Entertaining Madness

DIY disaster

I haven't had a whole lot of time lately to make much because I've been out of town working on something super fun.  I can't say what that fun thing was but one day I will be able to. 

I did have a project that I worked on today and at the very end it was ruined.  I love my Nook.  I have the original and use it quite a bit.  I also have the wonderful Alice In Wonderland cover for it and love it but sometimes I want to change it up a bit so I thought I would try making my own.  The construction wasn't too hard.  I used canvas, thin card board and ribbon.  I made a really cute stencil with a quote from Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter and cut it out on freezer paper.  Everything was looking great until I ironed on the stencil to color it in and the iron burned the fabric.  Totally ruined.  There is no way I can fix it and I spent all day figuring it all out.  So angry!  Oh well, it was good practice.  I have some ideas for next time.

No pictures because it wasn't worth it but I will be making another one and will show it off then.

DIY and Picture Fun

I've been a bit busy lately and therefore haven't had time to make much but I wanted to post a few things.  A few DIY projects and some photos I took while bored and playing with my camera.

Harry Potter Crafts

I like many of you went this past weekend to watch the final instalment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  I loved it and me being a very sensitive person cried like a baby.   Of course I don't want my Harry Potter madness to end yet so I've looked around the web and found a lot of fun crafts that people have made.  Thought I would share some with the rest of you. 

A Great walk through for a Harry Potter stencil

Super cute Hermione hat from the first part of Deathly Hallows.  I cant' wait until I know how to knit enough to make this one. 

Make your own wand from paper and hot glue.

Tons of paper craft Death Eater masks. Print, cut, glue, easy.

Never read a book without a house elf sock. Here's a knit bookmark just for that occasion.

Make your own secret box from Tales of Beadle The Bard

Your very own Monster Book of Monsters except less bitey

Here's a Harry Potter candy box with links to the candy recipes too.

A really great Time Turner out of simple items

A fair isle Gryffindor knit bag

Knit hat inspired by Ginny's Goblet of Fire hat.

That should keep you quite busy with a lot of Harry Potter goodness.  I can't wait until I have time to make some of these things myself and I have a Harry Potter project of my own that I'm planning later.  Why must all of my ideas be big things that take forever?  Oh well. 

Happy Harry Potter days all!

Crafts and Inspiration

Well I had a lovely 5 day weekend over the 4th of July holiday.  I decided to get some crafty things done because I had found so many tutorials that needed to be tried.  I have also found some wonderful inspiration for other things too.

First project was this little knitted winter headband.  It's perfect for those days that you don't want to mess up your hair but need to keep your ears warm.  Found it by way of this lovely tutorial at CraftSnob.

  It was a perfect project for a beginner like me.

 

Next up was a desk organizer.  I had been at the store a day earlier and passed the color duct tape and thought, oohh what can I do with those?  Lucky for me I found a wonderful tutorial on how to make a duct tape flower and turned it into making a whole desk organizer.  I only used duct tape and foam board.  It took some time to make because there is a lot of measuring and getting things taped correctly but I'm really happy with how it turned out.  The lovely how to is here at How Joyful.

 

The pretty silver flower.

 

Last project was a reverse tie dye t-shirt using bleach instead of dye.  You can find instructions here at the very creative Honestly WTF

One of the days was spent antiquing with my mother and I found a few little things.  I don't have enough money to afford most of the things I see that I love.  I already know what I'm doing with the bottles, especially the pretty purple tinted one.  Not sure about the buttons yet and the cameo is a pin so that can be worn many ways.

I'll leave you with a few of my inspiration finds.  Not going to say what I'm inspired to do because you might think of something wonderful yourself.

Sunbeam, purple flowers and sleeve pictures taken by me.

Flower chandelier and bookmarks found Here

Wall photos found Here

 

Make your own laptop skin

The other day I was looking at laptop skins and thinking about getting one but didn't really want to spend the money on one so I decided to try and make my own.  It turned out pretty well.

 

 

I decided to create my own design in Photoshop.  I love anything that has the World War II poster Keep Calm and Carry On on it and I'm a bit addicted to The Game of Thrones (both show and books) right now so I made my own mix of the two.

 

 

I used a template that I downloaded at Sticker Mule that didn't really work for me in the long run but I'll get to that.  It still helped just to get the general look and size of the image.  I then saved my image and printed it on my home printer.  I used matte photo paper but you could use regular printer paper too.  The photo paper is thicker and does give it a bit of a raise on the edge when you stick it on the laptop, so that's something to think about if it's going to bother you. 

Now the reason the template didn't really work is because it's bigger than a regular 8x10 piece of paper.  If you use an A4 sheet it might work better but I just centered my image in the print preview and it worked just fine.  It would only be a problem if you had an image you wanted all of.  After printing I grabbed my other supplies.

 

 Supplies:

1. Printed Image

2. Clear Contact Paper

3. Sharpie

4. Scissors

5. Paper cutter (optional)

 

I cut the edges off of the image with my Xacto paper cutter just to be sure I had straight edges and went to work on the contact paper.  I did a rough measure of my laptop lid basing it on where the curve starts.  I have a 13 inch macBook and my measurements ended up being 12 inches by 8 1/4 inches.  The great thing about contact paper is that is has meausurements on the back.  So I counted and marked the lines with the Sharpie.

 

Then I cut the whole thing out.  I then laid the contact paper down sticky side up and very slowly and carefully laid the image in the center.  I can't stress how important it is to do this slowly as you can't lift the image back up.  Paper is one thing contact paper won't peel off of.  So just take you time and breathe. :)

The above picture is what it looks like with the image and the Contact paper together.  Then you simply line up the Contact paper with the top of your laptop and press.  I used the flad edge of my ruler to slide the paper down and make sure there were no bubbles and it was clear. 

