Braided Rugs

Braided rugs are with us since the white men landed in the Americas. It is a tradition which we love to retain with all its old charm and grace. It is obvious that it does not require any high technology or computer controlled precision, otherwise how could the ladies hundreds of years ago make such exotic braided rugs out of rags. But what it requires is concentration, dedication and above all love and respect towards both the craft and the product.

So, if you really love braided rugs and admire their intricate artistry, Luis Messineo suggests not waste any more time and get cracking with the job at hand.

Luis Messineo Braided Rugs

Luis Messineo Brings Some Tips On How To Make A Braided Rug

Let’s go about making a braided rug from rags the way they were made in the early stages of colonization of the Americas.

Cut the material you have with you into roughly two inch wide strips. If you feel that the material is on the thinner side, make the strips about three inches wide.

Instead of sewing the strips together and rolling them into a ball before you start braiding, I would suggest you to begin braiding and sewing the material as you progress. I have found that in this way there are lesser number of tangles and knots which become a big hassle and take ages to unravel.

Tie the strips together and loop them over a doorknob or a handle or a hook of some sort and start making a three strip braid just in the same way as those who have long hair braid it. While joining the strips take care that there are no weak joints as they might spoil the whole show. The best way to join the strips is to hold them at right angles and sew a diagonal seam across the square so formed.

Another important point to note is when you start braiding fold the ragged outside edges of the strips slightly inwards so that there are no rough and jagged edges of cloth on the outer side of the rug you are going to make.

The first length of braid determines the final shape of the rug because the subsequent braids will only be laid one after another along the lines of the first braid. So, ensure that the length of the braid is adequate for the final rug size and shape you would get. The ground rule is that the first braid should be 1/3rd of the original rug size if it is to be an oval rug, and, it should be about half the original size if you are intending to make a runner.

The last and most intricate step is to be finished now. Take a large darning needle and pass the lace string you are using to sew the strips together back and forth between the braids much the same way as you put shoe laces through the eyes of the shoe. When you reach the desired length of the braid just flip it back and start sewing it with the lower strata of the braid. In this way you keep adding on and on to the previous braid and the rug grows outwards in size.

Keep the rug absolutely flat as you proceed and strictly avoid any wrinkles or dimples which may occur at this stage. Don’t ignore it as it would become more pronounced as you keep on braiding. So, if you observe a wrinkle, come back, smoothen it and then proceed further.

Carry on in this manner till the desired size is reached and then sit back and admire your handiwork!

Color For Your Scrapbooking Pages

Do you think you need to know color theory to make a beautiful scrapbooking page?  You don’t even need to know the difference between primary and secondary colors to create a page that complements your photographs.  All you need to find color inspiration for your layouts is a watchful eye during your everyday life. Color palettes are all around us.  Luis Messineo invites you to consider these easy-to-find resources for color choices on your next scrapbooking pages.

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Your Favorite Clothing Store
Clothing manufacturers design their seasonal lines according to a predetermined color scheme, Luis Messineo explains.  Ever wonder why all the stores seem to carry similar colors each season?  Many designers use the color direction provided by the Color Marketing Group.  The Color Marketing Group forecasts color trends for manufactured products.  Walking around your favorite clothing boutique quickly shows you the color trends for the current season.  Are pastels in this season?  Try a page with pastels even if it’s not spring. 

Your Closets
Along the same lines as using a clothing store for inspiration, your own closets hold the color palettes for past seasons.  Don’t limit yourself to just your clothes closet.  Your linen closet will also have coordinated color palettes to inspire you.  Love that quilt that you have tucked away for the guest room?  Look carefully at the colors and see if you can create a scrapbooking page with the same color qualities.

Paint Chips
Would you believe that you can find professional color schemes at your local home improvement store?  Paint manufacturers coordinate colors in sample decorating palettes.  These chips are often designed by professionals like Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren.  Browse through the paint chip display and use one of the palettes for a scrapbooking page or even an entire album.

