Do Epic Shit!!

 Remember the $500 I said I won on a scratch ticket?  Well, I made a good investment in some metal stamping supplies with it.  It's a somewhat pricey start up into a craft, but I have been wanting to buy a stamp set for a while.

Learning metal stamping has made me feel like a TOTAL bad ass.  I got my hammer.  I'm pounding on my anvil block.  I'm a total bad ass blacksmith :P

I even managed to make my very own little metal stamped logo.... Yes, originally I wanted that to be a heart above the TS.  We all see how that went.
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I bought a bag full of these small discs to practice with.  I have since tried stamping on a gold plated key chain, and it's actually much harder.  The copper discs are easy to re-line up the stamp if it doesn't come out.  They are easier to hold in place so you don't get a double stamp.  However, I do plan on moving to better metals once I get the hang of it.

I have since tried stamping onto a gold plated key ring medallion and I fucked up nine medallions before I got it right.  I don't feel like wasting that much money quite yet.  Hence the discs that are easier to line up and not double stamp!






So I decided on a piece to make a bunch of for practice.  I know I know the word is over used now, but I have always loved "Epic" because it just rolls off the tongue.  I also wanted to do something to kind of carry on the positive energy I've had lately looking for opportunities to pay tribute to my wonderful stranger! So, I settled on pendants that say "DO EPIC SHIT"

and I made a lot of them!!!







The "SHIT" ones were my favorite.

I've spent the last month or so creating an epic Pinterest Metal Stamping board.

So here's the deal!  I'm going to be giving away my practice pieces on the Running with Scissors Facebook page.

So, here's the deal.  Follow that link to the facebook page and share my blog.  Share it!  Write a little blurb about it.  The ones that amuse me the most I will send a "DO EPIC SHIT" pendant to the ones that amuse me the most.  Yup, I know that's kinda not fair but think of it likes a cards against humanity.  Cater to your judge :P  I'll also be posting some to the etsy this week if you would just like to purchase one.

Comment if you have other ideas for stamping I can fiddle with.

See you next Tuesday!

Wonderful Strangers!

Pardon my fuzzy cheesy meme.... but it fits!

Amazingly, not planned was this blog. Talk like Yoda I must not.

I just realized it's my last blog before Thanksgiving and literally (in the literal sense) lol'd.  How perfectly accidental.  It's funny how life reminds you of things when you need it, and I needed to remember how astounding people can be.

My move has me constantly running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  I finally got a job and am settling in, but the city is still so busy.  I love it.  I love every second of it.  I love the angry people on the subway, and the people playing guitar on the street.  I have made so many random friends in the most odd places.  I was escorted safely onto the T late night by the self-labeled "Most bad ass, fabulous, brother's from another mother, homeless guys in boston."

I got the title of "Honorary sister from another mister"

I have had so many wonderful experiences with people from all walks of life around the city, and I missed that so much.  I thought I was doing well picking up city life until last Monday.  Last Monday, I sat in this little memorial park to eat and I put my wallet down next to me.  I just now realized the irony of eating in front of those statues of people starving.  Whoops!

Anyway, I was watching all the people and got so wrapped up in the city and the moment, that when I got up to leave I pulled a classic Klutzz and left the wallet sitting about where that little gold "hello" arrow is pointing.

I do these things a lot.  The plus side is that I usually realize fairly quickly and don't tend to actually end up losing too many things (except my phone in Alewife bathroom that time....)

This was one of those bad times, where I didn't remember for hours.  I was starting a new job so I even had my social security card in it and my newly paid month long T pass.  This was not...freaking....good!  Luckily yet another appearance of a wonderful stranger happened and a now friend helped me look for my wallet near where it had been left and spotted me cash for the T home.  I counted it lost and started adding to my "To Do" list all the things I needed to look into replacing, and realizing just how fucked I was.

Next day, there I am sitting through training at the new job I LOVE... when I glance at my phone and see the subject of an e-mail

"LOST WALLET"

I jumped up and did a happy dance.  Everyone at my new job already thinks I'm weird.  It's good they caught on quick.

