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one headband for every occasion

I’ve talked before about how headbands are cool – not anywhere near as cool as bowties or fezzes, but they’re still pretty nifty (and we’ll get to bowties and fezzes in later posts, I promise).

But as much as I like headbands, I don’t wear them often enough to need a whole army of them in my closet, and they’re sort of awkward to store. Once they’ve got flowers and bows and octopuses and such attached to them, they take up a surprising amount of space. So what you really need is one headband, with a bunch of different attachments for it. Like vacuums! If you had to have an whole different vacuum for the crevice tool and the dusting brush and the parquet tool and the main powerhead… well forget ever having closet space for anything else.

That’s the lesson for today: headbands are like vacuums. But simpler, because the easiest way to make a headband-with-attachments set is to apply a little velcro. The headband has velcro top, and each attachment has velcro on the bottom, and voila – attach a new decoration for any occasion. Even Octopus Day.

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paper pie gift boxes (for Pi Day!)

Earlier this week, my mom sent me a very important email informing me that next Wednesday, March 14, is Pi Day. (Because the date is 3/14, you see.) She knows how I like to be kept aware of important holidays.

Since my math education culminated in me failing goecalculebra or whatever we were supposed be learning in 11th grade math class (the only course I have ever failed in my life), my appreciation for pi is sadly somewhat limited. My appreciation for puns and wordplay, however, extends well beyond the limits of good taste, so for me this is an opportunity to turn numbers into letters and start talking about that delicious food of champions, PIE.

Pie is delicious. It is nutritious…um…ish… um. (Apples? Pumpkin? Rhubarb? Come on!) It is created in that most beautiful shape, the circle. (Lots of beautiful things are round – just think about it. The Sun, the moon, the Earth, your true love’s eyes, breasts, pizza, the clock on the wall that tells you it’s time to go home and crack a beer – circles are gorgeous.)

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paper wine charms

Since moving to our new noticeably-larger-than-a-shoebox apartment last summer, my boyfriend and I have begun doing rather more entertaining. Y’know, since there’s now room to entertain without tripping over everyone else’s feet all night. Entertaining of the kind we enjoy generally involves games, food and always drink.

With a living room full of people imbibing alcohol, mingling, chatting and rolling dice, it’s often handy to have a little assistance keeping track of just which wine glass belongs to who. I mean, there’s cooties and all, but even more importantly, you don’t want someone else polishing off your glass of wine. I’ve made a variety of wine charms in my time, but paper ones always appeal as a quick, easy, colourful and lightweight marking method, easy to store, easy to replace if lost or damaged, and helpful in using up my endless stores of patterned scrap paper.

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chalkboard gift tags

 

It’s birthday season! I mentioned this last March, citing the fact that I seem know a whole horde of people (myself included) who were born in March and April. Which makes sense, given that nine months prior (June and July) is the middle of wedding season. To distract from the obvious contemplation of one’s parents actually enjoying themselves in bed (I know, ew. What could be worse? I personally plan to give up sex altogether as soon as I have kids, just to spare them such emotional scarring.) that follows this line of thinking, let’s focus on the here and now, in which we have a season potentially chalk full of celebratory parties and gift-giving.

In such a season, you may well need a lot of gift tags, and so might all your friends, who will probably themselves know a bunch of people with upcoming birthdays. So gift tags you can use, use again and reuse some more will probably come in handy.

Thus, this week’s tutorial is armed with chalkboard paint, to create small, cute reusable gift tags, arming you for the busy birthing (whoops, I mean birthday!) season ahead. Read the full post »

leg warmers from old sweater sleeves

I’ve decided that leg warmers are kind of cute. Before you scream for me to be cast into a vile pit of fashion mistakes and other torments of the 1980s, hear me out.

I love boots – I feel they balance out the bottom of the legs a bit, especially on women like me with wide hips or thighs. And they add something interesting to the bottom half of your outfit. Leg warmers basically do the same thing, while allowing you to wear your ballet flats and such as the weather gets warmer, or as you simply get tired of wearing your wintery boots.

As an added rebellion against the weather, this particular project turns old sweaters into leg warmers. No better way to stick out your tongue at Winter than to cut up your cold weather clothes right under its nose. Live in senselessly optimistic faith that the temperature will rise and the sun will come out and you won’t need that sweater for your upper half anyway. So there!

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paper Valentine’s candy packets… with a sinister twist

Today’s post is simple, silly and will make you think about something that gives any sane person a shiver of abject horror; Tommy Wiseau’s film, The Room.

The Room is possibly the worst movie ever… well I hesitate to use and thus desecrate the word “created.” “Spewed forth into the world” is more accurate. If you’ve seen it, the list of things that are wrong with you clearly begins with being frighteningly masochistic. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. I confess that I myself have viewed only clips and trailers, and that was enough. My foolish boyfriend and his pals watched it, though, and from what I hear, even Rifftrax can’t help this movie.

There’s a generally known, dating-back-to-I-don’t-know-when-but-let’s-randomly-guess-the-60s craft out there, wherein you make a little treat container by sewing together two paper shapes, filling the space between with goodies, and stitching up the gap. So, for example, paper hearts can make a sweet little Valentine’s parcel full of candy. The candy can only be obtained by ripping apart the paper, making it a one-use-only kind of craft.

If you’re familiar with The Room, you probably see where this is going. That’s right:

 

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Zelda health bar hat – a geeky Valentine

I’ve spent the last few weeks pounding my head against the sugar-coated mountains of Valentine’s Day paraphernalia that floods the internet at this time of year, trying to inspire myself with some kind of brilliant craft honouring this saccharine holiday. It has been to no avail. It comes down to this: I simply do not love our holiday of love.

In my mind, Valentine’s Day does not nearly live up to the hype given to it by soccer moms, 13 year-old girls and Martha Stewart. Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving are the holidays that really imbue me with a spirit of love and affection and creativity. For me, they are meaningful, special and genuine. Valentine’s Day is full of artificial flavours, colours and sentiments; the Pamela Anderson of holidays.

I don’t hate Valentine’s Day, it just fails to inspire me. But I’ve been trying. I’ve pondered just about every damn thing you can do with a paper heart. Then the other day I was playing Zelda, and I suddenly noticed the life meter is made up of hearts. I mean, I’d noticed this before, obviously, but now I noticed it in the context of having Valentine’s Day on the brain. And there was my inspiration. Screw heart-shaped sugar cookies, Hershey’s kisses and crepe paper roses. Zelda, something I actually enjoy to start with, could inspire me.

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