DIY Arc Reactor

After seeing Iron Man 3, I had inspiration pulsing through my veins.  I absolutely love Iron Man ever since I saw the first movie, and I decided to bring some of him to life.  So I created his Arc Reactor.

 First, I started off with 15/16 x 3-7/8 inch styrofoam disk.  I didn't want it that large, so I cut it in half and trimmed the sides down by about 1/2 inch.  Make sure its pretty thin so your lights can fit through, but not too thin so it breaks. :(

 Then I got some $6 LED battery-powered lights from Hobby Lobby.  You can find them at any craft store, because they're usually used for wreathes.  

 Next, I took a small piece of paper and drew a diagram of my styrofoam on it.  Since I had 15 lights I drew 15 dots in Arc Reactor-like order.  I drafted it on paper and copied it onto the styrofoam.

 I began using the beginning of the string of lights. In order of the Sharpied dots, I pressed the lights down into the styrofoam.

 Make sure that the lights peek through a tiny bit through the disk.

 Once you have them all in, bunch them up so everything is put all together.  This part was a bit tricky because I was afraid of my lights coming out of place.  Just be patient and if you need to re-insert your bulbs into a different disk, you still have the other half!

I used electrical tape to pin down the wires.  Its safe on the wires and sticks fairly well onto the styrofoam.  Make sure you leave a little hole out the side for your battery chord.

 Here it is!  Sorry about the resolution of the camera, it took away the view of the individual lights.

 You can wear it with a Black Sabbath T-shirt for a super easy costume!

Fun Fact:  Did you see Tony's light go out after Agent Coulson died in the Marvel movie Avengers?

Popcorn Cinema Cupcakes

A few months ago, I was invited to an outing with some friends.  We would be watching ALL of the Lord of the Rings movies!  I was invited to bring a treat as well.   This would be a celebratory get-together.  Duh, its Lord of the Rings!  I thought about making Lembas, but decided that these would be more fun.  Popcorn Cinema Cupcakes!  Trust me, these are a lot easier than you'd think.  

Start with a box of yellow cake mix.  Create your cupcakes, using regular cupcake liners.  (They'll be covered up anyway)

I would suggest you create your "popcorn" while your cupcakes are in the oven.  Its a good idea for time management.  

For the popcorn, take mini marshmallows, and cut them in half.  On the top of each marshmallow, you want to make an X.  Like a piece of popcorn!  Make sure the X's are deep, but not too deep to cut through!

After they're all Xed, you'll take yellow food coloring, and spray it on the "kernels".  I don't have a sprayer, but if you do, Kudos!  Makes life easier.  No worries if you don't have one.  I took a paper towel, and put a few drops of yellow food coloring on it, and dabbed the marshmallows, making it seem like it had a drizzling of butter on it.  You can add as much as you want.  Also, you can use a paint brush, and it works just as well. 

After your popcorn is buttered, you'll then take your COOLED cupcakes, and frost them with white icing.  Before the icing looses its stickiness, you'll need to stick your popcorn on it.  Stick as much as you can, because my mistake was that I didn't have enough, and the party was in thirty minutes... Procrastinator I know.  I could have made more, but time was of the essence.  

Here's a shrunk template of what you'll need to give your cupcakes for a wrapper.  I would wait until last minute until you put these on.  The grease can leak through the paper, making it look less appetizing.

They were a big hit!  I saw one of my friends eat four!  Not too hard, and give the affect that you labored in the kitchen for it. ;)

Sheet Music Image Print

I absolutely love this idea!  There has been ideas online about feeding book pages through a printer.  Perfect!  Except my printer won't accept any of the book pages I put in it.  So, either I'm doing something wrong, or my printer is stupid.  

Instead of book pages, I used sheet music.  However, because these pages are precious to me, I felt like I couldn't mess up, wasting pages.

My grandpa was a music teacher, and my grandma has kept all the sheet music that he gave to his band students, etc.  So, I use it to make keep sakes, like this. Just a little remnant of grandpa around the house.

