shelf space? Craft on Cue have come up with a very innovative solution to this problem - a craft supply library.

Hope this idea catches on well, and encourages more people to try crafting, and regular crafters to engage in more creative projects.

If you have just started sewing, and know someone who does, a brand new sewing machine would be a wonderful gift.

Well, Janome and Threadbanger have teamed up just in time and are offering a 10% discount if you buy two new Threadbanger branded sewing machines. With good performance reviews, these are great starter model sewing machines.

Get details here.

Ooooooh! I just saw Drops Designs Christmas Calender, and now wish I could rewind to December 1st.

Thorstein Bunde Veblen, a Norwegian-American sociologist and economist, calculated the value of handmade way back in 1899. At a time when the industrial revolution was just gaining high ground, Veblen figured that the order of satisfaction derived from a handmade luxury article was ten times more than that afforded by a similar machine-made one.

Machine-made has improved a gazillion times since then, but looking around me, I don't think the pleasure ratio has changed all that much. In fact, I would say it has gone up!

When my mother finished her first cross-stitched picture (a horse worked on matty), she went all the way across town to get it framed at the best framing store in town. The frame was great, but alack and alas, the work was not mounted properly, and the matty had stretched out of shape so that the straight line borders were wavy in parts.

Lesson learned. Needlework needs to be mounted and framed just right to bring out the beauty of your efforts.

Embroidery-methods.com has some great tips for you.

A sarape is a long, brightly-colored shawl worn by the people of Mexico.

Traditionally, sarapes were made  near the city of Saltillo in north-eastern Mexico. The Saltillo sarapes and blankets are of a dark brown or black, banded with yellow, orange, red, blue, green, purple or other bright colors.The ends are usually fringed.

Berroco continues their Global Gifting series with this colorful Sarape Shopper.

Copyrighting artwork is one of the most complicated issues around. With quilts, this problem takes on humongous proportions.

Magdalen's lucid piece on Copyright and other legal issues for quilters is a good place to start tackling the subject.

When working with a thick medium of paste or gel, use a sponge applicator to minimize brush strokes and get a smooth, even effect.

So while the Germans had Scherenschnitte, the Japanese were tearing up colored paper to create Chigiri-e. This technique which dates from the Heian period of Japanese history was  often used with calligraphy. Hand-made paper is used for the creation of images with an effect of water color. Some are further decorated with color pigments or metallic dust. 

   

Scherenschnitte (shear-n-SNIT- a) means "scissor cuts" in German. This is the art of papercutting design. The artwork often has symmetry within the design. The tradition was founded in Switzerland and Germany in the 1500s, and was brought to Colonial America in the 1700s by immigrants who settled primarily in Pennsylvania.

Halloween brings to mind the jack-o-lantern, carved from a pumpkin. Do you know how this tradition started?
Halloween nowadays is a night for dressing up, telling ghost stories, having spooky parties, trick-or-treating and pumpkin carving. Halloween is actually based on an ancient Celtic holiday known as Samhain (pronounced "sow wan"), which means "summer's end".
It was the end of the Celtic year and a night to honor ancestors. On this magical night, glowing jack-o-lanterns, carved from turnips or gourds, were set on porches and in windows to act as protection against malevolent spirits. Burning lumps of coal were used inside as a source of light, later to be replaced by candles.
When European settlers, particularly the Irish, arrived in America they found the native pumpkin to be larger, easier to carve and the perfect choice for jack-o-lanterns. Halloween didn't really catch on big in this country until the late 1800's and has been celebrated in so many ways ever since!

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is the magnificient carved mountain in the Black Hills near Keystone, South Dakota. Here are four 60feet high sculptures of U.S. Presidents - George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln, representing the first 150 years of the history of the United States of America.
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum, a student of the great French artist Auguste Rodin and one of America's most prolific artists, was commissioned to take up the work. Borglum was one of America's most successful artists. His Mares of Diomedes was the first work by an American artist ever purchased by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The great presidential figures were selected for the carving to create an eternal reminder of the birth, growth, preservation and development of a nation dedicated to democracy and the pursuit of individual liberty. 
In the six-and-a-half years of work that occurred on and off between 1927 and 1941, Borglum employed almost 400 local workers. Some built roads, ran the hoist house, generated power or sharpened thousands of bits for the pneumatic drills. Others set dynamite charges or completed delicate finishing work on the sculpture. As the four faces emerged from the granite, the men who helped carve the memorial began to share the sculptor's dream and became caught up in a challenge that would produce a national treasure.
Among the most highly skilled workers were those using dynamite. Using techniques he had developed at Stone Mountain and relying on skills his crew had acquired in mining, Borglum used the explosive in an innovative way that helped to remove large amounts of rock quickly and relatively inexpensively. His powdermen became so skilled that they could blast to within four inches of the finished surface and grade the contours of the lips, nose, cheeks, neck and brow. In fact, 90 percent of the 450,000 tons of granite removed from the mountain were taken out with dynamite.
Borglum created a model of the four presidents on a one-to-12-inch scale, which has been preserved for viewing at the Sculptor's Studio. To transfer measurements from the model to the mountain, workers determined where the top of the head would be, then found the corresponding point on the model. A protractor was mounted horizontally on top of the model's head. A similar, albeit 12 times larger, apparatus was placed on the mountain. By substituting feet for inches, workers quickly determined the amount of rock to remove.
Next, drillers used the same measuring system and air-powered tools to drill closely spaced holes to exacting depths, a process known as "honeycombing." The rock between these holes was then broken away using chisels and hammers. The final process, known as "bumping," used a pneumatic drill and a special bit to leave the finished surface as smooth as a concrete sidewalk.
Mount Rushmore represents the largest work of art on earth. Each face is 60 feet high, compared to the head on the Statue of Liberty, which is only 17 feet tall.