So, to Officer Corbett of the Boston PD  a HUGE ASS MAJOR THANK YOU WITH CHERRIES ON TOP.  They would not let me give them anything in return, because the person who turned it in remained anonymous.  I hadn't changed my license address yet, so the only reason I got it back so fast is because I had my Running With Scissors card in the wallet.

NOTHING was missing.  Not even the measly 2 dollars that was in it.  Such a nice amazing wonderful stranger that I didn't even get to make a Better Off Dead joke.

More than anything I wish there was a way that I could find this person and hug them until they pop and tell them what an amazing person they are and how much they fixed my life last Monday!
I have spent every day since looking for any way I can to pay this forward and  at least try to make anyone else as happy as this wonderful stranger made me.  So, Wonderful Stranger, this Thanksgiving I am thankful for you most of all.  I am thankful for Boston, and it's wonderful strangers, all the other people that have showered me in help lately. I plan to show how thankful I am to as many people as possible.

I hope the person who returned my wallet somehow sees this.

Thank you!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!

:) <3

Muppet Train to Somerville

I finally made that move I was talking about!  **cheers**  I took the Muppet train to Somerville to get back to a little civilization from the mountains.  I took a much needed whole 2 months off.  The best part of moving back into civilization have been the things to DO!!!  I played a little game of "Where in New England is Klutzz?" while visiting old haunts like Chicken Connection and new ones like winning $500 on a scratch ticket.  I never win anything... I still can't believe it.

Exploring Somerville has been quite a treat.  I wanted to do a blog on Fluff Fest but I didn't end up with enough stuff to write about.  There were too many people to really get close to anything and have fun.  You couldn't even try the cooking contest entries that I could find.  If you could no one was telling us we could.

My favorite thing about Somerville is all the found art.  The old, unused newspaper boxes are turned into terrariums or free libraries.  The bike rail trail is full of upcycled and found art including what I think of as an epic "Where the Wild Things Are" throne.  Don't worry, I'm gathering pictures of all this.  Expect more soon!  Oh yeah, and Q's nuts is a good Somerville staple. (See the picture below)  I am not shitting you, I never would have bought these if it wasn't the beautiful string of "Eat my nuts" puns that went along with the sale.  It was comedy gold.

BUT, I wanted to finally get back to crafting and blogging!!!!  I'm starting it differently this time, bear with me :P.  I decided to start really marketing the blog as more of a documentation of my adventures in learning different techniques.  I'm ADD spectacular and just get
bored doing the same things all the time so it's pointless to start with ONE type of crafting in my etsy.  So, I want to start making a few extras of the items I make for the blogs for selling and give-aways.  Yeah that's right, give-a-ways for all the people begging me to make them one too!

The rules will be simple:  Share the RWS blogs from the facebook page and the person with the pitch that entertains me the most gets a prize :P  I know it's unfair and no way to track it, but let's face it, I do this to entertain myself more than you guy.  So, I don't care if its fair.  It'll be fun!  So, keep an eye out for when I make the things you like so I can selfishly make you promote my blog to get it :D  Hey, at least I'm honest right?

I'm pretty excited for what's to come.  Hopefully soon I will also be posting about a local store in somerville carrying some items I made :D :D :D **crosses fingers**

Anyway, stick around for some chances for some free stuff, and more crafting NOW from back in civilization where people are nice!!!  Hope you had a FANTASTIC Halloween. Shovel dude and I did------->

See you next Tuesday!

Shrinky Dink Shrink Plastic DIY

 I was so happy I could have cried when I stumbled upon this Pinterest pin showing how to make your own Shrinky Dinks.  I had completely forgotten about the existence of the things.  Now.... suddenly ideas were EVERYWHEEEERRREEEEE.

I've actually had quite a few fails since starting shrink plastic (whole blog full of fail coming next week) but I'm still determined to have fun with it and get some good non-fail results.







First step however was getting me some shrink plastic. Any plastic with a 6 in the recycling symbol works.  I actually found catering tray lids at a store for only 40 cents a piece so I just grabbed a bunch.  I wanted to know what size to make things to have them shrink right, so the first project was a shrunken ruler.












While I was at it... I figured might as well make at least quarter inch notches also.  In case I ever need more exact measurements.

