There is a dizzying array available – if you run out of options in the bookstores, check Etsy. You can also buy decks of affirmation cards, inspiration cards, insight cards, and blessing cards, the extended family of oracle cards.

In June, I started the habit of drawing an oracle card each evening, reading its description in the book that generally comes with the deck, and thinking about it while going through a basic stretching routine. Sometimes that leads to a journal entry or an addition to my mini art journal; more often it does not, but even the least-applicable card gives me enough to think about that I stretch a bit longer than I would otherwise.

You can, of course, use oracle cards as journal prompts explicitly. Draw a card, and answer any or all of these questions:

1. Before you read the description, what does the card make you think of?
2. How well does the description correspond to the card? Where do you see the two especially well matched or especially discordant from each other?
3. Where could the message of the card apply to your life? How can you maneuver it into fitting some aspect of your life, if it doesn’t seem to as written?
4. In your life, is there an abundance of or a need for the elements outlined in the card? If the message is one of advice or divination, can you argue both in support of the message and against the message?

For a few weeks after getting into using oracle cards, I came up with a flood of card and deck ideas of my own. For a while I thought “This is my medium!” It slowed, though, and completing a good oracle deck is a lot of work – a lot of cards must be chosen and designed, and the descriptions must be drafted and reworked. However, you can make test cards or simple decks really quickly and easily. (And I am still working toward some completed oracle decks of my own.)

The easiest way to make your own cards is with blank index cards. You can use 4″ x 6″ cards for a large deck (though with index cards this size feels a little flimsy), cut the cards down – I’ve cut them into halves, quarters, even eighths! – or use cards that are already smaller. 3″ x 5″ index cards would be a reasonable size for a deck of oracle cards. Decorate one side of the cards to be the back – the techniques I listed for simple art journaling could all apply here. Typically you would want the backs to all match, but for test cards I have only been making them match thematically. I have a set that are (almost) all watercolor crayon resist, and a set that are all just filled in with colored pencil, and two sets that are watercolor-only. If you’re cutting apart large index cards, you can decorate a lot of backs in a short amount of time.

If you paint, the paper will probably get a little bumpy. Let it dry for 24 hours and then iron it, no steam, with a piece of blank paper between the paint and the iron. I found that even 24 hours later there was still a good amount of wet paint hiding in there to come off on the paper! I’m going to reuse my pressing sheets until I think of some way to use them as art in their own right.

So far I have handwritten the fronts of the cards, but my printer can print onto 4″ x 6″ paper, so I’ve got the option to print them. I have ideas for sturdier cards once my decks are more finished – the heaviest cardstock my printer can manage, and then cut it down into cards. I believe you could get 4 “full-sized” cards out of one sheet of letter-sized cardstock, or 6 small-but-not-mini cards (oracle decks are usually significantly larger than playing cards, but not always and it’s certainly not a requirement). I even have corner-rounding punches to make them nice and fancy. That process is a good while in the future, though!

Decks shown in photos:
First photo, left: Animal Kin Oracle by Sarah Wilder
First photo, right: Journey of Love Oracle, by Alana Fairchild (card meanings), Rassouli (card art), and Richard Cohn (poetry included in guidebook)
Second photo, left: Oracle of Mystical Moments, by Catrin Well-Stein
Second photo, right: Oracle of Visions, by Ciro Marchetti

The post Oracle Cards appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I’ve kept adding roughly a page a week to the notebook. Here are some materials and techniques that I’ve used:

1. Magazine, catalog, and other clippings – the cover of my tiny notebook is actually out of a credit card offer, and the ampersand in the photo below is out of a newsletter from my health insurance company.
2. Printouts from the internet – sometimes I look up a specific image that I want (since I’m unlikely to draw it to my satisfaction!), and sometimes an image crosses my path that’s worth hanging on to.
3. Stickers – I especially like letter stickers because I have limited skills with hand-lettering, but any stickers with suitable symbols or messages are welcome.
4. Crayon resist watercolor – write a message in light-colored crayon (assuming you’re using white paper), and then paint over it with very wet watercolor. Makes a mess of neighboring pages but a really nice effect; slide waxed paper underneath the page you’re painting to protect the next ones down. If you can go really wet, put drops of paint onto wet paper and the crayon marks will (imperfectly) contain them as they spread. The photo below is that effect, done on index cards.
5. Sharpie with colored pencil background – the permanent marker will lay down enough color that you can color in the background afterward with just about any colors and still be able to read it.
6. “Crayon resist markers” – this doesn’t really work the same way as with paint, but you can write with crayon and color over it with markers and get a somewhat similar effect.
7. Just writing, but with colorful pens – I have a set of gel pens I’m mildly obsessed with (Pilot G-2 Metallics), so sometimes I just write whatever it is I’m recording with them.
8. Marked-up writing – however your message is recorded, you can underline, circle, put arrows to, or otherwise highlight the key words with doodling.

