With so many different materials and modern tools, experimenting with your crafts is essential. Although you quickly establish your favorite types of crafts and your specialist tools, as the craft world evolves, your toolbox adapts and becomes a little bigger and better. The most exciting thing about crafting is it’s never boring, and your every day is always filled with new ideas, and it only gets more interesting. Here are some tips on how to level up your arts and crafts skills, as well as the presentation of various modern tools that can be of great use in your art corner.
Before You Start
Preparing yourself for your arts and crafts workshop will get half of your job done, and certainly, make it much more productive. The first to keep in mind is to protect all the surfaces and to wear protective clothing that will help with potential nasty spills. When it comes to spills, it is good to have a kitchen towel paper handy. Have the relevant solvents for paints ready well in advance to clean equipment, and remove stains. It is also important to remember that most chemical solvents are toxic and harmful to the people and environment, and should be discarded appropriately. Protect hands and fingernails with cream before you start, or even better – wear gloves. Provide a trash-bag and place it nearby so that you can always keep your workplace clean and tidy. Other than saving your time and keeping everything tidy, being well-prepared ahead, boosts productivity, and helps you focus on your work, rather than the mess around you.
Modern Craft Tools
Besides Basic craft tools and supplies such as scissors, paintbrushes, knives, or self-cleaning mats, many advanced and unusual tools will help you save some time and get more productive in your craftwork. A good example is hot glue finger caps – silicone heat-resistant protectors that slip right over your fingers to protect against hot glue or any other hot tools. There is also a modern version of a textured eraser available. These are made with natural rubber latex and silica grit and can remove various stubborn mediums, like colored pencil, ink, marker, and even paint. Another great multi-functional tool is a Cricut machine used to cut several different materials like paper, vinyl, or even thin wood, with extreme precision, for your craft project. If you keep looking for guides on how to improve your arts and craft skills, you will run into many similar products alongside.
Use Design Program Additionally
To professionally edit your work, you may rely on some software help. PicMonkey for example is a great tool for removing the background behind photos and is an overall exquisite photo editing tool for all those images you thought were disasters and can’t be saved. The package of the three most famous editing programs includes adobe DC, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Illustrator. DC is still an absolute number, one editor of PDF files, while Adobe photoshop has been considered the editing king ever since it was first launched. Another handy design software is Silhouette Studio Designer, whose free features are good enough for quite several tasks like filling shapes with patterns, tracing, etc. However, you will need to upgrade to Designer or Designer Plus versions to get the full power of this program.
Make Your Stencils
Stencils are another interesting craft tool. They are made out of a thin sheet of material, like paper, plastic, or metal, with a design cut from it (letters or shapes), used to produce the design on an underlying surface by applying paint through the designed holes in the material. They can be used for anything from painting walls to making a nice pattern on a cup of coffee. The key benefit of a stencil is that it is reusable and can repeatedly and rapidly produce the same letters or designs multiple times, depending on the material. They are very simple to make yourself. You may use cardboard or old X-rays to cut the design into them. All you need is a stencil pattern which is freely available on the internet if you can’t come up with one, cardboard, an old X-ray or any other material of your choice, and a cutting mat. For precise cutting, you may also use the Cricut machines mentioned in one of the previous sections.
Whether you are looking for ways to only level up your art hobby, or to turn it into a business one day, following these tips and using modern handy tools available on the market today, will surely help you express yourself in the best way and make the whole process easier and more efficient.
