Crafty Craftiness

[elfprince13]

Glad you like it! Building the hand device was one of the most work intensive things I've ever done for a costume.

[Jayelle]

I made a pony!

[Luet]

You did great! So cute.

[Gravity Defier]

Very cute! Love it. :)

[LilBee91]

Pictures of the completed quilt. I went the lazy route and machine-bound it, so it doesn't look absolutely beautiful up close. But there was no way I would have the patience to hand sew that binding.

[thoughtreader]

That is beautiful! (and hand binding is a PAIN IN THE ASS!!! so machine all the way!)

do you you have a pattern for it or did you make it up yourself?

[Jayelle]

That's so awesome! Kudos!!

[Bean_wannabe]

It looks awesome but I have to say... you suck at Tetris!

[thoughtreader]

It looks awesome but I have to say... you suck at Tetris!

Well if she made a quilt of a good game with lots of lines the whole quilt would be black.... so a crappy game makes a better quilt.

[LilBee91]

It looks awesome but I have to say... you suck at Tetris!

Well if she made a quilt of a good game with lots of lines the whole quilt would be black.... so a crappy game makes a better quilt.

This. I did the design myself, so I fiddled around with a few ideas. I thought about playing a game and using that as a pattern, but with random squares left over from lines disappearing it was hard to tell what pieces were which. I also considered just fitting all the shapes together and ignoring the fact that lines would vanish. But I decided to be a horrid tetris player but be true to the game. Or just pretend it's level 30 and I'm not quite that skilled.

[Gravity Defier]

Yay, Shannon, that looks great! [insert imaginary-FB friend LIKE here]

I really need to find a quilter around here. I have all this material I've been collecting for years that I want to use somehow and although it might not be right for a quilt, I don't personally know, so I need to ask an expert sort of person.

[powerfulcheese04]

I love it Shannon! It's beautiful!



I really want to make a t-shirt quilt.

[Young Val]

That quilt is awesome, Shannon! It looks super cozy, too!

[Eaquae Legit]

The world is in serious need of more homemade* quilts, and I commend you on your contribution! It looks great! I love the combination of crafty and geeky. The rise of geek crafting is something else I very much applaud.

[Gravity Defier]

This is not crafting exactly, unless you go for one of those wide-open, loose sort of definitions, but I am sitting around cutting out the edge from a small stack of book covers I snatched when I was working at the school.

When I'm done and see how far it will stretch, I'll be using it as a border around my window in some capacity because if I don't get more crap on my walls to make it less blegh, I will go crazy from surroundings-boredom.


If I'm feeling especially motivated, I will paint the cork-board I have for my craft.

[LilBee91]

Not my craft, but I went to a market(ish) thing they have set up downtown in the summer and there was a booth selling purses and clutches made out of hardcover books. They looked cool, but sometimes I have a hard time with mutilated literature. They also had "Potter-y" bowls, with strips from Harry Potter books mod-podged to them.

[Gravity Defier]

I was just wondering if you could do some sort of mod-podging to dishware but decided even if it's possible, I don't think I'd be comfortable doing it. I'd always worry it would come undone or somehow leak into my food...but I just bought bowls so zero would hush up about my dishware situation and they're pretty plain.

[LilBee91]

Some ladies I know take clear plates and mod podge fabric to the outside of them. You have to hand wash them, but since it's on the other side of your food, I don't think you'd have to worry about glue-food.

[Gravity Defier]

I have to hand wash everything anyway; among the many great amenities my apartment has to offer, no dishwasher is one of them. I'm somewhat tempted to try now...I have a crapload of fabric I keep around for rainy days and I can get my hands on a clear plate. Hmm...

[Luet]

I have a dishwasher but I never use it. I mean, we're only two people and I prefer hand washing anyway.

[Eaquae Legit]

Fuzzy fun yarn covers a multitude of sins. And what it doesn't cover, the three-year-old is unlikely to notice.

Cheshire Cat Hat accomplished. (Yes, will post a pic when I take one. No, it's not as cool as you're imagining.)

[Dr. Mobius]

Speaking as an artistically challenged person whose most creative work was a crudely photoshopped sheep's head, I'm pretty sure it's actually even cooler than I'm imagining.

[Gravity Defier]

One of the two books that were in my backpack for the Big Storm has started to mold, so I will need to do some surgery on it here soon and amputate the bottom. That will leave other parts of the pages untouched to be mod podged somehow into wall decoration so...I need to not work so much this next week so I have time to be less tired and more creative.

[steph]

[Luet]

[Gravity Defier]

I'm taking this as a sign that I need to spend more time with crafty stuff in general...I'm not exactly done with this because the paint smeared underneath the stencil I was using, rendering "Dream" and "Imagine" completely illegible. I decided "Dream" can be interpreted as "Drecum" and "Imagine" as "Tmagone" or something similar.

Another major bummer of this whole thing is realizing my walls are painted "Book page" off-white because holding this thing up to the wall was like making most of it disappear. I don't want more blah on my walls, which are genuinely starting to depress me from their complete lack of color and/or decoration.

Anywho, the reason I wanted to make this in the first place, besides to get more stuff on my walls, was to have something as my official "To Read" pile designator. Currently, I have a sticky note that says the books below it are my to-read books.

All in all, I'm marking this down as a Fail until I figure out how to fix the text and find some sort of border to add to it so that it doesn't blend in with my walls quite so badly.

[LilBee91]

This is coming from a very not-crafty person, so if it's stupid just ignore. Could you dip the pages in water colors to give them some color without covering up all the book-ness?

[Jayelle]

This is coming from a very not-crafty person, so if it's stupid just ignore. Could you dip the pages in water colors to give them some color without covering up all the book-ness?

Or tea! I've dyed pages with black tea and they've looked quite good.

[Petra456]

How big is it/would it be possible to find some sort of frame to keep it in? Sucks that the stencil bled, because this is such neat idea!

[Gravity Defier]

I could start over (not like I don't have enough pages for it...I'm using the non-molded parts of the book I had to buy from the library) and do something to color the pages; that isn't a half bad idea. Maybe this time I'd also use marker for the stencil instead of paint.

I'm betting there's a something or other online about using tea on paper?

[Jayelle]

I'm betting there's a something or other online about using tea on paper?

Yeah, I'm sure there's lots if you google it. All I did was brew some strong tea (boiling water + 5 earl grey tea bags), let it cool, then dip the pages one at a time into the water for about 5 min each, lay them flat to dry on newspaper. Easy Peasy.

[Gravity Defier]

How did I not get this sooner?

[steph]

I'm not sure. That was my first attempt to creatively announce, but it mostly went unnoticed. (Except by Nomi!)

[Gravity Defier]

In my not very strong defense, I've seen others use that on MySpace/FB just to show momma pride. It never occurred to me that would be an announcement. I'm also just dense.

Very clever, though. :)

[starlooker]

That and something else - can't remember what - made me suspect. I wish I'd asked! You weren't unnoticed!

I'm so, so, so past happy for you!