MIG Welding- not for the faint of heart...

Photo credit (Flickr) - neoplatonistking

     Hi there! So, I just took another class - this time in MIG welding.  It was at the same hacker space as before, but with a different instructor.

     I liked him a lot, but he wanted me to just jump into welding while having 5 ft. spark arcs shoot at me, which was on top of worrying about massive amounts of heat from
the welding tool and possibly getting UV sunburn on my eyeballs. Needless to say, it was a little hard for me to focus on just welding in the beginning. After all, our instructor did spend the first 30 minutes of class describing all the ways you could injure yourself during welding.

Look, I made a Bench!

    So this post is really just to brag about this awesome woodworking class I took in Houston, TX rather than to share any insightful tips or crafts with y'all. I've always wanted to take a woodworking class- in high school, I took sewing instead of woodshop, and in college, while I took a slew of other art classes, my schedule never lined up for me to take any of the wooden variety. 

  

A-Door-Aborable Wreath: Tech Edition, Part 2

    Hello again! Just wanted to give the second half of the LED jingle bells wreath project. The first half of the project covered the creation of the wreath itself, using cardboard, a craft knife, glue, and a few other materials. The video is the conclusion of the second part of the wreath project: adding song and lights!

    Though I liked the wreath when I first made it, it is much more interesting now that my brother incorporated LED lights and an arduino code to make it play "Jingle Bells." To get the code he wrote as well as some read through instructions on how to get started, click here. Some basic info on the project, in his words:

"To make a similar project, on your breadboard, wire two LEDs in series on each Arduino out pin called in the "LED PIN" array, and include a 330 Ohm resistor on each pin circuit to ensure that you stay under the maximum current draw for each pin.  The piezobuzzer is wired as usual, and the pushbutton has a pull up resistor to prevent any erroneous 'low' signals. "

A-Door-Aborable Wreath: Tech Edition, Part 1

      I know it has been a while since I've written a post (the combination of being in my best friend's wedding and the holidays), but I have another - perhaps now less timely- Christmas wreath project. This project is unique in that my brother and I collaborated on the design and implementation of the wreath. I also knew that I wanted to use cardboard in some way because I have a bunch of it at my house from work and it is a cheap material to work with. This post will just describe making the cardboard wreath. The next post will cover how to install LED lights and set up the arduino code to play Christmas music.

Materials:

•  cardboard, lots of cardboard
• wood or white glue (Elmer's or other brand)
• An exacto knife or a box cutter
• marker or pen
• surface to cut on (one that you don't mind getting scratched up or marked on)
• (optional) acrylic paint (red, green, white)

How To:

1.  The basic plan was to create a wreath of interlocking triangles. So, the first step was to cut out a bunch of similarly sized triangles in three different sizes. (I needed about 60-75 total for the project)

Triangles- so many to cut out. Get a cushy exacto knife or your hand is gonna kill you afterward

Quick Tip- Sauce Portioning

Whether it is from homemade sauce or jars of store-bought sauce, I always have leftovers. Since they don't last that long, even in the fridge, I always freeze my sauces. But it can be messy to get sauce into sandwich bags, so I use this trick that I borrowed from my days working at a Bakery and filling bags with icing - shout out to Bobbicakes!

1. Place a sandwich bag inside of a wide-mouth mug or cup. Make sure that the top of the bag folds over to the outside of the cup. 
2. Place a funnel inside the cup and pour in the sauce (if you are super confident about pouring, you can skip the funnel part.) If any lumps stop up the funnel, shake it gently from side to side until the clog clears.
3. Once all the sauce is poured into the bag, zip the bag closed. Then remove the bag from the cup. Mess free sauce portioning!

A Pumpkin Pake

Pumpkin Cuppake with a little bit of whipped cream on the side, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon

      Well, technically, they are pumpkin cuppakes- cupcakes wrapped in little pieces of pie dough instead of the usual paper wrapper. Fair warning, this recipe makes for one heck of an awesome carb-filled biteful.
    For those of you who remember my first foray into baking a pake- it was a blueberry pie with a sour cream cake, aka a blueberry pake- I did it for the sake of Drop Dead Diva. They now have a recipe on their site for those wishing to make a pake, but all the ingredients are canned or come from a box (lame!) So, I set out to make another wonderful pake, this time with fall flavors in mind. My dad and mom came to visit last weekend, so I made these treats in my dad's honor since he loves pumpkin pie. And as much as I rag on the Lifetime recipe for not being "from scratch." I am not a total glutton for punishment, so I did use store bought pie dough and store bought canned pumpkin (if you want to make your own, feel free- I've done it in the past and it is delicious, if time consuming.)

A Sour Attempt At Pickling

     Puns aside though, this was a colossal disaster: please in no way follow any of my instructions to make this or your hopes for pickles will turn into salty seas of sadness.
    My brother subscribes to get a farmer's basket every other month with various vegetables (I call it Hippy Harvest); a few weeks ago we got a few pickling cucumbers from the farmer's basket. Now, I love pickles. LOVE THEM. I used to be the kid who would buy a cup of frozen pickle juice for 50 cents while at the skating rink- Or, if I was feeling incredibly wasteful with my allowance, I would get an entire giant pickle. And while I can't quite stomach that much acid at a time any more, there is nothing I like better than sneaking a little crunchy pickle snack into my day.
    So, I thought, I should make my own pickles! What a grand adventure it will be- battling all the possibly dangerous bacteria floating around in home canned pickles (well, so say the critics). And of course, should I go with the classic kosher pickle recipe, using lacto-fermentation (mostly salt) or the modern stand-by (mostly vinegar.) Since I have had so many vinegar pickles, I decided to go with salted pickles. The theory is that as the brine increases in it's fermenting, the salty cucumbers will excrete salt in the form of a sour, tanginess. Or something more scientific than that. So the longer you leave the good bacteria to do it's thing, the more sour your pickles become. And they continue to ferment until they are eaten and "go bad."
     But for some reason, I didn't actually try to follow the recipe that the video pickle-guys used. Instead, I used a recipe from a random cookbook. And while I am sure the recipe was great, I apparently can't convert a recipe for one large crock into the three jars I ended up using. Instead of splitting the mixture between the three jars adn then adding water (as the directions for the crock recipe said to), I added all the salt mixture to one jar and then made a new batch. the amount of salt I used was a bit extreme (1/3 cup for the big jar and another 1/3 cup split between the smaller jars); this is expesially ridiculous when you look at the measurements from the first video (1 tablespoon per jar.) Yikes! As soon as I tried them, I winced in salt-shock and I was still tasting salt in my mouth hours after I tested them. I should have just put the slices over my eyes and called it quits for the day.

