I made a leather wallet for my hubby!  He used a toy ray gun as inspiration and drew a couple images that I transferred to the leather.

I found out later that I was doing this wrong, but it worked for what I was doing right now.

I wish I had read more about diluting they dye, but too late now!!

I guess he gets lots of comments and compliments, so that works.  My favorite is the moon with it’s craters. I do wish the dyes weren’t $8 each, I might have gotten one more, but I couldn’t see spendig that for just a couple touches of color.

I saw on Pinterest someone had used Styrofoam bowls as diffusers on their camera. So, after a meal with Styrofoam  take out boxes, I made one for my little Sony.

Drew around the lens onto scrap paper, cut out a hole:

Testing the scrap on the lens – looks good:

Transfer hoe to Styrofoam:

Cut that out and tested on camera:

Random photo with no diffuser:

Diffuser cut out and on camera:

Random photo with diffuser:

Now, to try it on people!!

I wanted one of those lamps that spin around and cast light against the wall (like the lantern in Sleepy Hollow), but I didn’t like anything I saw online so I decided to make my own.

Bought a lamp at Goodwill:

Took it apart:

Put it back together with the light directly against the base:

Made a top with vents to allow for spinning:

First try-

Second try, which worked (this photo does not have the vents cut).  I also found that I couldn’t screw it down like one might do with a normal lamp shade. Instead, I taped a thumb tack to the vent and balanced the pin tip on the lampshade post-

Made a shade out of foamie. I thought paper would be too flammable and any metal would get too hot and burn little fingers-

This turned out to also be a poor choice – the foamie got hot, soft, and smelly with in seconds of the light being turned on, it was too heavy for the spinning action to happen, and light did not show on the walls in clear shapes (the rocket was too big and the bottom needed to be enclosed).

And, by now I have gotten tired and bored with this project, so it’s going to Goodwill!

My last post was nine months ago!  Sure, I had a lot of things come up since then:

The 45 day Epic Summer Train Trip (which also still has a lot of back-posting that needs to be done)…

Being proposed to quickly after returning home and then quickly coordinating a wedding…

Getting pregnant IMMEDIATELY after getting married…

Being a lazy pregnant lady and feeling overwhelmed with my day job…

I have done some projects, not nearly as many as I’d like, but finding a new sewing blog (Polka Dot Overload) has inspired me to get back into a) the sewing, etc and b) the blogging!  

Here’s a brief list of the projects I’ve finished since getting back from my trip and I will endeavor to write about each: Mounted my 1954 Elna to a treadle table, wedding stuff (my dress, sash, awards, banners), height charts, Time Traveler’s Ball figurehead, Civil War era dress, some footies, fleece scrap stuff, poly shrink jewelry, and a wire-crochet necklace.  

Current projects: MAME lighting (a wedding guest sent me instructions with photos on how I can fix the lighting, I just need to do it!), an articulation treatment android application, and working through all my sewing/craft UFOs.  The goal is to free up space in the craft room, then pick just a few types of projects to pursue and put the rest away in the attic or basement until we move and I can have a craft room again.  We’ll either need the room for our office stuff or for Sprout in the next year or so.

This week I altered a body double to maybe predict my fully pregnant shape so I could drape a knit cotton dress on it.  The next two projects will be to finish a snails trail pattern quilt and to sew the doll cloths my mother cut out when I was toddler (her job is to find the dolls she sewed to go with the cloths so we can put hair and cloths on them and give them to my kid!).