Let's Make Eraser with Microwave - English Instructions!

Quite a random crafty thing today... a kit to make erasers using some rubbery dough stuff, some moulds and a microwave.

We went to Japan last year and one of the many cute things for sale were lots of different novelty erasers, commonly of food like cakes and sushi, but there are also things like kitchen utensils and animals.  I may have bought a set of 'zoo' animals... in addition to these, where were also kits to make your own erasers.  I didn't buy one of these while we were there, but I got a voucher for JBox for my birthday so included a kit in my order of very random Japanese stuff!  I got the Ice Cream one.

The instructions weren't obvious from the pictures alone so I spent a while translating them (although I did get a key detail missing to start with and it was going horribly wrong, but I figured it out in the end!).  I thought it might be useful to post instructions in case any one was trying to find some on the net.

Take some of the dough and roll it in your hands until it goes soft and smooth.  You want a ball a bit bigger than the shape you are going to make.

Coat the two sides of the mould with a little water - I just dipped my finger in some water and then rubbed the mould with it, this seemed to be enough.  This will stop the dough from sticking (and was the key detail I misunderstood slightly!)

Put the ball of dough in one half of the mould and then line the other one above it.  You then need to press straight down firmly.

Open up the mould and gently remove the bigger pieces of excess dough, then remove the shape from the other half of the mould

There will probably still be a little excess dough around the join, so use something to remove this.  I used a craft-knife.

If you want more than one colour in a shape, you can put your balls of dough together into the mould like this.

You then need to put the shape in the Chinese takeaway type box the kit came in and add some water.  Add enough so that it's about 1.5cm under the water.

This then goes in the microwave with the lid left open for the following amounts of time, depending on which item you've made:

Item	500W	600W
Ice-cream Cornet or Cookie	3min 30sec	3min
Ice-cream tub or Ice lolly	2min 30sec	2min
Wafer	2min	1min 40sec

You then tip away the hot water and cover it in cold water, leaving it in the cold water for another 3 minutes.

Then dry it off and there you have it, little ice cream erasers.

I said it was random!

Fabric Covered Notebook

Another Christmas present I made for a couple of friends were fabric covered sketch books.  I made these following a tutorial on Bloom and Blossom, another link I found on Pinterest!

The tutorial is very easy to follow and can be adapted to fit any size notebook.  I particularly liked the way in which you iron on the patchwork strip onto the interfacing before attaching the linen, I found it made the patchwork very neat.  It was also satisfying how quick it was to make - I'm too used to sewing clothes, these were done in a couple of hours!

As my books were landscape, there was quite big bare area, so I added some kanzashi style flowers (more about these later) in some of the patchwork fabric.

Here is one of the finished books:

I think they went down well with the people that received them :o)

Polaroid Magnets

Well I'm not doing very well with the 'new year, let's use the blog more' thing yet am I... oh well, here's a little something from last year.

A nice quick Christmas present I made for some friends were these fab polaroid photo fridge magnets I found on Pinterest:

Source: ambrosiagirl.com via Nikki on Pinterest

I didn't make mine in quite the same way as the tutorial, my method was particularly lazy.  Firstly I sorted out the images and printed them on glossy photo paper.  Then stuck a piece of sticky backed white foam onto the back of the photo paper.  To the back of the foam I then stuck on a sheet of sticky backed magnet.  Then I cut round them all with a craft knife, and hey presto, cute little fridge magnets of some of my friend's holiday photos.

Here are some of them on their fridge:

A New Year..

..already, and I didn't post anything here at all for the whole of last year!  Oops.  Well, Happy New Year to anyone reading!

Being the new year, a lot of blogs I follow have been doing round-ups of the last year and goals for this year, so it got me thinking; I'm going to give this blogging malarkey another try!  I've been quite busy with some little creative projects recently, so I've managed to build up quite a list of draft posts I should be able to talk about in the near future, so I shouldn't run out too soon.  I must also try and a bit more social on the blogs I read... I have a number I read regularly that I've never commented on.  I actually decided to enter a giveaway on one the other day and won, which then made me feel quite guilty about commenting the first time on a giveaway, when I've been reading for years..

Anyway, I'm not going to try and round up the whole of last year, I'm not sure I could remember enough, so instead I'm just going to dive straight into my first topic and that is:

I discovered Pinterest last year and it's been great for inspiring me to do some more crafting.  If you've not seen it yet, it's basically a collection of bookmarks from lots of different people, sorted into categories and presented in a pretty way that makes it very easy to browse for ideas.  I tend to just sit looking through the DIY & Crafts category, re-pinning things I like the look of.  I think I've ended up making quite a few random different things because of it, and it's also re-sparked my interest in card making.

My Boards

As you can see, I've concentrated on craft stuff (so far), but there so much else there.  Lots of food, holiday ideas, wedding ideas and lots of lovely rooms in homes you just wish you could ever have and hope of having....

You have to be invited to create an account, either by other member or by requesting an invite.  I requested an invite and got one within minutes so I don't think it's a problem if you don't know anyone using it yet.

My next post will be showing one of the first things I made from a pin I found here.

Burda 06/2010-107

We had quite a quiet weekend at home so I did actually get round to doing some sewing.