I took a sheet of music from one of his trumpet exercises books.  Then, I took a regular piece of printer paper, and used it as a stencil to cut the music.  This way, my printer would accept the size and shape of the page, giving me a clean print!

Now, I chose a bike to be on the page.  One of the reasons because, its cute.  The other reason was because my uncle worked at a bike shop when he was younger, and he'd continually give my grandpa bikes, even though he didn't even ride them!

For my printer, I had to put the page upside-down and backwards, so the music could print properly.  I took a Microsoft page, copy and pasted the bike onto it, making sure it was centered.  Then print!

I would probably darken it with a black sharpie, but I think it turned out alright!  Cut, frame, and there you have it!

Lady Captain America

I know this is going all the way back to October, but I decided to share it now.  I'm a big geek for comics and Marvel, so for halloween, I REALLY wanted to be Captain America... In lady form.

Here's my costume:

It took time, but I think it was worth it.

I started out with a plain blue t-shirt.  I cut out a sparkly felt star with a silhouette I found on Google Images.  I laid the shirt flat and pinned the star right in the top middle of the shirt, and sewed it with white thread.

I took some blue shimmery-silky fabric and red felt to make the sleeves.  I measured my arm length, (I wanted to make it quarter sleeved so I took off a few inches) and the width from my upper to my lower arm.  I sewed the sleeves together, making sure the shiny side wasn't facing outward, so when I turned it right side out, it would be shimmery.  I then took two strips of red felt, one for each sleeve, and sewed it on the top of the blue sleeves.  I turned the t-shirt inside-out as well as the sleeves, and began sewing the quarter sleeves to the short sleeves of the shirt.  Right-side-out, voila!  Your top is done.

For the corset, I measured my waste, and added two inches to the top and bottom ends for the fabric.  I used the sparkly white felt to make the base part.  In the middle of the corset, I made peaks on the top and bottom of it, as shown in the picture.  I used two pieces of felt to give the corset girth.  I turned them dull-side-out and sewed the edges except for a six-inch portion to pull it right-side-out again.  I then measured parts of the corset of where I wanted the stripes to go.  I cut those, pinned them where I wanted, and sewed them with red thread.  On the ends, I put velcro, for an easy adjustment if the corset was too big or too small.

For the skirt, I took the blue shimmery-silky fabric and cut it into a fairly large square.  This determines how long you want your skirt.  Add a couple inches to create a seam along your waist-line.  I measured my hips,  and cut a circle of the measurement of my hips right in the middle of the square.  I folded the circle inward, and sewed it to make a nice seam.

For the shield, I cut out a circle of cardboard.  I used some left-over red felt and covered the whole thing.  Next, I took some left-over white felt and made a smaller circle.  Alternating colors until I got to the blue.  For this, I used blue poster board.  Then for the star, I used card board and painted it.  To hold it, I made little duct tape straps.  One bigger than the other for the hand and forearm.

To finish it off, I wore white converse and bright red tights!  Patriotic in deed! Now its time to sock old Hitler right in the jaw!  With a sack of halloween candy!

I used about 1 1/2 yards of blue shimmery fabric, a yard of sparkly white felt, and a 1/2 yard of red.

Finn's Hat

Cartoon Network has really gone downhill in my opinion.  However, there is one show that I really enjoy on CN, and that is Adventure Time!  (I could also go for some Regular Show, but I prefer Adventure Time)


My brother wanted to be Finn the Human for halloween.  The costume would be easy.  Black shoes, white socks, blue shorts, and a blue shirt.  But what about that hat?  I decided to look up a tutorial online.  Cartoon Network had a perfect template for it.


Here's the link to the video: tutorial:http://archives.frederatorblogs.com/adventure_time/2010/03/24/finns-hat-is-awesomeeeee/

Michael and Finn are pretty tight. ;)

However, if I could do it again, I would make the straps for the chin much longer.  I don't know if my brother's face is too long, but he couldn't seem to get the straps all the way down for the velcro to stay put.  But, his costume looked great. :)

Mustache Party

  Being over-obsessed with decoration, I couldn't just have a birthday party with a movie, pizza and cake.  I decided to go all out for my sweet-sixteen.  And what better way to do that, than with mustaches?  Yes.  Mustaches.  I created a little mustache wonderland.  By the time my friends left, they were throwing up mustaches.

