Discover the expert in you.
Discover the expert in you.
Home and office alarm systems often use sensors that alert the system that a door or window has been opened. Even though many of the sensors for modern systems can contain small power supplies and wireless transmitters, a door sensor need not be elaborate to perform the job adequately. A magnet and a few electronic components, for example, can be assembled to provide an audible alert when a door has been opened or closed.
Adding a NullText value to an Infragistics WebGrid button allows you to ensure that the value that is assigned to it will never be empty. This can, for example, prevent your table from being populated with empty cells. You can assign a NullText value to an Infragistics WebGrid button by editing your Web application's source code.
Dressing up your name tag is a great way to let people catch a quick glimpse of your personality. Dress up your name tag with help from an expert with a natural knack for teaching, creating and communicating in this free video clip.
You can make flower-shaped name tags right at home so long as you have the proper materials. Learn about do-it-yourself flower-shaped name tags with help from an expert with a natural knack for teaching, creating and communicating in this free video clip.
Purse jewelry needs to be made in a very specific way for the best possible results. Learn how to make purse jewelry with help from a visual artist and product developer in this free video clip.
Easter stamps are great for adding designs to napkin ring holders. Use stamping techniques on Easter napkin holders with tips from a scrapbook demonstrator in this free Easter crafting video.
Napkin rings can be easily decorated for Easter. Cut and score card stock for Easter napkin holders with tips from a scrapbook demonstrator in this free Easter crafting video.
With the right tools you can make the perfect drum lamp shade right in the comfort of your own home. Learn about a do-it-yourself drum lamp shade with help from an interior designer, home staging expert, and Allied member of ASID in this free video clip.
Making and recovering a lamp shade can turn an old eyesore into an art centerpiece in just a few quick steps. Make or recover a lamp shade with help from an interior designer, home staging expert, and Allied member of ASID in this free video clip.
The Facebook markup language lets you create customized Facebook applications for your fan pages. You use the Facebook developer section to edit the FBML for inactive programs. You edit the code until you are ready to promote the code to the live page on your Facebook page. Facebook includes an editor in your development dashboard included with the Facebook development setup.
An amplifier takes an electrical signal and increases it. In a stereo system, the amplifier receives an incoming audio signal in the form of a low-voltage current, and then boosts it with a transformer, creating an output signal with the original frequency and wavelength, but greater power. Some amplifiers work without transformers, however.
Eighteenth and 19th century French purses were embroidered bags made of silk. The exterior design of the bags varied, but the primary similarities include use of silk fabric to construct the bag and the use of silk thread to embroider the bag. Placing potpourri in a silk bag or purse would allow the aroma to escape from the bag and add the scent to the environment around the bag. The potpourri-filled bag would make an aromatic and attractive addition to a clothes closet or wardrobe.
You can wear a traditional headband during sports to keep your hair out of your face and absorb sweat. These practical headbands, however, also become a fashion accessory when crocheted. Consider types of yarn, stitches, embellishments and elastic options to create a one-of-a-kind work of art.
The military battles that shape a country or region in terms of politics, economics, sociology and religion create an incredible impact that makes wars fascinating to study. Students of history most often explore these battles through the written text, photographs and film but there is a way for interested learners to capture the events of wars in a tactile manner. Kids can learn to make war dioramas in which they build a stage and incorporate elements to bring a scene to life in a three-dimensional work of art.
The butterfly loom is a small, hand-held wooden board with notched intersections cut into the edge. It is available in a variety of sizes and creates an open weave design. By wrapping and knotting yarn or ribbon around the notches, you can create colorful hair bows. You can make small bows to attach to a clip or larger bows for headbands using different loom sizes. With a little practice following the weaving techniques, you will complete your hair bow project quickly.
If you love to crochet but the thought of a months-long project such as an afghan is overwhelming, consider crocheting hot pads for your kitchen. The thick, absorbent nature of cotton yarn makes it a conducive medium for your dishes while providing a decorative accent you cannot find in stores. Both of these tightly-woven pot holders employ the ubiquitous single crochet stitch and can be made quickly. Perhaps the best part? If you come to the end of the pattern and want to make the hot pad bigger, you can keep your fingers moving until you reach the size that’s…
Caves provide bat colonies a safe place for them to sleep after they spend their day foraging for insects at night. Bats are able to hang from the ceiling of caves to stay out of reach of their enemies. Recreating the intricate features of a bat cave’s stalactites and stalagmites for a school project may seem intimidating, but it can be done using basic art supplies. Students can create a diorama, a three dimensional depiction of a scene, while learning about cave formations and functions.
