Jake the Dog Plastic Bag Holder

Hello! Do you feel like practical things are made so much better with just a touch of impracticality? Like, I have a rice spoon. Boring. I have a rice spoon that is a pastel pink rabbit and its ears are the spoon scoop - excellent!! I decided recently that I really needed a plastic bag holder - and that it should totally look like Jake the Dog.

My Jake has a 65cm long torso and, including his arms and legs, is about 118cm long in total. He is only 14cm wide though; I can't decide if I like the skinny look best (because it kind of looks like he really has stretched) or if I should have made him wider.

To make Jake, I started off by cutting two wide strips of yellow fabric (15cm wide and 70cm long), six skinny strips (5cm wide and 35cm long), and two really long skinny pieces (5cm wide and 72cm long).

Then I used a plate to round off both ends of the wide strips of fabric; this will be Jake's head and bottom.
 

In one of the wide strips, I cut two holes with a 10cm diameter. I didn't want to make a traditional plastic bag holder where the bags go in and out the top and bottom because I thought it would make Jake look a bit weird. This solution, to be honest, also looks a bit weird! So I guess it's up to you which weird you like best ~___^
 

 

I sewed two skinny strips in half and threaded them with about 27cm of elastic.
 

I folded up the raw ends and sewed them closed, which prevents the elastic from moving around and makes the next step slightly easier.
 

I pinned the elasticated strips in place around the holes and sewed the raw edges together. 
 

The result are these strange scrunchie looking openings. I think I could have made the elasticated strips wider, but these openings work well enough as is.
 

The next step was to make Jake's facial features. To make the ears I drew a square 5cm by 7cm and then curved off one of the short sides. I cut four of them, sewed them into pairs, and lightly stuffed them. I also made a tail, 4cm wide at the base and 1cm at the tip and 7cm long, which I sewed and stuffed the same way as the ears.
 

 Jake's eyes have two pieces each; the black circles are 3cm diameter and the white circles are 2.5cm. His nose is 1.5cm in diameter and his mouth is the same size, but cut in half to make a semi-circle. His eyes, nose, and mouth are all felt. To make the puffy thing that his nose sits on, I drew a circle eight cm in diameter and then turned it into a shallow horse-shoe shape. I cut out two pieces, seamed the raw edges leaving a small gap, turned it right way round, and stuffed it with polyfill. I sewed all of the facial pieces on by hand.

For the legs I used the four leftover skinny pieces; I just rounded off the ends, sewed them together, and turned them right way round to stuff them. I stuffed them pretty firmly, but left a large gap at the top to make them easier to sew to Jake's body.
 

The arms are made from the really long skinny pieces of fabric. There is no need to round the edges because both ends are sewn into Jake's torso, but otherwise they are made the same way. I didn't take a photo of the next step (d'oh!) but all that is left to do is to pin the ears, arms, legs, and tail onto the torso and sew the torso together; you don't need to leave a gap because you can use the holes for the plastic bags as turning holes! Then you can turn Jake the right way around and - ta da!

Jake the Dog Plastic Bag Holder!
 

He managed to fit in our entire plastic bag hoard, and he really brightens up the laundry room, so I'm very glad I've made him!
 

- Lisa xx

Baking, succulents, and parties

Hello! I realised recently that I have an awful lot of photos of little things I have made/ baked, but I haven't shared them with you! You may have seen some of these on Instagram, but here we can talk about them a little more without having to make those huuugggeeee comments that end up looking like a really dense wall of text ~___^

First up: ugly cake! Scott and I recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary for which the traditional gift is salt. I thought that sounded a little boring so instead I decided to make a salted caramel cake. I wanted to make a layered cake, but I also didn't want it to be huge so I made a rectangle shaped upside down cake, and cut it into smaller circles. The caramel part of the upside down cake means that I didn't have to put anything between the layers.

However, cutting nice looking circles from cake is actually a lot harder than I expected it to be! When I layered them up, I realised how wonky my cake was! >___<

I thought about covering the entire thing in buttercream icing to try and make it look nicer, but ultimately decided that salted caramel layers and a salted caramel sauce poured over the entire thing was probably enough forms of sugar for one small cake so I left it naked and ugly ~___^ We ate it anyway, and it tasted pretty good!

I also made a simple card for Scott. I used a black and white chevron paper to cover a blank card, glued on a square of gold heart patterned paper, and stuck a black and gold embellishment in the middle. I messily scribbled a border around the heart paper with my silver metallic pen and it was done!

Bunnings had a heap of tiny succulents for sale recently, so I brought, ummm, way too many of them. I put one in a tiny teacup to give to a friend for her housewarming, and put two more in two empty tins I kept because they're cute. I added dinosaurs because dinosaurs are awesome.

I put the rest in a bigger pot, and added more dinosaurs and some pretty little rocks. I'm not sure how well that one in the middle is going; I brought it because I thought it was a cool colour, but I'm now thinking that perhaps I brought a dying succulent. Hmm.

I designed a badge to give to some of my derby pals, and recently two of my buddies from skating star classes had their birthday so I used two of the leftover pins to decorate some hair bows. The fabric I used is the same design as the badges, which I got printed from my Spoonflower store.

For my birthday I had an Adventure Time themed party - I didn't take many photos but I did remember to photograph some of the food (the most important part, right! ~___^)

I made Lumpy Space Crackles with using this recipe ... except I didn't put in any cocoa and I used honey instead of maple syrup. I also added some blue and red food colouring which didn't mix in that well. I was hoping for it to make purple, but it mostly didn't. I also put on some star shaped sprinkles to make them more space like ^___^

I brought some Adventure Time cookies, but they didn't taste that great so I made them into chocolate bark, with the addition of salted pretzels and pop rocks. They were a big hit!