I keep some newspaper and waxed paper with my art supplies to protect neighboring pages and my desk from my various experiments. None of my art supplies are “artist quality”; most are Crayola products aimed at grade schoolers.

I think my problem before was two pieces: overly high expectations for what I could/should produce, and expecting to just know what to put into the art journal. You see pictures online of people who art journal extensively and they appear to fill two facing pages of a large sketchbook every day with renditions of the thoughts and events of their lives — that’s not going to be me, and I should recognize that! Two-dimensional art has never been my medium, and I’m not going to suddenly know how to draw or paint by magic; I’ve also never maintained a diary for more than two months at a time, so why would it suddenly be easier to maintain one that requires a lot more effort?

For me, art journaling is more about making things that stand out in my mind also stand out on paper – and I don’t have two pages a day of that kind of content.

In fact, for a long time I had very little of that content. I have found, however, that adding “non-art” journaling to my life – which is still not diary-style, and about which more in future posts – has created the contents to put into the art journal. Funny, that – taking time specifically to think about my life has allowed me to articulate the things I want to remind myself of. Kind of a big duh but it was only clear to me in hindsight!

The post First Steps into Art Journaling appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Sources for recipes (immediate sources – none of them indicate they are the originators) are listed with links; it’s been long enough since I saved these originally that several links have died and now point to the Internet Archive.

A little English-to-English translation: “cornstarch” = “cornflour” and “white glue” = “PVA glue” (= “school glue”).

Clay Recipes: The Winners

There were two recipes that came out head and shoulders above the rest. They are the only two on this list I will ever make again.

First Place: Cold Porcelain

(Puffy Little Things, Mashia Crafts)

This is the best homemade crafting clay of all the recipes I tried. It allows fairly intricate shaping, is resistant to cracking while drying, and doesn’t leave residue on your hands. You pay for those qualities with the amount of work to make it, the fact that includes non-edible (though still non-toxic) ingredients, and that it dries to a yellowish color.

Ingredients: 1 cup each white glue and cornstarch, 1 tbsp each lemon juice and baby oil; may substitute lime juice or vinegar for lemon juice and cooking or mineral oil for baby oil.

Instructions: Mix glue and cornstarch, then mix in oil and lemon juice. Microwave in 15-30 second intervals, stirring thoroughly in between, until there are no wet areas anywhere. It is possible to overcook this, so shorten the microwave times as you go along. Knead smooth and leave overnight in a sealed bag. Both sites recommend wearing hand lotion to make the clay easier to work, both for kneading and when you sculpt with it, but if it’s sufficiently cooked that’s not strictly necessary.

Testing Notes: I’ve made this recipe four times now, and the instructions above are the result of my testing, not directly from either of the sites. The mixing instructions are to avoid lumps, and the real restriction is: don’t mix the lemon juice directly into the dry cornstarch. This recipe also does not reduce well – I made it successfully with 3/4 cup each of glue and cornstarch, but if you get down to 1/3 cup each it is nearly impossible to cook it enough without overcooking it into yellow rubberiness.

The two sites give different proportions for the oil and lemon juice – one of them says 2 tablespoons apiece when using a cup each of glue and cornstarch. In my testing I found that made it more difficult to cook it thoroughly, though I must admit I didn’t give it a completely fair trial. When I reduced to 3/4 cup I did not bother reducing the oil and lemon juice.

The blog instructions say to cook for 3 rounds, but my clay was never finished in that little time. The version with 3/4 cup of glue took a good 8 rounds or so; I never did it for more than 20 seconds, though, and if I’d begun with a couple of 30 second rounds it might have taken fewer total. I was concerned about overcooking it, but when you’re using a larger volume that is not as big of a risk.

Stir your hands off in between cooking rounds! This will avoid overcooking some parts while other parts are still wet, and will mean you need little to no kneading at the end.

My 3/4 cup version was the most successful of any, and although it may have been slightly on the soft side, it was workable, and didn’t stick (much). I made a few items, wrapped up some leftovers, and left them for a little over two weeks, and it was still completely usable.

Items made with cold porcelain dry very smooth and rigid, and paint easily with acrylics. The photo above is all from the earlier testing rounds; there are photos below of the final batch, including of unpainted clay. The dry items are quite sturdy – long thin pieces can be broken, but even thin flat pieces are resilient. I tried hard to break the oval-shaped “love” item in the photo above and was unable to.

Cleanup: I used a cheap plastic storage container to make this, because I didn’t want to be microwaving glue in something I would then prepare food in. I was pleased at how clean it came, though – once it dried I was able to flake most of the clay residue off, and the rest washed away easily. I also used plastic knives to mix, and broke two in the process, so the next time I make it I will find something metal or wood to mix with and just designate it a crafting implement.