After that I wanted to add something else for scale.  I sat and tried to think what I could use and **ding ding lightbulb** I signed my signature on it.  Then I looked at it for a few seconds and thought, "Oh wait, I'm putting this on my blog.  Probably not too good to put your signature just out there for everyone huh?"







So, I scribbled it out and then put my fake signature instead.


Next, I popped on the last few episodes of the new season of OITNB, and I got my doodle on.  I did a black design on one side, then added the color on the other.  I didn't realize how much the black smudged when I flipped it over.







WHAT I LEARNED FROM EXPERIMENTING

Color on only one side.  Bake shrink plastic with color side up.

Use parchment paper or an extremely smooth cookie sheet.  Parchment paper is better because you can grab a curled or pre-folded up edge to quickly get the plastic onto a flat cooling surface.

Oven Temp: 325 degrees
Bake Time: 2ish minutes




Watch the shrink plastic when you put it in the oven. It will bubble up, then flatten back out.  Once it flattens back out, let it bake another 30 seconds.

Immediately Take off cookie sheet and put onto a flat cooling surface.

I also put my ACOA book (HUGE ass book) on top of my cut outs to flatten them out more.

Colored pencil on clouded shrink plastic looks way cooler than the recycled kind for charms and earrings.

However, if using the clouded plastic, remember to write backwards so that you can see it forward through the clear side.


Draw your design on a piece of paper first to perfect it.  Once you have it the way you want, you can trace it onto the clear plastic.

<--- See that tin foil?  Don't use tin foil unless you are a mother fucking sorcerer and can get it completely flat and smooth.  All the wrinkles did show up on these practice cut outs.

This is also handy for making multiple copies of the same thing.

Hole punch for tiny holes.

Compass for circles.... because who can real draw a circle. Doesn't matter on the recycled plastic anyway because circles do not shrink equally.



Little pieces of shrink plastic, or long thin pieces are hard to work with.  The little ones sometimes turn sideways when they bubble, and the long thing ones curl up over onto themselves.

Anyway, my charm and ruler came out pretty good.  Looks like the recycled plastic shrinks to a little more than half its original size.  Seriously, use that parchment paper.  I burnt the shit out of my fingers trying to grab these off the cookie sheet.

I already started adding it to a hippie string with a few more charms I've made.

:) Like, comment, tell me what you think.  show me your shrinky dinks..... the shrink plastic kind.  Perv.

See you next Tuesday!!!

Butterfly Museum Date Idea

 

So, it's finally warm in New England....ish....when the wind isn't freaking crazy.........and it's not raining......

Anyway, I had just about exhausted my options on inside/cold weather cheap things to do.  I hate winter.  Have I mentioned that before?  Cold and I, we don't get along.  So, when it was warmer-ish-kinda but not nice enough to go outside, I found this great cheap date idea: the Butterfly Museum!!!

Magic Wings is open year round.... I found out after we waited until spring to go. 

Tip for a butterfly museum:  If you want butterflies to land on you, wear bright colors.  I made sure to wear a shirt with a hood so I didn't get anything stuck in my hair.  The SO also made sure to wear a long sleeve shirt because his natural reaction to bugs landing on him is to slap them.  We didn't want to accidentally horribly murder any butterflies.

Before you enter the conservatory, you get to go into a room of odd bugs.  I didn't take any pictures in there because I wasn't sure if we could, but man those bugs were weird.....and huge!!!

Also, baby rain forest frogs are freaking adorable!

So, you walk through a corridor of air fans to blow all the butterfly escape artists back where they belong, and into a big dome filled with butterflies, a koi pond, tons of unique flowers, and QUAIL zipping around.  

I got one butterfly to land on me.  Actually, once we got there I was pretty scared of them.  I didn't want to not know one was on me and kill it. However, my crappy P.O.S. SAMSUNG GALAXY RING deleted them (Just got rid of it after 3 months.  Serious suckage!!!)

>:(

But yeah, I could have seriously wandered around this place all day.  The staff were so cheerful and seemed actually happy to be there.  The butterflies also scared the small kids enough not to scream or cry.  

