Mel's shared items

This is a really easy party decoration that you can pull off with what you have at home. You can use plain paper you have around the house, print out some beautiful patterns, or buy some sparkly patterned paper from the craft store.

Depending on how you would like the finished product to look, glue two pieces of paper together so you have pattern on both sides. Use a festive hole punch to pop out large shapes or just cut circles, squares, diamonds…whatever you like! I was hoping to find a shamrock but instead I found this 1.5 inch flower. Close enough!

While you’re at it, cut out a few sheets of extra punches to use as confetti!

Pull some extra thread out of your machine so you have enough left over thread to tie up your garland. Stack two flowers together and sew down the center. Back stitch at either end of the flower.

Lift the foot and pull the flower out the back of the machine a bit so you leave a space before you add the next pair of flowers. Continue this until your garland is long enough.

Clip the garland from the machine. Take one of the flower pairs and fold each flower in half away from the other. It will make an “X” shape if you look at it from the end.

Fold all of your flowers in half…and you’re done! I made six strands to hang from the chandelier in the dining room.

Up next I’ll show you some fun cellophane lamp covers in green, green party poofs, and potted paper shamrocks with green M&M’s.

I've seen a few variations on ways to mount completed embroidery, and I'm liking this latest tutorial from Maximum Rabbit Designs. I particularly appreciate her use of double-sided tape, and find her technique for padding the embroidery really interesting. [via Mr. X-Stitch]

One application which I’ve used for a long time is Evernote, though I’ve mostly been collecting and organizing recipes… until now. Just today, as I was scrolling through the Asahi Shinbun, I had an epiphany. I should be saving articles, sentences, vocabulary, and what-have-you in Evernote so that I can easily search for them later if I ever need to come up with examples on how grammar, vocab, etc., is used in a sentence. Doing this with Japanese blogs would be splendid too. More importantly, I’m going to deconstruct how to use Evernote for language learning (specifically Japanese in this article). It’s a very powerful tool with a lot of potential – I’m sure you’ll even find some interesting uses that I won’t even think of too.

What Is Evernote?

First off, you should probably learn more about how Evernote works, on a whole, before I dive into how you can use it to study Japanese. Evernote is a tool that helps you capture and remember everything. Because it syncs with your phone, computer, and so on, no matter how or where you gather the information, it will appear on all of your devices. These can be things like grocery lists (I write down my grocery list in Evernote on my computer, and it syncs with my iPhone, which I use in the store), remembering your favorite vintage of wine (take a picture of the bottle in the restaurant), or even saving entire articles with the click of a button (if you have a plugin installed in your browser). Because the organization and search features (you can separate your notes into notebooks, and then further break them up with tags) it’s easy to find your notes later. I use Evernote to take pictures of books I want to buy, movies I want to watch, to copy and paste articles I’ll read on my phone later, backups of newsletters / important information, shortcut keys for different applications, instructions on pieces of paper I don’t want to physically keep, my license plate number (in case I need to remember it), and more. Really, it’s good for almost any type of information you could ever want to store and have easy access to later. It’s not the prettiest UI in the world, but it does its job really well (that job being storing information and allowing me to retrieve it easily later). Best part is that it’s free unless you want to upgrade to a bigger plan, which I may actually have to do pretty soon.

So how about using it to learn Japanese, or perhaps some other language? I haven’t started doing this yet personally (I told you, I just had my epiphany today!), but I’ve thought about it, and here are some great ways to use Evernote to practice your Japanese. After I’m done, I’d love to hear from Evernote users out there on how you would use it for Japanese practice as well. I feel like there’s a lot of untapped potential in this simple little app!

Copying Articles To Practice Later

A lot of times when I’m scrolling through Japanese content, I find something I want to read and use as study material, but don’t have the time to study it right then. There are a couple of problems with this. 1. A lot of newspaper sites pull their content after a little while, which means bookmarking it won’t work. 2. I’m not going to remember it if I just bookmark it anyways.

With Evernote, you can install their browser plugin, highlight the text you want, and then click the Evernote button. From there, a popup will appear allowing you to add it to a particular notebook (I’d create a “Japanese” notebook) and then add tags (highly recommend you tag everything! In this case, I might tag it as “asahi,” “readlater,” and “Japanese.”

By using Evernote, it’s easy to gather a lot of content (and only the content you want, i.e. the article) and store it away for later in a place that’s easily searchable. Other options besides newspapers are Japanese blogs, Japanese Tweets, and any other sites that have regularly updated Japanese content.

Studying Vocabulary

Vocabulary study on it’s own probably shouldn’t be done on Evernote (use Smart.fm or Anki if you want to do that). There is, however, a lot of potential for compiling sentences that use the vocabulary that you’re learning. There’s probably a couple of ways you could do it.

1. Create a new note for every vocabulary word that you’re studying. As you come across sentences (either through dictionary searches, or Smart.fm example sentences) that use the word you’re studying, add them to that vocab’s note. That way, whenever you search for that vocab word, you’ll be able to find sentences that go along with it, and you can use that to study.

2. Just create one big note that has all your practice sentences in it. Using the search feature, you can find sentences that use the word you’re looking for and just scroll through looking at those. Not quite as organized, but less time-intensive as well.