Other Notes: The recipes below are given in parts, but I gave this in measurements instead for simplicity – it would be 1 part each lemon juice and baby oil, 16 or 8 parts each white glue and cornstarch, depending on the version. The Puffy Little Things tutorial has a section on troubleshooting at its end. Etsy New York has a variation they call homemade polymer clay with different proportions but the same ingredients, cooked on the stove; I did not test that one.

Second Place: Cornstarch and Baking Soda

(found all over: Southern As Biscuits, Growing a Jeweled Rose, Show Tell Share (with reduced water), De Tout Et De Rien)

This is the best play clay. Compared to cold porcelain it is far quicker and easier to make, all ingredients are edible and very inexpensive, and it dries very white. What kept it out of first? I was unable to find a way to prevent many items from cracking as they dried. The clay also leaves a powdery residue on your hands when you sculpt with it, and has a baking soda smell that I find unpleasant.

Ingredients: 2 parts cornstarch, 3 parts water, 4 parts baking soda.

Instructions: Cook and stir till the consistency of mashed potatoes, cool under damp towel, knead smooth on a cornstarch-dusted surface.

Testing Notes: This clay’s popularity is understandable: it’s easy to make and to work with. I have made it three times now. Use medium-low heat and stir frequently, scraping the sides and bottom of your pot. You want it fairly dry – not on the softer side of the mashed-potato spectrum. If you leave it softer it will be stickier to work with and curl more in the drying process.

If you cook it a little drier you can actually skip the cornstarch-dusted surface for the kneading step (in fact the kneading can be postponed until it’s fully cooled and you’re ready to work with it).

If I were really being careful with this I would throw the dry ingredients into a sifter and sift them into the pot – there are generally some little lumps when I make it, and sifting (and pre-mixing) the cornstarch and baking soda would probably help with that.

Items made with this clay dry with a white, powdery surface. Powdery in texture, that is – nothing comes off on your fingers when you handle dry items. It paints just about as well as cold porcelain; you can see items from my first two batches above and from the last batch below, unpainted. Items with this clay are slightly less sturdy than cold porcelain – I was able to break all of the “love” items in the photo – but still pretty resilient. Undercooked (wetter) clay seems to lead to more brittle results.

Cleanup: I used a stainless-steel pot and had trouble cleaning the residue off until I filled it with water and added a generous helping of white vinegar; after a little soak, it still needed the sponge but came right off.

Other Notes: Sand clay is a variation on this (these ingredients plus sand, with proportionally more cornstarch) that I have not tried.

What follows is general notes on air dry clay – specifically the two above but likely to translate to others as well – and a rundown of the other four recipes I tried and heartlessly rejected.

General Air Dry Clay Notes

The Drying Process

As your clay dries, it loses water volume, which is the source of the cracking and curling. There is no getting around the fact that items will shrink as they dry – you just have to take that into account, for instance making the sides of a bowl taller than you ultimately want them to be. The photos here are of cornstarch and baking soda clay.

You can reduce curling in two ways: by making the clay drier to begin with (this helps a lot in the cornstarch and baking soda case), and by helping the items dry more evenly. Setting them on a piece of paper towel instead of wax paper or plastic wrap to dry seems to be enough to make a big difference; lightly covering them with another piece of paper towel may help a bit more. If you do that, after 24 hours or so shift the items around – the cornstarch and baking soda will leave a slightly damp spot and the cold porcelain will stick a bit (but not enough to tear away any paper toweling). Having a double layer of paper toweling underneath larger items, especially with corn starch and baking soda clay, also helps. My photos above are of my tests of drying cornstarch and baking soda items uncovered (upper left) and covering them with wax paper (upper right) and paper towel (bottom).

Cracking, on the other hand, is a more difficult question. Cold porcelain is not prone to cracking, but cornstarch and baking soda clay is very prone to cracking. Sifting the dry ingredients to mix them and remove lumps should help, and items you have carefully smoothed the surfaces of are likely to crack less. Thinner items are also more resilient – my little rods to test curling didn’t crack, for instance. I tried sandwiching some pieces between paper towels (both a single layer on each side and a double layer on each side) which doesn’t hurt, but it’s not clear to me how much it helped to prevent cracking – those pieces are shown above. The first two shots are of partly-dried items, one of each kind of clay in each picture (cold porcelain on the right). The last shot is fully dry, and I wanted to include both photos of those little star dishes because of how the cold porcelain changed shape as it shrank, and how the two clays shrink in different ways.

Coloring

You have several options for coloring your clay. After it dries you can paint it, of course, and to color the clay itself the blog posts suggest mixing food coloring into it; I imagine you could also use watercolor paint. I have not tried either.

