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{late to the party} An Inappropriately Timed Easter Post About Natural Dyes for Easter Eggs

Karen — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:57:55 +0000

As you know Easter was last weekend, so this post will actually not be useful to anyone for approximately 381 days- but I don’t really care because I don’t blog for money or anything, and I took nice pictures and if I don’t write down what I did I will surely forget. I’ll try to remember to re-post this in a more timely manner next year. Until then… allow me to “resurrect” the Easter spirit (ba-dam-cha.) I’m here all week, folks.

So, this year I wanted to try natural Easter egg dye, so I enlisted my nieces and nephews for some experiments. First, I put some dye on the kids to see if they would get a rash. Oh my gosh not really! I didn’t mean that kind of experiment. That would be horrible. I meant I enlisted them to help me experiment with dying eggs. So first, we boiled red cabbage for 30 minutes and then dyed eggs in it. They turned bright blue! They had to sit in the dye for a couple of hours, but still! For the yellows, we used turmeric (for the darker ones) and saffron flowers (for the lighter ones.) It wasn’t real saffron, it was something called saffron flowers that was $1.69 for a whole bag. I don’t know what it was. But we’re on a need to know basis, and all I know is that it was a bag of little red thingies that kind of looked like saffron and made the eggs light yellow. My mom was seriously stressed about the turmeric because turmeric stains everything. So be careful with that one. I wanted to try beets for red eggs but beets are gross. Maybe by next year I’ll be mature enough to handle beets. Probably not.

So then we tried this other crazy technique from Serious Eats where you put stuff from your garden on a raw egg, then wrap it in onion skins, then fabric, then boil for 10 minutes. We did some in onion and some in cabbage. The cabbage ones are the lighter ones. It was like a fun science experiment and the kids really liked it! You know, for a really short time as kids do. On some you could totally make out the leaf and flower patterns!

So go ahead – bookmark this shit and then somewhere around November you’ll be like, what is this bookmark, why am I saving something for Easter? What the hell? And then just forget about it and go on with your life. You’re welcome. And happy Easter.

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{time waster} Generate a Color Palette From a Photo! (Warning: Addictive)

Karen — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 04:36:09 +0000

I love to play with this SUPER FUN app that generates a lovely harmonious color palette from your photos. You upload a photo and the app processes it and spits out the palette. This would be a great way to think about room decor, website design, or even what color picture frame to get. Here are a some I did from some of my photos:

This is the (amazing, delicious, if you love cheese don’t miss it!) cheese shop in Neal’s Yard, London, that makes a lovely subtle palette.

This photo of Confucius’ Temple in Beijing yields a spicy palette- I think it would make a cool kids room.

This is a horse farm in Kentucky – which gives me a gorgeous palette that makes me want to redo a room right this second! I think my bedroom would do well with this.

You can play with it at Big Huge Labs. Hopefully you will have more restraint than me and not become addicted to it. If you’re clever, you can use this color conversion chart and get something to bring to the paint shop! OK gotta go, I have thousands more photos to try.

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{idea} DIY Gift Tags

Karen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:19:19 +0000

Gift wrapping can get so boring, and I get super jealous of people who wrap gifts all tastefully and creatively. So here are 2 ideas from the internetz about some easy and fun ways to step it up from a gift tag perspective.

1. You can print out these free gift tags from Angry Chicken, there are a bunch of designs.

2. You can get creative with a stamp pad and your thumb for these cute owl tags I saw on Design*Sponge.

Cute, and FREE if you already own cardstock or pilfer a few sheets from the office! (I said a few sheets. I’m not advocating widespread office supply fraud. Put down that ream of paper and all of those staplers. You don’t even need that many staplers anyway.)

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{ingenious} Gummi Bearskin Rug

Karen — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:18:23 +0000

YaYa Chou, a Taiwanese artist, created this bearskin-shaped rug out of Gummi Bears and fake nails, and it’s amazing.

I have no words. I love it.

Visit YaYa Chou’s site for more info and photos of this and other works!

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{recycling} Light Fixtures From Milk Jugs, Banana Crates, and More

Karen — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:07:35 +0000

It seems I’ve been serially bookmarking a whole bunch of odd and unusual DIY lighting ideas so I thought it was time to clean it out and share a few with you.

