Two problems, both caused I feel by lack of enough information in the jewellery magazine projects. Any advice is greatly appreciated as my daughter particularly wants to move forwards into stamped images on metal, wood and other materials.  Thank you in advance.

1. Transferring printed images to packing tape.  The process places the image onto the tape, image side down. Immerse in water, rub off paper with finger, image stays on tape.  Supposedly.  So far the image comes right off with the paper.  Any suggestions for how to fix this? Using very strong clear packing tape from Post Office, it's like wide sticky tape.  Images were scanned from books and printed out on regular white paper, as instructed, on best setting on our printer.  (magazine is handcrafted jewelry special issue 2011 from interweave.com pg 84) Will we have the same problem with print pieces cut from old books?

2.  Stamping onto metal prior to cutting it out to file and sand for finished project.  They say just stamp it.  Well, trying this on aluminum didn't work, despite scouring with metal wool first. Oh the image will stamp but it's incredibly faint.  They say use an ordinary stamp pad. It's too dilute. Suggestions? 

Dang my brain I can't remember!  Does anyone remember if Jack Skellington's scarf in the movie had a fringe on the end or was plain?  He only wore it in a few scenes.   I've done a white cloche hat and added his eyes(sc circles), nose(2 black slits) and mouth to it but now I can't recall if his striped scarf had a fringe on the end or not.   Thanks for letting me know if you can remember.  Online searches so far only show pics of him without the scarf!

A craftster member made a great pair of faux chainmail type chandelier earrings out of split rings and necklace to match....dang it how do you fasten them together?  The bag of them I have are closed tight, they don't open.  No way I can open them(the rings not the bag) .  Is there a trick to that or do you just join split rings together with tiny jump rings?  Maybe it's an elementary question but on this topic my brain IS in kindergarten!  (and yes I did do a search on it)

When my daughter went away to University 3 years ago I offered to make her an afghan in her favorite colours to fold across the foot of her bed in her dorm.  A little touch of home. 

Did I say little?  I followed the pattern, right size hook, right number of yarn strands(it was a big jiffy pattern)...and this thing kept eating up wool and eating up wool....by the time I put it on her dorm bed it covered the whole fricking bed, pillows and all and hung over the sides.  My daughter stood there going, "Um, I kinda wanted to see the bed quilt and sheet patterns too."  So we rolled it up to the end of the bed and it still looked good. 

Crikey that was ka-ching on the wool cost too, it kept eating up skeins and I kept sticking to the pattern...or so I thought! I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong but now she and ALL her buds can snuggle under that thing on the couch to watch movies with tons leftover for everybody!  So much for a single person afghan that gracefully drapes across a chair.   To this day I don't know what happened. I felt abit like Lucy in that episode where her bread dough kept expanding out of the oven!   Hmmm, the afghan that ate New York....

[as you go along]

While I love beaded projects, the thought of having to string x number of beads on the yarn before crocheting, sometimes over a hundred, onto a pattern I may be modifying for size drives me bats, so I just avoid beaded patterns at the moment entirely .

HOWEVER this morning on a blog a fellow crocheter said there is a way to add beads to a crocheted item as you go along!   They neglected however to give a link or tell how.  Does anybody here know how to add beads as one goes along without doing the whole "string 300+ teeny beads before starting" routine?

Thanks!

I have an idea but it would be ungainly.  Any suggestions I MUCH appreciate!

Tinsel