You can mix in spices as well, which I did try. Doing so changes the texture, of course, making it drier and potentially gritty. Cloves will give you a cool medium brown; paprika will give you a nice brick color; ground mustard gives a lovely bright yellow – at least when wet! They wash out a little when they dry; those are shown in the first picture above in the cornstarch and baking soda clay. I did not try everything in the cabinet, in particular staying away from hot pepper and from anything that’s more like a fleck of leaf than a powder. It seemed to me when I tried it out that it took more spice to make the same color difference in the cold porcelain than in the cornstarch and baking soda clay, but since glue dries translucent, the color got richer as the item dried. I failed to take a real “before” but the second picture above is of chai-spice-laden cold porcelain partially dried – you can see the drier edge is darker than the wetter middle.

As long as you use paint that doesn’t create a seal of sorts you can paint it while it’s still wet, as well. Pan watercolors, in particular, shouldn’t interfere with the clay drying process.

Sealing

If your items will be handled a lot or might get wet, you should seal them with something waterproof. If the item is small enough, you can use clear nail polish. You’ll find water-based polyeurethanes among the acrylic paints in your local crafting store, which are a good choice (or you can use paints that themselves are marked for outdoor use). Mod Podge also has a “dishwasher-safe” formula. I was introduced to it by someone who said they like it because it never remains tacky after drying, as Mod Podge can sometimes do. I don’t know whether it’s truly dishwasher safe but it should surely protect your items from humidity and hands.

No matter how well coated with a sealant, though, I would not recommend putting air dry clay where it will just sit wet.

Clay Recipes: The Also-Rans

Salt and Flour

(Pottery On The Wheel)

Ingredients: 1 part each salt and hot water, 2 parts flour, small amount vegetable oil if desired (1 tbsp if a part is a cup).

Instructions: Mix thoroughly and then knead thoroughly once cool enough. May be baked, if desired, at 250 for 50 minutes or 300 for 40 minutes (latter browns the pieces).

Testing Notes: I made this on a hot rainy day, with the oil, and it was VERY soft though not sticky. That batch, unfortunately, I failed to work with for a few weeks and it turned brown and leaked some kind of fluid all around itself in the plastic wrap. The next batch I noticed was already a little brown compared to the other clays. That was on a day that was neither hot not rainy and it was soft and sticky-feeling, but not in a gunk-up-your-hands way. However, the following day it was too fluid to do anything with.

Salt and Cornstarch

(two sets of proportions, from the blog of Factory Direct Craft and a book called Meaning in Crafts, by Edward L. Mattil)

Ingredients: Blog: 1 part each water and cornstarch, 3 parts salt. Book: 2 parts cornstarch, 3 parts water, 4 parts salt.

Instructions: Blog: Boil water, dissolve salt into it gradually, mix cornstarch in gradually. Remove from heat, knead smooth once cool. Book: Mix all ingredients in the top of a double boiler and heat, stirring constantly, until the consistency of bread dough. Remove from the pot and let cool; knead for several minutes before using.

Testing Notes: I tried the blog recipe twice and the book recipe once. The upshot here was that the salt never dissolved for me. The “clay” was gritty and sticky and stiff, and although it was also sparkly, it didn’t dry sparkly!

Glue and Cornstarch

(Nurture Store)

Ingredients: 1 part white glue, 2 parts cornstarch.

Instructions: Mix and knead.

Testing Notes: This was underwhelming. It was simultaneously gummy and crumbly, and while some additional kneading helped with that, it still dried out very fast and became powdery. It was stiff and hard to work with, and while it was very smooth and white while working with it, it dried very off-white (of course, white glue doesn’t dry white) and despite my efforts had tiny but visible lumps of cornstarch. If you decide to try this I would recommend sifting the cornstarch, mixing it a portion at a time into the glue, kneading throughly, and using immediately. It will stick to whatever you lay it on to dry so make sure that’s something like a plastic bag or plastic wrap that can easily be peeled off.

Glue, Flour, and Cornstarch

(Impish DIY)

Ingredients: 1 part each white glue and water, 2 parts each flour and cornstarch.

Instructions: Combine wet and dry ingredients separately and then mix together and knead on floured surface.

Testing Notes: WOW was this soft. Like overwet bread dough soft. And sticky as all get out – I could hardly knead it. The next day when I opened it up it was quite smooth, but far too wet to do anything with.

Hey, you made it to the end! You should get a prize. I don’t have a prize for you, but you should get one.

The post Homemade Air Dry Clay appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

My craft night standards are strict:

• Anyone has to be able to do the craft successfully, without needing to possess any specific art/craft skills, and even if they are not having a super creative-feeling night.
• Someone who really wants to engage in the craft should be able to do so – nothing so simple that you can’t sink your teeth into it – but no one should *have* to focus tightly on the craft in order to do it. I want people to be able to come and not do the craft and still have a good time.
• The practical restrictions: it has to be doable in an evening, so no lengthy dry time between steps (say), and without any expensive materials or specialized tools. Ideally it should be doable mostly from stash and salvaged materials.
• And finally, the aesthetic considerations: the final product needs to appeal to a wide variety of humans (or have the customizability to do so). Nothing that only fits a certain rustic-crafty decor, for instance.

