My message board friends have done a Secret Santa exchange for years now, which is always seriously fun. A few years ago we switched to doing Christmas in July to cause less stress on people's holiday budgets, which has worked out really well. It's fabulous to get a really neat present in the middle of the summer. Everyone posts a list of likes and dislikes and ideas and then we draw via Elfster. This year I drew my hilarious friend Rachel and wanted to do a really good job on her gift.
She had wine charms on her wish list and she loves anything French, so I set out to make her some French-themed wine charms. I got the base idea from a set of DIY wine charms MB received for Christmas last year from Nie. She drilled holes through various dice from d20 sets and put them on hoop earrings, which works pretty well, but I wanted a more secure ring since the earrings tend to unhook themselves. I ran my specs (thin enough to directly thread beads onto, some kind of closing mechanism that would stay closed) by my mom, she of epic crafting experience, and she found the perfect rings at Hobby Lobby:
Since they're called stemware hoops, I kind of suspect they're intended to be used to make wine charms, and they definitely were exactly what I wanted.
I found some fantastic Eiffel tower charms on Etsy for a ridiculously-reasonable price and ordered ten. These are the charms I got, but I got them from this shop (the exact ones I bought appear to be sold out in her shop right now) and she was awesome. The charms got to me right away, they were exactly what I wanted, and she sent a little sample packet of other cute charms she offers. The most challenging part turned out to be finding pretty non-plastic beads that would fit onto the rings. I ended up finding the perfect beads at the Jo-Ann store - the label says they're 2/0 Czech glass e-beads. I bought one tube of mixed colors and one tube of clear. Then I futzed around with the number of beads, the pattern of beads, the order of color / clear, and after five or six attempts I found a pattern I liked. I was able to pull together sets of three beads in ten different colors from my variety tube, and ta-daaa:
She also wanted bookmarks that won't fall out of her books. So I googled "bookmarks that stay in books" (seriously) and found this tutorial. I wanted to use a thinner elastic with a less-obvious knot, so I tried using stretch magic, a thin plastic / elastic beading cord. That was a big fail. There wasn't quite enough stretch and the cord was too slippery to hold a knot. I called my mom again and sure enough, she had 1/8" sewing elastic that turned out to be just the thing:
Instead of knotting the top, I stitched the ends together to make a flatter join and they turned out pretty nice. I sized one for mass market paperbacks, one for trade paperbacks, and one for hardbacks. Maybe her daughter will just end up stealing them for makeshift headbands, but I wanted to try.
The package was a big hit and I'm still gloating a little over how well the wine charms turned out. Maybe I need to find someone else who likes wine and make more!
Reading:Wicked Business by Janet Evanovich
Playing: old mix CDs
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
How to make a dinosaur cake
I got the idea to make Nico's dinosaur birthday cake from a neat vintage book my mom found and bought for me. The directions called for a rectangular cake cut into about 9 pieces and then assembled into a dinosaur shape. I figured it was do-able but decided to check online in case someone had come up with a simpler method. Voila:
With only three pieces, this one was a clear winner. I briefly contemplated making the cake from scratch, but then came to my senses and decided that attempting my first-ever scratch cake plus my first-ever custom shaped cake the night before my kid's first birthday was probably not a great plan. I grabbed a chocolate cake mix from the grocery, borrowed a friend's 9" round cake pans, and figured I was good to go.
The first attempt was pretty much a disaster. I don't know if it was the cake, the pans, my method, or a combination of the three, but despite my liberal pre-cake application of cooking spray the rounds tore into pieces when I tried to remove them from the pans. I drove to the grocery at 11:30 PM and bought a second cake mix, and this time I greased the pans with butter and dusted them with flour AND cut circles of parchment paper for the bottoms. The first mix was the standard kind I remember using in high school and college, requiring vegetable oil, but for the second mix I bought the "butter recipe" version that used a stick of butter instead of a cup of oil. I tasted both cakes, and the butter recipe one was much, much tastier. The butter recipe rounds also dropped perfectly from the pans after cooling. Hallelujah!
