Geek Craft + Birthday Extravaganza

Yesterday was Jon’s 30th birthday and I wanted to make it special even though our cash flow is quite low at this time.  Since Jon grew up with playing Nintendo and thinks of that time in his life so fondly, I decided to do an “old school” Nintendo theme for the occasion.

It all started last year when I made him a coin purse featuring a Mario star.  He liked the purse, but it wasn’t quite long enough to hold his credit card and ID, so he suggested that I make him a new one and even drew out the design he wanted; a ruby from Legend of Zelda.  So the first thing I did to prepare for his birthday this year was make the coin purse that he had requested so long ago.  I used some bamboo yarn and the tapestry crochet technique to execute the design.

Looking around my studio, I brainstormed about what else I could make for him using materials I already had on hand.  A couple of weeks ago I found someone’s stash of wool crewel yarn in awesome 7os colors at a thrift store.  I also had a bunch of plastic needle point canvas scraps given to me by my Grandma Virgie a few years ago.  So I put two and two together and came up with making….you guessed it; coasters! (Jon, however, has declared these babies too precious to set a coffee cup and wants to have them framed.)

While looking online for source images to use for the coasters I came across some images of Mario made out of Skittles.  That’s when I got the idea to put a design on Jon’s cake using M&M minis.  The design fit really well on the 8″ cake.  The side of the cake is a play on the phrase “1 up.”  In case you’re wondering, no, M&Ms do not come in packages of single colors, you have to sort them yourself.  It actually didn’t take that long to segregate the entire bag, then once I was done I played around with which image I wanted to use.

Along with the change purse and coasters, I gave Jon some Burt’s Bees Saving cream and deodorant.  The only thing left to do now was wrap it all up and make a card.  Again I looked around my studio and found an oatmeal canister we had recently emptied.  I removed the label and replaced it with some white paper, then used a glue stick to paste on more pixellated Nintendo images.

On the card I did a line drawing of an old school Nintendo controller. (Incidentally, when I used to work as a caricature artist and some kid wanted to be drawn playing a video game, I would always draw them with one of these controllers, as I never really liked video games but used to play the original Nintendo once in a while with my older brother.)  The inside of the card reads, “Jon, you always know how to push my buttons.”

Jon, I hope your birthday was a memorable one!

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To My Sweetheart

Happy Valentine’s day to my sweetheart, Jon. Here he is hard at work or playing a computer game (I don’t remember which) after I gave him one of the heart pins I made and posted about yesterday.  Whatever he’s doing he sure looks into it doesn’t he?

And here’s the card I made for him after he went off to his first day of work this morning. The inside has another drawing and says, “and that bunny is me. Happy Valentine’s Day.”  A bit corny?  Don’t care!  We both like small, cuddly creatures with largish ears if you haven’t guesses.

This is a pin inspired by a remark that Jon made to me this Saturday. I was wearing a cute plastic pin from the 80s of a koala bear with a heart.  On the heart it said, “love ya!” to which Jon said it should say. “love me.” Great idea hubby! (oops, he hates it when I call him that).

DIY Valentine; Heart Pin + Gift Box

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner (tomorrow!), I thought it would be nice to share a quick and fun project that could be a nice parent-child activity…making a heart-shaped pin and with origami gift box!

I got the idea to make the pin when I was looking through some holiday apparel and found this home-made beauty (above) that I’ve had since I was very young.  Truth be told, I’m not usually into this sort of thing but I kind of dig it for its kitschyness. A short while ago I inherited a bunch of the plastic canvas needed to make this pin so I thought, “what the heck?” If you think it’s kitschy cute too read on for the how-to…

First the pin…
Materials:
Plastic canvas
Marker
Blunt-tip sewing needle
Scissors
Yarn (about 15 feet or so)
safety-pin

Directions:
Use a marker to draw a heart onto the plastic canvas and cut it out.

Measure out about 12 feet of yarn.

Here’s a quick way to do this:
I’m 5’1″ tall, which means my “wing span” is about 5 feet. So, if I pull the yarn between both hands with them stretched out twice plus once from one hand to my chest, that’s about 12.5 feet. It’s a great way to estimate yarn length. With 12 feet you’ll be able to make this project and not have to add more yarn part way through, but you also don’t want to have more than about 12 feet because it would be difficult to work with.

Thread the yarn through your needle and pull it so that both ends match up. You will be making this project with your yarn doubled like this.

Starting at one end of your heart, stitch in straight vertical rows. Instead of making a knot with your loose end, pull the tail across the back of the heart so that it will be hidden as you wrap the yarn over top of it. Try to keep the yarn from twisting as you sew.

Once you’ve gone all the way across the heart like this, start sewing around the edges.

Weave the end of the tail into the back threads and snip the excess yarn. Open your safety-pin and insert the back portion through the back threads to hold it.

Here’s the front of the finished project! Leave it as-is or embellish it with googly eyes, embroidery thread, beads, whatever!


I think the green heart will be nice for St. Patrick’s day and the black one could be fun to give to someone who might be a bit bitter about “the Hallmark holiday.”

Now, if you’d like to give these little cuties away tomorrow (and who wouldn’t), you might want to make a gift box.

I made these boxes using junk mail! It’s really simple. I learned how from an Etsy video a few years ago. Click here for the easy to follow how-to. To make sure that your box is big enough for your pin, you’ll need two squares of heavy paper that measures about 21cm square.

Happy crafting and thank you for stopping by!

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