The Lazy Girl’s Book Box

I’ve always wanted a secret compartment book, and since Tuesday is craft night, my friend Anna and I thought it would be Toads McGoats (on purpose) if we made them! If you look through the Internet for a tutorial, it will tell you things like ‘Use the Xacto knife to cut through 1,000,000,000 pages’ or ‘Why don’t you own a scroll saw to cut through books, dumbass?’ So since I’m ultra lazy sometimes, I had to devise my own method. (By devise my own method, I mean sort of use the method here.)

I started out with an Encyclopædia Britannica (surprise! I used an encyclopedia for this) and cut out the actual content.

Then, I haphazardly devised a box shape out of a cardboard box that I had. This cardboard box was from a 20” box fan that I bought during the first Heat Wave of 2011. I was saving the box for this very project apparently.

Then, I covered this fan box (see what I did there?) with corrugated cardboard to give it a look like it was pages. It doesn’t look like pages at all, in fact, but actually a fan box covered with corrugated cardboard.

Then! I glued the fan box (does anyone else want that to say fan boy?) the inside of the book, which I had neatly dressed up in encyclopedia pages. I also glued the inside edge of the book to the fanbox assembly.

Ta-Dah! I glued a tiny bit of corrugated cardboard to cover the fanbox corners.

I use it to store my remotes. My remotes will never go missing again! (That’s not entirely true. Less than 10 minutes after I stored these, my living room was still a mess and I wanted to change the channel. I tried in vain to find my remotes but this box was ever-so-new to my decor that I had completely forgotten about it.)

Unrelatedly, Anna has me in her phone as ‘Nidhi Currypants’.

A Very Smutty Birthday Card

I have a friend turning 25 this weekend, so I made a gorgeous birthday and slightly smutty card for him.

It’s a card using my manila folder method. I cut out a shape of a birthday card, and found some holiday sparkle in one of my magazines. I think it was an article highlighting how to have sexy fingernails. I always thought sexy fingernails were ones that had been trimmed and had little to no dirt underneath them.

See? Slightly smutty.

The envelope for this card was made using a Cosmopolitan photoshoot highlighting clothes that can apparently get you into dangerously sexy situations. Cut it up to this shape, and fold and glue!

I actually secretly kind of liked this Cosmo photoshoot and definitely used it to add to the smuttiness of the card. Best 25th birthday ever, hopefully.

The Glitter French Mani

This might just be the lamest post ever, but I am so so so excited about it. I’m wearing nail polish for the first time in years (not counting My First Manicure in October) and glitter is all the rage this season.

2 coats of a gold sparkle with 1 half coat of red sparkle (the top half). I’m really skilled of taking pictures of my hands. I don’t know what I was thinking; I should have been a hand model. What am I doing with my life?!

Happy Festivus! 

Sparkle Mini-Dress

I went to the thrift store again this past weekend because I’m addicted now apparently (I need to get the patch probably) and bought this lovely … (maybe top of a 2 part) 80s dress thingy. So many beads. I thought, “Wow, I could totally rock this as a mini-dress!” Too bad I got home and realized my torso is longer than I thought it was. Oh well. Still trying.

I cut out the shoulder pads and cut off the sleeves. Then I took the sides of the dress in a few inches so it would be a tiny bit more fitted. The sleeves were hemmed exactly where I cut them so it would fall a little farther off my shoulders than a regular tank top would. Then I forgot to document these steps in a pictorial so I’ll give you a close up of some beading.

Yeah! It’s obscenely short so I’m wearing it with leggings as pants.

And here I am, bringing sexyback. I wonder how many times that joke has been used to describe a showy back. Probably enough that would make this joke non-creative.

And here I am modeling the dress with a blazer! Maybe I can wear it for New Year’s Eve. And if there were any doubt in your mind that I hadn’t watched the video from The Ring, check out my face in this picture.

    

In other news, I just painted my nails with glitter and it looks like Edward Cullen threw up on my hands.

The Sparkle Sweater Skirt II

Another sweater skirt! I started off with this beautiful gold sparkly sweater from the thrift store. I bet it would fit incredibly well with the shoulder pads and all.

I cut off the sleeves and neckline, and pinned the sleeve area into a more skirty shape.

Then, I folded the top over and sewed it about 1.5 inches down to make a waistband.

Then, I found this old valence in my fabric stash and made a waist ribbon out of it. (Sidenote: I didn’t buy this to use as a valence. I bought it because the fabric was just so gorgeous.

I cut some holes for the ribbon to go through the skirt waist.

I need to figure out a different way to take pictures of myself. It took me maybe 6 times to take this picture and it is still sort of sucky. Maybe a roommate?

 

Bokeh! Hey new camera! (Nikon Coolpix, amazing.)

Sparkle is the best part about the holidays.

The Sparkle Sweater Skirt

I am obsessed with sparkles. I bet that’s probably because it’s holiday season and sparkles are almost always in style during the holiday season.

I went to the thrift store to see if I could find something super sparkly to alter for New Year’s Ever, and I ended up with more sparkles than I should have. I got this wonderful black sweater vest with built in gold sparkle thread.