The ancient metalworks of Luristan have been recovered from areas in west central Iran. The Lurs are the people of the mountainous Zagros,  descended from the migrant tribes who settled in this region during the third and fourth millenium B. C.

The typical Luristan style  artifacts include a great number of weapons, ornaments, tools, and ceremonial objects, crafted with iron, bronze and gold. These golden death-masks were unearthed from Kalmarekh and date back to the first half of the first millenium B.C.

The safety pin dates back to the Mycenaeans during the 14th century B.C. Called fibulae, they looked remarkably like the safty pin and were used in the same manner as modern day safety pins.
The safety pin was re-invented in July of 1849 by Walter Hunt. The rights to the invention were sold for $400.
The safety pin is a design classic that is timeless. It is as much a work of art as a piece of engineering. Made of rigid but bendable metal, it is activated by squeezing the parallel sides inwards. It is safe because the sharp needle tip is covered when the safety pin is closed. It is used for holding objects, mainly clothing, in place.
The safety pin is strong, safe and very durable. Safety pins are very common and inexpensive and they come in many sizes. They are also manufactured in plastic variants.
Make some cool accessories using safety pins.

Handy stitching tips make crafting a delight.

A pencil is an implement that is used to write and draw. It is usually made of a solid inner writing core of graphite, with a wooden encasing. Colored pencils use pigments, including those used in oil and watercolor paints. Pencils may also have an eraser or "rubber" attached to one end, typically by means of a metal ferrule.
The pencil found its origins in the ancient Roman stylus, which was a thin metal stick, often made of lead and used for scratching on papyrus. The word pencil comes from the Latin word penicillus which means "little tail".
In the early 16th century, an enormous deposit of graphite was discovered in Cumbria, England. This was found very suitable for marking sheep. Chemistry was in its infancy and the substance was thought to be a form of lead, and called plumbago. The black core of pencils is still sometimes referred to as "lead", even though it no longer contains the element lead.
The soft plumbago needed some form of case for rigidity, and the first plumbago sticks were wrapped in string or in sheepskin. The news of the usefulness of these early pencils spread far and wide, attracting the attentions of artists all over the "known world".
England continued to enjoy a monopoly on the production of pencils, and the distinctively square English pencils continued to be made with sticks cut from natural graphite into the 1860s.
The first attempt to manufacture graphite sticks from powdered graphite, found in other parts of the world, was in Nuremberg, Germany in 1662. They used a mixture of graphite, sulphur and antimony. Though usable they were inferior to the English pencils.
It was the Italians who first thought of wooden holders. An Italian couple in particular named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti were believed to be the ones to create the first blueprints for the modern carpentry pencil, although their version was a flat oval, more compact type of pencil. They did this at first by hollowing out a stick of juniper wood. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique was discovered: two wooden halves were carved, a plumbago stick inserted, and the two halves then glued together—essentially the same method that is in use to this day.
A French officer in Napoleon's army, Nicholas Jacques Conté discovered a method of mixing powdered graphite with clay and forming the mixture into rods which were then fired in a kiln. By varying the ratio of graphite to clay, the hardness of the graphite rod could also be varied (the more clay, the harder the pencil, and the lighter the colour of the mark). This method of manufacture also remains in use today.
Today, pencils are made industrially by mixing finely ground graphite and clay powders, adding water, forming long spaghetti-like strings, and firing them in a kiln. The resulting strings are dipped in oil or molten wax which seeps into the tiny holes of the material, resulting in smoother writing. A juniper or incense-cedar plank with several long parallel grooves is cut to make something called a slat, and the graphite/clay strings are inserted into the grooves. Another grooved plank is glued on top, and the whole thing is then cut into individual pencils, which are then varnished or painted.
Many pencils, particularly those used by artists, are labeled on the European system using a "degrees" scale from "H" (for hardness) to "B" (for blackness), as well as "F" (for fine point). The standard writing pencil is "HB". However, artists' pencils can vary widely in order to provide a range of marks for different visual effects on the page. The American system, using numbers only, was developed simultaneously by  Conté.
Pencils in the United States and Canada tend to be painted yellow on the outside.
Not all countries however use yellow pencils; German pencils, for example, are often green, and Brazil uses green and black
Most pencils today are Hexagonal in cross-section. This shape is comfortable to hold and reduces their tendency to roll on desks. Although they too are hexagonal, carpenter's pencils have a flattened shape, and allow for a more precise positioning of drawn lines. Cylindrical pencils are also manufactured, and often have either artistic designs or messages for promoting businesses, causes, organizations, or services on the outside. Still other pencils have a triangular cross-section, ostensibly for comfort and ergonomic reasons.
An urban legend in circulation since the 1970s tells of NASA spending large sums of money, typically in the millions of dollars, to develop an instrument that would write in space (a space pen). This task is not as simple as it seems, as standard ballpoint and fountain pens require gravity in order to function. The typical punch line is that either someone supposedly should have sent NASA a pencil, or that the Soviets used pencils.