I thought the decoupaged notebooks were a resounding success, so here’s the lowdown.

Decoupaged Notebooks: Process

Materials On Hand

• Notebooks – I thought I would be able to find plain-brown-cover Moleskine knockoffs all over the place, but that was not true. I ended up with mini composition notebooks (3.25″ x 4.5″) from the dollar store and larger notebooks (4″ x 6″ and 5.75″ x 8.25″) from TJ Maxx. They worked just fine, and in fact having something already on the notebooks made for some fun design options – “the future is” on the largest notebook above was pre-existing printing.
• Magazines, origami paper, and of course scissors – Originally I planned to get out scrapbook paper also, but it was too much. A big stack of magazines, catalogs, and tourism brochures, plus a few varieties of solid origami paper, seemed to be enough options to keep everyone happy. This gives me a whole different selection to provide at a future papercraft night.
• Glue sticks and Mod Podge – I prefer to glue with glue sticks and seal with Mod Podge, just, you know, FYI, but a lot of people glued with Mod Podge and it works fine.
• Foam brushes and a wide-mouthed mason jar with some water in it – the jar for putting used brushes in so they could wait for cleaning (which did not happen until the following day).
• 1/4″-wide ribbon and tacky glue – for bookmarks. Cut a piece of ribbon twice the height of your notebook plus 1-2″ and glue it along the inside back cover, close to the spine, so the excess sticks out at the top. That excess then folds down to be the bookmark, and you can cut a little v-shaped notch in the end to help keep it from fraying.
• Wax paper – to slide inside the covers of your notebook to protect your pages from the glue and Mod Podge. I pre-cut a bunch of pieces and I think that worked well.
• Miscellaneous buttons, beads, and small fabric squares – I had these around so I put them out, but I think one person used some fabric and the rest of the items were untouched.

Setup

We set up a folding table in the living room and spread the magazines and blank notebooks out on it. I covered the dining table with two layers of newspaper and set everything else out there (including the origami paper, so it wouldn’t get lost in the heap of other paper). Things moved between the two tables, but overall I think it was useful to have the separation, and people circulated during the evening depending on what they were working on.

14 people came and roughly half decorated notebooks, with many of those people decorating more than one. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves whether or not they decorated.

Lessons?

I would have started looking for notebooks earlier had I realized how much less available they are than I thought they would be. In particular, I only had 3 of the largest size notebooks, and I would have liked to have more.

I would not bother putting out buttons and beads if I did this again, just save them for a different craft they are better suited to.

I might have done a sample notebook, perhaps in particular a half-finished sample notebook, to leave on the table and demo the use of the wax paper and how to make a bookmark. I didn’t want to be in teacher mode and hover over the tables to give instructions, so that would have helped show some things, but it also wasn’t a real problem to have that information come later or not at all.

This worked really well overall, and there’s nothing significant I would have changed! It was a great choice for Craft Night 1.

The post Craft Night 1: Decoupaged Notebooks appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

When I was a kid we got weeples as fundraising incentive prizes: small puffballs with eyes, feet, antennae, ribbons with messages on them, and sometimes other accessories. When I remembered those, I knew I’d found the perfect achievement badge.

So I made them!

…but how do you make your own weeples?

Puffballs and eyes are obvious, and I had learned sometime prior that artificial flower stamens were commonly used for antennae. The rest needed some research and development.

This got to be a very long post. More details than you likely require follow, behind a cut.

Feet and Proportions

The feet of commercial weeples are stickers, so I thought sticker felt would be the best material for mine. Hand-cutting for the quantity of feet I needed was not going to happen, though, so enter a big fancy paper punch: Fiskars In Bloom Squeeze Punch (Extra Large). The plastic handles are not equal to the task of punching out sticker felt, but if you dismantle it you can use the actual punch, which is metal, as a die. Just add a hammer and something underneath you can smack an irregular metal object into.

Each flower makes two pairs of feet. Pick the worst petal and cut it out, then cut the remainder in half.

The punch seems to be getting dull with use, though it is still usable; on some of the colors of felt the cut is very shaggy. I tried sharpening it by punching aluminum foil, following a recommendation I found online, and it didn’t seem to make a difference. It was heavy duty aluminum foil, and I may try again with regular, but I don’t have high hopes. As of this writing I’ve punched enough feet for over 120 weeples, however, so I won’t be too upset if I have to replace the punch eventually.

