Christmas Project- Geeky Kindle Cover!

As this year was the first year that I'm properly into the whole creative thing and my parents don't have Internet I thought I would set myself a Christmas project. Which was going to be a TARDIS bag for myself (it would have been bigger on the inside). However, I messed up the tension on my sewing machine and it was taking me ages to try and get it right and to be honest I gave up trying. 


I had a deadline to make a Kindle Case for my boyfriend (drunkwriter.blogspot.com) it was just typical that the only kindle case he wanted was something that money can't quite buy yet...
And as my sewing machine was annoying me I decided to make it by hand, which took about 5 days to do. Probably spending a good 4 hours at a time on.


So here it is! The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy Kindle Cover:

There is a machine on the show that provides them with information and apparently it's a lot like a kindle. This machine has 'Don't Panic' on the front in green, friendly letters. And therefore I have re-created this. 

I got this Kindle card through the post with an Amazon order which I was quite happy about because then I can measure it all up and get the right measurements. 

The Green material is felt, I used this because when you cut felt it doesn't frey. The black material is satin I think. This was a bit more difficult to work with, I had to ensure that I cut it a cm more than I needed on all sides so I was able to do the hemming.

 After I had done the hemming I ironed on firm Viline which gives the material a bit more support.

I needed one hemmed double kindle sized piece for the front with a cm gap for the middle. And the same for the back. I then worked on the letters on the front section using a clear thread. 

I put kindle sized cardboard in the middle of the material for extra support. And black Elastic on the corners of the kindle case to keep the kindle in place. And a piece on the back as a fastener.

This was all done by hand.

And there you have it really! A geeky Kindle Cover!

More Cake Shinanagons

As you know it was my house-mates birthday on Monday. And you have to have birthday cake on your birthday, it's law. Or if it isn't a law, it should be a law- no birthday cake on my birthday makes me a sad Mary. So i baked her a birthday cake. 

I wanted to create an awesome themed birthday cake because I like the idea of people looking at the cake and going, wow! That's awesome!
So on saturday I spent 2 hours baking cakes, the first cake went wrong, bad reading on my behalf- this never happens to me but I HAD spent the day writing SQL code, forgive me? 

So first cake went wrong, had to bake another one and it was, as the french say Parfait. I made the cake, allowed them to cool mixed the buttercream (mmmm) which was 10oz icing sugar, 5oz butter and a drop of milk, mixed together. Very sweet but VERY yum. I spread a thick layer of jam on the cake once it had cooled and added the buttercream. 
Next was time to use the sugar paste. I've never used sugar paste, it's not nice to roll... But you use icing to roll it out and to make it stick to the cake a liquid paste made from water and icing sugar. 

So here's the cake! 
Mr Pacman! I thought it was awesome! I cut a slice of cake out and put it to one side, nom nom! No I had to ring a friend to eat the cake, no way i was eating all that cake! 
I melted some chocolate and made the eye from melted chocolate, on the whole a good success. 
Again I used the Mary Berry recipe as previously stated in my TARDIS cake post. 


Hope you like it! 


Over and out!

K9 Painting

I've never ever painted for something before. However, I was planning a gift for my boyfriend (again :P) so I decided I would paint him a picture of his favourite Doctor Who character thing. This was nerve racking. Because it's his favourite there was so much pressure to get it right, if it went wrong then I would have been upset. 

So I bought a Canvas from HobbyCraft for about £2.50. I didn't have an intention of using this to paint K9 at first, I was going to paint a picture as a Christmas present for someone, didn't know who. So I put the canvas to good use. 

The first step was to find a decent picture of K9, this was difficult. I eventually found the right one and then used that to guide me with my sketching. 

The first step was to do it on paper. I was happy with the results so I decided to put it straight onto Canvas.

I used Acrylic paint and a very fine brush to do the outline. As you can see this looks pretty much like K9.

The next stage was to mix the paint so that it was the right shade of Grey to do K9 and paint him after the outline had dried. 

Here is K9! I wasn't sure whether to leave it blank or not, so I spoke to one of my close friends who is also a Doctor Who fanatic and he advised me to do a background. So, as Doctor who is Sci-Fi, and Sci-Fi is space and stuff. I thought I would do a space outline, like so.

I agree, It looks so much better with the background. The white dots are stars and I decided I'd include some shooting stars to give it more awesome factor. 

So here he is, K9. I was insanely jealous of the painting and wanted one, it's a good job we live together!

Over and Out.

Bumble Bee Bear

On Monday it was my house-mates Birthday. For her birthday we decided to buy her a bear and then make it a bumble bee outfit. Pretty cool I'd say.

So here is Mr Bubble-bee Bear. We made a dress for the bear using a bit of elastic at the top to create a 'boob-tube' effect. Which was pretty groovy. We also created Wings for the bear! 
I decided that because it's November (was at the time) that the bear might get cold and because of that I knitted it a scarf. I did this by casting on 10 stitches, it's all you need for a tiny scarf and knitted lots of rows until I was satisfied with the length. Normal stitch, I haven't learnt purl yet, but I'm coming onto that shortly.

These are the wings, they were made using garden wire moulded to shape and using black wool to cover the wire. Attached two pieces of elastic and sewed them up so that they remain stationary and you're able to attach them to the bear! 


This is what happens when you're let loose in Hobbeycraft, you come up with project ideas! As like my next post....