Wednesday has been illuminated.

Christina: J’espère que ton voyage passera sans difficulté ce dimanche! Et je suis impatiente d’apprendre tout de ta vie française.

Cassie: I always love to see your roses. They are gorgeous, and I love what you’ve done with the colors in this one! Well done : )

Alexandra: I adore your post. Words are not always necessary when one is so impassioned about one’s work, especially with newspapers and dragons!

As for my craft this week, I got glass bottle (6). Cassie may remember that I originally also chose bottlecaps (4, I believe). While I had access to a vast amount of bottlecappage, I decided that for my chosen project, bottlecaps would look tacky and “undergrad,” and I wanted to be all classy and stuff. So I went with a lone glass bottle.

::Disclaimer: This description is going to involve a lot of references to Meghan and the hardware store where she works. I also neglected to take in-process pictures… Hopefully my words will be illustration enough!::

To procure my glass bottle, I bought myself a bottle of yellow tail (lowercase on purpose, as per brand name—it drives me crazy, too) moscato wine and enjoyed it over several nights’ worth of dinners. I recommend this wine. It was cheap and tasty, if you like dessert wines. I’m sure it would be scoffed at by a connoisseur.

Once I finished drinking the wine, I removed the bottle’s labels with some Goo-Gone I bought at the hardware store. (I also recommend Goo-Gone for quick gooey-stuff removal.) Next I waited several days until I could get back home to the hardware store and the girlfriend who knows enough about how to make things that she could help me.

With the help of a particularly lovely hardware store employee, I procured the following objects:
1 cork big enough to stop up my bottle (it was originally screw-top and therefore corkless)
1 screw-nipple-thing (I swear that’s what they’re called. Technical term.)
1 lamp kit thing (another technical term)
1 electrical cord with plug

With the help of that same lovely hardware store employee, I [read: she] drilled a hole on the side of the bottle near the bottom. This was a far more arduous process than one might think at first glance--it requires a special drill bit, patience, wet and dry paper towels, and a little bit of masking tape. The drill was also used to put a hole through the center of the cork big enough to allow for the nipple.

I then ran the cord up through the bottle, so that the plug was on the bottom and the wire ends were at the top. I ran these ends up through the nipple that was inside the cork.

After some internet consultation, HSEG (Hardware Store Employee Girlfriend) and I connected the wires to the lamp kit thing (where the bulb would screw in). We then screwed the lamp kit thing to the nipple and pushed the cork into the bottle’s neck.

A trip to Goodwill provided a lampshade of exactly the perfect size, shape, and colors for less than $1. This was placed over the lamp kit thing, and a light bulb was affixed in much the same way as light bulbs are often affixed to light fixtures.

The lamp was plugged in and turned on. Et voilà, the wine-bottle lamp was born!

I think I may add a piece of paper, rolled around the cord, inside the bottle. That’s the magic of having the cork easily removable. I can put a message in my bottlelamp!

This wonderful creation has found a perfect home on my dining table. The colors fit exactly with the other objects on the table, from silk flowers to chopstick collection. I’m quite thrilled with the way it turned out!

Lamp turned off:



Lamp turned on:



You may notice in the corner of these photos some green and blue stick-looking things. These are chopsticks shaped like light sabers. Just thought I'd point that out...

Tuesday Doesn't Craft

Monday likes roses an awful lot

Hello, girls! It's time to be crafty!

So this challenge idea came to me actually while I was completing Carlyn's challenge a few months ago. I do a lot of crafty stuff and scrapbooking, etc, so I'm always saving and reusing supplies other people might throw out. So that's where this came from. Personally, I rolled cardboard, and I was kinda excited about it.

Back in February, while Stumbling on the internet, I came across a website that showed how to make roses out of old book pages. Now, I like roses. I like roses a lot, and I especially like roses that are made out of other things. I own roses made of glass and of copper and of wood and of paper and of paper towels, two of which variety I made myself (hint: the easiest sounding ones), so I was thrilled to learn to make my own roses out of old book pages.

When I rolled cardboard, I thought, why not try a rose out of cardboard? It didn't go quite as anticipated, but it turned out pretty good, I think, so without any more gabbing from me, here's my craft. Also, I apologize in advance for the photo quality. The light in my apartment sucks and my camera is cheap. Sorry!

Step 1: Obtain cardboard of the thinnest variety possible.

I used, as you can see, cereal boxes, cracker boxes, and tissue boxes. Originally, I was going to try and do a rose of all the same color, more or less, but I didn't have enough section of any one color, so I went with each layer being a different color. 