At this point I covered the cakes with wax paper and left them to cool overnight. I got the trays on clearance at Michael's to use for veggies and fruit at the party, but they were also perfect for popping the cakes into the freezer the next morning, as the video recommends. While the cakes were freezing, I prepared a cake board. The directions for the cake note that it requires a 9 x 14" tray to assemble, so I bought a 10 x 19" cake box at Michael's. I didn't think to buy a cake board, so I made one by cutting the sides off an office paper box lid and wrapping it in foil. Easy peasy, cheap, and it took about five minutes. Also pictured, the dinosaur pattern pieces, printed on cardstock. I cut the dinosaur's head a little larger because I thought it looked a little bit stubby on the original pattern. If you do this, test the pattern pieces on your cake board before cutting the cake, for obvious reasons.
I also prepared the icing while the cake was freezing. I used this Paula Deen recipe for cream cheese icing, but unless you're an extravagant icer or are making a second cake, I would recommend halving the recipe, possibly even quartering it. I had a painfully ridiculous quantity of leftover icing. Once the (easy) icing was mixed up, I set aside a small amount of plain white icing to use for decorating purposes and then added food coloring to the rest until it was an acceptable shade of green. It took a lot of food coloring. Like, a LOT. Probably half of the small bottle I had. I was really happy with the results, though. Okay, so the cake board was ready, the icing was ready, time to cut the cake! I won't lie, I was kind of terrified.
Freezing the cakes made them easy to cut and much less crumbly around the raw edge, just as promised. I was shocked at how well this step went, considering it was my first try.
The video recommended briefly re-freezing the cake, applying a thin layer of icing to "crumb coat" it, and then freezing once more. I almost skipped this step to save time, but decided not to risk it. Heed my experience: DO NOT SKIP THE CRUMB COAT! It was magical how well it worked. Putting the crumb coat on was probably the second-most-frustrating / time-consuming part of the process, but it was well worth it in the end. The pre-freezing did keep most of the crumbs from the raw edges from mixing into the icing, and the post-freezing made the final icing coat look fabulous and completely crumb-free.
The final and probably most important step was to decorate the cake. In the past I've constructed my own icing bags from zipper bags and icing tips, so I was confident that I could do it again this time. I don't know if I used better bags in the past or if I lost my mojo somehow, but unless you have done this and are 100% confident in your bag selection, don't follow my example. Just buy some damn icing bags. I wasted a lot of time and icing trying to make an icing bag that would work. The seams on the zipper bags I had were too weak and would split as soon as I applied pressure to squeeze out the icing. I finally ended up using Lansinoh breastmilk bags, and they worked pretty well, though there was some trial and error with where to cut the slot for the tip. I ended up getting icing all over me and literally taking it down to the wire as far as time, finishing the cake at 1:30 with the party scheduled to start at 2:00 (and I still had to take a shower).
In the video they used Hershey's kisses to make spikes and spots. I knew I didn't want spikes and debated getting kisses for the spots but decided against it. Initially I had planned to leave the dinosaur plain, but then I started to think it looked too plain, so I added chocolate spots. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I used the set-aside white icing to make his eye. I had planned to write on the cake in white as well, but decided that first, the contrast wasn't high enough, and second, I was not going to risk screwing up the lettering with my ghetto-fabulous homemade icing bags and having to scrape the cake and start over. I wrote on the cake board instead and it worked out great, even though my icing penmanship was pretty bad. I was thrilled with the end result -- especially considering it was my first cake construction project -- and it got lots of compliments. And it was delicious.
And there you have it...dinosaur cake! Quite a bit of cake is wasted, so depending on how many guests you're expecting, you may want to make a second sheet cake or some cupcakes. We had about 20 adults and 6 kids, so I made a batch of cupcakes to go along with the cake. We had the dinosaur's neck / head and about five cupcakes left at the end of party, which is a nice amount...enough to enjoy but not enough to overdo it. If I ever do this again, I'm buying icing bags and leaving a little more time to work. From first freezing to finish, the assembly took about three hours. Overall, though, I give the whole project a big gold star!