I also made a Tree Trunks apple pie; the fancy lattice top was trickier to make then I expected it to be! It tasted really great and even though it was huge, it got demolished really quickly.

These sunglasses were made for my friend Clare for Christmas. Clare has an adorable style and is a big fan of daisies, so I wanted to make her something to suit her look.

All I did to make these was glue little daisy cabochons around the frame of some round sunglasses. It was really easy, but they turned out really cute!

I also made these Wookiee cookies after seeing these super cute biscuits by Sugared Nerd.

I used a mini gingerbread person cutter, and melted chocolate for the details. I adore how they turned out!

I made this chocolate bark for my dad for Christmas - I added almonds, pepitas, pistachios, dried cranberries, and white chocolate chips to melted dark chocolate. I also made Dad some coconut ice using this recipe (except I used Stevia instead of rice malt syrup), a trail mix, and more gingerbread. I added twice the amount of ginger into Dad's batch than I used for the Wookiee cookies because both of us like our gingerbread really spicy (not that he wanted to share! ~___^)

Inspired by Messy Nessy Chic, I made this cheese platter Christmas Tree for after our family lunch. Honestly, we were all a bit too full for this, but we did our best anyway! ^___^

Lastly, I've been working on the Death Star blanket. If you've been a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that I started this project in, oh, 2011. It's been in the WIP box for a long time, but the new movie inspired me to get it back out. I've started joining the squares, which makes the whole project a little more inspiring - I've almost finished the rows with the laser! (Baby steps!) ^___^

- Lisa xx

Hipster Princess Bubblegum costume

Sigh! Another Halloween has come and gone ... next year, when I'm not at uni, I plan to dedicate a lot more time to decorating and crafting and costume creation and just general Halloween shenanigans! However, I did still have a lovely Halloween, and I succeeded in making myself a costume so, without further ado, may I present ...

The hipster Princess Bubblegum! ^___^ Do people even do hipster versions of things anymore? This is how out of the loop I am. However, I have big, thick rimmed glasses and I didn't want to wear my contacts so this is the costume I went with! ^___^

 

The scarf, shorts, and shoes were thrifted (Bec actually found the shoes for me, so a shoutout to her! ^___^), and I already had the belt, top, tights, coffee cup, and bag so this was a fairly easy and inexpensive costume to put together.

 

After I made my crown, I guess I could have called it quits, but what is a hipster without some jewellery? (I actually don't even know. Do hipsters wear jewellery? I've heard they like triangles, do they wear triangles as jewellery?)

I watched this fantastic tutorial video by Nerd Burger and decided that I simply *must* have some donut jewellery. I'm not really sure if there are any donut people in Candy Kingdom, but I just couldn't resist.

They were really easy to make; make sure you check out the video as Cazz explains the process wonderfully. I already had some Super Sculpey in the beige colour that I used for the dough, and I picked up some pink and purple puff paints and blue and yellow sculpey from the craft store for the icing and sprinkles (I already had the sculpey in the other colours).

I made one purple donut into a brooch, and two smaller pink donuts into earrings, just by gluing the pin/earring backs on with E6000.

I also made this brooch using some of the light blue shimmery clay; mostly because I had this song in my head the entire time I was crafting things for this costume.

I also had a go at making a little Peppermint Butler brooch; it's not perfect (I need to work on making sure I don't leave nail marks on everything and I think his head stripes are too raised ...) but I think it's pretty cute anyway.

And, speaking of cute, you may have noticed that in the pictures above I have a little friend riding on my shoulder - Science the Candy Corn Rat! Yay! Pops de Milk made an adorable Science, and even shared the pattern for her so I knew I had to make one too ^___^

Patricia's pattern was lovely to follow; very simple to understand with with lots of pictures! (I always like to have photos to refer to so I can tell if I'm on the right track with a pattern!)

 

I did my Science's face differently in that I sewed on small felt shapes instead of using safety eyes and embroidery for the eyes and mouth respectively. I did actually have some 7mm safety eyes that I was going to use but when I put them in they just didn't look right. I didn't have any smaller ones, and I was too lazy to go back to the craft store, so I used felt instead! ^___^

One thing I must get better at doing is making the legs for amigurumi - mine always come out slightly bigger at the base than at the top and I think they are meant to be the same the whole way through. Practise makes perfect, I guess!

 

My Science also has more of a curly tail; this is probably because I crochet too tight. However, it may loose its curl in time so I'm not too concerned about it.

I also crocheted two more brooches (one can never have too many brooches, right? ~___^). For the lollipop I used a pattern by Twinkie Chan, but used part of a wooden skewer instead of crocheting a stick. For the sweet, I crocheted a rectangle, sewed it into a tube, put a scrunched up bit of paper in the middle, and then tied yarn around each side of a ball. Then I just glued brooch backings onto both of them ^___^

 

As always, there is so much more things I could have crafted for this costume (Peppermint Butler handbag, Lady Rainicorn bracelet, science glassware charm bracelet ...) but I think I did pretty well considering I was also finishing off an assignment ~___^

The zombie project I was planning has pretty much completely fallen through at this stage so I'm not sure if that will be appearing on here anytime soon, which is a pity since I still think it's a cool idea! I might keep working on it. I've still got eight tiny donuts to make into something though (plus three major essays, blah!) so I've got enough to keep me busy. I'm thinking maybe a bracelet? Or magnets? Or more hair bows? Hmmm.

Until next week!

- Lisa xx