It really was pretty simple and took maybe 10 minutes after I finished making the image.  Please feel free to ask any questions, I never know if  I'm being clear and specific enough.

 

Also, I may write something up on how to make my necklace but I haven't decided on that yet.

 

Cupcake Adventures

I mentioned in my previous post that I made some cupcakes and they were a bit of a workout.  Well the cupcakes themselves were easy and turned out great, it was the frosting that wanted to kill me.

 

 

I began all excited.  I mean who doesn't love a good cupcake and they were strawberry ones so I thought they were perfect for summer and looked super easy.  The recipe was from my Martha Stewart cupcake book and I've made other cupcakes from this book so I knew they would be fine. I got all of the ingredients around and ready.

 

 

Chopping up the strawberries was probably the worst part and that's only because I'm not a very fast cutter with a sharp knife.  Too scared of cutting my finger off (I've obviously watched too many scary movies).  Everything went together wonderfully and the batter was delicious (of course I ate a ton of it off of the blender).

 

 

After about 25 minutes the cupcakes were done and smelled wonderful.  No problems here so I thought things were going great.

 

 

On to the frosting.  It was a buttercream frosting and  there were only 5 ingredients so it couldn't be that hard, right?  I melted the sugar and eggwhites together and then used the mixer until they were frothy and thick.  Then I blend in the butter and vanilla.  Then I added the strawberry puree and the whole thing went insane.  The frosting completely separated and turned to liquid sludge.  I didn't even take a picture because it looked like congealed milk with bits of strawberries in it and I'm sure the description alone is making you sick.  Of course I was mad and both my mom and dad looked at the recipe to see if they had any ideas but nothing was working.  I am not one to be defeated by food so I went back to the store and bought more butter and sugar because I was going to attempt a different frosting. 

This time it was a basic buttercream with confectioners sugar and butter and vanilla.  It called for a pound of sugar, yes you heard right, a pound of sugar and after about a third of the bag I deemed it too sweet and thought it was thick enough.  I added a few strawberries for flavor and while it still separated a little it was workable.  It wasn't the most attractive frosting and I didn't make enough to decorate the cupcakes very prettily but they taste good and that's all that really matters. 

My next mission is to find a good frosting recipe that is easy and tastes good.  I'll be scouring the interwebs this weekend.  If anyone has any tips, I would love to hear them.

My poor little cupcake thinking it was supposed to be a fashionista and instead looks like it's wearing hand me downs. (sorry the photo turned out a bit blurry).

If anyone is wondering they taste like a strawberry shortcake and are actually quite delicious.  I've had positive feedback on the flavor.

What I call my crack den is just your craft store

I had some time to spare after work yesterday so I decided to stop at a few stores to browse.  One of those stores was the wonderful Michael's Craft Store.  I really should know better.  It's bad enough when I have something in mind to make but when the whole store is my playland it borders on rediculous.  Did I mention I bought a few things? 

Had to get this fun Martha Stewart card kit.  If you know me you know that I'm part Magpie.  If it sparkles, I want it.  Of course there is a ton of glitter in the kit so before long everything I own is going to be covered in glitter.  Lovely, sparkly glitter. :)

Oh, I took pictures:

 

I also bought some new cupcake cups for my baking adventure today that I will discuss at a later date.  Did not go as planned and I am exhausted.

Lastly I bought some materials to make a new necklace and ended up making it last night because the internet was out and there was nothing on tv.  I think it turned out pretty fantabulous if I do say so myself.

The pictures don't do it justice.  Here is a close up of medallion.  I liked it because it was a masculine medal but it has a lady on it.  Also the jewels are a copper and gold color.

 

Thus ends the tale of my crafty adventures.  The lesson to learn is that you should never go into a crack den if you are addicted to crack or you know, a craft store if you are addicted to craftiness.

 

 

These are a few of my favorite things...

Maria Von Trapp liked raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, I like pirates and zombies and cowboys.  Maria liked bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, I like the Victorian, Medieval, and Old West time periods.  I also love Doctor Who, Supernatural and a great many other television shows.  I love the color green and prefer bright and colorful over traditional.

I'm still playing around with my new camera, a Canon Powershot S2 IS (which I got for a great price on Ebay) and thought I would take some pictures of a few of my other favorites.

Let us start with books:

 

Then we have movies:

Of course my movie list could go on for pages.

Next we have shiny things and bright colors:

And lastly we have a big furball I call Chubby:

 

Me in 5 words... ok maybe 234 words.

Where to begin?  That's always the hardest part, isn't it?  How much do I reveal about myself and how much do I save to be discovered.  The basics are this, I'm a 30 something female who loves all things creative, historical and colorful.  I have a degree in history and have a passion for acting.  I found that the last few years I have lost that magical spark that keeps us being creative and helps us to see the wonder in the world.  I vowed to get that back and thought I would document it for myself and possibly for others. 

I'm not quite sure what this blog will turn out to be other than it will be me.  I may be odd, silly, thoughtful, and hopefully helpful. 

A word on the name of my blog.  You will find that I'm a big film and television buff and love Doctor Who.  The Doctor has a great quote that says, "Anybody remotely interesting is mad, in some way or another."  Lovely right?  Well, me being me got all muddled when registering my blog address and put entertaining instead of interesting.  Just as fun if I do say so myself.  We all need a bit of madness now and then.

I hope that some of you stop by often as I develope things and I hope to get to know you as well.  Here's to happy blogging!