Monday, December 21, 2009
Then how the reindeer loved him
I got some good suggestions back in November when I asked for Christmas ornament suggestions, but I ended up going with these:
I saw the idea in a craft catalog and since I already had a bunch of wine corks I'd been saving in case I figured out a use for them, I ran with it. These are actually really easy to make, and I got 13 done in about an hour and a half. I thought it might be fun to post the directions, since when I looked online last month for easy Christmas ornament ideas, I would've appreciated seeing a simple project like this.
Here's the original ornament:
First, the supplies. Of course you'll need corks. As I mentioned, I'd been saving ours for quite some time, but you can order them from Oriental Trading or possibly even buy them at a craft store. You'll also want googly eyes, pom poms for noses (red or brown / black if you don't want Rudolphs), brown pipe cleaners, brown felt, ribbon to make hanging loops, scissors, small-headed pins, wire snips, a skinny Phillips screwdriver or ice pick, and tacky glue. You can try other kinds of glue if you wish, but in my experience, tacky glue is the best when working with oddball materials like cork and plastic.
1. Decide approximately where on the cork you want to put your reindeer's face. Based on that, use the screwdriver or ice pick to make two shallow holes in the top of the cork for the antlers. You don't have to go really far down into the cork -- you just want your antlers to have a little bit of stability. It's hard to control exactly how the antlers will be positioned, so put them on before you put the face on, or you may end up with a lopsided reindeer.
2. Tie a piece of ribbon into a hanging loop and use a pin to attach it in between the antler holes. I had inch-long pins and found they were hard to get into the cork without bending the pin in half, so I used the wire snips to cut half the length off before using them.
3. Cut four ~2" pieces of pipe cleaner with the snips (not the scissors) and make the antlers. Put a dab of glue on the end of each antler before pushing them into the holes.
4. Re-evaluate face placement if necessary. Glue on eyes.
5. Cut two tear-drop shaped pieces of felt for ears. I made a template from a little piece of cardboard and cut around it for each ear, which was actually the most difficult / annoying part of the whole process. After some trial and error (mostly error), I discovered that it's best to glue the ears on before the nose, because it's really easy to knock the nose off while attaching the ears. Glue the ears on the back side of the cork, where you think they look best.
6. Glue on a pom pom for a nose. Et voilà! All done.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Benediction
Last Friday morning I walked the dog over to my parents' house so I could use my mom's sewing machine to make some pillows for a friend's little boy. I chatted a bit with my mom and sister, and solicited lots of advice since I haven't made much of anything on a sewing machine since college.
I was both surprised and pleased at how easy it was to use the machine. As happens when I sit down at a piano, my hands just sort of knew what to do and didn't really need much help from my brain. All the little things you must remember to do, like holding the loose threads to the side so they don't get pulled under the foot at the beginning of a seam, like pressing the button on the side of the machine to reverse the direction and backstitch, I just kind of did them without thinking. Until the day I die, the sound of a sewing machine whirring away will be the sound of home. Mom made most of our clothes when we were kids, made her own clothes, and for several years made completely amazing "busy books" to sell at craft shows.
Mom left for work and Sis went to the last day of her volunteer daycamp counselor gig, and I was alone within the comfort of my mom's sewing room, in the peace of the house where I grew up. At some point I looked around and noticed a sheet of lined paper taped to a cabinet door, covered in my mom's handwriting, the arches and loops of it as familiar as my own face in the mirror. At first I didn't think much of it, assuming it detailed instructions of some craft idea or sewing technique. But as I got to the less-exciting stage of stuffing pillow forms into the cases I'd sewn, I had time to let my eyes wander. They returned to the handwritten sheet, and I realized it was a verse of some kind.
