"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

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.