I sliced off the bottom of the sweater under the armholes for the bottom of my skirt, and I cut up a slightly smaller length rectangle for the waistband.

I sewed together the sides of the waistband and then folded it in half and sewed it to the bottom part of the skirt. I initially tried to do this with my sewing machine, but this material was so stretchy that the fabric didn’t move at all with the machine’s feed dog. Hand sewing commence!

Once this was done, I threaded the waistband with a couple of pieces of yarn to act as the drawstring.

I wore this skirt out last night with some friends and asked one friend to take a picture of me. My face would say otherwise, but I promise I haven’t watched the 7 days video in The Ring.

 

No, I’m not wearing this for NYE. I bought something much much worse for that. I’m planning on destroying that soon and I  am really nervous that It won’t end up being wearable. Here goes nothing…

French Pouf

I saw this tutorial for making a poufy thing on …love Maegan before summer ever started. Procrastinating for approximately 7 months, I finally got around to trying making this pouf.

I had this gorgeous dress from my freshman year that I bought for an 80s prom party. Actually, looking back, I don’t think it was an 80s prom party. I think we just dressed that way. Hmm. Gorgeous, right? Dig those fishnets. This was 7 years ago. I feel old. I have lots of better pictures than this but I’m not sure my friends would appreciate having terrible pictures posted of them  in public. (It took me maybe 20 minutes to find this picture. After I realized that it was taken before Facebook pictures was invented, I had to pull out the old external hard drive and dig through 13 folders all named ‘My Pictures’.)

I cut out the innards of this dress, which is a sort of petticoat thing made from heavy tulle and some sort of nylon thing. Really expensive fancy materials.

I cut these into circular type shapes, mostly by folding over so I only had to cut 4 times. I made approximately 20 tulle circles and 10 nylon circles.

I ~folded each circle over twice and started sewing them into a circular type shape. I used a layer of 4 tulle, 4 nylon, 4 tulle, 4 nylon, 6 tulle.

Then, I sewed a canvas backing on and added a safety pin.

It looks almost romantic. I showed one of my friends and she told me it looked like a tacky prom dress. Hahaha. It kind of is.

Garlic Grilled Cheese

Yes, it’s approximately 10:30p on a Saturday night, but I just finished my dinner. I had the brilliant idea to use my (mostly) empty fridge and make grilled cheese…of the garlic variety.

My cheese didn’t fit the bread exactly, so I tore it up and mosaicked it so that it would sort of fit. My theory is that when it’s mosaicked, it will melt and cover the bread so there aren’t any voids once it’s melted.

Then I ate it using dipping sauce that I had leftover from Dewey’s last week.

#bacheloretteFrog

Book Packaging

So I borrowed a book from a friend like last March, and completely forgot about it until I found it in the depths of my art studio apartment. Yeah. It’s November. I should have returned it ages ago but I didn’t.

I decided to package it up all nicely for her as a tiny surprise if/when I decide to give it back. Ughhh.

I started with a brown paper bag in which I had received some vegetables or similar.

 

I cut it into a belt that I glued around the book. As soon as I did this, I was reminded of the Harry Potter book The Monster Book of Monsters. I don’t think that this book would ever try to bite me, but who even knows.

I used some (surprise) encyclopedia paper and created some paper stars using this tutorial. Ok, so maybe I learned how to do it in 8th grade from the girl who sat in front of me. The things I remember about her are that she knew how to make paper stars and that she wore faux glasses with yellow lenses. This was before hipsters were cool. 
 

I glued these paper stars to the book belt and wrote “Thank you!” on it. In case you’re wondering, I still have absolutely no idea how to carry out a love affair. 

 

Another thing about the paper stars: I was obsessed with making them in 8th grade after I learned how. I made a bunch and would show them to everyone in my classes. Then, this kid that I had a crush on stuck a paper star down his pants. I didn’t have a crush on him anymore. Ewww.

Keep your head up, Oh oh

So there’s this song by Andy Grammer that I don’t like at all, it’s called “Keep your head up” or something similarly dumb. I put all songs that tell you not to be sad in the same vein as “Bad Day” by James Blunt. U. G. H.

Anyway, I have a friend who is going through a rough time right now, so I did what any craft princess would do: instead of comforting her or offering my shoulder to cry on, I made her art to show her I love her.

I found an encyclopedia page in my vast collection of encyclopedias (5) about French literature. Doesn’t something about that just scream fancy?

I cut out magazine pages for the lettering. I wonder if whomever reads my blog things I’m really uncreative for reusing the same materials over and over. I don’t care, actually, I just really like pretty things.

After cutting these letters out, I arranged them in a way that they spell ‘Everything will be Ok.’ Yes, the ‘G’ is only hanging off because I didn’t measure everything before gluing and otherwise it would be hanging off the page. I mean, it adds a sort of artistic elegance. Yup, that’s my radiator, it’s where all my good artwork is displayed.

And now, since I apparently have the flu, I’m about to drink a Thera-Flu and fly off into la-la land.