"H" is for Harry Potter!

It's been a while.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two happened, and it was the best/worst thing that ever could have happened, but I wouuuuldn't have it any other way. To anticipate the midnight release, we had a movie-a-day marathon in the week preceding the premier, and on Half-Blood Prince night, I decided to make Harry Potter foods =D!

Pictured below is my recipe for butterbeer, which consists of butterscotch syrup mixed with Reddi Wip, which drifts to the top to make a foamy substance when you pour in the cream soda.

This is the version that happens when I can't sleep at 2:30 AM, so I use the six droplets of Reddi Wip that dribble out of the can--a highly disappointing result when one considers the firecrackeresque whistling it made-- and also tremendously flat cream soda. Additionally, there was a moth careening about in the kitchen, and I was eleven percent sure it was going to murder me, so I had to act fast. Er, quickly.

This is the one Kaelin expertly made on the actual day:

We also had crumpets that were an interesting non-catastrophic mistake, glazed carrots that never stood a chance, Shepherd's Pie, and pumpkin pasties that turned out reasonably well. It was a fun time. All was well.

"G" is for Graduation and Glitter.

Right, then. That didn't work out so well, did it?

I had to return the Martha Stewart book to the library, aaaaaand I just am going to move on from that, I think. Any crafts, from now on. If I need an idea, I will maybe go to the library and consult it. Still, the alphabet.

Glittering really happened! There's a picture of Kaelin's Open House invitations on my phone. Let's see if I can figure out how to work that in. <--Preposition.

So that's little. Also, neat scribbling is... not scribbling. And that's it! I will make an H craft within the week, probably. Martha's book didn't have an H, which was confusing for me.

Eating the Unicorn

This has nothing to do with crafts.

But it has everything to do with eating the unicorn.

"F" is for Fines

I had to return Martha to the library today. I couldn't renew it because it was needed to fulfill a hold. But not to worry! I have placed it on hold for myself. Until then, I'll have to make do with memory. At least I won't have to worry about toe amputation next time I drop my backpack too carelessly.

"F" is actually for fabric flowers, and I decided to make a ribbon rose, which wasn't a Martha idea, per se, but it fit my AP Lit project--toast, roast, gift and grub!-- because I wanted to give Emily in "A Rose for Emily" a rose, since no one ever did. Pretentious metaphor or silly misnomer? You decide.

Here's the final product:

*note: floral tape = stresstastically sticky

My mentor:

The music is pretty rad.

"E" is for good griEf, Charlie Brown!

Etching is expensive. Also, there isn't a whole lot of opportunity for photography between starting and finishing, 'cause the instructions are like, "NO MORE THAN one minute" for blah-blah-blah.

I did my best. It's hard to take pictures of glass. I hope you enjoy my hand shadows and can make out the lighthouse etched into the surface in spite of them. I have decided that it is a coaster. It's the practice glass I got in the etching kit that was roughly $17.

P.S. Etching cream smells pretty terrible.

"D" is for "Dear Mom...."

Dear Mom,

Don't look at this.

No, really.

I mean it.

You're not allowed to look.

I'm so serious.

Everything will be ruined if you look any further.

Stop.

Stop reading.

This is not okay.

You're making me look crazy.

I have reasons!

You can look later.

Probably.

Are you gone yet?

Because I'm going to start.

Like... now.

Ish.

You'd better have looked elsewhere.

Okay. #lastwarning

It's a Mostly Martha Moment. And by "mostly," I mean the rest of the stuff. "Moment" is really only appropriate for alliteration purposes because this is not the one. This moment is pretty devoid of Martha.

"D" was supposed to be for decoupage, but... I didn't think of anything good to decoupage, and everyone was really busy, and I was like, "Is there really enough Mod Podge in this bottle to make it through an entire decoupage project...?" and I just really didn't want to test it or spend extraneous money, so...

"D" is for duct tape. Here is my muse:

Also, my mother is being temporarily banned from this blog because I am using this project as my Mother's Day gift. I will skip over the details of the process, as the video above was my only teacher. The only thing I did differently was use these plastic green stems my mom brought home from work. I think maybe they were part of one of those fruit bouquet things.

I'm not really known for my photography skills.

Nevertheless, that's my project for the week. The tutorial video reminds me that the roses could do with some leaves, but I'm out of green, so I'll have to see what I can do about that. The vase is a wine bottle I found in the recycling bin and off of which I peeled the label. That was a separate project I did with my friend Maggie one night when she came over and our power inexplicably went out for five hours. The colorful stuff is melted Crayola crayon wax.

On a side note, I can't fit all of those stems into the tiny opening, and I don't quite know how to fix it. I might need to trim the fake thorns, somehow, but that would probably look terrible. Also they are plastic.

"C" is for cookie; that's good enough for me!

But more importantly, "C" is for candles.