First task was tracing the pattern pieces off the sheets from the burda magazine. It's been a while since I've made up something from Burda, but since then they've doubled the number of pattern pieces per sheet.

From this madness:
To just these 5 pieces:
I didn't have a problem with tracing the patterns before, but this time it was rather hard to find and then stay on the right lines.

Anyway, after that, the fabric was cut out and I put it together at a leisurely pace over the weekend. I luckily didn't have many fitting issues as it's quite a loose fitting top to start with. I made it a little shorter and instead of gathering the bottom section at the waist, I pleated. I find I can never get neat gathering and it ended up bulging out rather a lot at the front, so I used pleats instead, which lie flatter. I also shortened the sleeves a little as they were huge!

Here's the finished item:


Haven't quite decided if I like it yet, I think I do but will need to wear it to make sure! There is a slight problem with sewing clothes, you don't really know what it's going to look like until you've finished and then you find out it doesn't suit you..

It was fun to do some sewing that was completed so quickly and I'm tempted to get on with the second top too. I'll have to start putting some more things into my queue if this carries on!

The start of the sewing queue

As I said in an earlier post, I'm going to try and get through some of the sewing I've been meaning to do for ages. I have two quite recent patterns I particularly want to try, and bought some new fabric the other week for them, so I have no excuse not to start really!

First up we have Burda Magazine 06/2010 107

Technically a dress but I'm going to make it a little shorter still and have it as a top.

For this I have a printed jersey. Hopefully this will work with the blue bands around the bottom of the top.

Secondly, Burda Magazine 05/2010 107


Another dress that I'm going to make as a top. With this one I'm going to shorten and lose the bubble hem. For this I have a printed satin that will probably be a nightmare to work with!


It looks very busy in this picture, but it's a very small pattern so I think it'll look okay. I find it quite hard visualising what a patterned fabric will look like made up, so I tend to stick with plain/self coloured embroidery but I fancied a change.

Both of these are similar to some RTW tops I have and really like. It's been a while since I've made anything with sleeves though and Burda do tend to be too big for me in the shoulders as I'm short, so I might have some fun with the fitting...

So we have the start of my queue, which I'm sure will grow quicker than I make anything. My intention is to make a start on number 1 this weekend, but we shall see. At least having it written down here means Kat will start nagging me to get on with it! ;o)

Weekend in Anglesey

Last weekend Mike and I went on a little trip to Anglesey. We'd been a bit disappointed that we were too early to see the Puffins when we went to Iceland, so decided we'd go to South Stack, near Holyhead, where some puffins spend the spring and early summer. Since it's quite a long drive, we decided to make a weekend of it originally thinking we'd camp, but the forecast for very strong winds during the night changed our minds to the easy option of a cheap hotel!

First stop was a place I'd spotted we'd be driving close to and I knew it would amuse Mike and it did indeed :o)

Then we went to Newborough Warren Nature reserve, where we had a nice walk along Llanddwyn beach, out to Llanddwyn Island. It was a lovely sunny day, but with a bit of a cool breeze so we didn't notice we were getting sunburnt despite the sun-cream, oops.

It was a good chance to try a few things with my camera too. Firstly I got to try my polarising filter and actually see it making a difference.

Without:

With:
I'm not going to pretend I know what it's doing, other than it makes things bluer and cuts out reflections and glare and they're highly recommended for landscapes! Wikipedia has more info and better examples ;o) but it was nice to see it working for myself.

We walked around the little island, though it's only really an island at high tides. It was apparently the home of Dwynwen, the Welsh patron saint of lovers and there are the remains of St Dwynwen's Church, a couple of crosses and a lighthouse, along with lots of birds on the rocky coves around it.

After there, we headed onto South Stack.

The cliffs were covered in birds, but we couldn't see any puffins. We started to walk down the many steps to the lighthouse, stopping when we were facing a different cliff to have another look and I managed to spot some orange feet!

Cute puffins! they were a long way away, this picture is using a 300mm lens and then cropped a lot, but aww, don't they look like cute little clown birds.

Since the lighthouse was now closed, we decided not to walk all the way down to it, we'd then have to walk all the way back up! We headed to our hotel, first stopping to have fish and chips on a beach.

I then decided I wanted to have a play with taking some photos of the sunset, the plan was just to find a spot on the nearest beach and I could faff to my hearts content whilst Mike sat, but the nearest beach was facing the wrong way! In the end we went back to south stack although it didn't turn out to be a particularly great sunset anyway.

On the drive back to the hotel I decided to have one more quick experiment, long exposures on waves.... 5 seconds made this nice misty effect.

I wasn't in the best place so not a great photo, but it's something I'm going to try more when we're down in Dorset in a few weeks time.

On the Sunday it was very windy and drizzly. We had a tasty breakfast and then went to see the last working windmill in Wales.
And then onto some new 'windmills'
Since the weather wasn't improving, we headed home. As we got to Llangollen, it was brightening up a little, so we thought we'd stop. We couldn't find a parking place, but in taking a wrong turn somewhere, ended up finding, Valle Crucis, a ruined abbey so we stopped here instead.


So there we go, a nice little weekend away in Wales.