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reversible cadet cap

hats 1

It’s summer, and – miracle of miracles – the weather in our part of the world is actually behaving like it’s summer. Sun sun and more sun, and actual decent levels of heat. Given that Canadian doctors have lately been encouraged to lecture their patients about our national vitamin D deficiency, you’d think people would gripe a little less about the heat, but people are weird. I am loving this weather.

Last weekend we went out to a rock concert and spent many hours lying in the sun and drinking beer. The good life. But after going to this event last year as well, I learned that a hat was needed. Last year I snitched one of my husband’s, but by this year I realized I had the skills to make my own (so it would actually fit). And once you know how it’s done, this style of hat is very simple to make, and can be whipped up in an hour or two, depending on your speed and skill level.

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plush bus

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I get commissions for all kinds of different things and all kinds of different reasons. Things from “My boyfriend loves this character” to “I’d like to give her a custom plush of her forum avatar” and “The baby needs a sun hat for summer anyway, why not have an awesome R2D2 one” have all come up.

And sometimes the reasons are a little more zany, or involve a detailed backstory because the commission is basically the physical manifestation of an inside joke or a “you had to be there” moment. The one I’m showing you today was made because the buyer wanted a nice big, soft and very much throwable bus, so that he could by tossing it over people’s heads, “throw someone under the bus.” I love my work.

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a very silly hat – with knotted rabbity ears

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Moving is the devil.

After three months of house sitting, we finally moved into our own new apartment (after spending a week re-painting rooms that some previous fool of a tenant had decked out in dog shit brown – why do people do that?!), leaving behind the super sweet, adorable, ancient and floor-desecrating cat (oh how you will miss all my tweets about kitty poo, I just know you will) and the house that, being an entire house, hid from us just how much crap we have.

That’s always a theme of moving: “Holy shit, how/why do we own so much stuff?!” Along with “Why is it this difficult to obtain a large number of cardboard boxes,” “Do we really need more than one pie server,” “Where the hell did I pack my shoes,” and “How in the world did the previous tenant manage to leave this many nail holes in the walls?!”

But I only had one actual full-on meltdown, so I guess things went ok.

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double-stuffed Creepy Doll

Double stuffed Oreos are “wonderfilled” with soft, sugary deliciousness. Double stuffed Creepy Dolls, conversely are “horrorfilled” with squishy, staring terror.

When I posted about making 50 Creepy Dolls for LoadingReadyRun’s Kickstarter, I mentioned that, due to prototyping that left me with the unfinished and horribly disfigured shell of a Creepy Doll, one doll in the bunch ended up stuffed with the empty body of another. But I didn’t say which doll it was.

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Well now, at last, the wait is over. Most if not all the Creepy Dolls seem to have arrived at their new homes, so this is the time. Let us discover who has ended up with a terribly, horribly, doubly creepy Creepy Doll.

The double stuffed plushie is doll number:

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Sixteen!!!

Congratulations to its owner, who will probably never sleep peacefully again.

Also, it’s the very same doll I’m holding in my lap in this photo. I made sure of it, because those kinds of secret details are fun.

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glass etching – another method for fine details & original art

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A few months ago I shared my first experiments with etching designs onto glass, which is a wonderful way to reuse, decorate and personalize glass containers of all kinds, whether to use for storage or gift giving or pure decoration. Apart from learning an important lesson about cleaning up my tools so as not to accidentally ingest poison, I discovered that it is a pretty simple process.

However, I wanted to find a way to create etched designs that could be more intricate than images that must be cut out, whether by hand or with die cutting tools, from sticky contact paper. After some experimenting, I discovered that simply painting your images onto jars works very nicely as well, and if you have a steady hand and a fine-tipped brush it allows for some very small and intricate detailing indeed. Read the full post »

listen while you craft – headphones, podcasts and music

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I’ve been meaning to talk a bit more about some of my favourite crafting tools, as well as the actual crafts. I could (and probably will, eventually) write a whole post about scissors, which are my number one if-I-could-only-have-one-crafting-implement-for-the-rest-of-forever choice of tool, and of course at this point life without my sewing machine is basically unthinkable.

But today I’m going to tell you about a perhaps less obvious crafting tool, but one I’ve found invaluable of late: wireless headphones.

Crafting is fun, yes, but parts of it can be quite tedious, especially when you’re making 50 of something. And a day of crafting is a day of just me, with myself and I for company. Ok and Twitter and Facebook, but if I start paying too much attention to them I’ll never get anything done.

This means I listen to a lot of music, podcasts and audiobooks while I craft. A lotRead the full post »

how to enjoy eating Magic cards

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Yesterday Angela Webber of the Doubleclicks tweeted about a fellow who’d commented on the music video for Lasers and Feelings. This fellow was very upset, rageful even.

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Now while I agree that this is indeed rather delicious nerd rage, I also feel a bit bad for the guy. I mean, he’s clearly missing out on good things, things he just hasn’t yet had the right opportunities to understand and appreciate.

I write tutorials, and the point of those tutorials is to teach people new things, to allow them to more deeply enjoy and be involved in crafting and creating. I’ve got some pretty solid background in the many uses of Magic cards, too.

So I’ve written a tutorial, dedicated to this Harry fellow, about how to best enjoy eating Magic cards. Let’s get started.

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Choosing your cards

It’s important to understand that different cards have different flavours, and you should choose the ones you think will be most up your alley. Not everyone enjoys everything.

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