Parchment shades on table lamps look pretty, but are quite delicate and easily punched or torn if they're knocked off the table. Instead of throwing them out and replacing damaged shades, get creative and renew the shade with a color scheme and style that suits your decor perfectly. Choose grown-up and sophisticated colors and patterns for a main room in the house, or give a child's lamp a new lease on life by choosing images of cartoon or story-book characters.
According to Friar Saunders of the Global Catholic Network EWTN, prayer beads have been used for meditation even before Christian times. Rosary beads or knots are used to count the number of prayers recited. While a full rosary contains the full rosary prayer--50 Hail Mary knots with four Our Father knots in-between--a rosary bracelet is condensed to 10 Hail Marys and one Our Father. A hand-woven rosary bracelet can be given as a Catholic gift and can be worn for prayer and meditation purposes or as a religious reminder.
Nighttime photo shoots are good options for photographing evening wear, such as black-tie and cocktail fashions, because the lighting lends an air of authenticity to the subject matter. Taking pictures at night poses lighting difficulties because you won't have any natural light. Fortunately, many techniques make nighttime fashion shoots possible. Proper lighting is one important aspect of a successful nighttime fashion shoot.
Artificial trees are a good option if you do not have the time to care for live plants or find that you do not have much success with keeping live plants alive. Artificial white trees come in the form of Christmas trees or those that look like they have blossoming white flowers. Brown spots on artificial white trees are often preventable.
A plastic refrigerator magnet may seem like a harmless product, but certain kinds of plastic carry heavy health risks. If a small child picks up and chews on a small letter magnet, an alarm should be raised over the safety of the material. Alphabetic magnets are sometimes composed of a range of different plastics and materials, some of which are safer than others. Possible materials include PVC, polyethylene and ethylene vinyl acetate. To ensure the safety of your children, select a product made of safe plastic.
With the exception of homemade pot holders woven from nylon bands, most pot holders are made from a natural fabric, such as cotton. Cotton is inexpensive, comes in a wide variety of fabrics and has a soft, appealing feel. Nylon, invented in 1938, was the first synthetic fabric ever made. It is often used in the manufacture of clothing, but has few practical applications in the kitchen.
A circle purse is a drawstring pouch style of a bag that lies flat as a circle when opened up entirely. Make a circle purse to carry your belongings or use them as gift bags during the holiday season. A circle purse also works well to hold small children's toys, like plastic building bricks, because the child can play on top of the purse as a mat and then hold the toys inside of it to transport them.
Ruffles can dress up nearly anything, from blankets and pillows to skirts and purses. Ruffles can be added to any purse pattern, regardless of whether the pattern calls for them. Ruffles are easy to make; all you need are two extra lengths of fabric and a sewing machine. Choose a coordinating fabric for your ruffle or use the same fabric as the purse. Alternatively, you can use two different fabrics for your ruffle so that each side of the ruffle is a different coordinating color or pattern.
A dreadlock hairstyle, which you achieve by twisting and "locking" individual strands of hair, consists of thick cords of hair. Like any hairstyle, dreadlocks require regular care, maintenance and styling. Headbands are a popular fashion accessory that keep your dreads away from your face, especially during hot weather months. In addition, headbands work to cover roots and loose hair when dreads are newly forming. Making your own headband for dreads is a simple, versatile project; explore your creativity and experiment with various fabrics and styles.
Many Native Americans heard coyotes yipping across the prairie and respected the intelligence and resourcefulness of the animal. As humans spread out across the country, they displaced and forced the coyote to adapt in order to survive. Today you can find coyotes on the plains, in the forest, on the mountains and in urban city parks. The coyote lives in any area that provides sufficient food and cover for its needs. Students creating a coyote habitat diorama may choose various areas for their three-dimensional display.
