Wedding Recap: Paper or plastic?

Or silk? I'm hardly a world class seamstress, but I thought it would be nice (and do-able) to make my bridesmaids some cute little purses to use at the wedding. After all, there are only two of them, so I hardly had an excuse not to. After some failed attempts at designing the bags myself (they looked like silk potato sacks - real classy), I came across this free pattern!

Isn't it adorable?! And free! The best part is that the pattern only uses a fat quarter, so I had enough fabric left to complete the bags after my "potato sack debacle."

Since these were going to be a little dressier than the pic shown on the pattern, I decided to skip the button detail and used some random scraps and guinea hen feathers (the fun ones with the polka dots!) to make a little flower instead.

Images courtesy Sherry Lynne Photography

I love the way they turned out! And I totally learned my lesson about underestimating the power of a cute pattern. Especially when it's free!

Awww... and packing.

Just when you think you've lived in Brooklyn long enough to hate all of human kind, ya happen upon adorable sh*t like this.

The reason I was googling "patterned tape" in the first place is because Matt and I need a solution for packing that will make it easy for "the movers" (ie. our family and friends) to identify boxes destined for Manhattan versus boxes doomed to a year of storage before we, as Jack Donaghy would say, "flee to the Cleve"

heh.

Anyhoo, look at these fun (and like many fun things, overpriced and impractical) tapes:

(available at TapeSwell.com)

(available at Amazon)

(you had me at "Happy Tape")

... aaaand evidently I was not the first to come up with this idea.

Alas, I think we'll go with something that is available at a local store - like that colored duct tape, perhaps. (Otherwise, we'd probably double the price with shipping costs.) But if anyone has a good idea for this patterned stuff, let me know! It would be a fun way to mail a gift package, right? Or just wrap a present in general. I'm picturing a box wrapped in newspaper or plain craft paper with some of that "happy tape" wrapped around it like ribbon. On the top of the box you could "draw" a bow with pieces of the tape. Notice I am thinking about this as opposed to packing. Have I mentioned my procrastination problem?

...and then the etching cream took off my arm!

For the last couple of months I've been obsessed with glass etching. I decided upon this craft whilst trying to figure what exactly to make for my groomsmen. Although this was an easy craft (I mean, I did it, how hard could it really be,) the numerous steps involved made it very time consuming. The first step was to find an image:
Then, I converted the image to a simple black and white, preserving key aspects intact in order to keep the image recognizable:

Then, I transferred the image to contact paper, put it on the chosen glass surface, cut out the black spots with a box cutter, brushed on the etching cream, waited a couple of minutes, rinsed it off, and viola!:

Working on these glasses required all of my concentration, as well as the use of a head lamp.

In the end, I etched 23 different glasses. Here are some of the others.

Here are some old school Super Mario Brothers power ups.

Go Bills!

Final Fantasy Vii!

Cutting Instruments!

My next etching project has something to do with a previous blog post of ours ...

Not your mama's craft fair

We're going tomorrow. Totally pumped!

Wedding Recap: The Ultimate Party Trick

A few months back, Matt and I decided to cross-off #114 on our list of life-goals and learn the dance to Michael Jackson's Thriller!, a feat made possible by tutorials from thrilltheworld.com. This website was set-up by a Canadian dancer (the best kind of dancer, if you ask me) who aimed to break the world record for largest simultaneous Thriller! dance. She created a series of tutorial videos aimed at people with little to no dance experience. Now you too can be the coolest person at the next party you attend!

Although the tutorials cover the entire 6 minute version of Thriller!, our friends were already being such awesome sports that we really owed it to them to edit the song down to 3 minutes. Anyway, here is a video of the fruits of our labor from the wedding. Enjoy!

Night of the Living Wed from Sarah Stock on Vimeo.

Mwa-hahahahaaaa!