The Russian lace-making tradition has produced some exquisite, ethereal pieces.  Read about this enchanting craft.

Thread conversion charts allow you to match thread colours between different brands, or find nearest equivalent colour Look here for links to handy charts available online.

Having sewn a fine seam, you need to know how to take good care of it. Read through these helpful tips if you need to wash your labor of love.

Starting a new quilting project? Take time to prepare your fabric, it could make all the difference.

Wash and iron fabric before cutting patches. Rinse dark colors separately in warm water to check for excess dye. Continue rinsing until water runs clear. Iron fabric when slightly damp for best results.

Ever wondered what that swatch of fabric in your stash is? - Cotton, silk, wool, rayon ... or what?

Run a check.

  “An artist's proof is a single print taken in the printmaking process to see the current printing state of a plate while the plate (or stone, or woodblock...) is being worked on by the artist”. Artist's proofs are a special prints of the regular limited edition.
Artist's proofs date back to a time when limited editions were all hand-pulled from a one-man litho press. They were the first prints pulled off a fresh "stone" (the plate which was drawn or etched by the artist to create the prints). This plate suffered wear and tear as greater number of prints were made. This meant that the artist’s proofs were the sharpest and most colorful of the lot, and so fetched better prices.
In today’s world of modern offset lithography, all the prints in an edition are nearly identical. Artist's proofs maintain their collectability and value because they are a small subset of the edition, and they usually come directly signed by  the artist. The artist usually signs the proofs personally, including a number showing the quantity of artists proofs available In these days of mass production and marketing, getting something directly or even indirectly from the artist is rare. Publishers usually turn over the artists proofs to the artist for his or her own use, and retain all the other prints in the edition.
Collectors also value artist's proofs because they are unique images. They are generally considered a status symbol in the world of art collecting and their resale value is proportionally higher than the numbered editions.
An artists proof is also known as a "comp".
Here we have an image of the artist's proof for Monet's "The Magpie".

The Chau is one of the rare mask dances of eastern India, found amongst the tribals of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.

The three forms of this martial dance are named after the region where they are practiced-  the Purulia Chau of Bengal, the Seraikella Chau of Bihar and the Mayurbhanj Chau of Orissa.

The dance is performed as part of the celebrations that herald the arrival of spring. The originally simple, rustic masks were redesigned in the early years of the previous century along the lines of the world famous frescoes of Ajanta. The soft pastel color of the masks, and subtle and elongated lines of eyebrows and eyes were marked to enhance the expressive movements of the dancer.

As with the Noh masks, the Chau masks were purely decorative, and concealed more than they revealed, leaving it to the dancer to portray every nuance of intent and emotion through their bodily movements.

The masks are made primarily of a base of jute fibers, with layers of mud, clay and paper. The eye openings are large, but the openings at the nostrils are very slight and vestigial. At times thick, knitted eyebrows and facial hair growth are used to indicate the malevolent nature of a character.

The costumes used with the masks have evolved alongside, with large, elaborately showy headdresses.

The thematic content of the masks is limited to the great Indian epics and local folklore.

Imitation is the best form of flattery, or so goes the saying. But not when it comes to precious works of Art.

Art crimes have been around ever since the first Art was created. But what motivates and initiates it? How long has it been going on? And how is it handled?

Find out.

Most yarn and thread workers spend a goodly portion of their lives UN-ravelling knots... well, here's how we can see what kind they are!

Ever wondered about Da Vinci's two versions of this painting? Decide for yourself.

Faberge eggs are symbolic of the elegance, pomp and opulence of Imperial Russia. The beauty and unique design of each of these exquisitely crafted pieces have made them coveted works of art.

Who amongst us has never held a Crayola crayon in their stubby little three-year-old fingers?

Here's how it started.

Mask is a polyseme. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple, related meanings.

A mask is a piece of material or kit worn on the face. To mask also means to conceal.

And masks can be as fascinating or even more so than what they hide.

Masks have been in use in several societies around the world for many hundreds of years. They have been used for religious rituals, social functions and cultural purposes.

In modern times, masks are also representational and protective.

The word mask comes from the Old Italic masca, which defines an evil, hideous character. However, most masks are creations of extreme and esoteric beauty.

The Japanese Noh mask is one of the oldest and most developed traditions in mask making. Profoundly artistic and stylized, these masks cover more than they reveal, leaving it up to the actor behind to bring life to them.

Try your hand at making a Noh mask today.

What happens when Salvador Dali meets Walt Disney?

Betsy Ross was asked by the Continental Congress to make the first American Flag.

A crafter who helped make History!