Museums
Take an afternoon to walk through an art museum, and you will see how the Masters use color.  Make some notes on what paintings inspire you the most and what colors are used to set the mood of the painting.  Artists know color theory, and reflecting on their masterpieces is an education in color theory without the textbooks.

Mother Nature
The earth provides its own color palette.  Not only can you gain inspiration from the colors of winter, summer, spring and fall, you can study landscapes.  These are earth’s paintings.  Look at the colors of the desert and mountains, as well as, the sunsets and sunrises.  Peek out your window at your flower garden for even more of nature’s inspiration.

Your Makeup Drawer
Makeup manufacturers also use color theory to develop their seasonal palettes.  Take a look at your eye shadows and blushes for ready-made color selections for your scrapbooking pages.

Home Decorating Magazines
Color inspiration doesn’t just come from scrapbooking magazines.  Interior designers use coordinating colors to make it easier for customers to create a perfect decor for their homes.  The photographs in home decorating magazines are sure to inspire a creative scrapbooking page.

Advertisements
Before you put those magazines away, take a closer look at the advertisements.  Companies pay millions of dollars to ad agencies to design advertisements that will capture the eye of its customers before they flip the page.  Ads can provide no-fail color schemes for your scrapbooking.  An added bonus of advertisements is that they not only provide great inspiration for colors, but their layouts are an education in design theory, as well.

Color palettes are everywhere.  Next time you need some color inspiration, take a creative look around you.  Keep an idea journal with notes, clips from magazines and paint chips.  Tired of the same old red and green on your Christmas pictures?  Use your holiday sweaters to inspire you.  There is no end to the number of color palettes you can find for your scrapbooking pages.

Wood Colors

In the species which show that a difference distinct between the duramen and sapwood the normal color from the duramen is usually darker than that of sapwood, and very frequently contrast is remarkable. This is produced by deposits in the duramen various materials resulting from the process of the growth, is probably increased by chemical oxidation and other changes, which have usually little or not appreciable effect on the mechanical properties of wood. Some experiments on the very resinous specimens of pine of Long leaf, however, indicate an increase in force. It is due to the resin which increases the so dry force, Luis Messineo explains.

Luis Messineo - Colors of Wood

Such a duramen resin-saturated is called the “large lighter”. Luis Messineo explains that the established structures of the large lighter are almost impermeable with the putrefaction and the termites; however they are very flammable. Sections of old pines of long leaf are often dug, are duplicated in small pieces and sold like lighting for fires. The sections dug thus can really remain a century or more since being cut.

The fir tree soaked with the rough resin and dry is increased also considerably by this fact in the force. Since late wood of a ring of growth is usually darker colors than wood early, this fact can be employed by judging the density, and thus the hardness and the force of the material. It is in particular the case with wood conifers. Out of ring-porous wood the ships of wood early not seldom to appear on a surface finished like darker than denser late wood, however on cross sections of duramen the reverse is generally true. Unless way has right statement the color of wood is not any indication of force. The abnormal discoloration of wood often indicates a sick condition, indicating the unsoundness.

The so common scratches brown-reddish in hickory and some other wood are most of the time the result of the damage by birds.

Discoloration is simply an indication of the damage, and more than probably of itself does not affect the properties of wood. However a known effect attracting under the name of splatting produces by this process is often considered a desirable characteristic.

Wall Clocks

Modern wall clocks have gained in popularity over the years and have become an essential part of most homes, schools, and offices. Luis Messineo recounts that, throughout history, unique wall clocks have been an oddity and were often the center of attention in any room’s decor. Today’s modern wall clocks are designed to fit into almost any decorating style, made to blend seamlessly with the more traditional wood or metal look.

Luis Messineo - Wall Clocks

As opposed to the more traditional antique wall clocks, which added a touch of elegance to any room, many modern wall clocks are focused on functionality. In this day and age of high tech gadgets, time accuracy and global features are important to not only businesses, but many households as well.

Modern Wall Clocks Have Gone Atomic

As you may have heard, the atomic wall clock is one of the latest technological advancements in time measurement. They are sometimes referred to as radio controlled clocks.