Here's a cute little decoration I made with poster board.  I used the fan technique and created two different fans to hot glue them on top of each other.  To finish, I cut out a template of a mustache on google images, large enough to fit the fan.  I then hot glued twine onto the back so it would be easier to hang up.  Voila!  Something to fill empty space.

I found this idea at a party store.  You could buy these straws with the mustaches on them.  I thought, "Why buy them when I can make them?"  So I cut out some mustaches on black poster board, and used a hole punch where the straw would go.  Another touch I added were mason jars.  I got these from the dollar store!  It took a bit of hunting, but it was so worth it!

The next thing was the cake.  Believe it or not, this was incredibly easy.  And again, it was Red Velvet.  My absolute favorite.  So my mom made a great cake, it was a circular cake to begin with.  She had it double tiered.  What we did, is we cut it like a Yin-Yang sign.  A squiggle down the middle.  ~  Then we set them to face each other like a mustache.  We had to flip one side over to get both ends of the mustache to face out.  Topped with cream cheese frosting and hair-like sprinkles, it was a big hit!

 I made these babies with just regular kabob skewers.  I cut out different types of mustaches and used a glue gun to stick them on.

 Now I saw some people on Pinterest do photoshop with mustaches, lips, and other kinds of things like that.  The perfect activity for a partay!   I literally taped a bed sheet onto the wall.  I then created a garland out of more poster board, alternating colors with mustaches as well.

Oh how dapper. :{)

 What other game would be perfect than Pin the Mustache on the Mustache??

As an after thought for a bit more decor, I decided to make a simple little mustache garland.  I cut out about 10 mustaches on black poster board and paired each of them together.  I used fishing line, and double sided tape.  I put the tape on one mustache, then sandwiched the fishing line and put the second mustache on top.  I spaced each of them out by three inches or so.  

Another decoration I did was I decorated the water bottles and sodas with mustache duct tape.  You can get this at Walmart or Hobby Lobby!  

For party favors, I gave them lip balm wrapped with mustache duct tape in little bags that said "My Stache."  

The party was a big success!  We all felt so manly by the end, we wanted some whiskers ourselves!  

Red Velvet Pancakes

Woo hoo!  Snow Day!  You know what that means?  Pancakes for breakfast!  However, on this one particular morning, I wanted something a little more sweet on the breakfast menu.  Then it hit me.  Red Velvet Pancakes!  I don't know about you, but I live for Red Velvet.



These are super easy, because on a snowy morning, I myself don't feel like making something strenuous and complicated.  So you'll start out with some regular pancake mix.

Afterwards, you'll add some milk, for a creamy batter.

Next, you'll add about two teaspoons of red food coloring.
Then, mix in white vinegar, eggs, vanilla, and last, but certainly not least, cocoa powder.

Because I have a tremendous sweet tooth, I added a handful of mini chocolate chips to get the full effect of Red Velvet.

Tada!

I didn't have any cream cheese icing, but I did use powdered sugar with some syrup!  So warm and delicious!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:

(Makes about seven medium-small pancakes)

1 1/4 Cup of Pancake Mix

3/4 Cup of milk

1 egg

1/2 tsp. of white vinegar

1/2 tsp. of vanilla

1 Tbs. of cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp. red food coloring

A hand full of chocolate chips (optional)

Cream cheese icing (optional)

Powdered sugar (optional)

        Take a medium sized bowl, and stir the mix and milk together.  Add your egg, vanilla, cocoa powder, and food coloring.  Afterwards, mix in your chocolate chips.  Pour the batter on a skillet or pan  in dollops.  You can make them as big or small as you want.  Flip them once the bottom seems to have a little bit of darker marks on it, and cook the other side.  Serve on a platter with butter, and syrup.  You can add cream cheese icing or powdered sugar if you want the extra sugar rush.