Maybe it was the thunderstorm that was rumbling outside. Maybe it was the cocoon-like quiet of the home that held me safe for most of my life. Maybe it was feeling sappy about sewing and seeing lovely words in my mom's writing. Maybe I'm just a drippy girl. But the words on that page? They were beautiful. I have no idea where Mom found them. Google, for once, wasn't super helpful, other than an indication that they come from an old African verse. If I could, I'd pull that sheet down from the cabinet door, frame it, and hang it in my house. Maybe someday I will.
Each thing that goes away, returns, and nothing in the end is lost. The great friend throws all things apart and brings all things together again. That is the way everything goes and turns around. That is how all living things come back after long absences, and in the whole great world all things are living things. All that goes returns.
Where you are going, go softly.
Aananom, you who have gone before, see that his body does not lead him into snares made for the death of spirits. You who are going now, do not let your mind become persuaded that you walk alone. There are no humans born alone.
You are a piece of us, of those gone before and who will come again. A piece of us go, and come a piece of us. You will not be coming, when you come, the way you went away. You will come stronger to make us stronger, wiser to guide us with your wisdom. Gain much from this going. Gain the wisdom to turn your back on the wisdom of Ananse. Do not be persuaded you will fill your stomach faster if you do not have others' to fill.
There are no humans who walk this earth alone.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Crafty McCrafterson
I've been a crafty fool lately, but I couldn't share photos of some of the stuff I was working on until after Christmas, since it was for giftage. First, though, an update on the eternal stitchery project, since several people have inquired about it lately:
Not to brag, but I've sort of been kicking ass and making counted cross-stitch my folksy little bitch. I thought I would hate doing the background work, but it's actually pretty enjoyable, at least when I'm not using one of the umpteen shades of brown. I do get rather sick of the brown.
The highlighted / colored-in areas on the chart are what I've done:
I've managed to keep the project a secret from my dad so far, and since he's never online and doesn't know this blog exists, it's safe to talk about it. I definitely did the right thing when I decided not to put any pressure on myself to finish it by a certain deadline. There's no way I could've finished it for Christmas. Next Christmas, maybe.
I did finish a project that I started quite a long time ago. I started working at the craft store in October 2004, right when knitting was getting really, really trendy. The craft store had a ridiculous supply of really awesome yarn, and I got my mom to teach me how to knit and made a few scarves. I took my sister out to the store and let her pick any yarn she wanted and told her I'd knit her a scarf. I knitted (knit?) almost all of it, and then got my current job, lost track of the project, and forgot how to knit and purl. I'd been meaning to get the scarf back out and finish it for a long time, but never got around to it until about a week ago. I dug it out and took it over to the house for a refresher knit / purl lesson, and even though my brain was half-baffled, my hands remembered how to do it almost right away. I really wanted to give it to Sis before she leaves for Ireland on January 6th, and I did! I finished up the last foot of the scarf on the 23rd, and got the tassels done on the 26th.
I don't care who you are...that's a nice scarf. (Mostly because the fluffiness of the yarn hides all the mistakes.)
The scarf really looks best when it's on someone, though, and so MB volunteered to model it:
"Don't you want a handsome man in the photo?"
I gave the scarf to Sis today, and she loved it. Now when I get to missing her, I'll be able to think of my fuzzy hand-knitted scarf keeping her warm on her Irish adventure.
She also got this for Christmas:
It was supposed to be one of those fleece blankets held together by cutting strips around the edges and tying knots, but Mom stitched the two pieces together on her serger so none of the surface area of the blanket would be wasted in tying the knots. After Mom sewed the edges, I fake-quilted it by threading and tying knots of yarn through both layers at semi-regular intervals to keep the layers from shifting and sliding around. Like the scarf, the dragon blanket was a pretty big hit.
We didn't receive anything particularly crafty for Christmas, but we still scored a pretty respectable loot pile:
How about you? Did you score any sweet loot or complete any long overdue projects this holiday season?
