Steam Punk House Number Time!

We have been living in our house for just over a year now, and we bought numbers to go on the front at the very begining.  Yet, they never seemed to make it actually onto the house!  I think it was becuase I wasn't very satisfied with them.  They were pretty, but there was a lot of room on the plate and that made it look...well...naked!  Finally last month I had a plan.  I wanted to steam punk our numbers!

So at the begining of last month I ordered some small watch type gears on Ebay.  Then I waited.  They had to come from Florida, so I waited and continued to wait.  Finally last week they arrived and I had a project to do for Sunday!

Basically, I took our exisiting numbers and then placed the gears in a diagonal pattern across them.  This filled up some of the empty space, but did not fill it up so much that a) it looked too cluttered and b) you can still read the numbers.  Once I was happy with it, I started to glue the gears down.  Initially I figured I would hot glue them all, but I started off with the first one and the glue dried so quickly I couldn't place them in time!  So I settled for super glue.  It dried quickly as well, but I could still place them as I wanted.  Although some of them did "fall" where I didn't want them.  Once that happened, they were there for good.  So I just worked around those ones and varried my design as I went.

All in all I am happy with the results.  Not sure why this picture is sideways, but it won't rotate for me!  You get the idea though.  It is very simple, subtle and it's exactly what I wanted.  It wasn't too difficult either, but it did consume more time than anticipated.  I also had a casulty of a super glue finger print on my brand new nails!  Luckily that stuff dries clear!

Easter dinner!

Last weekend we hosted Easter dinner for my parents.  I wanted it to be a bit special, so apart from the normal cleaning, I was also able to implement a very nice table setting and two new recipes.

The first thing I did was set up the dining room table.  I used the light blue table cloth we have and placed my bridal bouquet vases in the middle.  I then took some light blue daisies I got at the dollar store and cut off eight (two per person). 

Taking wine glasses, I placed two daisies underneath each dome.  This created an "under glass" look.  Once I had them all positioned like I wanted them in front of each person, I placed tea lights on the bases of the glasses.  This finished off the look and I was quite happy with the elegant simplicity of it!

I am all about getting as much as possible done before the guests arrive rather than trying to talk and do things at the same time.  The dessert I chose was something that could be baked the morning of and then left to sit until the time came to serve; pumpkin chocolate chip bars.  These were delicious, although I found them to be a bit on the salty side.  I would probably reduce the salt by half when I make them again.  I also ran out of cinnamon, so added a couple of dashes more of allspice and nutmeg (freshly grated of course).  This didn't seem to effect the taste as they tasted just like pumpkin pie...well, without the pie part and with a ton of chocolate chips in them!

The next new recipe I tired was an amazing appetizer.  Very simple to do and very tasty.  I took Asparagus spears and wrapped each one in a slice of prosciutto.  I then took that and wrapped the whole thing up in a single sheet of phyllo pastry.  I covered a pan with oil and the tops of the phyllo in oil and threw them into a 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  I checked them at this point and found they weren't golden enough for my liking, so I had them go back in for another 5 minutes.  They were so delicious!  Perfect balance of salty, crispy and sweetness from the asparagus.

Our main course consisted of my hubby's famous gnocchi and my Alfredo sauce.  Despite some technical difficulties (emergency flour run anyone?) they turned out fantastic.  The gnocchi were like little clouds of potato goodness and the Alfredo was a perfect balance of garlic, cream and cheese!

All in all I am happy with how everything turned out and despite my mom being sick, everyone seemed to have a great time!

Iphone case make over!

Last night I was bored and I needed something to do.  We had hung some pictures, but ran out of frames and hooks.  We also tried to do a project that we had started on the weekend, but I hadn't bought the right things to start it, so we were out of luck there.

I was sitting on the couch and was peeling the edges off my iPhone case that had started to come loose.  I had had the idea to cover it with comic pages awhile ago, and we had some left over from our picture craft, so I thought that it may be a good project to do in an evening.

I set about finding the right panels that I would want on my case.  This is easier said then done.  I needed to find pictures that I liked, but also that would fit!  After figuring out what I wanted and where I wanted them to go, I went to work mod podging them on.  I cut the panels as I went along so that they fit where I wanted and with what picture I wanted visible.  After all the panels were on and the whole case was covered, I cut out the hole in the case for the camera and smoothed the rough edges back onto the inside of the case.  This was actually quite easy as the comic paper was very thin.  I then coated both sides with two layers of Mod Podge.

It was at this point that I decided I wanted a smoother glossy finish for my case, so I used the Mod Podge Gloss sealer and coated both sides of the case as well.

All in all I am extremely happy with the results.  I love my case and so does my hubby, who wants me to make him one too!

Repurposing an old picture

It was the long weekend this weekend and due to other plans and general chores, I hadn't had time to do anything particularly crafty.  Don't get me wrong, I did a bit of crocheting, but as much as I love it it doesn't soothe the crafting beast that lurks within me.  I was getting the shakes for the need to make something!

I had had a project in mind for some while now.  We had gotten a wood transfer painting of some fruit for our wedding 8 years ago and had only put it up in one of our many homes.  It was something that had to be in a kitchen or dining room and every place we have had, has had little to no space for something like that.  So it was always relegated to storage and moved from place to place. 

Last year at the Calgary Comic Expo, we got a bunch of prints signed by various artists/authors.  These too were regulated to storage with plans to frame them one day.  This is when the idea dawned on me.  I could paint the wood black and use my trusty Mod Podge to "frame" one of the prints myself!  I had also seen some things on Pinterest using old comic book pages to add a geeky flair to different items.  I thought this would be perfect for this project, providing more of a frame, rather than just the basic black.  I was discussing this with my hubby when he reminded me that he has a whole box of damaged comic books we could use!  We then decided this would be a perfect project to do together that afternoon.

We started out with spray painting the picture black.  This was easy since it was mostly black to begin with.  We just needed to cover the black and white picture part.  While this was drying we went to work finding which comic books we would be OK destroying.  After Mike gave his final approval on the pile we had made, we went to work cutting the panels.  I used my handy dandy paper cutter and Mike went to work with the scissors.

Once we had a good sized stack of panels, I grabbed the now dry painting and went to work Mod podging the panels down.  We tried to keep our favourite panels on the edges where we knew we would see them, and used various different angles and overlapped some of them to give us the look we were going for.  We then let them dry.  After that I added a single coat of Mod Podge to make sure everything was sealed down onto the wood.

Now, I had already decided which print I wanted to use a long time ago.  So I grabbed it and with Mike's help we Mod Podged it down onto the comic pages.  We used a weight to try and keep it as flat as possible and allowed it to dry.

Using the same technique I used for our wedding song lyrics, I then coated the comic pages and the print 3 times.  Making sure to allow drying time in between each coat.  There were quite a lot of bubbles underneath everything, but again taking from my experience, I knew most of these would work themselves out.  To help it along we waited for the last coat to dry and weighted the entire thing down again and left it over night.

All in all I am happy with our results, and we have a lot more comic panels, so I am already thinking up new projects to use them with!

Changes!

No you are not seeing things, I did change the name of my blog to Meg's Magnificent Marvels.  Because....well I like the alliteration!