An atomic clock wall model has an internal mechanism that takes advantage of radio frequencies to synchronize its current time and date with the U.S. Atomic Clock. What is the U.S. Atomic Clock you might ask? Well, it is a radio controlled clock operated and maintained by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Ft. Collins, Colorado.

The atomic wall clock has a small antenna incorporated into it that receives a radio signal from Ft. Collins, Colorado. This signal relays the time and date, to the millisecond, to your atomic clock. So, once your clock has been initially set to the time zone at your location, your radio controlled clock will be automatically updated from the U.S. Atomic Clock.  What is even more amazing is that your clock will even adjust itself automatically for daylight savings time (DST).

Go Global With a World Wall Clock

Never heard of a world clock? Well, a world wall clock measures and displays time from around the globe. The typical world wall clock can determine the time for a specific location through a process of dividing the globe into time zones. Each group of states or countries will correspond to a different time zone, allowing for consistency of daylight hours as the earth circles the sun. World wall clocks have grown in importance as the Internet and modern communication devices have “shrunken” the globe. In today’s hectic business world, it is important for a business person to consider time zones, as their clients and customers can literally be halfway around the globe. For the common household, a world clock wall model allows for easy access to world times. This can be a great benefit if, like so many families today, relatives or friends live in foreign countries and contact times are important.

A modern wall clock, whether it is an atomic wall clock or world wall clock, is the perfect addition to your home or office, Luis Messineo recommends. If you can afford a cut-above model, it will provide an additional touch of glamour and a sense of sophistication to the interior of your home or office.  So, why not join the high-tech crowd today with your own state-of-the-art modern wall clock?

Artistic Greetings Create A Lasting Impression

Luis Messineo - Artistic Greetings

Every person feels the need to send greetings to dear ones and friends all year round, as it is a nice and easy way to let someone know you care. Artistic greetings come in many different forms and they have been popular for several years.

Artistic greetings can be found at every gift and card shop. A lot of people prefer to purchase one special occasion like birthdays, anniversaries, graduations and holidays. Another nice option, Luis Messineo suggests, is to visit an art gallery or museum where you may come across artistic greetings that illustrate some of the world’s most famous paintings.

On a creative note, you can even make your own artistic greetings which in reality might be the best way to say you care because of the effort and time you took to put the artistic greetings together. Although they can be time consuming, they are well worth it.

It can be overwhelming to think about making artistic greetings for everyone on your list but with some careful planning you can spend a few hours to it and possibly even get other family members to assist you.

If you are the parent of school age children enlist their help in making artistic greetings that you can send out during the year. A great approach is to set up a craft station on a table in your home. Materials like crayons, paints, sparkles and glue should be made available to your children. Let them draw color and paint their own little works of art and then trim them to fit on card stock. This is a much loved one one-of-a-kind personal creations that a majority of the recipients will appreciate and treasure long after the special occasion has passed.

One can also find exclusive artistic greetings by looking up for artists online who specialize in the business. Of late a number of artists see the potential in sharing their work through this venue.

This way you not only find ready-made greetings but you will discover artists who will create artistic greeting by request, thus offering you a unique creation that will certainly please whoever you decide to send it to. If you choose to go this route, Luis Messineo encourages you to ensure you deal with an artist who will come through for you when you need artistic greetings.

Lastly read reviews of the artist and check out more details on their website. Make sure that they have contact information displayed, and it is the right information. Also confirm you see the finished product if you special order artistic greetings before you purchase them, as shouldn’t have to pay on greetings that don’t fully reflect your initial vision.

Metal Art Basics

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Luis Messineo believes that metal art falls under a few different categories in the art world. Most people would place it in the sculpture box. Metal art is also a little out of the mainstream of art. If you think about it, the main population of artists are painters. Why you ask? Probably because the space, time, and resources that are needed to make the art.

For example, a metal artist needs a metal working shop where a painter only needs a dedicated room or studio. A metal artist also needs to invest in a significant number of metal working machines before he can begin. A painter only needs paint, brushes and a canvas. A bit of a difference huh.