Step 2: Cut faces off boxes and cut out three and a half six-petal flower shapes.

If you're not doing individual layers, this is easy. If you are, you'll need three full six-petal flowers from your outside three layers, and then the inside three can just have half-flowers. Regardless, you should end up with this:

Quick note: I goofed the upcoming step, so my color-coordinating kinda went out the window. Originally. the red, orange, and yellow were going to be my outside layers. But I made the red into the wrong layer, so I had to cut another purple full-flower out and that became my outside.

Step 3: Cut a slit between two of the petals of your outermost layer. It should still be a six-petaled flower. This is what I goofed, so I don't have a picture.

Step 4: Cut one petal out of the next layer.  (Note: if you're not color-coordinating your layers, keep the petals you cut out. You'll use them later)

Step 5: Cut two petals out of the third layer.

Step 6: Cut the fourth layer in half.

(Steps 6b and 6c: Because I'm color-coordinating, I need my one- and two-petals still)

Eventually, you want to end up with this:

Step 7: Overlap each of the first four layers to make three-dimensional flower shapes. So the first layer with the slit will become a five-petal 3D shape, the next layer will have 4 petals, etc. For paper flowers, I use Tacky glue. for the cardboard, I used hot glue.

 I also glued a length of floral wire to the first layer, to give my rose a stem.

Step 8: Curl the petal edges. This is MUCH easier with paper than cardboard! I started off curling them around a pencil, and ended up just using my fingers, especially on the double layers.

Step 9: Nestle and glue the first four layers in place.

Step 10 (No picture because I'm dumb and forgot to take one). Curl the two-petal section into a loose spiral and glue.

Step 11: Glue the spiral into the top of the rose.

Note: Normally the single petal then gets rolled into a tight spiral and becomes the final layer. However, I found that I couldn't get the cardboard to curl tightly enough, and it looked fine without it, so I left that layer out.

Final product:

A rose for you, lovely ladies!

Alexandra, I'll see you tomorrow!

Let's Be Crafty in Week 29

All right, girls! A few weeks ago, I gave you a challenge. I forced you all to be crafty with recycled objects. I look forward to see how that turned out! :)

Last post in America... (for now)

Alexandra: Great wedding photos, you both look so happy!

Meghan: I enjoyed the Omnovia jokes! I have a friend who has his own joke Eastern Europe, so I envisioned that in my head and it worked well, I think. :)

This blog post is being written in between packing and Gilmore Girls viewing, which is on in the background as I get everything in order... I leave for France Sunday night! I still can't believe it's so soon- I don't think I'll believe it's really happening until I'm on the plane over there. I thought I was prepared and relatively packed, but man do I have so much more packing to do. And printing! And scanning! So much printing and scanning to do, guys.

I'm scared but excited to be going to France. I'd love to just stay at home, relax, see friends, and do nothing for a bit, but I've done that for a month now and I know it's time to move on and actually start my own life: own apartment, own job, own taxes, own health insurance... all that. And I'm going to be doing it all in French! But I think I'm ready. And I'm realizing that my French is pretty good, if I may say so myself. I'm getting to that point where I don't have to always think about what I'm going to say before I say it, instead I can just talk and (for the most part) correct French comes out. I definitely have further to go (my vocabulary is on the small side and accents can always be practiced and honed), but I'm happy with where I am and think I'll be able to get around easily in France.

At the lycée (highschool) I'll be teaching at I'm going to be the only English assistant and there will be a German assistant. I've been talking with my contact teacher at the lycée and he suggested that the German assistant and I get an apartment together. I'd love if that could happen! It would be great because 1. I'd like to have a roommate and 2. Having a roommate from another country would be a great experience, I think. Also, I started taking German my last semester of college and I really want to continue. If I lived with a German person, I could just continue learning by talking with her instead of enrolling in a class! Nothing's really been discussed at all yet, but it's an appealing option out there.

While I'm talking about France and all that, I also wanted to ask if I could get a pass on blogging next Friday? I have no idea what my internet situation is going to be my first week or so in France and things are undoubtedly going to be crazy, so I don't know if I'll be able to get to an internet café to blog. So, give me a pass next week? It would be greatly appreciated! And of course if I do get internet access in time, I'll give you guys an update!

Talk to you all from France!