My five colors of sticker felt are each less than half used, as well. They are stiff sticker felt – I tried the softer kind and it didn’t cut cleanly, just stretched, partially cut, and gummed up the punch. Pipe cleaners are great for cleaning out punches, incidentally.

The feet seemed too small for a 1.5″ pom pom, so I switched my operation to 1″ pom poms. The 1″-across measurement is a fantasy, but they look proportional and still accommodate the two smallest sizes of googly eyes available. I bought the googly eyes and sticker felt at my brick and mortar Jo-Ann Fabrics, the flower stamens on Amazon, and the pom poms on CreateForLess.com. I found a recommendation online for Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue, specifically for gluing pom poms, and it has worked well. I haven’t done a comparison with other adhesives, but after holding the join in place for a little while I haven’t had any problems with pieces tipping or sliding.

Ribbons and Assembly

I had found multiple blog posts online that talked about using printable iron-ons with ribbon, though all the printable iron-ons I found specified they were only compatible with cotton fabric. I tried anyway, and it did not work for me at all – between throwing away ribbons that didn’t come out and the fussiness of the ones that did, it seemed like doing the work of 10 ribbons for every 1 that came out.

Next I looked into custom-printed ribbon, but the only source for 3/8″ ribbon (since no one printed on 1/4″) offered only one font and cost $15 per roll. I would need a new roll for each badge, bringing the total to $150 (plus shipping). Nope.

Instead, I got printable fabric, specifically June Tailor Sew-In Colorfast Fabric Sheets. After doing the colorfast treatment, I blotted on dilute white glue with a foam brush to keep the fabric from fraying when I cut it into ribbons. I didn’t measure my glue and water, but the mixture was definitely white, while also less opaque than skim milk.

I let the fabric dry flat, rotary-cut it into strips between 1/4″ and 3/8″ wide (closer to the latter), and then cut each end off at an angle and cut between each set of words, roughly halfway, at an angle. The fabric was flexible but solid, seeming in no danger of fraying; it may have been safe even without glue, but I wanted these to be very handling-proof.

Incidentally, to lay out my printing I used Scribus, creating a landscape-oriented letter-sized page split into 4 columns with no side margins. Each column was 2.75″ wide, and I centered the text within them. That created a de facto margin against the short sides of the paper, which was also the tail of the ribbon that hides under the weeple body or trails off after the message. If you wanted longer messages I’d recommend laying out your text so you can have the text close to the tail of the ribbon, keeping the total length near 3″.

At this point I had the materials for your basic weeple. Assembly is shown above: glue ribbon to feet and eyes to pom pom; next fold, trim, and glue antennae to pom pom; finally glue pom pom to feet. I found that order made it easier to get the eyes and antennae positioned how I wanted them. Mass-production makes this easier by building in time for the glue to dry after each step!

Accessories

For the first six badges, basic weeples were great. For the last four, I wanted to do something even more special. Accessories? My searches for tiny hats came up dry and I couldn’t figure out a way to make them, especially not in mass quantities.

My sister visited a sort of craft thrift store and found small craft wings, and in the ensuing text conversation I typoed that as “wigs” – two ideas right there!

After some looking online I had a few other ideas: earphones (paper, but how to cut?), sunglasses (paper, find a punch?), and clown hat (paper cone with tiny pom pom on top). I thought I’d do wizard hats (cone of appropriate paper), but that seemed likely to be finicky, and meanwhile I found some variegated pom poms that would be special and much less work. I settled on the remaining “special” weeple having a crown, which I figured could be a flat paper punch out of sparkly paper.

And indeed, I punched a bunch of crowns out of sparkly gold paper. Nothing to say about that.

The wings turned out to be the hard accessory. The purchased wings were too big, so I thought I could punch some. I stiffened felt with a dilute glue bath (as for the ribbons, but more soaked), and then a second time because after the first time it wasn’t stiff enough to get into the butterfly paper punch. I got some partial cuts out of the punch and thought perhaps it needed to be turned into a die to use with a hammer, like the flower punch. Wrong answer! That made it worse; part of the felt would just stretch and “smear,” and it become very difficult to remove from the punch.

Ultimately I traced the best of the first round of butterflies and hand-cut the rest. Since I didn’t need nearly as many as feet, that was fine, but if I hadn’t already destroyed the paper punch I’d have switched to construction paper for the wings.

The wigs were variegated embroidery floss held together by a sewn “part.” I unrolled two skeins of different colorways, put them together and doubled them three times, for a total of sixteen strands. To make sewing feasible, I cut strips of light paper to put underneath, marking every 2 1/2 inches for my seams and using a short stitch. I cut the floss and paper together and only trimmed the wigs later if on the weeple they looked really uneven.

My paper was not as long as the embroidery floss so I had to add a second piece. To avoid sewing through two layers of paper, I lined up the markings at each strip’s end and pinned, then sewed the next seam over before trimming one side of the paper and sewing the skipped seam.