Right. So first we had to find wicks and wax (and wicks and wax and wicks and wax and wicks and wax). We went to Meijer and bought some vanilla-scented Meijer brand candles for about $8, and then we bought a dozen eggs (Easter sale: $.99!) and a egg-coloring kit. Also some cream soda, but that was not for Martha purposes.

The first step when we got home was to dye the eggs.

Lookout!

And the next step was to poke holes in the top of the eggs and expand the hole until it was big enough for the egg to come out, which we set aside for cookie-baking purposes. This part was tricky because it was hard to keep shell from going in the eggs when we did it that way, but weeee managed. For the most part.

Then after thaaaaat, we needed wicks and wax, so we pulled the wicks out of the bottom of the Meijer candles, and theeen we realized we only had five wicks for twelve candles, so we had to get a little resourceful and use birthday candles. We peeled the wax off of them. It was very colorful.

Then we sliced up the candles so they'd melt easier in our makeshift double boiler.

^not potatoes

And then we poured it through a makeshift water bottle funnel into the egg shells, and then we stuck the wicks in there and waited until the wax hardened a bit before we could get the wicks in the center and straight. Once they were straight, we trimmed the wicks to a quarter inch with nail clippers.

And then the next morning I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and found a cute wire bunny egg-holder thing. That was actually quite an ordeal. We were supposed to use "egg cups." People look at you funny when you ask if they sell egg cups.

And then cookies =D

B is for Boutonniére!

Week Two: Beading

Dear Everyone,

If you are planning to make a beaded corsage or boutonniere, maybe do it more than one week ahead of time. We really came down to the wire. (Aaaahaha, pun intended!) That was kinda nuts. Particularly the rose. But it was fun =D?

[closing of your choice]

This is aaaaaalll the petals wound together. I really should have shown a picture of them all lying about separately, buuuuut I didn't take one =D.

And there we're aaaallll dressed up with the ribbon glued on. We didn't wear them for realsies, and we already had the others on, so we're just holding them, but you get the picture. (<--Aha. Ha. Pun also intended.)

P.S. The rose is missing two petals, and the forget-me-not boutonniere is missing a flower. Time constraints, guys.

A is for... Memory Box?

Right, so the A header was "Albums, Scrapbooks, and Memory Boxes," and we chose Memory Box to document our friiiiiendshiiiiip! Aww.

We found the box itself at Meijer for about $4.00, and the rest was just household supplies. Only creativity and a box required. Also lots of assembly. And glue. Peely, peely glue.

The curtain dealies came from part of a butterfly canopy I had for my bed when I was twelve or so. We bound them with some ribbon we found lying about, and we glued them to the top with some Mod Podge, but any glue would probably have done the trick.

The birthday hat on the top was a gift I got for my fifteenth birthday, which was a joint birthday with Kaelin, who got a tiara, which snapped at some point. There's a bendy lime green pipe cleaner on top, which we just added as an afterthought because it was sitting there. The sunglasses are Kaelin's, and she left them at my house for a year and bought replacements, so that's the story there.

The medal dangling from the top was Kaelin's from a music contest we entered in eighth grade. Or possibly seventh. We played "Hedwig's Theme," and it was awesome.

The top left picture is from a Halloween party when we were in eighth grade. She's Empress of the World, and I'm Hermione Granger... as I have been every year since the third grade. The ticket to the right is from our Washington, D.C. trip, specifically the visit to Mount Vernon to see George Washington's estate.

The whitish card on the top left side and the orangey one on the bottom are the same, and they're both cards we got at that music contest. On the drive home, we got stuck in traffic, and the "III" was circled, and I read it like "aye-aye-aye," which is the sort of thing that's only funny when one has been stuck in traffic for an hour, but anyway, we kept them.

The bottom left orangey ticket was a ticket to Godspell, our musical in eighth grade, and the orangey ticket on the bottom right was to see Sydney White. Good times.

And that blue piece of paper in the top right corner was a pass of some kind that Kaelin still had from middle school. Good job, Kaelin.

On the back at the top is a doodle Kaelin did in our World Lit class sophomore year. Those were supposed to be notes. To her credit, the lack of money was a fact. I think that was A Doll's House, but I wouldn't swear to it.

The paper at the bottom of the back side has our names on it. Kaelin was bored in art class, so she borrowed my Sharpies (that were Bic).

Aaaand that's really it! It's probably not precisely what Martha had in mind, but, eh. It was a fun time.

I wooonder whaaat's neeeeext! (NoIdon'tbutmaybeyoudo!)

Martha Martha Martha

I stumbled across Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts a couple of weeks ago, and it just so happens that I had also recently stumbled across Julie and Julia.

This project invented itself, posthaste.

CrazyCraftyCake will hitherto begin working its way through the alphabet, one crafty letter at a time, posting pictures and writing pretentious sentences along the way.

P.S. We're not angling for a movie deal. We just like making crafts.