     I found a couple of really good videos explaining the process, which I will post below:

How to Make Dill Pickles with Lacto-Fermentation 

How to Make Fermented Dill Pickles 

Avacado Ice Cream?

     Ok, when I saw this recipe on Alton Brown's website and had to try it. After all, I absolutely love avacados- a well made guac is where it's at, but avacados are at their finest plain with just a bit of salt.  The texture thing can be a big issue for some people, but it doesn't bother me at all. And they have a good amount of fat (one day it's "good" and the next its back on the "no no" list), which makes them a perfect ingredient for ice cream.
     Yes, ice cream!

Getting ready to use my Kitchen Aid ice cream attachment; reading the instructions and assembling

   

A Blueberry Pake

   In the last month or so, I finally decided to move to Houston, TX (shout out to my brother Chris!) So I have been thoroughly busy deciding what to take instead of making anything new. However, I had the day off on the fourth of July and I wanted to bake! I wanted something "American" - and I had a lot of blueberries just waiting to go bad before I could eat them all- so I immediately thought of making blueberry pie. I mentioned this idea to my boyfriend, who said, "oh I hate pie, I like cake better" and that blueberry pie dream was killed. Of course, I never really love fruit pies myself and I know how much work they take (hello lattice crust: my worst nightmare), so I wasn't entirely mad at my BF for pointing his preference out.

But what else could I make?
Of course, of course! A Pake!

    If anyone else out there is addicted to Drop Dead Diva, they will immediately know what I am talking about since Stacy's Pakery has been in the plot-line for the show for a while now.  For all those others though, a pake is a pie recipe mixed with a cake recipe. If you search for "pake" on google, you will get a fully made pie inside of a cake (aka too much work). Instead, my pake has a pie crust and the bottom half is fruit filling; the top half is a sour cream cake. Goodbye need for a lattice top.

Gardening...on Wheels?

Finished project!

    Well, spring is here and being able to go outside again is both good and bad for my creative side. It means I spend less time indoors with idle time on my hands, but it also means more time spent in outdoor spaces. And since the backyard becomes an extension of our home in spring, what better craft project to do than one involving plants and our patio.



   Last summer, I found a few old drawers at an estate sale. The lady sold them to me and asked what I planned on doing with them. I said I wanted to make a planter out of them - of course, right? Now that was all well and good to say it, but actually getting there was kind of a struggle. First, I had to clean them out (they had sat outside all fall and winter) and put holes in them for drainage. Then I painted the decorative details purple and water proofed them using spar varnish. Next came the question of how to actually arrange them. My dad and I went through quite a number of configurations before settling on the final design. And then I was so happy, thinking all we had to do was put it together and we'd be done. But then my mom got in on the design process, suggesting we add height and wheels.

     Wheels? What? Why? But still, I was intrigued by the idea of a cart peddling herbs. So, we added old chair pieces and AV cart wheels my dad had lying around. And Tada! We were done, right? No, now we must paint the chair legs white so that they match the drawers. This is an example of a little input from others being a good idea, but too much having the potential to derail a project. My garden clock is ticking away, letting me know that time is running out for my herbs to be able to grow and flourish as the heated onslaught of summer peaks it head over the horizon, laughing that we are at a standstill.

Steampunk Jewelry

A sample of the pieces, right before they are baked

    As promised, I have a new craft for you, based on a steampunk aesthetic. Basically, this is a brass/metallic look including gears, sprockets, wires, etc. Steampunk is based upon an alternate version of reality; an idea of how our world would have developed differently if Victorian England had relied more heavily on steam power rather than developing electricity. There are tons of sources out there to describe how this look came about, so check some of that out for a better explanation. 

My craft zone for steampunk jewelry projects. You can see clay, embossing powder, as well as tools (in the soup can)

     My mom keeps checking out books on this aesthetic used in crafting and one of my really good friends recently went to a steampunk/scifi convention in Dallas that really got me into the idea. Especially when it comes to costuming and jewelry, I love make-believe and whimsy. This craft lends itself well to the beginner. Gathering all the little tidbits is probably the hardest part of the whole creative process. Luckily for me, I am a compulsive craft/object hoarder, so I often have lots of junk lying around dying to be played with and put in a project.

Glass Towers

Instructions:

1. Find lots of sturdy, 1" or thicker, glasses
2. Get a heavy duty, clear drying epoxy glue
3. Lay down an old quilt or towel or tarp 
4. Lay out the pieces in a pleasing shaped tower (from a sturdy base to a smaller top seemed to work best, at least in our experience), but horizontally so none of them break
5. Assemble two pieces at a time, using heavy duty glue (blech, we had one that smelled like asphalt)
6. Hold pieces together (if using fast drying glue); OR tape/tie/clamp pieces together gently until glue dries all the way
7. Keep assembling with glue until tower is complete and let dry completely before placing outside