There are 3 main types of metal art:

Casting
Fabricated Sculpture
Metal Junk Art

Cast Metal Art

In casting the metal artist makes a mold of an object. Next, the artist uses a furnace of some sort to melt metal. This metal can be Aluminum, Steel, Bronze or some other metal alloy. The metal artist then pours the molten metal into the mold. The object cools for a period of time and then is released from the mold. Finally the object is cleaned up and sometimes a patina is added. This type of work is very hot and time consuming with multiple steps for the metal artist.

Fabricated Sculpture Metal Art

Fabricated sculptures are a bit different. There is some heat involved, but it is normally from welding different metal pieces together. These sculptures are usually more detailed then cast sculptures. Most times the artist has an idea of what they want to build and then they start assembling it like you would a car or bike.

Metal Junk Art

Some times people even make these sculptures out of junk pieces of metal. Luis Messineo calls this “Junk Art” while others call it “Found Object Art.” You make the call. You see this type of metal art at street art fairs quite a bit.

Out of these three types of metal art Luis Messineo prefers fabricated metal art. Not that he thinks that the art is better. To Luis Messineo, it seems there is some more craftsmanship that goes into in. There is a process before hand where the artist has to think a little bit and plan the work.

Metal art does take a little more time, money and effort then other types of art. Part of that is the nature of the work. You need extra machines around because you are working with a tough media. You need a little extra power so you control your metal art instead of it controlling you.

Beethoven Biography

Born in 1770, Ludvig van Beethoven was one of only three of his parents’ seven offspring children to survive infancy. Yet the world of music owes this chance event an immeasurable amount, because he would go on to be one of a handful of composers to grace the art form with a style and quality that is truly unique. Luis Messineo recounts that his father was his first music teacher, a proficient tenor, and his grandfather on the paternal side had been Kappelmeister at the court of Clemens August of Bavaria. Music was in his blood, and he started playing viola and organ at a very early age, although he was not a prodigy in the Mozart mould – despite his father’s attempts to declare that Ludwig was seven for an early performance when he was in fact nine. However he was certainly a talented youngster, and published his first three piano sonatas in 1783. He died in 1827 and it is said that as many as 30,000 people attended his funeral procession.

Luis Messineo -Beethoven Biography

How Beethoven’s deafness has helped interpreters

Beethoven’s genius is merely underlined by the fact that he started to lose his hearing in his late twenties, yet continued through intense frustration and anguish to compose some of music’s most complex and beautiful pieces. For the historian and student of his music, however, the composer’s deafness created a unique opportunity to appreciate the composer. Because he could not take part in an oral conversation, he would carry with him notebooks and have conversations with people in writing. These people could be performers, conductors, students or masters, and the notes survive today to give a unique insight into not only the man, but his art, too – among his notes are specific instructions on how to play many of his compositions and descriptions of his emotional state and day-to-day life, all of which are priceless to the modern interpreter.

Beethoven’s major piano works

During Beethoven’s life, Luis Messineo highlights, the piano as an instrument became much more accepted as an instrument, partly due to technological enhancements that meant a piano could hold its own with a full orchestra whilst retaining its warmth, tone, sustain and power in the chamber setting. The harpsichords, spinets and clavichords of the past would eventually lose popularity among composers and audiences. The timing could not have been more perfect for Beethoven; he would become a master at both performing on and composing for the piano. He is usually regarded as having composed five piano concertos, although his piano arrangement of his Violin Concerto in D Major is sometimes referred to as his Piano Concerto No. 6. Beethoven was a prolific composer of piano sonatas; altogether there are 32 of them, and many are well known, even among people with no interest in classical music. His best known piano sonatas are “Moonlight”, “Waldstein”, “Pathétique” and “Pastoral” (not to be confused with his Pastoral Symphony). He also left copious amounts of chamber music, much of which had a piano (or more than one piano) as an integral part, along with his string quartets, duos and quintets.