You can manage your Facebook account through the desktop TweetDeck software. TweetDeck supports most of the features found on Facebook, including tagging a Facebook friend in your status updates and posts. However, an authorization error can occur between TweetDeck and Facebook that disables your ability to manage most Facebook features through the TweetDeck software, including tagging. The authorization error comes from a glitch in the connection between TweetDeck and Facebook. By correcting this error, you can start name tagging through TweetDeck again.
With just some basic sewing skills, some pretty ribbon and a couple of vintage-era or vintage-designed kitchen towels, you can make a stylish, custom apron for use around the kitchen or just for decoration. In addition to being cute, this project can be a creative way to reuse your old dish towels that you no longer want to use but don't wish to throw away.
A toy tree organizer provides a creative storage space to reduce clutter in a child's bedroom. Toys are attached to the tree organizer with elastic bands that loop around each item. Colorful headbands or stretch ribbon can be used for the elastic bands. Fill a recycled flower pot with river pebbles and adorn it with bright silk flowers for the base of the toy tree organizer. Use stencils to paint a flower motif, monogram or name on the flower-pot base in colors to match the room's decor.
Take the tractor off the farm and transform it into a super stock tractor in the racing arena. At about 8,500 pounds, these modified tractors are one of the heaviest used in these types of tractor-pulling competitions. Fabricate a toy super stock tractor by carving it out of balsa wood, which is a soft wood often used in beginning woodcarving. It can be carved with a plastic knife, but a pocket knife or craft knife works best.
Web.config connection strings can make your ASP.NET application more secure. A connection string contains the parameters needed to connect to a data source such as a SQL database. Because connection strings may contain passwords and other sensitive information, it is wise to store connection string settings in a safe location. An ASP.NET application's web.config file holds these settings. Retrieve them to get the name of any connection string your application needs.
While many children love their teddy bears and like to take them everywhere they go, as they grow older, toting teddy from pillar to post isn't always feasible. A teddy bear pin, however, can be an item that is comforting to your child and decorative when placed on a favorite jacket or shirt. With some felt, scissors, glue and a little bit of time, you can fashion an adorable teddy bear pin that your child is sure to love.
Create a new heirloom or a cherished stuffed toy by making a teddy bear out of a knitting knobby, which is also known as french knitting or spool knitting. Pegs surround a small circular frame creating a simple loom for knitting. Excellent for beginners, the knitting knobby forms long strands of knitting that can be folded and twisted into a teddy bear. Any color and gauge of wool yarn is suitable for the project, and a crochet hook is useful for forming the knitted stitches.
A heart-shaped, satin-and-rhinestone change purse can make a simple and beautiful travel accessory. The change purse can be small enough to fit inside almost any purse for storage, or it can be attached to a wristlet strap to make it easy to carry your change everywhere. Use the craft as an opportunity to introduce sewing to a child, utilizing leftover scraps of fabric to keep expenses down and letting her embellish the purse with pompoms, ribbon bows and other odds-and-ends.
A diorama is a scale model of a natural landscape or historical event that fits within a container such as a box or glass case. Dioramas range from elaborate museum exhibits to school projects that create miniature worlds inside shoe boxes. Coniferous forests grow in subpolar, temperate, tropical and subtropical climatic zones around the world. The world’s largest coniferous forest belt grows in the northern hemisphere across North America, Europe and northern Asia. Typical plants in these regions are spruce, fir and pines; typical mammals are bears, moose, foxes and big cats. Bird life includes eagles, jays, owls and grouse.
A diorama is an interesting way for students to show what they have learned about animals and their habitats. If your child has been learning about dinosaurs, his teacher may ask that he make a diorama to illustrate his understanding of the subject. With a shoe box and a few art supplies, your child can create a diorama that shows what he knows about the apatosaurus. He can even use it to teach his fellow classmates about this type of dinosaur.
Making your own drawstring purse provides benefits beyond saving you money. Choose your preferred type of fabric and then customize the design however you like to create your ideal purse. A homemade purse also makes an excellent gift for a friend or family member. Alter the dimensions to create a purse big enough for everyday use or one sized for small items, such as keys and your cell phone.
