Doll bed posts

Just a quick post about another holiday project.

My boyfriend's mom, Cindy, asked if I would help her with a gift for her niece. Like so many little girls, she is very into American girl dolls, and Cindy wanted to make her a bed for her doll. Cindy sews and was planning on making the mattress and the bedding, but she hoped I could make the frame.

I wanted the bed to be more interesting that just a flat headboard and footboard, so I bought these two table legs at my favorite antique store.

I cut them up, used a leftover piece of furring strip from another project for the cross pieces,

And I ended up with a cute little bed.

measuring hack

For Christmas this year, I built a cabinet that my mom had been wanting made for about a year. We inherited an old player piano from my grandparents, and she wanted a cabinet for all of the song rolls made using an old glass door she had also found while cleaning out my grandparents' house.

I decided to wait until I got home to St. Louis to build it, I'm not currently working with any large theatres and really didn't want to be loading full pieces of plywood into my apartment to be cut in my kitchen. I headed down to my parents house five days before Christmas and was able to take advantage of my dad's pickup truck and a nice open garage and basement.

Once I got there I ran into the problem of measuring and planning. My mom had made some changes to what she wanted (once we both realized how large the original planned cabinet was going to be), which made all of my pre-planning useless. I was trying to replan the project without computer drafting, scale rules or even a good calculator (the cell phone just isn't up for this kind of math).

I tried to do all the math by hand, but with so many shelves (they were less than 3" apart) and the awkward size of the door I was basing my measurements around, I wasn't doing well. Every time I went back to check my math, something wouldn't add up quite right.

My solution came from a roll of 1/2" scotch tape I was using to wrap presents. I opened up my tape measure, marked off a few of the points and knew and then started using little chunks of tape to figure the spacing of my 1/2" ply shelves.

It ended up turning out really well. I was happy with it, and more importantly, she was too!

Christmas Magnets

This in another one of my holiday projects. I started out making a set of these glass marble magnets for my boyfriend for a housewarming gift.

They were so easy and so popular with the friends who came to the house and saw them that I am now selling them through one of the local comic book stores.

They're really easy too, can be done with any images and use supplies that can be purchased at any craft store.

I start with clear flat marbles like these (lots of people put them in the bottom of fish tanks)

I then use the marbles to scan for the right image and trace them.

It is important to individually trace each image because the marbles vary in shape and size. After tracing I cut them out on my cutting matte with my exacto-knife. Because the marble curves in from where I trace I usually make my cut about 1/8" in from the line I drew.

I laminate the image onto the marble with elmers glue.

Attach the magnet to the back with a heavy duty adhesive.

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

You can make them with any images, but I found that the comic books were working by far the best. Clean lines, bright colors and interesting shapes. If I were to do anything else I would probably start looking at brochures, magazines or other media with high quality images.

Coasters for Christmas

Around this time of year things tend to slow down a lot in the theatre world. The Christmas season shows are all up and running (they usually open early or mid November) and the January shows haven't really kicked into high gear yet. It is the perfect time of year to use my crafting skills to make gifts for my friends and family (and this year I'm thinking of selling some too, more on that later).

One of my projects this year is resin coasters.
I have been saving bottle caps all year for this project, it helps that my friends drink a lot of interesting beer.

I bought these resin molds online for pretty cheap (don't cut corners here, the chemical reaction as the resin hardens will cause it to stick to or melt your mold if you aren't using one designed for it).

The next step is to spray on a mold release and let it dry (if you don't let it dry all the way the mould release will float to the top of your resin when you pour it in, where it will be useless)

Next I pour out the right amount of resin

and mix in the hardener. I do this in disposable cups with disposable spoons to make my life easier.

 

I pour a small amount of resin into the molds, arrange my bottle caps on top, check underneath to see that they are straight and then fill the molds the rest of the way.

The resin takes a few hours to harden all the way through, and then I pull them out.

And as an added bonus I am becoming much more comfortable and skilled with using resin (which is really great for fake drinks, but I have messed up multiple times in the past when I didn't measure parts correctly).