Google a butterfly museum in your area if you have never been to one.  It'll make you feel like a kid again.  Hopefully the ones near you have as cool a gift shop as this one did.

Now, I expected there to be butterfly cocoons to take home and take care of until they turned into butterflies, but I never expected them to have preying mantis eggs.  There they were though...on the shelf...giving me day dreams of an insect army.

I AM MOTHER OF THE PREYING MATISESISEZZZZZZ' 

(how do you pluralize that anyway? Yes, I know I could google it, but then I wouldn't have all this fun pissing off grammar nazi friends :D)

I probably got entirely too excited for a thirty year old that I was going to have 100-200 little teeny tiny bugs that were going to immediately start killing each other upon hatching so they needed to immediately be set free........this is the kind of parenting I can get behind!!!

After a while though, I was really starting to think they were not going to hatch.  It had been over a month when I looked down one day while reaching over the little plastic tank and saw this

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I shrieked, "WE HAAAAVE BABIES"

the SO looked terrified for a second before he realized what I was saying.

We quickly took the container outside and started scattering them about, because they were already beating the crap out of each other.  Right after we finished scattering them, a spider wandered along.  I....uh...moved it....yeah.  No, we killed it.  Mother's instinct. /shrug










Then, of course like any good mother I immediately took pictures for my facebook.  I promised my MIL grand-puppies.... this will work right?

My cheerios were promptly pissed in when a stranger walking by was giving us a weird look.  I told him about the preying mantis egg and how we were freeing them.  He thought I'd like to know that only 1 out of every 100 preying mantis survive to adulthood anyway so it was okay that it was going to pour later.

:'(











Then came the rain, and I assumed they all got washed away.

BUT WAIT...... a few days later we managed to find a few.  A FEW.  That means more than 1 out of 100.  Beat that Darwin, my babies are awesome!

We're proud parents.  We were thinking of retiring out of New England now that the kids are all grown and off on their own.  Empty nest and all that....

;)

See you next Tuesday!!!

Macrame Bead Hippie String

This is a good project for when you have some serious time to kill or are ADD like me and need something to do with your hands while you chill at cookouts.

I didn't do a picture by picture tutorial on this because it was just the same knot over and over and over again, while randomly adding beads throughout.

and that knot... the awesome people at MadeByHippies.com provided an AWESOME How to Tie Hemp Jewelry - Macrame tutorial for us already!

I had these cute little metal circles with fancy words on them like Respect and Joy, so every time I ran out of string, I tied on a circle.  The finished string ended up being about four feet long.  I would say it took about 5 hours or so [8].

The original plan was to do a head band, hair piece... but then I just wanted to keep going.

I had a good idea and added a toggle clasp onto one end of the string so that I could wrap it any way I wanted around anything and toggle it to any of the other circles.  that's when I realized it could double as a necklace or bracelet or anything I wanted really.  It was just a universal Hippie String.


The best part about this project was, besides the circles I had sitting around, the beads were $1.50 and the yarn was $3.20.  I used about a quarter of the beads and barely any string.

For more tutorials, check out my Pinterest board on Macrame, and definitely expect more.  I love long tedious tasks, as long as that aren't actually productive ones.

See you next Tuesday!

Bleach Shirts - Cthulhu

I have SUCH a thing for bleach shirts.  It's just so easy to customize however you want.  I have an entire Pinterest board Full of Bleach Shirt Stencils and Tutorials.  Also, yes... I do plan on making them all eventually.  Maybe... that stencil cutting was pretty nerve wracking on my ADD.  Here's a glimpse at a Doctor Who bleach shirt that I did before I started the blog.  The Tardis stencil was a super easy to cut, but I hadn't found the bleach shirt communities I've grown to love on the internet yet, so I simply used paper and hoped the bleach didn't bleed.  I also used a bleach pen to make silence marks.  You can see how fuzzy they look.  I have plans to make a better tip for bleach gel, and try a recipe for homemade bleach gel in the future.