You can make a fashion statement with your own homemade fleece-lined purse. Match the fabric to any outfit; pair different fabrics, fabric textures and colors; or choose a pattern that you’d never find in the stores. Making your own purse puts you in control of the style and appearance of your most visible and heavily used accessory. Use fusible interfacing to stiffen the outside fabric and fusible fleece to create a padded interior suitable for gently carrying everything from wallets to cameras.
If you are on the lookout for original accessories, recycling pages from your favorite magazine to sew a purse is a project tailored for you. Create a handbag that expresses, in text or images, the topics that inspire you most. Sewing paper may sound like a crumpled, shredded disaster waiting to happen, but with the aid of adhesive vinyl, turning pages into a purse is accessible even for novice crafters.
Your child may be assigned to make a diorama of a mission as part of a study unit on old religions or Spanish influence in the Southern United States. Early Hispanic settlers in states ranging from Florida through Texas to California built churches in which they hoped to encourage the locals to become Christians. Some missions were elaborate, multiroom structures with ornate detailing, but many others were simple, plain adobe or brick buildings. Look at pictures of the famous missions in San Antonio, Texas or the one at San Juan Capistrano in California to get some ideas.
A diorama is a three-dimensional model, like those sometimes found in museums. Dioramas can be full-sized, but often they are made in miniature scale by hobbyists to re-create battles or war scenes using plastic models of military vehicles and weapons. Simple dioramas have also become popular homework assignments for school-aged students. These dioramas are often constructed inside a simple box, and can recreate practically any scene including sports scenes like football.
A rubric is a grading scale that teachers use to assess the grade for a project, such as a diorama. It also gives students a detailed understanding of what is expected from their finished diorama and how they will be scored. A diorama is a 3-D project, usually done in a shoebox, that offers a pictorial rendering of a specific study. For example, they may show a certain animal's habitat, a reenactment of a famous war battle or may depict what a 13th century church might have looked like. Several factors help determine a student's performance and comprehension.
A purse does not have to be expensive or a name brand to provide you with a striking but sensible accessory. It is very easy to make a clutch purse that will have all your friends asking where you purchased it and who the designer is. An elegant purse can be constructed out of an item as basic and inexpensive as a cloth place mat. The completed purse is the perfect size for a checkbook, cell phone, keys and makeup.
Headbands were an important part of ancient cultures, including the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians. The versatile accessory can hold hair away from your face and eyes and update your look. They are inexpensive, easy to use and can provide you with a distinctive way to showcase your personality. Headbands are available in variety of colors, patterns and designs and are made from fabric, metal or plastic. However, unorganized headbands can clutter your drawer and make your dresser messy. You may buy a headband stand or make one yourself using simple things found around your house.
Pleats can give the illusion of fullness without the need for more fabric. They can add style and elegance to fashion like skirts, blouses and even purses. To create that pleated look -- like a tapered pleat -- all you need are a few supplies and some sewing savvy.
Girls' hairstyles and holiday presents use curling ribbon as an attractive accent. Yet this decorative material can also beautify a more utilitarian product: a name tag. When adorned with ribbon, these pieces of identification can lend a tasteful touch to myriad events and occasions. Some types of ribbon, however, require more effort than others to curl.
The lightsaber is an iconic staple of sci-fi films, made popular by the Star Wars franchise. With today's video-editing software, amateur and low-budget film makers can create realistic lightsaber effects with little more than a toy lightsaber, colored masking tape and digital video software. Most advanced editors and special-effects software can create a realistic lightsaber effect through the use of rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is the act of drawing over real film with an animation. Programs such as Adobe Premiere, Adobe After Effects, Silhouette FX and Imagineer's Mocha can all edit video and rotoscope.
Reticule purses were used in the Victorian era because most women's dresses didn't have pockets for storing the items a woman needed to carry with her. Also called drawstring purses, they are available at some specialty shops, but making your own is more economical and allows you to customize the reticule to your preferences. The materials needed can be found at fabric or craft stores.
Craft stores offer a number of purse-making supplies from drawstring, magnetic, zippered and snap frame styles. Snap together frames are commonly used in clutch and evening bags and are one of the simplest purses to DIY at home. Frames come in rounded and straight shapes and can be matched with different purse patterns and fabrics to create a variety of one-of-a-kind snap-together purse combinations. Purse templates can be designed by hand or found online.
