How To Manufacture Dolls’ Dresses

On July 28, 2011, In Uncategorized, By Owen Jones

A great deal of people get a real kick out of making dolls’ dresses and other clothes whether they be for their own dolls, a relative’s or for sale. However, as with each hobby or craft there are a few ground rules, a couple of dos and don’ts which will help you enjoy your new hobby straight from the start until you gain enough experience to create your own judgments. In this article we will explain the fundamentals of how to make dolls’ dresses.

The first thing to do to make making dolls’ dresses easier is to think that you are making a new outfit for yourself. This is easier for you because you already know yourself and have improved from making mistakes in the past, but how well do you know the doll for whom you are going to be making clothes?

If you are manufacturing clothes for your own doll or for retail, this is not a difficulty but if you are making dresses for a friend’s doll, it would be a wise idea to see her, hold her and get a feel for her before you purchase any fabrics.

You might prefer to get a pattern for a doll’s dress if this is your first one, but you can almost certainly make it up as you go along, or be really professional and make a couple of sketches with notes first.

This is really quite useful, because you can transform the pattern in light of experience and make notes about problem regions. Who knows, once you have twenty of them you might be able to publish them.

The equipment that you will need to facilitate making dolls’ dresses is in essence the same as any tailor or seamstress would need. That is: a sewing machine, pins, needles, shears or a rotary cutter, glue, pinking scissors, thread, tracing paper, pencils and a marking chalk or pen.

You will probably need other things as well depending on what you intend , but they could include: ribbons, elastic, sequins and lace. Then you are ready to prepare your sewing machine for use. If you have not used it for a time, give it a quick service as described in the handbook that came with the sewing machine.

See your handbook if you do not know how to set up your machine to pin tuck otherwise look it up on the Net. It is a good notion with some fabrics to spray the fabric with starch before you begin this stage.

After you have finished your doll’s dress or even before that stage, you should take into account whether the style calls for any lace, ribbons, embroidery or sequins. You can create or purchase tassels if they are called for.

You can get a great deal of fun out of manufacturing dolls’ dresses for yourself or a niece and the look on their face while they comprehend that you have taken the time to make something so special and unique just for them and their doll is reward enough.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on a variety of subjects, but is now concerned with Silver Cross Dolls Prams. If you want to know more, please go over to our web site at Doll Prams.

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Interesting Facts About Astronomy

On October 1, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Owen Jones

Astronomy is an interesting science to many people because it is filled with many astronomy fun facts. Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the make-up of distant planets has been established. All of this information can be retold to entertain and enlighten people.

The Sun is a great font for astronomy fun facts. Our own star, which provides us with all our heat and light is between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth. It’s not that nobody knows the precise distance, but rather because the Earth revolves around the Sun in an ellipse, an uneven, orbit, so the distance varies depending on where the Earth is situated in that orbit.

The Sun is only an average size star, yet it’s size is another great source of astronomy fun facts. As average as it is, it accounts for about 98% of all the material in our solar system. Even with the massive planet of Jupiter on our side, we’re still only a tiny 2% of non Sun stuff.

It would take the diameter of about 100 Earths to measure across this average Sun. The solar winds produced by the Sun extends to about 50 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. In other words, those solar winds go out about 50 AU’s, with an AU being the distance from the Earth to the sun. That’s quite fantastic, isn’t it?.

What about astronomy fun facts that don’t have anything at all to do with the Sun then? How about the Moon? It’s the only object that man has walked upon except the Earth so far. And one man actually travelled to the Moon but has never left it. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker loved the Moon but was not found acceptable as an astronaut. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are lots more astronomical fun facts about the Moon. It’s the site of what might become the oldest footprint known to man. Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind left a footprint or shoe print in the Moon’s dust that will likely still be there in 15 million years time.

Lots of people, in fact about 13% of those polled in 1988, still believed the Moon is made of cheese. And finally, the suits worn by the Moon-walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the Moon, because of the Moon’s reduced gravity. Talk about losing weight, eh?

Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close astronomical neighbours. Looking at stars is like looking into the past. Some of the stars we see today in the night sky are so far away that their light takes a million years to reach us. Some of the stars you see may really be images of stars a million years old that aren’t even there any more. There are more than 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe. That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. The number is really quite awesome.

There are millions of astronomy fun facts and we could relate them forever. But this article can not. So, please, walk out there and learn about astronomy for yourself.

Fascinated by astronomy? Then please pop along to our website at: Astronomy Today Check here for free reprint licence: Interesting Facts About Astronomy.

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Astronomy For Beginners

On August 23, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Owen Jones

Although astronomy is the oldest science, it is still at the forefront of not only scientific thought, but also that of the public at large. Who hasn’t gazed up at the stars while walking home late at night and wondered about something larger? Having said that though, the ancient people of definitely the northern hemisphere, but probably both hemispheres, knew the movements of the stars and planets better than the majority of us do today.

They understood even then, thousands of years ago, that most stars appear to appear in the Eastern skies at night and travel on circular paths. They also noticed that some ‘stars’ were ‘wanderers’ (we call them planets) and that sometimes they went ‘against the flow’.

They also named groups of stars that we now call constellations or even galaxies and knew that those visible in the winter were different from those seen in the summer.and that others were visible all year round. The average common man of 5,000 – 10,000 years ago almost certainly knew more about the movement of the heavenly bodies than the average common man of today does. (I mean men and women here, of course).

They learned how to calculate or at least find the extremities of the sunrise and went to extraordinary lengths to mark those points with massive stone structures, such as Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, probably to facilitate the location of certain positions of the sun or other planets or stars, which may have been vital to their religious beliefs or crop cycles.

In 1609, Galileo invented the first artificial device for studying the stars and planets. It was the first astronomical telescope and through it he was able to observe things millions of miles away that no person had ever seen before. Because of the conclusions he came to from his observations, he had trouble with the Roman Catholic Church and was often in serious danger for his life, so outrageous were his discoveries.

But mankind was not intimidated, and since then we have gone on to build ever bigger and ever better telescopes with which we can even detect radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, infrared waves and gamma waves from outer space. Forty years ago, we even travelled to our Moon. and we have sent probes to eight of the nine planets in our Solar System, as well as to several comets and asteroids.

Where will we go next? That decision was always up to the government of the United States and the old Soviet Union, but now there are other contestants in the field. What will China or India want to explore with their possibly slightly different outlook on life? Or will it be just a question of financial benefit?

The world may be in a state of flux and power may be shifting from its traditional seats in the West, but it has not diminished interest in questions that scientists think can only be answered in space. These are exciting times for the science of astronomy, but then man has always found astronomy exciting.

Fascinated by astronomy? Then please pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

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How To Use Lighting To Stunning Effect.

On August 14, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Mike James

When you are considering the interior design of a house or area, lighting is most likely the most significant factor of the alterations to the interior decoration. After all, it is the aspect that generates the atmosphere of the room. You can create moods from intimacy to harsh clinicism just by the strength of your light bulb or turning a dimmer switch.

However, if you want to be sure that the effect of the lighting is the one you are looking for, it is important that you be acquainted with the four main kinds of lighting.

Ambient illumination: This is the general lighting for the entire room. In most rooms it is the typical light in the centre of the ceiling be it a fluorescent tube or an incandescent bulb. It is suggested that you make use of one or more dimmers in order to enjoy more flexibility in creating effects for each occasion.

Local lights: These lights are used to supplement or even temporarily take the place of the ambient illumination. Local lights are most commonly standard lamps, table and wall lights and are generally used in order to facilitate such activities as reading, cooking, and shaving. The concentration of the light is local and it has to be properly worked out so it won?t strain the eyes.

Accent lights Accent lights are sources of light for showing off decorative items, usually placed so as to highlight an objet d?art . Quite literally to show it in its best light.

Natural light: This is the one we get free though skylights, windows and doors. This light is controllable for part of the day by shades, curtains, drapes, blinds or awnings, but obviously varies with the time of the day, the season and the weather. Some locations see huge variations in natural light according to the season, eg monsoon, snow, etc.