So, I wanted to make the other half a super cool shirt.  Now that I knew how to make something more epic (Thank you /r/bleachshirts for the awesome Bleach Shirt Tutorial)  I first saw it on ThinkGeek.com (here's the pin... the shirt is not for sale anymore), but I wanted to make it Cthulhu, because that's kinda Magnus' thing...that and fire.    I started with getting a few black T-shirts, laying out newspaper everywhere, putting on clothes I didn't GAF about, and putting on an apron just in case.  I already submitted to the fact that I will always have the burn of bleach in my nose for hours after a session.  That's why I try to line up a few projects.   In this case I wanted to see how good the velum looks reused, so I did one for another friend, too.

I just brought up the picture of the shirt on my laptop and free handed the tentacles, going back to add the suction cup thingies.  I drew in pencil so I could erase and make the lines more smooth to the tentacle gradually thinned out to a tip.

 I was having problems RIGHT away with my Xacto knife and thought it could possibly be the vellum.  Then I realized I couldn't remember the last time I had changed my blade.  It can be super dangerous to use dull blades, kids!  This can lead to slipping and cutting yourself.  believe me... I'm a pro at that crap.  You don't pick the gamer tag Klutzz unless you realize it's a warning.

 Moving on........

Next, I carefully cut along the edge of the tentacles I drew, then realized the image was actually going to be mirrored on the shirt as I was drawing on the backing to the vellum.

Good thing there were no words at least, right?

Anyway, after cutting them I laid them out, plastic side up, on the shirt how I wanted them.

Here they are all stuck on the shirt, ready to bleach.  I peeled the back off the same way you would with a band aid, peeling and sticking as you go.
NOW, I was finally ready to bleach that!!!
I sprayed the bleach on in teeny, tiny squirts, then dabbed it off after a few seconds.  I kept repeating this until the entire shirt was speckled, then I chose a few spots to blast with bleach to brighten the image a little. (See final pic, that's exactly how it looks while bleaching).  Once it lightened to how I wanted it, I dunked it in cold water, rinsed, hung to dry, then moved on to the back side.

I ended up choosing a Cthulhu stencil for the back, mainly because I didn't want to cut out big tentacles again.  I had used the first set on both shirts, and while it worked well, I couldn't save them for the days between bleaching and letting the shirts dry.  I didn't want to draw the same thing.  I thought cutting them again would be tedious..... I'll tell ya, I was sure wrong.

This was hell.

Thankfully, Step 1 was turn on Orange is the New Black's new season which I love (because it's kinda exactly what would happen if I went to jail).



Step 2: I just taped the print out I had right down to the vellum and cut through it all.  Notice how large the vellum piece is.  I wanted it ensure I didn't get bleach outside the image.

Step 3: Here's where I screwed up.  I started big, then went to the small parts.  I should have started with the small parts first.

Step 4: What I did get right, was starting from the inside, and making my way out.  As I went, the print out stencil started to rip away, but the vellum was still fine.

Then...finally.... it was done.  (after many breaks to jump around because I can't be totally still that long.)

Sticking this one was a little more tricky.  I used the same basic trick, but I had to pay attention to a few places I screwed up and let my knife slip, and I had to make sure the tentacles all stuck right.

Here's the king of shitty photos (Literally... in the literal sense) to show the vellum stuck.  I had to get the glare and was working in a pretty dark room.

Next, I covered all the other parts of the shirt just to double ensure I didn't get bleach where I didn't want it.  It's REALLY easy to!

This one I sprayed evenly with bleach then dabbed off.  I wanted a solid color.

I wanted to also test out using this stencil a second time.  It worked, as you can see (the shirts were wet, hence the glare), but was a lot less crisp than the first image.  So, if you are doing a large chunky stencil, reusing once at least is fine, but not intricate stencils unless you are PRO at removing them.  I was not... especially with the slices from when I slipped.

Dunked in a cold water bath, rinsed, dried....

and Oh...........My........Gawd am I proud of how these came out.  This is above average for the projects I find online and I was squealing with joy over the results!

Also, many thanks to Magnus for being my model bitch.  At least he got to keep the clothes... they don't always let you do that.  Those are the assholes!

Bad........Ass!




See you nest Tuesday.  Until then, Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.

(Yes, I just copypasta'd it....... Deal with it)