Category Archives: DIY

CRAZY CAT LADY

 

River Island cat jewelry, $1.56 / Meadowlark cat jewelry, $165 /

 

Okay I made myself wait a day to post this one.  I have so much to offer the world right now, I am trying to hold myself back so that I don’t overwhelm THEDRUNKSQUASH with too much wonder.  But seriously, this took so much effort to hold back on.

Anybody who knows me personally (IRL 4realz) knows that I am most definitely going to become a crazy cat lady.  I am already one at heart, but am currently apartment living rather than farm living and so cannot house one million kitties (I am also holding off on the chickens, goats, dogs, and sheep).  Also, my baby hamster would not be happy with a bunch of predators pawing her cage.  But regardless of the reality of my situation, I am unmistakeably a crazy cat lady at heart.

I have a cat vest at the bottom of my dresser drawer as we speak.  Haven’t worn it in a while.  But that is the key phrase: it in a while.  Yes, it’s been worn.

Anyways, the point of all of this cat lady pride is the fact that I have seriously been dying over the amount of cat rings out there in the internet shopping world.  I know some people wear them ironically, but I am one of those completely dead serious cat jewelry lovers.  As I was planning to bookmark some to save for Christmas List ideas, I realized that I don’t have the patience to wait until Christmas.  I want a cat ring and I want it now, as my soulmate Veruca Salt would say.

KITTY KAT

So instead of dying over the rings, I decided to get diying (haha GET IT?).  This is why craft clay is so amazing.  Check out the process, it basically consists of:

1.  Get a nugget-sized piece of clay and warm it in your hands.
2.  Roll the clay out until it’s about 1/4″ thick.  Or as thick as your fingers want a ring to be.
3.  Cut out cat ear shapes and round it out to make a cat face shape.  This is not exact science.
4.  Use a round pen cap (or like item) to create a guiding hole shape.
5.  Widen the hole.  If you have a ring mandrel, you can check for size periodically as you shave out the shape.  If you don’t have a ring mandrel, you can use a ring that you already have as a guideline.
6.  Bake according to clay directions.
7.  WEAR ALL DAY EVERY DAY.
STEPS
It can also be used as a weapon in lieu of brass knuckles if you’re walking home alone late at night.  I always think about the weapon capability of my rings.  In my humble opinion, rings should be both beautiful AND functional.  Or at least make you feel safe.  It’s like a cat security guard- which is something I have always wanted.
KITTEH
Anyways, this is getting weird.  JUST GO MAKE A CAT RING RIGHT MEOW, it just might be the best thing ever.

LOVE and Brief Apologies

LOVE

WOOHOO I’m back

I feel like this is my ghost blog… in that I make a ghostly appearance every few months or so, remind you that I once lived and that I’m sad about being dead, and then disappear to haunt some other places for a while.  Agh I’m sorry.  Whatever, I’m a flake I guess.

I’ve been nannying like crazy these days.  This is what nannying looks like:

Nannying

So yeah, it’s obviously craaazzy.  Haha.  But seriously, those kids do sap all of the energy out of me.  So I’m showing you a crafty diy that I did back in MAY for Mother’s Day.  Lameskies, lateskies, whatevskies.

It’s cute and easy, so I hope you’ll forgive my absence.  Basically you just need some thick, pliable wire.  I think that this is 18 gauge?  Maybe 16?  It’s not a hard wire, but rather a nice bendy craft wire that I found at the craft store.

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I used pliers to bend it, but if you don’t have any, trusty ol’ hands would work too.  I basically just practiced my cursive skills and bent the wire to form letters.  Then, I tied a simple cord to the pendant and VOILA it was complete.

Perfect for somebody that you love, or that loves the word love, or that loves to wear the word love, or that hates love but wants to be ironic?  Either way, I LOVE IT.  And I think my mom did too ;)

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Oh and PS I can promise you another blog post TOMORROW.  That is a promise I can keep.  Because I already wrote it… HA!