Wednesday is patrolling the 'nets for a cheap rental

Kim: Thanks for blogging! It seems like you fit in pretty well with the crowd here : )

Cassie: You do love those kids. And they love you. And it shows. Dear Readers: Cassie is hella dedicated to her theater and her kids. You’ve never seen passion like this. Trust me.

Alexandra: What a lovely wedding locale! Your pictures are gorgeous. I love the uniqueness. I am delighted for you! What a smiling occasion.

So this week is JAB week. For me, this means I’m going to complain somewhat about my car.

I’m going to start two weeks in the future and work backwards. But first a couple details.

So, my dear guest blogger/girlfriend Meghan and I are from hometowns about ten minutes apart (though we met 2.5 hours west of that, in college). Additionally, we have three siblings between the two of us, all born in one three-year span. And they all go to the same university an hour south of our co-hometown-area, one each in freshman, sophomore, and junior years. This all combines to make visits home heinously convenient.

Except when my car breaks down.

This doesn’t happen too often, but it always tends to be at the most inconvenient times.

Say, for example, Meghan were invited to a wedding in Cleveland very near our co-hometown-area. This wedding might be in a week and a half, and I might be attending as her plus-one.

Say this also presented a perfect opportunity to go home and visit our families, whom we don’t often get to see.

Say ALSO that I planned to visit my collegehometown this weekend (a week before the wedding trip), maybe see my delightful girlfriend, maybe go apple picking, spend time with friends, get a wedding-preparation haircut and color from the one person I’ve trusted in years to get near my hair with scissors…

Now say I talked about this in front of my car, who took it as an impetus to refuse to start.

Come hell or high water, I WILL be in Cornfieldville, Ohio by midnight tomorrow. But it will probably be in the company of a AAA-discounted rental car.

::grumblegrumblegrumble::

Tuesday Still Spends Most of Her Time Writing

First of all, wedding pictures!

Secondly, I have begun the immigration process, a frightening process indeed. If I don't get past this first step (visa validation and all that), I'm basically going to have to leave the country for the next fourteen months... the country where my house and husband are. So that's great.

Thirdly, my JAB is once again informing you all that I am writing, as I always am. I've begun the early planning stages for my NaNoWriMo! (Does anyone else do NaNo? I'm Ophiucha over there, you should friend me.) It is, by the way, National Novel Writing Month. Good stuff, done it for years to get out early drafts. This project actually has a plot, too, which is something new. It's called The Memory of Stone, and it is about ~palaeontology~. Yep. Basically, the world is a sort of quasi-Wales, but all animal life - save for humans, protected by their magic - have died. Millions of years ago, mind. They've adapted, certainly. Every bit of land that can be spared for farming is dedicated to it, and they use any waste (from the obvious to the bodies of the dead) as fertilizer. And humans have grown used to getting their protein and whatnot from nuts, beans, and veggies. Nonetheless, the story follows a woman (about ~30) named Olwen, who can sense the presence of fossils beneath the stone, and can bring them back to life... well, sometimes. She doesn't have the power to bring anything but small animals back, bugs and the rare rodent or baby bird. Magic is gained through murder in this world. Kill a man, get his magic. And as much as she craves power, she doesn't have the heart (or, to be frank, the talents) to murder a few dozen men.

And she'd need to for what she wants to do. Beneath the Isle of Draig, the capital of Cymry, there is a gargantuan, intact fossil of a dragon - one as large as the island, with a wingspan spreading out into the sea. Even if she had the power, though, it is buried deep in the sediment, far beyond the reach of her chisel and hammer, needless to say. She comes up with a plan, though, that will work in her favour twofold. There is a woman named Arianrhod (Aran) who fought during the last war, whose magic alone would give Olwen the power she needs. And she wouldn't mind killing her, either. But she's the King's best friend, and top advisor, and Olwen knows he'd defend her with his life. She contacts Roderick and Gareth, two lovers who were once Aran's friends. They fought in the war with her, gaining just as much power, and combined, the two were able to move mountains. Aran feared that power, feared for Cymry, and cursed them. One would turn to stone by day, the other would turn to stone by night, so that they may never be together again. Olwen offers them a very simple trade. Help her fight Arianrhod and King Cadwgan, allow her to kill Aran, and wipe away the layers of stone hiding the dragon's fossil, and she will return them to flesh, allowing them to see each other once more.

Not particularly keen on defending their old friend, and willing to do just about anything to see each other again, they agree. And that's your basic set up, there. I'll leave you with this hour long video of Bill Bailey, which is an hour of beautiful orchestral performances, comedy, and even a bit of musical education.