After the wig glue was thoroughly dry, I used a wet foam brush to try to “comb” the wigs, or at least encourage them to hang downward instead of sticking out.

Here’s the ultimate materials list:

• stiff sticker felt (not the flexible kind)
• big flower paper punch, dismantled, plus hammer
• scissors (I used my paper scissors for everything)
• printable colorfast fabric
• page layout program, inkjet printer
• white glue
• rotary cutter and mat
• 1-inch pom poms
• glue-on googly eyes in the two smallest available sizes
• artificial flower stamens
• Aleene’s Fast Grab Tacky Glue

And for accessories:

• wings: butterfly paper punch, construction paper or cardstock to punch, or felt to trace on and cut by hand
• wigs: variegated embroidery floss, lightweight paper, sewing machine and thread
• crowns: crown paper punch, sparkly cardstock

This was an adventure, to say the least, in both R&D and production. I have a dozen each of the first 3 prize weeples and 5 each of the remaining 7, plus one designated “prototype” of each so I can remember the color combinations and eye size/spacing. Now to see whether they’re as motivating as I hope they will be!

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Clearly before the protective strips of parchment were removed. Those bottles contain red and yellow icing for people to add to their slices.

The hubs did at least as much work on this as I did, I should say. I started with a Food Network cheeseburger cake “recipe”, though I couldn’t find a 2.5-quart bowl, only a 2-quart bowl, and we decided to make only the burger patty chocolate.

A couple of weeks ahead I did a dry run. I thought I would make a finished, decorated product, but I ended up only baking the cake. I used half a box of chocolate cake mix (1 layer) and a full box of vanilla cake mix (3 layers, which seemed annoyingly excessive at first but turned out to be the right amount).

I took photos with my phone for later reference so the next cake wouldn’t be so bottom-heavy – the top “bun” looked silly, like a little hat perched on top, and the bottom bun could lose up to half its thickness and still be fine. However – look! A burger!

At this point we also thought the bare cake for the bun looked nicer than the icing-covered version, though no icing meant no sesame seeds (rice krispies being the universal “hamburger cake sesame seeds” according to my research). That’s actually why we did the “condiments” – the lack of bun icing meant overall a low quantity of icing, and we thought it would be nice for people to be able to add more if they wanted.

The day of the wedding we worked on the cake for SIX HOURS. I did not expect this to be a six-hour cake, but we made a lot of icing and had to go out for more powdered sugar at one point.

Preparing and filling the pans: cut out circles of parchment paper on the regular pans, thorough vegetable shortening on the bowl (via paper towel). A lot more batter in the bowl this time around – two-thirds full. Note that the bowl will take a long time to bake and even the pans will take longer because of the full oven. The tomato slice will be quicker, but for everything else start with a 30 minute timer.

I leveled the chocolate layer on a plate, saving the crumbs so I could put icing around the outside and pat them on (a great idea from the Food Network version). Unfortunately I should have put parchment on the plate beforehand and I lost the middle of the layer when I flipped it onto the bottom bun. A lot of toothpicks and additional icing later and it was okay, but not stable – it kind of disintegrated on the way to the wedding. I was able to make it look all right but there is a reason there aren’t as many photos of the finished cake as there might be…

Flexible dough scraper with rounded edge: the perfect tool to get the top layer out of the bowl.

The hubs insisted on cheese, lettuce, and tomato, and fortunately we had a small-scale cake pan (in fact it was retrieved from the to-donate box, so good timing!). I baked a skinny cake layer and he soaked it in glaze-style icing (powdered sugar and milk, as opposed to the easy vanilla buttercream – plus cocoa powder as appropriate – of the rest). He colored all the icing, except the green which was commercial, and iced on the cheese and lettuce. It was a minor miracle when we added the tomato slice; suddenly it all looked right.

We’ll close with a failed experiment – frilly toothpicks. I cut strips of fruit roll-ups into fringe and rolled them around the ends of bamboo skewers. I corn-starched one side of each strip but probably should have done both… on the way to the wedding they just solidified into a wad of gummy at the end of the skewers.

The post Hamburger cake! appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Well, not literally; I trimmed the edges this morning. But essentially.

Just a lark, slopped together with lots of mod podge and minimal care. I intend to make more collages in the future, though, so I thought I’d record what went well here and what I would change if I were doing a collage like this to be a serious piece.

The Good:

• I laid my sketch pad paper out on waxed paper and glued magazine clippings off the edge. The waxed paper meant I could turn it over and see the edges for trimming this morning without having to try to peel it off in advance.
• I had tons and tons of the little clippings. I kept cutting them even though I was sure I would end up with something like twice as many as I needed. Nope, I needed all of them.
• I saved out one of each version of the key to make sure they were all represented on the top layer.

