And now for something completely different...........

Oddly and amazingly this didn't come off of Pinterest. The screens either came off of clearance racks at Hobby Lobby or from Walmart, and I don't think I paid more the $10 for any of them. I feel a little silly because I do have a Yudu machine, and I've never used it! The reason for that may simply be that it only comes with one emulsion sheet for the screens, and I don't want to have to continually clean the screen, I want to be able to keep my screens and re use them. Which is why I love the screens I've picked up, I've had my share of false starts and goof ups, I have to replace one of the screens from Walmart because of something dumb that I did.

Not a great picture, I know. This is a screen I got off the clearance rack at Hobby Lobby and been itching to try. Wasn't sure how well the three color print would come out, but it doesn't look to bad, I just wish I'd gotten more pink in it!

This is the screen that has to be replaced. The mistake was that I tried to do both
shirts back to back without cleaning the screen, the hope was that the paint would still be wet enough to not clog the screen. Wrong. At least it's not difficult and fairly inexpensive to replace.

Can We Say Ariadne is a total Anime/Sailor Moon Geek?

The heart in the left picture is actually a stencil I picked up at Michael's. But between the two the first thought that ran through my head was Sailor Moon. D'OH! My wish, that I was actually small enough to wear this shirt! 

Father's Day Gifts... from Pinterest

So for Father's Day, we decided to make homemade oil lamps for Steven. It was relatively easy to make, all you need is olive oil, lamp wicks (which I couldn't find at Michael's but ended up finding at Wal-Mart for 97 cents [go figure]), and two mason jars. The hardest part was getting the sticky from the price tags off the top of the jars.

I used a permanent marker to draw a line to show where I needed to cut the hole for the wick and then used two screw drivers (I couldn't find the hammer) and ran the large one across the line I drew a few times to "weaken" the metal and then used the small one to actually punch the hole by hitting the top of it with the large screw driver (kinda like a hammer and a nail).

I had a hard time getting the girls really into it but I was able to get them to hold the jars while I punched holes...

From what I have read online, you have to pull the wick up after you burn it to be able to relight it- since this one does not have a screw to pull the wick up, you have to do it yourself.
Here is the link from Pinterest http://putitinajar.com/craftarticle.php?id=1

I hope he enjoys it, it was relatively cheap to make around $3.50-4.00 (JoAnns) for both jars, 97 cents (WalMart) each for the Wicks, and $5.48 (WalMart) for the Olive Oil.

Pinterest posts and Demented Ideas

So while looking at Pinterest (the wonderful time killer that it is) I found a post from Craftster.org where some inventive person had taken Perler Beads. How many people remember these? I remember playing with these in elementary school, my mom loved them and I'm pretty sure that we had most if not all the boards you could get at that time (it was the 80's, there weren't that many). Anyway, they had taken the beads, put them in a cake pan, and melted them in the oven. In retrospect I may have used the wrong beads from what they were talking about but it didn't turn out so bad =)

This is the picture from Pinterest, looks pretty good. from looking at this and what I ended up with it would appear that I should have used Pony Beads and not Perler Beads. Perler Beads won't work as a wind chime because they have no sound. Next time I'll have to try it with this.

This is what I made, don't mind my cluttered work table, it's always this way. The gold parts are clock arms, I added a clock motor to the piece. The advantage to doing this with the perler beads is that once cool it would be infinently easier to put the hole in it, an exact-o knife did the trick here, with the pony beads it would have had to have been a drill.

Going into the oven........

20 mins later.

All in all it's a fairly simple process heat the oven to 400 and put the pan(s) in for about 20 mins. I heard a lot about fumes from the melting plastic, always make sure that you have proper ventilation! I had a window next to my stove open, but there wasn't much by way of fumes from the melting perler beads, I'm sure that's different with pony beads.