Another thing you could try is using the tag feature to tag notes with the vocab you are learning. This, I imagine, could get kind of overwhelming, though, so try it at your own risk.

Keeping Track Of Grammar

One really neat thing you could do with Evernote is use it to keep track of grammar you’ve learned. All you would need to do is create a “Grammar” notebook (or even a note) and put all the grammar you’ve learned in one place. This way, if you’re having trouble with a particular grammar point (or just learned something new about a grammar point), you can open up Evernote no matter where you are, get the information you need, and move on with your life. No more searching your textbook or searching the Internet. It’s all there at your fingertips and you can always add more info whenever you need to, and it’s written in your own style, which means you’ll understand it.

Personally, I think this would be a great way to study for the JLPT, since a lot of the learning is pretty grammar-centric. As you’re going through other study material, this could be a great reference and help you study faster and more effectively.

Keeping A Language Log

Keeping track of the things you’ve done, the things you had trouble with, and then everything in between is pretty important, I think. Normally, I’d recommend using a blog platform (like Wordpress) to do this, since being “public” with your log should help motivate you more, but this article is about Evernote, so let’s stick to that. Keeping a log with Evernote is fairly easy, and it’s a good way to keep track of what you had trouble with and what you should study more of. Here is a list of things you could log in Evernote in regards to your Japanese learning:

• What you did today / What you studied today
• What was giving you trouble? Can you write more about it and figure out the root cause of the problem?
• Breakthroughs
• Vocabulary words you learned / studied / need to study more
• What you’ll be studying next (so you don’t forget the next day)
• Sentences, paragraphs, etc., that you wrote today
• Ideas for studying better based on what happened earlier
• etc.

There’s a lot to keep track of when you’re learning a new language, and Evernote is a great platform to help you do it. By keeping a language log, you’re deconstructing a lot of what you’re doing, which is actually really helpful and will assist you in understanding what you’ve done and what you need to do. I’d recommend trying it out for a week or two if you haven’t before. It does a lot more than you might think!

Collecting Inspiration

Staying inspired and motivated is one of the most difficult things when learning a new language (especially on your own). This is something that TextFugu does a pretty good job tackling and taking care of – but you can find and compile the things that inspire you personally, right in Evernote! By collecting articles, quotes, notes, etc., into an “inspiration” notebook or tag, anytime you’re feeling down, or feeling like you can’t do it anymore, you can go straight to that section of Evernote and get a boost of energy.

Although I haven’t done this with Evernote myself, I do have a stack of books with chapters marked off anytime I need an inspirational “you can do it” lift. If those books were in Evernote, it would be that much easier. You’d be surprised at how much of a pick-me-up something like this can do, especially with something that really does need a lot of motivation, like language learning (especially if you study on your own).

Taking Plain Ol’ Notes

I wish I had Evernote when I was in school. I would have used it to take notes in class (well, actually, I’d probably have used Google Wave, and just collaborated on notes with 3-4 other people). If you’re in a class, though, Evernote is a pretty sweet way to do it, especially since you can sync your notes between computers and study no matter where you are (of course, there are things like Google Docs, Dropbox, and others which can do this part pretty well too). Still, it’s a pretty good way to do things. At the end of class (or during class, if you sit in the front), you can even take a picture of the whiteboard and save it to your note (it will even make the words in the image searchable!), that way you have the teacher’s scrobbles, your own scrobbles, and all the scrobbles in between right in one place. It certainly beats pen and paper, at least in terms of searching for things later. If anything, the tagging system makes Evernote a really worthwhile option for taking notes in class.

Sharing And Collaborating

One cool little feature that Evernote has is the ability to share your notes with others. If you want to allow people to modify your notes, you do have to be a premium member (which may or may not be worth it to you). I could see this being useful for people who are studying Japanese with others and want to share notes and ideas. I can also see this being useful for those of you who are learning in a class and taking class notes (and want to share those as well). There are any number of ways to use the share / collaborate feature of Evernote to your advantage. Other alternatives which also let you collaborate include Google Docs and Google Wave, which I would probably recommend more for the collaboration angle of things.

What Are Your Ideas?

Contribute to the Evernote-Japanese-Studying Idea-Pool by commenting below. I’m curious how you use or would use Evernote to your advantage when it comes to language learning. Like I’ve said a couple times already, I think there’s a ton of untapped Japanese-studying potential hidden away in Evernote, and it’s only a matter of figuring out the different uses. So, how would you use the big green elephant? [Evernote]

P.S. If you like elephants, you should follow me on Twitter

Related posts:

1. Japanese Language Cheatsheet for Travelers
2. How to NOT find a Japanese language partner
3. Why you should use a Mac to study Japanese

After taking a great surface design class, I find myself drawn to new methods of altering fabric. I love seeing this method of gel glue batik, a process in which the resist (usually hot wax) is replaced with kids' blue gel glue from the school supply aisle. Jennifer of Swallowfield got this lovely resulting design when she tried a tutorial from That Artist Woman. It's a tutorial that has made its way around the Internet (even making an appearance over on MAKE) but is well worth revisiting. As I did a little more digging around, I found several bloggers who have experimented with this technique. Their experiences offer up some great inspiration and tips, so be sure to check them out as well!