It is possibly easiest, if you take a house room by room. Start by analyzing what the room is used for. Retirees will in all probability want to take advantage of the daytime natural light for hobbies and reading, while a working couple with school-age kids, will be more active in the evening, when additional illumination might be more essential. Write down what you do and where you do it. Do you have a favourite lounger for reading the paper, do you read the paper during daylight hours or after work? Be daring in your selection of lighting, but also keep in mind that illumination can have a powerful influence on our perception of dimensions, making a room look larger or smaller than it is in reality.

There are lots of ways to light a room but they all come from one of two perspectives: the lighting is either practical or aesthetic. Yes, they are both used to allow you to see more effortlessly, but highlighting the pages of a book or a shaving mirror is not quite the same as using a low light to highlight a statue of the Madonna in an alcove.

In a short synopsis, you could use the few lines below to give you preliminary thoughts when you are considering changing a room?s illumination:

i] Place a standard lamp behind armchairs: they should be between three and five feet high. ii] Use an accent light to high or even low light a canvas. iii] Use an accent light to underline the contours of bookshelves. iv] The ambient light ought to be modifiable. v] Use local illumination to swathe the walls with a low light or glow (can be recessed into the floor).

Are you remodelling your bathroom or are you looking for ways of using lighting? If so, please go along to our website entitled Stylish Home Decor

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Astronomy – Important Dates Before Christ

On July 19, 2010, In Uncategorized, By Owen Jones

There is no doubt that astronomy is the oldest science and there is also no doubt that astronomy was being studied by everyone, not only the wise men, thousands and thousands of years ago.

We do not know precisely why they did it, but we can surmise that early man noticed a correlation between the weather and the stars, which were themselves not fully understood, of course.

Early man, probably even as far back as Neanderthal man, noticed the relationship between the weather and herd movements and crop growth, or at least fruit and nuts on local trees, if they did not have planted crops.

This means that people could see a connection between the stars and food availability. This relationship was probably ritualized into some sort of religion like early Wicca. Therefore, the stars became a very important part of the lives of every single person and it is likely that astrology and astronomy were widely intermixed by the average person.

However, there were also people who did not only use the stars as some vast celestial clock and who tried to make sense of the whole shebang. I am going to narrate below, eight of the most important dates or years in the history of astronomy before Christ walked on the Earth. Never forget that they had nothing but an abacus to do there calculations and no telescopes, which came about two thousand years later.

585 BC: Thales of Miletus (c. 625- c. 547), a Greek, predicted a solar eclipse in Asia Minor purely on the basis of his observations and calculations. It was not a lucky guess!

c. 400 BC: the astronomer Oenopedes (5th. century). also a Greek, announces that the Earth is tilted on its axis with respect to the Sun.

352 BC: the Chinese report what they called a ‘guest star’, a supernova, which was the earliest reported sighting.

340 BC: The astronomer, Kidinnu (b. Babylon c. 379 BC) discovers the precession of the Equinoxes, ie the apparent change in the position of the stars caused by the Earth’s wobbling on its axis.

c. 300 BC: a ‘committee’ of Chinese astronomers compile star maps of the visible universe.

c. 240 BC: Chinese astronomers observe and make notes about Halley’s Comet. Also Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276 – c.194 BC), a Greek, correctly calculate the Earth’s dimensions.

165 BC: Chinese astronomers notice sunspots for the first time.

c. 130 BC: the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (b. 147 BC), a Greek, correctly calculates the distance to the Earth’s Moon and also rediscovers the precession of the Equinoxes.

You will see from the dates above that obviously not everyone let nature and the stars govern their lives, as the common farmer or hunter did. Some men actually took pen to paper, but before pen and paper even existed, and tried to work out ‘why these manifestations occurred?’.

These people must have been extraordinary men to have worked these measurements out by calculation, observation by the naked eye and rationalization alone.

Fascinated by astronomy, why not pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

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