Flower Headbands


I’ve been seeing them all over the nets, so I just wanted to jump on the bandwagon and show off my favorite hair accessories.  I made a flower headband last spring when I was feeling very excited over a mondo stash of fake flowers I bought at the dollar store.  I’ve been wearing it pretty consistently for the past year whenever I need a bright, happy, pick-me-up.

I wish I could wear it everyday, but that kind of takes away from the excitement of it, right?  But I decided that if I had TWO different flower headbands then I could wear them a bit more often without being too repetitive… right??

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So Voila, a bright yellow flower headband was born.  The construction is pretty straightforward: Get fake flowers, trim them off their stems, glue them to a headband.  It takes about five minutes if you’ve already got all the supplies!  And you can get fabulous flowers and headbands at the dollar tree, so it’s definitely not an expensive endeavor.

Sun/Star/Whateverburst Mirror

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All righty there folks, I just had to jump on the bandwagon.  I’m not sure if they’re called STARburst or SUNburst or whateverburst mirrors, but I love them and I’m not afraid to say it.

And, yes, they’re all over pinterest (here and here) and numerous other crafting sites and blogs, so maaybe you’re tired of seeing or hearing about them.  But I’m not.  In fact, all of that spotlight has made my need for one intensify.

And, anyways, the reason they’re all over those sites is they’re RIDICULOUSLY simple to make.  And take all of one hour to make (plus another for some spray paint drying time).

And this is all to say that I made a sun/star/whateverburst mirror and it’s on my wall and I love it and I want to share my great fortune with the interweb.

Here are the steps!

1.  You will need to procure materials.  They are:

  • a round wooden blank of some kind (I have no idea what it’s called, I found it at Michael’s Crafts in the wood working aisle.  It was about three bucks? I think?)
  • a round mirror that fits onto that wooden blank (Check the framing section.  Fortuitously, these two items fit each other perfectly and the mirror was also a mere few dollars.)
  • a bunch of kabob sticks (these came from my mother’s kitchen)
  • a hot glue gun (crafter’s delight… never leave home without) 
  • some means for hanging this mirror on the wall (you will see that I used rope, glue, and a nail)
  • I also used a metal cutting tool for cutting my kabob sticks, but this was kind of overkill.  You could probably use regular scissors too.

2.  I used a ruler to draw pizza slices on the back of my wooden blank.  That’s how I thought about it, not as math, but as pizza because I love to eat food and I don’t really like math problems.  I will admit this.
I used these lines to figure out that I needed 32 kabob sticks.

3.  I also drew a little box surrounding the middle point to leave room for a hanging apparatus as well as standardize the lengths of each stick.  I didn’t want to accidentally glue some closer or farther from the edge.  (Scroll down to see what this looks like)

4.  I left half of the sticks long, and cut half by about two inches to create a varied pattern.

5.  Then I began to glue.  First the long sticks:

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6.  And then the shorter ones:

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This is what it looked like when I had glued all of the long sticks:

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And then here it is with the shorter ones glued on as well:

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7.  And then the fun part, spraypaint-a-palooza (I used gold because I wanted it nice and gaudy):

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8.  Then, not pictured because it would be boring, I waited for the paint to dry.  This took about an hour.

9.  Then, not pictured because I forgot, I glue-gunned the mirror onto the sun/star/whateverburst.  Thus turning this whole shebang into a sun/star/whateverburst mirror.

10.  Finally, because I had rope and no picture hanger, I glue gunned a piece of rope onto the back of the mirror.

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11.  I then nailed a hole into the wall and hung the mirror (after it was allllll dry of course) onto my no-longer-quite-as-bare wall.

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TADA!

So, there you go. I jumped on the bandwagon and I am oh so happy that I did.  I love the simplicity and the way it totally doesn’t look like it’s made of glue gunned kabob sticks and rope.  Also, I love that it’s gold.

I may have followed the trend, but I’ve got no regrets, baby, just joyous gaudy sun/star/lovelybursts hanging on my wall!