Latex Glove Lamp by Katarina Britse
STUNNING- the trick would be keeping them inflated for more than a couple hours.

Globe Lamps on Craftster
Crack open a globe and voila. I like this idea!

Milky Way Chandelier by Alexander Reh
ingredients: 14 1-gallon milk bottles, 1 hula hoop, 1 string Xmas lights.

The Slinky Light from Bouf
You can buy it for £45, but why would you when you could make one?

Chiquita Chandelier by Anneke Jakobs
Made with old banana boxes. She must have great potassium levels. Apparently there’s a how-to manual available at her website but I couldn’t find it.

Bettine Ping Pong Ball Lamp by Studio Kleefstra

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{ingenious} Cute Jewelry Made From Starbucks Gift Cards

Karen — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:59:47 +0000

Check out these stylish bracelets made out of dead Starbucks gift cards.

Now I’ve seen everything. Young whippersnappers today are really just way too crafty, talented, creative, patient, eco-conscious, and skilled for their own good, I SWEAR, it’s almost enough to make you sick- that is, until you realize you’re just feeling sick because you’re jealous of their mad skillz and ability to execute ideas successfully and efficiently.

See the full scoop and more espressoccessories* on Confessions of an OCD Knitter.

*espressoccessories = espresso-inspired accessories. That one didn’t really work, did it? Did it?

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{patience required} Gorgeous Decoupaged Table

Karen — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:25:57 +0000

I am so enamored of this decoupaged table I saw on Craft:! I want one!

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{idea} Sick of Margaritas? Turn Your Blender Into a Lamp!

Karen — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:12:24 +0000

Problem: an old blender that doesn’t work!
Solution: turn it into a funky lamp!

You can learn to make this blender lamp on Instructables. The only tiny sticking point for me is that this guy works somewhere there’s a sandblaster so he was able to get the blender sandblasted for free and make it frosty-cool. But you or I would probably not be able to do that so easily or cheaply.

I’m kind of annoyed right now because I had a garage sale recently and I sold not one but TWO old blenders. Dammit. Now I’ll have to wait until my current blender craps out OR find a garage sale blender myself. Or, just not do this project. That’s a good solution too.

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{craft projects} Things I Wish I Had Time, Energy, Patience, and Motivation to Craft

Karen — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 22:57:40 +0000

Sigh. Sometimes the internets get me down. It usually occurs when I build up an overload of crafty projects I covet but know I will never and would never do. Why? Because I am impatient as heck, that’s why. In the meantime let’s ogle other (better) people’s recent craft projects that have been on Craftzine, shall we?

Stamped Tea Tins With Japanese Paper

Hand Stitched Father’s Day Card

Blinged Out Laptop

Note to self: stop subscribing to Craftzine’s feed. (Oh but I can’t. It’s like craftporn.)

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{easter} Colorful Silk-Dyed Eggs

Karen — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:57:23 +0000

Last Easter I made these pretty marbled pink eggs, but this year I was inspired to try silk-dyed eggs. I used this helpful tutorial from Our Best Bites and they turned out gorgeous!

To make them, you wrap eggs in patterned silk and then in plain fabric (I used an old t-shirt). It’s important to get as tight a wrap as possible for good results. They look funny all wrapped up and ready to go!

A couple of notes: you must use 100% silk fabric. I used silk neckties I bought from our local thrift store and was able to dye 2 eggs with each necktie. The only downside to the thrift store ties: when you pour out the water at the end, it smells like thrift store for a minute or two! You could also use a tie that had an irreparable stain, or an old silk shirt. I was tempted to buy one of those sandwashed silk shirts that were so popular in the 90s, since there were quite a few to choose from, but I wasn’t sure if washed silk would work, so I stuck with the ties. I was really happy with how they turned out!

Here are the ties I used. Some of the colors that came out were surprising. For example, the dark green and tan tie made eggs that had all different shades of light blue, green, and yellow. Overall the vibrant colored ties came out more dramatic, but I like the softer colors as well. Some of the eggs came out with fine-grain patterns that weren’t discernible on the ties, which was neat.

You can learn how to make your own, and see pictures of some really pretty ones, on Our Best Bites. Happy Easter!

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