The Not So Good:

• I couldn’t get a sweet spot between too much and not enough Mod Podge in its role as adhesive. If it was a thick enough layer not to dry immediately it wrinkled the paper and made it translucent. If I were doing this “for real,” I would … well, I’d be a lot more careful in a lot of ways! But in particular, I wouldn’t use Mod Podge as the primary adhesive. Instead, I’d use a glue stick to attach one round of clippings (probably over half) with minimal overlap but hopefully good coverage. Then I would dab on a thin layer of Mod Podge, covering the whole page, and let it dry. Intermediate layers of Mod Podge should mean I wouldn’t have to worry about making sure the glue stick was all the way out to the corners of every clipping. Repeat with the rest of the non-reserved clippings, and finally with the reserved clippings. Then probably one more layer of Mod Podge, thicker now because the previous coatings should protect the paper from wrinkling.

Quite a bit gained from following that moment of silly inspiration!

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It started with the silver notebook. I got it for free at work but it had a big ol’ vendor logo across the front. I wanted to cover it, and pulled out a magazine clipping from my stash – but my Mod Podge was nowhere to be found (it probably dried up). After procuring new Podge, I covered that, but then thought, “what other notebooks could I decorate?”

I wasn’t so keen on the tan plaid notebook to begin with; it came in a set. The chickens, from the back cover of a calendar, dress it up nicely, despite one likely being 90 degrees incorrectly positioned. The gopher-y creature was the front of a birthday card received from my parents years ago. I liked that notebook fine, but the whole back cover still has the zig-zag lines so there’s no real loss.

At that point I thought my supply had dried up – my remaining notebooks were too attractive to decoupage some random paper onto. Then I had a meeting and took the pinkish notebook – and realized I’d been using it for two years and was only maybe 1/4 through. Boring! Addition time. I do wish I’d trimmed out some of the white between the leaves near the bottom of the image, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Decoupage: highly recommended for instant gratification.

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In 2012 I cut out triangles of paper to glue together into a dodecahexaflexagon (documented in a post about a smaller flexagon). I also found instructions: scanned typed instructions from David Pleacher, and instructions incorporating triangle orientation from Kathryn Huxtable.

A dodecahexaflexagon is a 12-faced (the dodeca-, as you will know if you’ve read The Phantom Tollbooth, or been a long-time reader of this blog), 6-sided (hexa-) flexagon; each face is made from 6 equilateral triangles. I had cut each face from a different scrapbook paper, and I had small squares of white paper to serve as hinges.

In the summer of 2014 I dug out the paper pieces and started gluing them together. I glued one side of the strip together in an evening, but didn’t get back to the other side until now. The second side was quite easy, since on side 1 the faces were scattered around and on side two they were much more orderly.

There was some confusion in the folding and a length of time before I found all 12 faces. I didn’t know the trick! To flex, you’ll pinch the hexagon so that three of the lines between triangles are outward corners and three are inward corners (see photo below). Which edges are inward and which outward will change which face you see next (in some cases you’ll only be able to flex in one configuration). To see all of them, you can simply pinch out the same corner over and over again, only rotating to a neighboring corner if it is impossible to flex the first one. I found hanging on to the same pair of faces with one hand, doing the rest of the work with the other, was the best way to enact that. It is awkwardly thick and I’m glad I spaced the triangles apart a bit with the paper squares.

Each face is connected to at least two additional faces. I haven’t explored thoroughly enough to know whether I found the full set of options, but I made a little map and had each face connected to 2, 4, or 6 others, with complicated interconnection. This lines up with a diagram on Kathryn Huxtable’s general flexagon page, where I also learned about the “pinch one corner repeatedly” method of finding all the faces.

Want more flexagons? Harold McIntosh has an interesting read about the history and theory of flexagons, and Vi Hart’s videos and more (the first of which inspired my flexagon crafting) are all on a hexaflexagon page of puzzles.com. Woolly Thoughts, a bastion of mathematics-inspired crafting, has a page of crochet and knit flexagon cushions.

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The warm colors were “Ultra White” soap and the cool colors were mango butter soap. To use up more of my years-old soapmaking supplies I made a second dozen bars simply by swirling oatmeal and cocoa butter soaps together in the mold. That went less than smoothly, though – the cocoa butter soap had a low melting point, and after ten or fifteen minutes I went to put the mold in the freezer and instead splashed liquid soap across the rainbow bars (the three pictured are the only ones that were unscathed) and kitchen floor. Grr.

The bars aren’t too diminished in size, though. And at least what I got on the rainbow soap was just more soap.

Incidentally I had a problem with my caching plugin setup that likely kept everyone from seeing the new pattern and tutorial catalog onsite when I posted about it. I’ve fixed it, so please check it out and let me know what you think!

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